Kevin Bright Leaves Mason Schools as LT. Gov. Mary Taylor Speaks to Thousands About School Choice

Mason’s superintendent Kevin Bright made the announcement this morning that he was resigning from the Mason School System to take a lesser job in another district. For those of you who don’t know, Kevin is one of the highest paid superintendents in Ohio and is an instructor at the OSBA conference in Columbus at Levy University which teaches school systems how to pass levies. This ironically occurred at the same time that Sharon Poe, who ran the anti-Mason Levy campaign was on 700 WLW talking about all the good reasons for School Choice with Doc Thompson.

It reminded me of when I was on WLW with Scott Sloan many months ago talking about teacher wages on the air which many people weren’t aware of how much teachers were making. In fact Kevin’s name came up as one of the examples of extremely high paid administrators and that the levies were a giant scam only used to increase wage rates for school system officials. That interview caused so much trouble in the Lakota School System that the radio station was threatened by pro levy forces and they flooded everyone involved with nasty emails. One week later Mike Taylor resigned effective in January 2011.

Does this make WLW bad or evil, or me, or Sharon bad or evil? Well, it does if you’re one of the people who openly lie and manipulate the public in order to secure tax dollars. Superintendents are breed and bought to get school levies passed. That is their soul purpose, which is wrong. They are supposed to run the district like a business. Not just continue to lobby for more money. I know that a trustee for West Chester gave the employee search firm looking for a new superintendent for Lakota my number. This search firm was asking the trustee what they were looking for in a superintendent, and the reply was someone that can run the district like a business. The next question was, well what sort of person is that? And the trustee gave the firm my phone number.

“Call Hoffman, he’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

Of course the call to my phone was never made. Because they weren’t interested in the kind of person I’d hire. They are looking for another suck-ass manipulator that will get a levy passed in a very reform minded Southern Ohio market. Notice they still haven’t found one. Because those people aren’t out there, and nobody like Kevin Bright, which is what the firm is looking for, wants to come here. Those types of people are leaving, not coming.

One of the problems here is that we’ve all allowed education to be tied to our property values. Real estate agents spend a lot of their time accommodating families looking for a good school district for their children, so home sales have been connected to school districts. And then school districts complain about the growth of the district in order to ask for more money. At Lakota during the last levy, it was reported that the growth of thousands of students had been placed into the system which was beyond their control, and their financial forecasts had to account for that type of continued growth. The reality however is that Lakota did post numbers of 400 to 600 new students a year until the housing bubble burst. The reality is that only 98 new students enrolled after 2009. It was the sharpest drop in the 18,500 student district since 1991, and this all occurred before a school levy ever failed in 2010. The numbers were deliberately inflated to manipulate the poor tax payer into voting for a tax increase that would even further hurt the housing market with unattractive tax rates.

See, these superintendents know they are scamming us. They’re not bad people, as I’ve pointed out in my article, The Old Hollow Tree. They are just doing what they are told to do, what they were trained to do in compliance with the OSBA.

And today at Columbus there is a large rally supporting School Choice, which is the most innovative program to hit education in this century. But the threat is that it creates competition and no longer will real estate values be able to be associated with the kind of manipulation that school districts attempt to hide behind.

By the way, look at all the people at this rally.


The superintendents are leaving the sinking ships because their true motives are revealed. They’ve always been about the money. They say it’s about the kids, but their actions speak otherwise. In Kevin Bright’s situation he still has the Stacy Schuler case that is coming his way and will be extremely embarrassing and he knows that once S.B.5 passes, the school board will be forced to make real cuts to the district, not cosmetic ones. There won’t be anymore levy increases, so he’s leaving to friendlier districts. What he doesn’t understand is that this movement that is occurring in Southern Ohio is growing north. He can hide from it, but he won’t escape.

In Lebanon they are doing some great work. I am very happy with the tenacity of my buddy Cyd, and Rich McPherson. They are calling it the way it is and going after the superintended of Lebanon, Mark North who went into executive session last week in a deal made with the unions to get their contracts passed before S.B.5 became law. And the Lebanon people were there to call him out on it. Check out their fantastic website here.

http://lebanonschoolfacts.com/

It would be wise for these school officials to come clean now, and stop hiding behind children, and real estate values and reveal their true intentions before things become even more embarrassing. And for those teachers and administrators that are gaming the system thinking of leaving these districts for some friendly place like Kevin Bright is doing, good luck, because soon we’ll be there too. Enjoy it while you can.

If you doubt for a second that there are people, like these superintendents that aren’t aware what they are doing to communities or don’t have a social agenda listen to this tape of a former SEIU official discuss how they think. These union trained officials apply these tactics on everything from education to finance and combine their thinking wherever they can. That’s why Mark North made a deal with the unions to pass their contract before S.B.5 was passed.

This behavior is not something the tax payer should be paying for. And when they get caught, they resign and move someplace else hoping people forget. The sad thing is some people do forget, or at least they used to. Listen to the Bull Dog blow his top over the amount of apathy citizens have toward their government.

Can you argue with him?

Rich Hoffman

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

The Old Hollow Tree: All you need to know about School Choice

It is time to have a real conversation about what being an American is. Once it came to my knowledge late in the night of Sunday, March 20, 2011 that the Department of Justice had changed the colors of its website to black, gray and white colors, something eerily similar to the marketing of the European Union, added with the strange sort of collectivism being preached by public workers and the unions that represent them, that American’s must decide what it is they are.

Here Doc Thompson talks about Governor Kasich’s Ohio Budget and the further application of School Choice, which I support tremendously, because it creates competition in the education system. I am more convinced now than ever that the collectivism taught in schools by default has been devastating to our national economy, our political structure, and our personal identities and can be declared an epic failure. I have been open-minded about public education for the benefit of society. But now that I’ve seen the protests at the state level, and the way students have been conjured up to serve the needs of teachers unions in spite of whatever their parents might think, I am now prepared to openly speak against all the devices that are failing in American society so they can be identified and changed.

I came to similar points of view as Ayn Rand not by reading her. I came to her work late in life. But I traveled a path similar to her and arrived at similar conclusions. She, as I do, likes Nietzsche and understands without corruption what that philosopher was trying to say. She was an atheist where I’m not, but I understand her reluctance. I see spirituality in higher dimensional planes where she looked for reason in the observable world. But on matters of collectivism versus individualism I am with Ayn completely without pause.

She is on my mind because the film Atlas Shrugged is coming out soon and I have been waiting for that film for a long time. In that great book of the same name Ayn describes a tree that one of the characters enjoyed as a boy, that made him feel safe. The tree seemed unmovable in the world, a symbol of stability in a changing world. Until one night lightning struck the tree and it split in two. The boy sad, was able to look down inside the massive trunk now that the tree had split. What he found was that the tree had been rotten on the inside, eaten away by millions of parasites over a long period of time till all that was left was a hollow shell that showed its former strength, but was in fact barely able to hold itself up, and was easily destroyed in a big storm.

America is that tree. It has been eaten and parts of it killed from the inside by these insect-like collectivist. They in themselves are not bad or evil. But if you ever study a termite colony you see that their societies are very destructive to wherever they establish their residence. They are just doing what they do, but their life style is destructive to where they build their nests. Any group or organization in America that preaches collectivism, that’s labor unions, education establishments, clubs, country clubs, political organizations, Freemasons, fraternities, I’d even say the Boy Scouts of America is a form of collectivism.

