Tag: Columbus

The Rooster is Cooked: Vivek Ramaswamy is not having an affair

Everybody in Columbus politics knows exactly who “the Rooster” is. His real name is D.J. Byrnes—Donald J. Byrnes—, and he runs The Rooster, a Substack newsletter that bills itself as “All of Ohio’s depravity. All the time.”  He’s been a fixture at the Ohio Statehouse for years now, showing up with a cameraman, ambushing lawmakers in stairwells and elevators, filming confrontations, and turning routine hallway traffic into his personal gotcha moments. He dresses like he just rolled out of bed after a rough night—sloppy, unkempt, always looking like the guy who doesn’t quite fit the professional scene he’s infiltrating. He walks the room, always angling to be “on camera,” and is purposely disruptive because he genuinely believes he’s fighting corruption. I get the impulse. I respect a free press that scrutinizes people in positions of power. What I don’t respect—and what I can’t abide—is when someone starts making stuff up, or at the very least, wildly inflating unverified rumors, because it fits their narrative or their personal demons. 

I’ve interacted with the Rooster plenty of times since I first ran into him at the Capitol. He’s always struck me as someone carrying a heavy load. He’s talked openly about his own struggles with drinking. He’s written about it himself—how alcoholism nearly destroyed him around 2020-2022, how he hit rock bottom, lost relationships, and eventually got sober sometime in 2022 or 2023 after an intervention from friends. He’s admitted in his own posts that putting down the bottle saved him money, calories, and probably his life. He’s approaching 40 now, no kids, no wife, a string of failed relationships behind him. He’s described himself as having toxic habits from his college days onward. People who’ve been around him for years say it’s not exactly a secret. He comes across as socially awkward, the kind of guy who projects a “GameStop” geek—sloppy, outsider vibe, always dressed down, always seeing scandal everywhere because he knows what’s inside himself. 

I feel for the guy on a human level. A lot of people have things in their lives their ashamed of. They have moments where they can’t hold it together. When you’re battling that kind of internal chaos—whether it’s the bottle, failed relationships, or just the inability to build something lasting—you look for an outlet. For the Rooster, fighting what he sees as “corruption” became that outlet. It’s a way to transfer all that restless energy into something that feels productive. From his perspective, he’s a hero shaking up the system. He’s anti-power, anti-establishment, the guy who asks the questions mainstream reporters won’t.  He’s not purely partisan in every single piece. But the disproportion is glaring. The overwhelming focus, the tone, the nicknames he slaps on Republican leaders (“Governor Sleepy Tea” for DeWine, “Third-Place Frank” for LaRose, etc.)—it’s clear where his sympathies lie. He’s been a big-time active supporter, in spirit if not officially, of Amy Acton’s gubernatorial campaign, the Lockdown Lady. Acton, the former Ohio Health Director who became the face of COVID lockdowns in the state, is struggling in the polls against Vivek Ramaswamy. Everybody knows it. The Rooster knows it. And when you’re desperate to advance a campaign that’s losing steam, hit pieces start looking like a lifeline. 

I’ve been around Ohio politics long enough to see the pattern. The same media ecosystem that manufactured cases and events around Trump—stuff that never stuck because it was built on sand—is now trying the same playbook here in Ohio. Vivek is out front, a successful entrepreneur, family man, someone who flies home to his wife and kids rather than lingering in hotels. He’s not the type to fall for cheap temptations. I’ve met Vivek Ramaswamy plenty of times. I’ve met his wife, Apoorva, several times. I’ve met his parents. They’re good, solid people. The Ramaswamy family is the real deal—nice, grounded, focused on bigger things than one-night scandals. Vivek travels the way high-level people do: private jet for efficiency, but he comes home. He doesn’t stay overnight chasing affairs. He’s too smart, too disciplined, and too watched. The criticism from the left is always the same: he’s a rich guy hanging with Elon Musk, flying around, must be unethical. It’s the Democrat mindset—projecting their own assumptions about success onto people who actually built something. They can’t fathom that some people don’t share their weaknesses. 

The Rooster recently published a piece titled “The woman at the center of the Vivek Ramaswamy infidelity rumors.” In it, he claims—based on “more than 10 trusted Republican sources” who all independently named her—that Alicia Lang, daughter of influential State Senator George Lang (R-West Chester), is the woman at the heart of an affair with Vivek. He ties it to her work history: she managed Sharon Kennedy’s Ohio Supreme Court campaign in 2020, then served as Vivek’s Deputy Chief of Staff through December 2022, moved to Strive Asset Management (the company Vivek co-founded with J.D. Vance and others), was promoted, and later joined another venture. He mentions Vivek’s private jet being in Indianapolis for a week in late February/early March 2026 with no campaign activity. He notes rumors surfacing around the same time Vivek’s campaign ad about his third child dropped, and betting odds on Kalshi flipped in favor of Acton. He even references an anonymous tip through his “Dirt Box.” Yet he admits he hasn’t seen any photographs or video. It’s all anonymous sources and timeline speculation. No hard evidence. Just enough smoke to try lighting a fire. 

I happen to know Alicia Lang well. I’ve known her since she was a young girl—12 years old, a fan of my work, someone who’s read my writing diligently. I know her mother, Debbie Lang, very well. I know the entire Lang family. These are good people who have fought real corruption behind the scenes for years. They’ve been through tough times and stayed loyal to each other. Alicia grew up in that environment—politically savvy, smart, charismatic like her mother, with a positive outlook forged in real hardship. She’s worked high-level campaigns, had access to powerful people, and conducted herself with integrity every step of the way. The idea that she would “sleep her way to the top” or get caught up in some tawdry affair with a married man who’s constantly surrounded by staff, security, and the public eye is laughable to anyone who actually knows her. She’s way too sharp for that. She’s seen how the game works—the cameras, the leaks, the scrutiny. Families like the Langs don’t survive and thrive in Ohio politics by making rookie mistakes. 

I’ve talked to Vivek enough to understand his character. He’s not subject to those kinds of temptations. He’s got a nice wife at home, kids, a mission bigger than any fleeting thrill. The Rooster’s sources? I don’t buy that they’re genuine Republicans with clean hands. More likely, they’re people with a beef against George Lang, because he’s the Majority Whip in the Senate—maybe Democrats or disgruntled insiders trying to use the Rooster’s platform to settle scores. The Rooster doesn’t name them. That’s convenient when you’re pushing a narrative that could destroy reputations. He’s gambling that “some Republicans said it” is enough. It’s not. Especially when you’re talking about a young woman who isn’t even the candidate herself, she’s a staffer, a daughter, a private citizen in many respects despite her connections. There’s a higher legal standard there that the Sullivan case won’t cover, and you can’t just float rumors without consequences.

This is where the Rooster’s personal issues bleed into his work. When you can’t maintain basic relationships, when you’ve battled the bottle for years, when your own life feels chaotic, it’s easy to see chaos everywhere else. He projects his weaknesses onto others. He sees cocaine binges and sexual scandals in the Statehouse because it’s easier than looking in the mirror at his own broken life. He migrates to sexual stories. He assumes everybody’s doing what he’s done or wanted to do. It’s classic psychological projection—transferring your own sins and struggles onto others so you can fight them externally instead of dealing with them internally. I’ve seen it before in people. You feel sorry for them because you know they’re hurting, but when they start dragging innocent people into their redemption arc, sympathy turns to accountability. 

