Before it was all said and done there were around 500 people who joined the crowd protesting the gross intrusion of the IRS into the lives of Tea Party Patriots.
CINCINNATI – The furor over the IRS’s improper targeting of conservative groups went on full display in downtown Cincinnati on Tuesday.
More than 200 people turned out for a noon rally sponsored by local tea party groups, according to 9 On Your Side’s Scott Wegener. Some carried signs that read “Audit the IRS,” “Internal Revenge Service, Stop” and “Stop the Abuse of Power.” Some chanted, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, the IRS has gotta go.”
“I think we need to do something about the abuses of government,” said Dennis Hogan of Maineville.
After gathering on Fountain Square, protesters marched two blocks to the IRS office at the federal building at 550 Main St. That where IRS workers improperly targeted conservative groups in their applications for tax-exempt status over the last few years, a Treasury Department inspector general’s report states.
Lined up along the sidewalk, protesters chanted, “You work for us. You work for us,” while Homeland Security officers stood nearby.
“It’s ungodly, it’s un-American and it’s just plain wrong to target Americans because of what they say about the government,” said Paul Johnson of the Grassroots tea party of Boone County.
“We want them to cease and desist harassing us conservatives,” said Andrew Pappas of the Anderson tea party.
To that end, protesters signed a large placard and Ann Becker, president of the Cincinnati tea party, gave it to officers to deliver to the IRS.
“This isn’t about party. It’s about individual freedom,” Becker said.
Becker has called for the immediate resignation of all involved in the targeting scandal.
“There shouldn’t be a political attack based on our beliefs, and we believe that’s what the IRS has done,” Becker said.
“That it turned out to be going on in the Cincinnati office is fairly ironic considering the strong tea party presence in this area,” said George Brunemann. “I’d say there’s about 20,000 members in Hamilton, Butler, Warren and Clermont (counties).”
Brunemann said he and his wife were audited and his wife’s business was audited after they started the SouthWest Cincinnati tea party. He doesn’t believe the IRS officials who claim low-level Cincinnati IRS workers came up with the idea to target conservative groups.
“The IRS agent who told us we were being audited said it was directly because of our involvement with the tea party. She was almost apologetic,” Brunemann said.
He said he knows a small business owner who was audited by the IRS and investigated by OSHA after joining.
“To me, that’s what screams that this is not lower-lever IRS workers. This goes all the way up the food chain. The president might not be personally involved, but his people are,” Brunemann said.
Some tea party groups are planning lawsuits in connection with the investigation.
Five present or former Cincinnati IRS workers were called to Washington to give transcribed interviews in advance of a House committee hearing on Wednesday.
The scandal has already led to at least three congressional hearings.
I was at the Liberty Township Tea Party meeting when Katy Kern read the IRS harassment letter calling out Justin Binik Thomas as an individual. Justin is from Deer Park nearly a half an hour to the south of Liberty Township, Ohio and had no connection at all to the Tea Party group in my community. So the implication of why Justin, who was a founding member of the Cincinnati Tea Party, was obvious. The IRS was letting Liberty Township know that the leaders of the Tea Party effort were going to be targeted, and unless they wanted the wrath of the IRS coming down on them—they’d keep their head down. Well, it didn’t work. The Liberty Township group hunkered down and Justin went on the offensive letting every media outlet in the country know about the harassment he received. He’s been on virtually every news program in the country as a result and made a point to fly to Washington D.C. to attend the Ways and Means hearings. Upon arrival back into Cincinnati he gave two interviews, one to Channel 9 which is shown after the below video, and a radio interview with Matt Clark of WAAM in Ann Arbor, Michigan which can be seen and heard here:
The Channel 9 Interview is now listed below with the link to the original story here:
Justin Binik-Thomas wanted to know why a question about him was among 35 the Liberty Township Tea Party was instructed by the Internal Revenue Service to answer as part of the organization’s application for tax-exempt status last year.
Binik-Thomas, of Deer Park, believes he became the only individual to be singled out in any of the hundreds of questions asked by Cincinnati IRS employees who gave extra scrutiny to applications for tax-exempt status filed by conservative groups.
The 31-year-old was so concerned that he flew to Washington, D.C., to be present during the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee’s hearing Friday.
While Binik-Thomas didn’t expect the hearings to give him answers, he told 9 On Your Side prior to his trip to Capitol Hill that he thought it was important to be there to show the face of someone who has been directly affected by the scandal.
9 On Your Side interviewed Binik-Thomas to get his opinion about what he learned during the hearing.
His responses can be viewed below:
Q. What did you learn from the hearings?
A. I left confident that Congress has taken the [inspector general’s] findings, IRS admission, and constituent concerns seriously. Special thanks to my representative, Congressman (Brad) Wenstrup, for working with Ways and Means colleagues on this issue. Congressman (Pat) Tibiri and Congressman (Erik) Paulsen included my story in their questioning.
Q. Are you satisfied with the answers you got from the experience?
A. There was little new information learned at the hearing proper, but there will be followup, written testimony and committee research over the coming weeks. I hope to learn more in this phase.
Q. What do you plan to do next?
A. I will continue to work with congress and this committee to support as needed and appropriate.
Q. What would you like to hear from IRS/administration officials?
A. I would like to know why I was included in the letter to Liberty Township Tea Party, what the information received will be used for, and where the information was shared. [I’d] also like assurances that it will not be used against me or my small business in the future. The same assurances should be offered to targeted groups.
Q. What have you received in the way of support from the local community?
A. My family and community have been supportive. It is chilling to be called out by the government.
Q. What would you like the public to know about what happened?
A. The IRS has identified an individual in a letter to an unrelated group. Risks include future audits to personal or business finances. It can happen to anyone unless there are systemic changes at the agency – true checks and balances – to assure this does not reoccur.
What Justin said about being targeted in a letter to an unrelated group is the crux of the whole problem. The IRS used Justin’s name as a way to intimidate the Liberty Township Tea Party, and in doing so, abused their power. This is the reason that no one organization should ever have so much power that can behave like a dictatorship in such a fashion. No matter who was at fault at the IRS, the deed was done and Justin has had to embark on at least two years of fearful harassment as a result. The IRS owes Justin more than an apology.
I admire Justin’s professionalism in his responses. He has a right to state his outrage in a much more colorful manner than he has, but he’s a nice guy who is immensely responsible. As a founding member of the Cincinnati Tea Party he has shown a willingness to allow the legal process to work the way it should by working closely with his congressman to see justice done to the IRS. For Justin’s sake, I hope he gets it. But I have my doubts. The IRS is a terribly corrupt organization that stands against virtually everything America was founded upon, so unless major reforms are put in place the status quo will remain and people like Justin will be attacked again.
What a lot of people do not realize is that Tea Party groups are educational organizations designed to get back into touch with Constitutional ideals and beliefs that were valued upon the founding of The United States of America. In essence they are like a giant book club where members get together and talk about the merits of books they have read like The Federalist Papers and The 5000 Year Leap. That makes the recent IRS scandal against the Tea Party that much more preposterous, which has been going on for over three years now, culminating in the testimony in Washington that is currently going on. All government entities from local schools to the smallest cubical in the IRS administration offices have in their culture an inherit desire to advance statism—and anything that is a threat to their statism they deem worthy of attack. If a school levy is resisted, the advocates of the tax increase believe they have a “right” to destroy businesses and any individual who stand in the way of their funding. The IRS does the same on a massive scale acting as agents of tyranny to those who oppose statist oriented government objectives. So as a supporter of Tea Party causes, it gave me great pleasure to listen to the testimony of May 17, 2013 and hear occasional cheers coming from the crowd sitting in the balcony—since I personally know a good portion of the Tea Party patriots making such a ruckus there.