Now that may seem extreme by let me tell you a brief story illuminating this fact. I have joined my share of groups, but I usually end up leaving them because of this whole collectivism issue. I hate it. Years ago I was a member, which I still distinctly support, but I was much more heavily active back then, called the Joseph Campbell Foundation. I spent my 20’s reading Campbell’s vast work and through him and his lectures, which I think I heard them all, I explored James Joyce’s work through the Skeleton Key and Ulysses, and much of Nietzsche’s work. But Campbell’s work put me on the path. Now Campbell was an intellectual individualist, much different from other intellectuals, so this is the reason he’s been successful on a level most only dream of regarding the field of comparative mythology and religion with sub categories in psychology, philosophy and art. Campbell was a maverick in many ways which is another way of saying he was an individualist. But, many of the people attracted to literature, and I run into this all the time, are liberal. So many of his fans were left-winged, so the moment he died, even to his warnings, they tried to turn Joseph Campbell into some collective savior, almost a religion.

I learned this on a literary meeting sponsored by the foundation. I figured it was a safe, and authentic event because at the time George Lucas of Star Wars was one of the board members, so I figured that the people in the foundation would reflect Campbell’s views. What I found were a group of left-winged people who had lost the message of Campbell. They memorized his work and could quote it on demand, but they didn’t “understand” it. They were victims of “collectivism.” The point of the meeting was only to be around similar personality types for some sort of reassured conformation of their appreciation of Campbell’s work. Ayn Rand has a similar kind of following with her own Ayn Rand Institute. I don’t mind such groups, but I personally don’t enjoy them because they get in the way of my own individuality. I’m currently in the same dilemma with the Tea Party. I stay in the distance, I support them very much, but not at the expense of my ability to act on my own.

Now American’s understand the balance between “team work,” and “collectivism.” We know how it’s supposed to work. We invented a game that reflects it.

American Football, the game itself, not the cheerleaders, the politics around it, the fans, the schools, but the game of football in its raw form is just the right mix of individualism and team work. In football individual talent through competition emerges on the field of play with the focal point being the ball itself. It’s a game of individual assignments that must be executed with an overall battle plan’s overall goal of moving the ball down the field of play 10 yards at a time. Football is a brutal game where only the best find their way on the field. There isn’t much sympathy for those that are “benchwarmers.” They are actually looked down upon in our society. That is the true heart of the masses, otherwise, football wouldn’t be as popular as it is. The public has accepted those rules because on a subconscious level, they understand the implications of not allowing the best to play the game. The team that attempts collective diversity would find itself at a serious competitive disadvantage and the game itself would be boring. The winners on the football field are those that can run faster, hit harder, throw further, and adapt to changing circumstances most rapidly.
American’s understand football, because it is the game of capitalism.

But when the rules get blurred in all the associated groups that we naturally are inclined to join, because there is security in the group, we find that the world appears to be more complicated. But it’s not. We make it so.

It’s not that I dislike the insect like collective minded. When I swim in a pool and a poor little bug falls in and struggles to get out, I scoop it out and attempt to save it. I always do, even though the insect is part of a collective society. But, when a hive of worms builds a nest in a tree, or a wasp nest evolves in my garage, or termites, or ants make their presence known near my home I kill them without regret, because I’m protecting my home, my property. Collectivism does not understand this concept because personal property is seen as for the greater good of society, which is just how insects few the world.

So my words here, and the resistance to further taxes in schools, and reform such as what we are exploring in School Choice as heard by Doc’s interview are for the good of that great tree that is America. I see the insects that are eating the inside of our beloved tree need to be removed so the tree doesn’t die or split at the first big storm. And I have no emotion about the lives of those insects. They should not have attempted to set up a colony in our tree.

In a less harsh way, look at school reform. The interview above is absolutely correct. Education will change because it’s too expensive and ineffective. That’s a fact of life. It will evolve rapidly in the coming years to something more individually based, and it will happen because that’s the way it works in the world at large.

We’ve been compassionate and we let the insects live in our tree, and they have maliciously attempted to hollow it out without regard for the strength of the tree. And that is the cause of their soon to be fate. It is not the heartlessness of me or others that seek continuation of the greater life form of our nation. It’s not about fairness, it’s about competition and getting the results of that competition that is an occurrence reflected in nature itself. It is in mankind’s arrogance that they attempt to alter nature into a collectivism that does not act as a parasite on the world around it, which is an impossible and naive dream by incompetent insect like minds only considering their small lives and hungers.

My advice, be an individual contributor to society, not an insect.

Rich Hoffman

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

Warrior of the Week: Rich Hoffman

Sometimes you get a nice note from the people who count, the ones that take a few steps to show the appreciation they feel by the work you do. I was contemplating which person this week would be the Warrior of the Week when Cyd and some others put together the article below and asked me to post it.

I thought about whether or not doing such a thing was proper, conceited, egotistical, maniacal, and even remotely proper. My decision is that it made me feel good so I placed it below in Cyd’s words as she wrote them, and decided to cast opinion to the wolves of discontent to chew on with all the envy that comes from inaction.

____________________________________________________________

Rich Hoffman is my selection for Warrior of the Week, even of the year. Rich has been influential in helping so many of us who have been on the front lines, fighting to expose the local and national threats to our “Representative Republic.” He understands that the union control in our area is just a sample of what is happening across our country. The riots in Columbus and Madison demonstrate just what kind of “public servant” lives in our own neighborhoods.

Saul Alinsky describes the fundamental difference between liberals and radicals. He says that, “it is to found in the issue of power. Liberals fear power or its application. They labor in confusion over the significance of power and fail to recognize that only through the achievement and constructive use of power can people better themselves.” Alinsky further states that, “Throughout Western civilization, radicals tied their destiny to the organized labor movement.” He is the person that is quoted as saying, “for every crisis there is an opportunity.”

We saw that “opportunity” in Madison and Columbus. We saw the influx of outside radicals that churned up the crowd to yell and scream and attack. Rich posted these “riots” so that we could see the hatred expressed by the “unions” with our own eyes.

Rich understands these concepts and has been slowly educating us with his essays. Each essay is based on statistics, facts and figures found in his research of public documents and his knowledge of history, I know of no one else that can put this information together and compose it in a very readable and entertaining manner.

Each essay addresses a current topic of discussion. He inserts many facts that most people did not know. Most people don’t have time to break down the budgets of their local school districts. Rich did it for Lakota and helped others research their districts. How many people knew the top salaries of their school districts? When Rich published those of the Lakota District, other people looked up their district‘s financial reports.

Rich knows that knowledge is the key to making people act. Even if their only “act” is to go out and vote. That is a major step for many people.

Rich has spent many hours “breaking the news” on WLW radio. He has the courage to take on some very hostile proponents of area levies. It is refreshing to hear his calm voice on the radio quoting facts and statistics with ease and confidence. Usually the person attacking him just gives up because they are not as well-informed.

Rich Hoffman, you are our Thomas Paine. You bring reason to our ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, and you hold up truth to our eyes. (a paraphrase of Thomas Paine)

Thank you Rich for all you do in the name of “freedom.”

It is often said that the measure of a man lies somewhere between his Love of family, commitment to God, and the principles for which he stands on. There are few people I trust to bring truth, hope and reason to so many of the issues that plague us today. For me, one of those people is Rich.