He’s gone after other people I know—Jennifer Gross, for example—in ways I thought were unfair. But this crossed a line. When you target someone like Alicia, who’s conducted herself ethically her entire life, who comes from a family that’s fought real battles, who is too smart and too grounded to fall for “cheap thrills,” you’re not journalism anymore. You’re rumor-mongering. And in the age of defamation law, especially post-New York Times v. Sullivan, with the lower standards for public figures versus the higher bar for private individuals, this is dangerous territory. Alicia isn’t a public official running for office. She’s a young professional who’s worked on campaigns and big ventures. The Rooster assumes everyone has their vulnerabilities as he does. They don’t. Vivek and Alicia certainly don’t.

The Rooster has been doing this in earnest since around 2020, with Substack exploding in popularity. He’s published over 1,700 dispatches. But the style is gossip mixed with innuendo, nicknames, and sensationalism. He calls himself a “concerned citizen who commits acts of journalism.” He ambushes people, follows them upstairs, and pleads with troopers about the First Amendment. Some lawmakers call him a security threat or narcissistic. Others engage because ignoring him feeds the narrative. He’s been restricted at the Statehouse—lobby closures, doorway bans. He’s been banned from X (formerly Twitter) for extreme posts. He leans left, but claims anti-power. In practice, the targets skew Republican, especially when it helps a candidate like Amy Acton. 

Acton’s campaign is struggling. The lockdowns she oversaw as Health Director are still remembered—harsh restrictions that hurt businesses, families, and kids’ education. People haven’t forgotten. Vivek represents the opposite: pro-growth, anti-woke, entrepreneurial success. So the hit pieces come out. The same playbook used on Trump—make something stick, even if it’s a rumor and speculation. The Rooster thinks he’s shaking up stuff mainstream reporters won’t touch.  But you don’t fabricate or amplify lies about people who don’t deserve it. Especially not to project your own unresolved issues.

I know a lot of the people the Rooster writes about. I know what they do when they’re far from home. I know how they conduct themselves. The Statehouse isn’t the den of iniquity he paints it as—at least not to the extent he claims. Sure, human flaws exist everywhere. But the level of cocaine-fueled orgies and affairs he implies? That’s his lens, not reality for most. Good families like the Langs, successful people like Vivek—they have too much at stake, too much discipline, too many eyes on them. Alicia has her mother’s charisma and her family’s resilience. She’s not some average lowlife, like the Rooster. I think he’s going to find himself in trouble. Defamation isn’t protected speech when it’s reckless and false. He can only blame himself.

I’ve never shied away from calling out corruption when I see it. That’s why I can speak confidently here. I know these people personally. I’ve seen their character up close. The Rooster, for all his bluster, is projecting his own story onto others. It’s a redemption narrative for him—fighting the powerful to atone for his past. But when it harms the innocent, it ceases to be noble.  And when wrong is done, it has to be punished. 

Footnotes

1.  D.J. Byrnes, “The woman at the center of the Vivek Ramaswamy infidelity rumors,” The Rooster, April 27, 2026.

2.  Aaron Marshall, “Who is The Rooster? A Closer Look at D.J. Byrnes and His Controversial Blog,” Columbus Monthly, March 16, 2026.

3.  D.J. Byrnes, “Retiring from alcohol was one of the best decisions of my life,” The Rooster, July 26, 2023.

4.  Various posts on rooster.info detailing his sobriety journey and past struggles (2023-2024).

5.  Amy Acton campaign site and related 2026 gubernatorial coverage.

6.  Public records and statements on Vivek Ramaswamy’s family and travel patterns.

7.  George Lang’s family public statements and known political involvement.

Bibliography

•  Byrnes, D.J. The Rooster Substack (rooster.info). Multiple articles, 2023-2026, including sobriety posts and the April 27, 2026, infidelity rumor piece.

•  Marshall, Aaron. “Who is The Rooster?” Columbus Monthly, March 16, 2026.

•  Acton for Governor campaign website (actonforgovernor.com).

•  Ohio political news coverage on the 2026 gubernatorial race (various outlets, 2025-2026).

•  Ramaswamy campaign materials and public family statements.

•  Hoffman, Rich. The Politics of Heaven (forthcoming 2027).

•  Additional public records: LinkedIn profiles, campaign finance, and Kalshi betting data referenced in Rooster reporting.

Rich Hoffman

More about me

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

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

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

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

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

Remember the Lockdown Lady: Amy Acton’s Devastating COVID Policies That Torpedoed Ohio

I’ve never liked Dr. Amy Acton. I had very little good to say about her back when she was Ohio’s Health Director under Governor Mike DeWine, and I haven’t thought much about her since those nightmare years of 2020 and 2021. I tried to push her out of my mind after all the damage she helped inflict. But here we are in 2026, with a primary right around the corner and a full gubernatorial election coming up, and the Democrats have talked her into running for governor. In my opinion, it’s one of the worst political decisions they could have made. It’s not just bizarre—it’s tone-deaf to what Ohio families actually went through.

I happened to be in Columbus recently, and within just a couple of days, I had two conversations that really drove this home for me. First, I spoke with Governor Mike DeWine himself—the man who’s been in the governor’s office through it all. We talked policies, what worked during his eight years, and what went horribly wrong. COVID came up naturally, his administration got challenged in court over the constitutionality of the lockdowns and orders pushed under her advice. At no point during those dark months were the things they were doing fully constitutional, and many smart people—including me—knew it at the time. The Ohio Supreme Court and lower courts eventually forced reopenings because the overreach was so extreme. DeWine knows he lost a lot of goodwill over it, and he’s still trying to make it up to Republicans.  

But it was

A couple of days later, I talked to the future governor of Ohio—Vivek Ramaswamy. He’s a super nice guy, high-character, above-the-trench kind of person who wants to play well with everybody if he can. He’s smart, young, and genuinely wants to do good things for Ohio. He’s not the type to go down in the dirt and bodyslam somebody just for sport. But when we talked about Amy Acton, I told him straight: she deserves it. “Vivek,” I said, “she shut down our state. We’re still bleeding economically from the torpedo she dropped on Ohio under Fauci’s influence. You’re going to win the primary easily, and you’re going to have a new mop in your house because you’re going to mop the floor with her. That’s all she’s good for after what she did.” He laughed, but he knew I was right. He’s got people like Donald Trump Jr. and others who will remind folks of her record, so he doesn’t have to get his hands too dirty.  She’s the Lockdown Lady, and Ohio must never forget.

This isn’t abstract history to me. I lived it. I saw families destroyed, small businesses wiped out, kids losing years of education, and people denied the simple joys that make life worth living—like tailgating at a Browns game or taking the kids to Kings Island. I remember driving to Kings Island that miserable summer of 2020. It was supposed to be family fun, but her policies turned it into a dystopian nightmare: rides taped off, masked staff barking orders, social-distancing enforcers everywhere, limited concessions, and zero joy. We couldn’t ride half the things, couldn’t buy souvenirs properly, and the whole experience felt like punishment for wanting normalcy. That’s what Amy Acton did to Ohio. And now she wants to run the whole state? No way. I’m here to lay it all out—from my perspective, with the background you need, the facts she can’t erase, and why Vivek Ramaswamy is the only choice.

How It All Started: DeWine’s Bipartisan Mistake and Acton’s Rise

Let’s go back to 2019 so you understand the context. Governor Mike DeWine wanted to reach across the aisle after winning in 2018. He’s a moderate Republican with a long career—U.S. Senator, Attorney General—and he thought putting a Democrat on his team would build coalitions. That’s how Dr. Amy Acton, a physician and researcher from Youngstown with a background in public health, became Director of the Ohio Department of Health. On paper, it looked like smart politics. She had worked on infant mortality issues and seemed qualified. What DeWine couldn’t foresee was COVID-19 hitting in early 2020 and the federal machine behind her.

