Tag: Darbi Boddy

Tipping the Scales Toward Equity for All: The legal strategy to destroy Darbi Boddy who stands in the way of those tipped scales

I have people tell me a lot of things. A lot of things. You should see my email inbox, and regarding notifications on my cell phone, my battery life usually only lasts for a few hours because the screen stays on so much with people sending me texts, calling me, or notifying me that I have a new email on one of my three accounts that average over 300 new emails per day each. I try to answer as much as possible, but it’s impossible. I must pick what I listen to, and out of all that information traffic, I have a lot of very well-connected people who give me a lot of valuable information every day, all days of the week. That’s how I know what is really going on behind the scenes at Lakota with Darbi Boddy and the phony prosecution of her by essentially the same kind of people who have been using the same legal gymnastics to go after Trump. For instance, Sheriff Jones has been coming up a lot lately because of the Butler County Republican Party’s desire to pull together after the defeat of Lynda O’Connor on the Lakota school board, who has her fingerprints all over this talk of sending Darbi to jail for six months and a fine of $1000 just for showing up at a school board meeting. We’ll get into that more in a moment. But the details are pretty explicit, and these people are well placed, and they aren’t slack-jawed, dope-smoking losers. But very responsible, and respected VIPs. And their comments would hold up in court with no problem. Anyway, these sources told me the story of three of them who asked Sheriff Jones directly how he could support a candidate to run against Thomas Hall, and against the nomination of the Republican Party, where he became very defensive and told them all to “bring it.” He was questioned why he thought he could be a leader in the Republican Party and behave against the endorsed candidates. He didn’t care what the Republican Party thought and was audacious to throw his weight around. And by itself, that is not a very exciting story. But it does lend value to what I’m about to say regarding a conspiracy by the Lakota school board to remove an elected representative in Darbi Boddy, which has all kinds of things wrong with it. Details matter, and I get plenty of them that add up to the kind of stories you don’t get from the local press.

The real villains behind the RINO political philosophy is behind this door

I know the law firm’s name and the person who told Lynda O’Connor how to remove Darbi Boddy from the school board by making Isaac Adi the vehicle. At this point, the name isn’t as important. However, lots of people already know about it. I’m interested in the intent. This is not a story about Darbi Boddy going to jail for violating some bogus court order controlled by Judge Lyons and all the Butler County network of hive-minded bureaucrats; this is about judicial activism by one of the area’s most respected law firms to destroy every way possible the life of an office holder elected by the public to do community business. And their deliberate tampering with that effort maliciously is where the real meat and potatoes are. I was livid when I found out that another attorney was being introduced to Darbi’s legal defense before her November 29th hearing to answer a citation given to her just for attending a school board meeting, and this guy wanted a $5000 retainer. The goal is obviously to put Darbi on her heels, destroy her economically, and consume her supporters with a rat race that the real bad guys were controlling. So I was just a little angry about it, let’s say that politely.

These law firms are very politically manipulative. Here is a screenshot of a big one in the Lakota area. Their words, their actions.

I had heard for weeks this revelation from many sources, well-placed sources who are close to all these people, how this law firm got involved and schemed with Lynda O’Connor to essentially override the voters by destroying the life of a fellow school board member.  And this is what lingers in the background with all these cases.  These law firms are very progressive and lean far left of center most of the time.  So if you are trying to manage a school district and they essentially own the minds of the school board, which is the case here, then you can elect all the school board members you want or put up elected representatives to handle our business, but it won’t matter.  Because in the background, these lawyers think they are in charge.  We see that with these multiple cases against Trump, and in Butler County, Ohio, Darbi Boddy is our local Trump, and they have pulled out all the legal stops to destroy her in all ways possible.  But why?  Well, teacher union contract negotiations are coming up next year, and the school board will want everyone to get along and not go on strike.  And guess who negotiates those contracts?  They brag about how many labor contracts they negotiate successfully, but many times, they take the position of labor against the taxpayers, and the best way to make that work is to get rid of those who oppose labor.  The taxpayers have plenty of money to give; they need to figure out how to take it from them and give it to the radical labor element.  So having a loose cannon like Darbi Boddy on the school board isn’t in their best interest, to be polite about it.  Based on what people have been telling me.

History is good to study because it explains the actions of the present

Now, I’m not at all impressed with this. I argued with several of their people during the Covid lockdowns about the correct course of action, and they turned out all to be wrong. Lawyers seldom give good advice; they usually only give answers that drag the clock out for another six minutes and line their pockets with gold they steal from you with a comprehension of Latin that they think you don’t understand. I was right then about the Supreme Court cases defeating all the lockdowns, and they were grotesquely wrong. So, as I hear this story about Darbi Boddy’s attackers, the unelected types who hide in the background all the time and destroy the Republican Party from the erosion that takes place in those types of relationships, I know we aren’t dealing with people of intellectual superiority. This scam of using Isaac as the fall guy while all these insiders pave the way for easy future labor negotiations makes perfect sense to me. It sounds like what lazy people on cruise control in life would do. And to mask it all, they have turned Darbi into the vehicle of collaboration. There’s an old Metallica song about this very kind of transference. I told Darbi personally to drop all these losers and let Lakota die on the vine. I don’t want her to be hit by friendly fire in the coming months. But she told me that she wants to help the kids and was elected to do a job, so she is dug in to do the right thing, which I admire. But for her to defend herself by this constant stream of court cases that these bad guys keep throwing at her is not the right strategy. The fight has to go where it belongs, where the real trouble is up to no good, to the real influencers controlling everything from behind a fragile curtain. We don’t need Toto to pull back the curtain to see them or what’s happening. Plenty of people know. They don’t know yet how to do something about it. But admitting to the problem is the first step, and after the conversations, I have had with people, talking to me about it has been part of that first step of admission, something they never thought they’d have to do.

For many in the world, they find safety in collectivism. It’s too scary to be an individual.
Sad but true, mass collectivists are at war with individualism in Butler County, Ohio

Rich Hoffman

Darbi Boddy and the Masonic Order of Doom: The fight of social collectivists against MAGA individualism

Evil is the only word that applies to how Lakota schools, its administration, fellow school board members, various political parties, and the legal system have treated Darbi Boddy.  I told her recently that she should dump all those losers and let the whole thing burn.  But I wouldn’t quit either, even if it is the right thing to do.  That is more my wife talking than me; the empathy comes from concern over Darbi’s family.  On November 17th, 2023, Darbi needed to attend a safety meeting for the Lakota school board, and she had to make arrangements for someone to care for her little girl in case she was put in jail.  I’ve gone to war with people for far less than all this, so I don’t blame her when she says she’s not going to quit.  But the totality of the evil involved here is jaw-dropping and is every bit as bad as I’ve always said it was.  These are terrible, horrendous people engaged in teaching these kids in public schools, and there is a lot worse brewing under the surface.  And Darbi feels compelled to stand up to that evil and I admire her for it.  And so it was when she arrived at the meeting, there was security who told her that she couldn’t be there because of the recent and very dysfunctional Isaac Adi restraining order against Darbi.  But Darbi had spoken to the school lawyers and people who should know, and they told her she could attend, so she did, until the police issued her a citation and a court date for November 29th, 2023 for a violation of a court order.  To show how much these people care about kids, they threatened to throw Darbi Boddy in jail just for attending a school board meeting in which she was elected to participate.  Her husband is serving our country overseas, and she is the primary caregiver to a cute little girl, these people could care less what all this did to her, just as they don’t care about the students at Lakota.  All they really care about is how they can use those poor kids to fill their empty and featureless lives with social conformity.

