Tag: Down the Rabbit Hole

Fire Lakota’s Teachers: Protest over merit pay bad example to kids

I have written and said so much on this topic you’d think that the ridiculously arrogant teachers in the Lakota school system would have learned by now.  However, they apparently have the memory span of Dory from the Finding Nemo movie, and about the same politics—and they can’t remember anything from five minutes ago, let alone five years.  Like a bunch of children they protested in front of various Lakota schools over the implementation of merit pay—which is something that’s happening all over the nation, not just in Ohio—and is certainly not limited to Lakota.  I’ve said it before, I don’t mind paying a teacher $200,000 a year if they are really good, but I don’t want to pay a slug $65K per year just because they showed up and fulfilled a step schedule established by the labor union.  I want to see management deciding who gets paid what for an expected criterion.  I do not want to pay for collective bargaining which favors the lazy at the expense of the hard-working.

Of course the impact of these entire teacher antics in attempting to wreck the budget at Lakota will provoke another levy attempt, which I have been saying all along will happen right around the 2017 mark—if not sooner—since the school board knows it will likely meet resistance and may take a few years to pass.  What they are asking us to pay for is the same ridiculousness they have in the past—out-of-control employee costs that are directly linked to this kind of teacher behavior.  Because the union is protected by state and federal law management often caves under the collective pressure of protests like this recent one at Lakota and the tax payers are stuck with the bill—which means an increase in property taxes.  People new to the district don’t mind paying a bit more on taxes until they live in the area for a few years and are stuck with excessively high taxes.  It is then that they get buyer’s remorse—meanwhile all these radical union employees retire and move away leaving the mess to the rest of us to clean up.  I let the Pulse Journal know my thoughts about the Lakota protests with the following Letter to the Editor.

In a fair world every teacher who took part in the Friday April 24th demonstrations in front of the students at twenty of Lakota’s schools protesting merit pay, should have been terminated immediately.  However, we don’t live in a fair world and are currently stuck with an out-of-touch teacher’s union culture in these schools that feel they are entitled to district resources without the judgment of their job performance being established through a merit pay system. 

Defenders of the action will declare that their gathering was a “peaceful demonstration” and they (the teachers) have the right under the First Amendment to “assemble.”  Yet the protesters in this case are district employees who consciously made a decision to impose their viewpoints in front of the same children they are supposed to be teaching which should be considered a breach of contract by attempting to radicalize students against value assessment—merit pay.  It is insulting that they’d even contemplate the protest at Lakota after that district spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to repair their image after the last few years.  Talk about short memories—and a lack of gratitude.  The school board went to great measure to improve Lakota’s image and the teachers decided “collectively” to perform this task—in front of their students–amazingly short-sighted.

I’m looking forward to the further antics of the Lakota teachers over the coming summer.  Since we can’t fire them, they will make fighting the next levy attempt that much easier. 

Thanks,

Rich Hoffman

The judgment was so bad that all those employees should have been relieved of their duties and sent home on the spot.  But we don’t live in a fair world—but one where public employees like these people are used to getting what they want, when they want it.  They are spoiled brats—and that is putting it mildly.  The Lakota teachers participating in this demonstration are easily replaceable, and should have been treated justly.  They expect too much money for doing entirely too little—then they have the arrogance to be a disruptive force within the school.

It should be quite clear by now why I still think it was a teacher who left the note in the bathroom just days before the last election in Lakota threatening a shooting spree if voters didn’t pass a levy.  Even though the levy was to throw money at these same teachers as appeasement for maintaining a wage freeze at the time, the levy was sold as a way to keep our “kids” safe in school.  Conveniently, just days before the election a threatening note was left behind promising a shooting spree.  The FBI and Butler County Sheriff’s office offered no leads, no hand writing analysis, no arrests in their “investigation” because they knew what I did—that the investigation would have taken them to the classroom of one of these radical teachers instead of some disgruntled kid.  Heck, Sheriff Jones even put his name behind the passage of the levy.  But if it was a kid, where could we place the blame for learning the behavior—look at their teachers?

Much is said about the millennial generation and how bad they are regarding work ethic—how pretentious they are relative to generations from the past.  Granted, the parents are largely to blame for these screwed up kids.  But the public schools have sold themselves as an option to parenting—as a viable substitute.  Well, here is the proof of what kind of things those mentors are teaching kids.  No wonder kids grow up expecting the world to be handed to them on a silver platter; they learn it from their teachers.

Until Ohio becomes a Right-to-Work state these radical nutcases will have all the leverage against tax payers—because management of them is simply not possible—if teachers will protest merit pay—where good teachers get paid based on how good they are—they’ll protest a turtle crossing the street.  Their argument becomes so ridiculous that it’s almost science fiction.  What’s encouraging is that these Lakota teachers have shown so early in the game that they are willing to behave like a bunch of Saul Alinskey radicals just as they did in 2008 with a strike threat, which I brought up continuously in 2010 through the first three levy attempts, caused the budget problems at Lakota.  These latest actions by them will just give those of us willing to fight these idiots cannon fodder—so I welcome more of these antics.  But there is a bit of me that feels sorry for the management of the Lakota school system—which is an entity I have been very critical of—because of their willingness to stay away from the hard decisions like this merit pay issue.  They tried so hard and spent so much money extracting money from the community and this is how the teachers show their thanks.  It has to hurt.  But nobody can say they weren’t warned.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Whiskey Scam of Robert Reich: Students he taught should ask for their money back–because he doesn’t understand economics

If you really want to know what is behind the global push for $15 an hour wage increases at fast food restaurants and other entry-level jobs look no further than Robert Reich–the Clinton economist and academic liberal who has set the pace of the modern socialist movement using MoveOn.org as a platform for insurrection. MoveOn.org is the Soros funded enterprise and has in mind the fulfillment of the same brand of communism that was promised during the Red Decade only introduced with incremental bits of socialism over a long period of time. Professors like Reich are the reason that colleges are failing our young people because it is his nonsense that they have been taught. People like Reich funded by Soros are at war with American capitalism and seek to end it—and have from the very beginning. To understand why and how read the following article shown below from Reich where he introduced his economic theory in favor of a minimum wage increase. Because Reich is so “respected” and accredited, most people take his opinions hook line and sinker without considering the root implications, or source definitions. But to anybody who really understands money and how it’s made and measured, Reich is a functioning communist. He may not name himself that, but his actions define themselves. His major error in the following suggestion which apparently everyone misses is in properly defining productivity. I’ll explain more after the article and a bit of history about Reich.

WHY THE MINIMUM WAGE SHOULD REALLY BE RAISED TO $15 AN HOUR

Momentum is building to raise the minimum wage. Several states have already taken action  – Connecticut has boosted it to $10.10 by 2017, the Maryland legislature just approved a similar measure, Minnesota lawmakers just reached a deal to hike it to $9.50. A few cities have been more ambitious – Washington, D.C. and its surrounding counties raised it to $11.50, Seattle is considering $15.00

Senate Democrats will soon introduce legislation raising it nationally to $10.10, from the current $7.25 an hour.

All this is fine as far as it goes. But we need to be more ambitious. We should be raising the federal minimum to $15 an hour.

