Tag: Down the Rabbit Hole

Jon Husted, Mike DeWine and Amy Acton, Don’t Lecture Us: Government tampering in a free market is the cause of all the misery

Friday was a stunning day, the whole week has been for all of us of course, but I know something about Jon Husted, the Lieutenant Governor in Ohio to Mike DeWine and he shocked me with a lecture about behavior in the press conference he did with the governor and the health freak Amy Acton hinting that Ohio might be next to submit to martial law if businesses didn’t behave themselves. I’ve met Jon on several occasions and have thought of him as a Tea Party conservative, and he was part of the way that the Republican Party sweetened the deal of getting behind the rino-at-best, Mike DeWine in the last election. But Jon sounded like some communist leader of some third world country right from the capital of Ohio and it was shameful. Despicable from a person who should know better. Where is the Jon Husted that we all know and love? Listen dude, we don’t need a lecture on proper behavior by some government official. Most of the reason people are suffering is due to the inaction of our leadership in the state and that isn’t something that you get to pawn off and lecture to us about how we should behave or when. It was Ohio government led by Amy Acton that has overreacted to this Covid-19 crises and put everyone at each other’s throats. It was mismanagement of the governor’s office that started this chain reaction all across the country and you have only yourselves to blame. President Trump promoted social distancing, you idiots took it 20 steps further and now the nation is in a competition not to get back to work, but to how close to martial law they can push it until people break and start fighting back against the government. The press conference was a disaster to say the least.

Here’s the problem, the whole driver of this extreme social distancing measure is to slow the spread of the virus Covid-19, because there is a fear, (not a fact) that hospital beds will be in short supply and government wants to manage the panic. But in so doing, you have created massive panic, really bad panic. So bad that I had to waste my time going to Wal-Mart with my wife last night to get food for the weekend because she was too scared to go by herself during the day while I was working—working to undo a lot of the mistakes this state government has placed on top of us economically. Supply chains all across the country are closing down because their states have declared stay home orders and its wrecking everything. The last thing I want to do on a Friday night is go to Wal-Mart because my wife was in such a panic that she was worried about being attacked over bread. And as I walked the empty aisles, caused by our Ohio government, the other people were also just as terrified—afraid to talk to each other, walking around with masks and afraid to make eye contact—and here we get a lecture about being civil from the Lieutenant Governor of Ohio on proper conduct. Are you kidding me? Wal-Mart closed at 8:30 PM on a Friday night, it felt a lot like we were living in a communist country, limited options, short supplies, dead spirited people—empty ambitions—all in just one week of activist Ohio government sticking its nose in business it didn’t belong in.

The hospital shortage of any kind is due to government interference. With every regulation is a barrier to capitalist response to any crises. The reason more people are not in the health care business to provide for surge protection from some virus outbreak is because government is too far involved. Medicaid expansion from the last liberal governor John Kasich is one of those bad decisions, where providing services has a cost that many potential doctors don’t want to deal with. Medicine should be as common as food. Government doesn’t decide how many fast food places are put on the corner of a highway exit, and it shouldn’t be tampering with the market of healthcare in any way. Because it does through much regulation, and the unions attached to the medical industry, it is slow to react to the needs of the public and the lack of innovation has provided an artificial constraint. That constraint is why we must worry about not having enough hospital beds for a virus surge. If the free market were more allowed to function in the field of medicine, we’d have a lot more options and wouldn’t have to shut down our state economy because of a shortage of hospital beds.

But who says we have a shortage of hospital beds? Amy Acton? She’s the person getting her information around the world from all these climate radicals who are using computer models to tell the story of an outbreak that they want to see happen, for their own political reasons. Why in the hell are you guys listening to her—because she’s a “professional?” Get fu**ing serious! Have you guys lost your minds? Just about everything the governor’s office has said this entire past week has been wrong from a supposed Republican free market capitalist point of view. This big brother government “knows best” position has been embarrassing. You might expect such nonsense by a liberal governor and their office, but not a solid Republican state like Ohio. Then to end a week of misery once many more have suffered the down effects of DeWine’s decision to lock down almost all economic activity with a lecture of how to behave and how we want to be remembered after this crises is over—if its ever over at all—was reprehensible. And yes, when will the crises ever be over? Are we going to track every virus that emerges for the rest of our lives? You can bet the news will try to provoke such a panic, look how successful they were with you guys in Ohio government.

Oh, I can hear your thoughts, you know more than we do, you’ve seen the models, you’ve heard the concerns, you’ve suffered losses from friends who are losing people to this terrible Covid-19 virus. Wrong, you have your face against the glass and you have let liberal activists push it so hard that your nose is breaking. You can’t see the forest for the trees because your looking in the wrong, panic driven direction. And its OK to make mistakes, which our Ohio government has, but its not OK to try to justify it with caretaking for the innocent. There are many more people suffering over a lack of food, jobs, and fear of an unknown that you guys have created than anybody suffering a respiratory problem who is in their 80s and may actually need a hospital bed due to Covid-19 to help with their breathing. Because the DeWine administration was suckered into this over-reaction, many more people are suffering needlessly, and yes, we expect you to know better than to bite on the hook that was placed in the water.

We don’t need a lecture from government on how to behave. The problems of this entire Covid-19 virus outbreak was caused by government standing in the way of capitalist enterprise and to hide that fact, government has shut down almost all economic activity. People are mad, they are getting angrier by the hour and that fault is on Ohio state government for mismanaging the Covid-19 outbreak. You took some direction from the Trump administration which is fighting its own battles with Doctor Doom at the CDC, and you guys went several steps too far and now you can’t easily put it back in the bottle. And instead of apologizing, you gave us a lecture.

Rich Hoffman

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When Government Sticks Their Nose in our Business: Its time for them to pay for their mistakes that cost us all dearly

It doesn’t matter to me what’s going on in the rest of the world. Not to say that out of a desire to not deal with unpleasant things, but to be honest, most of the world doesn’t manage themselves very well, so their problems are largely self-induced. They generally aren’t capitalist countries, they don’t have very good diets, and their lifestyles are not optimal. I have spent time overseas on a few occasions and each time after only a week I became stir crazy and couldn’t wait to get home to the bright lights of a perpetual economy of a multi-sport society bulging with ideas and imagination. Even in London, Paris and Tokyo, I have found those places to be lacking the imagination and vibrancy of America and it is always good to return. So it puzzles me why we would ever shut down our country and all its resources to hide like cowards in our homes over a silly virus. Its just not American to do those things. And the most insulting thing of all with all the shutdowns that have occurred due to the China Virus has been the closing of businesses over sheer fear. I know a lot of people that it has hurt including a friend of mine, Mark Welch who is running for the 52nd Congressional State seat whenever Governor DeWine’s girlfriend Amy Acton decides we get to have a primary election in Ohio again. Mark and his wife had to shut down their SoZo HAIR and Spa in West Chester and they have no idea when they will be able to open again. They join thousands and thousands of similar businesses all across Ohio and now the nation has many other states that followed DeWine’s example and they will lose in incalculable amount of opportunity cost that no bailout will ever be able to repair. So lets talk about this cost of government not only to interrupt a free market over some panicky little virus, but when they do by abusing emergency powers, how they need to pay people back for their losses.