It didn’t have to be this way; it wasn’t long ago when Judge Lyons was with Darbi and me at a nice political event where I was one of the featured speakers.  The judge was sitting at our table, and I enjoyed his company, as I have on other occasions.  And I have thought of him as a pretty good guy.  But he is also the attorney for this Isaac Adi monstrosity against Darbi, where he and others have been aggressively trying to get rid of the new school board member for the last two years.  And going back to the beginning, they drew first blood.  Lynda O’Connor led the charge, and she has dragged into her antics of personal destruction many characters, such as Judge Lyons, to satisfy a personal vendetta against Darbi Boddy for mysterious reasons.  Reasons that transcend politics.  Many people have been giving me the inside scoop on this story, and it gets uglier the more we learn from the personal experiences of these people.  I understand many temptations for brotherhoods, such as those experienced in Masonic memberships, especially within the legal profession, and Bar Associations, union membership, political parties, and all kinds of groups that give timid individuals a place to hide behind a collectivist mindset.  This bloodthirsty hatred for Darbi Boddy and others in the MAGA movement was tied to this desire to hide personal behavioral characteristics behind various elements of social collectivism and use the disguise of saving the children to mask it all from the public just as the Shriners do a lot of excellent community work when the actual elements of membership may not be so psychologically healthy. 

Looking at this case, if it weren’t for Judge Lyons’s networking, this restraining order against Darbi Boddy from Isaac Adi would go nowhere.  The recent appeals court process of Roger Reynolds, the former Butler County Auditor attacked by rivals in the Republican Party purely over power, has been much slower than the case with Isaac, which has been lightning fast.  So fast that Darbi has barely been able to react to it, which is the point. You can tell how weak a case is when they build it around entirely procedural conduct to disguise merit.  If judges weren’t also the attorneys in this case, this whole thing would stall with everyone waiting for a trial.  But this one is moving lightning fast because other elements at work look to go well beyond political parties.  This is the same kind of legal warfare that Democrats are using to harass President Trump, and it all looks scary until you get to the details.  Notice how Trump is winning in court already, especially regarding the Colorado case, which was just decided yesterday in his favor.  And the gag order in New York.  I have said from the beginning what the legal result would be in those cases, and Darbi’s case is similar.  The restraining order trying to keep her from attending school board meetings, which is all this is really about, will likely be dismissed, and the citation she was issued will be as well.  And regarding the issue in Columbus where Isaac is pushing for a violation of the incorrectly applied court order, at best, it’s a misdemeanor.  So, there is a lot of overreach where judicial activism is on full display, but there isn’t much legal merit.  Just a serious abuse of authority.  But it’s the intent that is so alarming, and that people that you think are, or were, reasonable people can be so treacherously malicious to the point of self-destruction. 

One week before all this, I sat down with Isaac to discuss this drama. We were at a political event together and hadn’t talked much, and he approached me to have a conversation and tell me how much he forgave me for all that had gone on. Which I thought was odd, but I listened, as usual. He told me how much he “loved Darbi” and wanted to do the right thing. He also told me how much differently things look on the inside as opposed to the outside, and that I didn’t understand. Well, I see pretty well, and I’ve heard all that before from people up to terrible things. What’s going on is collectivism, the same behavior that rots people’s minds toward various degrees of Marxism, and it manifests in the kind of memberships people socially engage in. Whether it’s the club of a school board where the political elements are making clear to the public that they don’t care what the voters think, they will remove Darbi because it’s their club and they decide who is in it. The voters are not in control, which is what the same cop who investigated the various sexually related antics of the previous Lakota superintendent and let him off the hook, did when he issued Darbi a citation for attending a meeting on safety as an elected officeholder just doing her job. The message was that people from the outside were not welcome. President Trump isn’t welcomed into the Swamp, and Darbi Boddy isn’t welcomed to the Lakota school board, and they were going to try anything to remove the voter’s pick from their club of malcontents and social parasites. I wouldn’t blame Darbi if she did want to quit. The message is clear to all like her that the Republican Party is not open to outsiders. It’s the club they value and the networks of social collectivism that are all about not doing what’s suitable for the kids or the community—bowing to the wills of a politically radical teacher’s union and all the associations that spawn from it. It’s as ugly as anyone can imagine. And thank goodness someone like Darbi has come along to expose it all. Like Trump, there is so much we wouldn’t know until someone was willing to challenge that system and show the world just how bad these people always were. I want to say I hate to be correct, but I can’t think of when I have ever been wrong. And I certainly have not been wrong about the Lakota school system from the beginning. If anything, I’ve been too polite.

All these brotherhoods, yet they would sacrifice the responsibility of freedom for social acceptance all the time. Many evils are committed under such an arrangement.

Rich Hoffman

Prove Me Wrong: What the Lakota School Board should do over the next six weeks of 2023

I was at an event just a few days after the election of 2023 for Bernie Marino.  He was at Lori’s Roadhouse with J.D. Vance, ahead of the upcoming Republican primary, for a pitch session, and I saw a lot of great area Republicans who had come out to support him, which was great.  It was the first time since Lynda O’Connor had suffered such a massive defeat for another term on the Lakota school board and tempers were still pretty hot that I had worked with the “No Lynda” people to keep her from winning.  And it was the first time we all had a chance to talk, which we did.  Many people thought that I had created a monster by keeping a conservative off the school board, and now a liberal monstrosity had been unleashed with an overtly Democrat school board that was going to take Lakota school’s quarter of a billion-dollar budget and bring about doom and despair.  I explained to them that the excuses were now gone. Let’s see what they do over the next six weeks at Lakota. No more elections. No more motivation for the politics of personal destruction. It has been my opinion that Lynda O’Connor was never a conservative but was only pretending to be one to win support. When she had control of the board and the votes, she attacked Darbi Boddy to avoid proper district management. Now that she has lost re-election, she can work with Isaac and Darbi to implement real conservative ideas into Lakota. Let’s see how they behave. If they really care about the community and the Republican Party, they’ll put their differences aside while they still can. But I don’t think they will because it was never a conservative school board in the first place.

That idea of unity came to me after Isaac Adi approached me to tell me that he forgave me for all the disparaging things I had said about him.  He wondered why I didn’t reach out to him more to get the truth of the situation, and he explained to me that as an insider, things look much different than they do on the outside and that I was an outsider.  So I couldn’t understand everything clearly and his feelings were hurt.  I reminded him I had sat down with him previously, and the meeting didn’t go well.  And we haven’t spoken ever since.  If I spent time sitting down with everyone I had an issue with, I would never get anything done.  With me, once you lose me, you lose me pretty much forever.  I’m not such an outsider as many would like to comfort themselves.  I know pretty much something about everything, and when it comes to the Lakota school board, I know all the characters and the situation very well.  I have over 30 years of experience, so I know what’s going on, I also understand what’s going on in executive session.  Lynda O’Connor and I used to work quite closely together and while we’re talking about hurt feelings, it bothers me that she thought I was a sucker like she clearly thought of everyone else, that she could con me into believing she wanted to do conservative things on the school board, and that her relationship with me was purely to neutralize my strong opinions.