During her tenure, Acton completely deferred to the CDC and to Dr. Anthony Fauci at NIAID. Their guidance—later proven flawed, contradictory, and largely politically driven—became gospel in Ohio. Her daily briefings had this folksy, almost hippie vibe: “hug your neighbor,” “support each other around the campfire,” “we’re all in this together.” But behind the warm words were iron-fisted orders: stay-at-home mandates, school closures, business shutdowns, mask rules, and capacity limits that crushed everything. Ohio was one of the first states to go full lockdown on March 22, 2020. Schools closed statewide. “Non-essential” businesses were ordered to shut down. Amusement parks, fairs, and sports—everything ground to a halt.

I watched it happen in real time. Acton estimated as many as 100,000 infections early on, scaring everyone into compliance. But as I’ve said many times, the virus was engineered. Gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology—funded in part by U.S. taxpayers through Fauci’s NIAID and EcoHealth Alliance—took a bat virus and made it transmissible to humans. That’s not a conspiracy; it’s documented. RFK Jr., now serving in the Trump administration at HHS, laid it all out in books like The Real Anthony Fauci and The Wuhan Cover-Up. China released it, the WHO covered for them, and Fauci stonewalled investigations. Bill Gates’ involvement and his Epstein ties added another layer of suspicion, but the core fact remains: this was a lab-created bio-weapon scenario that justified the panic.

Acton wasn’t smart enough to be in on the big conspiracy, in my view. She just followed the CDC memos like a good soldier. “Outdoor outdoor outdoor,” she’d say, then flip to full lockdowns. She sounded whacked out on something during those speeches—Grateful Dead concert energy mixed with authoritarian control. And DeWine empowered her.  DeWine lost in court, had to reopen, and still carries the scars. Acton resigned on June 11, 2020, amid protests outside her home (some armed), legislative bills stripping her emergency powers, and public fury. She faded away—until Democrats dragged her back out in 2025, thinking we’d all forgotten.  

The Human Toll: What I Saw and What Ohio Still Feels

The damage was catastrophic, and I saw it up close. Ohio’s unemployment shot from 4.9% to 16.4% in one month—the worst spike in modern history—small businesses, restaurants, gyms, and retailers closed by the thousands and never reopened. Hospitality and tourism tanked. Families who saved all year for Kings Island got a nightmare version: no lines near rides, masked everything, and a joyless slog. Mental health crises exploded. Overdoses rose 20% in Ohio in 2020. Kids lost massive learning—third-graders fell behind by a third of a year in reading, especially poor kids. Life expectancy dropped.

Critics on the left still say Acton “saved lives” by flattening the curve. But compare Ohio to Florida, which reopened earlier under Governor DeSantis. Adjusted for demographics, outcomes were similar or better without the economic suicide. The real scandal was ignoring natural immunity, the virus’s low risk to healthy people and kids, and the secondary deaths from isolation and delayed care. As I told Vivek, we’re still bleeding. Families lost homes. Communities—especially rural southern and southeastern Ohio—felt betrayed by big-government edicts from Columbus.

Acton didn’t invent the virus, but she owned the implementation here. She channeled Fauci’s flip-flopping on masks, overstated models, and suppression of early treatments like hydroxychloroquine. Congressional hearings in 2023-2024, plus RFK Jr.’s work, confirmed the gain-of-function funding, the lab’s military ties, and the cover-up. Trump’s administration has now banned such research and put the lab-leak theory front and center. Yet Acton never questioned it. She just locked us down.

The Tweets That Prove It: Resurfaced Evidence of Her Madness

Nothing captures her tone-deaf cruelty better than the tweets she posted in May 2020—tweets she later deleted but that have now resurfaced thanks to OutKick, Fox News, and Donald Trump Jr. I’ve shared them on my podcast, and they’re Exhibit A for why she’s unfit. These weren’t policy announcements. They were personal scoldings aimed at ordinary Ohioans desperate for a break.

Context: The Cleveland Browns, with Baker Mayfield as the new quarterback, were generating rare excitement in a sports-starved state. Fans dreamed of tailgates, playoffs, and packed FirstEnergy Stadium. Empty stadiums that year were already heartbreaking. But Acton inserted herself into Browns Twitter like a hall monitor:

•  To a fan posting a Kermit the Frog meme about playoff hopes: “Please social distance.”

•  To excitement about Baker Mayfield: “Please follow CDC guidelines.” Then, when the fan pushed back, “We should be discussing ways to prevent COVID.”

•  To another fan saying Browns Twitter was “the only fun part of quarantine”: “Please stop.”

•  To Super Bowl dreams: “No. Too many people.”

•  To jersey talk: “We need masks and PPE, not jerseys.”

•  And the kicker: “Grow up #StayAtHome” and “We are in a pandemic.”

These are direct quotes from her deleted account, resurfaced this week. She was lecturing fans for wanting to watch football, cheer their team, or escape the misery. She told people to stop influencing others “in a bad way” by hoping for games. This is the same woman who made Kings Island miserable and shut down so much else.  People just wanted relief. She wanted compliance.

Her campaign now claims some were parody accounts, but the screenshots don’t lie. Trump Jr. amplified them. OutKick called it “bizarre harassment.” And she’s running for governor? In northern Ohio, where sports are religion, this stings. Cleveland Browns fans, Cuyahoga County union folks—they remember the empty stadiums she helped create.  

Vivek’s Path

That brings me to Vivek Ramaswamy. I told him exactly what I think: he’s going to win the primary without much trouble, and the general, too, if we show up. Southern and southeastern Ohio—rural, Trump-flag country—will deliver huge margins for him. Those are the right kind of people: hardworking, America-first, sick of big government. Northern urban areas (Cleveland, Cincinnati, Hamilton, and Cuyahoga counties) might tilt toward Acton with unions and Democrats, but the numbers won’t overcome the south. Recent polls show her competitive? Smoke from cherry-picked areas. I guarantee it.

Vivek has raised nearly $20 million, got Trump’s endorsement, picked Senate President Rob McColley as running mate, and has DeWine’s blessing. He’s a Cincinnati native, biotech entrepreneur, author—exactly what Ohio needs: innovation, tax cuts, merit over DEI, and manufacturing revival. He doesn’t want to “beat the heck out of somebody,” as I put it, but he doesn’t have to. Surrogates like me, Trump Jr., and others will remind voters she’s the Lockdown Lady.

DeWine endorsed Vivek the same day Acton picked David Pepper as her running mate. That timing wasn’t a coincidence. DeWine knows her record.  Vivek is the future—opportunity, excellence, the American Dream. Acton is the past: fear, control, economic destruction.

Never Forget: The Lockdown Lady’s Legacy

Democrats bet on amnesia. They thought six years later we’d forget the empty stadiums, closed parks, lost businesses, learning loss, and suicides of despair. They were wrong. History has judged the lockdown crowd poorly, and Acton was at the center in Ohio. She followed Fauci, the CDC, and a corrupt China-WHO axis straight into disaster.

I’ve said it for years now: remember until November. She locked down Ohio. She destroyed lives following bad science from people who funded the gain-of-function weapon in Wuhan. Read RFK Jr.’s books. Study the tweets. Recall your own pain—whether it was a canceled wedding, a lost job, or a kid who never caught up in school.  And when it comes to this election, never forget what she did. 

Bibliography / Further Reading

•  RFK Jr., The Real Anthony Fauci (2021) and The Wuhan Cover-Up (2023) – essential on origins and response.

•  OutKick/Fox News exclusive on resurfaced Acton tweets (March 20, 2026).

•  Ohio Capital Journal and Signal Ohio coverage of the 2026 race and endorsements.

•  Congressional reports on gain-of-function and lab leak (House Select Subcommittee, 2023-2024).

•  Economic data: Ohio unemployment spikes and lockdown impact studies (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics).

•  Guardian, Ohio Capital Journal, and Statehouse News Bureau on Acton’s 2020 resignation and protests.

