Tag: Doc Thompson

“Oh What Big Teeth You Have”: How much do police and firefighters cost in West Chester?

I wondered why when the film Red Riding Hood was announced to be released, film producers were re-telling that old child hood story. Can’t they come up with anything else? Then I watched all the “collective bargaining” debates over the last couple of weeks and realized that people needed to relearn how the wolf ate Little Red Riding Hood, so the timing of the film seemed suddenly appropriate. In that story The Wolf disguised itself as Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother, so to take the poor little girl by surprise trying to appear as something she trusted.

I have held on to information regarding the amount that Police and Fire Departments cost their communities for several months now. When I first came across this information it was way back in October of 2010. The West Chester Police Department was putting up a levy, and many of the people who were against the Lakota Levy were of course against the police levy. I assured many of those people there was no way people would pass the Police Levy, not as strapped as the community was, and the cops were crazy for asking. After all, weren’t they already very well compensated? I had seen the numbers, where some of them were making well over 90K per year. Some people in the community had no idea that the police and fire departments made so much. Many, myself included thought that police and fire fighters should be well paid, because we ask them to do a lot in the community, and figured that a good wage was somewhere around 55K to 65K per year. 100K per year seems outrageous, but that’s what the numbers told me was going on.

Below I include that list of all police and fire department staff in West Chester, Ohio where a levy was just approved in November that are currently making over 60K per year. This is public information because they are public employees. They report to the public! Not the other way around. They chose to work for the public, so should not be upset that this information is available. The reason it’s available is so that the community can understand how their tax money is spent. In this case, when we are discussing the problems with collective bargaining it has been the police and firefighters that have been complaining that they should somehow be exempt from the debate, because as they put it, “when society runs away from danger, they run to it.”

For the convenience of protecting society, I would say they are worth something like I described above. But anything over 65K I’d be against. The median household income in West Chester, Ohio is just a bit above 90K. Some of those homes are from single income families, but vast majorities are dual income homes, or homes where two married people and a child are working, which stacks up the numbers. So the misconception that residents in the wealthy area of West Chester are all rich is just that, a misconception. Divide the median income by two and that gives you the average wage in West Chester of around 50K per year. Yet through collective bargaining, the police and firefighter unions, just like the teachers unions, have driven up the cost of their service to extraordinary levels. The levy in November had to be implemented for one primary reason and that was to deal with the “step increases” scheduled for the upcoming years. That means that many of the people on the list you’ll see below are scheduled for an increase just because of their tenure. It doesn’t matter if they are already at a wage level that the rest of society deems reasonable. The collective bargaining agreements don’t care about common sense. The union mentality is that they don’t care where the money comes from. They have become extraordinarily arrogant over the years and many Republicans have been soft and non-combative, and have not meant them equally on the field of battle in the arena of ideas. Republicans have routinely caved under union pressure. This left Democrats to ram through State Revised Code and collective bargaining negotiations that are quite insane if looked upon with financial eyes.

Yet this is the cause of the current financial crises being felt all across this country. And in a few locations, like Ohio and Wisconsin a new type of conservative is being put into political positions by people who are sick of the game. These conservatives, driven by the Tea Party are expected to actually do the job, not cut deals with machine politics. And that’s part of what everyone is confused by. The United States is a Republic, not a democracy. If you don’t like what the representatives in government do, dump them on the next election. But what these Republicans are doing, they aren’t doing it for the Koch brothers, or any other corporate interest. They are doing it because it has been noticed, first by the Tea Party people all across the nation, that we need government to operate more like a business, in order to achieve a smaller government with more fiscal responsibility. Unfortunately, public sector jobs, like fireman, police officers and teachers who have used emotion to negotiate great wages are going to be the first to endure this scrutiny, which must happen.

Those three public sector unions, teachers, firemen, and police have used emotion for a long time to pass tax increases that their union leaders clearly understand must happen in order to sustain the contracts they’ve negotiated with school boards, trustees and city councils. In the case of West Chester, which is no different from any place else, signs went up all over our community in November reminding us how important police are to our safety, and we must pass a levy to keep our families safe.

We hear the same thing from firemen when they need to increase their funding, and we all know that’s what happens in schools. It’s all about the kids, right!

But when you understand that at some point someone in the union leadership should have recognized that they were maxing out their wage levels, someone should have put on the wage brakes, but nobody did. They seem to really think that wages can continue to climb at a proportional rate regardless of productivity or actual job skills.

One of the questions I asked of several public officials is who regulates how much overtime firemen and police apply to their jobs? Who decides if it’s needed or not, because what’s happening is many of the senior officers are logging more OT hours closer to their retirement so they can have a greater retirement payout. But why? Who is protecting the tax payer from such cost overruns? Because that job isn’t being done.

I can say that in companies that I’ve worked for; overtime is something that we always watched carefully. We look at labor hours each week and determine what any OT gave us in relation to product output. Who’s doing that for the public sector, because the costs according to the list below appear to be extremely high! If such payrolls as listed below were submitted in the private sector to a careful business owner, heads would roll in a major way at such obvious waste. But in the public sector, such costs over runs are just part of the way business is done. This is why these organizations are afraid of S.B.5. They know in their hearts they’ve been gaming the system for a long time, and they are being exposed. The manipulative marketing techniques are losing their appeal, especially when America has the opportunity to see these public sector workers in action during these protests.

Many of these public workers have buried themselves in debt, and their lifestyle dictates such high levels of income, even though it’s always been unsustainable. Nobody told them that though. Their union leaders just encouraged them to continue buying luxuries without question so long as their union dues were paid on time.

Now they are worried because they see the public anger headed in their direction. The old tricks aren’t working, so now their union leaders are resorting to violence and the kind of threats that got us into all this trouble to begin with.

You see, the reason I don’t want to support unions is because of the radicals behind the movement. It’s nothing against the members themselves, but I despise bullies and there have been a lot of bullies emerging lately. I have two examples below.

These public workers have not been so well compensated because of their incredible value. They’ve been so well compensated because of the strong-armed tactics of the unions, and the weakness of our public officials we put into office that did not stand up to them over the years. This allowed for the incredible budget problems we have today. There is not an infinite amount of money being held at the end of a rainbow by some rich leprechaun, like the Koch brothers or anybody else, that if released would save everyone. Those types of fantasies are the rhetoric of the economic illiterate. The rich will always be rich. If you go after them, they’ll just move to another country and take their jobs with them. In fact, that’s exactly what’s happened. Where are the jobs? Mexico, India, China, Europe, and why? They don’t want to deal with union thugs. So what’s the response from SEIU? “We have to become global.” Good luck with that in China. Such a thought shows the vast ignorance of union leadership and their understanding of economics.

One such extreme example of this union mentality is the below letter sent to the senate in Wisconsin just after they voted to strip away collective bargaining. This isn’t a new strategy by the union radicals. This went on in the 60’s and 70’s to great effect. I see them no different from an organized crime element. The sole purpose of this letter is to strike fear in the minds of these politicians and discourage any courageous union reforms in the future. This letter is complete as written minus the senders email address; misspellings are left as they were written. The source of this letter is 620 WTMJ Wisconsin News Radio. They are pushing for a police investigation which appears to be not happening, which in itself should be shocking! This letter was signed. I would expect to see this on the front page of every newspaper and this person should be immediately taken into custody for his terrorist’s threat. But I can find no place where this has happened as of this writing.

http://www.620wtmj.com/shows/charliesykes/117726263.html?blog=y

____________________________________________________________________________________________

From: XXXX
Sent: Wed 3/9/2011 9:18 PM
To: Sen.Kapanke; Sen.Darling; Sen.Cowles; Sen.Ellis; Sen.Fitzgerald; Sen.Galloway; Sen.Grothman; Sen.Harsdorf; Sen.Hopper; Sen.Kedzie; Sen.Lasee; Sen.Lazich; Sen.Leibham; Sen.Moulton; Sen.Olsen
Subject: Atten: Death threat!!!! Bomb!!!!
Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your familes
will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks. Please explain
to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families then it
will save the rights of 300,000 people and also be able to close the deficit
that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. Read below for
more information on possible scenarios in which you will die.
WE want to make this perfectly clear. Because of your actions today and in
the past couple of weeks I and the group of people that are working with me
have decided that we’ve had enough. We feel that you and the people that
support the dictator have to die. We have tried many other ways of dealing
with your corruption but you have taken things too far and we will not stand
for it any longer. So, this is how it’s going to happen: I as well as many
others know where you and your family live, it’s a matter of public records.
We have all planned to assult you by arriving at your house and putting a
nice little bullet in your head. However, we decided that we wouldn’t leave
it there. We also have decided that this may not be enough to send the
message to you since you are so “high” on Koch and have decided that you are
now going to single handedly make this a dictatorship instead of a
demorcratic process. So we have also built several bombs that we have placed
in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent.
This includes, your house, your car, the state capitol, and well I won’t
tell you all of them because that’s just no fun. Since we know that you are
not smart enough to figure out why this is happening to you we have decided
to make it perfectly clear to you. If you and your goonies feel that it’s
necessary to strip the rights of 300,000 people and ruin their lives, making
them unable to feed, clothe, and provide the necessities to their families
and themselves then We Will “get rid of” (in which I mean kill) you. Please
understand that this does not include the heroic Rep. Senator that risked
everything to go aganist what you and your goonies wanted him to do. We feel
that it’s worth our lives to do this, because we would be saving the lives
of 300,000 people. Please make your peace with God as soon as possible and
say goodbye to your loved ones we will not wait any longer. YOU WILL DIE!!!!

____________________________________________________________________________________________

The second event occurred at the Liberty Twp Tea Party meeting on Monday March 7, 2011. That meeting focused on excessive costs and red tape that business must endure to do business. Much of that discussion centered on the effects of the “CAT Tax,” prevailing wages, unemployment rate increases, and problems centering on the 1099 forms. Roger Reynolds spoke about the ridiculous regulations in the government building in Hamilton where if mail is delivered to the wrong floor, the mail cannot be just walked up to the next floor, but must be resent through the post office, which defies common sense. The gist of the discussion was that most of the regulations in place were simply to preserve jobs, which has a noble intent, but has directly contributed to the budget problems all across the State of Ohio, and the nation of the United States.