I’ll talk to anybody who wants to talk, so I spent more time with Isaac than I intended to because he wanted to give his side of the story.  I had just spoken to Darbi Boddy, who was also there, but she saw Isaac sitting next to J.D. Vance at this spectacular event, and she had to leave because of the court order that Judge Lyons got suckered into because of Lynda’s provocations, and I could see the pain on her face.  Everyone had ganged up on her and treated her as an outcast for doing her job on the school board in the way that people elected her to do it.  I don’t like to see people treated the way she has, and it wasn’t easy to listen to Isaac talk about his role in trying to destroy her.  But as he was speaking about peace and forgiveness, I thought it would be a good idea if all three of them could pull it together for the next several weeks to do excellent conservative work for the Lakota school board before the next session comes into play.  If the liberals want to undo it all, let them, and let them own the results.  I listened to Isaac talk; he’s a likable person.  But I have also known a lot of salespeople over the years, and much of our conversation was similar to that of a time-share salesman who wanted a commitment to buy.  And I was just there for the free orange juice.  Once I saw the place he was selling, I couldn’t help but think of the cat urine in the corner that smelled the site up and distracted me from the palm trees outside.  I was a hard pass on working with any of these people anymore, except for Darbi.  But for the good of all those friends of mine who were hurt by the election results, it’s always good to come up with ideas everyone can be happy with if you can. 

I think the best way to prove to everyone that we never had a conservative Lakota school board was to encourage everyone to work together for the remainder of the year.  Put the differences aside and do what they should have done that first month when Isaac and Darbi were sworn in and handed the board’s presidency to Lynda.  From there, Lynda went on a path of personal destruction against Darbi for reasons many people don’t understand.  I think it’s because she had to hide the fact that she was never a conservative and was hiding that from her supporters by playing the victim.  But instead of embracing that role like a kid who couldn’t wait to get that Red Ryder BB gun on Christmas Day only to open it and find out that they suddenly didn’t like guns, she instead moved on to the next shiny object, a Barbi dream house of progressive liberalism. I want to keep my enemies in front of me, so Julie Shaffer and this Doug Horton Dr. Seuss guy are at least what they advertised.  I may find their politics despicable, but it’s essentially the same as Lynda without the pretend conservatism.  But I’d love to be wrong.  There is no reason to fight now; the election is over, and Lynda will be gone from the school board.  So, if she genuinely wanted to leave a conservative mark, what’s stopping her now?  She is still the board president.  She still has three votes to do good things while it lasts.  Why not do it?  My offering to all those who have talked to me about it is that Darbi was her excuse for not doing anything.  After getting to know her, she purposely pushed Darbi so that she could always point to a distraction so she didn’t have to show the other school board members, Kelly Casper and Julie Shaffer, that she wasn’t one of them.  And the Darbi distractions kept the mask on Lynda so that fellow Republicans would never see who she was.  And I say that based on the contents of the last conversation I had with Lynda, something she told me that she probably didn’t intend to.  But prove me wrong; I’d love to be.  However, as history usually points out, I’m not.

Rich Hoffman

Don’t Talk About Party Loyalty: Lynda O’Connor lost because she was disloyal to her base support

They keep saying we are a small, but loud minority of radicals, as if to say, critics aren’t important. But all that did was fuel the opposition against Lynda.

It wasn’t a surprise that Lynda O’Connor had an embarrassing defeat on the Lakota school board. She shouldn’t have run for another term after the mess she caused over the last few years. Her brand was down in a big way and instead of trying to right the ship, she dug in and alienated all the people she should have been working with. The voter turnout was unusually high for a Lakota school board race, but that is largely due to the increased interest from the scum bags and pot-smoking losers who voted to kill babies and legalize drugs, who went in the direction of Julie Shaffer and Doug Horton. During the election, I saw all of them as the same, but it was Lynda who I felt had personally betrayed me, and I couldn’t support her. This hold your nose, and voting for someone who has done a lousy job isn’t an excellent way to conduct elections. Lynda deviated from the original plan and decided to move to the hard left and work against Darbi Boddy, and after two years of mismanagement, the results were evident in the election. Unfortunately, Lynda dragged Russ Loges down on the ticket because the GOP was split and not united behind the candidates. When you don’t have the Central Committee lined up with the desired outcome, it’s never a good thing. And it’s even worse to tell them to deal with the party leadership picks and to accept bad behavior. Lynda O’Conn0r was horrible as a school board president, especially after all the support that was thrown her way. She used people to get power, then abused that power overtly to destroy a popularly picked school board member in Darbi Boddy and cause problems between her and Issac Adi. And the results were evident well before voters cast a vote on how election night was going to turn out.

This is why Lynda O’Connor Lost the Lakota School Board. The Republican Party doesn’t run the voters. The voters run the party. The RINOs aren’t in charge.

I was in Japan, far away from Ohio when it became apparent to me what the cost of Lynda seeking re-election was going to have on Butler County politics. Over the previous two years, we had seen a couple of incidents where party leaders had abused their power to attack upcoming talent or long-standing respected leaders. Such a case was what Sherrif Jones did to Roger Reynolds, essentially sticking the label of a felon onto the former auditor for entirely personal reasons, which then of course alienated the base of the Republican Party. Then, of course, Darbi was a popular pick, and Lynda went on a campaign of personal destruction against her, which resulted in two years of bad branding. I told Lynda on a phone call about a year ago how to fix it, and she ignored the advice. She dug in and name-dropped a few people she thought was important then continued to support horrendous behavior on the school board and aligned herself closer to Julie Shaffer and Kelly Casper. And in the process, she made herself indistinguishable. People who don’t understand these things so well put their support behind her believing they had control of the party and the people in it like some kingly aristocrat and they resorted to a lot of pushing and shoving to get everyone aligned, which was not going to work with the Tea Party types in the Republican Party. Then, to make matters worse, they sought to destroy the Tea Party of West Chester to make their point more vocal, which essentially sealed the fate of Lynda O’Connor in politics. She had used the West Chester Tea Party to advance herself as a brand for the Lakota school board. And when she turned against those values, she lost the only real support she ever had.

After I returned, I attended a Central Committee meeting in Liberty Township after there were some political shenanigans in West Chester with their Central Committee, and it was obvious that the establishment types were going to screw everything up. The RINOs wanted appeasement, and the MAGA types wanted authenticity, so there was going to be an impasse, and it was just going to have to play out. Republicans everywhere, locally and nationally, have gotten into a lot of trouble trying to appease evil, and it has caused them to work with Democrats on all kinds of Marxist issues and has essentially pulled the country away from its foundation and more toward socialism and Marxism all because they wanted to “hold their nose and support the party.” For the preservation of a party that only wanted to live, not actually to represent voters’ values. That has left people who have values and want to see those values supported in politics hungry for accurate representation. That’s why Trump is running for president as opposed to all the other Republican offerings they have tried to give us over the last few decades. And with all the excellent work that has been done, a lot of people in the Republican Party didn’t get it. I explain it to them voluminously, but they don’t have the mind to listen. They think they know better, and the best they can give you is to hold your nose and put up with what your “betters” can provide you. They emphasized that they knew better what that was, and everyone should get in line and deal with it. Support Lynda because she didn’t want to challenge Ann Becker for the open West Chester trustee position because Ann was in trouble over trans rights, so Lynda screwed up and ran again after two years of serious mistakes, and everyone thought it was going to work out great?

