Tag: Disney Company

Jim Renacci, The DeSantis of Ohio: Even the Disney Company has benefited from federalism

Jim Renacci for Governor of Ohio

Well, thank goodness for federalism.  If you have read the new book from Geoff Shepard, The Nixon Conspiracy: Watergate and the Plot to Remove the President, you can see clearly that what happened to Trump and Kennedy is not new tactics.  In the climb to global power, foreign and domestic enemies have thought that they could control the world by controlling the presidency.  They make a mistake in viewing the presidency as a kind of American king, which was always wrong.  But the plot to remove Trump is just the same old power that has been around for a while, and in knowing what we know now and comparing it to the Nixon Conspiracy, there are a lot of ah-ha moments in that book which is very telling.  What has protected America from a complete takeover by these crazy powers, which we might call the “deep state” or the “globalists,” is our very good government balance of federalism where local and state powers are a priority.   The federal government has very little power within the borders of the country.  We could spend hours and hours talking about the vast Covid conspiracies or the quandaries of the “deep state” and their intentions of menace.  In essence, what we have learned after the Trump presidency and the global Covid protocols is that federalism is the way to go all over the world.  A competitive check on powers among the states has shown many economic lessons they had previously taken for granted.  And in America, Governor DeSantis of Florida has proven to be one of the very best governors of a state, where Ohio’s Mike DeWine has shown himself to be the worst.  Both call themselves Republicans, but only DeSantis has truly embraced federalism and the magic of capitalism to solve problems that came from so many directions.  And to this day, Florida is thriving where Ohio is not.  If only Ohio could have a governor like DeSantis.

But wait, Ohio does have such an opportunity.  Jim Renacci is running for governor and looks poised to primary DeWine in May of 2022.  Jim is offering to be the DeSantis of Ohio, using the model of federalism that has evolved out of Covid, where governors of states have shown just how much power they had.  During the Covid lockdowns, which Mike DeWine started even among the blue state governors, the fundamental philosophy of the governors of all states had a measurable distinction in the success and economic recovery of the states.  In red states where governors were strong, the economic impact of Covid had a much less impact.  Cases being cases, all the states dealt with their issues, but in blue states where lockdowns and tyrannical power went to the heads of the governors, such as in New York and Michigan, death by Covid and the rapid spread of the virus had no improvement.  Statistically, they look to have performed worse than in states that were more free and open with much less government intrusion.  And these were valuable lessons.  No longer was federalism debated in a college classroom advocating Marxism and more centralized authority as a capitalist utopia boomed outside the windows preparing for a big college football game on the weekend.  Now all the rules of economic theory were put to the test by the two primary ways of approaching government, and the red states clearly won.  Blue state governors, which Mike DeWine operated as one even though he called himself a Republican, showed the severe cost in misery, economic downturns, and the dangers of letting health departments run the general policy of a state. 

On the other hand, DeSantis decentralized the problem, took away the federal government’s power to stick its nose in people’s business, and promoted an environment where people at the local level could solve Covid problems and economic challenges through their own innovations.  By protecting the diverse state of Florida from centralized mistakes made by the federal government and protecting people with executive orders from further centralized authority mishaps, DeSantis led Florida to a very successful economic recovery coming out of the government-made pandemic.  And the correct measure has been in the reaction by the very liberal woke company Disney in what they have been forced to admit, even if reluctantly.  Due to the severe and lingering lockdowns in California, the Walt Disney Company has moved several thousand employees from the Anaheim offices to Orlando because Florida has been open and is a much more stable business climate where the government can’t interrupt their business operations so frequently.  With DeSantis, companies can at least trust the governor will keep the government out of the company’s management. With Disney going woke for such a long period of time, much of that wokeness came out of mitigation of knowing that for decades, a centralized government coming out of the White House intended complete authoritarian control, similar to what they have in communist China.  So they did what most companies did, appease the tyrants with wokeness so that they could survive.  But in Florida, where the Disney presence is a massive part of the state’s economy, actively and passively, the reality of the situation benefits the entertainment company tremendously.