Here are seven reasons why:

  1. Had the minimum wage of 1968 simply stayed even with inflation, it would be more than $10 an hour today. But the typical worker is also about twice as productive as then. Some of those productivity gains should go to workers at the bottom.
  2. $10.10 isn’t enough to lift all workers and their families out of poverty. Most low-wage workers aren’t young teenagers; they’re major breadwinners for their families, and many are women. And they and their families need a higher minimum.
  3.  For this reason, a $10.10 minimum would also still require the rest of us to pay Medicaid, food-stamps, and other programs necessary to get poor families out of poverty – thereby indirectly subsidizing employers who refuse to pay more. Bloomberg View describes McDonalds and Walmart as “America’s biggest welfare queens” because their employees receive so much public assistance. (Some, like McDonalds, even advise their employees to use public programs because their pay is so low.)
  4. A $15/hour minimum won’t result in major job losses because it would put money in the pockets of millions of low-wage workers who will spend it – thereby giving working families and the overall economy a boost, and creating jobs. (When I was Labor Secretary in 1996 and we raised the minimum wage, business predicted millions of job losses; in fact, we had more job gains over the next four years than in any comparable period in American history.)
  5. A $15/hour minimum is unlikely to result in higher prices because most businesses directly affected by it are in intense competition for consumers, and will take the raise out of profits rather than raise their prices. But because the higher minimum will also attract more workers into the job market, employers will have more choice of whom to hire, and thereby have more reliable employees – resulting in lower turnover costs and higher productivity.
  6. Since Republicans will push Democrats to go even lower than $10.10, it’s doubly important to be clear about what’s right in the first place. Democrats should be going for a higher minimum rather than listening to Republican demands for a smaller one.
  7. At a time in our history when 95 percent of all economic gains are going to the top 1 percent, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour isn’t just smart economics and good politics. It’s also the morally right thing to do.

 

 

http://front.moveon.org/robert-reich-explains-why-we-should-raise-the-minimum-wage-to-15-per-hour/

 

http://robertreich.org/post/82134788482

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/opinion/03reich.html?pagewanted=2&ref=general&src=me&_r=0

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Reich

 

Robert Bernard Reich (/ˈraɪʃ/;[1] born June 24, 1946) is an American political economist, professor, author, and political commentator. He served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997.

Reich is currently Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He was formerly a professor at Harvard University‘s John F. Kennedy School of Government[2] and professor of social and economic policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management of Brandeis University. He has also been a contributing editor of The New Republic, The American Prospect (also chairman and founding editor), Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

In an interview with The New York Times, he explained that “I don’t believe in redistribution of wealth for the sake of redistributing wealth. But I am concerned about how we can afford to pay for what we as a nation need to do…[Taxes should pay] for what we need in order to be safe and productive. As Oliver Wendell Holmes once wrote, “taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.”[25]

In response to a question as to what to recommend to the incoming president regarding a fair and sustainable income and wealth distribution, Reich said, “Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit — a wage supplement for lower-income people, and finance it with a higher marginal income tax on the top five percent. For the longer term, invest in education for lower-income communities, starting with early-childhood education and extending all the way up to better access to post-secondary education.”[25]

Reich is pro-union, saying “Unionization is not just good for workers in unions, unionization is very, very important for the economy overall, and would create broad benefits for the United States.”[26][27] He also favors raising the federal minimum wage to $15/hour over three years, believing that it will not adversely impact big business and will enhance the availability of higher value workers for companies.[28]

Reich is only a modern snake oil salesman trying to palm off whisky as a cure-all medicine. His economic product is Karl Marx communism and socialism implemented through twists and turns of Keynesian economics shaped by the philosophies of Immanuel Kant. And guess what—they are all wrong in their premise. Reich goes wrong in his very first assumption when he states above that “the typical worker is about twice as productive now as they were in 1968.” The worker isn’t more efficient or better, their productive output did not increase—their actual work, and the energy output to produce that work is statistically much less than it was in 1968. For instance, at a typical McDonald’s founded first in 1940 the amount of work a worker had to exert in 1968 meant that all the hamburgers had to be grilled by hand, the buns individually toasted, most of the labor had to be implemented with the touch time of a human hand. But by 2015 most of the food making operation was automated. The average McDonald’s today is very much more productive than the 1968 version, but it isn’t because the worker is better. Arguably, ethically, morally, and in all categories of make-up it should be easy to prove by some academic like Reich that the quality of people available to work is much lower today than they were in 1968. So his comment about the average worker being twice as productive is complete nonsense—it’s a statement made up in the halls of academia for the sole purpose of eating money out of George Soros’ hand and his aims for global communism.

The Reich formula for determining productive output ignores completely the value of individuals, whether those individuals are the CEOs of companies, or are hard-working employees who carry the rest of their workforce on their backs on a daily basis. The socialist utopia that Reich preaches about in his economic efforts is a theoretical fantasy that falls apart the moment that theory is applied to real people. And Reich has ignored these failures for years.

When Reich was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997 the economic success that Clinton and Reich enjoyed were not because of their socialist policies, it was because Clinton was forced to compromise with a Republican congress to get their fiscal house in order. Ross Perot was challenging both parties in 1996 so both wanted to squeeze him out of the debate and after the Lewinsky scandal “Bubba” played ball with House and Senate Republicans and things actually improved a bit economically. However the biggest contributors were the invention of the personal PC market and the spread of the Internet which was still a very new thing back then. The market expansion that occurred under tech sector economies happened on Clinton’s watch, and he got the credit. Most of that tech work was done in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan where the stage was set for such Silicone Valley creations—it didn’t have anything to do with Robert Reich.

Yet Reich stood in front of his Harvard and Berkley economic classes all this time teaching socialism to thousands of young students taking credit for that period of time without telling anybody the whole truth. The guy has lied and taken credit for the work of others for years, and now the communist utopia that George Soros wants to create needs the snake oil salesmanship of the con artist Reich. And that is how the minimum wage debate emerged and how the stage was set for the outrageous sum of $15 an hour fast food jobs. These are ideals proposed by shells of actual people who espouse anti-capitalist sentiments with the purposeful destruction of America’s economic power. They should be seen for what they are, and geniuses they are not. Reich can use a lot of big word and charts to explain his theories but in essence he is just a snake oil salesman proclaiming that whiskey has magical properties to a largely uninformed population. What’s worse is that he seeks to keep people in such a state so that not only he can resume gaining attention and accolades, but that he can advance a progressive agenda that seeks an end to our country as a capitalist power house. His failure is specifically in defining value in productivity assuming that all gains belong to human workers. Rather, the real truth in increases in productivity is from the minority of minds who invented the tools to increase productivity in spite of a declining social intellect. That trick is a masterpiece, and it has nothing to do with the American worker, or the gains made toward justification for a minimum wage hike first started in 1968 under deceitful measures.

If you are one of the many poor fools who have taken an economic class by Robert Reich, then you should ask for your money back. Because he sold you whiskey as medicine that only a drunk would accept as legitimate.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Who are the Three Percent: Being a shepherd and the sheep

Somebody reminded me recently of a little factoid that I already knew, but hadn’t thought about in a while. Before there was ever a Tea Party in America there was an organization called the Three Percent, which was a reference to the amount of people who fought and won the American Revolution against England. The term is important as it indicates a truth to the winds of change that is pertinent to our times. In the modern media driven culture hell-bent on socialism and various aspects of democracy where majority rules, the Tea Party is viewed as irrelevant because it does not represent the masses of our society. Yet history proves time and time again that history is not shaped by the masses, but by the leaders who are often in the extreme minority. In this case pertaining to the Revolution and the modern Constitutional movement the term Three Percent is relevant. Here is how the actual group, the Three Percent describe themselves on a 2009 website—followed by the link to their material.

The Three Percent in 1775.