A political party either represents voters, or it doesn’t. There have been times that I have loved being affiliated with the Republican Party and have been very proud of what we have had in Butler County. But then, after these last few years, since Trump has been out of office and everyone has snapped back into their true natures, we have seen a lot of embarrassment that reminds me of the old Bob Shelly days with Michael Fox. Party politics, arm twisting, deception, all the kinds of things that made people run to Ross Perot or Donald Trump. And they will continue to run because they don’t want to support the politics of the machine. I’m not interested in politics to hold my nose and vote for some loser, all for the “party.” I want to see things run well with constitutional value. But don’t lecture anybody on supporting the endorsed candidates as a base of loyalty to the Republican Party. Lynda went after Darbi, and the party should have helped the “Republican Endorsed” person. And Sheriff Jones worked to destroy the life of a very popular Republican in Roger Reynolds, and nobody stepped in to help him. And nobody stepped in to save the West Chester Tea Party when a media campaign went against them and essentially destroyed them for the time being, at least their meeting venue. When the RINOs decide to fight the actual base and future of the party, nobody should have expected good results for Lynda. Lynda had to earn those votes. Instead, she went on a crusade of personal destruction and acted as if she were entitled to the position purely off the backs of party affiliation. And some of the back-bending endorsements from people I know were concerned that they would be cut off from the money machine, were reprehensible. And the results reflect just how bad it was. When the approach to an election was filled with such ridiculously stupid behavior, the results should surprise nobody.

Rich Hoffman

Lynda O’Conner, the Spokesperson of Moral Depravity: Darbi Boddy’s attorney on the Bull Dog Show

One thing you never want to do, and I think I am excessively fair to the people around me.  Even if I disagree, I give people a lot of latitude in how they live their personal lives.  You never want to make me an accomplice to moral depravity, which is precisely what Lakota school board member Lynda O’Conner had done with me in how she handed Darbi Boddy, a fellow school board member and other members of the Lakota staff during the year of 2022.  I can deal with disagreements over topics and people who think ultimately differently than I do.  But don’t ever think that threatening me in any way possible to hide bad behavior will have some profitable outcome.  And that happened on an August afternoon while I was with my family in St. Ignace, Michigan, after spending a long day on Mackinac Island, getting ice cream and trying to enjoy a charming day.  I was reminded of just how bad the Lakota situation has been, and still is through an interview with Eric Deters and Darbi’s attorney Robert Croskery.  I have a history with both people, so it captured my interest when I saw that they had done an interview together.  And in so doing, it reminded me of that August day, and specifically my entire relationship with Lynda O’Conner up to that point, which I would have said was a friend.  Early in the process before there were ever tag-alongs, I was trying to help Lynda get a majority vote on the school board because I liked her and felt sorry for her situation, this was before there were any other people who invested in Darbi’s political efforts when it was early, and people were trying to save the world. 

I don’t get involved in such things quickly; getting me on someone’s schedule for anything is hard. I’m a very busy person and in these last few years, I have traveled a lot, including that referenced time in St. Ignace where I was on a family trip in our RVs and my phone was lighting up with all this panic from the police report I suggested the Butler County Sheriff’s department look at before anybody jumped to crazy conclusions about the previous superintendent at Lakota schools. I’m not the one who was involved in all the bad behavior, but once I know that such horrendous things are happening in my community, it’s my business. I’ve lived in Butler County longer than most people have been alive, certainly longer than the Skippy types who are always whispering in the ear of Lynda O’Conner from the Rinos for Lakota groups that she would tell me about. But what was obvious to me early in the process as all these forces decided they were going to “get Darbi” much the way those same types of people in politics are trying to “get Trump” you realize that the efforts at personal destruction are to hide the horrendously bad and immoral lifestyles of a lot of people in the Lakota school system. And they feel entitled to destroy the lives of anybody they choose to preserve their lust for moral depravity. I already think public schools are horrible for children, but when there is evidence that the adults are advocating for moral corruption with taxpayer money, making me part of the process, fury is going to be the natural reaction, and everyone should understand that going in, especially Lynda O’Conner who is the current school board president running for re-election. The dirty tricks that have come from her and efforts at personal destruction have been unforgivable. To what degree was obvious in hearing Darbi’s attorney once again on the Bulldog Show with Eric Deters.

Outside a Lynda O’Conner fundraiser October 7th 2023

So there we were; I had my kids and grandkids in St. Ignace getting ice cream on an excellent double-decker bus converted to a restaurant with a nice view of Lake Huron and Mackinac Island. The word was coming to me as we were distributing those ice creams to the kids, and they were all fighting for my attention in healthy ways, that legal action was headed in my direction by a bunch of scandalous characters who were emerging from that police report as having done some evil activity. And I was not OK with that. That’s when I got a call from Darbi’s attorney, Robert Croskery, which I took reluctantly. At that point, I was tired of talking to lawyers, which interfered with my travel. A few calls were fine, but this was nonstop for several days. So, by the time Robert called, I had my guard up, figuring that it would be a careful conversation in legalese. I was not enthusiastic about talking to him. But by the time we were finished, I realized just how good some people can be, and Robert was undoubtedly one of them. Darbi was, too. Many good people were getting pushed around and bullied over actions that Lynda O’Conner was directly responsible for, and I wasn’t going to turn my back on any of them. Even if I only wanted to read the police report and eat some ice cream with my grandchildren on a nice day in upper Michigan.

Lynda has brought a clown show to Lakota. It has been her leadership that has done it.

And the ridiculousness has continued, but it hasn’t been Darbi that was the problem; it has been an effort led by Lynda O’Conner to hide truly moral depravity behind legal action Lakota thought it could hide behind to intimidate private people into shutting up about it.  Once I returned from this trip and read the contents of what the police had reported about their investigation, which was very much watered down to protect the Lakota people, I was infuriated that Lynda could have read the same report and then chosen to be the spokesperson for moral depravity in our community—many of the losers surrounding her, who were advising her very badly I understood.  The swingers, cheaters, and personal scum bags who will do anything for the free babysitting service Lakota offers neurotic, lazy parents too busy to care for their children felt entitled to bizarre liberal lifestyles they expected the taxpayers to fund.  And I was not OK with it.  So, I have supported the only school board member who has been honest with me during all this, Darbi Boddy.  As Lynda has been a friend, I will not maintain friendships with people who chose to be spokesmen for moral depravity in my community or anywhere.  For the swingers and casual drug users who decide to participate in destructive social lifestyles, that’s a personal choice until you drag me into it.  And once I find out about it, I’m then involved.  But don’t ever think that I will be intimidated into turning away from that awful behavior, masking itself as some altruistic conservative movement, all this “greater good stuff.”  Don’t hire derelict employees; get rid of them when you find out how bad they are.  And don’t ever try to make me part of the story.  I’m glad that people like Robert Croskery are out there defending good people like Darbi Boddy.  And I like seeing that people who supported Darbi are willing to stand up to moral depravity when it certainly wasn’t to their social advantage to do so.  But I wouldn’t say I like seeing what Lynda O’Conner has been willing to do when faced with such vast moral depravity.  Rather than reject it, she became one of its strongest advocates.  And to the way I see things, that is reprehensible. 