•  Acton for Governor campaign site (for her own words—or lack thereof on COVID).

•  Governor DeWine’s endorsement statement (January 7, 2026).

Rich Hoffman

More about me

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

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

Rich Hoffman is an independent writer, philosopher, political advisor, and strategist based in the Cincinnati/Middletown, Ohio area. Born in Hamilton, Ohio, he has worked professionally since age 12 in various roles, from manual labor to high-level executive positions in aerospace and related industries. Known as “The Tax-killer” for his activism against tax increases, Hoffman has authored books including The Symposium of Justice, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, and Tail of the Dragon, often exploring themes of freedom, individual will, and societal structures through a lens influenced by philosophy (e.g., Nietzschean overman concepts) and current events.

He publishes the blog The Overmanwarrior (overmanwarrior.wordpress.com), where he shares insights on politics, culture, history, and personal stories. Active on X as @overmanwarrior, Instagram, and YouTube, Hoffman frequently discusses space exploration, family values, and human potential. An avid fast-draw artist and family man, he emphasizes passing practical skills and intellectual curiosity to younger generations.

Climate Change is a Hoax Created By Financial Whores and Barflies: Those who advocate for it only want to control you and make money off your stupidity

It’s too tempting of a target to want to put everything into one basket and blame it, but in the case of climate change and the whores who advocate for it as a means to implement communism around the world, all roads go to finance.  I was recently in Columbus, Ohio, discussing important things with influential people. A few of those people were very powerful attorneys working on legislation language for wind and solar farms in Ohio.  My answer to them was why they were so excited about an industry that was limiting our electricity needs, not helping them.  Solar and wind power don’t produce enough energy to advance society.  It might help you recharge a battery on a camping trip so you can get electricity for two or three needed electrical devices, but it won’t run a vibrant economy.  So why were they so excited?  Well, because there was a lot of money flowing around investing in this new technology, and it gets pretty complicated, but many of the big banks and investment firms wanted to make the World Economic Forum happy as a measure of success and to invest in a change state technology and to profit off the dollar transactions.  For many now massively globalized investors, a domestic policy that only serves 350 million people is not where it’s at.  They are looking at options that serve billions of people and want to invest in the infrastructure that provides those services.  And traditional technology already has its kingmakers; they have all the money.  If you want to move it from their hands into yours, you need some social motivation, which is what is happening with climate change.  That’s also why those two attorneys in Columbus were so excited because, as whores to the nearest dollar they can get their hands on and become socially compliant, they were happy to be leading something that would give them some respect among the political class.  Many of those people are hoping to be on the invite list to Davos at the next World Economic Summit, or the World Government Summit, or a think tank of liberal communists who want to limit resources so they can control the economy and everyone who lives off that economy. 

I’m all for solar power for colonies on the moon and Mars that will need to provide power for a few bunkhouses and electric vehicles.  Computer work centers, cooking, climate control, and those kinds of things service a small group working from those remote locations.  Solar and wind power are suitable for remote, distant locations that do not yet have the economic infrastructure for mass-rate economies serving millions of people.  And to attempt to force those methods on a society and their economies is foolish at best.  But bankers are not very interested in science. But they are in power and stability, so they are always looking to make money from anything that can have an interest rate attached to it, and that happens best for them when you move money from one place to another.  And the fiction of climate change does that for them, which is the only reason anybody is interested in it.  When I refer to those two influential attorneys as whores, and barflies, you would hear the same kind of enthusiasm coming from two 22-year-old prostitutes working a convention racket.  They might see a couple of good-looking guys at the bar they’d rather spend time with as biological creatures of sexual lust.  But they look at the fat, middle-aged men with full bank accounts but no hair and bad breath from their chicken dinner, and they seek them out because those are the guys who are willing to pay for sex.  People who do things just for money are no different, making decisions in life for the same reasons.  There was no logic in bringing clean energy technology, such as solar farms and wind power, to Ohio.  If you want clean energy, the best thing is nuclear power.  If you wish to have a constant power supply to maintain a growing economy and all the power needs of a society of invention, putting more and more needs on an existing power grid, a fossil fuel economy is best.  But if you only want to make money from something desperate and to sell a lie to the public, well, then prostitution is the tempestuous vice that works best.  It doesn’t bend reality to be something it’s not, as climate change advocates attempt to perform.  But it does make a fast buck from gullible, lazy people. 

If we wanted to, we could terraform the planet Mars and other similar celestial bodies into the kind of atmosphere we want so it’s livable to humans.  We can certainly do that on earth.  There is even technology that can manipulate the weather right now.  We don’t have to be a victim of weather, just as we don’t need to die of cancers.  We have scientific solutions to most of these surface problems.  We know what causes atmospheres to heat up.  We can cool them down.  In the case of carbon dioxide emissions, it’s an easy problem.  Plant more trees because they eat up carbon dioxide and convert it to excellent, breathable air.  We have the means to clean water.  To scrub the air.  We could control the earth’s thermostat to feature the best climate we wish it to be.  I would dare say that we could turn off violent storms through upper atmosphere manipulations as they are forming if we wanted to, and we had governments who tried to solve those problems instead of exploiting the destruction to acquire more government power.  But we are not helpless victims of nature.

And that’s where many of these climate change methods start, at the occult level within the World Economic Forum itself.  Many of those people are still occult worshipers of old Mesopotamian gods, such as Baal, the rain god from Canaan and the main villain of the Bible.  Occult-driven personalities want to rebel against Yahweh, the god of Christians and Jews, and overthrow the foundations of religion in the Western world.  They don’t give a rats tiny behind for saving planet Earth and only scare people into serving their god and bending the human race over a barrel where the new gods are those from the administrative state who serve as communists to a massive centralized authority.  As the wealth of America is exploited through fear of climate change, there are plenty of whores and bar flies willing to make money off the robbery.  But rising ocean levels and holes in the atmosphere are controllable elements well within our command of science to manage.  People who want to control us want us as they did in classic societies who worshipped Baal and other gods and want us to fear our circumstances. If we can terraform Mars, we can maintain Earth however we choose.  But climate change advocates are about dependency, victimization, and ultimately making money off whores who will do anything for a dollar.   And at the heart of all that is a finance industry entire of whores who aren’t very smart but are ruthless in their pursuit of easy money.  And that’s all climate science, as advocated by a political class attached to the World Economic Forum goals, is all about. 

Rich Hoffman

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Ding Dongs in Columbus: A Review of Governor DeWine’s State of the State speech

Before I get into the obvious homeless guy on 3rd Street in Columbus who was standing on the corner a block south of the Statehouse, completely nude, with his ding dong and buttocks clear for all the world to see, as if he were getting ready to shower at a YMCA, I have to talk about the fantastic book I bought from the Statehouse gift shop that I have had my eye on for several years now, The Art and Artistry of the Ohio Statehouse by Dayna Jalkanen.  Every time I go to the Statehouse, I think about getting it, but time is always short, so I never do.  I love the Statehouse and the intentions of the work that is supposed to be done there, of republic-style representative government, and I had just told a story to similar people about my thoughts on Governor DeWine’s speech where I stood in the rotunda with DeWine giving out pictures with a lunch buffet set up in the middle of the room where senators, representatives, lawyers, lobbyists, cutthroats and even media personalities were at work saving the world from their perspective.  Even the “Rooster” was there dressed in his backpack and poorly attired shorts, deliberately showing disrespect for the process as he runs a government blog checking the antics of the powerful with a kind of Marxist mentality of “bringing them all down.  During this visit, I had a little more time to make it to the bookstore, where I was there with Jennifer Gross, the Ohio Representative from the 47th District, and her son, a brilliant young man.  I explained to many people that DeWine’s speech this year was horrible, worse than usual, and uninspiring.  And there was a thick blanket over the whole State of the State address as Columbus conspiracies were awash in speculation and scandal.  But as I have said before, the Statehouse is there, grand and has deep roots in history.  It intends to inspire people to greatness even if they fall short, as was apparent under this current flock of politicians.  So, I wanted to get the book to remind myself of the worth of it all.

