Tag: Down the Rabbit Hole

Cancellation of Union Contracts: The self-entitlement of public workers

A regular citizen shown in the video below pulled over a police officer—a government worker who believes that they are exempt from the law. The officer was driving an unmarked police car and using it for traffic citations—which in Washington state is illegal. The private citizen knew as much and pulled over the bewildered officer. Notice the arrogance of the officer in believing that because he was a police officer, that he was held to a different standard than the rest of society.   Wisely, he realized that the citizen knew more about the law than he did, so he shut his mouth rather quickly—but his irritation at being called out for illegal action was classic.

This is what you get when you have unionized employees in charge of society. Unionized behavior doesn’t work in private industry and it certainly doesn’t work in the public sector. It is because of the lack of competition in promotions, raises, and benefits acquisition that there is so much incompetence in the public sector centering around union contracts paid for with tax payer funds. As predicted at this site four years ago, time is running out for this kind of behavior as city managers and councils are beginning to understand that the only way they can manage tax funded resources is to introduce competition to the equations so that they can get better value for the consumed dollar.

Two remarkable stories happened over the last week resulting in the cancelling of union contracts by public officials. One is the dissolving of the Lincoln Heights police department in Ohio due to excessive insurance costs triggered by union driven law suits so to move the bar of progressive activism far to the left—which has cost Lincoln Heights a lot of money. They decided to just drop their police department to stop the bleeding—which was an excellent decision. The other is the Philadelphia school system cancelling their teacher’s contract because of the excessive cost of health care contributions. The union over the years refused to budge on their golden plans with little contributions from themselves which has broken the bank leaving the only responsible thing to do is to just drop the contract. I have reprinted each story with the original links below. The Lincoln Heights story was the result of a WCPO I-Team investigation and is what journalism is supposed to be about. The Philadelphia schools system story is a Fox News feature. Both have their roots in the same crises located in different parts of the country to show that this is not a regional problem. One is in a relatively conservative area, the other a very liberal one. In the coming months and years this will become a much more common occurrence as it is the only way to properly manage tax payer resources from the greedy hands of public sector unions who just don’t know when to stop asking for more, and more, and more.

CINCINNATI – Lincoln Heights police and fire departments were shut down Thursday after a “lapse in insurance coverage,” but at least one service returned Friday morning.

Hamilton County dispatchers said the fire department reopened, but the police department will remain closed.

Public Entities Pool of Ohio (PEP) – an insurance group that provides property and liability coverage to public entities – terminated the village’s insurance at 12 a.m. Thursday, forcing the departments to shut down.

“It was a yearly renewal,” Lincoln Heights Village Manager Stephanie Summerow-Dumas said. “It was time for a renewal and (PEP) made the decision (to cut coverage) because of certain variables.”

Those variables are lawsuits, according to PEP Executive Vice President JT. Babish.

Babish said coverage was pulled due to the “substantial negative financial impact” of wage disputes, employment harassment, wrongful terminations, allegations of wrongful arrest and violations of civil rights within the departments.

Twenty-three of those claims have resulted in lawsuits – nine of which are still being defended, he said.

PEP officials said the village could not keep up with the costs of those suits.

“Any company would look at that and see if they want to be vulnerable to offer insurance,” Summerow-Dumas said. “I’m sure that came into play and they looked at some of that.”

Lincoln Heights emergency dispatchers were advised to tell callers to contact the Lockland Police Department and Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office, which have taken over emergency duties.

RELATED: I-Team: Lincoln Heights police department struggles with ‘corruption’

The closure of Lincoln Heights’ safety services comes on the heels of an I-Team investigation looking into allegations of corruption inside the police department.

The I-Team uncovered several officers within the department have been cited with violations and charged with crimes .

Lincoln Heights Mayor Laverne Mitchell called Ohio Rep. Alicia Reese Thursday after the insurance coverage was revoked.

Reese said she is working to find a solution.

“I contacted the governor to ask for help,” Reece said. “Safety has to be the top priority for the residents, both in the short and long term.”

Reece said she also held an emergency meeting with cabinet members and representatives from the Department of Insurance and Public Safety.

She said the state agreed to work with Lincoln Heights officials over the next several weeks.

 

 

http://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/lincoln-heights/lincoln-heights-fire-police-department-shut-down

 

 

Philadelphia schools cancel teachers’ union contract

PHILADELPHIA – The troubled Philadelphia school district abruptly canceled its teachers’ contract Monday, a surprise move designed to force health care contributions after two years of stalled labor talks.

The announcement came at a hastily-called meeting of the state-run School Reform Commission.

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

District officials said they have no plans to cut wages of the 15,000 teachers, nurses and other members of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. They would pay about $55 to $140 per month for health care premiums, and face other benefit cuts, starting in December, unless the move is challenged in court.

The American Federation of Teachers called the vote Monday “a well-planned Hail Mary ambush” by Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, who faces a tough re-election fight next month.

“Corbett’s School Reform Commission has amped up a war on teachers and support staff,” AFT President Randi Weingarten said in a statement. “The commission would rather attempt to impose a contract than work with teachers to figure out what is best for Philadelphia’s kids.”

The district, one of the nation’s largest, has 135,000 students. Officials have eliminated 5,000 jobs and closed more than 30 schools as they cut nearly $1 billion in expenses in the past few years. The district perennially struggles with a structural deficit caused by rising pension and health care costs and payments to charter schools, which serve an additional 65,000 students.

Officials said the benefit concessions were on a par with those made by administrators and other workers in recent years.

“Requiring teachers and other employees to contribute to their health care costs is a change and a sacrifice, but contributing to health care benefits is the reality of today’s workplace,” Superintendent William Hite said in a letter to parents. “Limited resources require difficult decisions.”

He expected the teacher health care contributions to yield more than $50 million in savings and new funding per school year. At the same time, Hite urged parents to keep pushing state lawmakers for what he called a fair funding formula.

“Philadelphia families have made extraordinary sacrifices: students come to school every day in buildings that lack critical resources necessary for teaching and learning,” said SRC Chairman William J. Green, a longtime Philadelphia councilman appointed to the post by Corbett earlier this year.

Corbett just two weeks ago signed off on a $2-a-pack cigarette tax in Philadelphia, which city leaders had sought to raise $83 million a year for the school district.

One Democratic lawmaker, Rep. Mike O’Brien of Philadelphia, called the SRC’s unanimous vote to break the contract Monday “an exercise in union busting.”

“It’s certainly a violation of all laws dealing with collective bargaining,” he said. “I think it winds its way into the federal courts.”

Union officials planned an afternoon news conference.

City schools have been under state control since 2001, but have always worked under a negotiated contract. Under the takeover law, teachers do not have the right to strike.

Only a few dozen people attended the surprise session Monday morning, according to parent activist Helen Gym, who said she only learned of the meeting at midnight.

“It’s a disgrace in terms of public governance and democracy,” said Gym, the co-founder of Parents United for Public Education.

“As parents, we’re obviously concerned, because the only thing that is really holding our schools together right now is the teachers and staff,” she said. “I just don’t know how we’re going to sustain and keep a talented teaching force without a contract.”

 

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/10/06/philadelphia-schools-cancel-teachers-union-contract/

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Fabio’s Cancer Fighting Crusade: Antineoplastons are the wave of the future

The story I put up yesterday about Cliffhanger Research and Development was a lead-in to a series of stories that I am conducting about technology and the suppression of science due to forces of politics embedded in regulation and current industries who are woefully outdated. I have seen this painful realization up close and much of the work I perform currently which shows anger at these “suppressors” is due to my direct experiences. One of the greatest of these suppressed sciences is the cures for cancer that Dr. Burzynski from Houston, Texas is conducting even under the constant harassment of the FDA.

If you have wondered what Fabio Lanzoni has been doing lately—who used to be a spokesman for the National Cancer Institute—he is now an advocate for Dr. Burzynski’s cancer treatments. This is not a happy place for the medical industry where a major celebrity has come out as a spokesman for the controversial doctor. Christina, Fabio’s sister, was treated and did end up dying of cancer but the track record Burzynski has is extremely good—much better than current treatments. You can see a special panel that Fabio participated in on behalf of Burzynski during a film festival showing the movie, Cancer is Serious Business Part II where he talks about his sister’s treatment and the path to life he worked so hard to provide her

To learn more about Dr. Burzynski read the information below by Dr. Mercola providing testimony about the cancer treatment doctor. The essence to the trouble that has come toward Burzynski is that he is the sole holder of the patent for antineoplastons which is the method he uses for treating cancer. If Burzynski’s antineoplastons become the industry standard, much of the 70 year old cancer fighting technology that is currently in practice, which pharmaceutical companies currently utilize will become obsolete. There is a lot of money in keeping people sick. There is also a lot of money to be made off of people’s deaths. Just consider the amount of revenue that is consumed through “death taxes” which states count on as part of their budget. As sad as it is, many in the medical industry are short-sighted enough to put such concerns ahead of the health, and quality of life of their patients. It’s not a sad conspiracy; it is a fact of modern life. The old guard of the medical industry is deliberately suppressing cures to maintain their federal funding structures and political status quo. Most in the medical industry desire to keep people sick to preserve their livelihoods. People like Burzynski are actually trying to cure people so that they can return to a normal life that does not involve a weekly visit to a doctor’s office.

Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski received much deserved publicity with the release of the 2011 film, Burzynski—The Movie.

Eric Merola’s award-winning documentary showcased Dr. Burzynski’s remarkable cancer discovery for all the world to see, and explained how he won the largest and possibly the most convoluted and intriguing legal battles against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in American history.

Dr. Burzynski’s story now continues in the compelling follow-up film: Burzynski—Cancer Is Serious Business, Part II. This second film details his continued struggles and victories, and explores the current status of Antineoplastons’ clinical testing—now (finally) sanctioned by the FDA.

Dr. Burzynski’s Cancer Treatment

Dr. Burzynski, trained as both a biochemist and a physician, has spent the last 35+ years developing and successfully treating cancer patients suffering with some of the most lethal forms of cancer at his clinic in Houston, Texas.

The treatment he developed involves a gene-targeted approach using non-toxic peptides and amino acids, known as Antineoplastons. I personally interviewed Dr. Burzynski about his treatment in the summer of 2011.

He coined the term ”antineoplastons” and defines them as peptides and derivatives of amino acids that act as molecular switches. However, as genome research blossomed and science progressed, Dr. Burzynski discovered that antineoplastons also work as genetic switches.

They actually turn off the genes that cause cancer (oncogenes), and turn on or activate tumor suppressor genes—genes that fight cancer. His treatment strategy, which he refers to as “Personalized Gene Targeted Cancer Therapy,” includes mapping the patient’s entire cancer genome.

This involves analyzing some 24,000 genes in order to identify the abnormal genes. Once they’ve determined which genes are involved in the cancer, drugs and supplements are identified to target those specific genes.

Antineoplastons work on approximately 100 cancer-causing genes, but traditional oncology agents (including chemotherapy) may also be used, typically in combination with antineoplastons. This expanded direction of “personalized gene-targeted treatment” has permitted people who would otherwise be denied access to the still-unapproved antineoplastons to benefit from his treatment.

The War on Cancer Cures

As the first film in this series clearly revealed, the FDA began scheming to eliminate the threat Dr. Burzynski and his discovery posed to the cancer industry as early as 1977, when Dr. Burzynski first tried to get antineoplastons approved.

The reason he was (and still is) considered a significant threat to the cancer industry is because he’s the sole patent holder of the treatment, which means he’s the sole beneficiary, should the FDA approve Antineoplastons—not a pharmaceutical company and the bosses thereof.

As a matter of fact, Dr. Burzynski is the first and only scientist in United States’ history to enter the federal drug approval process for a proprietary cancer therapy without any financial support from the American government, the pharmaceutical industry, or the cancer establishment.

Vast amounts of money are at stake, since FDA approval of Antineoplastons would not only threaten conventional chemotherapy and radiation, it would also result in billions of dollars of cancer research funds being funneled over to the one single scientist who has exclusive patent rights—Dr. Burzynski.

The sad fact is, as stated by Dr. Julian Whitaker in the featured film, that true medical breakthroughs are suppressed these days because they “put at risk the entire financial underpinnings” of medicine.

If a medical breakthrough replaces failing therapies, the cash flow and profits of those failing therapies are lost forever, and the industry simply chooses profits over cures… Instead of investing in actual cures, medicine, over the past five decades, has invested in awareness campaigns. But, as Dr. Whitaker points out, awareness does not cure the disease, and will never lead to a cure, no matter how much money is raised by these campaigns, for the simple fact that there’s too much vested interest in therapies that fail and perpetuate a money-making disease.

Cancer Is Serious Business

In recent years, the focus for cancer therapy has increasingly shifted toward individualized gene-targeted cancer treatment, such as that provided by Dr. Burzynski for the past decade. So it’s no wonder, really, that the industry has tried so hard to get rid of him, in order to protect their own profits and access to research funds. Burzynski—Cancer is Serious Business, picks up where the first movie left off, detailing Dr. Burzynski’s continued struggles and victories, and explores the current status of Antineoplastons’ clinical testing, now sanctioned by the FDA. It also follows the progress of several of his patients. As described in the film’s synopsis:1

 

“For most patients undergoing Burzynski’s treatment, their advanced cancer itself runs secondary to the constant barrage of skepticism coming not only from their local oncologists, but also from friends and family who feel their loved ones are making suspect treatment decisions—even though mainstream oncology has already left many for dead.

As the story unfolds, you will observe a real-time change of hearts and minds from many of these doctors and families. Unlike the first documentary, Part II showcases interviews with board-certified oncologists, surgeons and neurosurgeons, who witnessed patients leave their care, soon to return in great health after opting for the Burzynski Clinic.”

National Cancer Institute Acknowledges Antineoplastons’ Success

Incredibly, in August of last year, America’s National Cancer Institute (NCI) finally acknowledged and cited some of Burzynski’s peer-reviewed Antineoplaston studies, as well as findings by Japanese researchers who have been independently reproducing Antineoplaston clinical trial studies since the 1980’s, without any involvement by Dr. Burzynski. One of the most remarkable admissions by The National Cancer Institute is the following:2

 

“A Phase II study also conducted by the developer and his associates at his clinic reported on 12 patients with recurrent diffuse intrinsic brainstem glioma. Of the 10 patients who were evaluable, two achieved complete tumor response, three had partial tumor response, three had stable disease, and two had progressive disease.”

What’s truly remarkable about this is that a brainstem glioma has simply never been cured before in the history of medicine—Antineoplastons hold the first cures ever! In the featured film, you will also learn how a Japanese team, consisting of pathologists, oncologists and surgeons, has conducted the first-ever independently-run randomized controlled human clinical trials on Antineoplastons, and the results thereof. According to Dr. Hideaki Tsuda, MD with the Kurume Medical University in Japan:

“After 27 years of independently testing Antineoplastons—including randomized clinical trials, we found that Dr. Burzynski was right. It’s obviously not anecdotal anymore.”

The Story Everyone Needs to Know

Dr. Burzynski has developed a cancer treatment that surpasses all other treatments on the market today, and the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry knows it. They also know his treatment threatens the entire paradigm of the cancer industry, which is based on expensive treatments with a high rate of failure and retreatment.

For the past 15 years, they’ve harassed him, tried to take away his medical license, and even tried to put him in prison for life—all in order to protect the status quo. Adding insult to injury, you and I have been paying for the brutal opposition to Dr. Burzynski’s cancer treatment this whole time. The US government spent $60 million on legal fees for just one of his trials alone.

Still, Dr. Burzynski has prevailed, and the truth about his gene-targeted treatment is finally receiving some well-deserved acknowledgment. After all, Dr. Burzynski has published over 300 articles on Antineoplastons, many of them peer-reviewed. And more than 100 independent Antineoplaston studies have been published, including those from Japan.

Support a Cancer Cure, Not Merely the Awareness of the Condition

Earlier this year, a group of patients and patient advocates launched a campaign to have Antineoplastons accepted worldwide as a “standard of care” for the treatment of cancer.3 For more information, please see www.iwantanp.com:

“Unlike all other cancer research campaigns which rely 100% on awareness alone, we realize that awareness itself does not cure the disease. Medications such as Antineoplastons are what can lead to the cure of the disease of cancer.

If the United States still refuses to allow Antineoplastons into its marketplace, we will then make sure another country will be properly funded to set up the proper channels for Antineoplastons to be approved for their marketplace. Another avenue would be simply opening up a massive Antineoplastons clinic allowing the cancer patients of the world to seek treatment using Antineoplastons.

Upon gaining either market approval—or the funding the construction of an Antineoplaston clinic overseas, our funds will then go to make sure everyone who cannot afford to travel overseas to receive Antineoplaston therapy—can do so by requesting money through this organization.

Either way, whether the market or its government’s regulatory agencies want Antineoplastons available to its citizens or not—Antineoplastons are here to stay, and the members of our global human family deserve the right to have access to them.”

 

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/07/13/burzynski-cancer-film.aspx

The sad saga of Fabio Lanzoni’s sister Christina’s battle with ovarian cancer, partially revealed

The work of Dr. Burzynski is a game changer that will alter the way cancer is treated in the future. The crisis that exists now is not science fiction intended for some distant society. The solution is right there in front of us, just as energy methods exist that are far superior to modern means, skycars are available for manufacture right now, but lack any political support to implement, and even regenerative medicine has the ability to grow and replace every organ in the human body making modern health care providers a worthless enterprise. Think of how many people, many of whom are reading this right now work directly for, or around the health insurance industry. Consider what would happen if regenerative growth simply eliminated the need for surgery, or getting sick all together. Most of those people would be out of a job. More jobs would be created for sure, but most of the administrative positions that really just entail pushing paper from one place to another would be downsized. It is for that reason that progress is slow on implementing the kind of technology that actually improves the human condition.