From the beginning of Covid, Disney led the way just like Mike DeWine by adopting all the government rules and regulations, imposing mask mandates, and all kinds of ridiculous and unscientific protocols, which has hurt their business tremendously.  For them, if everyone had to impose the same restrictions upon themselves, then it made sense.    But because of DeSantis not following all the rules, but in protecting people from those rules, all businesses in Florida did not have to wear dumb masks or socially ridiculously distance themselves.  That left the Disney Company hanging out there alone, and losing money because of it, by their own choice.  When it came time for the unconstitutional vaccine mandates, which the Disney Company wanted to impose, DeSantis had created a business climate where that Biden Executive Order would be challenged in court protecting businesses from an overreaching government that was just spitballing in the wind regarding ways to manage a virus they had in fact through Dr. Fauci released upon the world.  So because of DeSantis, the people of Florida were protected from that level of stupidity, and even the Disney Company had to recognize the benefit.  They announced last week that while they reviewed the legal circumstances, they would not be imposing the vaccine mandate on their employees for the time being.  Essentially, they were putting their finger to the wind and seeing how these court cases play out, which is great for everyone involved.  But if not for DeSantis, there would be no check on federal power, no matter how well-intentioned.  Ultimately, when mistakes are centralized, everyone suffers.  When errors are separated by federalism, then not everyone has to suffer.  That is the benefit of a great governor like DeSantis.

That DeSantis model is now out there, and there is history that can be studied for centuries on the positive impact of federalism during a mass international crisis.  Nobody can put this genie back in the bottle; it’s out, and it’s out forever.  All those who have been pushing governments toward more centralized government, as they were even in the Nixon White House, have seen through Covid the root cause of their massive failures.  They had hoped, like Disney, to hide those failures by forcing 100% submission to their cause. Still, because power was decentralized through federalism within the states of America, to compete, even the mighty Disney Company had to see reality for what it was.  They benefited greatly from DeSantis as governor; even if they didn’t vote for him, his policies made Disney a better company.  And that approach is what is needed in Ohio.  With Mike DeWine, we will never have such a governor.  But with Jim Renacci, we have a chance to have perhaps someone better than Ron DeSantis.  Trump helped pave the way for DeSantis.  And DeSantis has helped pave the way for people like Jim Renacci, whom I think can actually do better in Ohio than DeSantis has been for Florida.  And the time is coming quickly for us to be able to vote for him in the primary.  Which is something we can all look forward to with great zeal!

Rich Hoffman

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Nobody Should Care About China’s Box Office: Reaching a market of over a billion people can’t justify surrendering to communism

What I have always loved about Star Wars, aside from the obvious creativity that it takes to make the movies, is that they are in and of themselves positive stories that don’t get hung up on negativity. Yet the theme of our day is negativity, because if people are in a state of discontent they may be open to the offerings of some political class. It was probably always this way to some extent, but its really bad now, where negativity is insisted upon by certain sectors of the world, as a culture. Yet, its not always easy to see, but when something like a new Star Wars film comes out, the pop culture reaction to it is an obvious measure that we can all see and touch. And it was never clearer as to what the intentions for our society is than in reporting on the new Star Wars film, which was probably the most positive film I’ve seen by anybody in a long time, and one that certainly stands for goodness. Clearly the intent of the characters in the movie were to make clear choices about good and bad behavior. So of course the focus on the reviews was that this latest movie, The Rise of Skywalker is that it is the most poorly reviewed film since The Phantom Menace, and that it has bombed in China at that box office, see the Variety article below:

https://variety.com/2019/film/news/star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-flops-debut-china-1203449672/’

This is why I write so much about Star Wars, the movies are very positive and defined about what good and evil should be—as any kid’s fairy tale would. That makes them as a work of art a wonderful measure about social values and the motivations of our cultural forces. Further, I would offer that communism has been the functioning plan for many years, especially those college trained as all media people are to some extent, certainly in the case of writers of these types of articles like Patrick Frater a defense of China and its communism is baked into their view of the world, and by attacking films that are distinctly American points of view, China continues on with the mission they’ve had all along and is constantly assisted by universities and their products to advocate for and against certain types of cultures. The effort becomes grossly obvious when entertainment trades make it so obvious such as trying to slam a movie as successful as The Rise of Skywalker which made over $177 million domestically over its opening weekend and will continue to do well at the box office over the long Christmas week. Especially when the news around the world that in just a few days it made $376 million globally. That is hardly anything to sneeze at, or to ignore, culturally.