At a time, not so long ago, I needed all those things and was desperate to find the persons that would show me that there is a voice out there that feels like I do, is passionate about the path we’re on, and speaks and writes the thoughts I think. It’s much different from Glenn Beck, when you have the camaraderie within the surrounding communities and the issues at hand are shared by many.

Your tireless efforts to prepare your perspective on a daily basis do not go unnoticed or unappreciated. You are required reading every morning so that I can start my day perhaps not so bogged down with world affairs of the moment, but a lively article on what transpired the day before. The “in your face” news gets to be too much at times. What you bring to the readers is a need to inspire and the will to get folks motivated to be involved and perhaps present a whole other perspective than your own. That’s where you shine. You let people speak their mind and respond with decorum and dignity as if you know them beyond your pages.

It’s important that we let those people know, who are doing such diligent research, reading, and fighting hard for the common, everyday values we were taught to respect, be held up every now and then, and given a big THANK YOU!!! This IS our thanks to and for you.

Cyd, Sandy and the “others”

Rich Hoffman

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

We’re on an Island of Reason Surrounded by an Ocean of Corruption

30 billion dollars a week is spent on just interest toward the national debt and congress cannot make a decision to cut a fraction of that out of the Federal budget. Local school boards, county commissioners and city councils are making last-minute deals to get public worker increases in before S.B.5 becomes law. Darryl Parks of 700 WLW calls it correctly when he proclaims that those of us that find large government corruption wrong, are on an island surrounded by treacherous water we cannot drink, filled with creatures hidden from view that want to swallow us whole, and it is daunting that for as far as the eye can see, there is only an endless expanse of such peril.

Meanwhile, President Obama is going on vacation to Rio in South America while nothing less than the fate of the world hangs in balance.

• Japan is in need of United States help from its catastrophic devastation at the hands of a tsunami.
• Congress, the Senate and the White House cannot agree on the proposed budget cuts and are only buying small increments to keep the government operating.
• Socialist labor unions are threatening order all over the United States.
• States and cities are going bankrupt all over the nation.
• The NFL is even shutting down over “collective bargaining!”
• The Middle East is undergoing destabilization.
• Fuel prices are rapidly increasing.
• Food prices are rapidly increasing.
• And the immigration violence on the border is terrible while the pacifists feed the discontent with rhetoric like this:

Those are the people in the water that are making up the policies we are all facing. Pacifists for profit is what they are, because in their pacifism, there is much profit among the corrupt politicians that are squandering away American resources for their own gain with little regard for the moments past their last meal just as a shark shows to the fish it has just eaten. The mindless, bloodthirsty shark has not a thought for tomorrow. It only eats, and eats, and eats for today.
Here Anthony Weiner shows his vast ignorance by grandstanding on such small issues as the defunding of NPR, missing completely why the funding was cut.

Weiner and company forget that even John Boehner is standing behind the cutting of the Joint Strike Fighter which has the engine built-in Boehner’s district at the GE facility. Everyone is making sacrifices, but those stories aren’t being reported, only the emotional ones that are equivalent to pouring blood in the water to attract the mindless sharks. All that kind of discussion is lost to the foolish sharks like Weiner and his friends that only look at the meal in front of them and circle the island of logic, hungry for more food to feed their mindless lives of living just one more day on the spoils of others.

Meanwhile, small little school districts like Lebanon rush to take care of their union friends while turning with the other hand to ask for more blood from the taxpayers to appease the sharks by tossing more food into the water to keep the beasts at bay.

Darryl Parks is right. We are all on a lonely island, the last sane vestibules of continuation that must fight an ocean of predator’s intent on immediate, selfish destruction in order to restore our nation to a life of thriving unification that can only occur when the predators no longer threaten our existence. We are truly engaged in a battle of the mindless sharks and the beings of reason for the advancement of civilization.

And Barak Obama is in Rio looking at string bikinis. Hey, I was happy to elect Alan Keys as the first African-American president, but nobody wanted to listen to him.

Allan Keys wouldn’t be in Rio right now if he were president. That much I can promise. Why didn’t Jessie Jackson and the African-American community support my man, Allan?

Because the sharks want their food to swim right into their mouths, they don’t want us on an island planning our escape, or the taming of their wild, bloodthirsty ways.

With Obama, the socialist minded, tribal leaders of the African-American community got what they wanted, a man who would turn his back on his nation, play golf, and go on vacation to South America while the world burns, and the sharks are free to eat.

Rich Hoffman

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

Hurry! Get Your Contracts in Before S.B.5. Becomes Law!: The reason we can’t trust elected officials.

There is disturbing news coming out of Lebanon, Ohio that arrived to my ears late Thursday as I was trying to enjoy the first pleasant day of spring-like weather in 2011. The information isn’t surprising as I had been thinking along these lines all week. An aspect to that thinking is in leadership which Doc Thompson discusses in this broadcast.

I’ve mentioned in many words on these pages why some leaders are better than others, and exactly what makes a leader, “good.” For a clear definition of what makes something of quality, and why some people are “better” than others I refer your inquisitive mind to the great book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. That book is one of the best, most thorough works of philosophy on quality and leadership done since the pre-Greek age. The capacity to be, “the best” is within all of us. But certain traits certainly jump out as contributory factors.

What brings all this up is the need for leadership in school systems, and the apparent lack thereof. The current system seems to be a nightmare scenario from an Ayn Rand novel and I say that without exaggeration.

I wondered how school boards were going to react to S.B.5 once it’s signed into law. After all, they are now empowered to negotiate on behalf of the community. I thought of the Lakota Levy when I’d go to school board meetings and see our elected officials all wearing Yes Lakota pins and actively promoting the passage of a school levy. Taken at face value, this seemed acceptable to me. But now, on the eve of a real management measure like S.B.5 that will give these school boards real teeth, I wondered if it was appropriate for school board members, who are elected by the community, to openly promote school levies.

That’s when the information arrived to me from an employee within the Lebanon School System that Mark North had been meeting with the union at Lebanon and informed them to have their contracts turned in by the conclusion of business March 17, to  avoid S.B.5 ramifications. The reason is that S.B.5 will honor all existing contracts, so any deals made prior to law will be recognized. Lebanon is planning to make the announcement to the press that the union has agreed to a “pay freeze” but the step increases will be held in place and kept under the radar.

This is disturbing news to me, and it’s not unique to Mr. North from the Lebanon School Board. No school board member should ever be on such cozy terms with any member of a union. They are a member of management and that requires them to be distant and impartial. If school boards were truly management on behalf of the tax payers that elected them they would not pass along information to unions informing them to get their contracts turned in before the passage of a new law. The school board should be looking to avoid a tax levy by using S.B.5 to bring their costs down. Such revelations are an enormous contributor to the current funding problems that all these school districts have.

School board members attempt to start off representing the community, however immediately in November they are sent to the OSBA Conference in Columbus. They do this once a year and the goal is to bring school board members in cohesion with the aims of the education unions that are really in control within the state. At these conferences the new board members “bond” with other board members and learn the ropes. Immediately school board members are eating out of the hand of the union. School board members that question this process are labeled “radical” and pushed out of the “group” mentality.

Now, before anyone says that I don’t know what I’m talking I know quite a few school board members all over the state, and this is how I learned about this story. It’s not a secret. Such ceremonies are no different from the “hazing” rituals in college fraternities. The intent is to unify everyone into a “collective team.”