Cancer is big business for medial care providers at every level. If cancer just dropped off the radar of concern, like it will once antineoplastons are widely used, a lot of the false wealth created that goes into medical industry pockets would dry up and disappear. That is the reason that people still die of cancer and the federal government is the primary guilty party in suppressing the new technology. Their biggest concern is not the death of people, but in the employment of them.   No administration wants to be the one who sees a massive jump in unemployment, especially one that occupies more than 5% of the American economy just to cure people of a disease that should already be extinct.

 

Cancer cures aren’t the only suppressed technology out there, but it is one of the most impactful, and immediate ones. There will be a lot that will change in the very near future so much of the stonewalling done by modern bureaucrats will prove to only unnecessarily kill people for no reason. Even old age is quickly becoming a really dumb idea that will easily be avoided so to save all the terrible cost of health care to the elderly. Once a cure for old age comes into play, what will become of the mortuary industry? What about the nursing home industry? Or even the many hip and knee replacements that are currently conducted due to bones losing their bone mass? All of that loss and degradation is ridiculous and unnecessary. What holds us back is our old adherence to ancient medicines and security of livelihoods. Additionally, in the case of mortality—our religions—are outdated as well. Dr. Burzynski is just one example of a vast wall of conspiracies that are so openly played against the human race resistant to the inevitable changes that are coming. In the mean time, because of short-sighted selfishness, many people will die for absolutely no reason at all because the cure is right in front of them—but they aren’t allowed to have it—due to a trusted medical industry more interested in the serpents of the caduceus than in actually treating people. What those like Burzynski is proposing is to reinvent the very nature of medicine and redefine the industry for the 21st century.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

The Insult to Ann Becker: Strategic disadvantages in taking the “high road”

I feel for Ann Becker, not just because she’s a friend of mine, but because of the overwhelming sense of betrayal I know she feels after being thrown out of the John Kasich rally during a campaign visit the Governor made attempting to get out the vote. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  Kasich in the last half of his first 4 year term has adopted many of President Obama’s big government philosophies like acceptance of Common Core as an education standard and the expansion of Medicaid to facilitate Obamacare. The golf game Kasich and John Boehner had with the President and his Vice President Joe Biden, whose son just this last week was discharged from the military because of cocaine use-had the desired effect. Kasich became a passivist hungry for a second term soon after he got a taste of life as the leader of a state. His Tea Party ideology turned to mush within a year after a few hard battles making him by year four to be almost a copy of the politician Obama himself. Obama didn’t only win the golf game that day long ago against the two staunch Republicans. He also won their soul—which was always the intention.

Three years ago in the Republican Party Ann was one of the organizers of the Kasich event in Liberty Township. She and I held valued statues within the upper echelons of Republican power. I knew then that they were using our ambitions and riding the coat tails of our activism to success which was a good strategy at the time. But what was disappointing for me was how quickly their courage went to mush as they had no heart for any kind of fight. I learned about their betrayal while I was on the air to half a million people with Scott Sloane on WLW radio. I was in the middle of a swirling controversy, all of it part of a larger strategy. It had been talked about prior to and everyone knew what they were getting involved with—but when the media pressure hit and the fists started flying, the core of that group—many of the same people who threw Ann out of the Kasich rally sent a press release to the station trying to distance themselves from the controversy I was bringing to the table. The fight itself didn’t bother me in the least—after all—that’s what I’m good at and was set to perform. It was the betrayal that stung, the lack of will to stand and fight for what they knew was right.

Three years later, Ann went through the same betrayal just the other day. As stated, three years ago she was one of the organizers of all things political in Southern Ohio. Even though she was invited out of respect to the Todd Hall organized event, she started the day as a notable outsider because of her position as a former teacher standing against Common Core. Ann’s firmness to her political beliefs has cost her dearly. She chose a school to teach in that did not require union membership because she loves the profession. However, appearing in the Cincinnati Enquirer every other week and doing a radio segment with Brian Thomas on 55 KRC every Monday morning is “controversial” for any school to accept employment from such a person. So it hasn’t worked out very well for Ann—even though she has tried. She has always put her beliefs before her own security and comfort—which is why people like Kasich need her as foot soldiers.

Cruising to an easy victory in Ohio however, Kasich doesn’t need those foot soldiers to retain office, so he feels he can afford to isolate himself from people like Ann. As Ann and many of the 200 dismal supporters who were at the Kasich rally were mostly Central Committee members, she was allowed to RSVP the event by invitation. Her personal friendship with Patti Alderson secured that much respect from the heads of the Republican Party. Those leaders have seen Ann at Patti’s parties even though they know Ann is a bit of a loose cannon, so they politely invited her. But when she showed up with a t-shirt against Common Core—which Kasich supports because of the federal funding it solicits for Ohio schools the so-called friends turned against Ann quickly actually throwing her out of the event. The Republican Party debacle was chronicled in the Cincinnati Enquirer and Journal News—who are always happy to do anti-Republican stories even if they are supportive to the Tea Party. The progressive Cox and Gannett newspaper companies don’t see the Tea Party as a real significant threat to political order, but any time they can take a jab at the Republican Party—they’ll do it in less than a second. The embarrassment and betrayal that Ann felt after her exodus left her little choice.

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2014/10/14/tea-party-leader-ejected-kasich-rally/17250155/

 

http://www.journal-news.com/news/news/local/tea-party-leader-kicked-out-of-kasich-rally/nhjRD/

“I was invited to the event. I had RSVPed to the event,” Becker said. “When I came to the door, I was turned away with a lie, being told I didn’t RSVP. I was told that if I didn’t leave the premises… I would be arrested.”

Butler County GOP Executive Chairman Todd Hall said security at the governor’s rally made a judgment call regarding “a loud and caustic outside protester who suddenly wanted inside the event.”

“There must have been concern about safety or to disrupting the peaceful nature of the event itself,” Hall said. “While the Republican Party is open to all views and expressions of free speech within or even outside our party, we always stand in strong support of public safety officials and the difficult decisions they often have to make.”

Well, again I have inside knowledge of all these people and can say with certainty that what Todd said was a bullshit, ass-kissing diatribe of irrefutable, insulting nonsense. He knows well the case in West Chester where the police beat to a pulp a drunken fool just because they could—falsely saying that their lives were in “danger.” That is the common statement that most law enforcement makes when they want to justify a “judgment” call especially when it comes to appeasing political power who wants to wash their hands clean of controversy. Click here to review the disgusting West Chester police case which occurred under the flag of the Butler County Police headed by Sheriff Jones—who happened to be a featured speaker at the event. The cop who threw Ann out of the event—an officer who has obviously spent too much time at Dunkin’ Donuts sipping coffee and licking the icing off pastry treats waiting for a call to do something made up a story to justify denied entry into the rally. And Todd backed the cop over a continued alliance with Ann Becker—a foot soldier that would be useful to him at some point down the road. It was an epically stupid move—eclipsing the betrayal those same people conducted toward me. I know exactly how Ann feels.

However, on the political left, they embrace their foot soldiers. They have their Van Jones radicals, their Al Sharpton types who go on MSNBC and derail everything that Republicans do, and you never see politicians like Obama distancing themselves from their foot soldiers—because they at least understand how important trench fighters are and they treat them well. They may not hug and kiss them in public, but they do support them any way they can “off the record.”

What Todd Hall and the rest of the Republican leadership in Butler County fail to understand is that people like Ann and I are not affiliated with the party to protect our financial interests—like they are. We are in it to win it because our core philosophy is on the line. Common Core and Medicaid expansion are not just bumps in the road for us to navigate around so that we can get government contract work for our projects or ease of processing during the zoning permit portion of a development project. We really care about the direction of Ohio and our country. The Republicans who threw Ann out of the Kasich rally only care to live for tomorrow to protect their financial interests and they don’t want any controversy to come their way politically which might rock the boat. There value is not superior to our value within the party—as it is often portrayed.

 

Unlike the Democrats who often don’t have any money except what they steal from others through taxation—Republicans are always too careful about their financial stability. They know that if they hang around with radicals like Rich Hoffman and Ann Becker too closely that they may be drug into court for some bogus hearing that could cost them millions of dollars in legal fees. Or they may lose work opportunities all together like what happened to many of my No Lakota Levy friends—many who were at that same rally. What makes them weak is that the enemy knows those Republicans have something to lose. And they are even more vulnerable when foot soldiers like Ann Becker are removed from the process.   Anybody with any memory will recall when John McCain chastised Bill Cunningham on 700 WLW for his radical remarks during the 2008 campaign while in Cincinnati. MaCain thought that the best bet in winning the election was in taking the high road and showing the pubic that Republicans aren’t such mean guys after all. Well, guess what—he lost the election. And when Mitt Romney was pulled into the same defensive position during the debates of 2012—which he had been winning up until the second and third debates because of his aggression—he lost the election. Even locally when the same area Republicans wanted to take the high road with the Lakota school system—guess what—the government school won the next election. Playing nice doesn’t win elections. The reason the political enemies want Republicans to take the high road is so that it makes it easier for them to pick off because it is easy to take out political opponents when they are visible and positioned where they have no place to hide—like the high road. The high road is not a place of safety and ensured continuity—it is a strategic position that favors the enemy.