Things became exciting as the meeting was closing. A teacher and a fireman, crashed our Tea Party to protest S.B.5. Being good Tea Party people, there was no anger at this imposition, but a lively discussion erupted as the two public workers stood before the crowd of approximately 250 people and pleaded to us not to support the S.B.5 Bill. The argument centered on the usual stuff, “S.B.5 will put us out of work. It’s not fair to ask us to work for less. Who’s going to pay our pension fund?”

They spoke for about 15 minutes then started repeating themselves. The Tea Party people had been very patient asking hard questions, but never getting divisive. Since the building we were renting had it’s time expire some of us starting folding up the chairs to put them away and let the two public workers know that the meeting was over, as politely as possible. Before they left, I approached the two workers and asked them, “So what do you propose to do? How do we pay for you? Raise taxes even more?”

We shook hands and parted disagreeing, but not hateful to each other. They didn’t have an answer on how to pay for their work. Especially when you realize how much we are spending on public workers. For those workers, I found out the teacher was only making 52K and he had a Master’s Degree. That didn’t seem unreasonable, but I know of many more public workers out there that have allowed “collective bargaining” to give them wages that would be unheard of in the private sector. Many of these so-called middle-class jobs that police, firefighters, and teachers are engaging in are at the top of the pay scale for any job, and when they argue that they are just simple middle-class citizens that are sacrificing themselves for the good of our nation and our future, it leaves you scratching your head when you find out how much they make, because in a lot of house holds, their income makes them considerably wealthy compared to the other 83% of the state that is not a part of “collective bargaining.”

I thought about the Tea Party crashers for a good part of the week and considered their audacity of coming to that group uninvited to make a personal emotional plea. They felt empowered to do so. Their action demonstrates their mentality which truly believes they are entitled to the benefits they’ve become accustom to.

Because of these two actions I decided to put the information I had been holding for so long onto these pages for others to see, because if we’re ever going to fix these problems, we all need to understand what we’re dealing with. So here is that list I mentioned of the police and fire officers and support staff of West Chester Twp. It’s not to put a specific light on them, because the problem is statewide, even nationwide. But because they just passed a levy a few months ago and are in my community, so I already had these numbers. They make a good example of how much these services cost. It becomes clear when looking over this list that the police and fire department unions are trying to protect this very lucrative compensation that collective bargaining has yielded them. This is why they are protesting S.B.5 so furiously, and this is why they are already planning to put the issue on a referendum for the November ballot, hoping to return to the “good ol’ days” that they are currently enjoying once S.B.5 becomes law by the end of March.

From a management side, it is also clear why our taxes are so out of control. The reason for S.B.5 is to put local communities back in control of these types of costs, which of course the unions don’t want. They want chaos so they can continue to push up the costs of their members. To give you an idea how much the union is relied upon among the people listed above I can report that there are two police captains on that list that are not in the union, because their positions are a bit like a superintendent of a school system. They currently have appeals filed where a judge struck down their attempts to re-join the union on grounds that they would not be impartial to negotiate contracts if they were a part of the union. This says everything about where those captains’ loyalties are. A judge’s opinion wasn’t good enough so the appeals were filed. This is the game we’re playing and what they are protecting.

And who could blame them? These people are being paid “extremely” well, and they know it. What is disappointing is that they aren’t putting the good of the community in their thoughts. Further taxation among a public that is making 30% to 45% less in most cases is the only option they are interested in exploring.

My mind on this issue is open because danger doesn’t impress me. Many are not comfortable looking at firefighters and police officers, or even teachers with scrutiny because there is an inner guilt that is built into all of us not to question these professions. It’s considered un-patriotic. For many, many years the media has pandered to these groups in order to get their support in exchange for stories. Talk show hosts claiming to wrap themselves in the American flag hang themselves to police and firefighters particularly after 911 in order to associate their image with justice. And for year’s police, judges, lawyers and many others in the legal profession have formed a brotherhood of nepotism that cannot be ignored as they share in the defense of that thin blue line. But worst of all has been politicians looking for the FOP vote. Those politicians are just as guilty of pandering to bloc voting with police and fireman as those accused of doing the same with immigrants and other minorities.

As I look at the wage rate numbers and watch the protests on TV about collective bargaining, I now understand how, Little Red Riding Hood ended up in the stomach of the wolf. “Oh Grandma, what big eyes you have.”

“The better to see you with.”

The enemy that seeks to eat us comes to us as a trusted representative in order to lure us close enough to eat. It’s a classic story that we teach our young to avoid these very types of pitfalls. Is the wolf evil for wanting to eat Little Red Riding Hood? No. It’s just a wolf. It eats to fill its belly. That’s all it understands.

The dark side to the pandering of police officers and fire departments by politicians for such a long time is the same as the reason many people appease a bully. Nobody wants to be on the bad side of the police, because there are plenty of stories of retaliation from “the brotherhood.” Massaging the ego of someone more powerful is the most effective way to avoid trouble, and politicians and other media personalities are very guilty of doing just that. The cost of that pandering can be seen in the wages which are in my opinion way out of control. In organized crime they might call it a “paying for protection.” In our communities, we call it a “tax increase.”

Now that S.B.5 has been put on the table, I’m sure it’s shocking to many of these unions to see that a great number of people see through the game they’ve been playing for such a long time. I’m sure many of them are hurt, because most of the employees in the public sector believe in what they are doing. Like most people they put on blinders to the negatives around them. We all know of trouble in our work places, improprieties that we choose to overlook because that’s how we get up and go to work every day. Most of the public workers are no different, and aren’t openly plotting to bankrupt the communities they work in. They see themselves as heroes, because they’ve been told that by so many over the years. It is difficult for them to suddenly see themselves as the “big bad wolf.” But the reality is that’s how people really feel deep down inside. Appeasement is confused with respect.

To me, a hero is someone who acts out of sacrifice. Running into danger when the rest of society runs away is what the tax payers pay those people for, so they do it for money, which is fine, but don’t pretend that doing a job that’s dangerous makes someone heroic with danger being the qualifier of heroism. The real heroes are those that do good deeds without any compensation, not even a pat on the back, because it’s the right thing to do. Paying over 90K for police and firefighters doesn’t qualify as heroism. It qualifies as an expensive employee for the community.

When the threats and intimidation strategies come into play we see what these people we thought were heroes are really about. A hero would admit that they have been taking too much from the community and would come to the table and put themselves in line with the rest of the community because they are public servants. They wouldn’t seek to send threatening letters to senators, call people names, or crash local Tea Parties to plead to the emotions of the good public just trying to do the right thing and afford our tax burdens.

The Big Bad Wolf only thinks of filling its belly even if it means eating the innocent.

Rich Hoffman

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

Chris Littleton’s Message: Stand Behind S.B.5 Now!

The minority can no longer rule us. Yet hearing these chants, you could easily forget that they only represent 13.7 percent of the Ohio population. But here are the union protestors chanting to keep the over-reaching promises given to them by years of corrupt politics.

In such times there are people who rise up to bring people’s minds together to defend against a threat, or attempted threat. Below is a message from Chris Littleton, Co-Founder of The Liberty Council. It’s a call to action for S.B.5 that I gladly pass along on these pages. The radical union element is hard at work to undermine S.B.5. So we have to counter that energy with our own effort.
Here is Chris being interviewed on 700 WLW by Bill Cunningham.

I wanted to pass along this message from The Ohio Liberty Council

__________________________________________________________________

I am the Silent Majority!

Dear Fellow Citizens and Taxpayers,

The fight to reduce government spending continues as a bill to end monopoly bargaining rights for public employee moves from the Ohio Senate to the Ohio House of Representatives.

The Bill

You’ve probably read or heard about the public sector labor union protests down at the Statehouse in Columbus over the last two weeks. The union-funded protests have received a lot of media coverage. The labor unions are protesting Senate Bill 5 (SB5), which is a bill that would allow your township/village/city/school district/county/state to control the out-of-control compensation, health care, and gold-plated pension costs of their government employees.

Because many of those local government entities are hitting deficits and compensation package costs are the single largest piece of local government budgets, without more control over spending, they will be forced to raise your already high taxes (Ohio: 7th highest state and local tax burden in US).

The bill will attempt to do things like moving health benefit contributions for public employees more in line with the private sector, taking those public employees from what is sometimes 0%-5% contributions to at least a 15% contribution of their healthcare premiums. You know how out of line that system is since you are used to paying 15%-30% of your own healthcare premiums, or even 100% if you are self-employed.

And, that’s the goal – moving public sector employees in line with economic realities of the 88% of the America’s work force who aren’t in unions. That’s right – the vast majority of Ohioans and all American workers do not enjoy tax payer funded benefit plans, so don’t let them steal the terms of “middle class” and “working class.” I work. You work. We are the silent majority.

The Action Item

To show legislators and Governor John Kasich that there is a silent majority of Ohioans who would prefer government compensation cost cuts over large tax hikes, we are working with multiple groups
for a:

“I am the Silent Majority Virtual Rally” on Thursday, March 17 from 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm.

You may be wondering what a “virtual rally” is. Well, because I know you are too busy working, taking care of your kids, and trying to get ahead, you don’t have time to drive to Columbus for a big rally. So, to make participating in this important event as easy and quick as possible for you, the “virtual rally” will consist of one roughly thirty second task during lunch.

Simply Send an E-mail, steps below:

(1) Place these three addresses for House Speaker William Batchelder, Governor Kasich, and the email used to make sure we get an accurate count of how many Ohioans participate (district69@ohr.state.oh.us; John@kasichforohio.com; imthesilentmajority@gmail.com) in the “To:” line,

(2) type “I am the Silent Majority” in the “Subject:” line,

(3) type “I support SB5” in the body of the email, and

(4) send the email anytime between 12:00 pm and 1:00 pm on Thursday, March 17.

That is it. Thirty seconds, 8 words, 3 addresses, 1 email, and the inbox ping of thousands of Ohioans making their voices heard. Freedom at its best!

If you really want to make our voices heard, please take a minute or so RIGHT NOW to forward this email to family members, friends, and business colleagues who you think might want to participate in America’s first-of-its-kind virtual rally. If you don’t speak up now, the labor unions and their push to raise taxes will be the only thing our elected officials hear. The time to act is now!