That whole process needs to stop. School boards are elected by the public and need to represent the public. S.B.5 puts school boards in management control, the way people always thought they were, but the reality is like what has been reported on the activity of Mark North of Lebanon. They will never publicly admit that they are more loyal to unions than the public that elected them, but their actions prove otherwise.

At a minimum, no school board member elected by the public should ever wear a pin or carry a sign lobbying the community for increases in taxes. Because in doing so they are publicly admitting that they do not have management control over the school system and are not able to do the job.

S.B.5 will change the rules and the weak managers in the system, (and there will be many) will have to be removed and strong managers put in their place that will not go to the OSBA Conference in Columbus every November, but will truly represent the people who elected them.

And a warning to Mr. North and all those like him. Be careful what you say to people. The difference now is that when a whistleblower says something to the paper, and it falls on deaf ears, there are now groups like this one and others that are emerging, that will carry the story. So hiding behavior under a rock or behind closed doors will no longer be a valid way to hide improprieties to the taxpayer. And there are plenty of leaks. Believe me.

Now, for further evidence that it’s not only schools that are in a rush to ratify their contracts before S.B.5 becomes law here is the news for the Butler County FOP contract that’s been bouncing around since February 2010 . And to get an idea how much these guys make see my article, Oh, What Big Teeth You Have. What this article means is that they knew just as Lebanon knew, to take what they could get before the governor signs the new bill. It’s not a coincidence that this contract mysteriously was agreed upon yesterday.

It’s always about money.

Butler County commission signs off on FOP contract
Butler County Sheriff’s Office deputies have new agreement.
By Michael D. Pitman, Staff Writer March 18, 2011

HAMILTON — Butler County Sheriff’s deputies and supervisors will get a raise, but they’ll have to wait until next year.
The Butler County Commission agreed Thursday to ratify the collective bargaining agreements for members of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 101.

The contract, which expires Feb. 9, 2013, had to go to a conciliator in November for the six items on which the union and administration could not come to terms.

“This is how the process is supposed to work,” said Sheriff Richard K. Jones, an opponent of Ohio Senate Bill 5 that passed the Senate and is in the House for debate. “We couldn’t agree, so we went to arbitration.”

Sgt. Jeff Gebhart, a spokesman for the FOP, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

According to the new contract, union members will get a 2 percent raise next year; $1,000 cash payment in lieu of a uniform allowance; and new top step effective in February 2012 to be set 2 percent higher than the current top step while deleting the lowest step.

The union also wanted similar pay scales for court services deputies and road deputies; the ability for supervisors to bid on positions; and a uniform allowance in 2010. The conciliator did not grant these requests.

“We want our people to have the best they can negotiate for; it’s not a battle,” Maj. Norman Lewis said. “But in these economic times, with the way the budget has been slashed, it’s a process that had to take place.”

Lewis said the collective bargaining process started in February 2010, but the six items of disagreement needed a conciliation hearing.

The contracts with corrections officers, corrections supervisors, clerical and dispatch unions are being finalized and likely will go before the county commissioners in ensuing weeks, he said.

Jones said the collective bargaining process works for the administration and the unions, and has worked well for the 34 years he’s been involved in the negotiations.

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So who is looking out for the taxpayer if all these elected officials are scrambling at the last-minute to get all the money they can before the gates to easy money close with the passage of S.B.5.?

This is proof that the money was flowing like water and nobody cared to turn it off at the facet, and access to that easy money is really what collective bargaining has always been about. It’s easy to spend other people’s money. It’s hard and takes real leadership to have discretion. And what we’re learning is that our political officials are greedy and lack leadership in every way we feared and suspected.

 

Rich Hoffman

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

These People Teach Our Kids: Protestors React to Kasich’s Budget

The protests on Fountain Square the day Governor Kasich released his budget were amazingly short-sighted considering many of the participants were educators. “We need to tax the rich, and save the middle-class,” were the chants. Really? I mean, really???????? These people really believe that there are other options that are less painful than the budget cuts Kasich placed on the table. They really believe that the wage levels are somehow separate from collapsing community budgets.

Much of the debate at the Lakota School Board meeting on Monday March 14th, 2011 centered on the loss of junior high sports. Many angry parents came out to protest the elimination of sports programs. I listen to the arguments and can only scratch my head why this is such a contentious issue. First, how did sports become so embedded in public education to begin with? Second, why would you eliminate programs that parents want when it is evident that the wage levels are directly contributing to the overhead cost  increases? A 30% reduction in the top wages would generate over $20 million and would solve a lot of problems that could be spent on “the kids.” But the teachers and administrators are the same type of people protesting on Fountain Square Monday. They aren’t about to make any sacrifices. They’ll let the kids suffer in a minute  because their priorities are all wrong. They’re not bad people, but their workplace culture is wrong. They only know to increase taxes to deal with the budget deficit caused by the very good compensation they receive from the taxpayer. When I hear these people complaining about concessions they’ve made up to this point, or sacrifices, it is quickly obvious that they don’t have a clue what’s going on in the private sector. And what goes on in the private sector is market driven. It’s not some rich conspiracy against the poor. The public sector is driven by a socialist utopia that is not possible. And that is not an inflammatory statement. It’s completely true!

Few of these public workers understand that Medicaid is almost a third of the state budget and only 4% of the people occupy 70% of the cost. That’s a major problem and one of the largest contributors of the budget deficit Ohio is experiencing. It’s certainly not that the rich aren’t paying enough taxes, or that industry is getting tax breaks. The people who say such things are incredibly selfish and not very wise on world affairs. They only look at their little piece of the world and could care less if everyone else suffer, which is what’s happening in Lakota and every other school district.

I’ve been very vocal about the whole wage issue because I don’t think many of those teachers are worth more than 70K a year. I would never think to pay any teacher that amount of money. The education they obtain for themselves is on their dime, not mine. If the state tells them they must have a Masters Degree to teach, they know that getting into the profession. But with that debate aside, they prove with these foolish protests and lack of understanding of statewide matters that they are not equipped to teach our children anything. I wouldn’t send my kid to a school that teaches such small-minded socialism, and that’s what taxing the rich and giving to the poor is.

The protestors were already prepared to protest Kasich no matter what he said in his budget. He could have said he was giving everyone a thousand dollars in the state of Ohio, and they would have still complained about what an evil guy he is.

I look at the things Kasich wants to do and it all sounds good to me. The protestors clearly just don’t want change because they benefit tremendously by keeping everything broken. They are ultimately a very selfish lot that lack the intellectual capacity to educate anyone in my opinion. To know that there were teachers from Lakota at this rally disgusts me. They represent the community very poorly.

Here is what they are protesting from Kasich’s budget plan.

• More oversight over Medicaid, although spending on the federal program will continue to grow by $1 billion annually. Medicaid comprises 30 percent of Ohio’s $60 billion budget in fiscal year 2013, including all federal matching dollars.

• Better coordination of mental health services.

• To offer the state’s health-care coverage to local governments to save money and ask union workers to pay more toward premiums.

• To sell liquor distribution rights to raise money for job-development programs,

• To honor pay increases contained in the third year of a union contract that ends next February. The extra pay offsets lost personal days and unpaid furloughs by state workers – concessions to balance Gov. Ted Strickland’s last budget.

• To double vouchers for school choice, eliminating a waiting list for parents who want to transfer their children from public to privately operated charter schools.

• Bonuses for teachers – $50 for each student who shows marked improvement.

• A closer look at adding slot machines to Ohio’s horse tracks or legalizing casinos operated by Native American tribes.