Unlike my Tea Party friends, my interest in politics extends beyond education. I am an aggressive type of individual and I sometimes do and say things many of them would never consider. For that reason I keep a bit of distance from them so to preserve my right to exercise my intentions without bringing negativity into their direction, particularly from groups like the IRS or any other government body. So privately, frequent readers of my Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom got together with Justin Binik-Thomas to deal with this whole IRS thing. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. I’m not the kind of person who believes in mass demonstrations and protests. I don’t do the group activity thing but I do respect those who do. The people who were in that Overmanwarrior’s group were not the types who would collect in mass to show the IRS that there is strength in numbers—they are the type of people who are prepared for the next tragic steps once government organizations realize that the Tea Party will not back down. They are people like Justin Binik-Thomas who won’t be frightened away from holding leadership positions in the Tea Party organizations, due to IRS intimidation. Knowing something about media relations myself, if those steps are necessitated, I don’t want my friends in the Tea Party splattered all over the news as a negative connection to me, so I keep a respectable distance—because that is where I am. I admire their kindness, and desire to learn. That much I share with them. But I have different methods for dealing with bullies that is much more direct than a lot of people feel comfortable with. I intend to direct that kind of attention toward one of the biggest bullies around, the IRS. So the meeting we had with Justin well over a year ago in the middle of this IRS scandal was to deal with those next steps should the IRS push the issue beyond pieces of paper and phone calls.
This is where the statist government types like Barack Obama are at a loss, and why they find themselves in the center of so much trouble. America is not Europe; we have not been beaten down by thousands of years of statism under kings and queens. America was founded by rebels fleeing Europe. Rebellion is so deeply ingrained into our DNA that it cannot be easily changed leaving a subtle and constant push against statism. Even though government education has trained the minds of generations toward statism, deep in their hearts Americans hate it, and they act against it any way they can. Most of the people I know are happy to peacefully protest, as they traveled to Washington to show a unified force against the IRS. But I prepare in other ways for events that are historically probable. I do not count on government to submit itself to the will of the American people, and I expect a fight from them. So I am always in a state of preparation. But what we all have in common, my Tea Party friends and some of my “other” friends who will strategically stay in the shadows until needed–is that we are not going to yield. Submission to government is not an option. We will never submit to United Nations authority, we will never submit to the tyranny of the IRS or any other government organization. I personally won’t even submit to a local trustee or zoning board. I don’t go out looking for trouble, I simply resist the imposition of my time, money, and energy by those who want something from me, and hope to force me to act in the way they desire through “thuggish” democracy—mob rule.
What else is the motive when a bunch of union inspired thugs attempt to vandalize the property of a target, or organize a mass protest in front of a home or business? What is the point of spying on a target so that weaknesses in their defense can be ascertained? What is the point of using the rule of law through the tax code or some other government inspired imposition to arrest a target and throw them in jail just because they have charisma and a following? The intent is to “win” at their intended strategic objectives, through force. The IRS did these types of things to the Liberty Township Tea Party because they wanted to send a strong message to a Tea Party group in John Boehner’s back yard. They wanted to tie up the efforts of the Tea Party into not protesting big government and national debt, but to put them on the defensive with red tape and bureaucracy. It was harassment with the intention of “changing” the behavior of the Tea Party groups. By targeting Justin Binik-Thomas the IRS wanted to send a message to the other Tea Party groups that leaders in such groups would be targeted—so to discourage leaders from naming themselves for fear of an audit.
I am happy to see the victims of this IRS harassment enjoying their moment in the sun. They deserve to look down from the gallery upon those who intended to bring harm to their lives—and the IRS did intend to use their authority to change Tea Party behavior. Justin deserves that satisfaction as does Rachael and the representatives of the Liberty Township Tea Party who were there for the testimony. It is nice to see justice being handed out where it is deserved. I’d rather get everything out in the open so that the pretense of politeness can be dropped and everyone can start dealing with reality.
As these scandals break, and justice comes to the aggressors of the IRS and the government that supports such a tyranny, what I believe will happen may be delayed, where the federal government out of frustration just turns on the American people with out-right force. Such peaceful resolutions are the intentions of the Tea Party and I’m happy to see them getting some form of justice from the efforts and worry they have expelled. But such victories are paper in nature and easily forgotten. They are not the kind of conflict resolution that I am thinking of. It would seem that for that, I’ll have to wait a bit longer as the government recalibrates for their next psychological assault. But what we all share no matter what the method is that submission is not an option. Statist government is not what we are willing to support, and there isn’t any amount of forced imposition that can change that basic premise.
One of the big problems the current White House is going through with all their scandals is due to a commitment to maintaining a positive public image instead of dealing with difficult problems. The White House is in trouble because they showed more concern about their public image than in doing what was right. Since The White House trouble is all the rage in the news at the same time the Lakota school system released their lip-dub video in dedication to Spina Bifida awareness comparisons were inevitable. While watching the video I realized that Lakota was guilty of the same sins as their progressive older siblings in the federal government. I had been prepared to say good things about the video where the efforts of the entire school had been pulled together with thousands of kids involved, but as I watched the obvious attempt to cater to Ellen DeGeneres at the 8:30 mark in the video the line was crossed.
What I see when watching this video is a very committed attempt to shut down the entire school system, teaching the kids nothing during the filming of the video except to act in a music video. The amount of work was extensive and would have required hundreds of labor hours to decorate all those halls, coordinate the student efforts, and ultimately put on a production that is so large that Lakota could implement their stated objective of getting their effort noticed by Ellen DeGeneres. They even rented a helicopter for the crane shots! Based on what I know about the personalities behind the effort it appears to me that Lakota is using the tragic conditions of Spina Bifida as a shield gaining national exposure and the money that comes with such public relations. The money Lakota needs is to pay for heavy ended labor contracts that are about to launch the administration into a budget deficit. I wish that it wasn’t the case, but after carefully looking at the posters on the wall and the behavior of the coordination, the effort is more about public relations and appeasing Ellen DeGeneres than actually helping Spina Bifida victims.
These kinds of public relations tricks have been executed against communities for decades. The White House uses these tactics overtly because nobody would dare call them what they actually are, because the villainy is hidden behind goodness. In the case of Spina Bifida the little girl featured in the video needs help, and she needs money for research into her ailment. But if people really wanted to help, the left-leaning video organizers would contribute considerable portions of their pay-checks—especially the nearly 1000 employees at Lakota who make more than $60K per year to help Spina Bifida. Some of the people involved in that video have quarter million dollar contracts. A personal check for $1000 to $5000 goes a long way, and those school employees can afford it. But the intention of the video however was to convince “other” people to contribute “their” money while the school gets a pat on the head by a national celebrity. The school can then use that endorsement during their next levy increase campaign. I would say the same statements to those organizers that I have said to the local socialites who stick their noses in local charity efforts—just write a six figure personal check instead of buying another Florida condo, then you will have done something good for Spina Bifida and the little girl in the video. But putting up decorations all over the Lakota schools using staff members and shutting down the entire education process to film a video for a public relations effort with the intention of attracting a day-time talk show host’s airtime is public relations, not Spina Bifida awareness.