 

The pattern should be obvious, instead Todd Hall allowed a nobody rent-a-cop to fashion the public relations in a negative way against his Republican Party by throwing Ann out of a rally so she could do the good honest work of challenging Kasich on Common Core. The Governor is trying to have it both ways—he wants to pretend to be a conservative—but he wants to appeal to moderates and the poor to pave the way for a 2016 presidential run—so he is clearly putting his own political ambitions ahead of the governing of the state—or a commitment of conservative value to the foundations of that state. He simply wanted to avoid controversy so that nothing negative would come up two years from now when he attempts to run for President. His nightmare is in giving the radical teacher unions ammunition against him—more than they have now because of SB5 by taking a controversial position against federal funding. But he received the bad PR anyway because he falsely expected Ann Becker to go away quietly and pout like a child sent away from the dinner table. He is used to having that kind of control over people like Todd Hall and Patti Alderson who stand to lose a lot of money if someone other than Kasich is in the governor seat in Ohio—due to rules and regulatory policy.   Ann doesn’t come to those political events to protect her assets—she does so to fix the future for her children and that is a concept that continues to elude Butler County Republicans who are in charge of the party. The fault that Todd and his Republican leaders performed yet again is that they ran from controversial people instead of falling in behind them for the real fight that exists in politics which they continue to lose against time and time again.

I appreciate that I still get invites to these kinds of events, but it should be noticed that I don’t attend. I haven’t for a few years now because I’m not the type to break bread with people who betray me. I can make my own money—I don’t need to do it through “connections,” so there isn’t much to obtain in such events without strategic objectives being conducted. Like Ann, I care about the deeper problems and don’t have the time or patience for back-slapping. It continues to be my hope that someday Todd and his Republicans will learn the importance of maintaining alliances with people like Ann Becker—because they need her a lot more than she needs them. A dangerous place for Ann is on the political outside—she will still get her ink, her radio coverage, and her leverage within the community because she does it for the heart of the matter. Because of her motivations, she will always be inspired to be on the front lines—a place where the Republican Party desperately needs soldiers to fill the vacancies. Without those positions filled, the losses will continue to escalate. Sure, Republicans will win a few battles here and there—they may take back the Senate at the federal level and hold the House, but they will continue to lose the war against progressivism one concession at a time. They will continue to look at each other and wonder why taxes keep going up, and why police officers continue to twist their arms for more pay—because they as Republicans failed to stand strong against them when it mattered most. Ann Becker is just the latest in a long line of such failed resolutions.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

The Ebola Conspiracies: Warnings from ‘The Hot Zone’

I first learned about the Ebola virus from the 1994 thriller The Hot Zone. The disease has been around for a while and was contained successfully for over 20 years to the African continent. For reasons that seem to be pulled straight off the pages of that best-selling book, the level of stupidity regarding the containment of the disease over the last couple of months have only fueled the conspiracy theories that a massive desire to depopulate the world with a deadly virus are true. The failure to contain travelers from the hot zone of Africa is the first give-away. Then the failures to stop contact with infected victims in the United States has been the other indicator. There seems to be more to the story than just lackadaisical stupidity on behalf of the government workers at play. Conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones and musical artist Chris Brown have justifiable concerns to their active imaginations. It doesn’t take much to draw conclusions that something is array.

 

The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story is a best-selling[1] 1994 non-fiction thriller by Richard Preston about the origins and incidents involving viral hemorrhagic fevers, particularly ebola viruses and marburgviruses. The basis of the book was Preston’s 1992 New Yorker article “Crisis in the Hot Zone“.[2]

 

The filoviruses Ebola virus (EBOV), Sudan virus (SUDV), Marburg virus (MARV), and Ravn virus (RAVV) are Biosafety Level 4 agents. Biosafety Level 4 agents are extremely dangerous to humans because they are very infectious, have a high case-fatality rate, and there are no known prophylactics, treatments, or cures. Along with describing the history of the diseases caused by these two Central African diseases, Ebola virus disease (EVD) and Marburg virus disease (MVD), Preston describes a 1989 incident in which a relative of Ebola virus named Reston virus (RESTV), was discovered at a primate quarantine facility in Reston, Virginia, less than fifteen miles (24 km) away from Washington, DC. The virus found at the facility was a mutated form of the original Ebola virus, and was initially mistaken for Simian Hemorrhagic Fever (SHV). The original Reston facility involved in the incident, located at 1946 Isaac Newton Square, was subsequently torn down sometime between 1995 and 1998.[3]

 

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

With the sudden rash of cases dominating the news cycle—eclipsing all other stories including the ISIS debacles, IRS crises, the continued failures of the Obama administration at virtually everything—a bit of panic has ensued into the mainstream leaving MTV to actually discuss the issue. Below is a small article from MTV actually castigating a black artist for reckless comments about an Ebola conspiracy theory. Ironically, this is one of the few times a major progressive network has come out against the type of rhetoric that is coming out from people in the African-American communities like Louis Farrakhan.

 

“When it comes to updates on his new music, videos or graffiti, Chris Brown is a great source of information. But … if you’re looking for reliable, timely news on the Ebola epidemic, Breezy is not really your guy. See, on Monday (October 13), amid news that a second person in the U.S. had tested positive for the deadly virus after coming into contact with the nation’s first patient, who is now deceased, CB took to Twitter to spout his conspiracy theory on the spread of the disease that has killed thousands in Africa.”

http://www.mtv.com/news/1961927/chris-brown-ebola-tweet/

If Chris Brown had sent out a Tweet about the Ferguson riots, MTV would have been all over themselves in support of the celebrity—but on this case, they are oddly critical. This of course points to the kind of conspiracy that is a product of Alex Jones who is often bombastic in his predilections, but often makes some interesting observations that deserve investigation. His belief reflected on the Info Wars website seen below is that this recent outbreak of Ebola is part of a Globalist process conspiracy—meaning that the disease is being deliberately spread through bureaucratic means to depopulate the earth before medicine can possibly react to the danger—as shown in the quotes below.

“The specific object of the Globalist Ebola process conspiracy is here theorized to involve diminishing the linkage, in public consciousness, of Ebola with nationality status. Globalists have huge immigration plans for the U.S., and they do not want Ebola (or any other infectious disease, for that matter) getting in the way of those plans. That is why their Ebola policy protocols—as absurd as they are (discussed shortly)— read the way they do, that is why we have been exposed to a cloud of lies emanating from Dallas and dispersed through the MSM, and that is why Duncan was discharged with antibiotics soon after his first visit to the Emergency Room of Texas Presbyterian.

Because the theory is a process conspiracy theory and therefore rooted in subverted policy, it has application not just to Duncan, but to future Duncan’s as well. The argument proceeds as follows. First, a brief observation concerning risk is offered which, even though obvious, is necessary because without it the argument will make little sense. Second, the CDC’s Ebola Screening and Isolation polices are examined, and, on the basis of the risk observation, shown to be not only wholly inadequate to the task they were allegedly crafted to meet, but quite likely to make the Ebola contagion problem even worse. Third, evidence is provided in support of the idea that the Ebola process conspiracy theory offers a simple, and very plausible explanation, of certain important assertions of fact, and inconsistencies, emanating from Dallas that are otherwise rather difficult to explain. Throughout, the connection to the issue of nationality status will be obvious.”

http://www.infowars.com/the-dallas-ebola-case-an-immigration-related-process-conspiracy/

 

There are aspects to both conspiracy theories, whether it is a fear that there are forces who want to kill black people with the disease, or a global conspiracy by the elite banks to depopulate the earth so to save it from the thriving masses leaving mankind to begin again under the care and guidance of a rich elite—the stupidity in controlling the disease has supported those fears. But what is not a conspiracy is the reaction that Americans have had toward the disease, a shallow cowering fear that has emitted short of panic as the news coverage has intensified over the last couple of weeks. Any Jihadist terrorist who might desire to kill themselves and many others for Allah is likely already thinking of ways that they can contract the disease and catch a flight to the resort towns of Mexico where incoming customs are lax that detainment is nearly impossible. Mexican tourist towns think of only one primary objective, vacation dollars spent on their economy. They are too short-sighted in those cities to think of the implication of a world-wide Ebola outbreak. From there it is easy to walk across the American border to attend a college party or dance club at a nearby city. Two weeks infected and dripping with a feverish sweat, the terrorist could contaminant thousands of people in a single evening that would then infect many thousands more in the ensuing weeks. If someone wanted to create terror against the most successful capitalist country in the world, Ebola would be the way to do it, especially given the reaction to the few incidents already popping up in North America. Given the ease for which it was spread and the incompetence of the government to contain it the only logical conclusion would be conspiracy.