Rich Hoffman

Why Not Lynda and Isaac: I’d rather vote for Democrats because at least you know what you are getting

It has not been very pleasant. I have been traveling a lot across the world, and at each airport stop once arriving back into cell phone coverage, I have been flooded with text messages and calls wondering why I still defend the Lakota school board member Darbi Boddy and do not have the same kind of sympathy with current school board president, Lynda O” Conner, and member Isaac Adi. I understand the concerns, but neither Lynda nor Isaac are conservatives, and you know what I always say. I love all Republicans until they show me that they aren’t. There isn’t a situation where Lynda and Isaac give the illusion of a conservative school board. At the point I’m at now, I’d instead remove the illusion and let the Democrats have it so we can hang them on all the problems later. Playing this game with Lynda and Isaac is lying to ourselves, and I see no point in doing it. All it does is cause further brand damage to the Butler County Republican Party brand. My view on these silly disputes is that they are small-minded, who in their right mind cares about power on the school board except for people who don’t bring much value to anything else in their lives. Watching what Lynda has been willing to do to achieve such silly power has disappointed me. The school board is a part-time gig at best. It should never generate the kind of political games from Lynda’s camp, and I cannot support her or those propping her up. I have given them a chance. I’ve worked with Lynda, and that picture Isaac Adi has with Jim Jorden is one that I took. I have tried to help all of these people. But only one hasn’t lied to me, at least that I know of yet. And that is Darbi Boddy. The rest of them have been horrendous, and if that’s the best we get, we might as well vote for Democrats.

This coming from a guy whose son was sentenced to life in jail for pedophilia.

I’ve heard a thousand times, that Darbi lied to everyone during the vetting process, and represented herself as a calm, collective, friendly person willing to play ball. I’ve heard from even friends of hers that Darbi engages in personal outbursts and is very aggressive. I had experience with Darbi before she was elected, and I have had several complex discussions with her since; I can say that she has always been honest, even very Christian, much more so than I initially thought. She has values and she defends them. And she has never been crazy or violent around me, and maybe she had a right to be. I always liked Darbi Boddy, but I like her much more now after two years in office than I did the year leading up to the election where she and Isaac ran together as an endorsed Republican Party ticket. Darbi has been my favorite among all the people I have dealt with on the Lakota school board over the last decades. I don’t think she misrepresented herself during the fundraising and campaign stage. I think what happened was that Lynda used her to get the vote for the school board president position then quickly turned against her when the mask debates were getting heavy during Darbi’s first month after being sworn in. And that betrayal hurt her, and it has only gotten worse since, not because of Darbi, but the behavior of the other school board members.

Showing they have control of power while real crimes are abundant without their attention

You might have heard in the news that Isaac Adi won his restraining order against Darbi Boddy in court, where Lynda was nearby blowing on the fire to help it burn. Lynda is the one who lied and misrepresented what she was up to. Isaac indeed misrepresented himself to me and I am excessively disappointed in him. Darbi has not disappointed me. Lynda has. Isaac has. And the rest of the characters fall somewhere along those lines. My policy in all things in life is that I’ll give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but once I find out you’ve lied to me, it’s over. And it’s over forever. There is no forgiveness. So that is why I still support Darbi Boddy but am very much against Isaac Adi and Lynda O’Conner. Everyone knows that I do not like Julie Shaffer, one of the other school board candidates. Despising her is a more accurate term. I would vote for her before I would Lynda O’Conner because I think Julie is more honest, and at least I know what kind of Democrat radical I am dealing with. They all register as Republicans, but their actions always tell the truth about them. After watching that mess, which likely will be overturned on appeal, the protective order against Darbi from Isaac because his little feelings have been hurt by how aggressive she is, I’m willing to call it a day on the whole election for the Lakota school board. Think how absurd all this is; Sheriff Jones is threatening to arrest Darbi to help his buddies on the school board when he can’t even arrest all the people showing an interest in abusing children which caused all this trouble to begin with. All those who have helped Lynda will have to learn a hard lesson. Don’t call me because I will tell you I told you so. Out of all these characters the only one who has consistently told me the truth has been Darbi, which is why I still support her and have nice things to say about her. She has been very respectful to me, my wife, and conservative politics. And that is supposed to be what we are all fighting for.

Hey, everyone only has themselves to blame. Around 20 great young people wanted to run for political office, and the Republican party could have gotten younger with fresh people with long shelf lives.  What will Lynda do? Give Butler County 4 more years, of what?  And will Isaac be the future of the Butler County Republican Party?  He’s getting restraining orders against women!  People like Darbi make people want to go out and vote Republican, and several people like her would be good.  However, the Party decided to pick controlled assets they felt more comfortable with rather than people who would make the party better and represent the voters of Butler County.  Lynda and her gang have played the game of personal destruction and the damage left in the wake is her fault, and those who helped her along—trying to talk me into throwing Darbi in as an equal failure would be dishonest.  I think Darbi has every right to be upset at everyone who has been terrible to her.  People of value often find that their feelings get hurt, and she’s disappointed in other people.  Not the other way around.  With all that, it should be pretty simple why I support Darbi Boddy.  I would love to see a school board with four more like her.  But that won’t be the case this time around; Lynda is the one who went against the plan and misrepresented to everyone what she wanted.  And I’m not OK with that.  Darbi, in my experience, was a good person who was easy to work with until she was sabotaged with an effort a few months into her term to be removed from office.  And that kind of personal sabotage is just another form of election fraud.  The voters picked Darbi.  Lynda and others have worked to undo that election, and that is the worst of the worst in my book.  And why Darbi is not in the same boat as Lynda and Isaac.  And why I support her and not them. 

Rich Hoffman

The Horrible Report Card at Lakota Schools: Lynda O’Conner has become the Jack Smith of Butler County

If you ever wanted to know why Lakota schools had a terrible report card of 3.5 out of 5 when it should have been, as surrounding districts were, a perfect 5, the reason was sitting in a Butler County, Ohio courtroom on September 15th, 2023.  No, it wasn’t Isaac Adi trying to get a protection order against Darbi Boddy that was the problem; it was Lynda O’Conner, who was also present, who was behind everything.  Poor little Judge Lyons was there representing Isaac in such a ridiculous case.  That he was deceived into doing Lynda’s “Get Darbi at all cost” obsession said everything.  He’s a pretty nice guy, and wouldn’t have been there but out of obligation.  The drama and destruction at Lakota fell on one person’s shoulders, Lynda O’Conner.  Rather than playing politics and embarking on a campaign of personal destruction, she should have been managing the Lakota school system, which shows in the report card.  And I know precisely how Judge Lyons got involved in Lynda’s business, which is essentially just the same as Jack Smith’s case against President Trump, with Smith behaving just like Lynda and Darbi being our local version of President Trump.  I know because I’ve tried to help Lynda personally for years and I understand that look on Judge Lyon’s face, the “why am I here” look.  Lynda, over the last week, has personally been involved in so much destruction.  Her crusade against Darbi Boddy is well chronicled, but her fingerprints are all over the Jews against the West Chester Tea Party case, too, which blasted them all over the media needlessly, not caring at all who it might hurt.  It was vicious politics and really unacceptable, especially since it involved long-time friends. Having disagreements with friends is one thing. Trying to destroy them is quite another. The smoke is still clearing on that one, but guess who is at the center of all that destruction?  All because they didn’t endorse Lynda, and she didn’t want to do the “meet the candidate night?” So rather than going there to get asked tough questions, destroying the venue was the next best option? Those are my assumptions based on knowledge of the people involved. Give me a break. You don’t get to go out and try to personally destroy entire organizations, just as she has done with Darbi, just because they don’t do what you want them to do.  Then call up all these “powerful friends” to help you do it.  That is corrupt politics on steroids. 