As I have said many times, I am not for bailouts. That little $1000 check is a nothing burger, but after all, it is my money and yours dear reader. They shouldn’t even have it to give back to me the way I think about things. But who is going to pay Mark back for his losses from this shut down and who will ever be able to tell him how to plan to get back on his feet again. Usually when these kinds of emergency powers are enacted they involve some regional area, like a city hit by a hurricane or a town destroyed by a tornado. But this idea of shutting down an entire state or a series of states over a fear of getting sick is a ridiculous step in dangerous waters where a very small group of people become the sudden dictators of everyone’s lives. In the case of Ohio, Mike DeWine used his emergency powers to sidestep the legislature which is designed to slow down the emotions of a crises and make good decisions—other wise to protect the people of a state from a mad scientist insanity of becoming some crazed radical who thinks they know better than the rest of us how we should be living our lives. As I’ve said, I’ve traveled around the world and I deal with many time zones every day but they lack the kind of freedom that I always end up missing, and relish upon returning to the good ol’ USA. DeWine and many other governors across the nation have destroyed that freedom with a few simple press conferences and the cost incurred is incredibly high. So who should pay for that, certainly not the business owner who has stuck their neck out to offer jobs to employees and contribute to the great American economy. It certainly isn’t the role of government to take all those employees away and pay them to stay home damaging our workpool forever with more government dependents. There is nothing that can wipe away the cost of a lunatic like Amy Acton from becoming the latest Captain Nemo on a quest for some vision only she can see that ends up destroying everyone around her. Does anybody remember the Jim Jones massacre? Jim thought he was saving everyone by killing them.

Government should never stick its nose in our business. People shouldn’t be able to call government and cry for compliance and turn the role of the governors office into a overcharged Attorney General role that basically is using this crises to become a mini emperor then to say “Trump told us to do it.” The cost for the closures of businesses like Mark’s SoZo needs to come out of somebody’s ass. The talk of the bailouts, someone must pay. These companies aren’t failing by their own missteps, they are happening because of the over-reactions of government and the government owes us all the cost of those mistakes. It’s not Mark’s job to pay for the costs that government has cost him. How are we supposed to know how dangerous Coronavirus is going to be? We’re not going to just take Amy’s word on it, or Doctor Doom at the CDC. When the hospitals aren’t overrun and the deaths aren’t in the millions, or even the thousands, they don’t get to say “well, we saved you, now we can all go to Starbucks.” Most likely, if they had done nothing we’d be exactly where we are now with the death toll—but we’d still have our economy.

I’ve been quite open about the Boeing situation before this ever happened. Sure, they had a few pilots in very poor countries who crashed their planes and there has been an investigation that has gone on now for well over a year, which has cost Boeing many billions of dollars. Government is slow, why should Boeing have to pay so much money when government steps in to do an investigation that shuts them down for such a long period of time losing massive market share and harming lots of companies downstream? What role do they play in that cost, and why isn’t there any expectation on government to get their asses moving so that Boeing could get back to work. Why aren’t they concerned about Mark’s spa? Or any other business across the country. Usually on Saturdays my wife and I eat at the Cracker Barrel in Middletown. Not today. They are closed and can’t have any idea when they can reopen. Cedar Point the amusement park in Ohio has pushed their opening day into May, not knowing how to hire and bring in supplies for that event. And to listen to these disconnected idiots yack on about some deaths in Italy or China where they eat the eyes out of fish and compare some World Health Organization statistics to us and expect it to be an apples to apples analysis is insane. And because government has no skin in the game, they don’t care how long it takes or how much money it costs. They take the money from us and give it back as if it were a gift. Meanwhile, those who generate all that money are stuck and waiting and no amount of government bailout will cover the cost. And that’s what you get when you let government get too big, and they get too much power. They abuse it then give us the cost.

Rich Hoffman

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Yes, They have been Watching You: The truth behind China Virus panic

One of the most interesting things that we can learn from the whole meltdown of the China Virus not just around the world, but in the United States, and within each and every local community is what our weaknesses as a people are. Pundits like Sean Hannity and even Katie Puvlich who are thought of as conservative commentators particularly on Fox News have suddenly become increasingly supportive of “forced compliance,” if President Trump’s orders are not followed to the letter. Well, I’m a Trump supporter and I’ll be the first one to tell him, “no, you are outside your authority and I’m not going to listen to you.” What has become obvious is that when pressed, when bread, milk and toilet paper are hard to find, people are quick to abandon their beliefs and resort to survival mode, and their most basic instinct that was taught to them as babies has been to resort to authority for protection. Much the way a child might get burnt by the stove as a young person, they run to their mom and hide behind her leg for protection. But when things are going well, they may be rebellious teenagers defying authority at every turn, until their safety is in question. Then they turn into a baby again. That is much of what has been driving the panic of this nothing China Virus that has completely shut down our American economy when it shouldn’t have even caused a stir.

Its easy to see how this happened. I talk often about how much I love Microsoft Office, and even I use Gmail from Google for my email service, and I know that those giant companies track my every keystroke to sell to whomever in the world might want that information for statistical analysis. I don’t use Facebook for that very reason, because they are obvious violators of privacy, but in truth, the internet has given us great freedom, but it has also put anybody who wants to watch us to study our every move. And with AI coming along, we aren’t worried about big brother watching what we are doing, but Big AI who can process huge amounts of information acquired and make a determination about the contents, and what buyers of this information have learned who run big corporations and giant media companies know about mankind as a result is that we trust too much in professional opinion, because we have been taught from babies to accept such a concept, and that any attack against mankind should expose that weakness. And by the reaction of even the staunchest Republicans under the coronavirus outbreak, most of them were quick to abandon all conservative principle and seek the shelter of mommy’s leg.

As we grow from our mothers into society at large we attend government schools and there we learn to trust the people at the front of the room, and their bosses, the administrators. We learn about policemen and firemen, and doctors, and politicians as well as all kinds of authority positions who specialize in some thought process and advise us what to do as we move through life. 99.9999999999% of us live and die by the opinions of others and shape our lives around what those authority figures tell us. We trust them and surrender often our thoughts to them. We might be bold and push back when we are comfortable, when we have food in our bellies and toilet paper in the bathroom. But the moment we fear not having those things, we surrender our freedom to authority figures and let them have the stage without retribution and we do what they say.

What Facebook, Microsoft and Google have studied all these years about us is that the way to beat the human race is not through armed conflict, its simply to slap down the rebellious teenagers into compliance and reward them for their surrender. Once that is done the rebel becomes a timid child again, and the governments of the world can then regain control. I’ve watched Katie Puvlich for a long time, and she has made me cringe at times. But I see her often as a well-intentioned young person who thinks of herself as a conservative. But what she has been saying about yielding to the Trump administration or to face the consequences has been very concerning. She represents what a lot of people have been saying who would normally not think of themselves as the leader of a communist revolution in the Soviet Union. But the content of the conversation is all the same.