The problem is one that I have pointed out often, especially coming out of Hollywood for more than a couple decades now, where Chinese companies have been buying up interests in film studios and even trade magazines. They have been trying to do to American markets what they do internally in China as communists, and that is to control everything at every level. I mean give me a break, Star Wars was beat at the box office in China by Ip Man 4: The Finale, and that is very fishy. Instead of making the story about the Chinese box office being a failure of Star Wars to reach an audience, the story is really about how China as a government controls such box office numbers so that they can protest against western ideas influencing their country, especially when the protests in Hong Kong are fueled by those same western ideas. The box office numbers themselves do not tell the story, but our media which has been heavily influenced by the Chinese even from such a far reach uses the known measurements that China controls to attempt to shape the kind of stories that are told in our culture—which the rest of the world obviously loves as they were.

I admired Disney, which is a big global company that wants to please everyone, because they allowed the filmmakers of Star Wars to get back to what made the films popular with fans and The Rise of Skywalker is a love letter back to them full of very positive storylines that don’t get hung up on negativity. The previous installment The Last Jedi was taking a turn to the dark side in all aspects and critics loved it. But the fans didn’t. As I said at the start of this article, one way to control people is to take away from them hope, disconnect them from options so that they will be forced to embrace a way of life that the controller wishes to impose. When Star Wars looked to be taking a negative “realistic” tone with this modern trilogy, critics loved the film, but when the box office diminishing returns started showing that fans were leaving, Disney had to make some decisions and listen to the fans, and return to the kind of storytelling that Star Wars has always been for people—which is not the trend of the world full of communists in China that still have global plans.

I doubt that Patrick Frater from Variety is an open communist, but I would bet that he’s likely an anti-Trump political personality and that the whispers of his college days speak to him in copious amounts, and that the roots of those whispers were sympathetic to the type of society that China has been trying to export for decades. Star Wars obviously stands against that sentiment. While in the states, Variety has been very supportive of Star Wars so long as they could view the Resistance as being anti-Trump and liberal. However, the reality is that Star Wars has always been a small government love letter and few stories in the history of storytelling has ever shown how a government can be great one day, and on the next turn into a mass manufacturer of dystopia and scandal. The enemies of American ideas I would offer are those who have also been giving bad reviews to The Rise of Skywalker. While Disney has tried to make everyone happy, especially with the ridiculous lesbian kiss at the end of the movie as if to throw a bone to the dogs, ultimately there is no way to shut out the negativity that comes from the press because the goal is to attempt to keep people from being enchanted by the positive messages of Star Wars, since it is control over mankind that is at stake.

This movie is just one more example of why China is ultimately irrelevant. Nobody can make movies culturally that China and America will enjoy together. If a film studio tries to make movies that China will like, American audiences will push it away. And if the story is too “western” then China will shut it down in their markets. This is the nature of this entire battle yet I don’t see any evidence from the trades in dealing with the issue properly. That is because they are part of the problem and when they can, such as in this Variety article, they must take down any challenges to China as a communist culture. To save Star Wars, Disney had to choose, and they went with traditional western storytelling as they should. Nobody cares about China’s stupid contributions. Its worth dropping a $100 million at the box office, which is likely what it cost. But that money will be made up many times over in the other markets before its all said and done, and Disney will be rewarded for their choice, even if the trades like Variety are rooting against it for all the reasons stated.

Rich Hoffman

What Disney Calls Magic is what Chick Fil A Calls Competency: Taking away the excusses to happiness

People have been wondering why as a grown man who could go anywhere in the world why my wife and I went to Disney World for vacation, without any kids. Well, there were a lot of reasons, but one of the main ones is something I don’t hear a lot of people talking about, but its at the core of their theme park business model, and its very similar to Chick Fil A. What Disney sells is happiness, its in their mission statement which is clear the moment you enter the property in Orlando welcoming you to the happiest place on earth. Obviously the first thing that cynical people think of in Disney are the huge expenses and the long lines, but there is a reason everything costs so much yet is so extraordinarily crowded. Its essentially for the same reason that Chick Fil A is crowded every afternoon just for selling chicken, it’s because as a company, they don’t make excuses for failure and have a can do spirit on everything, and that is precisely what people are looking for at the Disney Parks, and why I specifically wanted to vacation there. I’m a very positive person and professionally everywhere I have turned over the last year and a half was some drag asser looking for every little excuse not to do something, and it was driving me crazy. It had been time for a Disney vacation.