When President Obama brought in the families of the Sandy Hook shootings to Washington and gave a speech with them in the background, the President was guilty of using the tragedy of that catastrophic school shooting to advance his anti-gun policies. The situation was exacerbated when those families were encouraged to sit in the Senate balcony to apply pressure on the Senators as they voted on a proposed gun bill pushed by the Obama administration. The same type of subtle manipulation is being done by the government school of Lakota. The attempt at consensus by Lakota to use victims of Spina Bifida as an excuse to appeal to a national audience is using the mechanism of charity as a malicious and manipulative endeavor. Since altruism is generally a hand-off type of social judgment, assessment of charity value is never analyzed. It is never judged whether or not a charity event is successful or not, because only the intention is considered. This allows giant government schools like Lakota to use victims of Spina Bifida to actually gain public relations favor ahead of tax increase requests without being accused of using thousands of Lakota students and employees to illegally support school levy endeavors by hiding the intention behind a detrimental illness.
This is the danger of a government school being stuck into the center of a community and forcing property owners to contribute their money to such institutions under force. The progressive philosophy shown in the video, especially at the 8:30 mark is one that I do not support, yet I must support it because I own property near the school. And I also don’t agree with supporting an institution that exploits those who are less fortunate with the disguised need to further raise taxes. Public schools need to behave under competitive influence so that tax payers are given a choice of what kind of ideas they support, or don’t support, instead of being forced to provide thousands of private dollars in taxes to a progressive organization that thinks singing, dancing, and getting on Ellen’s television show is more important than the fundamentals of education, and living within a community established budget.
It may be considered by many to be “mean spirited” to point out such obvious schemes. But if someone really wants to help Spina Bifida, they need to put their money where their mouth is and help those who need it without seeking celebrity on television. In the case of this video, it is just a grim reminder that public education institutions see themselves as molds for a community, and they are driven by government parameters, so it is troubling to see such large conglomerations of collective effort believing that they are doing good, when the act is only an illusion. These are not the kind of messages that children should grow up believing. Even though the participants at the 8:30 mark in the video behave in such a flimsy way as part of their social act, the act itself is but one more reminder that the product produced in public schools are one of the many factors that are eroding away the ethical foundation of our present society with beliefs that are caused not for concern over Spina Bifida, but to become celebrities on Ellen with a production so big, and expensive, that nobody would dare question it.
I saw Iron Man 3 last weekend and wanted to immediately provide a review of some kind because it was a very good film full of large concepts. The value in these comic book based stories is that they do not take themselves too serious as intellectual advancement devices. But like so many plot lines to video games these days, the writing, and concepts behind the plot are quite advanced allowing viewers to define abstract concepts in mythological dialogue that the human brain understands as a truth obtained no other way. When it is wondered why the Marvel films are doing such magnificent business it is not because of the great performances of Robert Downey Jr., or any of the primary actors, but because the bizarre plot lines have within them a truth that unifies all the fragmented evidence society is exposed to and presents the information in a way that makes sense.
But before going too far down the rabbit hole, let’s get the typical stuff out-of-the-way. Is Robert Downey Jr., worth the $50 million dollars he is getting to play Iron Man in these films? I’d say no. If it were me making the decision at Marvel Comics and Disney on how to pay Downey for Avengers 2, I would write Downey out of the story and let him sit it out for a film or two so that his agent does not have the contract leverage to continue driving up the labor costs. By paying Downey so much money, which I don’t think even he thinks he’s worth, it sets a dangerous standard that the other Avenger actors will expect in equality under the ridiculous standards of collective bargaining, and could wreck the magic of these films in the future. If Iron Man or an Iron Man type of character needs to appear in The Avengers 2 let it just be the suit with another actor doing the voice of Downey, or make it the Iron Patriot instead of Iron Man. Let Avengers 2 make a lot of money without Downey to take away the leverage and keep the budget under control—otherwise the Marvel films as a financial formula could be wrecked as the parasites of the entertainment industry will seek to concentrate on collective bargaining as a way to increase their own looting percentages. Downey’s performance as Tony Stark in the Iron Man films is brilliant, and I laughed out loud several times during Iron Man 3, but that performance is not worth $50 million dollars or more. I’d center the next Avenger film around another character and if the actors don’t come down in their prices, make it more about The Hulk as a CGI character to cut down the screen time of the other actors and call the bluff of the agents trying to increase payroll for the actors to over $200 million alone—as everyone now expects a Marvel Comics movie to pull in at least $1 billion at the box office. With that said I don’t think any other actor could have played Tony Stark as brilliantly as Downey did. The range of emotions Robert Downey Jr., performed in Iron Man 3 ranged from dealing with genius scientists, mechanical robots, romantic interactions, maniacal terrorists, to the innocence of young children—all done with comedic overtones. It was unique, and fun to watch. In spite of the money demands Iron Man 3 will place as a danger to contract negotiations between Downey and future films, I think all the parties will work out the situation in time and snap back into reality allowing Iron Man to return to the big screen played by Robert Downey Jr. I think Downey understands the situation and will do the right thing in the end giving kids more of his Iron Man.
What set this Iron Man 3 film apart from other movies of the same basic design was the way they portrayed the villain, The Mandarin, played by Ben Kingsley. As I read the reviews of Iron Man 3 and saw that so many young people were having a hard time accepting who and what the Mandarin was as a bad guy, I had to laugh a bit. Many people seeing Iron Man 3 had hoped that The Mandarin would be a villain of epic James Bond capacity, a treacherous villain worthy of being far superior to Tony Stark in order to drive tension into the film’s narrative. Instead The Mandarin was simply an actor hired to play a terrorist by the real terrorists who were working behind the scenes of a well-intended campaign to end human misery by re-growing lost limbs from victims of unfortunate tragedies. The real villains in Iron Man 3 were brilliant wide-eyed scientists and politicians who wanted to help the world, not destroy it. They simply desired to “nudge” society into compliance with their vision. This conspiracy went all the way into the President of the United States own administration and was handled very well by the writing and direction of Shane Black. Considering that Iron Man 3 was being filmed and finished in post-production after the events of the real life Aurora shooting, Sandy Hook, and Benghazi, the plot of Iron Man 3 was incredibly insightful. The difficulty with the various conspiracy theories involved in all those real life tragedies is to assemble them logically with the information that can be known. Figuring out what happened is not easy as it’s like trying to assemble a puzzle where someone has stolen most of the pieces and then tried to figure out what the picture on the puzzle was without most of it being put together.
Most people know or feel that the government as a self-preserving entity will knowingly derail information from the public which leads to all the wild speculations generated about the real intentions of a terrorist act. Even to this very day, conspiracy theorists are ridiculed by the government and their public relations machines for even asking good questions about what really happened in the 9/11 tragedy calling them “truthers.” This leaves people afraid to openly state their opinions, which is the design of the derogatory designation forcing society to relegate their opinions to themselves. Yet fantasy films like Iron Man tackle those conspiracies head on with creativity and attempt to assemble the missing puzzle pieces with some form of logic, and this is why films like Iron Man, and the Batman films are doing such ROBUST box office business. There is a truth in Iron Man that has more meaning for society than 24 hours of watching Fox News.