Through this crises I have watched very smart people turn into compliance addicts, almost like some crack addict looking for a fix, trying to show the governor of Ohio that they are the good kids in the class by trying to please the teacher (government) with the highest grade on a test by proving their compliance to every stupid mandate issued by Amy Acton. Logic was totally thrown out the window because government has the studies and know the nature of the desire for compliance, just as every parent knows that a scolding of the child will result in some crying but ultimately a need for consolation by the child from the parent for much needed approval. And that emotion lasts for most people all their lives. I can name off 20 people I know right now who are still worried about their parents approval of them as 60 and 70 year olds as those parents who are still living at 90 are sick and dying and have obviously lost their minds. The kids—grown up and elderly themselves—are sick with worry over their parent’s approval at such a fundamental level. Any logical person would say to themselves, “who cares, these cats are going to be dead in about 15 minutes, who cares what they think?” But in practice worry over this topic will keep them up at night, give them serious cases of erectile dysfunction, and put 40 pounds of fat on them because of overeating.

Those worries about pleasing parents and other authority figures in our lives are things we normally keep to ourselves. But Microsoft knows because we have written about them somewhere in their software, and Google knows from our emails, and Facebook knows everyone we know and what are relationship is with them and why. We actually vote our opinions with the like button everyday and yes, that information is being used against us, right this very minute. The China Virus is the first time in history that such a mass collection of data has been used to exploit our natures to fulfill a political agenda. And its been so effective that normally diligent stalwarts of a conservative truth have fallen to its spell. But those of us who live off the grid to whatever aspect and don’t care about such things and have no reverence for authority whatsoever can see all this for what it is, because we are not prisoners to such emotions.

The trick is very obvious to me, and this has all been extremely fascinating, and a great learning experience. It has confirmed many things that I have thought about for a long time. And when the pressure is on, we can see how even leaders behave, and it has not been pretty. It’s something that our species is going to have to overcome, otherwise our enemies will continue to use this trait against our society for the effects we see today. And in the coming times, it will be a lot worse because they will push things even further, and when people run for mom’s leg to hide behind, even as 40 and 50 year old people lined up outside of Kroger at 6 AM to get bread as they live in $400,000 houses, they’ll find that mom isn’t there—only an incompetent government. And if that government is run by Trump, we will still need to fight against it.

Rich Hoffman

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The China Virus isn’t what’s Dangerous: Government is the threat and at the center of all this is climate change radicalism

I really don’t like being conspiratorial, but logic demands that we question sheer stupidity, which is what our government has been engaged in. We are supposed to believe that the same idiots who have been monitoring Donald Trump, and the rest of us—shadow banning, blacklisting, and threats of every kind—legal and not legal, which even has members of the FBI, IRS, DOJ and even foreign governments working on their behalf—that they suddenly are very smart and can tell us what is good and bad with this China Virus (corona—Wuhan, Covid-19—whatever the hell you want to call it) But nobody has answered a very basic question about all the actions that have been taken over the last couple of weeks, which has essentially shut down the American economy. That question is, regardless of how many people get tested, what are we supposed to do with the people who test positive? There isn’t any cure—not really unless we are going to count the new news about the Malaria drug that has been shown to “virologically” cure patients. We are supposed to believe that the same panicky climate scientists, like Amy Acton from Ohio are suddenly the smartest and most trusted people in the world and that we should take their dictates without question and do whatever they say, including giving employees temperature readings before showing up for work—those who still do work since the government has given the entire American workforce a written excuse to use every little sniffle to stay home and work from there—isolated and afraid? If you can’t smell the rat dear reader, then you have lost all sense of smell, because this sucker stinks badly.

As a Trump supporter, I have to think he wasn’t ready for an attack this massive, a global media epidemic that is a monster with no apparent head that is attacking the economy of the entire world to spread a communist message by appealing to the most extreme fears of mankind. His mistake was to let these Obama holdovers at the CDC have a mic and to start speaking fear and loathing making them stars over night using over reaction to spike up their audience. But what choice did he have, he could call bull shit and would have been massacred nightly on television by a media already poised to run with this story through the Bill Gates efforts of planting the seeds for this event years ago by socializing it to an audience of young kids who are afraid of their own shadows. And for them we are supposed to throw logic out the window. At a UDF in Port Union Ohio a friend of mine went there for lunch to get some toilet paper for which there were three rolls. He was confronted by an angry man who demanded he put one of them back. Of course my friend told him he could buy the one that was left and refused to comply. A fight almost ensued in one of the wealthiest areas of Ohio over a roll of toilet paper and if this kind of atmosphere persists much longer, like a few more days or God forbid weeks, a confrontation like that is going to end up in an actual killing. People have been let down by their government and they are extremely unhappy and this is the result of letting them get out of control for a seemingly good reason—to save lives. But were those lives ever really in danger? I don’t think so.

Obviously the push to get people tested is only to pad the stats and show a growth of the virus by measuring it. To keep the panic narrative going, the government needs data to justify their actions which is why the CDC keeps referring to this flatline scenario of that graph they keep showing. But to keep fuel on the fire, they need every day to have news of more of the virus spreading, so they need testing to show that to keep the panic narrative going. The conspiracy is in what these types of people believe, they are just crazy leftist groups of people who truly believe in radical advocacy behind climate change, with the same vitriol that PETA strips off their clothes to protest animal cruelty. People are very naive if they don’t see the global trend here against any capitalist effort by overdramatizing the China Virus to implement their climate change initiatives. That is certainly at the heart of Amy Acton’s decisions in Ohio where she has Mike DeWine wrapped around her finger. Her sincerity is real but her concern isn’t quite what she says it is. These people want to shut down the economy of the western nations. That is the real intent behind tricking people to stay home and not interact with each other. It has nothing to do with getting sick, protecting the elderly, for a virus that most everyone would get over on their own, its about protecting the environment by taking people off the roads, shutting down all those polluting factories, and opening up people to the idea of a universal salary where the government pays you to stay home. If you look at all that’s happened, it flows straight into the climate science activism that those types of radicals have been trying to convince us all to follow. Well, now they got a mic and a stage globally, and they have used it to preach their anti-capitalist message and we have allowed it to go on out of compassion for the elderly and not so healthy of our species.