During the American Revolution, the active forces in the field against the King’s tyranny never amounted to more than 3% of the colonists. They were in turn actively supported by perhaps 10% of the population. In addition to these revolutionaries were perhaps another 20% who favored their cause but did little or nothing to support it. Another one-third of the population sided with the King (by the end of the war there were actually more Americans fighting FOR the King than there were in the field against him) and the final third took no side, blew with the wind and took what came. Three Percenters today do not claim that we represent 3% of the American people, although we might. That theory has not yet been tested. We DO claim that we represent at least 3% of American gun owners, which is still a healthy number somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 million people. History, for good or ill, is made by determined minorities. We are one such minority. So too are the current enemies of the Founders’ Republic. What remains, then, is the test of will and skill to determine who shall shape the future of our nation. The Three Percent today are gun owners who will not disarm, will not compromise and will no longer back up at the passage of the next gun control act. Three Percenters say quite explicitly that we will not obey any further circumscription of our traditional liberties and will defend ourselves if attacked. We intend to maintain our God-given natural rights to liberty and property, and that means most especially the right to keep and bear arms. Thus, we are committed to the restoration of the Founders’ Republic, and are willing to fight, die and, if forced by any would-be oppressor, to kill in the defense of ourselves and the Constitution that we all took an oath to uphold against enemies foreign and domestic. We are the people who the collectivists who now control the government should leave alone if they wish to continue unfettered oxygen consumption. We are the Three Percent. Attempt to further oppress us at your peril. To put it bluntly, leave us the hell alone.

http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2009/02/what-is-three-percenter.html

I have for many, many years considered myself in an even more elite class going well beyond the Three Percenter types. In my family the push has always been to be a 1% percenter, not in measure by fiscal buying power, but by intellectual aptitude. I have absolutely no desire to be in step with the rest of society—but rather several decades ahead of the current democratic driven trends. So it’s not hard for me to feel an affinity for those who consider themselves in the Three Percent.

The philosophic stance between of the Three Percent and the modern Tea Party led by people like Glenn Beck and Matt Kibbe is where I’m at. I don’t feel a need to proclaim violent action against an out of control government because I think any of them can be easily beaten with intelligence. Conversely, Glenn Beck is a bit too evangelical for me—a bit too soft-spoken. I understand why he’s the way he is, but he’s too soft for my sentiments. But I’m with him on most things, and I admire the vigor of the Three Percent. If things get out of control, I would be ahead of the Three Percenters in resistance. However, I have little faith in the competency of government to even organize such a thing—so I don’t entertain much in the way of options in that direction.

The point of the matter is that minorities are what shape the future. It currently is a small minority of radical leftists who are shaping the modern world of politics starting with George Soros and trickling down of money to puppet politicians like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. They are in the minority, yet they behave as though they have always been in the majority—democratically speaking. They have committed a ruse—but they are vulnerable to the same tactics—which is what they have been seeing over the last decade. Even with all the George Soros money spent advocating on behalf of socialist/progressive policies—the gains they have made have been limited and the pendulum has swung toward groups like the Three Percenters and the Tea Party to show guidance away from the left-leaning minority domination of the national message.

One of the most frequent criticisms that I see leveled at my work is that it only has an appeal to the minority—in most cases one percenter types who are even more vigilant than the three percenters, or the more general and soft minded Tea Party types. An angry leftist will write me with proclamations that the masses are not behind my view points and suggest that I should abandon them in favor of a more popular view. I have a long history of this type of resistance and my hatred of public education can be traced back to my firm belief in going against the grain of popularity. For instance, when I was a kid it was very unpopular to like the popular Star Wars films in school. Showing an open love of those movies were guarantees at social castigation—even though privately most people enjoyed the films. I took great joy at stepping on the school bus with my Han Solo shirt on and feeling the parade of insults cast at me to make me want to change my behavior. The more the other kids threw insults at me, the more deeply into my convictions I planted myself. When verbal insults didn’t work, kids would resort to physical violence, which did not work with me—at all. I had some rather memorable fights in school which taught kids that they were best off to leave me alone. Meanwhile, I wore my Han Solo shirts well into my high school years and never stopped moving into adulthood.

Thirty years later, which seems like a long time, but it was only a few election cycles—Star Wars is openly enjoyed by just about everyone. Nobody looks sideways at me when I wear my Han Solo shirt out somewhere with my grandson. People actually respond favorably to it. The new movie, Episode 7 The Force Awakens is projected by the Hollywood Reporter to hit over $2 billion in global revenue during its upcoming Christmas run. I personally think the number will be higher, but it’s a start. It’s not that people all of a sudden started liking Star Wars—it’s just become suddenly fashionable to publicly say so as the years have traveled toward us. I knew when I was a kid that Star Wars was something special and I was certainly well within the 1% percentile who publicly stated it—proudly. It was quite a shock when I had a chance to date a girl in the 8th grade who was the most attractive girl in the school—and I gave up on that date to play Star Wars with a bunch of geeky kids who were younger than me. A lot of people thought something was wrong with me. Society in general didn’t understand. But I did, and that’s all that mattered. So I told the girl no and instead spent that Friday night in the basement of my parents house with four other kids playing Star Wars all night—and it was a lot better than a date with a pretty girl. Believe me. Pretty girls mostly come with rules aligned toward social values current to the day. They expect their boyfriends to get along and like the ordainment of their peers. Those are rules I was never willing to deal with. Star Wars was much better, and it still is. Trust me kids, after tens of thousands of sexual experiences—Star Wars is more rewarding.

Since those days I have felt the same pressure for a hundred million different issues, but I generally handled them all the same. I do what I know to be right in spite of what “society” thinks is correct. If the issue is controversial, so be it. Some of the worst and most violent fights I’ve had were when my wife and I were the only two people in a Mason neighborhood who were against the teenage drug dealing that was going on in front of our house. The issue got so out of control that the mayor of Mason had to get involved as the entire police department had turned against us—because they didn’t want to deal with the issue. Talk about pressure. We had the same kind of social rebuttal when we home schooled our children for a time. That was hard as everyone turned against us socially. It was harder than wearing a Han Solo shirt onto a hostile school bus full of rough neck kids from the Gregory Creek trailer park. If you wore a KISS shirt you were cool and didn’t get picked on. If you wore a Star Wars shirt, you got picked on bad. Put your kids in public school, and sign them up for every sports program available and you will be the star of your neighborhood. Home school your kids and you will be ridiculed. Publicly endorse all the modern big government entitlements and the news outlets will paste your face on every station. Stand against them, and you will be seen as a scourge on progress. But as we know, Star Wars is now popular—by virtually everyone, and the liberty movement has now migrated beyond the typically three percent of the population. It takes a leader to see these events way ahead of the masses—it is for the masses to follow the leader. There isn’t a cell in my body that desires to be a follower—to be a mere lamb in the flock herded by a wise and knowing shepherd. I only want to be a shepherd and typically only around three percent of an entire population feels the same way.

While many from the masses bulk at the topics on this site, I am certain that within twenty to thirty years—just like Star Wars—these topics will be popular among the masses. They hide their feelings now—those masses, but deep down inside they support them—they just don’t feel confident to proclaim those feelings in public. Three percent of the population understands that, and they are typically ahead of the masses. So there is no reason to bend the will of the leaders to the masses of any society. Because eventually, the masses will catch up to the leaders—and everyone can’t be a leader. Only the rare few—and it is among them that the world hinges. There is no other way—the only difference is in knowing what type of person you are. Sheep need to be herded—and they like it. Shepherds do not—and among those shepherds are the Three Percent.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Meet Matt Kibbe Speaking at the Cincinnati Tea Party: Six years of success projecting many more

It says a lot that after six years the Cincinnati Tea Party still draws such huge crowds such as they did during the 2015 Tax Day rally at the Sharonville Convention Center. Ann Becker and her band of righteous rebels have done a very good job of keeping everything together even when the established political party of Republicans has openly sought to destroy the fledgling movement. The Cincinnati Tea Party has so much influence throughout the country that it attracts national personalities like Matt Kibbe to speak at its events such as what can be seen in the following clip from that event.