That doesn’t mean that what you get at Disney is happiness. I watched carefully during my vacation the other people who were looking for the same thing as me, but obviously were not so inclined to experience such a product as Disney calls “magic.” Magic is the word for it, because in reality, its only the performance of illusions, not some mystical energy created to manipulate the impossible. Magic to create happiness is a series of tricks designed to evoke in the user a feeling they couldn’t get anywhere else, but not all people are prepared to experience it. So they can go to Disney World and spend many tens of thousands of dollars, they can have their magic bands and take the shuttle from the airport to the parks without paying all the tolls on the highways between the two, and all they’ll see are long lines and misery. They’ll complain later that Disney World is all about just making a buck and is for kids as they seek some psychological distance between their present reality and any future attempt at happiness. For many people, they do not want to be happy, because there is responsibility in it, so even going to Disney World can’t do it for them. But on this trip, I wanted particularly to study Disney as a company and how they maintained their brand so I was watching with different eyes than I normally would in times past.

One thing that was obvious, and likely the key to their success at Disney was that all of their employees were taught to buy into the philosophy, like Chick Fil A. You don’t go to Disney to hear excuses about why this or that can’t or won’t happen. With them anything is possible. Any request from a customer is entertained, and it’s done so with a smile on their faces. As I went everywhere and asked lots of questions of what they call “cast members” a personality trait emerged that was part of their employee development. The customer was always right, and the employees of Disney were taught never to complain, or to let it out that they disagreed with those very valuable customers. Everything was on time; no rides or attractions were shut down because they didn’t have enough employees to operate the activities. Nothing stopped at Disney World due to massive call offs of a weak labor pool to draw from. To make the parks work magically each day, it literally took tens of thousands of park employees to make the massive operation run. If 10% of their work force didn’t show up for work on time there would be big problems in selling that happiness, yet Disney didn’t have that problem at all. The reason why is the key to the answer.

To conduct my experiments my wife and I stayed in Kissimmee and spent some time out of the park interacting with the various work cultures there to draw some long-held conclusions that I have had. In years past, whenever we went to central Florida, we would meet at the family condo over in Cape Canaveral, and a fair amount of socializing was always part of the trip. This time, we didn’t talk to anybody, we just conducted my experiment spending a lot of time at all four Disney Parks, eating and interacting with their various resorts, and crawling over every inch of their Disney Springs development. We used all their various transportation systems and even talked to the janitors who walked around the park cleaning up the trash. I purposely looked for the ugly side of Disney, any peeled paint, any decaying wood, any sign of shortcuts toward the magic illusions that Disney was so obsessed with creating. Then once the parks closed, or before they opened, we would eat and shop down in Kissimmee and the differences in culture were obvious.

We were staying only two miles from the entrance to Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios the entire time along RT 192 which had a lot of great Gatlinburg types of tourist traps that I love so much. Only the employees almost everywhere we went sucked, and I mean, they sucked big time. We went to Joe’s Crab Shack which was just a stone’s throw to the south of Animal Kingdom, off the Disney property and it was obviously mismanaged in a terrible way. It took 15 minutes for someone to even ask to seat us, even with most of the place full of empty tables. Then we were told it would take an additional 15 minutes to seat us. When I asked why, they told us that they had a few call-offs and that they were running behind. Disney operates hundreds of restaurants, hotels, rides, and other vendors and I don’t think they would permit any of their employees from making such a ridiculous statement. Why would a business make their mismanagement problems the problems of the paying customer? Its an absurd concept, so we left Joe’s Crab Shack and looked for other options. And we found the same behavior everywhere else, including a Cracker Barrel