The reason that the 1994 book The Hot Zone was such a terrifying best seller is due to the theoretical proximity it has to reality through either incompetence or conspiracy. Either way, we are vulnerable to the grim realities of a devastating disease and must take caution. Part of that caution is in knowing how to avoid it. The second part is in taking action to replace the type of people who have shown such gross incompetence at their government positions to allow for Ebola to migrate from Africa to America either by purposeful design or sheer stupidity. Those responsible need to be removed from positions of decision-making so that proper managers can take their place with a level of competence that necessitates the performance expectations that Americans have in living free of such deadly diseases as those spawned in West Africa.

 

The conspiracies spawned off of this latest Ebola scare are rooted in incompetency—they are born when people suspect that they aren’t being given all the facts of the matter leaving their imaginations to fill the gaps. It is not they who are at fault—it is not Chris Brown or Alex Jones who are the nut cases in advocating conspiracies when it comes to Ebola. It is the idiots who let it leave West Africa for destinations on the continent of North America. The warnings were there from the start, but obviously those in charge had forgotten the warnings given in The Hot Zone. Now—it’s too late. Ebola has gone from a scare to a grim reality that is now non-fiction and beyond speculation.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Mermaids at the Newport Aquarium: Thank a capitalist like Steiner for conservation awareness

Many think that because I’m a conservative that I naturally do not support conservation. These are the same types who think that the issue of slavery was only a white on black occurrence occurring in America from the 1600s until the mid 1800s. Of course slavery was a much larger social problem involving all races and sexes of that particular time period and it was America who was the first to take a moral stand against it—to such an extent that a war was fought over it—led by Republicans. The same type of manipulation has occurred to make conservatives into villains regarding conservation—and largely it has gone unchallenged. That is because the answer to the conservation question is again that it is capitalism which is the biggest spokesman for the conservation movement which is much to the frustration of the bleeding heart liberal types. So it is with some surprise that people learn of my love and support of the Newport Aquarium.

The primary reason that I am so excited about the upcoming Liberty Center development being constructed as we speak in my community of Liberty Township is because it is a Steiner project. The Steiner group twenty years ago envisioned a way to save the embattled city of Newport, Kentucky with a brilliant new development on the river built around a new state-of-the art aquarium. That aquarium was a game changer and to this day is worth an out-of-state visit just to see. Situated across from the Cincinnati skyline, it has changed life on the banks of the Ohio River for the culture of the Cincinnati region and it all started with the capitalist Steiner.

 

Years later during a week in mid October 2014 the Newport Aquarium brought in the Weeki Wachee Mermaids from the popular Florida resort to perform in an extravaganza that I thought was incredibly wonderful. To the music of the Little Mermaid from Disney thousands upon thousands of little girls lined up to meet the beautiful mermaids and see them perform in the Coral Reef tank—which was absolutely glorious. Capitalism was on display at its finest. Of all the little girls present many will find they have an appreciation of sea life because of that experience and will likely carry it with them their entire lives. Two Disney films dominate the exhibits in a subtle way at the Newport Aquarium, Finding Nemo and of course The Little Mermaid. Disney created the gateway into such stories by creating the mythology. Steiner and his group brought that mythology to reality. And the wonderful Weeki Wachee swimmers from Florida and their capitalist endeavor their brought mythology to life for profit which further intensifies the experience for countless lives touched by their endeavors.

Leaving the Newport Aquarium after seeing the exhibit of mermaids on a sunny day in October with the great Ohio River rolling by just feet away, with Mitchells, Barnes and Noble and the AMC movie theater looming above, it was the vision of the Steiner group which brought this experience to so many people and God love him for it. It took a lot of headache to bring that vision to reality and I am thankful that he did so twenty years ago. My brother is a diver at the Newport Aquarium and it has been an important place for my family for a number of years. I simply love the place, but without Steiner—the capitalist—it would have never happened. The Newport Aquarium is one of the best exhibits of its kind in the world and has maintained that status into its second decade. And it’s still going strong and is able to bring in talent like the Weeki Wachee Mermaids from such a distance to bring a bit of Disney World to the Midwest.

 

http://www.newportaquarium.com/What-to-do-in-cincinnati/Aquarium-Events/Mermaids.aspx?cid=ppc_000161

 

At the aquarium in Newport, conservation is on full display. It is evident why manufacturers would want to refrain from careless drilling, over deforestation, and a destruction of the earth’s natural resources by seeing the exhibits. Science driven by capitalism is the best conservation method that there is, and the Newport Aquarium is the perfect example of such an endeavor. I could sit in front of their exhibits for hours and just watch the animals—and appreciate the unique circumstances which made them possible as a life form. Without a profit motive however, there would be no Newport Aquarium, or a Newport Levee experience. Profit drives science and conservation. A lack of such formulas gives you the Middle East—sand, poverty, and stupidity. The Newport Aquarium is culture at its finest—it brings out the best in people and is a wonderful, magnificent creation of the Steiner group.

 

With the same epic vision the Steiner group is bringing its latest creation to Liberty Center. I expect that complex to dwarf what has occurred at the Newport on the Levee development. And because of the well-designed shopping complex the very popular outdoor store Cabela’s is moving in across the street on Liberty Way. I can’t think of any aspect of modern culture that most brings conservation to the minds of the masses than such a shopping experience at Cabela’s—an outlet dedicated to the outdoor experience and the preservation of those outdoors for future lives. Without Steiner, there would be no Cabela’s. And without Cabela’s the Bass Pro Shops down the road wouldn’t be expanding the way they are by necessity of competition. Because of those two retail outlets millions of people will become inspired to not only participate in outdoor activities, but to preserve them through the education programs that come as natural off-shoots of those shopping experiences. Because of the Steiner group and their use of capitalism to create profit driven experiences, conservation awareness will be greatly expanded dwarfing the great work done at the Newport Aquarium so many years ago even into the present.

If there are little ones in your family now is the time to see the Weekie Wachee Mermaids at the Newport Aquarium. I’ve seen the show in Florida and it was wonderful, but the Newport Aquarium provides a much more up-close and personal experience because of the tubular design of the display in the Coral Reef section. It was quite majestic. It was a brilliant move by both the Weekie Wachee crew and the Aquarium to pull those two elements together. They are playing only through this upcoming weekend, so make sure to see it. Better yet, take a day off work and visit during the day when the crowds are much less. Take your kids out of school for the experience. They’ll learn a whole lot more at the Newport Aquarium than they will in school, that’s for sure, and the experience you’ll share as a family will be unrivaled. It is that good, and is just one more reminder of how wonderful capitalism can be when it’s used properly in the hands of wonderful people in the Steiner Group. Their creativity and desire for quality has given thousands an experience in their own back yards worthy of a week-long vacation to a distant land. Only it’s right there at Newport on the Levee. So take your kids, eat at their fine restaurant, pet some sharks and thank a capitalist for the enriching experience.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Capitalism as a Weapon: The peaceful conquest of our enemies without firing a shot

The Wall Street Journal had a wonderful little essay in their Saturday review section that sounded like something one might find at this site every day. The author Hernando De Soto wrote a nice little article titled The Capitalist Cure for Terrorism: Military might alone won’t defeat Islamic State and its ilk. The U.S. needs to promote economic empowerment. It was such a good article I place a portion of it below along with a link to the whole article for further review. In it Hernando talks about his experiences in Peru as communism was moving through South America and Central America during the 80s and 90s and how it was defeated with economic prosperity. He suggests that if the same strategy were employed in the Middle East, that it would be a lot more powerful than airstrikes and “troops on the ground.” The way to beat communism which is always floating around in between the sentences of progressive thought is to advocate capitalism. There is a lot more strength in that economic policy than in any military occupation by force of a people in a remote land. Here is some of Hernando’s article.

By 1990, a Marxist-Leninist terrorist organization called Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path, had seized control of most of my home country, Peru, where I served as the president’s principal adviser. Fashionable opinion held that the people rebelling were the impoverished or underemployed wage slaves of Latin America, that capitalism couldn’t work outside the West and that Latin cultures didn’t really understand market economics.

The conventional wisdom proved to be wrong, however. Reforms in Peru gave indigenous entrepreneurs and farmers control over their assets and a new, more accessible legal framework in which to run businesses, make contracts and borrow—spurring an unprecedented rise in living standards.

Between 1980 and 1993, Peru won the only victory against a terrorist movement since the fall of communism without the intervention of foreign troops or significant outside financial support for its military. Over the next two decades, Peru’s gross national product per capita grew twice as fast as the average in the rest of Latin America, with its middle class growing four times faster.

Today we hear the same economic and cultural pessimism about the Arab world that we did about Peru in the 1980s. But we know better. Just as Shining Path was beaten in Peru, so can terrorists be defeated by reforms that create an unstoppable constituency for rising living standards in the Middle East and North Africa.

To make this agenda a reality, the only requirements are a little imagination, a hefty dose of capital (injected from the bottom up) and government leadership to build, streamline and fortify the laws and structures that let capitalism flourish. As anyone who’s walked the streets of Lima, Tunis and Cairo knows, capital isn’t the problem—it is the solution.