I watched an interesting interview from Bill O’Reilly a few days ago where he was confused by the enormous business that Iron Man was producing in sheer box office dollars. O’Reilly like all the other news makers of the day wants to believe that Iron Man 3 is good just because of the great performance of Robert Downey Jr. But it’s not. Iron Man 3 is about terrorism and radical extremists, something we all deal with everywhere in the world. Yet the way the terrorism angle was dealt with in Iron Man 3 was likely much more truthful than the typical plotline of any other blockbuster film. We all expected The Mandarin in Iron Man 3 to be a ruthless terrorist like Osama bin Laden, or Saddam Hussein—a mastermind, and ruthless despot. But when Tony Stark discovered who the real Mandarin truly was, he found that he was just an actor who has been playing the part of a terrorist in exchange for drugs—as he’s a recovering addict. That is the reason behind the success of Iron Man 3 and films like it.
Even in the wild over-the-top plot lines of The Avengers, the idea of aliens attacking earth through a wormhole has more plausibility than many of the plot lines that our society is fed by statist oriented governments who seek to placate the public with disinformation and manipulation in order to advance their version of solutions against the will of the people they represent. There is more truth in simple comic book stories than in any other plausible explanation, and this is not just a diabolical tragedy, but a stunning revelation. The magic of a story like Iron Man 3 is that it puts the plausible concept in the mind of the viewer so that rational emphasis can be added to actual reality. In the case of Iron Man 3, the storyline is unlikely, but the scenario of how the terrorists were able to get into the president’s own administration and manipulate vast sums of people with the fear “they” created with the fictional character in The Mandarin has roots in reality. The intention of the Mandarin was to get the eyes of the American public to look toward China or the Mideast for the source of the terrorist threat, not to Miami, Florida in a crack house filled with whores and a burnt out actor who had been hired by the terrorists to play a terrorist.
Iron Man 3 reminded me of a typical action film from the 80s in most other regards. I did not think the special effects where outrageously great. I thought the ending was telegraphed and was average. Coming out of the theater I asked Doc Thompson what he thought of the film from The Blaze and he said that he liked it, but that it was an average film—technically. He gave it 6 out of 10, which I tend to agree with. I would give it a bit higher score based on Downey’s performance alone. But the film is much better if the context is considered by the explanation of many conspiracies. It is in this explanation, or plausible one, that the Marvel movies thrive so boldly. There is truth in these fictions that is more relevant than the truth offered in real life that often turns out to be fiction. This is why Iron Man 3 has made nearly $1 billion dollars in just two weeks at theaters. As wonderful as Downey’s performance was, it is the plots that drive the heroics, and that rests in the hands of Stan Lee from Marvel Comics.
I read a lot of heavy material, and I often balance out all that weighty stuff with comic books to ease my mind and relax. In fact, for my 25th wedding anniversary my wife bought me a comic book. I like to read them, which only takes about 10 minutes, but I often enjoy just looking at the pictures which contain the visions of the authors and effort of their imaginations. They are often simplified outlooks at reality but occasionally, there are very sophisticated concepts that are approached in comics which can’t be explored in the deepest work of Carl Jung. I read recently a very good editorial from Dave Marshall at Dark Horse Comics in January of 2013 titled “Everyone Needs Stories.” Below are the first couple of paragraphs that remind me of why Iron Man 3 is so successful.
Too often stories can be taken for granted, bundled away as frivolous entertainment, but it only takes glancing at a newspaper, opening a book (nonfiction included), or having a conversation to see that storytelling is an inexorable part of communication, which in turn is an inexorable part of the human experience.
Stories are everywhere, yet our thirst for them remains unquenchable. We even consume products masquerading as stories in nearly immeasurable quantities if they are convenient, as our need is so present and demanding. This fact informs my work every day. I strive to contribute to books that give people the stories they need, with truthful characters who navigate authentic emotional experience in an intricately realized world, as opposed to merely growing the heaps of false stories, with motorized characters clicking through their roles in a mechanical plot, designed to lure people in and produce a predictable result (usually additional purchases).
When a story gives people what they need it becomes a part of them, integrating into their attitudes and ideas, and expressing itself in infinite ways, some of which the comics community knows well.
Dave Marshall, editor of Dark Horse Comics
Marshall is right, everyone does need stories, but not the kind that are produced in public relation firms and pumped out to keep the society at large in the dark as to the real truth of a matter. They need stories that can take the motivations of well-intended individuals and make them into treacherous monsters which is what Iron Man 3 is all about. It’s a fantastic story that has more relevance than the nightly news, and more truth than a White House press conference. As whimsical as Iron Man 3 is, it is more honest than the speech of a typical politician or government spokesperson, and that is why business is so good with comic book movies. They are not successful because kids and adults alike are escaping reality and reliving their childhoods through the characters actors like Robert Downey Jr., create, but because the stories are truthful, and honest about the human condition in a way that no other endeavor attempts to tackle. In that regard, Iron Man 3 is a 10 out of 10 and a movie that should be seen by everyone in every corner of the globe. And yet again, Stan Lee deserves a tip of the hat to his tenacious creations and ruthless honesty.
I am starting my own political party in America. So far I am it’s only member and I really don’t care if one year from now, or 30 years from now, that the number remains at one, because if history has taught us anything, it’s that the masses are fools and it is individuals who always prevail, and there isn’t a greater signifier of individuality than the number “1.” I have traditionally been a Republican most of my life, yet as a party they are not freedom oriented enough for me. I sure as hell am not a Democrat as there isn’t one cell in my body that understands their socialist diatribes of collectivism. And I enjoy freedom too much to be cast into an oven with Libertarians, Objectivists, or any other political philosophy associated with “group” behavior. Yet America needs a political philosophy that is uniquely an invention of The United States Constitution, and it needs people who will not cower in fear to defend it. All of the above have to some extent, with the exception of the Libertarians, and Objectivists who currently find their social identification cast into the quick sand of marijuana legalization by the other two established parties, are on the wrong path–completely. My new party of which I am so far the only member is The Capitalism Party. And when I speak of capitalism I’m talking specifically about laissez-nous faire capitalism. The reason is that such a brand of capitalism is the only moral choice for the modern age, and is the absolute best way to defeat all pretenses of statism in all political parties across the world. Tactically, since it is well-known at this present date that ideologically the world is well involved in World War III I see capitalism as the most effective component to winning that war not against other nationalities, but dangerous collective ideologies. Capitalism disarms the enemies of freedom in a way nothing else can, so it is my determination that capitalism gets a political party dedicated to fighting not against any machine political rule, any lobby force in state and federal capitals, or the type of tribal chieftains who have destroyed every culture on the face of the Earth with their infantile notions of collective sacrifice—capitalism trumps them all in logic, moral value, and effectiveness and it is time to use it as a means to bring the human race true freedom once and for all.