• Study the concept of semi-private “charter” universities to give now-public colleges more flexibility. That would eliminate the requirement that they hire multiple prime contractors and pay prevailing wage on construction projects, to keep tuition down. It also caps annual tuition growth at 3.5 percent.

Those are just a few of the highlights. The bottom line is that unions just want to keep everything as it is. They don’t want change because they like the way everything is. But they hardly represent the majority. Only 13.7% of the Ohio population belongs to a union. And it’s those 13.7% that are creating the policies that break the budgets of school districts so that kids in junior high won’t be able to play sports, or ride a bus. In the scheme of things the cost of busing, sports programs, and electives are a small part of the budget, its labor costs that are the enormous factor. And it was excessive labor costs that crippled the auto industry, ran the steel industry out of Pittsburg and seriously hampered innovation in companies that are under union control.

Recently I needed a part from a large manufacturer in Dallas, Texas, and the person on the other end of the phone said they could see the part through the window from where they were sitting. But they couldn’t send it to me. Why? Because the department on the other side of the window was controlled by the union and the guy in charge of moving that part was out on sick leave, and he was the only one able under the contract to move the part. So because of union rules the person I was speaking to could not simply open a door and pick up the part to ship back to me. It cost thousands of dollars in delivery penalties and seriously set back our manufacturing process. I was so mad at that process that I put my fist through my phone in frustration.

The same mentality is at play with these public sector unions. They are out of touch and protecting the serious imposition they have imposed on us all. And they could care less of some kids suffer because of their inflated opinions of themselves.

The proof is in what they say and do. Not in their very controlled bullet points designed to manipulate a busy voting population.

And that is the crime that should have serious penalties. And for those that participated in that rally, if you really care about “the kids” and the community you work in, take a pay cut, and don’t even think about asking those communities for more tax increases.

Rich Hoffman

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

Bring Atlas Shrugged to Newport on the Levee: Ayn Rand’s Epic Novel is coming to a theater near you.

If you’re like me and admire greatly the work of Ayn Rand, then you’re looking forward to the film being released on April 15th called Atlas Shrugged.

I would consider this a very important and timely film. One that contributes to our culture and it gives me great hope listening to the producer explain to Doc Thompson that the film makers are doing everything in their power to remain true to the original book. The last time a filmmaker spent that kind of time being authentic to a body of literary work it was a little film project called Lord of the Rings.

The Atlas Shrugged series will be divided into three parts the first of which is coming out this April. Hollywood will be watching closely how this film is received. It is entirely possible that the success of this film could change the direction of Hollywood for years.

Why? Because Hollywood is dying on the vine. They are holding onto their former glory with mere finger nails. I know a few friends in Hollywood and even worked on a project or two. (Here is the latest. Everything you see that has a whip in it is me doing stand in work for Peter Facinelli. And yes the stunts are all real, no CGI, including the backward whip crack of the cigarette.) See a more detailed article on that here. In other words I know a bit about what I’m talking about regarding the film industry. Book publishing is in the same boat really.

The young people making films today are as lost as the films they are producing. The other day my wife and I were discussing whether or not we wanted to see the film Paul. I told her it looked a lot like ET to me. We’ll probably see it, but will come away feeling a hunger for more.

It is no accident that the films celebrated at the “big” theme parks like Disney World and Universal Studios are celebrating the films of yesterday. Disney World is an obvious celebration of the films from the 30’s to the 90’s with a gap in the late 70’s to the late 80’s. Universal Studios is basically a celebration of Steve Spielberg and the music of John Williams.

But recently, where are the “big bold films?” Well, I dare say that Atlas Shrugged will be one of those films, and once released, and proven successful, will send a powerful message to Hollywood and the liberal film critics that have attempted to steer the direction of our film industry into a ridiculous collectivism that is obviously not what Americans want in the movies.

I’ve said it before, it’s not an accident that Star Wars is still one of the greatest movies of all time, not because of all the special effects, or cute little creatures, but because it has a fundamental message of the individual against the collectivism of the Empire. Such themes run deep in the human conciousness and are understood in the context of a story. It’s not always easy to apply those understandings to real life, but the human mind understands the dilemma well.

That’s why Atlas Shrugged has the potential to be more than just a movie. It has the potential to revitalize our American civilization at a time that many are asking the very questions that Ayn Rand offered in a time that nobody wanted to listen.

Go to the Atlas Shrugged web site and let them know you want a print of the film to be shown at Newport on the Levee. Also, contact that theater so they can set up a screening with the producers so we can help that film prove how powerful the viewings in the Midwest are. This will convince Hollywood to release the film on a wide release, which is of paramount importance.

Go to this link and just type in your zip code to cast your vote to bring this great film to Cincinnati, or whatever city you live in. 

http://eventful.com/performers/atlas-shrugged-part-1-/P0-001-000245241-9/demand?widget=1&viral=0

Here is the link to the home page of the film website.

http://www.atlasshruggedpart1.com/?gclid=CP3P_ra21KcCFcW8KgodShQA-w

Hollywood through films and television forgets time and time again that just putting special effects into a film with stunts and set in time periods similar to classics like Star Wars, or the Godfather, or an epic like Lord of the Rings won’t guarantee success. Citizen Kane is not one of the greatest films ever made because it had great effects or even great acting. Those films are great because they mean something, and the contents of the story don’t leave the viewer by the time they get back to their car in a theater parking lot. Stories filled with big ideas matter. Even low budget phenomena’s like Smokey and the Bandit from the 1970’s hold a special place in the viewers that watch it, because the movie is about individualism in its most raw form, and that’s what America loves.

It’s one thing to battle politicians for fiscal responsibility. It’s probably more important to battle these problems from the aspects of culture, and our movie industry is one of the greatest communication devices of our culture. Atlas Shrugged and the success of its subsequent films will achieve a great deal to educating the millions of young people that are currently getting the wrong message from MTV, the film Hangover, and American Pie 5 or 6, and TV shows like Two and a Half Men, and How I MetYour Mother. Those entertainment pieces show exactly why our culture is failing. And it’s time that new myths communicate the important attributes of American culture, and one of the best opportunities for that to happen is in Atlas Shrugged Part 1.

Some of my favorite scenes brought to life!

Rich Hoffman

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

The 53% Against the 47%: A Lesson in Leadership

Kasich’s approval rating is at 40 percent just two months into his tenure as governor of Ohio. Doc Thompson was critical of Kasich’s marketing of himself and the confusing messages coming from the governor’s office. Doc also discusses the West Chester Police and Fire Department wages from the article at this site. The overall consensus is that expectation among all federal workers, from the governor all the way to the desk worker expects too much compensation from the tax payer, and many are guilty of taking advantage of the bureaucracy in government to make very good jobs for themselves. Listen to broadcast here.

I’m actually amazed that Kasich’s approval rating is as high as 40 percent considering how bold he has been on many of his policies. There is no question that Kasich’s budget is going to be painful for many people. I would have to say that if I were governor, I probably wouldn’t do things much different from Kasich is doing. I personally wouldn’t think too much on the pain of the moment, because what’s right is right. It’s not Kasich’s fault that so many people have become addicted to public money. It’s like taking the bottle away from an alcoholic while they are trying to get drunk. Of course the drunk will be upset, and they usually protest that they are not alcoholics. I’d probably hire people to serve under me at good business wages so I could get the best people and not the typical “kiss ass” political climbers, I’d probably want to control the video of my presentations so they couldn’t be used against me in the future, and I’d probably be caught numerous times calling police that pulled me over, “idiots” because it would make me angry. I’m a very aggressive guy and I keep my eyes on the end result, and I see in Kasich the same traits.