Follow us on Twitter @OLCPAC

Sincerely,

Chris Littleton
Co-Founder, Ohio Liberty Council

________________________________________________________________________

Rich Hoffman

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

Please Save Us Young People: Only The Mindless Will Follow!

There is without question a social engineering strategy behind the political left. Their ideas taken on their own merit are flimsy, and cannot withstand the test of time, they must, must recruit members of their rank from people who have difficulty reading, foreign immigrants trying to get the rest of their families into the country which creates an effective and loyal voting bloc, minorities that have been carefully nurtured into the welfare addiction, and the youth which aren’t old enough to know much because they don’t have the benefit of experience.

That’s why Van Jones below is pandering to the youth. He knows deep down inside that thinking people who can actually reason out the type of rhetoric he utters and won’t follow him. So he needs ground troops that are in a natural state of rebellion from their parent’s conservative ways that are seeking to create their own orbits with insubordinate behavior that provides the escape velocity from their childhoods to do so.

Such rhetoric is seductive to the weak mind, and most youth have not yet acquired strength.

What does it speak of a movement that requires mindless acceptance, or the sole benefit of a charismatic speaker? How deep are the roots of a movement that must capitalize on ignorance and naïveté? We can see the effect of this brain washing ability as thousands of idolizing media students studied Walter Lippmann in college and set them on a course which is obvious to this day.

Lippmann believed that the“governing class” must rise to face the new challenges. He saw the public as Plato did: a great beast or a bewildered herd – floundering in the “chaos of local opinions.” Thousands of those same media students, who now work for CNN, MSNBC, the Washington Post, the New York Times and many others carry out what they learned in their youthful drunkenness of the university. Lippmann’s philosophy has been eagerly embraced by left leaning professors to shape the minds of those young people in much the same way that Van Jones is attempting in the above clip.

But not everyone bought into the Lippmann idea. Some journalist approached the profession with an open mind, and formed their own opinion, and never lost the ability to think “critically.” Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your position, Fox News attracts those types of “critical” reporters, and the success of that network says everything. The public sees through the smoke.

Want proof? Have a look at this clip from the 9/12 Rally on Washington in September of 2009. Look how many people were there. Yet only Fox was covering it.

Even if Fox put the rally on, which they didn’t, so many people gathered in one place in Washington D.C. was news. Big news! But the networks and newspapers virtually ignored it, as if they hoped to wipe the incident from the minds of the public. Such an act is a form of collective censorship and this is right out in the open. The media was caught with their hands in the cookie jar on this.

There is a force from within our country to subvert us all and convert us into something else. Those that point it out will be labeled as “crazy” “conspiratorial” “delusional” and any number of names designed to discredit the messengers who attempt to wake up the masses.

Lucky for us all at least one media outlet attempted to hold the media role in the proper context, and for that we all have Bill O’Rielly to thank for it. As Fox News rose to power, it was Bill that set the pace with “real” journalism. And Fox built the network around his philosophy.

Now for people like Van Jones, Fox is a threat. Jones certainly isn’t the only one. But in their quest to expand the welfare state, immigration voting blocs and an ever more influential youth, people like him is ultimately doomed to fail.

Once those kids grow up and learn that everything Jones is saying is a lie, those kids will become the conservatives of their parents, and they’ll switch from MTV, to Fox News, unless they lose too many brain cells in the process to ever fully recover. For those types of people, they are lost beyond recovery. But fortunately for the human race, most of those people can be recovered from the depths of their liberal madness.

Rich Hoffman

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

The Sheep and the Lion: How much is public education worth?

There is a term called “going down the rabbit hole” that is used to understand abstract and deep concepts. Depending on how far down the rabbit hole you want to go can determine your resolve for understanding a problem. This article is a “big picture” view of going down a rabbit hole more than some people are willing to go in regard to public education and the value it has for society.

The following radio broadcast from Doc Thompson is very good, and comfortably sits on the edge of that rabbit hole, where even this much people are unwilling to go. But I offer it as an alternative to the text that follows. Or I offer it to help the rest of the text go down more easily. But beware, if you want to maintain any illusions about education, then turn away from this page immediately. I talk about some of my personal experiences again, partly because there has been much speculation. But the opinions will not be comfortable for the reader wanting to continue “not seeing.”

The first thing that teachers assume of school reformers is that they must not have done very well in school, or that they had a hard time in college, or that they are simply social outcasts that have some vendetta against public education. What they fail to consider, because such a thought is outside of their “bubble” of experience is that there is a portion of society that think for themselves and have seen the scam for what it is, deciding to not take part in the whole process.

In my case, I decided long ago that the system didn’t work. It never worked for me because I’ve never been happy in a follower position. I’ve always questioned authority, my entire life. In fact, in kindergarten, I missed several of my recesses for arguing with the teachers. It became apparent to me early on that education wasn’t so much about learning arithmetic, language, and art, as it was about learning how to take direction.

I have had great success in life by being a leader. To date, the only thing I’ve received from family, friends or “others” is a workbench vice I inherited from my grandfather when he died. Money, or money gained from property sales passed down through my family have never found their way to me, and on purpose. I resist any relationships where I take a passive role and where a gift can be used as leverage against me down the road.

Now to many people who may seem extreme. However, if you want freedom, you must have freedom of such predatory relationships. And, unfortunately teachers, by design, form a predatory relationship with their students the way the system is currently set up.

When I was younger, I will admit that there was a blood bath that followed in my wake. I spent a lot of time in court, in fights with other students, and in general trouble with officials in school. Much of that trouble came simply because I refused to submit to an authority figure. That’s it. I never looked for trouble. I just didn’t like authority figures and since socially, submission of some kind to authority is required, I was in for a constant barrage of trouble which found me.

It has never occurred to me that I was in the wrong for taking this position. It doesn’t take a brilliant mind to sit in one of the many parties that I attended and see the failure of public education. Many of the kids back then when speaking of Pink Floyd would proclaim, “Man, you have to be wasted to understand The Wall.” At those parties stoned classmates would watch MTV with awe as “We Don’t Need No Education” played displaying a bunch of kids being processed in a factory, faceless and being cast into a meat grinder. Such a metaphor was very similar to my own thoughts, but I never did drugs and I certainly wasn’t wasted. I went to parties back then to pick up girls that were, but I did not partake in that behavior.

If you want to understand a culture, study its music, and you will learn a lot.

You would think that many parents would have wanted their kids to spend their time with me. After all, I didn’t drink, I didn’t smoke, I didn’t use curse words, I helped people when I could, I was polite and well spoken. But I was also defiant, inquisitive, and perpetually skeptical. In fact there were two rules that people riding in my car had to live with when I was 16.  (And note that I did not have a shortage of people wanting to spend time with me.  It was the parents that didn’t want their kids around me.)  First, there was no smoking allowed. Second, we would not play Pink Floyd on my car stereo, because I understood the stuff all too well and thought it was depressing to meditate on such things, where many of the youth back then did. One of my best friends back then was told by his mother and father to stay away from Rich Hoffman. He’s not the kind of kid I want you to be friends with.

His mother’s preferences were the drug induced kids from the neighborhood, whose parents she knew. My friend became addicted to drugs and was lost eventually, but not because he was friends with me. If he had been friends with me, he wouldn’t have done drugs, or stolen from people. He wouldn’t have contracted a variety of STD’s and probably would have entered adulthood with his head on straight.

My head has always been on straight, even when authority figures wanted me to believe otherwise.

The next question that arrives is that why would authority figures wish to convince a person that they are in need of care. The answer to that is easy. Authority figures are perpetually in need of justifying their existence. Since their lives and careers are embedded in the lives of others, they are terribly insecure of people who don’t need them.

College wasn’t any different. When I was there, young people were more interested in the social aspects of college life than the scholastic and the whole thing seemed like a money pit to me. Professors were seeking to drag out studies that could be done in weeks into events that went on for months so they could charge $10 per credit hour or more. The charge alone for books was an obvious scam. That’s how it appeared to me, and I still feel that way.

I’ve lived a life full of education, but also free of authority figures. And I’ve had success in life when I became old enough to be sought after as a leader, because that is my natural impulse. I don’t wake up in the morning looking for power or influence. But when I’m in a collaborative effort with others, I am only comfortable in a leadership role. That’s my nature and I understand it.

So I understand the frustration people who have committed, and submitted their lives to such things as to my motives and their speculation of my back ground. The idea of cutting all ties into their lives that are corrosive and manipulative is a completely foreign concept to them and something they cannot fathom.

Even knowing that the public education system was seriously flawed, I sent my kids anyway. My wife always liked school, until she met me, and she felt our children should have school in their lives. I argued that the kids could learn faster if they took a more independent route, but I listened to her opinion on the matter. The result, my kids breezed through school. I taught them not to take the whole thing too serious and not to submit to any authority and they navigated through the experience very well without all the pitfalls that most kids go through regarding peer pressure and social-climbing.

The reason for this explanation is that there is a story in mythology that I learned a long time ago that I think about a lot. It goes something like this; a lion was separated from his parents and was discovered by a herd of sheep. The sheep took the lion in and raised it for many years.

The lion grew to full size and was roaming around in the herd with the other sheep where a pack of lions hunting the sheep saw the lion and called him over whispering.  “Hey, what are you doing? You’re roaming around with the sheep.”

All the Sheep trained Lion could say was, “Baaaaahaaahaaa.” Because his instruction came from the sheep all his life, he didn’t know any better.

The lions took the Sheep/Lion to the river and said, “Look at your reflection. You’re one of us. You’re not a sheep. You’re supposed to eat those creatures.”

The story goes on where the Sheep/Lion rediscovers his true identity and becomes in the end what he was meant to be.

Human beings are no different. We all are lions in sheep’s clothing. It’s a cultural phenomenon indicative of authoritarian culture created when humans moved from a nomad society to an agricultural society. Europe and all its problems are derived from attempting to maintain human beings in an agricultural society, including their attempt at education.

Those that settled the United States left that behavior behind in Europe in favor of a Lion’s life in the New World and it was so important to them that they’d risk their life to have it.

My oldest daughter and I had a long talk under the stars till about 3 AM one night a few years ago and she asked me what she was supposed to do with all the stuff I taught her. After all, it’s a fine line between enlightenment and insanity. The slopes to insanity are steep if you are not within the safety of the herd. It’s not that she questioned the truth of it, but co-existence with others becomes difficult when you insist on living awake when the people around you insist on being asleep.