Very few people know what is meant by laissez-faire capitalism. The way political parties have established the meaning is in a connotation of greed, wealth, and distorted excess. It has been ostracized not because it’s bad, but because capitalism is good. The worst elements of human society have recognized that capitalism favors those with value and makes those without it easily recognized so their objections to capitalism are to prevent those revelations from being seen by the world at large. Enemies of capitalism have sought to knock out the lights of capitalism just as they were turned on following the American Revolution. The small period of near laissez fair capitalism emerging from 1780 to 1850 in America brought The United States most of the wealth it currently enjoys. But it could do more, and many more people could have benefited if capitalism had not been abandoned in favor of socialism and big government fascism. Laissez faire capitalism get’s its name from the French period of Louis XIV who was the archetypical despot of Europe. He is certainly not alone in history as there are many Louis the XIV types currently in The United Nations, and current American White House. There are wheel barrel loads of them on the current Capital Hill in the House and Senate. There are even more in the court rooms of our free country who seek elected office at some point in their careers to assist in their legal business and establish themselves as advocates of statism by advancing “political pull” as their path to success. Anyway, under Louis XIV there was the chief advisor by the name of Colbert who believed that government regulations created national prosperity, and that higher tax revenues created economic growth. It is easy to see where Karl Marx and the theory of Keynesian economics derived their elementary ideas—from the rulers of Europe and early advocates of world statism. Colbert was not stupid however; he understood that business was important to the country’s prosperity. Often he would attempt to wine and dine fattening them on the opulence he had access to under Louis the XIV in hopes that they would become willing facilitators of collective success. This reflects the type of behavior currently seen in American politics and then as in now, businessmen through tokens of appeasement in the direction of Colbert by way of bribes to keep the government off their backs as much as possible, sought to protect themselves from government interference. Yet one businessman, a manufacturer named Legendre told Colbert that if he really wanted to help industry in France that the government would: “Laissez-nous fair!” meaning (let us alone!)
Those who advocate statism of any kind tend to be mentally lazy, and short on original ideas. Their desire for statism is to leech off the efforts of the very few who do have original ideas so that they may show the world that they also have value. However their only means of achieving that value is through collectivism, as they are not able to generate such value on their own. This is why large masses of people find themselves seduced by socialism, fascism, and hard communism because it takes courage to stand at the front of an idea and to be successful. Most people do not have that courage. So like Colbert, they understand that they need the big ideas of those who start corporations so that jobs are provided, but like abusive husbands who fear a cheating wife, they prevent them from having unlimited freedom to disguise their own insecurities, thinking that the they will run away if they are given free choice. Colbert sought partnership with business in much the same way, and the same holds true to this very day in America. Government seeks a partnership with business to elevate their moral authority—to fill the empty vessels of their souls with value—not because they want to help advance liberty, or even make people safe.
I have studied history and political philosophy for many years, and all the systems are lacking the type of value I personally have, so I must reject them. All current political parties can fall under one of the three primary influences known to the world today, socialism, fascism, and statism. The definitions of these three forces need to be understood adequately. First, socialism is a theory or system of social organization which advocates the vesting of ownership and control of the means of production, capital, land, etc, for the community as a whole. When a school levy in America is attempting to appeal to the moral authority of their right to take tax money off private property they are functioning as socialists. The value of the property is for the good of the “community”–the collective whole. Their premise is that by spending money on children they are investing in the future of the community, but in reality, what is really happening is that public schools are tactically attacking private property by penalizing those who have it, and benefiting those who don’t—such as renters of apartments who have an equal vote, but do not pay an equal share of the taxes. This is socialism.
Fascism is a governmental system with strong centralized power, permitting no opposition or criticism, controlling all affairs of the nation (industrial, commercial, etc). This is what the EPA is doing, the ATF, the FDA, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Education, the IRS—just name the federal agency, and you will see the definition of fascism clear as day. Then there is statism, which is the principle or policy of concentrating extensive economic, political, and related controls in the state at the cost of individual liberty. When a school says they must teach a certain thing to students because “The State” has mandated it, they are indicating that they are committed to teaching statism to students and they expect tax payers to supply the costs of that statism with tax increases.
Obviously our modern society is a mixture of all three of those definitions, and none of those political theories are dedicated to individual freedom, quite the opposite. Instead, they are 100% dedicated to the idea of “rule by consensus.” Rule by consensus is the surrendering of the good to the bad so that the murky middle can rule all by fairness. However, this is only fair to the bad that have little to contribute to society. The only entities that make a sacrifice under such compromises are the good. So the rule by consensus ideology that is so prevalent in our modern times is unfair to those who produce and have value, but is fair to those who are scandalous, tyrannical, and emotional despots. Ironically, in any democracy there will always be more of those types of people, so they will perpetually vote in favor of statism—as they only can gain from such an arrangement.
This brings us back around to capitalism and why I am committing my political philosophy to it for now on. The definition of capitalism as it needs to be rightly understood is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned. That sounds simple enough and it needs to be, but the idea of ownership permeates every level of society and virtually everything that is seen. When someone owns property even if it’s just an idea, they tend to take care of it. When they share the responsibility with others, they neglect the property—its human nature and is as old as time itself. So to encourage the most value in society that brings the most benefit to the most people, capitalism needs to be the political philosophy most strongly advocated—world wide.
I understand that it will take a long time to make my case. It may take several lifetimes to change the minds of mankind away from the idea of tribal sacrifice and embrace property ownership. The planet Earth in 2013 is being ruled by tribal consensus. Every continent except half the North American continent has a deep history of mystic faith and voodoo beliefs, and the political philosophies have forced their people to live in huts, cramped up housing, and sub par conditions because they have embraced either socialism, fascism, or statism in their tribal cultures from their inception. Only the United States took a step toward capitalism and the benefits were obvious. But under the rule of consensus, America has been made to feel guilty and has been expected to crawl on its knees begging for atonement—begging the lethargic buffoons of five continents to impose their beliefs on American success and that has to stop.
In our representative republic of America I do not have anyone who reflects my beliefs not because my beliefs are wrong, but because they lack the courage to defend them. I will not crawl on my knees for anybody, especially Europe. And if I’m the only one who thinks capitalism is the proper political philosophy for America, I am fine with that. But I will continue to make the case for capitalism going forward because only it represents my personal values and does the most good for Earth and everyone on it. For an example, see The Epcot Center in Disney World for proof and evidence.
There have been a few writers in history who have defended capitalism properly, but not nearly enough. So I will endeavor to contribute in that area. Already I have two books with separate characters in Rick Stevens from Tail of the Dragon and Fletcher Finnegan from The Symposium of Justice who can tell a story in mythic form why capitalism is the preferred political philosophy in America. This is the best way to understand a complex concept. It may take me the next 100 years to write more stories, and create more scenarios that articulate properly why capitalism is the proper political system that America should function under, but that task is one that’s appropriate to the type of odds I enjoy. There are nearly 7 billion people living on Earth presently, and I would guess that nearly 98% of those people currently believe that the world’s political philosophy should either be socialism, fascism, or statism. Yet they are all wrong—every one of them. Since I do not accept rule by consensus, I am happy to take on each and every one of them in tandem to defend capitalism as the most moral means of political philosophy ever invented and to expose the holes in their corrupted theories in a battle that even though the numbers are dramatically against me, are in my favor by virtue of honesty. So the time to make a commitment to capitalism is now.
In the April 21st edition of Today’s Pulse Butler County a cheerleading student from my home district of Lakota took issue with my dialogue of resistance against the lecherous tendency of the public school to raise taxes ahead of an upcoming teacher contract in 2014. The school district has attempted every progressive political trick known to mankind over the last two years and is hungry to pay for their lack of contractual management with further impositions on local property owners. Since I have been the most outspoken opponent to tax increases in my home district, I am of course the target of their strategies. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.