Here’s the Peru story in brief: Shining Path, led by a former professor named Abimael Guzmán, attempted to overthrow the Peruvian government in the 1980s. The group initially appealed to some desperately poor farmers in the countryside, who shared their profound distrust of Peru’s elites. Mr. Guzmán cast himself as the savior of proletarians who had languished for too long under Peru’s abusive capitalists.

What changed the debate, and ultimately the government’s response, was proof that the poor in Peru weren’t unemployed or underemployed laborers or farmers, as the conventional wisdom held at the time. Instead, most of them were small entrepreneurs, operating off the books in Peru’s “informal” economy. They accounted for 62% of Peru’s population and generated 34% of its gross domestic product—and they had accumulated some $70 billion worth of real-estate assets.

This new way of seeing economic reality led to major constitutional and legal reforms. Peru reduced by 75% the red tape blocking access to economic activity, provided ombudsmen and mechanisms for filing complaints against government agencies and recognized the property rights of the majority. One legislative package alone gave official recognition to 380,000 informal businesses, thus bringing above board, from 1990 to 1994, some 500,000 jobs and $8 billion in tax revenue.

 

http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-capitalist-cure-for-terrorism-1412973796

Of course President Obama would never consider the types of reforms which took place in Peru because as a progressive—his underlying philosophy is that of Karl Marx communism—the same brand that is behind the Muslim Brotherhood, the tyrants of South and Central America and in general the labor unions of the world. As enemies of capitalism, they are in paralysis to utilize it as a military objective and are thus forced to commit the type of imperialism that America is often criticized for. But that is entirely unnecessary—as capitalism is the best strategic mode of military conquest. Free people to their own economic success and they will have no need for a dictator. Make people wealthy in the Middle East, and they will have no desire to feed the resources of ISIS.

It is wonderful to see such strategic thinking coming out of the Wall Street Journal. New York, even though it was built by capitalism is a hard place these days comprehend such an economic philosophy. Progressivism is the ruler of that city these days. Yes capitalism still speaks loudly in Times Square, but the underpinnings of progressive philosophy are slowly destroying everything that city has meant to America which is a military objective coming from the other direction—from antagonists like ISIS and other Muslim radicals. They wish communism upon the earth and they use religion to hide it. So it is only fair to utilize the strength of the West—capitalism—to crush the enemies of our nation without firing a shot.

You’d think that Obama being the peace-loving old hippie follower that he was and is would love the idea of a peaceful solution to the world’s problems. But Obama is an enemy of capitalism, so he cannot use it to save the world, which is a shame, because it is the most effective weapon that America has against its enemies. And America has enemies not because of what it does to other nations through imperialism, but because it is always a threat to tyrannical control they wish to impose on the world. America because of its capitalism is an example to the world that tyrants hope to extinguish so that promises of a better life do not come from economic freedom, but through the support of the next rulers of a Karl Marx economy where each takes from confiscated wealth according to their need.

The solution to many of the world’s anxieties could be accomplished through the simple embrace of capitalism as an economic force. The continued desire to find the next subtle way to deliver world-wide communism is the root of much trouble that can be seen today whether it is the ISIS terrorism, or the border troubles with Mexico. At the heart of most third world economies and their hatred for America is the old relic of thought started by Karl Marx, the great destroyer. And the best counter measure to Marx and his communism is the fine essence of self-empowerment through glorious capitalism.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

2014 Values Voter Summit: How Glenn Beck is incredibly wrong

The Glenn Beck speech at the 2014 Values Voter Summit was very good and worth watching—which can be seen below.  There is a lot he said correctly—especially regarding Sykes-Picot agreement.  I was one of the first to cover that origin of trouble in the Middle East and if members of Beck’s staff passed it along to Glenn Beck to report—well, that’s why I write this stuff—to educate and help people understand the world around them.  It doesn’t hurt my feelings if Beck takes his big platform and expands it.  Click here to review my article on the matter.  It is the key to understanding the trouble and politics of the Middle East.  The rest of Glenn Beck’s speech was good as well and worth witnessing.  I agree with most of what he said, but in some parts of it he is vehemently wrong.  In those portions his life as a former addict crosses over into the realm of strategy and his advice is bad.  Specifically, it is in his self-sacrificial calls to surrender thought to God and to embrace Christen passivity in the face of evil.  Like many people who have found God late in life to redeem their self-destructive paths people like Beck fill their lives with scripture to plug the holes that were formed through drug and alcohol abuse.  It’s a survival mechanism that works better than personal and social destruction.  But for confronting evil, strategically, Christ is not the example and the kind of passivity Glenn Beck talks about in his speech will get a lot of people hurt, and or, dead.  So let’s explore the correct position below after watching the speech.

I understand that Glenn Beck is under tremendous media pressure to avoid being called a rebel rouser and is taking the Martin Luther King approach to solving problems when confronting evil.  Well—Martin Luther King ended up dead—killed by his rivals.  Beck also talked about Jesus, for many of the same reasons and suggested that Judas was frustrated with Jesus and his lack of ability to rally the troops against the Romans—which is why Judas betrayed Jesus.  Well, Jesus and his passivity caused him to be killed—assassinated as a religious rival to the power held in Jerusalem.   Beck and his utterances about Christ’s passivity obviously has not listened to the popular church song, “Onward Christian Soldiers, Marching as to War” which invokes a bit of battle balled.  Passivity of religion rolled over into politics will end your movement before it ever begins and sparks for rebellion is necessary if there are hopes of overcoming evil.  God will not come down from Heaven and break down the walls of Jericho to the sounding of trumpets and slay the enemies of King David through simple prayer.  Such things require action to square off against evil and to conquer it as it presents itself.

Without Sam Adams, his cousin John would have never been the second President of the United States.  The American Revolution would have never happened.  Without Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson would have been just another former European styled intellectual pointing out what should be as opposed to what was.  Without a rebel rouser, action against the enemy does not happen.  In his speech Glenn Beck brought up the criminal Barabus who was picked by the mob to save instead of Jesus.  Beck stated that the angry mob in Jerusalem wanted a rebel rouser to spark rebellion and Jesus just wasn’t that type of person to perform the task, so they picked Barabus whom history would have otherwise only remembered as a harmless, petty inciter against the vile institutionalism of the day.  However, it was the pressure from the mob that caused the Romans to even put in place a system of providing a choice to their subjects to take the edge off their tyranny.  Without the aggressive pressure of people like Barabus—the Romans would just slaughter anyone who disagreed with their power.  Because the Romans feared an uprising against them, they put in place mechanisms to appease the mob—just as what happens to this very day especially during elections.

Praying to God in front of an armed thug who wants to destroy you and everything you stand for will only get you dead.  Trusting in God to save your soul from evil might get you into the gates of Heaven, but it will destroy life on earth for you and all that you love.  Passivity is not the answer—aggression is.  The bad guys need to know that the mob is angry and that at any moment some rebel rouser will shout “let’s get them!”  The only messages such villains understand is force—unapologetic force at that.  It is nice if that force is backed by a value system represented by Christians or some other religion of value, but passivity toward aggression cannot be a plan for expanding goodness in the face of evil.  That is just dreadfully empowering for those who favor aggression and blind power over those who are easy targets.

The current role that America has in the world shows this—the foreign policy of those raised as peaceful Muslims—like Barack Obama in the country of his education Indonesia—has a hands off pacifist behavior that is also characteristic of the modern liberals and libertarians who think that they can smoke a joint and offer the peace sign to a radical terrorist and all will be well—that God will just sort it all out.  They are insanely wrong.  Religion is only good for a relationship to the after world and establishing some foundation beliefs that can build a civilization.  But it will not provide good advice on how to deal with an aggressor.

I’ve never been a pacifist.  I learned martial arts at a young age and learned how to make myself invincible from a one on one attack through blocking techniques.  You can’t guarantee that you will always win in such matches with the opposition, but you can force a stalemate by not allowing their force to overcome you.  This has been a very successful position, and I’ve had many people—most of them bigger and stronger try to impose their will over the years—and they have not succeeded even after nearly five decades.  I’ve been in a lot of fights from young to old, the most recent one was actually a few years ago in front of several Butler County police officers which took place in the Hamilton Court House parking garage.  When confronted with vile evil, God won’t swoop in to help you.  You have to help yourself and confront it directly.  They have to know that if they make a move against you, or the things you care about—that you will pummel them.  That is the only way to achieve peace without being the victim of slaughter.  I’ve never been a drug user or a person who uses evasion techniques to avoid thinking—so have never had a need to turn to God to fill holes in my background.  I have always acted upon the moral appraisal that my mind produces based on the conditions of the world around me.  So I can speak from experience, pacifism feeds aggression against goodness, it doesn’t make it go away.