I am prepared to fight these corrupt government types with any means possible, but in all honesty, we shouldn’t have to. I can think of a million other things to think about, I don’t need to waste my time on these extremely stupid people. But they are costing us millions of dollars that no amount of money from the government will ever make right. It doesn’t matter what they do in Europe, or Asia, America should never shut down anything for any reason. The show should always go on and it is embarrassing that our government has ordered so many things closed, where it is even affecting our sports entertainment. That is an attack on our culture and is just as detrimental as a lost life to a virus, because in a lot of ways our economy is a living thing. People should not be ready to kill each other over toilet paper, yet we are supposed to believe that staying home and not talking to other people is going to lead to a better quality of life? Get serious. I have been flooded with reports over the last several days that National Guard Humvees were staging in the parking lot of Kings Island and other locations between there and downtown Cincinnati. My response to everyone has been they don’t have enough troops to haul everyone away to the concentration camps that have been rumored for years to be the ultimate goal of the Deep State. And because of this government interference in all of our lives over NOTHING, people are terrified to consider just how deep that “Deep State” is. Its one thing to see President Trump going through Hell with it, but its quite another when you can’t find bread on the shelves and people are fighting over toilet paper. But that’s what happens when we give the big government climate types the mic and the stage, we have seen what they would do with it. They have brought the communism and socialism of China and Venezuela to the great United States and terrified everyone with a level of interruption that was science fiction only a few weeks ago.

I wouldn’t recommend taking up arms against this government just yet, but we are close when governors like Mike DeWine alter the election process to prevent us from managing our government with newly elected representatives. He didn’t have a right to do what he did and there is nothing about this China Virus to justify this action. What is troubling is that Mike DeWine’s daughter has been running for prosecutor in Greene County, and that her family had given her 400K for the race, yet she was still losing. The thinking is that she needed more time to build her case with the voters and that was one of the reasons that the election was pushed off until June 2nd, without even running any of this by the legislature. That’s likely more than a rumor, it has more than a grain of truth to it. But that people think its possible, and that they think the National Guard is ready to make a martial law move against us all says just how much trust we have in these fools. We cannot give them this much power, ever. We must load up on ammunition and buy up as many guns as possible, and we must never give them an inch on the Second Amendment because if we have learned anything with this China Virus, its that we can’t trust the government with anything. And the moment we give them the benefit of doubt we have seen what they do with it—incite a global crises that shuts down the entire economy—and for what reason—to protect the environment from all us pesky humans and our propensity to shit, eat and consume. If you peel away all the caution and concern over the lives of people getting sick from this virus that is what you will find in every one of these alarmists and we should all be ashamed of ourselves for letting them loose from the loony bins of society to ruin our lives for even a moment.

Rich Hoffman

IMPEACH MIKE DEWINE: Is the governor having sex with Amy Acton?

There are only two explanations for it, Mike DeWine is either having sex with Amy Acton, or he’s a complete idiot and is just letting her be the liberal activist she’s always wanted to be because he doesn’t know better. Watching those two in these every day public scare announcements has been like watching a couple of young kids in love. Yes Mike DeWine, I “get it” I understand how a virus spreads.  But I don’t trust you to make decisions for me, you have lost that trust with this massive over-reaction to this virus.  I think of Mike DeWine as a good family man, if there is anything good to say about him at this point, and it would shock me to find out that he’s bent over for this girl. But I was surprised to learn that many people, even very religious people, fall to the fruits of a little attention by someone climbing for power at any cost. Whatever it is, Mike DeWine needs to be impeached for what he did over the voting issue on Tuesday. Its bad enough that he had already shut down the economy of Ohio which set off a chain reaction across the nation by other panic driven governors, but he has essentially been letting this former assistant climate change activist, and abortion supporter run economic policy in the state of Ohio and has circumvented the legislature all in the name of emergency to do it giving this lady free reign essentially over the nation. Impeaching DeWine would not be like the congressional attempt to impeach President Trump, in this case DeWine actually did something wrong even as a judge stated that the elections would go on as normal. DeWine went even further and tampered where he had no right to go, and that is why he has to go—as soon as possible. At the very least we must elect some other Republican the next time around, but due to his extreme radicalism, well intentioned or not, he needs to be made an example of.

Ultimately its DeWine’s problem that he appointed a bad person for the Public Health Director in Ohio. He knew her record and he appointed her anyway, she has a tendency toward liberalism and as we are learning, so does Governor DeWine. That’s why many of us held our nose to vote for him, but the surprises don’t stop there. One of the selling points was that DeWine came with Jon Husted who we hoped would keep the Governor in check. But in a meeting held shortly after the closing of the restaurants and bars in Ohio on Sunday, Husted told those listening that if all these measures saved just 10 lives, that it would all be worth it. The world had literally fallen apart, and sanity had dropped away. What leftists like earth girl Amy Acton want in the deepest recesses of their hearts is to turn humanity into a harmony with the earth and shut down all those mean big businesses, and using a little flirty feminine charm, whether or not things actually got touchy and feely, a pent up old man is likely to give more ear to her than she would otherwise deserve, and that brings up a whole lot of problems we need to consider.

I’m personally not convinced that this coronavirus is very dangerous at all. Over the weekend there were four people in West Chester who were found to have had it, the hospital there diagnosed it, then sent them home to self-quarantine. They were all in the same family, so it wasn’t exactly the end of their lives. Tom Hanks and his wife just recovered from the virus and that is likely going to be the story with anybody who gets this. We are not going to have rows and rows of hospital beds in parking lots all across the nation with sick people dying left and right. These fears come from the imaginations of climate scientists and pot smoking loons who are left over hippies yearning for a return to Woodstock, not right thinking, practical people. It looks like most people who get coronavirus won’t even know they have it and will likely recover completely with their own immune systems.

This whole thing reminds me of the campaign several years ago to reduce the amount of toilet paper that people bought and consumed, in order to save the planet. Some of these people are very loony people, and they have a right to exists of course, but they don’t have a right to shut down our economy and induce panic over nothing. Mike DeWine has empowered one of these loony leftists and given her full power to run the national economy by default all in the name of an emergency. As I ponder the relationship of Mike and Amy, I can’t help but think of what might have happened if Andrew Gillum had won in Florida the governor seat in that very tight election. We have all heard by now that Gillum was found with meth and a gay male prostitute in a Miami hotel room. He couldn’t even be dependable to his wife and three kids, yet he was just a few votes away from being a governor of a big state. Who wants someone like that making decisions with the kind of power that Mike DeWine has abused? And that is the heart of the problem. We can never just trust government to have our best interests in mind, they are human and fallible. And when Mike DeWine, let his girl Amy Acton override an Ohio judge who clearly rejected the request to shut down the election, then DeWine let an unelected bureaucrat make the decision to do so anyway, we witnessed a reckless abandonment of the rule of law all in the name of safety.

Anything could be said to be dangerous, and that is the massive danger of this virus. Its not that it will kill anybody, it’s that government and all the fallible people who run it, are making a power grab all in the name of safety. DeWine feels that he knows better than everyone else what is best for people and that’s not how things are supposed to work. Already the news reports are stating that this crisis will demand that we never go back to how things were before. This in a lot of ways is a 9/11 for the modern political terrorist, they will push for more regulation, larger government, and a more panic driven society where only they have the answer. And for people like Amy Acton, that is a dream for big government people. They want us all to be tied together and to be honest, I want nothing to do with people like that. Mike DeWine doesn’t get to decide that we are all “in this together” by literally taking away every conceivable option otherwise because some staffer of his whom he is psychologically sweet on set off his judgement into a bad direction. That is why we have checks and balances in the legislature and within the judicial. Mike DeWine decided to overstep those checks with activism and deserves to be fired from his job.