I told her that most of the people who think in such a way as I do, end up going insane by their early 40’s, or they become abusers of drugs in order to maintain that reality to themselves against the current of sheep, that secretly wish the safety of the herd, so they turn to chemical abuse to numb them.

“How do you keep from going crazy?”

I smiled at her, “You have to start with being grounded to begin with. You read a lot and study other Lion’s that have lived full lives and witness how they did it. You don’t abuse alcohol or drugs or sub come to other human weaknesses. But you have to not compare yourself to the sheep around you, because relative to them, you will seem crazy. The life of a sheep and the life of a lion are completely different. The sheep grazes in the field, and travels in a pack. They mate and give birth occasionally. They run away when a predator comes near and if they live to old age, they die eventually as their bodies break away. The Loin travels in a pack when they find hunting that way more convenient, but they stay solitary animals most of the time. Like most cats, they are happiest when they are alone.”

That took the conversation into a different direction, the difference between dogs and cats.

I personally like dogs. They are always happy to see you. They are intensely loyal, even when you abuse them. Cats, they only come around when they want a lap to lay in. If they get mad at you, they’ll avoid you. They never seem to sink deep roots in their owner. They seem to choose their loyalty carefully and that loyalty leaves quickly if the relationship is strained. Those types of differences can be found in people too. Society expects dogs and the loyalty of them. But some people are just cats. We might sub consciously call those types a “cool cat.” I would make the psychological argument that what the nation is experiencing with Charlie Sheen right now is that very complex. It’s no secret that public characters like Snoop Dog, Charlie Sheen and Dennis Rodman are dear to the deep recesses of the human condition. Socially those characters are rejected, but when the doors are closed and the arms of a woman are wrapped around them, the truth is revealed.

To my observation of public education is that it fails at a fundamental level. It teaches our youth to be sheep and not lions. My view is taken in the context of philosophy, and I understand that many people in our society aren’t ready for that line of thought. They want to be sheep, and they want their kids to be sheep.

So the argument then becomes one of business. Can we afford the current form of public education? No. The way the unions have structured their contracts have turned the whole funding of education into a Ponzi scheme much like Social Security. The step increases that were negotiated require higher and higher taxes to maintain the funding, and we’ve hit the wall.

One of the benefits of being a leader type is that I don’t have the burden of appeasing any group. So I can look objectively at the situation and name the problems for what they are, because I’m not looking at any part of the problem with emotion. I already think the system is broken; I am not looking for ways to justify the behavior. And I have no illusion that by throwing more money at the situation that it will solve anything. All it does is push the wall a bit to delay the crash that’s happening. It’s hard for many people to see the wall because they don’t want to believe it’s there, because public education has become for them much more than basic education services. Sports provide the possibility of college scholarships, and school social events provide opportunities for young people to “interact” and discover themselves.

Teachers that truly believe they are the saviors of society are particularly arrogant in their thinking on this issue. But much of their work can be replaced with a computer in this new century, where the computer is ironically much more personable. I don’t say that out of a dislike of teachers, which I’ve admitted that I personally don’t like authority figures, but the idea of a solitary figure speaking to a class where the weakest link of the class sets the pace is archaic.

In truth, my dislike of public education was based on that one principle. I couldn’t stand the pace of the learning. I’m a person that enjoys doing things at a fast pace. And the classroom was always just too slow for me. Now I may be the exception, but it is apparent that it doesn’t work very well for other students either. The difference is other students were content to learn how to “game” the system, get their passing grades and move on to the next grade. Most of the time they forgot what they learned by the next semester because their goal was not to learn the material, it was to get a passing grade and advance to the next level.

When you learn to be a lion, a leader in the world, you will find that your services are always in high demand, because such people are rare when they are in great need. So career worries go away, where the sheep of the world are always concerned if the farmer will feed them, or if a predator will attempt to hunt them down and kill them, the lion doesn’t concern themselves with such matters. And thinking like a lion does not mean that I automatically support a sports team like the Cincinnati Bengals.

My favorite football team is the Tampa Bay Buccaneers so when my wife and I want to go to a football game, we fly down to Tampa to watch them play. It is more practical to me to fly 1000 miles to see a good team than to drive 20 miles to see a bad one. If I’m going to pay for the NFL experience, I’m going to enjoy it, and not just do what’s convenient. A few years ago, when we were waiting for a night game to start, we were killing some time at The International Mall, which is within walking distance to Raymond James Stadium, one of my favorite places in the world. We spent half an afternoon needlessly shopping and still had some time to kill before the gates opened, so we stopped by a very elaborate booth for Rosetta Stone Software located in the middle of the mall.

The attendant at the booth gave me a head set and computer and let my wife and I play with the foreign language software for several hours. When I finished, and we headed over to the game, I realized that the way we are currently learning foreign language and just about everything in public education is outdated. That Rosetta Stone Software had made learning much more practical and interactive, and that the only reason public school did not leap into this style of learning was because the teacher unions would stand in the way of that innovation.

They’d stand in the way because public education had become more about creating jobs than actually learning. The current focus was maintaining the system along the same fashion that education had been embarking on since schools were a one room building. The only thing that’s changed is the school became larger, but the teacher at the front of the room is the same, and it is no longer as necessary.

One of the arguments for this big system is that poor students don’t have access to computers and they need a teacher to help them, because they don’t have a family to take care of them at home. This is the way the unions sell their service now and why they insist on the current costly form of education. It has more to do with social structure and social ills, than actual educational performance, which shows in the students.

It’s easy for me to see all this because I wasn’t happy with the system to begin with. But I’m happy to pay my taxes and participate if the rest of the members of my community want it. And we do pay a lot in property taxes. But when I hear schools lie to people, and I see teacher unions manipulating the situation and attacking people for questioning their motives, then it changes the argument.

To participate in a system blindly costs money, not to mention social consequences. My view of those social consequences might be extreme to many, even though privately most people agree with me once they close their eyes at night and can read their thoughts across the backs of their eye lids. But the financial burden of the public education system needs to be broken down and restructured, and unions stand in the way of that, so that is the reason for the adversarial relationship. The more hate mail and comments I receive, the more convinced I am of the lack of merit in public education.

The intent behind the name calling, and the attempt to silence any critics are to continue to ask for more money to keep a broken system functioning. As I’ve established, I am an employer, and I’ve heard every possible justification and excuse from employees over the years that wish to convince me that they are special, and that they and only they can do a particular job. After several hundred of those statements you learn to see what truth is and what fiction is. As an employer you must have an understanding of the job you are asking people to do, otherwise you are guilty of not being able to make a proper assessment, and are 100% reliant on your employees to tell you how valuable they are. And they will try, and if you don’t know, they will take advantage of you 99% of the time.

With public education, I’ve been there and done that. I learned a lot more when I finally got out of public education because the barriers to learning were removed, and I was able to attack it at the fast pace I enjoy. I have had to provide instruction to people myself, and teach, lead and assess talent, so I understand what works and what doesn’t. And I’ve had success outside the classroom. Many of the professors and teachers that I’ve known over the years fit the description, “those that can’t do, teach,” meaning that people who can do are in the world working and producing, those who aren’t comfortable with producing stay in the safe world of academia, and they teach, or they attempt to be professional students. I have known more than a few of those types and have actually given a few of them jobs much to my frustration, because they are so timid. They tend to be the type of person that will stand at the side of a pool and stick their foot in to see how cold the water is. I’m the type that will jump in regardless of the temperature so they frustrate me to no end. But it takes all kinds of people to make the world go around, so I put up with them. The question is not whether or not those people have worth. They do somewhere. The question is are they worth six figures? No!

Public education if we look at it for what it is it’s for many people an opportunity for their kid to get a scholarship for higher education. For others it’s a day care facility, because parents are busy with their lives and don’t have anywhere to put their kids while they are at work. Let’s face it and call the situation what it is.

My goal is to see kids actually learn something. I think the whole idea needs to be turned upside down and rebuilt, because as I look around, the people functioning in the world around me are failing. The divorce rate is too high. The moral standards are too low. People’s understanding of politics is abysmal. Their understanding of geography is pathetic, some people actually don’t even know where India is! Their confidence in themselves is terrible and they pass that along to their children, which raises more insecure children. All these are social failures which to me start with a failure of public education, and more money does not solve it. We’ve poured a lot of money into the situation, and it has not worked.

It is easy to attempt to maintain the status quo by proclaiming that its critics “don’t like” education, or some other loose term. It would be expected for sheep to make vicious proclamations of the lion, because deep down inside, the sheep wish they had the courage to be lions, but they don’t. All that’s left is to hurl insults in an attempt to cover the fat life of the herd animal that just seeks more and more feed to provide nourishment to its virulent existence within the confines of the barn yard. My concern is the larger issue of actual performance as a primary concern, and secondly, of the financial stability, which is proven to be not well thought out.

The old games are no longer effective because the sheep in the barn yard have noisily protested for years and now we see that they are all fat and need to be sheered. And it is my hope that once we start doing the sheering that we will find beneath all the hair that some of those sheep are actually lions, and can return to their natural state and teach others to be lions and return the nation to what it started as, and avoid a fate of a depleted, crushed Europe full of glory from some ancient time while the future leaves it behind.

Unfortunately only leader types are able to see that far ahead. The sheep are only looking at their next meal, but the big cats, the lions lay perched in trees and look out over the savanna to what is far off and they will be the first to see what is invisible to everyone else.

Education needs reformed for more reasons than one and we will have it, because it’s what’s good for America, not just those that have built lives off it.

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: Doc Thompson

The Warrior of the Week is Doc Thompson. I could have made him that for any week prior to this week, because his work is exhaustive. For those of you that don’t know him, he’s the radio personality at 700 WLW from 9 to noon. He also still does his radio show in Richmond Virginia on 1140 WRVA from 3 to 6 PM. That’s two 3 hour radio programs which requires at least 6 to 7 hours of show prep each, reading newspapers, interviewing people, watching the news and taking notes and running things together with the program director, so just those two shows are big deals by themselves. But Doc doesn’t stop there.

He is also heavily involved in Tea Party business. He attends budget meetings at night for city government. He’s been active in learning about School Choice and has come to our meetings. He is extremely active, plus he answers over 200-400 emails a day, many of which he answers with care.