Matthew B. “Matt” Kibbe is the President and CEO of FreedomWorks, a position he has held since 2004. He originally joined the organization (previously known as Citizens for a Sound Economy) as a policy analyst in 1986. He previously worked as Chief of Staff to U.S. Representative Dan Miller (R-FL), Senior Economist at the Republican National Committee (where he resigned in protest when George H. W. Bush violated his no new taxes pledge),[3] Director of Federal Budget Policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Managing Editor of Market Process, an academic economics journal published by the Center for the Study of Market Processes at George Mason University.[4][5]image

Kibbe has been published in publications including The Wall Street Journal,[6] The Washington Times,[7] USA Today, RedState.com, America Spectator and Reason Magazine.[8] On television, Kibbe has appeared on MSNBC’s The Dylan Ratigan Show, MSNBC’s Hardball, FOX News’ Fox & Friends, FOX News’ Glenn Beck, NBC’s The Today Show, FOX News’ America’s Newsroom, CSPAN, FOX News’ Neil Cavuto, FOX Business Network’s Happy Hour, and HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher[9]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Kibbeimage

I enjoyed meeting Kibbe as he’s someone who has done some great national work on behalf of the Tea Party. If not for him, and a few like him, it would have been hard to continue this act of rebellion against big government for such a long period of time. As Kibbe said in his speech, there has been a shift in the power of new media to allow discussions of freedom to rise to the top in spite of attempts from the old world to confine them. Kibbe pointed out that John Boehner should have been in attendance since he lives up the road, but was scared because he knows what the Tea Party means to established Republicans.

Of the upcoming presidential nominees from the Republican Party so far, all are Tea Party candidates. There wasn’t anybody like these guys in 2008 when McCain ran against Obama—so this election of 2016 will naturally have some debate that the rest of America has not heard before. People within the Tea Party of course have been hearing these arguments for quite a long time, but now there will be a national audience that will be cast in competition against the ideas of the past—traditionally regulated to the progressive elements of the two-party systems. The Tea Party has not died, as many hoped, but has remained a force for change from a corrupt system into a more philosophic endeavor poised to provide definitions to economic and social boundaries that have long been ignored.image

Kibbe with all his great experience was very at ease on stage and provided a wonderful talk. I came in behind him as he was registering at the VIP entrance once the crowds had settled inside the auditorium at the beginning. He was extremely unassuming and confident using logic to make his points as opposed to emotion. Even when nobody was looking Matt Kibbe was a solid representative of sound economic policy. I knew who he was but didn’t bother him as he gets hammered by fans everywhere he goes. He was very polite to everyone who tried to engage him and gave him their books hoping to get coverage on his FreedomWorks network. But Kibbe stayed on point and focused until it was time for him to speak.

In contrast was Benn Swan who I have also had some interaction with in the past who gave a speech with a pretension that projected he thought he was the next Glenn Beck. Kibbe has had a lot higher profile than Swan who made a name for himself at Channel 19 in Cincinnati. Swan ducked out as soon as his speech was over shaking hands and behaving like a star wanting to sign all his autographs. Kibbe stood next to me in the back of the room looking like the kind of guy you’d want to have a beer with. We spoke a bit but otherwise he kept his profile low and his attention on the task at hand. He was as much of a class act as I hoped he would be.

imageKibbe’s speech left me thankful that he does all that he does. His contributions are direct, and having a dramatic effect. He is certainly one of the people in my opinion who have helped populate the field of current presidential candidates. His national work has after all these years began showing results–and for those in the Tea Party movement, they are favorable. It is certainly because of people like Ann Becker that the Cincinnati Tea Party is still so respected, but it is because of those like Matt Kibbe that advances in political, and economic philosophy have brought to fruition an option in thought that just wasn’t present in American politics six years ago. It has been a great six years, and the next six will produce advancements unfathomable to the John Boehner types of yesteryear. And the responsibility for many of those advancements will fall directly to the antics of Matt Kibbe and his FreedomWorks network. It is for that reason I enjoyed meeting him so much.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Mason High School’s Covered Girl Challenge: Public education purposely turning children against you

As public education advocates were marching on Columbus to protest Governor Kasich’s budget cuts to affluent school districts, the Mason school system showed what the government schools are really about. For those who think that my criticisms of public schools are exaggerated check out the activity that was being organized at Mason. Keep in mind that Christianity is heavily ridiculed in government schools yet in Mason, Ohio—one of the wealthiest regions in the country students are being encouraged to wear a Muslim hijab to school as a gateway to Islam. What is interesting in this is that radical ISIS beheadings are the news topic of our day and thousands of years of archaeology is being destroyed in the Middle East by radical Muslim terrorists—yet here is a publicly funded institution encouraging the spread of Islam. Here is the memo that went out to students and their parents announcing the upcoming event.

Mason High School is blessed to have a unique and diverse student body. In order celebrate this diversity and promote open-mindedness, the Muslim Student Association is inviting all female students to participate in “A Covered Girl Challenge” which will allow students to wear a headscarf for the whole school day. Afterwards, there will be a discussion (open for all students, male & female) held in Z223 to share experiences and reflections.

In order to participate, students and/or parents should attend the informational meeting offered and turn in the attached permission slip to Student Activities or Mrs. Jenkin’s room in Z223.

On the morning of April 23rd, there will be booths set up in A2, C1, and Z1 to help participators adjust their scarves and answer any questions.

To learn more about what the Covered Girl Challenge is all about and what a headscarf is watch this video: https://youtu.be/_WosD_GTz_E

Please note the important dates below: Informational meeting: April 20th after school in Z223 Covered Girl Challenge Thursday April 23rd during school day

Covered Girl Challenge Discussion after school on Thursday April 23rd in Z223 Flyer and permission slip are at the link below:

http://www.edline.net/pages/Mason_High_School/2684432697290919314/Student_Activities/FORMS/EMA

If anyone has any questions please email masonhsmsa@gmail.com

 

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/04/ohio-public-high-school-hosting-a-covered-girl-challenge-asking-students-to-wear-hijab-for-a-day

Now, what conclusion would any rational person make by that event? It’s not like Mason is some backwater school in the middle of nowhere—its right in the heart of America.

Here’s the deal, public schools are all about using confiscated wealth and breeding into the minds of youth nice little socialist followers who will support an aggressive agenda once they are of voting age. They are unhealthy places that no parent who truly loves their child should send an innocent mind. Public schools are bad places that intend bad things for newly formed minds. What other conclusion is there about the Covered Girl Challenge at Mason High School? Think about that and let me know…………………………………………………………

Why are we paying for these palaces of doom to destroy our children?

Send this to a friend and ask them the same question………………….why?