Whatever conspiracy theory might be interesting to think about, the bottom line with coronavirus is that I think many of us would rather live a little dangerously than to place our lives in the hands of micromanaging bureaucrats like Amy Acton and a love-struck governor in Mike DeWine. I’ll take my chances with coronavirus rather than to lock ourselves in our homes and to kill the best economy in the world just so maybe 10 people might live, who would otherwise die anyway of a bug, or a stick of butter. Government doesn’t get to decide for me how my life will be, they are supposed to manage our affairs within the context of the various branches of government. But when they step over everything, whether it’s a Republican or a Democrat doing it, we have to throw them out of office in order to keep our system honest, or we’ll empower them to continue to step all over our Constitution and run our lives from a perspective of fear, forever.

Rich Hoffman

A Saturday at Premier Shooting; Training in West Chester: There are few more Pro Second Amendment than George Lang and Mark Welch

It was really irritating me over this past weekend that everywhere people were overacting to the coronavirus. All the stores were being ransacked for toilet paper and people were already too far gone to think logically. The media scares had soaked into their thoughts and they were in survival mode and unable to come out of it. Since there wasn’t anything on television worth watching and I had a free Saturday more or less, I signed up for a Tactical 88 class at Premier Shooting & Training Center in West Chester and spent the day at the gun range stepping away from the panic for a bit and enjoyed being around people who had not gone crazy. And much to my relief, they had toilet paper on the shelf, and all was right with the world. But much to my surprise, they were very busy on a Saturday (much more than usual) and they reported more gun sales that weekend than they had on Black Friday. People were coming in and buying guns and ammunition like the world was coming to an end, and for those who were watching the news, it would be easy to think why they would think that. It didn’t take long for me to realize that going to Premier Shooting & Training during the coronavirus outbreak was a good decision, it was a good day to get away from the insanity of the world and a very hard reminder how lucky we are to have such a great facility in West Chester, Ohio.

I never go to Premier without thinking of George Lang, who as a trustee was instrumental in attracting the investment of a top tier gun range into West Chester just a few years ago. I was invited to tour the facility before it opened with Mark Welch—both men are now in position after the Tuesday primary to move on politically to state seats. But few know them as I do, as shooters who were active in the opening days of Premier Shooting & Training. I go there to shoot when I have time, its my favorite range in the Cincinnati area and I think one of the best in the country. But the store and gun range is only part of the story, what they do very well at the West Chester gun range is teach people firearms handling and some of the more advanced aspects of tactical training. With the Tactical 88 instructions that are done at that facility, participants get a chance to learn the same types of things that only advance police and military officers get by way of training. And they certainly have the classrooms for that level of participation.

I spent about 10 hours there on Saturday, had lunch, shot a bit, took the classes, but mostly observed behavior. It was obvious that the people coming there were looking for some sense of normalcy to their life, or some level of empowerment. Buying a gun for them was a punch back at the victimization that they were feeling from the news reports that virtually everything was shut down out of panic over the coronavirus. Even Disney World was shut down, so there was nothing much going on television, the NCAA March Madness brackets were gone this year, baseball season is being pushed out, even James Bond’s new movie coming up has been pushed out as Hollywood looks to lose around 20 billion dollars due to coronavirus. What was happening around the world smelled a lot like an attack on the American economy and people wanted to take action, so they came to Premier Shooting to get control of things from their perspective, and buying a new gun and hitting the range to learn how to use it was the most proactive thing they could do. But it was a running joke at Premier that day for everyone who saw the display of toilet paper that at least the gun range was stocked where Kroger, Walmart and Walgreens were ransacked by panic driven customers to stock their shelves at home for the apocalypse that was to come next.

Spending that extra time there Saturday I was able to work with much of the staff on hand that day and I can only say that I am really happy they are there. They do such a good job at every level at Premier that even as I think often how wonderful it is that they are in West Chester, many people take it for granted just how much. They are top notch on a good day, but on a day where the stock market was on course for depression like numbers and the entertainment world was shut down over panic, it was good to see that Butler County residents had somewhere to go that wasn’t terrified of the coronavirus, and they could feel empowered to participate in something instead of hiding in their homes waiting for the news reports to tell them how next they might die. The staff at Premier was under control and ready for anything, and people could feel that coming into the door, which is likely why they were swarming there to begin with, to go someplace where they could still see America and enjoy the freedom to gather without fear of death. No wonder gun sales were up. Perhaps with the economic hit that losing all the sports and entertainment venues this spring will bring, toilet paper sales and the sale of guns and ammo will offset those losses. Watching the cash register at Premier gave me great hope that the same thing was happening all over the country and it said a lot about the resolution of the human race when a crises had pushed people to the brink. They didn’t run to hide in some cave, they went to the gun store and took action to protect themselves and others.

Yet with the primary election looming, I thought of George Lang and Mark Welch all day, as they were a part of the early days of Premier coming to West Chester to begin with, and few know to what degree they support the Second Amendment as mainstream politicians very loyal to the Trump administration in Butler County. I was at the announcement ceremony for George Lang this past summer when he declared himself to run for the 4th District Senate Seat in Ohio that was coming up this year and I saw many people there who I have also seen often at Premier Shooting & Training in West Chester at various events, especially at their own grand opening where Mark Welch and I were given a private tour before one shot had ever been fired there.

I’ll admit, I went to Premier for the same reasons as everyone else that rainy Saturday. I sat at the window and looked out at the lake on breaks in our training schedule and enjoyed the warm blanket of Americana as only a gun range can tell the story while the world outside was in a panicked heap. Guns have a way of calming people down and letting them know they can still defend themselves when the governments of the world get it wrong and let loose a panic like the coronavirus. But as the primary election comes on Tuesday remember that it was George Lang and Mark Welch who were there in the beginning of it all, and it is one of the best reasons to vote for them, which is barely something that has come up during the election season. Very few mainstream politicians are as pro Second Amendment as those two, and voters need to remember that as they vote on Tuesday March 17th.

Rich Hoffman

Why Most Scientists are no Better than a Common Whore: They’ll say anything for grant money

So it’s been thrown around a lot lately, especially in the wake of the Wuhan Virus coming out of China, and it plays a huge part into the reason so many Americans were duped into accepting so many cancellations to prevent the spread of the virus. This notion that the “scientists” are beyond refute and should be listened to like sages of knowledge that are beyond political theater is just ridiculous. Politicians desperate for President Trump to be controlled by the same fears that everyone else is functioning from have been saying with increased voracity that he needs to start listening to the scientists. This of course has been in reference to the Wuhan Virus but more largely the climate change studies that are being done by federally funded scientists who will say and do anything to their paying clients, just like a common whore, for the purpose of setting policy to their statements. And anybody who thinks on their own is considered stupid, uneducated, and dangerously reckless because in their thinking they have deviated from the established source material published to support some reckless conclusion not meant to cast mankind into space as an independent specimen of evolving character, but to lay prostrate before a ruling class who desire to control every aspect of their lives. It’s not the great warriors of the hunt who are the top of a political food chain, it’s the academics, the scientists who are used as hammers to pound a point into the consciousness of a population to control it, not to advance it into any type of newfound state of understanding.