I have covered all the who, what, why, when, and where’s of education funding at this site in great detail, and it is now obvious that education is not about teaching children values, intelligence, critical thinking, and life skills centered on self-reliance, so I won’t continue to repeat the same material as the behavior has not changed in lieu of the presented facts. Rather, the commitment is deeper, darker, and much more sinister involving people who believe they are operating on high moral ground when in fact they are committing erroneous evils that are impacting lives across the entire world. Those evils many times begin with letters such as the presumed innocent plea from the below Lakota East cheerleader. Read her words for yourself as they were written:
Lakota Schools: Balancing from the top of the pyramid
After two strenuous, back-breaking years, the Lakota Local School District is slowly dwindling down to former Little Miami state-run status. The residual aftermath of three failed levies is hacking and slashing athletics, academics and employment. However, Lakota is working hard to keep the state’s “top ranking” label.
Yet with the costly sports and disappearing classes, Lakota schools are nothing to cheer about.
In response to Rich Hoffman’s letter to the editor, I find it curious how an adult can describe the school district’s budget issues in the same way he describes cheerleaders on the football sideline.
As a Lakota East cheerleader, I believe it’s not Lakota that is poorly budgeting its resources but rather the lack of support shown by those who fund the team.
Cheerleaders are there to boost the morale of the crowd and cheer our team to victory. Like the tax increase supporters of Lakota, we strive for an excellent victory and domination. Yet, with multiple failed levies it’s becoming harder to cheer on a team that is deteriorating to just a couple of expensive sports fees.
In regard to Mr. Hoffman, jumping on the bandwagon for lower taxes isn’t getting the township any closer to winning that football game. Rather, it’s fueling the blow for the team’s next defeat of 45-0.
What Lakota needs is a healthy dose of TLC in the form of a passed levy. The lingering effects of the rejected tax increases is leaving our students unattended and overspending.
As the state’s largest district rated “Excellent with Distinction” on the Ohio Local report Card, one would think Lakota had the fans willing to allow the team to succeed.
Mr. Hoffman, the levy addicted cheerleaders are cheering in order to pump up the hesitant crowd, not splatter their “mindless drivel” on the already losing football team called Lakota. Maybe it would be more obvious if Lakota didn’t have to balance its budget from atop a pyramid of vetoed levies and income shortfalls.
Ellen Kasik
Now, here is my response as it appeared in the same paper one week later on Sunday, April 28, 2013.
I would like to think Ellen Kasik, the Lakota East Cheerleader who wrote a letter specifically addressed to me in last week’s paper, was motivated to engage in a debate purely by her own regard. If that is the case, I think she makes my claim that kids are not learning anything about finance at Lakota, because she had some alarming opinions. However, if she were to be asked, it would not surprise me to learn that the motivation for putting a letter in this paper was not her own, but actually the work of either Lakota board members, principals, school employees, or “other” political activists seeking to avoid violation of Ohio Revised Code ORC 3315.07 (C) (1) and (C) (2). That particular ORC states that no board of education may permit any of its employees to attend a public meeting during regular working hours for the purpose of presenting information about school finances and activities and board actions, even if the purpose of the meeting is to discuss or debate the passage of a school levy or bond issue.
Cincinnati Public Schools was guilty of this very violation, three times! It would be naive to think that the same thing is not presently going on at Lakota. It has in the past, and the issue has been overlooked out of kindness. However a fourth attempt at levy passage will require updated analysis of which Ellen Kasik will be a starting point, since she’s offered up her name with a similar mode of operation currently performed in other school districts regarding levy strategies.
Now to answer the claims by Laura Sanders who also recently addressed me in a Letter to the Editor the previous week. I can recognize a student at Lakota not understanding that commercial properties pay the same rate of taxes per value as residential properties. But for Sanders to say such a thing against businesses indicates she is drinking from the union talking points and is short on fiscal knowledge. I’d like to thank her; she made my job so much easier.
Rich Hoffman
The probable reality behind Ellen’s letter is that someone either working directly for the school, or working as a favor to their befriended employees at the school as levy cheerleaders put the idea in Ellen’s head to submit the letter to the paper as part of a long taught levy strategy instructed to education professionals to impose tax increases on communities. It happens all the time, in fact CLICK HERE to read about the court cases attorney Chris Finney has successfully advanced against major area schools that provides explicit proof. I sincerely hope that Ellen wrote the Letter to the Editor on her own, but when truth is told under a similar situation as what Finney has revealed in emails, testimony, and other evidence, indicated at the above link we will discover most likely kids like Ellen are “lured” into such political activism by levy radicals for the purpose of concealing their thuggish tyranny with innocent children.
This is why the fight against public education has to be turned up and taken in a new direction. The intent of public schools and their levy addicts in using young people to advance their cause is to bend communities to their whim using emotional leverage and guilt to advance their tax increases. After all, who in their right mind would argue against a sweet little girl from Lakota East who is a cheerleader? Who could possibly rob such a child of their future by not throwing more money at the public schools? Well, I can because I know the real intention behind the tax increases, the labor unions who advocate them, and the intention of the government schools. The crux of the problem is in the reason the public schools have to use such extortive measures in the first place. After all, if one clicks on the hot links of this article, the story of extortion, anti-capitalist education, revisionist history, and deeply scandalous activity is common place in virtually every public school. They are not exactly safe-havens for children’s minds.
The advocates of public schools routinely boycott businesses who do not vote for school levies, they strike against the community with work stoppages, they indoctrinate children with liberal propaganda, and they do not hesitate to put children in harm’s way to extort money from the public with busing cuts, or using children like Ellen as scarecrows against the community. But why? Well, the reason is their product is bad. If Lakota were such a great product, would they have to twist so many arms, and attempt to ruin the personal reputation of people who stand in the way of the “institution?” If Lakota and every other public school were great community products, would they need to strong-arm business leaders, and make ploys at emotional whims through charity organizations? No, they would not. The reason that schools do such things is that they represent the worst of collective mentality. They are simply mobs of thugs who desire to crush individualism in favor of altruism. They ignore reality because they believe that the thoughts of the collective team can bend fate to the appeal of the masses.
They attack the moral base of reason so that thought is undercut in favor of emotional decision-making. It is for that reason that public schools cannot balance their own budgets, and are ruled by corrupt labor unions teaching generations of children to become servants of statism while pretending it’s for their own good. They seek to pass tax increases not on the superiority of their product, but on the guilt that successful people should feel toward a sense of collective unity. They seek to manipulate, cover-up, and lampoon their opposition since they cannot answer any honest inquiry because their product is bad. Their product is an emotional one, teaching children the same, which is why all government schools are failing so miserably. Yet they want more money for the same behavior, and they will do anything, and attempt to destroy any individual to meet the will of that collective desire.
Because of these trends, my focus on education will not be on the legitimate arguments of cost versus performance as they were during campaigns past. No, the times require new strategies, many of which the opposition has never seen before. I do not like to see young people used for institutional gain. I do not like to see individuals mashed into collective causes. And I don’t like to see institutions extremely willing to sacrifice individuals to the gods of altruism, and that is what is prevalent in public education not just at Lakota, but everywhere across America. Public education is built off the innocence of children and funded by the guilt of property owners, and that is a system that should be crushed in its present form. The transactions shown here are just the beginning………………………….