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Black-clad Lakota Teachers Against Merit: A system only designed by Lucifer himself

 

It would be a comedy if it wasn’t reality, but sadly it is. The Lakota teacher union is at it again—thinking incorrectly that everyone in opposition to their radical community expectations have gone back to sleep. Foolishly they exposed their true agenda with the same old tired tactics that belong in a lampoon film. They are a satire of themselves. At a recent school board meeting they protested the school board over the issue of merit pay, which I immensely support. The mere mention of merit pay gives me hope that the Lakota school board may actually do something correctly in relation to management of their employees. Merit pay means that good employees get paid better than bad ones—it’s pretty much that simple. For example, a teacher my kids had at Lakota East, Mr. Duff I would have considered an exceptionally great teacher. I wouldn’t care if the school paid him $200,000 per year, because he was worth it. However, the many teachers from Lakota reported by this site that were caught in various scandals and poor choice behavior recently clearly aren’t worth so much money. They may have value in some education capacity, but certainly are not equal to Mr. Duff. The Lakota teachers are a progressive organization under their LEA union leadership and they believe in strict collective bargaining or nothing—meaning all boats rise to the top regardless of the quality of their employees. Because of their insistence on this collectivize bargaining/no merit pay formula the budget tax payers are forced to fund is outrageously high. Lakota like every organization should be functioning under the 10-80-10 rule, which generally cites that roughly 10% of a work force are exceptionally good—like Mr. Duff and should be compensated accordingly. 80% are average and should make wages in accordance with their meagerness. Then the bottom 10% are the child molesters, the sexting addicts, and general bottom feeders who should be on the chopping block of termination upon their first mistake. The union helps those bottom feeders while penalizing the top by minimizing their worth as equal to the lowest 10%. Here is how my old buddy Michael Clark reported the issue in the Cincinnati Enquirer. The complete article is at the end of the segment. Read it while you can—because the Enquirer starving for revenue takes these articles down not long after they are published. Typically articles like this one are forgotten in a few weeks, and during the next levy attempt, we’ll want to remember it.

LIBERTY TWP. – In the middle of key Lakota Schools’ contract talks, dozens of teachers made a symbolic but silent appearance Monday night in the union’s first public demonstration since negotiations began.

About four dozen teachers – many of them clad in black – joined a full audience at Lakota’s school board meeting as labor talks continue this week for Southwest Ohio’s second largest school system.

Some of the teachers say they are concerned about the possibility of merit pay being contractually installed for the first time in Lakota’s 59-year history.

“I’d like to see more positive changes for teachers here in the future, but I don’t think merit pay is the way to go,” said Brandon Bright, a science teacher at Lakota East High School.

Sharon Mays, president of the 923-member Lakota Education Association (LEA), declined to comment about union members’ appearance at the board meeting or on the status of the contract talks, which began last month.

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2015/04/13/talks-continue-lakota-teachers-demonstrate/25743561/

I read the comments at that link from some of the teachers and they were even funnier than those idiots standing outside of the administration building dressed in black for emphasis fighting merit pay. They have an opinion of themselves that is much higher than their real value. They are spoiled brat public employees who work, think, and have expectations on par with the most grotesquely out-of-touch IRS employee. They have no sense of service, but somehow believe that the community works for them instead of the other way around. No wonder so many children raised in public education environments over the last two or three decades enter life feeling entitled to everything—because they learned the behavior from these idiots!

Public teachers like those at Lakota own the problems of our modern age–the sex driven antics of youth, the low morality, the poor ethics, and the terrible work habits. Union employed teachers have successfully offered free baby sitting to lazy self-absorbed parents making the public school the primary driver of youthful upbringing and it has been a disaster. Public schools do not get a free pass when everything goes wrong—they don’t get to point at the parents and call them names to justify the poor home lives of children. The public schools offered themselves as a substitute and they failed—at best.

But why did they fail–the public schools like Lakota? Well it’s because the teachers have collective bargaining agreements and step increase schedules that give them money no matter how good of a teacher they are. So bad teachers are kept around and considered equal to the top ten percent, and the really good have no incentive to continue being great, because they get paid the same as the slugs working next to them. The public school system is the epitome of Karl Marx communism. It’s just not called that by name, but the assumption that all employees are equal is taken straight out of the text of The Communist Manefestro. Public education is a joke. Exceptional employees are looted of their value in favor of the weakest and most demonstrative. Values in such a system are re-distributed to those without it, just like wealth in the community which funds the whole mess. The public education system might as well have been designed by Lucifer.

Lakota to their credit as an administrative measure have thankfully listened to the complaints over the years—and are considering merit pay—which would go a long way to solving a great many of the problems at that district. But it’s a drop in the bucket and the unions instantly jumped all over the issue with protest. All they really managed to do was to show just how grossly out-of-touch they really are by protesting in this day and age—after all that’s happened at Lakota—in such a dramatic fashion. Really? They know I’m not going to let it die and will bring it up from now until infinity—yet they did it anyway.

I suppose they figure they have the votes for a new levy, and they think nobody reads Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom just because they don’t and don’t hear me on WLW radio any more. But they’d be wrong. The stat numbers on my site for the topic of politics is quite high, and daily provides information to those not quite up to date on things. Most people miss Enquirer articles like the one above the first time around and only care during elections. Since the Enquirer charges for their information people turn to sites like this one. Because of Overmanwarror’s Wisdom, during the next election when people Google “Lakota teacher salary” or “Lakota election” articles like this one will come up. Then they may know about the Enquirer article, they’ll have access to the quote I provided, but they’ll click on the link and discover that the link no longer works. So they’ll read my site instead of the Enquirer and form their opinion based on the data given.

It used to be that teachers union scum bags and merit pay protestors only had to bend the ear of reporters like Michael Clark from the Enquirer or the Pulse. But media has changed over the last five years. If it’s not on Twitter, nobody will see it. People don’t read traditional news any more, and they care even less about some story about black clad Lakota teachers written by a reporter eating out of the hand of Sharon Mays. But come election time, they’ll find me, and will ignore the flowery newspaper articles that always come out prior to an election—just so that papers can sell advertising back to the school through direct and indirect sales. When they do read this article in the upcoming years voters will remember what a bunch of idiots the Lakota teachers were over merit pay. Once they do, they’ll become an informed voter and will cast their ballots as such.

Meanwhile, the Lakota teachers participating in that protest are satirical limericks of personal destruction—they are caricatures of sanity pasted against the theater of time apparently solely for our amusement. Because no truly sane person would argue against merit, unless they are a thief wanting to steal while nobody is looking. But guess what? Everyone is looking—and they are wide awake.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Jurassic World: A new step in science and philosophy

I’m not kidding, I am ecstatic about the opening of the new Jurassic Park franchise film Jurassic World. I may actually be more excited than that—but needless to say, I can’t wait. I love those movies deeply because they embody questions very relevant to our times regarding philosophy, science, morality, and economy that are not explored more effectively than in any other venue. It was Jurassic Park that really introduced over twenty years ago the concept of DNA replication to bring to life extinct species. A lot of science has been unraveled since then really demanding this latest edition—where scientists needing a ratings boost in park attendance make a hybrid dinosaur that gets loose and destroys the fully realized Jurassic World—the dreamy creation of the former John Hammond whose dream of a fully realized dinosaur park is finally made into a reality.

I loved the Michael Crichton books when they first came out, Jurassic Park and then The Lost World. When the movie hit in 1993 I made a big deal about it and took my little girls at the time to see it on opening night. They still remember that movie as their first theater experience. For this last Christmas my youngest daughter gave me a Jurassic Park t-shirt as a present because it is something that is specifically our thing. To this day she loves biology, botany, and paleontology because of her childhood spawned from the first Jurassic Park movie. A few years later when The Lost World came out I drug my wife’s side of the family, something like 25 people who had been gathering at a lake house on Nolan Lake to Elizabethtown, Kentucky to see the opening night in the only theater within fifty miles of the remote residence. The family often gathered at that lake for Memorial Day. In that group of people are a lot of science lovers, particularly my father-in-law who held multiple degrees in geology and was a school teacher—so they all wanted to see it. We packed up in several cars and made a pilgrimage into town to watch The Lost World. My kids were older at the time and had an absolute blast with their cousins.   I don’t think they ever forgot the experience.