My unique relationship to this issue is that I love science and I deeply respect the work of the curious. If I didn’t have so many interests, I might have been one myself, but I could never stuff myself into one bottle of a field that could claim such a title. So I was never willing to limit my talents to one specified academic field and to declare to the world, this is what I am, a geologist, an archaeologist, a paleontologist, meteorologist—pick one of the fields and its likely I had enough interest in them all to be one professionally. And in college, where I was on a path to studying economics, it was the same problem. The professors would issue the textbook needs for that semester, and I’d have the books all read and understood within a week. I just never accepted putting on the breaks to my mind that wanted to move at 1000 miles per hour and this used to concern many people who were worried about my future. They would call it a lack of focus, but what it really was, was an understanding of things that was very hyper in its origins. The result was that after several decades of openly studying all the things I wanted to in the pace that I could consume the data, that I know a great many things and can speak about my thoughts on them in a way that is far beyond the single topic scientist. And because of that, I can comment on things that people functioning under an orthodox understanding just wouldn’t see otherwise and that has led me to many topics that I discuss that involve these giants of the world that are found in grave sites displaying a past history that has never been talked about except in far flung books that are outside the purview of accepted cultural academics.

Studying those topics of the giant race of people who are obviously part of our distant past and do not have a place in the anthropology record that has been established has been quite a journey, and that tangled web is still being uncovered as we speak by more and more people who like me are saying, “wait a minute.” From what I know on the subject its only the greatest conspiracy that has ever been pulled in front of the eyes of mankind and at best we should all be insulted by what scientists have tried to perpetrate on us, not just in the realm of history, politics, religion, but psychologically. Let’s just say this much, scientists have been lazy, a general statement that applies to many of them. Those who have allowed their minds to be limited to one field of study have been all too willing to allow that limited vision to direct their attention to the understandings that political tides shaped by religious needs allowed to be known—not what actually was and needs to be studied under the umbrella of multifaceted science. Because the fields of understanding in academia are defined in the ways they are, and funding models for those fields require minds to stay in their lane, many of the things that need to be known just aren’t because the system is set up to always keep them from coming together and sharing information that the other would need to know to advance the fields of science.

So when anybody says that we should listen to the “scientists” they are essentially declaring their frustration that a president like Trump won’t stay in the lanes established to control the minds of mankind and focus their attention on the political needs of that culture. Personally, I have found that its far more conducive to understand the mysteries of our times because I never accepted one field of study over a long time of being passionately driven toward understanding, because I have been free to read and explore whatever the evidence presented. I have not had to shape my thoughts to fill the parameters of federal funding through a grant or some other finance hurdle that is so common in all fields of study. The academic system that we inherited from Europe still has way too much Roman Empire in it, and from there the way study emerged from the Catholic Church of France and England. We still want our fields of study to follow some path that reflects the monk like lives of those who professionally read the Bible for a living and many of us, most of us, have accepted that limit openly. And that is why the professional scientist can lie and mislead the public on the nature of the Wuhan Virus or of the dangers of climate change without a nervous twitch to their eye, because in their way of viewing the world, they believe what they say because they don’t have supporting evidence from other points of view that could dispute them.

Only by thinking in multifaceted ways can the true nature of science be understood, and as a business guy, I think that gives Trump a better grasp on the nature of scientific understanding than the fragmented specialization of the most dedicated members of their fields. We are all better off not listening to the scientists, not the other way around. The truth can only be seen by understanding many things, yet it is concealed by forcing minds to only look at fragmented things and to build a case study around that limited knowledge. And due to this nature, great veils have been pulled over our own history that many people just aren’t prepared to deal with emotionally. Yet, that doesn’t make those notions wrong, just inconvenient. In a free society where people are free to think and do what they want and they can defend that right with the personal ownership of guns, the truth is going to get out, and it is rapidly these days, especially under President Trump. And that has establishment types more terrified than ever, and is the true nature of the massive amounts of consternation that can be witnessed daily on the news cycles and text books that go out to young minds looking for answers, and when they don’t get them, get bored and just accept the locked doors placed before them.

Rich Hoffman

Why Governments and the Media are Telling People to Stay Home for Coronavirus: Extortion and socialism are at the heart of the panic

There is a subtle attack that is going on with the coronavirus that is every bit as maniacal as the grandest conspiracy theory, and the people perpetrating that attack know full well what they are doing. By perpetuating that the virus is so dangerous and deadly that we must cancel sporting events, and to have the Olympics performed in front of no audience—that politicians should not have rallies and that we should all stay home and quarantine ourselves, is the plot to get to the heart of the matter behind the intent, and that is to harm the global economy by taking away workers to produce anything. If the attack against the economy by socialist minded activists in the press is the objective, then the reality is to physically take those workers away from productive output. We have already heard the push to impose on employers paid leave for coronavirus, to actually pay people for doing no work, or to push people out of the office and to work from their homes. The intent of the conspiracy in this case from the press who get their thoughts on matters from their bosses who have been trained to think to the beat of the liberal dog whistle, is to act as change agents in using this coronavirus to change the relationship between employees and their jobs.

It’s already a major problem across the world that has breeched into North America recently—over the last thirty years or so. This idea that people don’t have to work to make a living, and that if they don’t show up to do productive enterprises, that someone will give them a check anyway is fairly new to Americans. However, around the world where socialism has been spreading, it is quite common to take leave from a job for many weeks and months at a time, and expect to return to that job unhindered, as if the job were some kind of right and that it was created for the worker, not the worker for the job. If you listened carefully to the drumbeats behind the push to make coronavirus such a pandemic its not that the virus will kill people, its that the implication is that people should just stay home and not contact each other which is to disconnect people from productivity completely. This widespread nonsense about coronavirus danger is not out of safety, its out of anti-capitalist activism. A way to spit in the face of those evil corporations who provide jobs, and to coax out of them a paycheck anyway. And if as an employer you don’t like it, then you are putting the world at danger by going to work!

For supply chains that deal with global issues and must communicate across many time zones, coronavirus has given the incompetent an excuse for their failings. Suddenly its not that they can’t purchase steel, or organize shipping containers that are in hot demand with a great economy, its now that they fear the spread of coronavirus, or that many of their key people are in quarantine and can’t come to work that they have the excuse for failure. If you are an employer and an employee calls off for work, now they can blame fears over the coronavirus. And if you press them on coming to work anyway, now the system has been set up to work against the employer for inciting a dangerous work environment to others for insisting that employees show up to do the work they are being paid for. Now the employee has an excuse to stay home and play Call of Duty all day and the employer can’t say anything about it, because coronavirus has given the unproductive cover from judgment, and performance.