As I checked out the book at the counter and spoke to Jennifer about all the perils of progress during legislative proceedings, I reflected on what I had just said about DeWine’s speech and why it was so bad.  Governor DeWine was clearly in a lame-duck stage of his term.  He was on the outs with the Trump campaign over several controversies.  But the biggest one is that DeWine isn’t a Republican, especially not a Trump Republican.  He’s a product of FDR’s New Deal and some Johnson version of a Great Society where the government was there to do what parents couldn’t or wouldn’t.  And that was the entirety of DeWine’s speech on the State of the State on 4.10.24.  The whole thing was about how the state of Ohio could take care of children in ways their parents would fall short of, and everything he mentioned required more legislation and tax money spent without scrutiny on the next generation without any real expectation of success.  As I had just said in the rotunda, everyone in that room thought they were doing the right things, including DeWine.  They all had the best of intentions.  Nobody thought of themselves as evil.  Yet there was evil everywhere, and why?  It’s a challenging game where you must go to Columbus to work with others to make things happen.  You have to build relationships and get things done.  But in compromising with other people to get things passed, most people find themselves changed forever in the process, and they aren’t the same people who were elected, and they don’t survive the meat grinder of politics intact. 

Whenever I attend a State of the State speech, I always like to sit in the gallery where all the lawyers, aides, and lobbyists sit because I want to hear how they talk to each other.  They all have some specific thing that concerns them most about the government.  It might be renewable energy, social programs, or even Rob Portman’s retirement status, and how many boards he is sitting on for advice.  I was sitting next to one of his former aides who went on and on about how much influence the former senator still had in the business world, which I had to snicker about.  I’ve known Rob Portman for a long time, especially at the beginning of his political career when he was in his 20s.  Rob Portman shouldn’t be advising businesses about anything; he doesn’t have the horsepower to understand the field or how it works.  But in that gallery, I heard many stories about things those people wanted to impress upon each other as they were caught up in the moment.  All dressed up to listen to the Governor give a speech about saving children from their parents.  I explained it later by identifying the problem for what it is: all those people at the speech had the power of government at their fingertips, and they had to decide how to use it to help people.  And that’s where the evil comes in: when people don’t have the right thoughts about things, how can they decide to use government the way it’s supposed to, not how their feeble minds interpret it?  DeWine intended his speech well, as everyone listening did.  But where can they apply government power to the right purposes?  That’s what I wanted to think about as I bought that book and why I took a little extra time talking with Jennifer about those kinds of challenges this time. 

But the answer to that question was at the corner of 3rd Street, just one block south of the Statehouse as I was leaving.  There was security everywhere around the Statehouse because of the governor.  I was leaving the Senate, and there were plenty of police.  But then there was this 6’ 6 man of color standing there with his pants pulled down around his ankles, underwear, and all oblivious to the world around him.  I don’t think he knew his ding dong was hanging out in full view to all the cars and pedestrians moving by him.  I’ve seen homeless people all over the world, and they are caused by too much government destroying the personal initiative of individual people.  And here was this guy, an apparent creation of a nanny state government rotting away in full view of everyone just a block from where all the rules of Ohio were made.  And nobody was doing anything about it.  He was violating public decency standards.  He was probably violating many drug laws.  But he was a person of color, and nobody wanted to be called a racist for pointing out his bad behavior.  So, everyone just ignored him and went about their way.   No doubt, several children that day had their lives ruined by seeing that naked guy on the street corner on a sunny April day in 2024.  With all the grand ideas proposed by many governors over the years, the reality is that the quality of life for people only gets worse the more that the government tries to replace good personal conduct with more laws, which aren’t even enforced a block from where DeWine gave his speech.  And all the people talking about big, fancy ideas in the gallery were already in their cars on their way home, driving past all the problems none had the guts to deal with.  Which is how evil works in those kinds of gatherings.  Well-intended people who use the power of government to do what they lack as people, and it migrated into society to show itself in that homeless guy so disconnected from reality he was nude on a street corner in the capital of Ohio, which should be a showpiece of excellence.  The Statehouse certainly lives up to the lofty expectations.  But the people in it, inhabiting it, don’t.  And they hide their lack of courage behind procedures and fancy speeches.  Yet they always fall short because their minds aren’t up to the task, and they don’t have the guts to increase their intellect where they can help people like that guy instead of making more of them by default. 

Rich Hoffman

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George Lang’s Business Ratio: The New Bass Pro in West Chester, Ohio

Over the last several weeks, it has been interesting to hear from so many people upset that I support George Lang, the current State Senator in the 4th District in Ohio, and will continue to do so.  They think he is a RINO and that somehow I can’t tell the difference between a rhino and an elephant.  And the concern continues because I know many politicians, and I like many of them, and I’ve been very open about it.  People new to politics or who don’t have an excellent understanding of what the government is supposed to do for all of us get wrapped up in the horse race criteria that the media creates for them, so supporting candidates for various positions becomes a kind of football game where some people in Ohio support the Cincinnati Bengals because they happen to live south of Columbus while people in the north support the Cleveland Browns.  Those in Columbus fight over which is the better, depending on the record.  But in the end, it’s all rigged, and they are all the same guys and corporate products designed to sell advertising to people.  Politics is much the same kind of thing, and what we usually end up with are people who don’t do a very good job once in office.  They talk the talk but never walk the walk.  And the people I tend to support do so on merit-based standards.  I judge them more on what they actually do than what they say, and when it comes to George Lang, who doesn’t say much about himself too often, he does a lot in the background that is very successful.  And one of these, there was undoubtedly a topic of conversation ahead of the March primary; I had the good fortune to attend the opening of Bass Pro for a unique sneak peek ahead of the crowds with George.  And we geeked out by what we saw.  But as we enjoyed a private tour and I did a scouting report on some of my hard-to-find .500 magnum ammunition and acquire much-needed 209 shotgun primers, I was reminded of why I like George so much.  Not that it’s a struggle, but when I say he’s a great politician and has done all of us such a great job, I look at Bass Pro moving to West Chester as part of the great free enterprise initiatives that George Lang has built over the years, things that operate in the background, and the case for George Lang makes itself quite clear. 

I remember when George and I were friends as he was a trustee in West Chester 15 years ago, and he struggled to fight to keep the trend of the area toward small government and generate much economic wealth, as a township instead of a city.  I have a rule I talk about all the time, which I discuss in great detail in my book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, which people worldwide have been enjoying because the balance of government is the key to a country’s success.  Just as it was set up to do in America, the government needs to be big enough to support the needs of a country or a community but not too big to become authority figures, which is tricky business among anybody in the human race, anywhere in the world.  But few places have done it better than West Chester, Ohio.  I have been a part of it since the beginning, starting when we used to call it Union Township, and it was mostly farmland and open fields.  It was strange to stand in the new Bass Pro parking lot with my wife a few days later during the grand opening when she remembered me racing cars against other rival people in that area.  Things have changed quite a lot.  However, the form of government formed around the growth of West Chester Township is a success story that traces back to George Lang.  To have such a community run by three trustees is unusual in the world, where so much wealth is generated among so many people, and to have such a high standard of living is almost unheard of.  But George established much of that in those early days, and the trustees there now have continued those policies and resisted the temptation to turn West Chester into a city with a mayor and city councils running everything.  The success in West Chester is that George Lang and future trustees have embraced the capitalist concept of free enterprise and kept government as small as possible to allow businesses to grow, and as a result, West Chester has been, and continues to be, one of the best places in the world, not just the country.  I’ve been all over the world several times.  And I’ve been all over the United States and seen a lot of very nice communities.  There are few places as good as West Chester, Ohio.  I would argue that no place is better.  The reasoning is that the government ratio has been figured out and maintained in West Chester mainly because of George Lang’s precedent.