When Dr. Grant returned to Jurassic Park III my kids were in high school and I let them take a day off to go see the movie on opening day. Dr. Grant was always my favorite character so I was excited and my kids were excited because I was. It was a marvelous experience. The movies declined in quality a bit from the first one, especially as Steven Spielberg moved away from direct involvement with the franchise as the director, but they are still good regardless. Each movie is like the approach to a theme park at the beginning of the day when the sun is out, the air is cool, and eagerness fills the mind. There is nothing quite like the morning approach to a Orlando park whether it be Universal Studios, Disney, Sea World, a day at the local zoo, a thrill park, there is magic in the air that is unique to the human experience emerging from such a creation. Each Jurassic Park film embodies that same type of optimism where act one is filled with that type of energy. Act two in the movies becomes something of a Hitchcock type mystery where problems of clashing philosophies set up act three. In that third act all the optimism from act one gets tossed out the window and the films become a haunted house experience where a new thrill is around every turn that is wrapped up nicely at the end with heroics and fanfare. They are fun in the least, but at their best they ask deep questions very relevant to modern science—and they drive advancements in technology.

In my family we all loved playing Jurassic Park Builder on XBox and later on our cell phones. My kids play those types of simulators often and that love started with seeing the movies and dreaming of what it would really be like to see a fully realized Jurassic Park. So it will be wonderful to see what a Jurassic World will look like in the movie, where the whole island originally conceived in the very first film has finally been built into a fully functioning amusement park. I overlook the obvious attacks on capitalism which always spawn in the second act as a simple plot device to ask “what if.” If not for capitalism there wouldn’t be anything relevant about Jurassic Park so without it, there wouldn’t be any dinosaurs or topic to contemplate. Rather the theme of the movies is what happens when undisciplined use of capitalism leads people astray, which is what happens in Jurassic World.

As cool as all the dinosaurs are, the cost of running such a large theme park is excessive so they need increased attendance just to cover their costs. So they invent a new dinosaur which is wrong in so many different ways. But what is to stop human kind from doing such a thing. Very soon genetic research which was in its infancy in the first Jurassic Park movie, will allow people to alter themselves into whatever they want to be. All you have to do is manipulate your DNA code and we can all be taller, faster, and prettier—whatever we wish. The same topic of conversation is emerging in the discussions of giving birth once again to extinct species of animals. What is to stop zoos from making a wholly mammoth when they can change it into something that has never before existed. What are the limits in playing God?   Religions will say that nobody should play God, but science dictates that we should—so where is the happy medium? Those types of questions are what the Jurassic Park movies explore and leave movie goers talking about those very topics on the way home after the movie. That is why these movies are important, because they put hard science into the spotlight of what we should and should not do as a species with very advanced tools in our possession.

Needless to say, I am excited and will continue to be the closer the movie gets to a release date. There are a lot of great movies lined up for the summer, but none of them are as exciting to me as Jurassic World. Will it be as good as the first one? Probably not. Likely it will be somewhere between the second and third film—it probably won’t make as much money at the box office as Universal hopes it will, but it will still be enjoyable, and relevant. I hope it does well enough to justify another movie in the franchise, because I could watch them forever. It is always fun no matter how many times we go, to pull up to Disney World for a fresh adventure. There is always optimism in the morning before attending an amusement park. And those are the same type of emotions experienced before seeing a Jurassic Park movie. It is one of the few films of its kind that really captures that optimism fully. That is the reason I simply can’t wait for the movie to open. When it does, I will be one of the first in line!

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Secrets of the Moon: We are not alone, and never have been

The great danger of having the government in control of so much, particularly education, is that it makes it easy for them to conceal information that they do not wish to emerge. And this has never been more evident than in the issue over mankind’s actual origins or its relationship to the heavens. For instance, NASA recently had a press conference announcing that it would be likely that mankind would discover alien life within the next decade as seen in the video below. This was a remarkable statement by a government organization that has traditionally tried to debunk some of the wild UFO theories that have emerged throughout the years. Yet innately we all seem to understand that there is something not quite right about the stories we were given as children, and we look to the heavens as if yearning for home. We hide those yearnings behind religion and trust in government because the implications are just too terrifying to us in discovering, (or rather re-discovering) the truth. But the truth is headed in our direction quicker than mankind can deal with it and is on a collision course with destiny that none of us are ready for. Government has some idea, although it’s unlikely any one person in government has the whole story. For instance, NASA is planning on getting a manned mission to Mars by 2035 and they already have a pretty good idea what we’ll find once we get there. Just recently it was discovered that there was a vast ocean that covered the Northern Hemisphere of Mars and at a time, the red planet was very earth like. If there was water, it is likely that some form of life was in it. It is even possible that a whole life cycle of intelligent life rose and fell well before humans were even mating with (angels) in the time before the Deluge.

The most suspicious giveaway of this massive cover-up is the fact that mankind has not returned to the moon since the 1970s. Our journeys to the moon came to a sudden stop never to return or even send a probe. When the Apollo missions were over, everything just came to an end. NASA moved into a phase of launching shuttles and building an “International Space Station” content to float above the earth, but never to venture out too far from our home planet. The moon was strangely off limits suddenly.

The moon is pretty easy to see and amateur astronomers have been looking at it for many years. No matter where we are on earth, we all see the same side of it, never seeing anything on the back side as the same face always gazes at us—yet human beings have been more curious than their governments have been comfortable with. They have seen strange events happening on the moon and speculate as to why or how. But the real evidence that gives away the mystery is that nobody has returned, and if they have, it was a secret not disclosed to the public. When mankind does return to these other planets we’ll confirm the long-held suspicion that we are not alone. We were never alone, in fact, our galaxy is teeming with life—most of it very primitive, some of it advanced, but we will share with that advanced life an origin story that will be difficult for all of us. It will shatter our religious convictions and a perceptual understanding of reality—so for now our governments protect our fragile emotions with the thin veil of concealment like children still wanting to believe in Santa Clause. We want to believe in the Leaky theories of evolution, in the hand of God shaping us into our present form. But what we’ll discover very soon is that God was not some deity in the heavens but only part of the story of a race of people who came to earth from someplace else and made the world into the image of their homeland. Likely some of these relics will be found on Mars which will finally put all the speculation to rest. And before Mars was settled, there are other home worlds some of which still host life and have with them the origin stories what will shatter our current perceptual knowledge and leave mankind reeling with panic. The government isn’t all sinister, just filled with human frailty and an understanding that such revelations will shake the very foundations of society to its very core—and they have an innate desire to stay in charge and protect their “flock” from such trauma. But, it’s too late. It’s coming whether or not we want it to.

It is common in government schools for children to ridicule other children for believing in UFOs even though the evidence in support of alien life far surpasses the official press releases provided by government. The government has shown that it will lie collectively about small things, like Benghazi, or the true nature of a deal with Cuba and lifting sanctions with Iran—so it is quite a mystery why anybody would be so willing to believe the government in regard to alien life. But in public schools the government helps shape the consensus of learning. Children are encouraged to keep up with all the latest trends in pop culture and social concerns filling their brains with irrelevant material doomed to revision once government gets caught concealing the truth. That time is coming quick especially with independent private sector companies moving into the space race. Government will have to come clean or put a stop to free will because they can’t prevent the curious from uncovering the origins of mankind any longer. There are just too many tools available to the modern adventurer. Kids still make fun of other kids in school who dare to ask questions that have their answers outside of the latest happenings of a boy band singing the latest greatest hits. Many young minds are happy for a time to turn off their thoughts so they can feel the boobies of some girl during their adolescent years, but eventually their curiosity will catch up to them. And the evidence won’t be concealed any longer.