Meanwhile, the previous superintendent, who had all the trouble and put Lakota in such a bad place, was hired by Lynda, and Lynda personally managed him.  Many of the legal fees that the district has suffered are because of her mismanagement of his time at Lakota; she was the school board president and had the gavel.  Based on the police reports, he was much more interested in maintaining a swinger life with area Lakota parents and strangers on Craigslist than in ensuring that Lakota schools was a great district.  That is probably, given the destruction in her wake, which I have personally gone way out of my way to help her avoid, was the dumbest thing she could have done.  I see the public education system as just a fancy babysitting service, and I put my personal beliefs on hold to help her enormously, including when she wanted my help to get Darbi and Isaac elected.  Then, what I witnessed in personal destruction up close regarding Darbi was bizarre and a serious waste of my time, which I’m pretty angry about.  I didn’t want to know everything I did that made up that poor report card for Lakota, which all these same losers want to blame on disruptions caused by Darbi.  Give me a break.  That is like the Democrat Party saying that the world would be so much better if not for President Trump.  This politics of personal destruction is a Democrat thing, culminating in that Butler County courtroom.  Lynda started the fights between Isaac and Darbi.  And she even managed to get an old friend in Judge Lyons drug into a mess she created.

A lot goes into public education report cards, but it comes down to one thing: the teacher’s union’s control over the education process.  It states simply, “Pay us more money, and you’ll get a better report card.”  All the report card people are aligned to that objective, and next year, Lakota has a teacher’s contract coming up where all these horrible employees will want raises.  And if they get them, the report card will suddenly be a four or a five.  The real solution to Lakota’s problems would be to have four more parents who care on the school board and to fire all the senior-level sticks in the mud who work at Lakota and hire young, fresh talent who you can get for half the pay because it’s payroll that is the problem and what they do.  We don’t need a bunch of radical Joe Biden supporters teaching kids Critical Race Theory and gender neutrality at a six-figure hit to the budget.  Then, ask the community to pass a tax increase when their taxes are already out of control, and the hidden inflation tax is destroying their basic lifestyles.  The Lakota school board is supposed to be like Darbi Boddy has been.  Not a lay down across the train tracks like Lynda O’Conner has done for over 16 years catering to the teacher’s union while playing Republican to everyone who doesn’t want their taxes to go up—but doing the exact opposite regarding actual policy.

I have spoken to hundreds of people about Lynda’s bizarre behavior toward fellow school board member Darbi Boddy, and I think it all comes down to one thing: Darbi doesn’t look like the bottom of a foot.  And the irrational crusade against her isn’t over policy or presentation, but it’s over classic female rivalries.  Which is pretty ridiculous when you think about what’s at stake.  Many people are worried about real estate values because of the continued report cards at Lakota, which are expected to be excellent.  But honestly, the real estate value fear tactic is old news now.  Schools are good because of the people who invest in real estate.  Schools aren’t the primary drivers; location and culture matter far more.  The public schools are just places where parents can drop their kids off while parents do “busy stuff.”  But in Lakota’s district, child-aged parents are a pretty small demographic.  Most people living in Lakota don’t have kids in the community.  So all this Lakota news is a waste of their time.  It’s not just Darbi; there are several young women who do not look like the bottom of a foot and don’t have to put on layers of caked make-up to go to the mailbox who want to run for the school board.  I have only seen this kind of bizarre behavior in situations where women are fighting each other over silly things, which is a pretty stupid thing for people who want to lead the district even to be concerned about.  Yet Judge Lyons was getting pulled into an even more foolish story, trying to validate Isaac’s fears of being harassed by Darbi.  It was like some dumb soccer game where a player is trying to draw a penalty, and a swift breeze comes along and ruffles the player’s hair, and they fall to the ground as if someone hit them.  When you see that kind of thing going on, well, it’s no wonder the report card for Lakota is a measly 3.5.  The situation that set up those conditions is older than when Darbi was on the board.  And like everything at Lakota and all the trouble dripping off it, Lynda O’Conner is at the center.  And she wants to be re-elected?  She owes a lot of people an apology, at the very least, Darbi, for one.  The West Chester Tea Party for another.  The Butler County Courts. And literally hundreds of people who have tried to help her, only to watch her essentially turn into the Jack Smith of our community.  And embarrass us all.

Rich Hoffman

What to Know About the Ken Paxton Impeachment Trial: The old power of party politics wants to be in charge again, but it never will

What anybody needs to know about the Ken Paxton impeachment trial in Texas is that he’s a MAGA supporter who has been very influential.  At the outset of the 2020 election, as the Attorney General of Texas Paxton established one of the best cases for election fraud proof, which upset all those RINOs who wanted a clean break with Trump.  So, the old Bush power in Texas put a target on Paxton’s back right away.  And recently, Paxton was going after Google over privacy issues.  So, this trial in Texas, where the House has already impeached him from his position and now the Senate is going through the process of hearing the evidence cast against him, is an old game by the old forces who are clinging to their power from MAGA challenges to their established order.  It reminds me of a case in my county within the Republican Party, where legal warfare is regularly employed to destroy political rivals.  The core of the dispute is to resist the apparent changes that are part of the MAGA movement and the hope that if those challenges are destroyed, everything will snap back into the controls of the old days.  Where the Bush family was in charge, alliances with big companies like Google could occur under the radar, and election fraud could be conducted in the open, and nobody would question it.  It is interesting to watch, especially as RINO Republicans have attempted to shame Paxton with references to an affair he had that was well settled before any of these current issues emerged, which are being used to attack his character.  People see through it that it’s essentially the same type of case thrown at President Trump, and the results will be the same.

The Ken Paxton trial in Texas is an ongoing legal battle that has captured the attention of many across the United States. The problem centers around allegations of securities fraud against the Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton. The case has been controversial, with many questioning the motives behind the investigation and subsequent charges. At the heart of the matter is the accusation that Ken Paxton committed securities fraud by encouraging investors to buy stock in a technology company without disclosing that he was receiving compensation for the recommendation. The case has been mired in legal battles and delays, with Paxton’s lawyers arguing that the charges should be dismissed due to a lack of evidence. As it is going, the case against Paxton has been weak at best, with the best parts of it involving going to the FBI with no evidence, just accusations. And if there were any merit to the case, the Biden DOJ would have picked it up because they want to take down Paxton for his election case against the federal handling of the 2020 election. But there was nothing there, leaving the entire issue to the flimsy holdovers of the Bush legacy control over Texas. So everything is coming out petty instead of having any good legal standing. As bad as it all is to attempt to impeach an attorney general by his party, over essentially, nothing but to get rid of a member of MAGA in the power politics of Texas, the attempt says far more than any of the evidence does that has been established against Paxton. We have uncovered a monster that we always knew was there but has emerged in the wake of Trump in the White House and the distinct fear that he will return, with people like Paxton gaining power.