This coming week in addition to everything else he is hosting the Glenn Beck radio program on Tuesday March 8, 2011, 9-noon and Thursday March 10, 2011, 9-noon he can and should be thanked for his fair coverage of the S.B.5 Bill that passed the senate this past week. There were some powerful forces lining up to stop that bill. Some old school Republicans from the “machine politics” were leaning heavy on some of the Senate Republicans to turn away from S.B.5, and if Doc had not dedicated 9 or more hours to the topic over the week leading up to vote, I believe the bill would have failed in the senate.


That’s not to say that Doc Thompson was all one-sided. Doc gave coverage to both sides equally and asked the hard questions so the public could hear the debate, which is a valuable service to all of Ohio. It is not a question that the power of The Big One was being listened to in the offices of those elected officials in Columbus and Doc’s voice was carried clearly over the raving mob outside the State House windows. He was also able to land key interviews that not even the radio legend Bill Cunningham was able to obtain from Senator Shannon Jones. This sample goes on for over an hour and a half, but has the interview with Senator Jones, then goes on for another hour of union caller after union caller attempting to plead their case. It’s fantastic radio. Have a listen.

During last week Doc had on a protestor from the University of Cincinnati to speak against S.B.5. He was a student at the school who organized a rally against S.B.5 prior to the vote. The reason it is a significant interview is that Doc was very kind and fair to the young man, but after asking a number of tough questions, the protestor revealed on the air around the 16:30 minute mark that he was a socialist.

Not to be taken lightly, right after the socialist student, Doc had on Senator Scott Brown from Massachusetts almost seamlessly.

For that student to reveal that he was a socialist was important because the unions had been trying to defend themselves all week from radio personalities like Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh who were saying that the universities and union movements were swarming with socialist sympathizers. Even Newt Gingrich had received criticism for accusing President Obama for being a socialist. There are many people in our society that just aren’t ready to deal with the “socialist” word. Parents certainly don’t want to face the fact that they’ve spent much of their adult lives saving up small fortunes to send their kids to college only to be exposed them to socialist principles, so people who make such proclamations are called kooks.

But Doc didn’t call the kid a socialist. The kid called himself one, revealing what many of us already suspected. That kind of revelation on the air with half a million people listening over 38 states and part of Canada has an effect, and suddenly gives the protestors outside the State House a lot less credibility.

Doc could have taken the easy road, and just asked surface questions like the TV News would do, or newspaper interviews. But Doc let Ohio hear the truth behind the mobs from the lips of an organizer.

It is a pleasure to have Doc Thompson in Cincinnati. He is just getting started in this market, and if this is just a preview of what’s to come, I shudder to consider the implications of future influence as he continues to bring truth, justice and the American way to 700 WLW.

Rich Hoffman

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

Seeing Beyond the Headlights: Governor Kasich’s Press Conference on S.B.5 after it passed the senate.

It is interesting to hear the chants from unions and members of  left-wing of politics that we need to create jobs, not pick on the “working man” or “bust unions.”

Who creates the jobs? Government? The people chanting about we need to create jobs in Ohio really believe that somehow Governor Kasich is supposed to wave some kind of magic wand and create some jobs. What do you say to people who believe those kinds of things? All I can conclude is our education system either completely failed these people, or they learned all the wrong things when they were there.

GOVERNMENT DOES NOT CREATE JOBS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When they do, they screw them up and charge the tax payer for their lack of efficiency.

Here is Kasich at a press conference talking about the S.B.5 Bill and all the rumors and insecurities that have been initiated by groups like SEIU and others to discredit the procedure of passing the bill, in an attempt to erode public support.

What is bad about any of that? What don’t people understand about Governor Kasich’s press conference?Yet listen to these people? They have no understanding of economics. They are like people driving a car in the dark. They can only see as far as their headlights, and no further.

They don’t have to be able to see so far if they are unable to. That’s why we put the Governor in office, because he can see past the light of the headlights, and he’s not the only one. I know a lot of people who understand perfectly how S.B.5 saves money, brings jobs to the state and actually saves the system instead of destroying it. Those are people educated in business and understand how money works. Not Michael Moore types that think with some socialist economic policy that is completely invalid in the world outside of a college campus.

The people who will be hurt are those that have been “gaming” the system. They deserve to worry, because the state can no longer carry employees that are just “cruising through the system.” But for those that are truly hard-working, there’s a job for them in this new economy. And things will be better.

But you have to be willing to look beyond the light of your own headlights.

Rich Hoffman

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

The NFL Crises: Doc Thompson Attacks “Collective Bargaining” and wants to start a sports union!

With the NFL Labor Dispute looming the largest casualty of this “collective bargaining” issue between the players and the NFL owners is the fans.

Doc Thompson discusses many of the NFL issues and introduces the concept of a sports fan union to protect the fans from labor disputes.

Here are the issues involved in the NFL Labor dispute. You can see the original article here from John McClain.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/fb/texansfront/7454328.html

Key issues in the NFL labor dispute:

Q: What is the difference between a lockout and a strike?
A: The owners lock out the players. The players go on strike. The players went on strike in 1982 and 1987.
Q: What are the primary issues behind a lockout?
A: The NFL generates approximately $9 billion a year. The owners take $1 billion off the top for expenses. The players get 59.6 percent of the remaining revenue. The owners believe that’s too much. The owners want to take another $1 billion off the top. The owners also want an 18-game schedule and a rookie wage scale that would cap salaries for draft choices. No top pick would be guaranteed $50 million, as St. Louis quarterback Sam Bradford was last year.
Q: What happens when the lockout begins?
A: There can be no contact between players and their teams. They’re not supposed to communicate. No players will be signed, including rookies, and no trades can be made.
Q: What about players who are undergoing treatment for injuries?
A: Players are on their own, but teams were able to set up a place for players to undergo rehabilitation.
Q: What about players working out, lifting weights and doing what would have been organized team activities?
A: Players are on their own as far as finding a place to lift and work out. Eventually, they’ll practice on their own. When the lock-out ends, those in the best shape should start faster.
Q: How long is the lockout likely to last and could we miss games?
A: The NFL lost seven games in 1982 and four in 1987 because of player strikes. This time, both sides would lose a lot of money. Some owners are determined to get back a large portion of revenue that goes to players. The players will have to give something back.
Q: Will there be a draft in April?
A: Yes. Players aren’t union members until they sign and pay dues.
Q: Can drafted players sign?
A: No.
Q: Can other players sign?
A: No.
Q: When do players start losing money?
A: Those with roster bonuses in March won’t be paid. That’s more than $200 million. Players draw game checks over 17 weeks, starting when the regular season begins in September.
Q: Won’t the 500 players who’d be free agents and those who would have gotten the $200 million in roster bonuses force the union to make a deal?
A: They might try to, but they’ve been warned for two years to save their money. The union will do a deal when it believes it has the best one possible.
Q: What about the ruling this week that the owners can’t spend the television network money they’re getting?
A: A special master ruled in favor of the owners. The players filed an appeal. Federal Judge David Doty ruled in favor of the players, saying the owners can’t spend the money. For instance, owners need money to make payments on their stadiums, practice facilities, etc. They’ll have to find other revenue. The owners will appeal Doty’s ruling, which could take months.
Q: Will it help for the union to decertify?
A: Every team gave the union the right to decertify. Unions can’t sue their bosses. If there’s no union, the players can sue the owners and hope they win in court. That’s a risky business for both sides. If players decertify, they can always reform as a union.
Q: Is there any individual in the NFL who has the power and respect to influence both sides and help get a deal done?
A: In 1982 and 1987, Pittsburgh owner Dan Rooney played an instrumental role in helping settle the player strikes. But he’s older, and he’s the ambassador to Ireland and may not have another fight in him. Rooney said during the playoffs he was against the 18-game schedule because the players don’t want it, and he’d rather make less money than force it down the players’ throats. No wonder the players respect him so much. As it stands now, commissioner Roger Goodell is the most likely candidate because he’s respected by both sides.

john.mcclain@chron.com

The shame in all this discussion is that the fans just want to look forward to football. Most people who spend their Sunday afternoons drinking beer and watching football would be willing to give an arm and a leg to have the opportunity to play professional football, let alone be paid so well that they’d never have to work again.

The NFL situation better be solved soon, but I don’t have faith in a resolution. I personally think that the owners will lock out the season because the upfront costs of rookie players is just too great, and there isn’t any way the owners can guarantee that the money will find its way to veteran players. And my thoughts about “collective bargaining” are the same as they are for the public sector workers. I’m not a fan.

My advice to the players is to take what the owners offer and get on the practice field and start playing football, because the fans want their football. Give it to them!

Rich Hoffman

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

The Communist Manifesto: SEIU ATTACKS OHIO SENATORS WHILE THEY EAT!

 

Isn’t this a great quote?  Guess where it’s from, The Communist Manifesto. 

My wife and I have a secret hideaway that we like to dine at, hidden from the world and its worries.  Friday March 4th, 2011 was a glorious spring like evening complete with pouring rain, as we sat together in a cantina like setting waiting for our food to arrive.

She had been reading much about quantum mechanics and the latest theories of universal theory rejecting some of the work most recently proposed by Stephen Hawking and was discussing the topic vigorously as the aroma of our food cooking in the kitchen was overtaking our senses.  My mind however was on a discussion I heard on the radio between Bill Cunningham and Sheriff Jones earlier in the day where they were critical of Senator Jones and Governor Kasich for their aggressive support of S.B.5.   Their position is of the old Republican guard view of “gaming” the system as greedily as the Democrats over the years ever had and it is hard for some of those guys to admit it to themselves.  They are uncomfortable with this “new conservativism” and spent much of their discussion belittling the lack of political understanding of Kasich and the aggressive nature of Senator Jones, as if they hoped that they could somehow turn the tide of anger that has been building for a long time back into some manageable form. 

My mind was also on the Easy Street Café from Wednesday night where Senator Niehaus, Senator LaRose, Senator Bacon  along with several others were harassed by members of SEIU District 1199 led by Monica Moran for passage of the S.B.5 bill just hours before.   Monica stepped into that restaurant with 10 other SEIU members and began chanting at the Senators until the police had to arrive with a helicopter to whisk away the protesters. 