I would be happy to just let the community vote in favor or against a tax increase if the desire to manipulate and extort money through coercion was not the way public schools achieved their means. But as it stands, they cannot win elections based on the goodness of their product. Instead, they rely on emotional leverage and guilt. This makes them not just bad for the education of children, but a tremendous negative for our entire society, which is why they deserve to be exposed as parasites to the human mind and the appropriate title Looters of Lakota.
I love reviews of my recent novel Tail of the Dragon like the one below. It is for readers like that which prompted me to write the book in the first place. In the letter I see that the soul of a person was touched in the way I had hoped, and invoked the thoughts and beliefs of a time before people grew up and began to “compromise.” The letter writer tells a brief history of their life as the exploits of the novel’s fictional character Rick Stevens provoked memories long suppressed. It ended with nostalgia for just one more adventure in life before age robs the body and mind of such yearnings, and every time I hear a story like this, it breaks my heart. It is for those people who I wrote the story, to give people such an adventure without the risk of their own peril. By reading the book, they gain the ability to crawl into the lives of Rick and his daredevil wife from the comfort of their bedrooms and contemplate the possibilities written words can paint on their minds. The villain of many modern lives, especially those over the age of 30, is the long list of compromises that are usually made just to navigate through life. By the time many reach the age of 40 to 50 they are just fragments of their former selves, and this produces a level of sadness as such people look longingly toward their own past in a yearning to recapture it for just one more time. In the novel, Rick Stevens never compromised himself. He at times in his life delayed his efforts as there were obstacles in his way, but he tenaciously held on to his course until such a time that his number for a grand adventure was called, and when it did, he didn’t turn away from it. The Rick Stevens story is one of a man doing anything he can to hold on to his own authenticity, even if the result is death. This is a powerful motif, one that resonates with many people, and it touches me deeply when readers let me know that they found a part of themselves rekindled by the book. Here is the letter as it was written:
Thank you Rich Hoffman. I just finished reading Tail of the Dragon. What a great ride. It brought back some of the adventures of my youth. My first muscle car was a ’66 Ford Fairlane GT with a 390. It was red and fast. My friend and I would take either my car or her ’66 Chevel SS and cruise and street race and laugh. We were underage and cute so we would get guys to buy us beer then we’d go off to race. I sold the Fairlane when I enlisted in the Navy. My parents thought I’d spend my entire Naval career in the brig. I didn’t. Only 1 Captains Mast and a couple of close calls and 6 extra months for a Good Conduct Medal. After watching the original Vanishing Point I bought a Super Blue colored 1973 Challenger with a 383. The first car I ordered from the factory. I wasn’t able to get the Hemi I wanted. A pox on your house Ralph Nader.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_Chall…… had that car for a long time. While in the Navy I had airborne adventures too. As I trained pilots, on the weekends I’d go down to the flight line and see where a plane was going that I hadn’t been yet. During Nam there were lots of planes going lots of places. I got to steer a tactical jet. Eventually I bought a Firebird. It was orange with a white Landau top. It was a nice car but the color sucked and it wasn’t a Trans Am.
Those cars and I had some good times. We drove cross-country several times by our selves. The fastest trip was in my ’83 Challenger. D.C. to Yosemite in 2.5 days thru ice, snow and rain storms and stopping at hotels 2 nights. You only stop when the bladder is full and the tank is empty. We had adventures those cars and I. I received professional curtsey from Texas Ranges, RCMP, NHP& CHP or I’d have a lot of points.
My friends all wanted to get married and have 2.5 kids, a dog, a station wagon and I white picket fence. I always said I didn’t want to be put out to pasture as a brood mare before I had a chance to run some races. I ran several and set some records. Young ladies, there is no need to thank me for opportunities you have now. I didn’t do it for you.
I don’t want my adventures to be over yet but it’s hard to find somebody that will come out and play anymore.
I want to thank you Rich for another adventure.
See a shorter version of this letter at the end of this article and at the Amazon review site:
To that letter writer, you are sincerely welcome. It is hard to find people who are willing to come out and “play” in these ultra safe times of apathy, political correctness, and attorney driven schematics, so I sympathize. I understand. That is why I wanted to give readers Rick Stevens. Rick is willing to come out and play…………………in a BIG WAY.
There are thousands of reasons that people live their lives like a slow death losing pieces of themselves a little bit every day until their days run out. I deal with those reasons at this site extensively. But more than what is ever offered at this site; there is nothing contextually more powerful than when difficult philosophical concepts can be placed within the plot of a story like I was able to do in Tail of the Dragon. In human societies, we have always done such things, which is how mythology is created. It is our myths which form up the values of our social behavior. So to bring to light a problem, the best way I know to tackle that problem is with mythology.
The journey of Rick Stevens in Tail of the Dragon is on the surface a good ol’ car chase. But mythologically speaking the story is much deeper than that, at least the way I intended it—which is most notable in during the “shopping mall” scene. For me, this scene for Rick Stevens is his Jonah in the belly of the whale, or Pinocchio trying to rescue Gappetto from the same type of beast. Rick in the shopping mall is on a psychological level the same type of mythological story telling, the hero going into the belly of the beast to find what society is lacking, which has been consumed by the beast. For the readers, who have been placed into their own bellies of the beast as they have unintentionally found themselves consumed by the monsters of existence, they must escape, which is the point of the novel.
As a writer I loaded Tail of the Dragon with such metaphors, some spelled out literally, and some quite discrete. The purpose was to take readers on a journey of their own “escaping their own personal beasts,” so it gives me great joy to learn of such successes. It is in such journeys that people find redemption even if many years have passed them by and threatened to deliver them to their graves in a suppressed state. People speak about freedom all the time, yet they seldom realize that before they can have freedom in their lives, they must have it right in their mind. It has always been my hope that readers of Tail of the Dragon can re-learn what freedom is and experience it for themselves in Rick Stevens struggle. For the letter writer above, this was the case. So for that person, the thanks go both ways. Yet the adventure doesn’t end there. Hopefully for that person there will be many more times that “someone” will ask them to “come out and play.” It may not be Rick Stevens, but there will be others………………….
Tail of the Dragon is a great ride. It brought back some of the adventures of my youth. My first muscle car was a ’66 Ford Fairlane GT with a 390. It was red and fast. My friend and I would take either my car or her ’66 Chevel and cruise and street race and laugh. After watching the original Vanishing Point I bought a Super Blue colored ’73 Challeger with a 383. I couldn’t get the Hemi I wanted because of a Birkenstock wearing crusader. A few years later I got a Firebird. All these cars represented freedom to me. The freedom to live, to breath, to think.
That’s what Tail of the Dragon is; a tale of freedom. The freedom to live. The unbridled political ambitions of a Governor backed by the police union set Rick up. He is thrown in jail and abused ending his romantic weekend of motorcycle riding with his wife. Rick is given the opportunity to fight back against the abuse. With his friend Charlie’s help, great craftsmanship, creativity and inventiveness they turn his old Firebird into a bird of prey. Rick and Renee declare war on the vampires sucking the life, soul and freedom from the citizens of Tennessee in the name of public welfare, public safety and the public good. What follows is a tale of the fight for freedom and liberty against all the odds.
Ride with Rick and Renee in that red Firebird as it flies through the Smokey Mountains screaming carpe libertas!