I see these fights all over the country, and they are happening in just about every county.  As I have said about my county of Butler County, this is the number one issue challenging everyone.  Many supported Trump during his first term because he was in power then, but they held their nose and couldn’t wait for him to be removed from office, which they cheered for when they thought nobody was looking.  In the wake of one of the most massive crimes in world history, which was the stolen election of 2020, and the Covid release of a bioweapon against the public to allow for cheating to occur, no matter who was harmed in the process, you could see clearly where people were politically.  Many put on masks and surrendered everything to the health administrators, hoping that a superior power, more significant than Trump, would knock him out of office.  These are the same people who, just months before, would gut their mothers for a chance to get a VIP pass to a Trump event and stand next to him for a picture.  I watched all this action with curiosity.  And over the last three years, it has been obvious what they were up to all along: they wanted to go back to the regional powers, such as what the Bush family has over Texas.  And there is always some family like that all over the nation, and they were pleased to snap back into that control in the wake of Trump.  They wanted their power back, so anybody expressing Trump-like opinions now that Biden was in the White House were a target, and everyone expected Trump to be gone forever, in favor of some controlled asset like Ron DeSantis, they bet everything on that future.  And that isn’t what’s happening.

I tried to explain this to many people at our Lincoln Day dinner in Butler County, Ohio, after Ron DeSantis had just come and spoken to everyone.  Many were hoping that DeSantis was going to be the Trump killer.  I told them that Ron was going nowhere, which is precisely what has happened.  I found it surprising that nobody wanted to talk about Trump.  And those who did, and we saw this same kind of radicalism on the Lakota school board, where the former Trump supporters were quick to adjust to this new Biden world as if the former Republican president had never happened.  It was as if some great eraser would come along and put all the people who wanted power back in charge forever.  It was a bizarre exchange.  On that school board, the Lynda O’Conner’s of the world wanted to destroy the Darbi Boddys over essential political philosophy, establishment against MAGA.  And now there is panic in those groups because they have bet everything on the old forces destroying these new rivals.  All the political hits have not beaten their enemies; it has only made them stronger, just like what is happening with Trump.  And, of course, what is happening to Ken Paxton.  The frustration is that Paxton will emerge from this impeachment process with more political power, which is the case with all these traditional attacks.  The old games no longer work; people don’t like the kind of society that we have had with them in charge, such as the Bush family or the DeWine clan in Ohio.  People want better political parties to represent them, not those who make deals with Google to ruin our country, destroy our Constitution, and tell us that we’ll all be better after the compromises.  That them selling us out to foreign interests was to our advantage somehow.  But many have realized that the political parties, especially RINO Republicans, have not been good for us, and we want real change.  And we’re not going to accept sell-outs.  We’ve given them a chance in the past, and we are now forever against their further attempts.  And that they can get rid of Trump, Ken Paxton, or even regionally, Darbi Boddy or Roger Reynolds, and people will still be upset with the lackluster RINOs.  They will never regain their old power, and in the future, they will only be more and more resented.  That is the future of politics; we want more like Ken Paxton and fewer Jeb Bushes.  We want people who represent us, not some ruling-class aristocracy.  And those needs will only increase in the future; we will never go back to the old days that caused all these problems in the first place. 

Rich Hoffman

Why I Won’t Support Lynda O’Conner for the Lakota School Board: There is a storm coming and it won’t be pretty

Of course, we are going to have this fight in Butler County, Ohio. It’s happening globally, nationally, statewide, and regionally. Look what Ken Paxten is going through with the Bush political machine in Texas right now. We find the same kind of problem regarding issues on the Lakota school board: populism as opposed to machine politics. The main reason I can’t support Lynda O’Conner for the school board is due to her performance, which has been rooted in machine politics that has stood against the kind of reforms education needs.  She has her role in the nasty storm that is about to hit, and rather than trying to destroy fellow school board member Darbi Boddy personally, she should have been preparing the community for what’s about to happen.  I know many people are getting caught up in the Rs and the Ds, even though school board people are supposed to be nonpartisan.  We know from experience that such a concept is far from the truth.  And based on partisanship, I don’t see any difference between Lynda O’Conner, Julie Shaffer, or Doug Horton.  They all would fit nicely in Kathy Wyenandt’s living room as like-minded Democrats.  Lynda has called herself a conservative, and she has a network that leans in that direction, but her behavior has been more on the side of Kathy Wyenandt’s pro-government school posse of progressive insurgents and far from small government and fiscally conservative values of the GOP.  All the intimidating phone calls, going through people’s garbage, messing with their utilities, or property ownership with useless bureaucracy attempting to show power over the anti-Lynda forces can’t change what she has done.  She has told me what I wanted to hear in the past, yet she has behaved in the opposite direction, and those are not traits that can be endorsed.  She brought us Darbi Boddy, then immediately, as soon as she was sworn in, turned on Darbi in excessively unhealthy ways, not showing good leadership at all.  And now Lakota has a lot of problems looming on the horizon, and because of the time she has been on the board and what she has chosen to do with her time over the last two years, any rational mind would be crazy to endorse her.  I was hoping she wouldn’t run and that she would point her interests in a different direction, such as a trustee position.  But she has done the worst thing possible: running again when strategically it makes no sense, so now we must have a difficult conversation. 

I’ve heard it all before: We must have Republicans on the school board, and these conversations have occurred in name only.  Like some sports player who wears any team’s jersey, they are told to play against, without true loyalty to any team.  The brand damage associated with Lynda will be very damaging in the months and years to come.  I was at an event recently where some very smart political people were talking, and one of these particular people was right about this “perfect storm” that is about to hit.  But we disagree on what role Lynda should play in it as an endorsed candidate of the Republican Party.  I would advise that the GOP doesn’t touch this one with a 50-foot pole and let the Democrats choke on it because the storm is an act of their creation, and Lakota can do nothing to avoid it.  I’m not against the GOP endorsing candidates.  A GOP endorsement is powerful enough to do as it has in the past, but with two more good Republicans on the school board; otherwise, we’ll end up with union stooges.  But for one of those two endorsements to be Lynda is a problem because the candidate might as well be one of the many liberals of Butler County who know they would never otherwise get elected to anything unless they were affiliated with the Republican Party. 

The time to deal with this story would have been over the last few years when Lynda picked a fight with Darbi over, essentially, political power, and now the kicking the can down the road is leading to catastrophic circumstances.  Obviously, it would have been better for Lynda not to be near a school board when these things hit the fan.  But nobody listened, so the brand damage is going to be devastating.  Nobody will be able to say I didn’t warn them.   The best thing to do would be to throw this election to the Democrats.  That doesn’t change any positive support for Russ Loges, who I think will be a great school board member.  Darbi could use help, and Isaac can decide whatever he wants to do.  But a teacher’s contract is coming, and they will want more money.  There is a facilities plan that looks like it will legitimately cost a billion dollars over the next 20 years.  Of course, that is attractive to people in construction, but it’s a vast, expensive commitment to a school system that is changing rapidly with school choice options that will become more dominant soon.  This isn’t something that just occurred; the school board has been discussing this facility plan since Brad Lovell was president of the school board, and Lynda was looking for help dealing with him.  It’s been a long time; meanwhile, Lakota has burned through its surplus and worked up the community toward a tax increase.  The problem is that property value assessments are increasing significantly due to state auditor complications.  So, the amount of taxation from those increased property value assessments will be significant.  Not the environment that makes for a healthy community passing tax increases to support a government school.  Then, of course, the national political challenges with inflation, supply chain issues at the grocery, and general temperament have brought pain to everyday people.  These next few years are going to be rough. 