The Bass Pro story is a good one.  We have been fortunate to have a Bass Pro in Forest Park and a Cabela’s in West Chester by Liberty Center.  Since Bass Pro bought Cabela’s over the last decade, I have mixed feelings about them combining resources to make this new Bass Pro in West Chester, which opened on February 21st, 2024.  I liked both previous stores and hated to see them go.  But the property for the new one was established over a decade ago, and once they were planning to move to the new location, Forest Park made them an excellent deal on their lease, so they stuck around while the market settled down and the agreement with Cabela’s matured.  The giant outdoor store market has found its balancing act, as Field and Stream have discovered.  How big can you be and still be small enough to survive?    I tend to judge all Bass Pro stores based on my favorite, the one in Springfield, Missouri, the headquarters of a vast store, as I have discussed before.  As George and I stepped into the new Bass Pro, it was more Cabela’s in its presentation than Bass Pro, but it’s a fantastic size and filled with everything anybody could ever hope to have regarding outdoor life.  My family spends a lot of time exploring and traveling, so a store like this is a wonderful addition to our life.  The new West Chester store is enormous.  It is noticeably different from the one in Forest Park, but it is right-sized to fill the needs of the current outdoor market.  Having the ground on the Streets of West Chester is far better for them than in any of the other two previous locations. 

And that’s the trick: why did Bass Pro select that location in West Chester instead of other regional places?   The Forest Park site was failing because the community failed, as has Fairfield, Springdale, and Sharonville around the area.  All those places have moved in the city direction and have added government in the form of mayors and city councils that slowed down the growth rate because they started looting off their businesses to support the government.  West Chester is very business-friendly, and the tax structure is not penalizing.  If you keep your government small, they don’t have the ability to loot off the community.  And additionally, we have kept the government school of Lakota under check for well over a decade now, so they haven’t been able to suck the life out of West Chester and Liberty Township the way the schools do in other parts of the world.  The result is that investments like those that take a Bass Pro Shop to build and develop can happen, where different communities would choke off the opportunity at the development phase.  Working in the background as one of Ohio’s most powerful senators, George Lang is bringing those same sensibilities to the entire state of Ohio.  And he’s doing a great job.  Whenever I go to Columbus to talk politics, the word about George is that he stays focused on his Business First Caucus and doesn’t get wrapped up in much else.  He is applying the West Chester model, which he helped to build from the start to Ohio in general.  The Ohio Senate listens to him, as does the House, and he has the ear of the governor in a healthy way.  You don’t see George running for every microphone to broadcast everything he does.  When I took a few pictures of him at the opening of the new Bass Pro, he was a little shy about taking credit.  But I know the details behind the scenes, and he deserves much credit.  And that’s also why I’m so supportive of him over these many years and continue to be.  George understands how to support just enough government to make it functional.  And takes away the flash of temptation for it to grow into a monster.  And everywhere George has been, his fight has been to keep government small and manageable.  Bass Pro is just a recent but obvious example.  And it was great to see it happen.

Rich Hoffman

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Vote for Thomas Hall for the 46th House District in Ohio: Setting the bar high, too high for political rivals

It’s never been an option from my perspective; after the remapping of the Ohio House Rep districts, Thomas Hall has always been the clear favorite. That’s not because Matt King, who is running against him in the primary that voters will decide on August 2nd of 2022, is a bad candidate. But just that Thomas Hall is that good. He checks all the boxes you’d want for a Representative seat in the new 46th district, which now includes Liberty Township, Ohio, and traditional districts from the north, such as Middletown.   Recently at a West Chester Tea Party meeting, Thomas and Matt spoke to the audience to make their pitch as to why voters should vote for them, and I present those videos here, which comes down to one key attribute that decides the issue. In Thomas Hall’s case, he has a lot of experience and has been very successful during his first term in Columbus. He has done all the right things, including passing blockbuster legislation across Governor DeWine’s desk for H.B. 99, which makes schools safer in the case of a mass shooting. Matt King just doesn’t have the experience, and it showed as he presented himself. Both are nice young men, but in the case of Thomas Hall, he’s just an exceptional political representative who has done such a good job that no challenger would do well against. 

To Matt’s point, he did the best he could, and he’s right about the Founding Fathers being very young when they were involved in the revolutionary business of starting a new country. He’s been a guy from the business world, not a politician like Thomas Hall, who has two terms as a trustee in Madison Township to add to his resume even as young as he is. And typically, we might say that not being in politics is more attractive than voting for the incumbent. In most races, that would be true. But Thomas Hall is such an exceptional young man who has faced the hottest fires of controversy and done so with great poise; you get the feeling from him that he’s just getting started. Thomas Hall has already shown that he can go up to Columbus and work with people who do not agree with him and work on legislation in a productive way to get their support. And he knows how to navigate the rough waters of politics without being a sell-out to his district. Of course, that has made Thomas Hall a target for those jealous of his success. For instance, Sheriff Jones has endorsed Matt King because the Sheriff is on the record being angry at legislation Thomas sponsored, like H.B. 99. But Thomas has managed to pick up the enthusiastic endorsement of Butler County Sheriff’s Office Police Union, which Sheriff Jones is a member. He also has the support of the NRA, Buckeye Firearms, Ohio Right to Life, and the Middletown Police Union. Sometimes when you are too good, you do make enemies. In my opinion, Thomas Hall has made the right kind of enemies and he made those enemies because he had done his job too well. 

Some of those jealous forces have thrown their support behind Matt King simply because they don’t want to live up to the high bar that Thomas has set for them. Matt is a blank sheet of paper, making it much easier to live up to. The hope that a fresh set of eyes as a House Rep might turn out well is the same kind of reasonable hope that someone who purchases a lottery ticket might expect. You can’t win if you don’t buy one. But in buying one, you accept that the outcome is uncertain. In my experience, a person with a business background like Matt has will have a tough time because when you run a business, you can hire who you want, and if you need money, you just go to the bank and make your pitch. The tricky thing about Columbus is that it already has people there whom you have to work with who have their own ideas about things, so it is difficult at best to get anything done and to do so with your authenticity intact—and even saying that of course Democrats who enter the Republican Party as Trojan Horses would like to see an end to Thomas Hall. You can see that clearly in the upcoming fundraiser mysteriously sponsored by the Republican Party of Butler County that has the Super Bowl trophy of Spencer Ware on it. They even put the trophy in Matt’s name. When you see this kind of thing, its always an indication that the candidate doesn’t have their own record to stand on, so they try to evoke the records of other people, like the Super Bowl exploits of a person who was on Super Bowl-winning teams, or Sheriffs with a long history of service, but a history of wanting to be a kingmaker and knock off political rivals at the party level.  