Our hotel had half dead slugs running the place, the room cleaners kept forgetting to give us new towels, coffee packs and whatever we asked for because they were not engaged in maintaining our happiness. They were just going through the motions like the rest of the world. Disney by contrast didn’t permit such excuses and that was obviously part of what they called magic. From the airport in Orlando to the surrounding establishments around the Disney World property, the contrasts were obvious, and a key to the success story. It really came down to a management decision to take away the excuses of unhappiness. If people wanted to see the strings and hidden chambers of the magic show, they could. But Disney would not be responsible for it. Their whole thing was to take away the excuses to be miserable. If people chose to be miserable anyway, that was on them.

I am one who likes to be happy, so it didn’t take much for me to enjoy that level of competency. In such a “can do” culture it doesn’t take much for me to respect such a thing. The cast members no matter how important their roles were in the customer experience held to the company motto and it was obviously successful. It shows what can be done when a company has expectations from their employees to behave a certain way and to ensure that the customer experience from their side is positive and excuse free. And in that, there are lots of lessons for the outside world to come to grips with, which is precisely why I chose this vacation over other options, which I’m glad I did.

Rich Hoffman

The High Crimes of the Obama Administration: From Hezbollah to the Disney Company, they all want the same thing–an end to America

For those who think my position on drugs pouring into the United States is too harsh, that drug consumption is just a personal choice of free people exercising their right to destroy their minds, than feel free to use this article for the evidence in why you are an idiot and a contributor to domestic terrorism.  Additionally there are also people—usually the same kind of people—who think that now that President Trump is now in the White House that we should forget about the past—believe all these stupid anti-Trump stories—and live happily ever after forgetting about the many prosecutions that are due to members of the Obama administration including the former president himself, his DOJ operatives—both his attorney generals who are currently involved in serious anti-Trump activity.  Hillary Clinton, CIA director John Brennan, James Clapper, and of course James Comey—they should all be on trail defending themselves from prosecutions that may take them from their freedoms for the rest of their lives—not out signing book deals.  There have been massive crimes committed under that previous administration and we either have justice, or we have chaos in a banana republic. Before I go on dear reader remember what the gun smuggling operation was all about called Fast and Furious—which had the finger prints of Eric Holder and Barack Obama on that tragedy directly.  Then consider what Oliver North featured in the video below was up to with the Iran Contra Affair and how much trouble the Reagan administration got into over that.  Then consider that this deal that Obama’s administration cut with Iran to let Hezbollah sell drugs to the United States by scaling back the arms of justice from the DEA to allow the terrorist organization to continue funding itself by poisoning the minds of American youth in the process—then tell me that we should let all this go.  The deal Obama had with Iran isn’t much different from the MO of the Fast and Furious deal—which still hasn’t been dealt with—and we are all supposed to buy into all this crime just because some of the players are minorities, blacks, women and people from other counties—and that by saying anything about the crimes they committed makes us all racists?  Hey, I have an invisible bridge to sell all the people who believe that crap.

Look, if we have no law and order in America than I’ll gladly put together a team of vigilantes to strap on some guns and attack some of these villains directly.  The only reason I haven’t yet is that I have a hope that there is some justice left in the world.  I still respect the law enough to participate in the election process.  Wasn’t it Barack Obama who told us years ago that elections had consequences?  Well, he’s right, and he’s going to have to deal with getting his hands caught in the cookie jar of the most explosive scandals and crimes ever committed from such an abuse of a high office in the history of the world.  Talk about draining the swamp, well we have found the hairy mess that has been clogging the pipes and once it is removed, you’ll be surprised how quickly all the water disappears, and you’ll also be shocked how much the water hid.  We are talking about really bad people who have been involved in these things.  It’s not just because most of them are Democrats—it’s because they are criminals who have been willing to kill and destroy anybody to protect their tentacles of injustice. What has been done demands action by the good people of America and there really isn’t any live and let live—they have forced us to make the hard decisions that are in front of us—so the fault is completely on them.