I would have advised Lynda to ride off into the sunset after 16 years.  Instead of digging in and picking a fight with Darbi Boddy because she didn’t fall under the control of the school board president like other members did in the past.  And now there is a whole political faction within the Republican Party that is very angry at Lynda.  And with all the intimidation techniques employed, it has only dug them in deeper.  And they will continue to make their voices heard.  Instead of working to solve those genuine problems, we have significant fractures that will be very destructive.  Things would have been different if anybody was willing to play a little chess.  The blame for this would be much better placed where it belongs, around the neck of Julie Shaffer or Doug Horton.  But if Lynda is the endorsed candidate, it will likely end up around her neck, which isn’t good for her.  And everyone supporting her will end up with eggs on their faces during a crisis period that will need a lot of leadership.  This happens when you mix political philosophies in the way things have been done at Lakota.  It is far better to have apparent political disagreements and to let the losing side be obvious than to let a GOP member burn at the stake with everyone else.  And that is what kicking the can down the road financially for over twenty years will cost, which won’t be good for anybody.  Lakota is not a quarter of a billion-dollar business with Lynda running it.  It’s instead a quarter of a billion-dollar lottery ticket for the unions that have the power to distribute that pile of money collected by property tax owners that is spent on liberal political issues.  And as all that hits the fan, it would have been best to have distance politically from the destruction that will follow.  That is why I won’t support Lynda O’Conner for the Lakota school board.  I would have supported her for trustee or some other position.  But not for this mess, which occurred on her watch, actions she did not provide the leadership necessary when it was needed most.

Rich Hoffman

The Busing Strike at Lakota Schools: Hiding the real problems behind drivers who don’t deserve it

I love the new busing strike at Lakota schools. Nothing infuriates me more than slow-moving vehicles clogging up the roadways, and since school has started back for the fall, all the buses hauling kids around to a communist government school in my district that eats money insatiably has been a sore subject for me. I’ve dealt with this busing issue for years; I remember when Lakota cut busing as an extortion method to push parents to pass a tax increase back when we had to fight those levies every few months. And I certainly remember how it was during Covid. Parents learned not to have busing, and as far as I’m concerned, parents can take their kids to school. They’ve done it before; they can do it again. They already get a free babysitting service in the school paid for by the taxpayers, so the least they can do is drive their kids to school. But my favorite school board member, the only one who has been really good on busing issues to make things better for parents, Darbi Boddy, is supportive of busing services and has wanted to expand coverage. See, we don’t agree on everything, just most things. Darbi ultimately is not a professional politician, but she’s in politics the way it’s supposed to be. She’s a mom, and she thinks like a parent. So, she is undoubtedly sympathetic toward school bus drivers as they voted to strike just before Labor Day 2023. And what’s unusual about this strike isn’t about money or benefits. The busing services are contracted out to a company called Petermann, which handles the needs of the drivers, who are well compensated. Instead, the problem is over surveillance, a similar tech issue as is at the core of the Hollywood strike of actors and writers. Technology has turned into a tyrant, and the drivers aren’t happy about it, so they have walked off the job.

Of course, there is more to the story, which is why this is a compelling analysis. Lakota schools want to micromanage the bus drivers in ways they would never dare do with their employees, and because of Petermann handling the union responsibilities, it has given Lakota schools a chance to try and fix their social perception problem with parents during an election year, without having to take responsibility for anything and making members of their radical leftist union upset. Lakota has been very soft on pedophilia over the last several years, following some genuinely detrimental behavior with several past employees that have damaged the public school brand. Followed by some very disappointing report cards from the state and a financial situation where the lawyers are essentially running the school, the current school board, except for Darbi Boddy, has been a complete disaster. So they need a public relations push, and this school bus driver issue has been, for them, a golden opportunity. Suddenly, they want to use technology to monitor if the bus drivers are putting both hands on the steering wheel while turning and if they are staying within the speed limit. The same policy is not present to ensure that Lakota teachers behave themselves. If a kid shoots a spitball at the back of a bus driver’s head, and the driver yells at the kid. The act will be caught on video. But if it happens in a classroom, nobody will ever know. So based on that premise, Lakota management, starting at the school board, is talking out of both sides of its mouth, which is a standard from them, not an exception.

Without question, there are school bus drivers who are cheating slugs. They don’t fill their logbooks out correctly; monitoring will help correct that problem. But the number is likely under 25%. There is no precise justification for abusing the other 75% with overmanagement while the rest of the school culture gets away with horrendous acts of defilement and social degradation. Sure, bus drivers park in places they shouldn’t be to associate with other drivers who shouldn’t be there between pickup tasks. There are many reasons to justify the increased monitoring of the bus-driving staff. But the question is, “Should they do it?” Given the government school culture, the least of the problems are the bus drivers, yet the school board and superintendent want to be harsh with them in just another phony plea to convince parents that management cares about the kids. Parents interact with school bus drivers as representatives of the school more than they do the school itself, as the bus usually comes to their homes personally, where the school is someplace the kids disappear to. This has allowed the school board to appear tough on discipline over employees they don’t even have responsibility for while Lakota’s teacher’s union members get away with everything. If Lakota wanted to be tough on employees, it would have reacted much differently to the many abuses of kids that get reported but are slowly dealt with at the school board to protect the school’s image rather than to make kids a priority. But if a school bus driver goes over the speed limit by driving 40 MPH on a road that’s only 35, even though the rest of the traffic is going 45 MPH, then the push will be to write that driver up for a safety violation. Technology has allowed for this kind of oppressive micromanagement, which is not good.

It’s hard enough to get drivers for a school bus; it’s a part-time job at best that you have to spend your whole day doing, first early in the morning, to pick the kids up. Then, mid-day pre-rush hour traffic takes them home. It’s an idea I don’t think society should have ever started. It should be the responsibility of the parents to take their kids to get an education, wherever it is. Bussing has made it way too easy for parents. In this case, it has been an all too easy target for a school board that has mismanaged its affairs to appear more diligent than they are because the introduction of expanded technology has allowed tyrants to have power over others they should never have. Mainly when the utilization is not applied evenly to all parties involved. The bus drivers are being punished for disciplines that the school board would never apply to the teachers and administrators under their management. The third-party Petermann drivers are an easy target with expendable employees. And if nobody goes to school, the teachers get a more leisurely day, which we saw they were too willing to exploit during COVID-19. Technology isn’t used to improve everything, only to control it for power over innocent people while the real trouble persists elsewhere. The hope is that parents will think Lakota is doing an excellent job with the safety of their children by monitoring speed limits and hand placement during driving while the teachers are trying to convince boys that they are girls and that everyone can use whatever bathroom they want. Meanwhile, the lawyers are using taxpayer money to settle every legal challenge that comes their way, and they are trying to do to Darbi Boddy what the school board is trying to do to the bus drivers: blame them for all the lousy mismanagement of the district, when the real trouble is in their back yard, which many parents will never otherwise see.

Rich Hoffman