But the most convincing case for Thomas Hall came when he was pressed during the meeting by a critic of H.B. 218, which was a reaction to the impositions of the vaccine mandates. The critic in the audience was pressing Thomas for his support of the bill, which she did not feel went far enough in protecting employees from their employers during Covid. Thomas was front and center with all that activity, so he has a track record to criticize. But I think he handled that emotional question very well, which shows how much grace under fire he can handle, so I offer it here. Many political personalities would have stumbled through this kind of criticism, but Thomas did all he could at the time, so he could confidently answer the question.   There was undoubtedly a time limit being imposed on H.B. 218, and Thomas wanted to get something done, even if it didn’t go as far as the person asking the question wanted it to go, which was complete protection from mandatory vaccines. When the Biden administration put forth their Executive Order in September of 2021, it was essentially a race against time, putting politicians like Thomas Hall between a rock and a hard place on purpose. There is a fine line between individual rights and the rights of a company to require employees to comply with the needs of a workplace. That caused a lot of trouble for Columbus in reacting to the pressure; Thomas showed outstanding leadership during this challenging situation and was very respectful to his critic when asked the question. Of course, many of the Biden mandates have been found unconstitutional, as many thought would be the case all along. H.B. 218 tried to do something in a really tough time, so there wasn’t much more Thomas could do, but his reaction to the criticism is telling because it shows how he can handle pressure, even when it’s critical. Matt King couldn’t be asked any questions because he didn’t have a record to defend. And ultimately, that’s what this race comes down to; one of the candidates for the newly created 46th District in Ohio has a lot of experience and has been very successful. The other guy is hoping to use other people’s reputations to knock off a political rival who has set the bar too high for other politicians to live up to. That makes it a pretty clear case. Ultimately it’s up to voters, but the logic favors Thomas Hall greatly. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

America is what it is because of Risk Takers: Government can print money, but it can’t produce lost opportunity

I suppose we always knew it, but the audaciousness of the revelation has been stunning. The government’s attitude toward business owners and businesspeople in general during the outbreak of Covid-19 has been jaw-dropping in its arrogance, and ignorance. To think that government is doing the world a favor by letting people get back to work is stupid at best, yet that is the attitude. To promote healthcare workers in such a way to call them heroes as many people put on the unemployment line by destroyed businesses made that way by the government’s over-reaction to a virus has been insulting, and has well defined the true problem that has always been there, just not expressed honestly. Politicians like to say they support businesses when they are looking for donation checks, but truly, they see their roles in our republic as something of a kingly station that grants out rights and privileges rather than in representing the people who really make the world turn. That was obvious when the Governor of New Jersey indicated that he did not consider the Bill of Rights when he closed down their state’s businesses. After all, it was all in the name of “safety.” And under those conditions, we just make things up as we go, that’s what they told us anyway. The Covid-19 crises has displayed one thing clearly, people in the political class do not understand our American Constitution, and they certainly don’t understand what makes America different from other places in the world—an aspect that was truly ignored during the shutdowns of 2020 that put us all on a course of another Great Depression. The notion that we should shut down our economy to be “safe” was the most destructive thing we could have done and that politicians did it so easily says that they have no idea what, or who makes America, America—and that is a real problem.

I know very well that a risky life is not for everyone. I understand that most people are not as risk obsessed as I am, that they have a natural aversion to it. That’s OK. Risk can be scary, and most people want to be safe, and American society has a place for them. But risk is at the center of our entire economy, and our way of life. When risk is incentivized, it can be said that we have the best society in America, the most people benefit when some risktaker in the form of a business person goes to the bank to borrow millions of dollars to advance a business concept. Whether the action is a new manufacturing facility, or a new restaurant, our economy depends on risk takers to go all in on an idea for the hope of profit to make something out of nothing. And that’s how jobs are created. If our economy is a big open highway trying to inspire dangerous people to drive over 100 MPH down it with an exotic sports car, then government is that big, fat ass, slow truck that takes up all the lanes with an intent to slow everything down to its limits and that is what we have witnessed with the Covid-19 reaction to a danger. Government took over and put all of America’s risk takers off the streets, locked them in their homes, took over their operations and gave society huge limits in economic activity costing trillions of lost dollars in our economy.

This was most on display as government checks were issued and loan applications distributed to allow businesses to recover some of their lost costs during the shut down over the Chinese coronavirus pandemic. Government just didn’t understand that no matter how much money they printed and distributed, it wouldn’t come close to being enough—because nobody was measuring opportunity cost. My daughter is a good example of this, she has a six figure a year business as a photographer. But with the stay at home measures imposed on her, her clients have no idea how to even schedule their events, so her business has dried up to nothing, and it will take years to build that business back up to what it was before government stuck its fat ass on the highway and essentially stopped all economic activity. Her husband lost his job because manufacturing up and down the supply chain has dried up completely, because nobody knows how to predict market forces now that government has disrupted everything, so all those previous good jobs have been cut until there is better schedule visibility. Those are just my examples in my family, there are many others, we all know people who have had their lives destroyed by the actions of government, and those who have managed to keep their jobs have found them intolerably made more difficult, all in the name of some government view of safety.

But what has been ignored is that our entire economy is built on risk, and we need risk to exist as Americans. We should never be following some foreign model of how to live a good life, because most of the world is very risk averse. Life is better in America because of risk, every place of business that we see is the result of someone taking a great risk to operate a business in hopes of making more than a little money, and that risk gives us all options we otherwise wouldn’t have had. To listen to Lt Governor Husted outline what must happen on May 1st to allow businesses to get back to work was like being in kindergarten again where some teacher was telling us all the rules for going to the bathroom. Suddenly we are supposed to change everything we do in life because that fat assed government that is so slow with bureaucracy is going to define to us that we should not live in a risky way, and that businesses were going to have to live with that mandate. Well, if we change our attitude about a silly virus then we will change our attitudes about going to the bank to start that new idea we’ve been thinking about. The end result is that instead of thinking about new business ideas and how to make money off them, our people are now thinking about how to be compliant to a virus that the government wants to think is dangerous so that they can acquire more power—because as a group of the political class, they are naturally risk-averse. Yet they want to feel like they are players in the world, so they are trying to have that respect without the risk.

I don’t mind that people are stupid, or afraid of risky activity. But don’t get in the way of people who do want to take risks. It is not an American thing to do but to hide in their homes over a tiny virus and hope that government can safely manage us all to compliance. Social distancing is not an American thing to do. Most of the reason there were hospital shortages to deal with the Covid outbreak was because of too much federal regulation. Everything should be operating at the speed of business not of government, and risk should be embraced, not penalized. Risk is hard enough without making it harder due to government intervention, and that concept should be better understood. And certainly, more respected. Instead of giving out awards to people terrified of their own inability to fight off a virus and promote massive government interference, the awards and respect should be going to businesspeople who make the world go. At best, they should be given a lot more respect for the risks they do take often without anybody even knowing how much pressure they are under in the hopes of making enough profit to have a decent life. Politicians want the good life without the risk, and they are so out of touch with risk that they have obviously forgotten that America is nothing without risk and instead of trying to slow it down, they should get out of its way and let risk happen by those with the stomachs to endure it.

Rich Hoffman

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George Lang for Ohio House of Represenatives in the 52nd District: I fully endorse him for re-election without any second thoughts

At the meet the candidates’ forum at the West Chester Tea Party on September 4th 2018 my wife kept introducing me to people as a “blogger” which is a term I don’t find appropriate to what I do. While shaking hands, I’d correct her by saying that I’m an “independent journalists.” When I think of a “blogger” I think of people who deal with surface topics. What I do is often climb into the deep roots of things and my articles are certainly thoughtful, which has always been my intention. Even when dealing with the outlandish, which is sometimes a big part of our world, I always work to evoke some depth to a topic, and for that I’d say more what I do is journalism than just some hobbyist blogger. And I think that for good reason, after all I was proud to have just stepped away from an hour-long call with a producer with the Travel Channel on some work I had done on ancient cities buried under current cities in North America. So what I do and an average blogger do I think is quite different and I made sure to let people know that. The old timers at the West Chester Tea Party all know me of course, but many of the newer members didn’t as I haven’t been coming to the meetings as much over the last couple of years due to a professional project that I have been working on that has consumed a lot of my time—about 60 to 80 hours of work a week, so the Tea Party meetings for me have not been as frequent as an occurrence. But I came to this one to film some campaign footage for my friend George Lang whom I endorse completely for his re-election of the 52nd House Seat in Ohio.