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/03/03/union-supporters-disrupt-gop-senators-restaurant-meal.html?sid=101

The owner of the restaurant had to endure pushing and shoving until the police came, and Moran was not apologetic.  In fact she was quite defiant saying, “The moment of discomfort Senate Republicans may have felt as a result of my expressing my opinion pales in comparison to the extreme discomfort and financial hardships that public employees will endure as a result of SB5.”

My wife and I ate our own food I thought about Moran’s statement.  I have absolutely no tolerance for bullying, and I couldn’t help but wonder how anyone brought up in America couldn’t see that the public workers using such strong-arm tactics for nearly three decades have painted themselves in this corner they find themselves in.   I find it amazing that so many Republicans are weak kneed, including Cunningham and the Sheriff when it comes to taking a hard-line on this issue, insisting on more collaboration, more political procedures, and really more of the same behavior that has delivered our nation to the precipice of destruction.

When Nancy Pelosi and her Congress under the urging of President Obama, where former SEIU head Andy Stern visited the White House several times a week, pushed through the Health Care Bill, and Net Neutrality, and the bail outs, etc, there were many in America that decided that a push back was in order.  That the bullying that had been going on for a long time had gone on for too long, and it’s time to set things straight. 

Senator Jones and John Kasich are doing what many people, me included, want.  I don’t want any collaboration with the type of people who will barge into a restaurant and shout profanity at Senators in an attempt to scare them into “proper legislation.”  That kind of behavior has no place in the American landscape.  It will take the bold actions of Kasich and Senator Jones to do the job. 

Senator Niehaus had to display boldness for removing Senator Sietz who was stalling the vote under the guise of “compromise” and many other measures to undo much of the damage that has already been done by the actions and influence of SEIU and the politicians they control.  The time for negotiation is long over; it’s been a one way street against the American tax payer from the inception of Executive Order 10988 under President Kennedy in 1962.  Since then, the unions functioning with authority have behaved like an organized crime element in our society.  And if politicians don’t fall in line they are intimidated and harassed until they change their views and therefore their votes.   Monica Moran was just reading from the company handbook and her followers truly believe they are wrapped in the flag of the United States fighting for worker rights. 

After the food was done, and our drinks were drained into our bellies, our date was far from over.  Check paid, tipped placed on the table, we left our cantina and proceeded to our other favorite spot, the most romantic place on the face of the planet………the book store. 

We usually spend two or three hours picking out our supply of books for the week, and my wife was intent to find more information on her quantum mechanical theories.  So I went to one of my favorite sections, philosophy.  There wasn’t anything new, I’ve read them all.  They did have the little blue book, The Coming Insurrection in stock which I read and despised as tripe from a bunch of French fools lost in their own elitism.   I saw a copy of my favorite book from Nietzche Thus Spoke Zarathustra which Hitler would distort under the assistance of Nietzche’s power hungry sister while her brother suffered from insanity shortly after the book was completed.   There was also a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, also written by someone who suffered a major intellectual breakdown enduring electro shock treatment to “cure” him of his thoughts.  Zen was written about 5 years later.  Great book, but nothing new there for me, so I headed to the Social Science section. 

In the Social Science section, again I have read many of them.  There is of course all of the Glenn Beck books.  Wonder why they are so popular?  They are right next to all the liberal books; in fact Ed Shultz’s book was right next to Glenn’s.  There was one copy of Ed’s book with 7 of Glenn’s book Broke.  I asked the attendant if the reason was because Ed’s book was selling like “hot cakes.” 

She said, “No, we’ve had that copy since August.” 

I asked her about Glenn’s book.

“We just got those in on Monday.  Can’t keep them.” 

I took a mental note and continued to look over the titles looking for something new.  There are all the Fox people, Bill O’Rielly, the Judge, Morris, Ingraham, all of them selling well.  They must be doing something right.  I saw some liberal books, The Audacity of Hope was there, the cover was torn and looked like it had been looked through a lot, but not purchased, and had experienced another lengthy shelf life.   What becomes clear when traveling through a book store when all the covers are slickly done by professional book publishers and editors is that Americans vote with their wallet.  Once the message gets out in the world of competition the better argument will win, and people will buy that product.  People bought President Obama’s Audacity of Hope when they thought they were reading the book of American’s first black president.  Not someone who was a mouth piece to powerful union interests.  They rejected the idea and the sales have dropped off.  Compare that to Glenn Beck’s An Inconvenient Book,published in 2007, a year before Obama’s book. 

“How often do you order this book?” I asked the attendant.  I noticed there were five of them on the shelf. 

“Once a month,” she said.  “We usually order about 10 at a time. 

My wife found me in the isle and informed me she was going to be a while.  She was having a tough time with her selections. 

I told her to take her time, that there wasn’t any hurry.  As she left my eyes fell on a book of evil, one I read years ago and there it was on the shelf with a new, hip cover designed to entice young hippie impersonators, The Communist Manifesto. 

This version of The Communist Manifesto was just over a hundred pages by the time you read through the forwards and introductions.  So I stood and read the book again while I waited for my wife over the next hour and a half.  And when I got to that last page I thought it was particularly revealing the line they chose to place there, “forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.  Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution.  The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.  They have the world to win!  Working men of all countries unite!”

Suddenly the behavior of Monica Moran doesn’t seem so out of place, if you take it in the context of The Communist Manifesto.

I put the book back on the shelf and thought about what I had just read. 

The attendant came around and asked me, “Are you going to buy it?”

I gave her a disgusted look.  “Hell, no.  I have to go home and take a shower now that I’ve touched it,” I said half-joking.  The girl was a younger girl in her early twenties.  “Tell me something, does this book have any appeal to you?”

She looked at it and said, “The cover is pretty cool.  I’ve heard it talked about by my literature professor in college.  I don’t know.  I think I probably would read it if I was pressed for time and had to do a report on a book.  It’s short and would probably get me some points with the professor because of the subject matter.”

I smiled and nodded knowingly.

The girl looked self conscious.  “Did I say the wrong thing?”

“No, you answered perfectly.” 

My wife was back with an arm full of books.  “I couldn’t make up my mind.”

I just smiled as we proceeded to the counter; my mind was on what the attendant had said. 

The Communist Manifesto is a book for fools and lazy minded youth that lack true worldliness.  It’s designed for the masses because the intent is to create an insect like response to arms, to overthrow the establishment and create a communist world draped in fairness.  It’s a naïve notion born first from Plato’s Republic then glorified in Sir Thomas More’s Utopia written in 1516.  The book has power because it does two things, it’s easy to read because it’s so short, and it appeals to the lazy. 

Capitalism is for competition, but for it to work everyone needs to have a hunger for competition.  Competition brings out the best of the best, and gives those who aren’t the best something to reach for.  It is obvious that one of the imperfections of capitalism is that it leaves behind the lazy, because the lazy do not wish to work in order to better themselves and compete.  To the lazy, the corporations will always be evil entities, because they represent difficulty in competing with others that are “competitive.”  To those lazy citizens communism will always be attractive because it is far easier to hide in the masses under a collective association than to stand as an individual which is how America was founded. 

The Tea Party shows that groups that associate themselves with individuality can come together and work as a unit and function socially as the Constitution intended.  The philosophy that produced The Constitution has produced a successful country, the United States, where we have such a rich and diverse society that it is the only place in the world where all the races of the world actually work together without tribal warfare and even our poor are well off compared to the rest of the world.  The American system works better than anywhere in the world with no exceptions. 

Communism has only produced misery everywhere it’s been implemented.  Everywhere!  It is a half cocked idea created by a mad man soaked in poverty.   He pulled together information from the British Museum to construct his theory along with Friedrich Engels study on the working class struggles.  Marx was hardly a popular person.  You can tell a lot about a person based on who comes to their funeral.  Well, Marx had 11 people at his funeral.

When unions discovered that Marx’s short little book could unite the sectors of society that didn’t read much and tended to have the hobby of drinking, eating and pursuing women, the simplicity of The Communist Manifesto had a great deal of power.   This helped give rise to the Labour Party in England by the 1920’s which destroyed England as an imperial power, which was the goal. 

It should be remembered that the United States broke away from England to avoid imperial control, and our capitalism worked were England was an imperial tyrant.  The United States never sought to become an empire, which is the system Marx studied.  There wasn’t enough data in the mid 1850s to provide any data on capitalism in the United States without empire status. 

But what did the Labour Party in England do to their country?  Well, I have friends in England so I know firsthand.  Also, my son-in-law is from England, and when he found out what kind of opportunities were available to him in American, he wasted no time coming here and working his butt off so he could provide my daughter with a good life.  In England, there weren’t any opportunities for a kid his age.   The townhouses in the country are incredibly expensive.  They aren’t creating any new jobs because nobody is locating there.  It was a big deal to him to see a McDonald’s so close to our house.  He had to go to London to see one.   But they aren’t producing anything and exporting anything.  The Democratic Socialist Party, (the Labour Party) shut down the country and created the kind of European socialism that President Obama and others want to bring to the United States. 

I don’t want that in my country.  I want NOTHING to do with it.  And I want NOTHING to do with ANY unions.  Period.  They were created with socialist intent, and socialism does not work. 

Now, for those that don’t understand how I went from talking about communism to socialism, it’s because socialism is the gateway to communism.  Here are the definitions provided by http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_difference_between_socialism_and_communism

” Socialism is the idea that the working class, the class that produces the profits, the wealth, the cars, houses, planes, steel, should take over and run things collectively, democratically, for the benefit of the majority (who also “just happen” to be workers too).

Communism is the idea that society should not have classes – exploiters and exploited oppressors and oppressed, and so on. ”

  • Socialism generally refers to an economic system, while communism refers to both an economic and political system.
  • Socialism seeks to manage the economy through deliberate and collective social control.
  • Communism seeks to manage both the economy and the society by ensuring that property is owned collectively, and that control over the distribution of property is centralized in order to achieve both classlessness and statelessness.
  • Both socialism and communism are based on the principle that the goods and services produced in an economy should be owned publicly, and controlled and planned by a centralized organization. Socialism says that the distribution should take place according to the amount of an individual’s production efforts, whilst communism asserts that goods and services should be distributed among the populace according to individuals’ needs.