So in that context let’s consider my thoughts about how terrible drugs are for our country—I said recently that anybody who supports drug use in America—especially among our youth are participating in domestic terrorism.  I would say that many people who support the reckless use of illegal drugs—including marijuana in the United States are on a sadistic pilgrimage to destroy the next generations so that the population on earth will decrease thus preserving the planet for the future by wiping out the humans which inhabit it. If you sit down to dinner to speak to some of the richest and most powerful progressives currently in existence, when you get down to it, their intention is to use drugs as a Trojan horse to destroy the cultures of capitalism around the world so that there isn’t anyone to resist their Marxist sentiments for the world—with the ultimate goal of protecting the earth from human invention.  I would go so far to say that 100% of the villains of our modern age think some variation of that accusation.  But taken literally, most of the money made off the illegal drug trade goes to fund the terrorist activities of anti-American forces around the world.  That illegal drug transaction that takes place on so many street corners within the United States directly funds terrorism from the source countries—Hezbollah being just the tip of the iceberg.

The debate will rage on, do people have a right to destroy themselves with drugs—including alcohol if the by-product of that behavior affects the happiness of everyone else?  Should I have to put up with a couple of stupid kids vaping weed in the car in front of me at a traffic light?  I’d say no because it has an impact on my happiness because the smoke blows back toward me when the wind kicks up.  I have to breathe that air, so their action has an impact on me.  I should have the right to step up to their car window and drag them out of it beating the shit out of them until they no longer have the strength to “vape.” But that is a more complicated debate that we can all have.  What we know is that in most cases that “weed” purchase put money in the pockets of some anti-America force.  The pot advocates will say that the solution to that is to make it all legal so that we can tax it, regulate it, and create jobs in the states.  But you see, here was the objective all along—by doing so you legalize poisoning the next generation of our society which fulfils the aims of the terrorism to begin with—the bringing down of a capitalist culture.  The terrorist doesn’t care if they give the poison or if someone else does, so long as the objective of destruction occurs.  By forcing the issues, if America legalizes it they don’t need the terrorist funding, because their aim has already been accomplished—a stoned society of American kids ill prepared for the fights of tomorrow leaving the Marxists to crash the gates of our republic without anybody so much as raising a fist against them.  That is what the terrorists ultimately want—a defeated society without having to fight them directly.

And why would any terrorist organization fear America when such high crimes from the highest offices have gone unpunished?  What do they care about the might of the American military as long as they continue hiding in the caves of Afghanistan, or the slums of Mexico City?  Do you dear reader know to what extent the Chinese are willing to impose their will on the world just to remain an exclusive supplier of the world’s garlic—a legitimate crop that is in high demand in the United States?  Consider what they are willing to do with the unregulated opium that pours from their borders headed for American dance clubs filled with sex starved capitalist youth?  Don’t kid yourself.  The world is filled with bad people and they have their guns pointed at the United States—and the Obama administration with the help of MOST of the Beltway culture—including the media, opened the door to allow all that terrorism to prosper.  The executives at Disney should go back and watch their own movie, Pinocchio.   They are teaching our youth to make “asses” of themselves right now with their progressive programming at ESPN, the Disney Channel, and liberalizing every product they put up on the silver screen.  They are no longer the innocent little puppets proclaiming they “have no strings on me”, but are the stinky kids smoking and playing pool—literally turning into donkey’s before our eyes—then being sold into slavery as a result of their ill lived lives.

Hezbollah is an enemy of American ideas and Obama himself got involved in all this activity using his DOJ to put money in the pockets of the terrorist organization.  That same DOJ that met with Bill Clinton in a plane just a few days before the FBI decided not to charge Hillary Clinton with crimes she committed so to protect all this crime committed by the Obama administration with a friendly next administration.  When that didn’t go as planned and Trump won anyway, Obama’s personal terrorists involving Brennan, Clapper, and Comey moved to unmask Trump’s campaign during the transition in a last-ditch effort to derail the new president before he could get to work in “draining the swamp.”  So they committed even more crimes with this Russian dossier and the Fusion funding of it—to produce FISA warrants to create a cover story for all the crime in case they got caught—which they did.  These are really bad people and they deserve to be punished.  They’ve given us no choice.  And it either happens “legally” or it happens in less desirable ways—but it will and must happen.  I personally won’t accept anything less.

Rich Hoffman

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