Now people aren’t used to that. They are used to wishy-washy politicians that spend their own political careers not displaying any real courage. They carefully watch the poll numbers and can be moved from a position within days of stating something, depending on the power of the lobbyist.

I would say that Kasich understands like many people who are in leadership positions that a vast majority of any given group will be lost no matter how much you try to explain it. And those types of people don’t like to waste time explaining their vision to people who won’t get it anyway.

Is that the best way to present material, of course not. But it is a symptom of real leadership. Kasich knows that approximately 53% of all people in America have some leadership ability or at least the ability to grapple with difficult issues. They can see where the headlights are pointed and what’s in the light of the headlights, and they get it. 46% of all Americans can’t even see the headlights without glasses. They need assistance, and these are the people who have a tendency to be attracted to public sector jobs, unions, and welfare. No matter what you do, they won’t understand until they can look at a problem in hind-sight.

It was reported that Kasich’s approval rating is below the levels enjoyed by the last three governors when they were in their start of their administrations. The Ohio Poll registered 68 percent approval for Democrat Ted Strickland in May 2007, 49 percent approval for Republican Bob Taft in March 1999 and 61 percent approval for Republican George Voinovich in February 1991. The reason for this is because those governors spent much of their time pandering to the 47% and therefore accomplished very little as leaders. They mistakenly assume that the 53% will always be there for them, which is unfair because the 53% get overlooked as they are the good citizens that work hard to support the nation. Unfortunately the squeaky wheel does get the grease, and those squeaky wheels are that 47%.

People aren’t used to a governor that has a reversed position and targets his governorship at the 53% that understand, even if they don’t agree. It appears that Kasich isn’t the only governor showing these tendencies. Scott Walker certainly appears to be the same way.

Now of that 53%, there is no doubt that those are the people who are usually on the fence on any given issue, and the number in Ohio appears to be about 13%, which are finding themselves affected by all the negative press surrounding S.B.5. That’s where the 40% comes from.

In the end, when the policies Kasich enacts solves many of the budget problems that Ohio finds itself in, it just might become the model that the greater nation will want to follow. But Kasich really doesn’t appear to be interested in opinion. You know the old adage, “opinions are like assholes, everyone has them.” A leader has to do what they know is right because they have the ability to see beyond the headlights flashing in the darkness. Their fault is that they don’t care to explain themselves to the 47%. Those people will never be happy anyway. But they will jump on the bandwagon when better times come along.

Kasich deserves an elevation of his man card if anything, for doing what many only talk about. He is doing what leaders do, they lead.

Rich Hoffman

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

School Boards Still Don’t Get It: S.B.5 Empowers them to Control Their Costs!

Doc Thompson covers how the “rich Hollywood types and politicians hide their money from tax collectors, gaming the system. These are the same people who proclaim that we should pay increased taxes in order to fund public sector jobs. Doc has an argument with a guy that claims he’s willing to send in a $20,000 check to pay his “fair share.” Also, Doc covers a UC administrator that received over $900,000 in severance upon being released from his contract. Have a listen:

Meanwhile, local school systems, are still asking for more money claiming to be broke when in fact they are already receiving generous tax dollars from the communities. Public union leaders are somehow oblivious to why there isn’t enough money to pay them. How they don’t connect the dots is amazing. They insist that we should cut salaries in the governor’s administration before we cut teachers salaries, which sounds foolish. It’s not so much the amount of money individuals make, as it is that way too many in public office make it. That is where the socialist tendency differs from the capitalist. The socialist wants the increases across the board, as they are in step increases. The capitalist pays based on merit. That means fewer will receive “top pay” instead of a majority regardless of job performance as the system is now.

On the eve of Governor Kasich’s budget revelation it is interesting that Lebanon City Schools and Fairfield City Schools are not looking at using S.B.5 to control their costs on a broad scale, but are still playing the same game of small cuts that have been the preferred method, such as busing cuts and other items that are inconvenient to parents in the district.

Taking into account that the contracts under S.B.5 will be grandfathered in, it would seem most responsible for these school districts to begin exploring how they can severely reduce their labor costs under the new law without staff reductions.

My guess however is that these current administrators won’t explore that option unfortunately, because they cannot think any other way, which is part of the problem.

Further attempts to place levies on a ballot are not needed because these school districts don’t need the money. They need to reduce their budget expectations. They need to understand how to manage the money they do have. S.B.5 will give them the tools to do so. There shouldn’t be another levy on a single ballot anywhere in Ohio during 2011 because of the passage of S.B.5. If there is, it’s because the school districts wish to continue to play games, and not make the “hard”cuts.

If school districts like these two continue to beat the same old drum, it is because they are completely inept in the skills of money management, and those administrators need to be removed so that people who are skilled at money management can help these schools operate with their excellent ratings, but at a reduced cost.

Before a single layoff is ever explored, wage reductions should be implemented. Realistic wage amounts need to be established, not the outrageous levels they currently are. Teachers of high school students and junior high students are not all worth 70K or more no matter how much schooling they have. Some may be, but not a majority. Few people are worth that much in labor and a college degree does not guarantee those wage levels, which is the assumption under the established step increases, and the fact that I even have to write it down so that administrators have to be told says they are out of touch completely with the community marketplace.

The money is not coming from the state. The money is not coming from the federal government. The money is coming from the community, and these districts and the teachers that teach in them must decide now if they want to bend a little to make the districts remain excellent and within the community budgets, or if they will continue to think selfishly and strap these communities financially. For those highly paid teachers that don’t want to work for less, there’s the door. Good luck finding a better job because every district in Ohio is going through this trouble, and they all must come to this realization sooner or later.

The longer these districts avoid the obvious, the more damage they’ll do. They now have the tools, but further tax increases are not an option.

Below are two notices, one asking people to attend the school board meeting in Lebanon. If you care about this issue at all, you should go and ask those people how they are planning to think “outside” the box to save the community money without a loss of services. Because they will no longer be able to blame the states unfunded mandates.

The other is from Arnie Engle from Fairfield who has been fighting this fight for a long time.

To one and all
FYI
The board will be voting to cut High School busing this Thursday
Are you willing to risk our children’s lives to save $300,000??
The next Board meeting is 3-17-11
6PM in the Community Room at the HS

The blackmail tactics are about to begin

 

Our community was divided over the 3 school levies the board jammed down the throats of the community in 2004. This board is knowingly driving our district into fiscal crisis and a repeat of the 2004 community divide. Why are they doing this? Because they refuse to place the community and our children before the staff with appropriate cost cutting measures.
Please attend and let your voice be heard

Please pass this on to everyone you know !

You must sign in to speak at the beginning of the meeting and you get 5 minutes.
There is also an additional chance to speak before the board votes on the cuts. 2 minutes.

On the agenda are 3 million in cuts to be voted on. The list can be viewed on the school web site. In the list is the elimination of high school busing to save $300,000.

Fact!
The schools own finance report, shows we spent 6.6 million on pupil transportation in 2010.
We are cutting 1/3 of our busing. Shouldn’t we expect a savings of 1/3 of $6,000,000????
You can view this report on the school web site.