It took several hundred years after the death of Jesus for Christianity to begin taking hold.  In the meantime, many innocent people were murdered and lives were destroyed needlessly because mankind was too willing to surrender their life on earth for a perceived entry into the afterlife.  This allowed evil to manifest on earth and rule the planet for the last several thousand years.  And it was a stupid strategy that was supported by people like Glenn Beck over the years who get their messages mixed up—on one hand they stand aghast at the depravity of the world but then think that the situation will be solved by putting trust into God without any direct action taken by the victims of violence.  God made evil as well as the good, and places them into the battlefield of life for purposes yet defined.  However, in that transaction, goodness cannot yield to villainy and pacifistic behavior will not lead to victory for Christians.   When you see the actions of a bully, you have to be willing to look that bully in the face and destroy it if needed—and you can’t hesitate—you have to be willing to turn evil into a pretzel if need be and to end its life on earth if the situation calls for it.

As a person who has looked directly into the eyes of evil for many years and challenged it with force of my own, I can report that pacifist behavior feeds them leading to violence not avoidance.  I once confronted evil by taking on the entire police department of a local city who was using their power to sell drugs to kids through a local school.  The police gained these drugs through raids and instead of the evidence sitting on the shelves in a FBI lab somewhere, the cops were selling it back on the streets for extra cash—and everyone knew about it, including the mayor at the time.  How do you dear reader think that confrontation went?  Praying to God certainly didn’t help.  Many of those same cops were influential in the local churches, and gave a lot of money to the donation plates.  That evil had to be confronted directly—and it was.  I’m still around—many of them aren’t.  So who does God favor?  Does God favor the meek and weak, or the one who will spit down the throat of evil when pressed?  My experience tells me that God does help, but only when evil is confronted by the good—not yielded to.  Many of those police officers referred ended up destroyed by car accidents or health ailments within a few short years so fate does play out to some extent, but in my experience, meekness leads to the destruction of good, not the furtherance of it.

It is also in my experience that disguised behind the sermons of peace are people generally afraid of confronting evil, and they use the excuse that God is the ultimate mitigation of justice to avoid needed confrontations.  Born again Christians are particularly of this type as they must believe that their sins from the past will be rewarded through meekness toward God, by surrendering their lives to ancient provocation.  It is easy to do such a thing and still appear to be tough in standing against evil—without actually having to perform the task.  But it doesn’t work.  Evil must be confronted.  You have to be willing to look it in the eye and beat it down.  Without such a position, evil grows through embolden observation of pacifism.  Glenn Beck says a lot of things that are right, but on the issues of aggression and the inevitable confrontations with evil, his past taints his strategic thinking for the future. And his opinions about tactics against aggression by mixing religion with observed thinking is wrong.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Why Gordon Ramsey is so Good: The difference between Jags and everyone else in West Chester

One thing that Gordon Ramsay has brought to my life is an appreciation for fine food.  I have a background that involves working in several Cincinnati restaurants as a grill cook and waiter and have seen many of the troubles featured on the Gordon Ramsay television show Kitchen Nightmares firsthand.  I learned a lot from those places of secondary employment—most notably how to handle trouble when short of expected staff.  It created in me a lack of professional rigidity that serves me very well now.  So needless to say, my wife and I nearly exclusively these days make it a point to watch the several Gordon Ramsey television shows that are in production, Hotel Hell, Kitchen Nightmares, MasterChef, The F Word, MasterChef Junior and Hell’s Kitchen.  After watching so much of Ramsay it is impossible not to critic my food when I eat out—especially in the upscale places.

In Cincinnati it is Jags in West Chester that represents the best that the culinary arts have to offer.  It used to be the Maisoniette in downtown Cincinnati which finally closed in 2005 after maintaining a five-star culinary rating for several consecutive years, and the Celestial in Mt Adams which continues to a wonderful restaurant.  I used to be a fan of the Celestial after plays at the Taft Theater and days spent at the Art Museum—but Jags has replaced it. The drawback to Jags is that there isn’t much to look at outside the windows as the Celestial has a wonderful view of the city and the river.  But Jags for its exclusivity is better in that you can tune out the outside world and enjoy culinary art with some much needed isolation.

It’s not like I plan for days to embark on fine restaurant adventures, they just sort of happen out of necessity.  However, prior to Chef Ramsay I would usually prefer McDonald’s to the complicated—long winded dining experiences at the Celestial.  For instance, the Celestial Oscar is priced just under $40 and had dainty portions as opposed to the Oscar at Jags which costs $59 currently—and is more than enough to fill you up.  When it’s just me looking for food, I often want the quickest bang for the buck just because I’m so busy, but Ramsay has shown how wonderful food can be, that I find myself more and more enjoying the finer dining options around Cincinnati—as opposed to the quickest.

It’s not a fluke that Fox has so many Ramsey television shows featuring the award-winning chef.  Gordon Ramsey is a very effective manager—and it is a pleasure to watch him cut through problems quickly to get to the core of a problem.  Usually, the trouble with food ends up being psychological as opposed to knowledge based.  A lot of people know how to make great food, but they lack the sanity to put it on a plate.  This is what is fascinating about Ramsey—is his ability to break people down and rebuild them in such a short period of time.  In Kitchen Nightmares, Ramsey usually only spends a week figuring out design changes to a struggling restaurant, confronting owners who are struggling with personal problems which come out directly into their products, and re-launching with aggressive marketing campaigns from the local community.  The same process can be seen more articulately in Hell’s Kitchen where most of the candidates appear to be floundering messes at the beginning of the episodes, but as the season progresses, Ramsey pulls out of one or two of them, a potential culinary master by pounding out their inner psychosis into something that can produce masterpieces on a plate.  Ramsey films Hell’s Kitchen at the same time as the MasterChef shows which are incredible as the participants are forced to become greater through competition until they are master chefs.  It is amazing how quickly Ramsey is able to get to the source of a problem—and helps people overcome it.

Ramsey even though he is from the United Kingdom is one of the finest examples of capitalism that there is currently.  In essence, beyond all the personal problems of the people he helps, he forces them to accept capitalism or to perish—which is really the best thing he could possibly do for them.  Most of Ramsey’s enterprises succeed, although a few fail—his ratio is incredibly successful—which is why my wife and I enjoy watching him so much.  But because of Ramsey I can now spot the quality of people’s minds based on what they cook for me, which is something I never considered prior to watching so much of Chef Ramsey.  I can now spot in a little dive of a restaurant in the middle of Tennessee that the owners are having marital difficulties based on the way they prepare the food, and I can tell when a little over-priced Bistro on Lake Ontario is full of self-inflated egos based on the quality of the food.  Like Gordon Ramsey, Chef Michelle Brown at Jags has a background in sports and that competitive spirit finds its way onto the plate with every serving.  The food is often served meticulously, even in large groups.  Recently while in a large group it was easy to see even during the appetizer that great care comes out of the kitchen as we ordered three raw bar sea food samples.  They were brought out in massive fountain-like containers, and within each were oysters, jumbo shrimp and crab legs not haphazardly thrown in with clots of ice, but meticulously spaced.  I measured them in their spacing and each serving was equally distributed.  This to me was remarkable and is why I prefer Jags over something like the Celestial.

Compared to other area restaurants like Stone Creek and Bravo! Cucina Italiana which are franchise establishments that give nice middle of the road dining experiences disguised as upper crest—I can now eat in places like that and know much that there is to know about the kitchen and personalities involved.  The standard procedure in Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares is to sit down and eat the food—once he’s done that he attacks directly the root of the problem which is usually psychological problems between owners, managers, and staff—or food prep laziness.  In Jags you can feel that the victory of the meal is won during food prep, in those critical hours between 2 PM and 5 PM when dinner rush is planned for vigorously in the kitchen, and those other places where things are frozen because they are purchased in bulk for all the area restaurants by deals cut with food suppliers.  The employees at second-hand restaurants pretending to be exquisite is that they show up for work an hour before dinner service and expect to make great food—and it just doesn’t work that way.

Critics of Gordon Ramsey are often  the same people who think that capitalism is unfair—and they are also the same type of people who would rather eat at Bravo! Cucina Italiana as opposed to Jags where the individual meticulousness of Chef Michelle Brown comes out in virtually every meal leaving her kitchen.  They are the ones Ramsey cusses at as opposed to receiving his praise.  But I continue to be amazed at the playfulness and hard work that Chef Ramsey is able to conger up all while maintaining a family, traveling the world, and hosting four television shows that involve intense management techniques.  He is a remarkable person which is also why his food is so magnificent.  West Chester, Ohio is one of the best areas in the United States to live and its per capita income make it affluent enough to support a Gordon Ramsey restaurant.  Until he does that, Jags will likely be my top pick of dining experience.  And under the benefits of capitalism, it would be a great day indeed to have the difficult choice of Chef Ramsey or Chef Brown.  I like Chef Brown so much that I might have to pick her over Ramsey.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Up for Whatever Happens: Tampa Bay Beats the Steelers in an improbable win

There hasn’t been much to cheer about the last couple of years, and first part of this new season as I’m a diehard fan of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers football team.  It has been a transition period for them as they have sought after their correct player/coach combinations.  With the addition of Lovie Smith as the new head coach, I have been optimistic until the thrashing that took place in Atlanta.  I am also a fan of the Bud Light commercials, “Up for Whatever Happens” which I featured during the last Super Bowl.  So even after a terrible start to the new season, it was wonderful to see Warren Sapp grant a Tampa Bay resident with a dream “happening” by converting his living room into a pirate themed amusement park at the beginning of the game against the Pittsburg Steelers.  This is usually how it looks at my house on each Sunday that the Bucs play.