Collective bargaining is a form of socialism that has been perpetuated by communist sympathizers.  That’s not anybody on Fox News saying that.  It’s not Glenn Beck, or Rush Limbaugh or anyone else.  They are just stating the facts and history that is available to everyone.   For too many years we’ve allowed these parasites of philosophy to attempt“European Style” socialism to America and we’ve all just let it happen.  We haven’t taken pride in ourselves and defended our way of life properly so those groups that want to bring about socialist ideas took us for granted. 

Republicans are traditionally as I mentioned regarding Bill Cunningham and Sheriff Jones, conservatives that align themselves with other conservatives and built business and helped create laws.  They tended to be nice, God-fearing people.  But on their watch, these parasites which hold The Communist Manifesto in such high regard have reigned free from impunity.   Many of those Republicans are guilty of what they are accused of, being out of touch and spending too much time on the golf course, and they are partially guilty of letting these labor unions get out of control.  So it’s not just the labor unions fault.  Unions are made up of common, everyday people who are more interested in what Charlie Sheen is doing, or whether or not Lindsey Lohan has on any panties when she gets out of a car.  Such minds are easy to fool and they have been fooled by power-hungry manipulators like SEIU, and the AFL-CIO and the NEA .  Those unions made pay good through collective bargaining which allowed the lazy of our culture to continue to be lazy.  It allowed them to get what they wouldn’t get in normal competition.   And Republicans, the same Republicans that took a soft stance on S.B.5 let them do it because they didn’t want to think about the larger problem.  Those Republicans were lazy themselves taking for granted that the United States would always be here, and that threats to our way of life existed on foreign shores.  They took the labor movement as pests that had to be appeased and went back to their golf game.  So they are guilty too, and still are!

But the urgency we are seeing now comes from a new group of conservatives that are not looking at long political careers, golf games, and fancy dinners with powerful people.  In many cases like Kasich in Ohio, and Christie in New Jersey they are already successful and are not looking at being two term governors, and that’s how it’s supposed to be.  Be bold, and fix our problems.  If the people don’t like it, let them change things with a vote in the next election. 

S.B.5 is not Health Care Reform.  It’s actually the opposite.  S.B.5 is about ripping control from the state and putting it in the hands of communities where it belongs.  It’s not creating more central control like Health Care did.  If the passage of S.B.5. seems aggressive, well that’s because it is.  Time is running out.  There isn’t time to sit down with a bunch of labor leaders and “collaborate.”  That is how things were done in the past and it hasn’t worked.   The union strategy is to just stretch out the negotiation process until public opinion turns against the Republicans.  That’s how Democrats and unions have beaten the crap out of Republicans for years.  That’s why those idiots in Wisconsin fled to the border, because it’s their “mode of operation.”  By delaying the Wisconsin vote, the unions hope to turn the public against Scott Walker, only this time Scott Walker isn’t putting his finger in the air and checking the wind direction.   He’s doing what he thinks is right. 

So of course when Shannon Jones introduced S.B.5, and there was three weeks of testimony, Kasich knew he needed to implement his changes quickly so he can fix all the holes in Ohio.  Everyone played fair and by the process, but they didn’t allow themselves to get bogged down, deliberately.  And Senator Sietz, the rock solid Republican that asked Strickland to lead last year, was one of the Republicans from yesteryear that helped create the problem.  He helped legitimize the labor movement that is intent on implementing a new social order.  Not the rank and file members, they just want a pay check.  But the leadership is certainly after a larger political agenda and that is not acceptable.  So I am deeply proud of Senator Niehaus for not allowing Sietz to stall the vote and play politics with S.B.5. 

Timing is important.  All across this state school levies are threatening to break the backs of property owners everywhere, and once S.B.5 is signed into law, school boards will have a tremendous amount of ability to control their costs and take those levies off the ballots.  Schools like Little Miami can renegotiate contracts and become solvent again, and that’s just the beginning.

Kasich’s motto is moving at the speed of business, and that’s what he’s doing.  Let the unions put the issue on a ballot in November.  Because Kasich will have by then put Ohio on a successful path and if the voters decide to go backwards, so be it.  It won’t be because our Governor didn’t do the job.  It’ll be because Ohioans failed to recognize a threat and take responsibility for the condition of their state.   There won’t be any slack-jawed politicians to blame this time, only a preference for the status quo. 

My wife and I closed out our evening with details I won’t reveal on these pages.  But I personally stayed up till the small hours of the morning reading and thinking. 

This is a battle not between left and right, young and old, rich or poor, but of those that truly want the American way of life, and those that simply want a “kick back.”  And both sides are guilty of playing that game. 

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
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Lebanon Gets to Go First: Budget Cuts to Avoid More School District Taxes

Where many people have arrived at in their view of public education is that they believe that the money they are spending currently is a waste of money. The kids don’t seem to be learning anything significant, and the costs just keep increasing. Many people like me want to see some new options. I’m not shy about it. I don’t like the results of public education. I’m happy to pay my fair share for the sake of the rest of the community, but I make a living saving companies money, so it is impossible for me not to sniff out extreme waste when it is so very obvious. And the only reason I get involved is because these wasteful public education organizations are asking me for money, money that comes from my property value, which to me is the same as attempting to rob me while at the same time telling me it’s for my own good.

Doc Thompson seems to feel very similar and talks about it on his radio show at 700 WLW.

As the school boards all across this state prepare to blindly look to the future and campaign for levy passage in order to throw more money into public education in the name of “helping children,” a new chip is being placed on the table to curb those uncontrollable expenses.

Once S.B.5 signed into law, school boards will have the ability to bring down their costs immediately, which means they can drive down their labor costs finally. My guess is that many of these school boards will stall making big decisions and hope that S.B.5 is put on a referendum and defeated in the fall of 2011 so they can avoid any tough decisions. But I have a warning for them that choose to play the game that way………. it will be remembered that the opportunity to substantially lower your costs was put before you, and you did not take advantage of it.

For school districts that plan to play the stall game, and mindlessly ask for yet more school levies, there are further school reforms coming that will guarantee that you will see a declining student body population, such as School Choice and online courses, as options are provided to more and more parents to put their child in alternative forms of education.

The teachers union is aware of this threat to their control. The article below is intent to raise concerns with parents thinking about alternatives, such as online schooling. The lobby campaign against those reforms are already forming. Check out this from The Pulse Journal. Read the whole article here. http://www.pulsejournal.com/news/local-news/skipping-school-can-land-students-parents-in-court-1097694.html

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Skipping school can land students, parents in court

Kids learn hard way, with truancy comes consequences

By Eric Schwartzberg, Staff Writer Updated 10:36 AM Friday, March 4, 2011

WARREN COUNTY — A growing number of students in Warren County are making up time missed in the classroom with time spent in the courtroom.
Truancy rates in the county continue to climb as school districts become more vigilant about reporting unexcused absences. Last school year, more than 5,254 individuals were part of the Warren County Truancy Intervention Program, up from 5,215 in 2008-09 and 5,099 in 2007-08.
Bethany Cole, 16, of Lebanon, started skipping assigned online lessons in 2007.
“I got on virtual (school) in seventh grade and took it for a free-for-all,” she said. “The work was hard and I just didn’t want to do it. I wanted to play with my friends and have fun.”

______________________________________________________________________

 

Translation is this, if you are a working parent and you think your kid can take online courses to get through school, you as a parent may find yourself in trouble with your country Truancy Intervention division, and may have to go to court. It’s a fear tactic to keep people from considering reforms. In the article, it is implied that young Bethany Cole needs a teacher to keep her in line. That’s the intent of the article.

I read the paper every week, and I haven’t seen much on this topic until S.B.5 passed the senate this past week. I know that one of the reforms that will benefit from S.B.5 is coming from State Rep Bill Coley’s online class bill passed during 2010, moving away from brick and mortar class rooms.

Those reforms will happen; it’s already in the works and is signed into law. This reform happened under Governor Strickland. The unions know it, so they will attempt to plant fears in parents from attempting any school reform. So there will be many more fear tactics attempted by the union to attempt futilely in keeping the world as it’s always been for those unions, but to no avail. The old games will not work any more.

Now there will be those that will accuse me of reading too much into the timing of the above article by Eric. All I’ll say to you is that you are naive and don’t understand the process if you think the timing of that article is not intentional. Such games are no longer going to occur with impunity. I’m not the only one looking at things like this now. School district budgets are going to have to change and adapt because competitive options are going to be implemented in education.

For the Lakota School District I have put out a plan for dealing with their budget deficit issues. Check it out here.

All districts should demand that the unions come to the table and reduce their wages proportionally taking a pay cut to bring their costs to the budget revenue supplied by the community. At Lakota I proposed a 30% cut that would instantly generate 27 million dollars. No further levy would be required, and no lay-off of teachers. All courses could still be offered as they always have. The only thing that would change is teachers would be paid less, something more in line with everyone else in the community. They are paid right now 62K per year. A 30% across the board reduction would make the average 43K per year. The median income in West Chester, which is within the Lakota School District, is $97,971. If you don’t know what median means, median income is the amount which divides the income distribution into two equal groups, half having income above that amount, and half having income below that amount. Mean income (average) is the amount obtained by dividing the total aggregate income of a group by the number of units in that group. The means and medians for households and families are based on all households and families. Means and medians for people are based on people 15 years old and over with income. In short for the purpose of statistics in this case it is a husband and a wife working making $48,985.50 each. In Liberty Twp, which is the other Twp in the Lakota District the median income is $88,105 which divided by two is $44,052.50 per working resident. Many of the people working in the Lakota School District have college degrees and advanced degrees. Such measures do not guarantee automatic pay increases of 70K to 90K per year as the teaching profession believes. School boards, asking teachers to live within the wages of the community are not unreasonable and needs to be implemented immediately. I hate to use teachers in this example, but they do make up a majority of the labor costs. Administrators, many of which are well over the 80K wage range must be looked at for their usefulness. Do they contribute directly to the education of children or are they just cruising through the system? School boards are well aware of who adds value and who doesn’t, and needs to act on that information to bring costs in line. There will of course be employees that will threaten to leave if they are asked to take a pay cut. Well, let them go, because where they are going will have to do the same, and if they are dumb enough to leave a good school district for another just because of money, then they aren’t worth the money to begin with because they are not in the profession for all the right reasons.