It wasn’t that long ago scientists—(individuals functioning under government grants) doubted that there was life anywhere but earth and that water was unusual to our planet. Now we know that Mars had an ocean—a big one and given the nature of our personal mythologies and early “pagan” religions, that in our background on earth there is evidence of life that was quite vast and intricate. Before there were governments in the form that we have them today, there were kingdoms and religion was used to control the minds of those within those kingdoms to serving their kings as a link to the heavens. Government has expanded this role, it is no longer just one or two monarchs sitting on a throne, but a whole class of people we are supposed to trust to manage our affairs as we work to pay our taxes to them and pick one of the few religions provided to us to focus our eye toward some version of immortality after the death of our bodies on earth. We are taught in our public schools to cattle prod our classmates into staying in the lines and not believing the strange reports of UFOs that flood in from the curious. But later, when the school days are done and government doesn’t provide answers to the strange things we see around us but to tell us to look somewhere else and keep our minds focused on some religion to answer our questions, all we have to do is look up and see ancient relics looking back at us.  The moon is right there—yet human kind does not see it for what it really is..

The moon itself is an ancient artifact and this will be confirmed once we finally return and stay on its surface. There won’t be concealment of the truth any longer and NASA can see the day within the next few decades when this reality will occur. So they are slowly floating out to the public what is expected to be discovered, so that mankind has a chance to grapple with the implications. And those implications will shatter the religions of the world too stringent to accept the reality that we have never been alone but were only a colony on earth from a vast species that still roams the universe. And from there is the real origin story that will bring with it many new religions and a destiny not rooted in such sure footing. The strongest evidence to the fact is in what NASA or the government in general has avoided doing. The moon is so close, yet so far away. It is right there in the sky and on it is the truth—a truth we ran away from after the Apollo program. But a truth that is catching up to us faster than government can conceal the information.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Art of Playing: Celebrating life and happiness

imageIt was my 47th birthday today and I spent it in an unusual fashion compared to some, but quite the standard within my family. During it I was reminded of a conversation I had recently with some pretty important and powerful people about the nature of living and how I manage to do so many things at several layers of severity and risk,  but still manage to lay my head down on my pillow each night for sleep without wanting to jump off a roof. It’s a secret that I feel compelled to teach the world, just so that I might remove just a bit of their suffering and change the direction of their life’s focus. It’s a method that everyone would benefit from if they embraced it more and would drop the broken stereotypes of the past—because they don’t work. As a brief intro to the concept please understand that my wife could have given me just about anything for my birthday—a new Apple Watch, an expensive vacation, a dinner at Cincinnati’s exclusive restaurants, even a new car—but what she did give me was infinitely more interesting and fun. She gave me a Zoomer Dinosaur. She has been watching my grandson and he knew what she had bought me, and at just over 2 years old, he couldn’t wait to tell me. So he guided me to where she was hiding it and we opened it up. She didn’t care because he was so excited to see it move. After opening it, we put the little dinosaur on the ground and began playing with it—which set the tone for the entire birthday celebration.

My mother taught her kids how to play, even late in life. Growing up we played a lot and had very diverse interests. My grandmother also played at life a lot and made growing up very fun. Every trip to the grocery store was fun because they made it that way, and as a result I carry that into my own life-even in tragic situations. I try to have fun every day of my life—no matter what is going on. That is a pattern started in my childhood by my mom. My brother and sister have a similar love of playing and as a result as grown adults, they don’t have any mental problems or issues with social interaction. They are not drug abusers of even a slight nature and have no real insecurities of any mention. Now with kids of their own, they are bringing that element of play to their own offspring with very positive results. But out of all the members of my family, I learned to play more than the others and I am more obvious in my dedication to it.

One of my best memories as a kid was when I had to go to soccer practice one evening when I really didn’t want to. I always loved sports, but only the games themselves. I didn’t like all the team work crap—ever, or the social infusion with the community. When my team would win the parents were always excited for some mysterious reason and used the word “we” a lot. Yet they never did anything to help win the game except yell like a bunch of idiots on the sideline. It never made sense to me, and as the years moved on, I stepped away from sports because of the heavy emphasis on team building and derision on individual achievement. If I had different teachers and social influences as a young kid I might have moved into professional sports of my choosing, but because the wrong influences were around me focused on the wrong things, I abandon sports at my first opportunity—as a freshman in high school. But of that wonderful memory, I was at soccer practice, miserable because honestly I had a huge set-up in the basement of my home dedicated to Star Wars and I wanted to be there playing with all my toys rather than running around at soccer practice. It was spring time, my dad was out-of-town on business, and I was hoping to be home so I could have some play time before bed. It was the middle of the week and I had school the next day, so my time to play at the things was short. My mom picked me up from practice and we headed home. Only this was different, my brother and sister were in the car dressed like we were going somewhere, and there was the smell of popcorn from the trunk. I didn’t think much about it until we took a different route home and ended up on roads I wasn’t familiar with. Those roads eventually took us to a drive-in theater in Hamilton that was playing the very first Star Wars movie as a re-release. My mom took us all to see it for what I think was the 7th time at that point. It was wonderful and I cherished deeply every frame of film. During the scene where Han Solo and Luke were rescuing the princess, which is the high point of the film for me, I was sitting in a lawn chair with my soccer cloths still on listening to the echo of all the portable speakers around the drive-in playing the sound of the movie with a slight delay during that specific scene—the clouds were high in the sky and slightly blotting out a big bright moon on a spring night—and I thought about how wonderful life was. It really didn’t get any better than that.

But every day I try to make the day better than that day at the drive-in, and most days I come close. I am always looking for a way to have fun with a situation, and most of the time I do. I avoid people who don’t know how to have fun. If they are depressed people trapped in emotions constructed around neurosis, I usually paint them out of my life for my own preservation. If they can’t keep up, I leave them behind without looking back. I like to have fun, I love to play, and I hate people who don’t know how. I’m happy to teach “happiness” to them, but if they don’t show much of an effort, I drop them quickly. I understand and sympathize that they didn’t have a mom like mine who showed them how to play, even as adults, so I take the time to teach them. But I won’t sacrifice myself to their misery. If they want to be miserable, I leave them to it. I might write an article like this to help show them the way, but I won’t take their burden on myself if they wish to be stubborn about it.

I have known many adults who give Rolexes to their spouses and new cars for birthdays—but most of the time those gifts are laced with a desire for social approval more than developing happiness in the recipient. Behind such gifts is the desire to brag to someone else about the value of the gift, and thus, the amount of social pull that person has in the world of mixed economies. So it means quite a lot that my wife out of all the things she could have given me picked the cute little dinosaur which I think is quite a leap in scientific development. The little sensors in it for a kids play toy are very advanced, and the gyroscope system which balances it on two wheels is quite extraordinary. I could play with it all day and night if left to my own devices. It is intriguing, and intellectually stimulating. I love it!

imageBut of course there was a gathering with my family like we usually do later in the day during my birthday. This year we went to Dave and Busters so that we could……………play…………….as a family. Specifically there is a new video game called Star Wars Battle Pod which is a kind of flight simulator for Star Wars. It is the newest, and greatest of what technology has to offer, complete with a breeze simulator to replicate actual environmental conditions. It has a wrap around screen that totally engulfs your vision allowing you to invest your intellect into the experience without distraction. The food was great, as it usually is at Dave and Busters, but playing Battle Pod was for me the best thing I’ve done for a birthday in years. In my family, most of us are intense Star Wars fans so we loved taking time to play it together. It was a stunning game to play, and fly. I had to reflect back to that drive-in surprise where my mom played like she was just picking me up from soccer practice on a school night, but instead took us all to see Star Wars one more time on a big screen, before it was gone forever—or so we thought at the time. Now, because of Battle Pod, people can play in the Star Wars universe in a way that was only a remote fantasy for someone like me years ago.