Its not hard to see how liberal activists have been given this much power. Most of us share the consumption of the media culture as part of our everyday life. When we see that sporting events are being cancelled, and that movie stars are concerned about something, it is only natural that we would trust what they are telling us, because we are conditioned to believe in the narrative of television, movies, and even news broadcasts. We don’t think of them as entertainment, but as trusted advisors. So, when we hear them in such a panic over a fake pandemic, with all kinds of political overtones to the need for a tragedy, we give pause to consider that it must be true. We see it, we hear it, and the sense of touching it has been removed because we experience all this through televisions, computers, and our smart phones. So, we have no way to verify the problem for ourselves and end up trusting only what we can see and hear. But going out to lunch, or to the shopping centers in America and to step away from the media world, we can touch things and see the truth, and that is that coronavirus is a minority experience that is only dangerous to the elderly, those with an average age of 80. And that is to say a group of people where everything is dangerous to them. A swinging door is dangerous to an 80-year-old, it could knock them over and kill them by just the fall. But it is this issue which has been overblown to wrestle away power from the employers of this world and give endless excuses for a lack of performance to employees looking for any way they can imagine to stay home.

If the liberal activists behind the spread of the coronavirus could change the pro work culture of the world and make a drastic impact on productivity itself, they would satisfy one of those long-desired goals of Marxism and that is a very real problem. They are using a manufactured fear of coronavirus to stop the engine of the world and force more corporations to lick their feet for a reprieve. Ultimately, it’s a power trip that empowers the lazy and unproductive by robbing productivity from the producers of the world. Its just another way that a centralized government, represented by a centralized media, is trying to manage the freedoms of people to pick and choose their levels of success in life. For those ambitious, they have opportunities to get rich in the world if they don’t mind the work. But for the lazy, they need government to feed them like baby birds in a nest they never get kicked out of. But for those who talk about equality, income based, gender based, race based, any kind of equality, the way to get it is to take away the incentives to do work to begin with and once that happens, a utopia of leftist thought might have a chance, where nobody works hard for anything and everyone gets a paycheck whether or not they did anything to earn it. The sense of ownership is taken away from them in exchange for a free week or two off their jobs where their employers can’t do anything to them over it, and in that way an alliance is built between the lazy and the leftist media to squeeze the evil corporations in the middle and bring them to their knees begging for a reprieve. If only they might donate a few million more dollars here, or buy advertising there, the extortion might stop. Otherwise, the coronavirus fears will continue to be spread until there are no workers left, all the stadiums of the world are empty, and the highways are saved from traffic, and thus the environment as well will be saved from the efforts of mankind, because everyone is locked in their homes for fear of a death that never comes.

Rich Hoffman

What You Need to Know about Coronavirus: Its no big deal, more people will die over media panic than the virus itself

To understand why the coronavirus is a hoax, you must look at the big picture of it, which a lot of people have a hard time doing. The virus is real sure enough, but the effects of it and the planned panic of unleashing the information in the way that corporate media has a motivation to do is what makes it a hoax. We are talking about a year that countries around the world want to make their own version of Donald Trump to run their countries, which is happening in England, Italy, Brazil, and even in Hong Kong.

Many of the scary players in the world like Iran and North Korea have been pacified and those aristocrats that run the corporate media culture need a new bad guy to scare people into purchasing their content. Those same corporate titans also don’t want world leaders like Donald Trump to continue to get elected because they solve problems. Corporate media wants problems to complain about because they are lazy as a culture to come up with content on their own, and from their perspective, its that simple. That is their part of the conspiracy, the need for negative press to fill their airtime and newspapers.

I have said that China started the virus to help cover their terrible economic news coming out of the Trump trade deal that made them look bad, and the revolution in Hong Kong. They may have developed the virus to help thin out their elderly population, but it is unlikely they wanted it to spread out of the country the way it is now, because that has just given them more bad press which they didn’t want. This is the problem with a centrally controlled communist government. When they make mistakes in judgment, they only have themselves to blame and if they can’t handle that, they will be inspired to engage in coverups, which seems to be why it took so long to admit to the world their part in unleashing the virus. But to the greater problem of why so many viruses come out of China and how they tend to be the origins of most infections, its their wet market food supplies which would be laughed at in America and other places. But since we have such an open world of trade, which that same corporate media wants to believe is so possible with different cultures, China’s bad practices with food is a danger to us all.

The unsanitary way that animals are handled within the communist government of China requires a brutal admission to the morality of it all. You don’t see PETA stripping down naked to protest the layers and layers of dead animals in those wet markets where the people eat every part of the animals in various states of preparation without being concerned about ethics in the least. Most people in China are not living in fancy apartments with a KFC a few blocks away, they eat what they can get their hands on. Over a billion people who need food, water, and electrical resources every minute of every day is not a simple thing to coordinate with just a few people at the top of the communist government making all the decisions. In a growth economy of over 7% GDP, they had money to work with. But after the past year of their trade deal fight with Trump, the real financial impact is likely much greater than they are willing to admit, and worse than that, they are finding it difficult to just throw money at this problem because for the first time in a long time, they just don’t have it.

Then of course there are the beat reporters both on television and in print who are Bernie Sanders socialists freshly graduated from their liberal studies at university, all around the world. From the BBC to CNN International, to Bloomberg, MSN, all the major networks, they all have a leftist bend to their economic theories, and they would love to slow down this hot economy any way possible. They like seeing school closings due to panic they have created, they love to see people fighting over toilet paper in Australia from panicky moms thinking that the world is coming to an end. They love the stories of the shortage of masks because people are buying them all up faster than they can be made. They love to see the stock markets around the world plunge, and people cancelling their cruise ship vacations. To fulfill their communist visions of utopia, they like to see people shutting up their doors and turning to a central government to make them safe, like the CDC. They want to put Trump on his heals with a problem that will take more than optimism to resolve because they hope this will be the killer of his administration since the Mueller Report didn’t work, or the weak attempts at impeachment. They need a new story that strengthens centralized government and weakens people running away from it, a health crises that can be overblown to strengthen their arguments for more government control around the world. Coronavirus is it for them.

But in reality, the virus isn’t that dangerous. Places that are poor and overcrowded are spreading the disease due to their bad sanitation. Italy is susceptible particularly due to their high tourism, but relatively poor living conditions. Italy is nice, but its pretty dirty, and its one of the best places in Europe. They don’t exactly have a Walgreens on every corner selling hand sanitizer. Iran is an armpit that has the same problems that China does, a strong central government that can’t handle the problems as fast as they are coming in. It takes time to create vaccines for these types of viruses, and there will be one for coronavirus. Its going to spread, people are going to have to overcome it with their immune systems and the real response to overcoming it will not come from centralized power, it will come out of individual effort. Individuals will have to overcome it like they do any other virus and some heroic individual under Trump’s urging will develop a vaccine that will shoot their stock through the roof overnight and a lot of people will make a lot of money off it. But under no circumstances should people hide in their homes or try to cancel life. The powers behind spreading the fear of this virus don’t care about the lives of the people effected, they want something much more sinister, an end to the economy of the west, no matter who gets hurt in the process. To call it a mass conspiracy is to do the information a mis-service. It’s a reality, nonetheless.