CAFR
Comprehensive Annual Financial Report
(Page 105 schedule 6)

School busing is the safest way to transport school children. Putting our kids on the road to and from school is a disaster waiting to happen.

And for what??? $300,000???

Are you willing to risk our children’s lives to save $300,000??

I’m not!

The following is what I said about cutting busing back in 2004.
The same applies today.

From the 2004 CARE flier
WHY CUT SPORTS AND BUSING?

The recent cuts made by the Fairfield School Board do more than balance the budget. They actually punish our children and the community,

in an effort to force an unjust $9,000,000 school levy on the taxpayers of our fine city. This tax levy will definitely benefit the staff, but NOT our children.

Regarding Sports, local papers have reported that the Xenia School District “saved $183,000 by cutting extra-curriculars. However, more than 100 students left the school district and went to other schools to participate in sports. The decreased student enrollment ended up costing the school $340,000 in school funding from the state.” Our school board and administration are aware of this, but they cut our extra-curriculars anyway.

Regarding busing, our school officials say we will save $400,000 by cutting busing. According to Treasurer Scott Gooding, we have a $5,500,000 transportation budget. We are cutting more than one-third of our transportation by cutting busing for grades 9-12 and extra curricular activities. You would expect to see savings of one-third of $5,500,000 or at least $1,800,000. Also note that the state gives us $2,000,000 for transportation as reported in the ODE, SF3 report. If we loose one-third of this funding that amounts to $667,000, nullifying the $400,000 savings projected by our officials.
Therefore, it just doesn’t make good economic sense to cut busing and sports, unless it’s really an effort to punish our kids, parents, and community in order to pass the next school levy on August 3rd.

I have heard it time and time again that the district needs to move forward and forget about the past \history. The problem is that history is about to repeat itself! We can all expect that $600 pay to play and the elimination of all busing will soon follow.

This board is, knowingly, running our district right into financial crisis. The solution to their madness was spelled out in my last letter to the editor. The boards blackmail tactics will never end as long as this board continues to places the staff ahead of the community and our children

BOARDS 1-13-11 RETREAT
Letter to the Editor
February 2011
BOARD INACTION WILL LEAD TO DISTRICT FAILURE

In regard to the Fairfield school districts budget retreat it was disappointing to hear the board was still considering a new tax levy. It would be a big mistake for the board to assume the community would support any type of levy. I would hope the board would anticipate this and enact the appropriate cuts to balance the budget. Failure to do so will send our district down the same road as Little Miami. The board needs to put the box of band aids away and get down to enacting a budget void of new levies. Time is running out.

Although there was an additional 4.6 million in cuts presented at the retreat there are still millions in possible cost cutting and revenue generating ideas presented by both me and the districts own hand picked finance committee. My suggestions and the finance committee’s suggestions should be reviewed, considered and enacted or rejected with reasoning shared with the public for any rejection, before there is any discussion of a new levy. The community is entitled to know, in detail, why the board refused to enact all cost saving ideas presented by anyone.

In my opinion there needs to be a fundamental change in the way the district does business. This would include but is not limited to the following suggestions.

Getting serious about contract negotiations.

Not relying on local property taxes to fund schools

The board must be honest with the public and follow through with their board actions.

The board should vote with an understanding of how their vote will effect the budget and leave their emotions at home
.
The board needs to start placing our children and the community first.

The board needs to review the business partner relationship it holds with it’s vendors and assure the public it is receiving the best possible price for the tax dollars spent.

The board needs to have a conservative outsider to review the way the district operates

The status quo of taxing and spending is not working in Fairfield or any government agency. If this philosophy can not be reigned in it will undoubtedly lead to the financial ruin of our district.

Let me leave you with a quote from the districts own finance committee “The current system is unsustainable without the fundamental changes we are suggesting — inaction will lead to district failure.” I have been warning the district of this for years. Time is running out.

Arnie Engel
Past member Fairfield Board of Education
CARE founder
829-7840
Please pass this on to everyone you know !
and please attend the
next Board meeting on 3-17-11.
Bring your neighbors, friends and family.

Rich Hoffman

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

Hagan Uses Racist Slurs, Grayson Tries to Start a Fight: The Hypocrisy of Progressives

Bob Hagan, a Democrat from Youngstown recently participated in a disgraceful exchange on Facebook with Kevin Crowther during a debate over S.B.5. Hagan did what most Democrats and union supporters do when they are intellectually challenged by facts, they called their intellectual superiors names. Hagan called Kevin“Buckwheat” on Facebook for all to see.

Here is that exchange.

Kevin is a black man, a conservative that was making some great points that Hagan couldn’t answer. So like a child on the playground at wits end, Hagan retreated into a racial slur.

Isn’t that something? I thought Democrats were all about minority rights, equality for all, and looking out for the little guy. Yet here is Hagan calling a black man, “buckwheat!”

Here is Hagan’s contact information and bio.

http://www.house.state.oh.us/index.php?option=com_displaymembers&task=detail&district=60

If you have lived under a rock for the last century, “Buckwheat” was the little black boy on “Little Rascals.” After Hagan’s comments, many people went to the press and a few websites carried the story. I learned about it during a recent Tea Party meeting. If you read this article, you can see that Hagan is sorry he “got caught” I mean sorry he slipped with the racial slur.

http://www.vindy.com/news/2011/feb/27/hagan-falls-flat-on-face-8212-book-that-/

Why is he sorry? Well, apparently he wants to run for Mayor of Youngstown, and that will never happen if he can’t capture the black vote. So now that he has realized that arguing with people on Facebook is a pretty stupid idea considering that people can take screen shots, like the one you see on this page. Sorry Bob, but you revealed your true thoughts and it won’t be forgotten with double talk. Why does Hagan seem to have problems with black people? The event with Kevin took place on February 19th. It’s not a conservative conspiracy to take his seat, because a year prior to this “buckwheat” incident Hagan was in the way of another man trying to view belly dancers on a stage and Bob wouldn’t get out-of-the-way. The two men had some words, and Bob was knocked out cold, the man who punched Hagan in the face caused a gash in his chin needing 11 stitches. The man who struck Hagan was a black man. However, according to Hagan, all these things that keep happening to him are the fault of some conservatives from Southern Ohio.

Now, you’d think that this would be a big national story. But it’s not. For the most part, the papers and TV stations have given Hagan a pass. After all, he’s one of them, he’s a progressive, so his answers that he didn’t mean “buckwheat” in a racial way, is accepted.

Now here is another one of those liberals that just doesn’t seem to connect the dots in his mind, listen to Alan Grayson talking about the “hate” and “racism” from Republicans.

But this is the same Alan Grayson that sent this letter to a friend of mine. Have a read and see of those two people match up.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Dear XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX:

On May 4, 1886, in Haymarket Square in Chicago, the public rallied peacefully in support of 40,000 workers in Chicago who had gone on strike, to win the right to organize. The police attacked, and eight died.

On July 6, 1892, in Homestead, Pennsylvania, 3800 workers went on strike, to win the right to organize. Three hundred hired and armed goons attacked them. Five people died.

On April 20, 1914, in Ludlow, Colorado, 1200 coal miners went on strike, to win the right to organize. The Colorado National Guard attacked their shantytown, and burned it to the ground. Nineteen people died. Two women and 11 children were asphyxiated, and they burned to death.

Here and around the world, many people have fought and died, so that you and I would have the right to organize.
And so that 250,000 public workers in Wisconsin would have that right, too.