Now my primary occupation is bringing costs down in business. It is very hard to sit across the table from someone and tell them that they aren’t worth as much money as they believe they are. It is very, very hard. But a good manager will see through the tears and the hard emotions to do what’s right for the company, because it is the company that provides revenue to all its workers. So the health of the company is very important and cannot be top heavy with excess costs. It’s for the good of the upset worker that proclaims that they are not paid enough, to restrict them for the health of the company that they work for in order to protect their job over the long run.

These unions and school districts that have been run by the unions won’t like stepping back and will attempt any kind of emotional argument to proclaim why teachers and administrators are worth 30% more than every other profession. They’ll throw out all kinds of numbers but the reality is that they don’t know what is going on outside of their specialized bubbles. They have for years been their own management ruling over the elected school boards and have given themselves outlandish pay increases without regard for reality.

For those members of the unions the warning to them is this, drag your feet and fight the process all you want. Work hard to get S.B.5 on a referendum and overturned by the voters in November if you want. Try all you want to convince tax payers to keep throwing money in your direction, because what will happen within years, not decades, but years, is the entire system will go bankrupt. Those superintendents and teachers that are close to retirement won’t care. They will hope to hold off the tide until their retirements and they can escape the system with their wheel barrel of money. But for those of you that are in your late 30’s and 40’s, you’re in big trouble, because the system will collapse well before you get to retirement.

Don’t believe me, I wrote it down here for all to see forever, so prove me wrong in the future? At Lakota in 2003 the average wage at Lakota was 48K per year. In 2011 it is as we said 62K. There was one levy approval and two strike threats for more money and benefits over an eight year period and the average wages went up by 14K per year.

I use Lakota because that’s a district I’m failure with. But similar circumstances can be found in virtually every school district in Ohio. I am envious that Lebanon will be the first to be able to use the benefits of S.B.5 to avoid a levy all together. Because now their school board will have the tools to truly bring their costs in line and avoid putting the tax payers through a levy. They will have the opportunity to teach all the districts in Southern Ohio how to proceed in such a process and will always be known as the first to do so. Because of S.B.5, there is no reason for a levy, as planned. The school board will now have the power to regulate their labor costs, and that is an exciting prospect for the tax payers.

Little Miami is in the same situation. They are now able to deal with regulating their costs in ways they never dreamed of, and if they have the courage and commitment, can save their district.

But to those that those union types that are clinging to the past, and hoping to press upon communities to pass more levies and further the tax burden on property owners, you are in for a hard lesson. Calling people names because they don’t want to raise taxes on themselves will no longer work. The days where you have twisted the arms of communities are over. S.B.5 is not a radical right-winged conspiracy against the left. It is an urgent attempt to operate on a cancer that is eating away our public education system and restoring balance to local communities from the centralized power of union influence. And I S.B.5 is not used by school boards, or if voters in Ohio vote the bill down in a referendum then the system will bleed itself dry soon and nobody will have anything.

And when that day comes, don’t say you weren’t warned and that people didn’t stand up and attempt to save it, because we did. And the unions stood in the way and caused their own demise, because they were too stupid and arrogant to see that they desperately need the operation.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
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White Blood Cells: The Mystery of the Tea Party

The budget battles are waging across the county, most recently in the states drawing a hard-line in the sand, such as Ohio, Wisconsin, and Indiana, trying desperately not to become the next California. The most intense battle hasn’t even arrived yet however, and that is the battle at the Federal level, where tax and spend liberals like President Obama, and Harry Reid are coming up against a new element that runs deeper than typical, placid conservative Republicans. That new element is the Tea Party, referred to by the media, and all those rampant tax and spend happy politicians, as Tea Baggers.

The Tea Party has brought an element to the political landscape that is difficult for the establishment to understand. Greta Van Susteren of Fox News recently attempted to get her mind around the Tea Party ideal and interviewed several people who tried to understand how a movement as large as the Tea Party is, can function without a leader. The left, who can’t function without a leader, is perplexed as they reach for icons like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. It’s not about them. If they were removed from the discussion there are hundreds of capable people waiting patiently if needed. The real heart behind the movement cannot be seen in such terms.

The best way to explain the Tea Party movement is that you have to consider the United States of America as a human body. It has a life of its own, eating, breathing and interacting with other nations. Now we all know what happens when a body gets sick. We don’t feel well, our temperature may increase, and we may fill chilled, weak, and have a runny nose. When we have a cold we tend to lay down for a bit, take off work and let our immune system fight off the virus. Such sicknesses might be called in America as “recessions.” Our immune system is the election process, and given time, minor illnesses can be overcome.

But there are other viruses and diseases that cannot be easily overcome by our immune system. Viruses like AIDS actually disguise themselves as healthy cells in the body till they are strong enough to attempt to take over the healthy cells in a body.

Cancer is the same kind of subversive disease that hides quietly in the body till it sees an opportunity to strike, and take over the surrounding tissue. We count on our White Blood Cells to identify a disease and to kill it, before it has an opportunity to take over and kill our body’s tissue.

Watch this video of a white blood cell chasing bacteria. Notice that the white blood Cell does not take time to watch TV, or eat at McDonalds. Such concerns are completely irrelevant to the life of a white blood cell. Yet, study the conscious movement of the cell, it is aware of the threat to the body and it is taking action to protect that body.

The United States of America, if looked at like a human body is plagued with many cancer cells attempting to destroy the tissue of the American body. To the cancer cell, this process is not a bad thing. The cancer cell just wants to live like any other cell. The quest for life is what all life shares. But the white blood cell is dedicated to protecting the body from such intrusions so a conflict is expected; we often refer to our immune systems as “fighting off a disease.” We expect it as a natural occurrence. But the cancers that we have in the American body have penetrated our education institutions, so they train the new cells of our body to duplicate the cancer cells. They have penetrated our political system, so as to infect all the cells there to become corrupt and distorted. They have penetrated our families, so the production of strong white blood cells cannot occur so there is no defense in the body to resist them.

Some white blood cells are aware of the cancer cells, and are attacking them directly now. And that is what you might call the Tea Party. The white blood cell is void of attention, concern for power, and greed. That is unless it has been corrupted by a cancer cell or other disease. We know many politicians on Capital Hill that have been corrupted in this way by the disease of “lobby influence.”

But most of the Tea Party people are as pure to a white blood cell in our society as we have to offer. They are selfless defenders of the body called America. They don’t expect financial compensation, powerful positions, or disproportionate amounts of wealth. They are unified by a common cause, and that is the preservation of the body America.

For that reason, the white blood cells called “The Tea Party” do not need a leader to tell them where to go or what to do. All they need to know is what the cancer cells look like, and to attack them the way America expects them to in order to restore the body to health.

The white blood cell is often out-numbered and must take on larger, much scarier cancer cells and bacteria, such as was seen in the video. They will often be outnumbered. But the white blood cell more often than not prevails and life continues for the healthy body. The body can only be measured by its health depending on the strength of its immune system, or otherwise, based on its ability of white blood cells to destroy attackers. This is important because a body is always under attack from foreign invaders.

In America, diseases that the white blood cells called The Tea Party are on the lookout for are socialism, which consumes healthy growth of the body’s tissue by cutting off the flow of blood in the body. Blood to America is its corporations. Other diseases are trickster cells that attempt to weaken the resolve of the white blood cell by disguising itself, such as AIDS. In America such comparisons are in the body’s lack of ability to embrace religion, social norms, and healthy living habits. Such trickster cells will attempt to kill off the white blood cell population with unhealthy pointless endeavors so the resistance is not in place for disease growth. Greed is a specific kind of disease that might be found in the union movement where those cells expect larger amounts of substance to maintain their own existence, tricked by diseased cells into behavior that puts their own lives at risk by overconsumption. This behavior takes away the body’s ability to furnish its other white blood cells with proper nourishment which inhibits healthy growth.

The Tea Party is doing the job expected by the Constitution. The spending habits of government now must be looked at as a disease. And all elements that are attempting to crush our American body must be dealt with. There is no longer time to have the type of compassion that allows cancer cells to live next to healthy cells because we now know with clarity that the cancer cells will 100% of the time attempt to take over the healthy cell.

That leaves just one question. Where do you fit in? Are you a cancer cell, or a white blood cell?

I know what I am. And I know many Tea Party people who are pure white blood cells. The goal of this site is to identify cancer cells and attack them so that we can return to a healthy body, because there is so much cancer in this body we are trusted to protect, that we need to relearn what the diseases are, and what the healthy cells look like, so that the epic battle to overcome our sickness can be resolved and our America can return to health.

Where do you stand?

That also brings up the logical question many have leveled at me. Am I a white blood cell Tea Party guy?

I name this site after a term I wrote about in 2004 called a Overmanwarrior, which was in my mind before there was a Tea Party. I am, as a person most happy in conflict. I am not a turn the other cheek, peace-loving type of person. I respect people who are, and many in the Tea Party reflect that position which I support.

Since I am one of those types that do find myself in conflict, usually under the radar, I operate as I have for many years, alone, so not to incriminate the people around me that I care about. But my best friends are just to the left of my ideas and those are the Tea Party white blood cells that understand what’s important and what to do about it when they see the threat to that importance.

I would consider myself a white blood cell that will 100% of the time take on the largest diseases without endangering my friends. And such endeavors are not the types of battles that peace-loving people are best at. So we all have our role in curing the diseases of the body. My role is different, but very similar. It is just a variation of the white blood cell role intended for the most vicious cancers.

That’s all I’ll write about that role since further revelations will reveal the strategy to the diseases who read my site every day. As I said, the Overmanwarrior role from my 2004 book is based more on fact than fiction. And that’s all I’ll say. But it is a kind of ultra-white blood cell.

The best writers write what they know about. I’ve been doing this kind of thing for a long time, and I am relieved to see that there is now help which I welcome with enthusiasm.

If there is anything we’ve learned from our first 200 year history in the United States it’s that having checks and balances of elected representatives are not quite enough in this American experiment. Waiting from election to election to act is not enough. What is needed in the body of America are those interested in fighting off disease as soon as they show themselves and keeping those elected representatives honest with diligence, so those political representatives don’t buckle under the temptation of disease to become corrupt and work against the body of our nation. Such a thing should never happen again once America’s immune system kicks in and restores our health once again so the real American dream can be experienced by our descendents.

Rich Hoffman

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