Its important to know that people do recover from coronavirus. Its not a death sentence the way that the media has purposely portrayed it. If you get it, you will get past it most likely as most people would most viruses. That people who die from it are typically suffering from other illnesses and that coronavirus is just the final nail that overwhelms their system is a point of consideration. But that doesn’t make it any worse than any other sickness trend that has challenged the human race at any point in history. Unfortunately, the news reports are much more interested in spreading panic about the virus than the facts and people are literally looking at it as a death sentence. Stopping the economy to quarantine the virus is not necessary, but its being done not for safety, but for an attack on the global economic system by people who want to see it brought down for many reasons listed here, and many more we don’t have time for. Coronavirus is not a death sentence. A vaccine will hit the market very soon, much sooner than people think, and this will all be over quickly. But the economic damage will be a real problem. Trump will still get re-elected, but there will be many harmed greatly by the economic downturn around the world, and that will kill a lot more people than this virus, which is what the news isn’t talking about.

Rich Hoffman

I Can’t Wait to Vote for Mark Welch: Sad to hear, Jennifer Gross has been a Never Trumper

After watching the debate performance at the West Chester Tea Party Candidate Forum between my pick for the 52nd House seat in Ohio Mark Welch, and his rival Jennifer Gross I was very impressed with both of their answers on the 2nd Amendment. I have known Mark for many years, before he ever ran for any office, so I know clearly where he stands on things and he has not been a disappointment. He’s had some temptations come his way as the West Chester Trustee who worked with George Lang to bring so much prosperity to the area and I know that I can trust him in Columbus where things get quite a bit more difficult. My comment to Jennifer was that I wish she wasn’t running against Mark because I’d love to vote for her for some other position. For me she was a bright spot of the evening and I enjoyed talking to her. Apparently, our paths have crossed in the past on projects and so talking to her after that event was a real pleasure. However, as an employer getting ready to vote for a new hire for an important House seat that means a great deal to our area, Mark is still my guy without question. And here are the reasons.

There is a lot of talk in this election about the establishment being some kind of maniacal force that must be overthrown, especially from Candice Keller. But I could write several books about all the work that has gone on behind the scenes with great leaders like George Lang, and Ann Becker to push out the RINO Republicans and build an Ohio Republican Party that is firm behind President Trump’s administration. That is why we recently had a big party for Trump in West Chester that drew a large crowd and Lara Trump herself came to Jungle Jim’s in Fairfield recently to help raise money for the Butler County GOP. Todd Hall as Chairman has done a great job in shaping the current GOP along with Sheriff Jones. I have done my fair share to help shape the kind of people we wanted in those positions and I am very proud of the result, of the people who are now office holders that would never have been if we didn’t start working to get real conservatives on the Central Committees. If there is anything really good that came out of the Tea Party movement, it was that, and the result is that we now have options at high office in the Statehouse like George Lang and Mark Welch, who were born out of the Tea Party movement and are now part of the Trump Administration as far as policy at the local level. So the establishment isn’t so bad anymore, I would say its actually quite good and I have no problem naming myself as a proud, Trump Republican.

In fact, I was never anything but a staunch Republican, no matter how much disagreement we may have had within the party, success does unite people in a great way and Mark Welch was there when it wasn’t cool, and he has done all the right things, and learned all the hard lessons to run that 52nd District seat wonderfully. But after checking out Jennifer’s background, I am not so sure about her yet. I’d need to see her vetted a bit before I’d vote for her in a key spot, something like a trustee seat, or even the school board. I really like her, she is a good personality and a sincere person, but her history as a Never Trumper concerns me greatly as indicated by some of her online postings shown within this article. I’m certainly never one to push away a potential friend or partner, even from former rivals. People learn things in their own way, and I am not rigid in accepting people who have seen the light into being part of a solution in the future. There were a lot of people who were Ted Cruz supporters in the last election that had a problem with Trump. There are of course the Ron Paul types whom I never was a blind supporter. I have never called myself a “libertarian.” I am a Republican in the purest form of it and likely always will be. But I don’t expect everyone to have those firm convictions.

That brings up my other issue with Jennifer, with all that said, she has made comments that she doesn’t associate with being a Republican which is a deal killer for me. It’s not just about party, but its about values. She obviously by some of her messages has some strong feelings about Mark Welch who is my friend because he has many of my shared values. Mark will clearly represent my Republican sentiments in Columbus the way I want to see. But since Jennifer doesn’t care much for Mark and obviously has stated that she no longer identifies as a “Republican” it breaks my heart to see that she’s not where I’d like her to be in life so I could give her a vote. Because I think she has the talent, certainly the charisma. But I’m not sure she can hold a note under pressure on the big stage. I’d need to see her support this current Republican Party and survive some pitfalls first. I understand that sentiments change and with success under Trump, things are much clearer than they were for people coming out of 2016. But I’ve always thought the same things and I know Mark Welch has too. He’s never been a different person. My experience with him is that he holds back a lot, he’s more a man of action than of talk so he doesn’t sell himself enough. But he’s relatively new to this political game himself. He started off as a trustee and has worked his way to where he’s now poised for a more complicated office. And its not about just straight up votes, its about team building for bill passage, and that means that you need to know how to work with the party in charge and not be some outcast that screws everything up. It’s a tough business and it takes a very likeable, and charismatic person deeply rooted in their own belief system to navigate the lobbyists, the pressures in the hall outside the chamber and the constant stream of negative emails because you didn’t vote this way or that. It always takes knowing how not to stumble over the media when they are trying to twist every word you say to play the gotcha game. I know Mark can play that game. Jennifer in my thoughts needs some practice.

When the smoke from this primary on March 17th is over, I hope to see more of Jennifer. I’d like to see her work herself into a party endorsement and to start building some bridges which is what a republic style of government requires. It wouldn’t take much to make me vote for her, just consistency and to fit into the team that has been building in Butler County in the GOP. While individualism is the key to representative government the passing of laws and the art of representation requires those extra team building skills, just as every corporate environment demands. Being a solid individual is needed to fend off the wolves who want to turn every politician into a corrupt specimen. But you must be able to win people over to your way of thinking in a republic and that isn’t easy under the best of circumstances. Its wonderful to say we should never have party politics, but in Columbus we have majorities and minorities and that is needed for all kinds of checks and balances, and that is the framework that anybody going for a State seat must navigate to do the good work that needs to be done. I can’t wait to vote for Mark Welch, he has worked hard and deserves it. And I look forward to getting behind Jennifer Gross at some future opportunity if such a chance presents itself.

Rich Hoffman