This is not exactly a new idea. Six months after the Ludlow Massacre, President Wilson signed the Clayton Act, prohibiting the prosecution of union members under Antitrust Law. That was almost a century ago.

Two decades later, during the Franklin Roosevelt’s first term as President, he signed the National Labor Relations Act into law. It protects the right to organize. That was over 75 years ago.

The right to organize also is a fundamental principle of international law. Over 150 countries have ratified the “Right to Organize” Convention, an international treaty. It was adopted in 1949, over 60 years ago.
So why are we even talking about this, 11 years into the 21st Century?

Because the teabaggers want to “take back America.” They want to take it back, all right – take it all the way back to the 19th century. When there was no right to organize. When people worked for a dollar a day. When grown men competed against children for jobs. When women were barred from most jobs entirely. When you worked until you died.
Not to mention slavery.

I want to see an America that is healthy and wealthy.

They want an America that provides cheap labor to our corporate overlords. An America where the middle class is chained by debt.

We didn’t ask for this fight. But we have no choice except to fight back. For the survival of the middle class in America. For us, for our children, and for our grandchildren. And so that the victims in Haymarket, in Homestead and in Ludlow did not die in vain.

As Cardinal Spellman said 45 years ago, “it is a war thrust upon us, and we cannot yield to tyranny.”
I’m ready to fight for what’s right. What about you?

Courage,
Alan Grayson

______________________________________________________________________

Here Alan is calling Tea Party supporters “teabaggers” and calling for a fight. Also, included in his email is this emblem of a “fist.” Isn’t that kind of violent?

Let me give Mr. Grayson a history lesson: Slavery was ended by a Republican, Abraham Lincoln. That’s the really tall guy who had a beard for you MTV viewers. He was a conservative.

The labor movement was started by another Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, who fought during the first decade of the 20th century to break down anti-trusts and corporate power in machine politics. And you know what, I agree with what Teddy was trying to do. But………after his presidency, Roosevelt went on a grand safari hunt in Africa for an entire year, and every country he visited touted him as a king. Somewhere out there in the Serengeti Teddy became a bleeding heart progressive. Maybe it was his age, maybe it was a form of madness, who knows, but if Teddy had a fault it was that he craved power, and suddenly he didn’t have any power after the presidency. Before returning home, he toured all the nations of Europe dining with kings, queens, princes and Emperors. Everyone wanted to eat from his hand, and it went to his head.

The final blow came when Teddy came back to the United States and saw that his good friend President Taft had allowed machine politics to retake the Republican Party so Teddy decided to run for a third term of president. But the Republicans wouldn’t let him run on their tickets because Teddy had become, too progressive and had lost touch with his conservative principles. So they pushed him out of the party hoping he’d just retire.

All it did was make Teddy angry, because deep down inside, Roosevelt wanted power back so he formed his opinions around the new emerging “progressive” party being formed by “rich” Republicans seeking a utopia type era in America. So while the Republicans divided over progressivism and split the vote during the 1912 election, Woodrow Wilson won under a softer form of progressivism on the Democratic ticket.

Wilson adopted many of Roosevelt’s progressive reforms, especially after his wife died early in his presidency. So Roosevelt’s progressive platform filled the intellectual void of Wilson in his grief. But Wilson was an ideological academic and was not as sensible as Roosevelt and progressivism spun out of control. Wilson was a racist to the extreme, but Democrats seem to overlook that, just like they do with their current golden boy, Bob Hagan in Youngstown. Does anybody think Jessie Jackson will come to Youngstown and speak out against Hagan. Or will the Democrats denounce their affiliation with Wilson? You already know the answer.

Alan Grayson attempted to give a history of the labor movement as if to validate the union movement. The fact is, if Roosevelt had not fought hard for the worker rights against the corporate greed, they’d still be going on to this day. It took a president to provide that kind of leadership. The union movement only rode on Teddy’s coat tails and a friendly Woodrow Wilson administration that was so lost it was easy for the unions to take credit. When F.D.R came to the presidency, which was Teddy’s younger cousin, Franklin also suffered the Roosevelt tendency to elitism that came from their New York high society roots. Franklin came to power in government as a state senator when Teddy was most progressive and it seemed to have a serious influence on Franklin.

Franklin had another problem aside from being a progressive leaning young man……..he couldn’t keep his pants on, and had multiple affairs while married to Eleanor.

Eleanor forgave these imperfections, but she lost interest in sex with Franklin and buried her time into social and political causes. She wasn’t doing all that social work because she wanted to fix the world. She was trying to fix the world because she could fix her marriage.

These were psychologically messed up people, these progressives. Does Eleanor remind you of anyone? Listen to her here.

Now progressives might listen to that and think, “oh, she’s speaking my heart.” I hear something different. I hear a woman that desperately wants sex. She was well aware that her husband was sneaking his long time mistress, nicknamed Mrs. Johnson into the White House during 1941. It wasn’t revealed to the public until the 1960s. It left Eleanor drowning in jealous betrayal and a yearning for what every woman wants, and F.D.R wouldn’t give it to her. She was suffering from the same dilemma that thousands of women suffer from, an attempt to find redemption in a career of some kind only to find out much later that nothing can fix a broken heart. Such imperfections should not be followed, as they appear to be. They are to be avoided. Broken minds do not make the type of people anyone should attempt to emulate.
And here is a fan of Eleanor, they have a lot in common.

How about that deficit control and all that job creation?

It’s quite obvious what the facts are, and the days of pushing this stuff under the rug are over. Progressives are a broken people, and the labor movement is teaming with progressive influence. The name calling from Democrats and the hypocritical, divisive politics won’t fly any more. These are people who can’t even fix themselves so how can they fix anything in government.

Progressives are all about remaking the world. They don’t care how they do it. They’ll attempt to pound people out of their way if they have to, because these progressives are trying to outrun their own form of insanity.

I can speak for myself. I don’t want anything to do with progressive thought. I do want to take the nation to a period before progressive philosophy took over the American consciousness like a sickness. I would be the first to fight for worker rights against corporate greed, and I don’t need a labor union of power hungry progressives to tell me that it’s right to treat people fairly.

And I don’t want anything to do with a group of politicians that speak out of both sides of their mouths. Bob Hagan got caught using a racist slur. Alan Grayson is trying to incite violence among the union rank and file. I would suggest any financial damage caused by union radicals should be sent to Mr. Grayson for his incendiary comments and blind rhetoric, spewing half-baked historical facts to the masses that look to him for the truth, which he fails to offer. Instead he panders to the mob providing viability to his progressive philosophy, which has set America on a path of the pathetic as Republicans spend half their time defending themselves for far less impositions than what these Democrats have committed, recently.

If we follow the progressive path, we will continue to fail. If we continue to listen to the double talk of people like Hagan, Grayson, Clinton and many others, that are lost in their own personal problems and attempt to fix the world where they fail to fix themselves. We don’t need a world made in their broken images. Government is not their playground for experimental progressive politics which sends us all on a path to be second-rate in the world market place.

And unions are not a right given by government. They should absolutely be illegal. They have no place in public funding, and what Grayson fails to point out in his child like grasp of history is that his beloved F.D.R also said that no public union should ever enter the mind of any politician. But he won’t tell the mushy minded followers of his rhetoric that. He is able to mislead his flocks of sheep because it’s worked in the past, and the plan is for it to work in the future.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
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