George and I go back a few years, nearly a decade. We first met at the Miami University VOA conference center where we were both concerned about out of control public spending. He was already a trustee in West Chester trying to change a culture that was spinning toward becoming a high tax city rather than what it is today which is a thriving zone for business development. I had just come off a few entertainment projects, one in Hollywood and I was writing my second book and was doing a lot of talk radio. We wanted much the same thing but his role would become much more traditional politically speaking, mine would be to take on the role of antagonist, to a kind of an anti-Saul Alinsky persona but for good instead of evil and that has gone on now for nearly a decade. I instantly liked George as well as about 20 other Republican candidates at all levels of government and I wanted to use my background to help them in some way, so I started the blog you are reading now as a direct response to that sentiment. In so many ways the Republicans were hampered by restrictions that the Democrats weren’t. The two sides weren’t playing by the same rules, you can see a modern example of just what I’m talking about in regard to the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. Liberals had always been able to act in diabolical ways against Republicans but the same couldn’t be done the other way and that didn’t seem fair to me—so I endeavored to do work behind the scenes to make things a bit fairer for Republicans. After all, I figured I had a professional reputation and lifestyle that couldn’t be picked apart by even the most tenacious investigator, there was no dirt that anybody could find on me about anything and if things became physically violent, I had those bases covered too. So why the hell not make things in the world a bit fairer? The rest is history.

Sometimes of course I have had to push right up on that invisible line of civility, because that’s the way it is sometimes if you want to be honest. I never expected people like George Lang to stand by me through any of those moments, but to his credit, he has never even tried to put any distance between me and him, where any other politician certainly would have. On one particular event in 2012 when my name was being smeared all over the news, several of my supporters got together at a pizza place to provide encouragement. It was a secret little meeting to figure out what to do next. I was just a little stunned to find that George came to the meeting. I asked him why he would risk such a thing and he simply told me that he believed in me and that he wanted to support me. That was the moment that I realized what a good guy George Lang was. He was in politics for all the right reasons and if things got a little hairy, he didn’t back away from the people he believed in just to gain political points. At the time the Republican Party was very much John Boehner’s and John Kasich’s. Trump wasn’t even a thought, so I felt that George Lang being seen in public with me at that particular moment was very risky for him. I knew I’d be fine because I’m always fine. But for him public impressions were much more important, yet he stood by me.

Of course, George and I aren’t attached at the hip on everything. He has thoughts about things and so do I that are not always the same and my methods of evoking those thoughts are often very colorful, while his are more political, naturally. But I have found him to be one of the most honest people I’ve ever known in politics. Politics is very much like a poker game, friends can become enemies depending on who has what cards and how much is at stake. But I know George beyond that game and the person himself is a very good one—a guy who loves business and the tools that economic development brings to a region. As a state representative he simply wants to do for Ohio what he has done for West Chester, which he articulated well in the video presented here.

The question that people often wonder when they hear campaign rhetoric is whether or not the politician is sincere, and I can testify that George Lang is everything he says he is and does. Peal away the trappings of politics and he’s just a good person trying to do good things for the world. I’ve seen him under conditions of great pressure which is often the best way to get to know people, and I can say that he is very authentic, which is the reason I consider him a friend. People who don’t like him or who would campaign against him have their philosophic issues. They do so for the same reason that there are elements who just hate Donald Trump for no other reason than he is a person used to winning and thinking for himself. George Lang is one of those types of people, and when it comes time to vote in November, people can feel really good about voting for him for their state representative. George Lang is certainly the kind of person you want representing you in Columbus. He’s one of the good guys down to every last cell in his body, and that is a rare thing indeed.

Rich Hoffman

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Warrior of the Week: Governor John Kasich

There comes a chance only a few times in a century for people of a state, or nation to define themselves through their actions in a great epic battle of some age-long warfare. Battles and wars are not always fought with bullets, knives, aircraft or missiles. Some of the most violent battles in the history of the planet never directly shed a drop of human blood, but created ideology that steered the course of the human race through ideas. Those battles take place in courthouses, statehouses, and Capital Hill where the warriors dress in business apparel wielding pens across paper with destructive effect.

Such activity is not what many in mainstream America consider to be war however, and that is why organized labor and other progressive platforms have migrated like a sickness into our legislative process to the point where it threatens our very existence. Collective bargaining has been for Ohio a kind of Trojan Horse where on the outside it’s an appealing device, but hidden within is an army intent to devour everything in its path once behind the walls of their enemy.

Ohioans are now aware that something is wrong behind our walls, from within our state borders, and they elected a governor in John Kasich to deal with that threat directly, and swiftly. That threat is nothing short of our economic vitality and future survival. So it is with great honor that I name Governor John Kasich as the “Warrior of the Week” while he must look out across the lawns of the statehouse in Columbus and see the mass of people intent on further destruction of our state economy and hold steadfast to the ideas for which he believes.

Such boldness as exhibited by Governor Kasich is rare in people, as the intent of these protests that will intensify at the start of Februarys last week, is to rattle his mind. Listen to Kasich behind the scenes here.

Those protestors, many of which are good people caught up in a bad system, just as soldiers on a battlefield are not evil taken by themselves, yet the minds behind the movement represent much of what’s wrong with our State and Nation. The architects of these protests reveal their malicious intent behind protest signs and chants. Sadly the majority of the state that stands behind the Governor is busy at their work, contributing to their families, and communities. While the protesters hope to erode away the resolve of our elected representatives with mass, the truth of their strategy will soon collapse the protestor’s objective.

As seen in Wisconsin, doctors have been on hand to pass out “false” doctors excuses so those teachers protesting can still retain their jobs. As groups like SEIU and the Huffington Post have put their resources to work in an attempt to apply “mass” bringing in people from out of the state to make the movement appear larger than it is, the reality is that hotel rooms and local economies are seeing business that they otherwise wouldn’t have experienced, and that is good for the cities of these protests. The protesters do not have the financial resources to maintain crowds of 70K or more for long. They will run out of sick days and vacation time in the not too distant future. The shock factor and media blitz will wear off and the reality of the situation will become obvious quickly. The true majority will finally have its voice heard over these loud chants from the minorities that pack these state houses. For the way to beat the protestors is to take away their quick emotional victory and spend them into their own destruction, which is what, will happen.

Governor Kasich in Ohio is the kind of man that sees through the chaos to the end result, and that makes him unique. I personally hope that SEIU and the President’s Organizing for America groups send a lot of people to Columbus. Ohio’s hotel chains and downtown businesses will enjoy the increase in business. But the intimidation that is intended will fall on deaf ears, because Governor Kasich is not governor of Ohio to be a career politician. Kasich is Governor of Ohio to do a specific job, and that’s what he’s doing.

I can say that I know many thousands of people in Southern Ohio that are behind his efforts and the efforts of Shannon Jones, along with all the bold legislators that are taking the big steps to do truly good things in the face of attempted coercion.

There isn’t any walking the plank alone this time for this Governor. Ohio has over a decade of frustration that is ready to be unleashed at the voting booth. Governor Kasich is just the first of these reformers. So after the protestors in Columbus run out of their own sick days, and money, once the hotel rooms are back to regular occupancy, Kasich will have a passed Senate Bill 5 in front of him to sign. And he has an entire state hungry for his signature. And for a change, Ohio has a governor with the guts, and fortitude to put a signature on a document like S.B.5 and to win a victory on this battlefield for the fate of Ohio’s future that will live on for generations.

Rich Hoffman

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