Football is a celebration of capitalism and the type of people who have assembled on the outskirts of society to attack the NFL are the same idiots who believe in global warming, the income disparity between men and women, and that it is better to have a president in the White House because of skin color rather than content of character.  These intrusive big-government, anti-capitalists want to step into the private affairs of Ray Rice, and Adrian Peterson along with coming after the Washington Redskin franchise name—as they do every “citizen” of the world for reasons that have nothing to do with justice.    These characters are not so interested in protecting women from domestic violence or children from abusive punishment—or honoring the name of a conquered people—but rather in moving the progressive bar further to the political left by attacking a mainstay of American capitalism—the NFL.  So I tend to support American football as a leisure activity in spite of their altruistic obsession of appeasing those same radicals with the pink ribbon campaigns and 60 minutes of exercise per day for children.  I believe that the Madden Football on Xbox and Playstation does more for children than an entire year of public school as far as teaching them how to think—so I love and support the NFL.

I also love Lovie Smith who has always been and continues to be a stand up guy who coaches in a unique way as a mentor first, and a leader desiring to win second.  This could be said of the Glazer ownership as well which I have spoken about in great detail over the years.  The Tampa Bay Buccaneer organization from the top to the bottom is a class act and a great enhancement to the Tampa Bay region.  Lovie Smith is the perfect kind of fit for the type of coach the Glazers had been looking for.  But after a terrible, embarrassing loss to the Atlanta Falcons—a division rival, I had no hope that the Bucs could bounce back and beat the Steelers playing in Pittsburg—where the home team almost never loses.  The mountain of improbability was just too high.  I didn’t even put my flags out for the first time in about 8 years.  I watched the game out of loyalty but I didn’t want to put too much emotional investment into a team that was obviously struggling with Lovie’s team philosophy. I didn’t even get excited much when the Bucs came out and sacked Big Ben in the opening moments jumping up to a 10-0 first quarter score.  The Steelers made some adjustments and came back to get the lead and held it until the closing moments of the game—but with 7 seconds left on the clock, the Bucs mounted a valiant comeback—held their poise and won the game.  It was very impressive, and if I had my cannons out, I would have shot them as seen in that Bud Light commercial.

I don’t care if the Bucs win another game this season—that win was one that I’ll never forget.  Hopefully the organization will build on that victory and step will into the future.  For all the talk about the recent Hall-of-Fame inclusions of Warren Sapp, Derrick Brooks, and soon John Lynch, Ronde Barber, and probably Mike Alstott, Tony Dungy, along with many others—the Bucs have been living in the past—happy to have their one Super Bowl win in 2002.  The ownership has tried to recapture that magic, but the results have been average.  There have been some great wins, and some fun Sundays, but the Bucs have not been able to rekindle the magic of their Hall-of-Fame players.  The Steelers on the other hand have a whole hallway of Super Bowl wins and a legacy of success that is unmatched.  Their current head coach is a former Buccaneer coach and has had great accomplishments in Pittsburg.  The reason it is so hard to win in Pittsburg is because the fans expect success from their team—and nothing less.  That is obvious when Pittsburg comes to Cincinnati to play which is four hours away to the south—there are nearly as many Steeler fans in the stands of a home game with the Bengals who follow the team to away games with great enthusiasm.  They do the same in Cleveland, and Baltimore creating a very intimidating fan base that rattles visiting teams during every Steeler home game.

It would have been very hard for Lovie Smith to prepare his team after such a daunting loss to get back on the horse and prepare for the Steelers—where the odds were against them in every category.  The NFL world was shocked to see the Bucs steal a win against the valiant Steelers—yet it happened in a convincing way.  Even when I thought the game was over with only a minute left—Pittsburg had the ball forcing Tampa to use all their timeouts—the defense put the screws to a very good Steeler offense.  The big difference in the game was that Gerald McCoy was back in the middle forcing the Steelers to attempt to run the ball to the outside where speedy linebackers were there to pick up the attempt.  The defense held, and the Bucs got the ball back with 30 seconds left to march down the field and score a touchdown.  Mike Glennon—the back-up quarterback throwing to a guy who was signed only the week before—who was cut after the pre-season, caught the ball on a slot reception and nearly made it into the in-zone.  Two plays later Vincent Jackson caught a touchdown stunning the football world.

After the game the Bud Light commercial featuring Warren Sapp and the Buccaneer themed living room came on again and it was just more revered the second time—because of the win.  There are a lot of metaphors in football that can be applied to life and it is games like the one between the Bucs and Steelers that serve as testimony to all of them.  Even when the odds are terribly stacked against you and you appear to be out-classed in every category—if you believe you can win, it’s the first step in marching down the field to get a victory—against all odds.  And in such times it takes a coach who is willing to spit in the wind of convention and not surrender to the temptation to lose his cool that can convince his team of young saplings that they can achieve the most audacious feat only a week after receiving the most embarrassing loss of their lives.  Lovie Smith is a great coach if for no other reason than the way he handled himself before and after the Pittsburg Steelers game of 2014.  It was a game that belonged featured in the Bud Light commercial “Up for Whatever Happens” because in the closing seconds on a brilliant autumn afternoon in the Midwest—it did.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

White House Activism Against Corporations: A ridiculous argument against inversions

This is what happens when you get activists who think like communists in the White House. I received this email from them recently trying to build a consensus against the American corporation desire to create tax inversions for themselves to avoid the incredibly high corporate tax rates found in North America.  This is also what happens when corporations are demonized by a political class who wishes to believe that everyone underneath them is in the “middle class” and willingly submits to their gross miss management of national resources.  What the idiots who wrote the below letter conveniently forget is that it was they who spent too much money—not corporate desire to hang on to the profits they’ve earned that is the cause of the problem.  Read their ridiculous utterances here:

Here’s What Inversions Are Costing Us

You don’t get to pick your tax rate. Neither should corporations.

That’s why, earlier this week, the Treasury Department took initial steps to prevent U.S. corporations from using a tax maneuver to avoid paying taxes in America. This loophole — known as an “inversion” — lets a company avoid taxes by relocating their tax residence overseas while changing very little else about its operations or business.

And it’s costing Americans nearly $20 billion over the next decade — critical dollars that could grow and expand the middle class.

Take a look at why we are taking action to close the inversion tax loophole — then share it with everyone who needs to know.Inversions

Notice what type of presidents were in the White House during the periods of time shown on the graph.  Big government socialist types as opposed to conservatives.  When the White House says that it will cost $20 billion in lost revenue over the next decade what they really mean is that they have already promised too much money through mismanagement to future endeavors that cannot be paid for but through higher rates of taxation.  This is the same lunacy that comes from public school mismanagement when they sneak through school levies to pay for unfunded desires—like inflated wages, elaborate buildings, and ridiculously wonderful benefits packages.  What they all have in common is that they are government enterprises built by government minds that spend too much money so to remain in power—then expect tax payers to cover their costs out of some patriotic obligation.

No…………..

What this is called ladies and gentlemen is “mismanagement” of tax payer resources—not obligatory sacrifices to strengthen a middle class of subjects worshiping the feet of the political class.  When they say this “is what inversions are costing us” they don’t mean……”us” as in you, me, rich and poor—they mean the political class who desires under a socialist mentality to rule over everyone else.  They also want a blank check to waste as much tax payer money as possible then expect payment by their subjects without complaint.  But to make matters worse, because corporations don’t have the ability to vote except through lobby power—the government targets them to pay a disproportionate amount of corporate tax by demonizing them into compliance.  However, corporations in this new international trading system that the government so proudly sponsored is voting with their feet and leaving America for oversea tax shelters to protect themselves from a grubby government desiring to steal all the profits gained through production.  This is the inversion process that the White House is complaining about and rather than deal with the problem they caused they are using email activism to attempt and build an argument of democracy against corporations to protect the financial burdens they already committed America to through mismanagement to pay.

These same fools in government almost in the very next sentence promise that they want to create jobs—yet their proposal is to create more government positions paid for by tax payers forgetting that the only real jobs that directly contribute to the GDP of a nation come from corporations and small businesses.  They neglect to inform anyone that it is their mismanagement that is not only spending too much money, but also pushing jobs out of America making unemployment un-naturally high.  Government is the cause of both problems.

It is truly arrogant for a political class to assume that nobody sees what they are up to, yet there it is directly from the White House to my email inbox.  They are that audacious to complain about the life blood of the American economy—corporations—then promise jobs to people was if they had them tucked away in their back pocket like a condemn intended for use in a whore house.  They are that ridiculously foolish.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com