Matt Clark from WAAM had me on his Sunday afternoon radio show to discuss the Cincinnati Freedom Expo at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center on April 19th 2013. Matt had come down from Ann Arbor, Michigan to attend the event and meet with me personally. As a bonus, he had the opportunity to also meet Doc Thompson from The Blaze radio network also in attendance. The three of us have been on a kind of collision course for a long time as we have each fought our own portion of the battle for modern-day freedom independently. The Freedom Expo was a chance for us all to meet on the same evening at the same place, as most of the time we have spoken primarily over radio airwaves. So Matt took advantage of my invite to come to Northern Kentucky and be a part of the freedom festivities. After a fabulous evening with a lot of color in dialogue spewing forth from multiple sources, Matt invited me to come on his Sunday show immediately following the event as Doc Thompson drove him back to his hotel at 2 AM.
One of the topics we discussed was the speech by Congressman Massie where he described how poorly congress prepares for their votes, and how arm twisting was common place in order to force consensus. On many levels, we all know this goes on, but it was surreal to hear a sitting congressman speak about it so openly, and matter-of-fact. That type of behavior has contributed to most of the evils young people fresh from their educations have to contend with as they graduate college to find a world that has hung perilous debt at their feet. Those educations have instructed them to “feel,” first and embrace their compassion for all life, leaving them totally unprepared to deal with the problems of our modern age which require logic to solve. The education institutions have completely failed young people teaching them all the wrong skills for not only running government, but their own lives. This has given inquiring minds no place to turn but to the Tea Party, which was born out of the kind of apathy Matt played in the Massie clips during our interview.
For those who have destroyed the world with misguided strategies of collectivism the pieces are laying about everywhere, and the minds of mankind is struggling to find out why it’s happening. Bright minds with eyes willing to see notice the warning signs in the movies of our age, songs, literature, video games, and virtually anyone who still prides themselves of thinking. But everyone gets the summary of the problem just a little wrong, because the true evil consuming America, and the world at large is the misguided premise of compromise being the guiding light of the current civilizations of planet Earth. Compromise has ruined America and given young people no place to go or hope to cling to. In virtually every business, every political endeavor, every relationship the word “compromise” is thrown about as if it were a gospel of almighty thought, yet it is the destroyer that has robbed young people of their future potential.
This realization hit me during Matt’s broadcast when he played the Massie clips. Audio over a radio is more potent because like a book, it forces the mind to paint the picture of what is being said, as opposed to the visual senses providing the information like a baby eating from a jar a of baby food. The evil that Massie was speaking about in congress is the same evil that is ruining schools, businesses, and all government activity–the evil of compromise.
Compromise is sold as an altruistic form of goodness, so the idea that compromise is the root of all evil is certainly an alien one to most people. When Massie told the story of the GOP leader who instructed him he could vote the way he wanted “this time,” that was an attempt to “compromise” with Massie so that it would be realized that there would come a time when the vote was more important to vote the way leadership instructed—as a collective unit. This astonished Massie, because as a congressman, he was willing to do the work of reading the bills he’s responsible for. It was an insult to him that the GOP would expect him to vote any other way but the results of his thinking mind. This is because the machine politics of the GOP desired “non-thinking” compliance to the collective order of the right leaning political party. They expected Massie to collect his tax payer funded check and to vote the way he was told, and this has been going on for decades. It’s certainly not a new phenomenon.
Compromise is evil because there is only one right answer in any given argument. A thief cannot be a thief by themselves. First someone must produce something of value before the thief can steal it. In such a relationship only the person who has something of value losses anything. When the thief attempts to take all or a part of the valuable something, they call it compromise. The producer calls it theft. Barack Obama and other socialists call such an act “wealth redistribution.” But the intention is the same in all cases. When a drunken uncle asks his straight as an arrow brother to go into business with him as a partner, the brother says yes out of obligation to his sibling, because he may feel sorry for the drunk. But once the two brothers are in business together, the drunk has little to offer leaving the straight business partner to do all the work. The success of the business rests completely on the straight business partner while the drunken uncle can only gain from the relationship. If the business fails, the drunken uncle returns to his bottle, but his brother’s reputation may be ruined forever from the failure. This is why Matt and I began our broadcast with the 53% comparison that was made so famous during the Mitt Romney campaign. It is well-known that roughly 47% of the country does not pay federal taxes. But 53% pay for 100% of the country’s needs, and I am proudly one of those 53%. Yet I find myself in an unwilling partnership with those leeching 47% who refuse to manage their lives, or conduct themselves with productivity, because it is easier to “compromise” with me through votes in the government to steal my wealth for their gain. These arrangements are made possible because of scenarios like the one outlined by Congressman Massie at The Cincinnati Freedom Expo.
Compromise is not good, because always the value of one thing is reduced when portions of it are divided up and consumed out of a dedication to fairness rather than the truth. Those who fear the truth are always those who reserve the right to compromise with someone else so that they earn value in their life by the act of compromise. But the compromise of right to wrong comes from a value somewhere, and it is always from that value that something is stolen. This is why the political landscape of modern America is considered so immoral, and ruthlessly decadent. People like Congressman Massie are expected to compromise their beliefs for the benefit of the collective GOP. Such a compromise makes the collective sum of congress better off the efforts of Massie, while Massie comes away from such events less than what he was in the beginning. In the compromise, Massie had something to give while those representing all the incorrect answers had only to gain from the Congressman.
This is the reason for the increases in young people who wish to join the Tea Party with greater numbers. Young people have been lied to, manipulated, and tricked into compromises from before they were even born by the kind of leeches who whisper in Congressman Massie’s ear on how he is expected to vote. Young people are learning that there are no answers in either political party for them. They are looking for something else. They are looking for a chance, and they won’t find it in the present system of statism that is built around the premise of compromise. So they are coming to events like The Cincinnati Freedom Expo in greater numbers, because they are tired of it.
When Matt Clark says on his radio show that he is intending to “Save the Republic” one show at a time, he means it. As one of those young people, he has no illusions that anything current politicians utter are any greater than a terrible lie. When that realization hits, a person has only a few choices, they can dig a hole and hide their heads, or they can start to fight back to take what is rightfully theirs. In the case of the second option it is “compromise” that starts the corrosive process that delivers human beings into slavery, the kind of slavery young people all across America are currently chained to. What makes people free is their ability to think, and when the mind is robbed from a person through compromise, or dedication to collective causes they have lost their freedoms in the worst way. Matt understands this, and it is through his program on WAAM in Ann Arbor, Michigan that he is dedicated to stopping such intrusions, one broadcast at a time no matter how wonderful the weather is outside. Because the fight is worth it, and fortunately Matt is no longer alone in a wasteland of compromise built by generations of fools who placed their values in the wrong strategy of saving the world by destroying all the good in it so there wouldn’t be any opposition to evil ending conflict for all time. It is now time to stop compromising with evil, and to stare it straight in the eye and dig our fingers into its sockets with a ferocity that it has never seen popping out their ability to have vision, and fill that empty socket with spittle, and declare, “That is the new way that the good ‘compromises’ with evil!”
“It’s ungodly, it’s un-American and it’s just plain wrong to target Americans because of what they say about the government,” said Paul Johnson of the Grassroots tea party of Boone County.
“If they attack first………..blast em’!”