At Hollywood Studios my favorite restaurant is the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater. It tries to simulate the drive-in movie experience I had in my youth, with my best memory being that Star Wars outing. There are still drive-ins, but they don’t carry the same impact as they did when I was a kid. Now they are viewed as a cheap alternative to the cinema experience as opposed to a first-rate experience. But when I go to Hollywood Studios, I have to stop by the Dine-In Theater and have a hamburger. It reminds me of that Star Wars presentation after the soccer game, and reminds me of the importance of playing at life instead of taking things too serious.

In reference to the important people I was talking about the best of us realize hopefully before they arrive at 60 years of age that career climbing and ass-kissing doesn’t get anybody anywhere. People are most effective and ultimately better when they retrain, or relearn the art of playing—as they did when they were kids. Typically, I don’t get along very well with people in my own age group, because most of them suffer from socially created illnesses. The people I most get along with are kids and old people because generally they aren’t worried about the ridiculous social rules which construct our network of associations. They would do far better for themselves to spend their time playing with other members of their families than in chasing the tail of someone higher in the peaking order hoping to schmooze their way to the top instead of letting their actions speak for themselves. One of the people I was talking to is a guy I enjoy quite a lot. He has a PHD in an advanced field of endeavor, but has not lost his love of playing. He’s is the grandpa of some lucky grandkids and the father to some fortunate children. Yet he solves problems like they don’t even exist, the kind of problems that might hang up regular people in the related field of endeavor. The difference is that this smart guy never forgot how to play at life, and therefore solves problems the way a child does, with resiliency and creativity. We teach our children to stop doing these things, and that is our first mistake. Instead, we should be teaching them to develop it further and to do so through their infantile 20s and 30s. But until everyone else gets on that page and recognizes that this is the way to conduct their lives—with playing at life for their entire lives—then I will continue to recharge myself the way I have. And for that, the little dinosaur my wife gave me along with Star Wars at Dave and Busters was a wonderful experience that gives me more than anything money can buy–a chance to play.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Duke Wins NCAA Championship: College athletes rising to greatness in spite of institutional failure

United States Senator Claire McCaskill, of Missouri, illustrated without really thinking too much about it a great crisis for many when she tweeted after the 2015 NCAA Championship between Duke and Wisconsin:

“Congrats to Duke, but I was rooting for team who had stars that are actually going to college & not just doing semester tryout for NBA.”

http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/ncaabk/missouri-sen-claire-mccaskill-takes-shot-at-duke-after-title-win/ar-AAawu1y?ocid=LENDHP

Saturday Night Live just prior to the big game made similar jokes in the same spirit, assuming that college athletes had an unspoken duty to their institutional education as opposed to the financial opportunity of leaving college after one or two years to join the NBA as young millionaires. These points of view are lost to ideology rooted in a hatred for capitalism where the old-fashioned belief was that citizens were supposed to learn a vocation which served society and that was the purpose of the college experience. Instead the perception and accusation is that student athletes were selfishly serving the all mighty dollar and colleges were letting them do it for the big money generated by the popular basketball tournament. The common villain in the whole exchange was money.

This is where the old progressives have failed to understand where they are, and what young people are supposed to learn in college. The NCAA Tournament is all about production, sixty-eight college teams fighting it out for the number one spot. The heroes get drafted into the NBA, thousands of sports bars cash in on a spike in business—beer is sold, chicken wings etc. Advertisers get exposure for their products and schools get an increase in their profile with national exposure—meaning likely increased enrollment in their colleges which then pay the salaries of their staff. There is very little wrong with the NCAA basketball tournament known as March Madness. I’m not even a big basketball fan, yet I find myself enchanted by the festivities every spring.

College as it was conceived is a failure. The thought of shaping young minds into soft-minded government employees is currently failing. Going to college is not the path to a vibrant economy. Fresh, unimpeded ideas are. Too much government restricts the economy so the college experiment failed right out of the gate. Instead of giving their children a better life than they had, lifestyles regressed just two generations after the implementation of a global acceptance of widespread college education. Kids today have been spoiled rotten by parents guilty over their own life decisions and those students are entering the workforce with house payments thrown at colleges’ indebting them for their entire working years. They are arriving at jobs that pay half of what they expected and not having expendable income to help float the economy leaving epic stagnation. Since most of what the colleges taught was progressive values, nobody learned how to do anything but show social sensitivity, because nobody knows anything anymore about anything. That is the fault of modern colleges instituting misplaced values.

One of the only things kids can look forward to is that their college sports team might do well and give them some sense of pride in their alma mater—for all the money they’ve spent on their educations. Lucky kids can use their college years to get a job interview, but it doesn’t do much to prepare those former students for the marketplace of ideas. College was sold as a way to buy success for children—but all it really bought were kids flat lined economically and socially neurotic. They have been molded into dismal human beings.

That is the system that Senator Claire McCaskill and Saturday Night Live defended through their various parodies. It reminded me of my fourth grade teacher who took my class on a field trip to the Cincinnati Music Hall to listen to the symphony play a concert dedicated to Star Wars which had just come out and was grotesquely popular. During the concert slides from the movie were shown on a big screen and kids cheered with the display of their favorite characters. It was a very energetic and positive experience—until we arrived back to our class. Our fourth grade teacher who was just shy of 30 years old at the time chastised our entire class for enjoying the concert. I sat there completely dumbfounded as her reaction was completely opposite to what I was feeling. I had a great time, and so did the rest of my class. I didn’t understand. My teacher went on to say that cheering for the characters on the slides would hurt the feelings of the members in the symphony and that Star Wars was all about making money and success—so it should be shoved aside in favor of “high art.” The same arguments are constantly thrown at the Disney Company, and even Nickelodeon for exploiting children for the all mighty dollar, as if making money was somehow evil. Yet if not for Star Wars would any of those kids have sat through a musical concert featuring a symphony? No.

Colleges would be more successful in capitalist America if they stopped copy-catting off the socialist Europeans and started teaching kids that making money is the most important thing they could learn from college. And under that criteria what is wrong with a freshman basketball player from Duke University leaving school for the NBA the very next year because they are so good that team owners want to make 20-year-old kids millionaires? Even better, college sports often highlight minority children…….there is nothing wrong with the situation. Notice how none of the sports bars around America had angry white men protesting black basketball players covered in tattoos. Nobody cared, everyone picked a team and rooted for somebody giving kids the opportunity to be a star no matter what their background or appearance—and receiving a chance to make more money before they are thirty than the lifetime incomes of everyone watching the games in a BW3s. Colleges, as institutions and the products coming from them have missed the point of the NCAA Tournament completely because they refuse to acknowledge the real truth of what the offering of higher education was supposed to be. People want upward mobility—not just a chance to receive a government check and a pension after age 55, but real, substantive wealth—the kind of wealth that could purchase their own island in the Caribbean.   Until colleges face that music, they will continue to lose in the marketplace of ideas, and will struggle to keep their public image as high as it currently is. If not for college sports, how many Americans would still support college as an option? That is an answer that United States Senator Claire McCaskill doesn’t want to know.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.