Tag: Economics

The Affordability Crisis: Price increases to fill vacant personalities are the folly of socialism looming in the background

The question of housing affordability has become one of the most pressing socio-economic issues in the United States today. With the average home price reaching approximately $400,000 in 2024, many young families and individuals find themselves priced out of the market. This reality raises a critical question: why does the housing industry continue to prioritize large, expensive homes when market signals clearly indicate a growing demand for smaller, affordable housing options? Historically, the American housing model was built on accessibility. Following World War II, the United States experienced an unprecedented housing boom driven by the GI Bill, which provided returning veterans with low-interest mortgages and educational benefits. Between 1945 and 1960, the average home price increased from roughly $8,000 to $12,000 [1], while median household income rose from $2,400 to $5,600 [2]. These homes were predominantly single-story ranch houses designed to be affordable for working-class families. They featured simple layouts, modest square footage, and efficient construction methods that allowed developers to build entire neighborhoods quickly and inexpensively. This model supported rapid suburbanization and contributed to the rise of the American middle class. By contrast, the late 20th and early 21st centuries saw a shift toward larger homes, often called “McMansions.” In 1980, the average home price was $47,000 [3], but by 2000, it had climbed to $120,000 [4], and by 2020, it had skyrocketed to $320,000 [5]. This escalation far outpaced wage growth, creating a structural imbalance in housing affordability and leaving younger generations unable to enter the market. The cultural and economic forces that once prioritized affordability have been replaced by incentives that reward size, luxury, and perceived status, setting the stage for today’s housing crisis.

The persistent trend toward building larger homes is not driven solely by consumer demand but by systemic incentives in the real estate and finance sectors. Developers maximize profits by constructing high-value properties, while municipalities benefit from increased property tax revenues. This dynamic discourages the development of smaller, entry-level homes, even though demographic data suggests that younger generations prefer affordability and functionality over size and luxury. According to recent affordability indices, the ratio of median household income to qualifying income for a median-priced home fell to 0.68 in 2024 [6]. This indicates that homeownership is increasingly unattainable for average earners, reinforcing the argument for a return to smaller, cost-effective housing models. Yet the financial ecosystem—from banks to zoning boards—remains locked into a paradigm that rewards high-margin projects. Mortgage lenders often favor larger loans because they generate higher interest revenue, while local governments prioritize developments that promise substantial tax inflows. These incentives create a feedback loop that perpetuates the construction of oversized homes, even as market demand shifts toward affordability. Furthermore, inflationary pressures and speculative investment exacerbate the problem. Between 2000 and 2024, housing prices grew by more than 230%, while median incomes increased by less than 75%. This disparity underscores the structural imbalance between wages and housing costs, a gap that cannot be bridged solely by traditional market mechanisms. Without intervention, the housing market risks becoming increasingly exclusionary, limiting access to homeownership and eroding the foundation of economic mobility.

Beyond economics, cultural factors play a significant role in shaping housing trends. For decades, the pursuit of status through material possessions influenced consumer preferences, encouraging the construction of larger homes as symbols of success. Golf memberships, luxury cars, and sprawling properties became markers of achievement, reinforcing a cycle of materialism that drove housing design. However, contemporary social values are shifting. Younger generations prioritize experiences, sustainability, and financial flexibility over conspicuous consumption. They are less interested in impressing neighbors with square footage and more concerned with affordability and quality of life. This cultural evolution underscores the need for housing policies and development strategies that align with changing societal norms. Yet the industry has been slow to adapt, clinging to outdated assumptions about what buyers want. Compounding the affordability crisis is the growing influence of institutional investors such as Blackstone, Invitation Homes, and other private equity firms that have acquired tens of thousands of single-family homes across the country. These firms often purchase distressed properties in bulk, outbidding individual buyers with cash offers, and then convert these homes into rental units. This practice accelerates the transition from an ownership-based society to a rental-based one, echoing predictions from the World Economic Forum that “you will own nothing and be happy.” While such statements are controversial, they highlight the structural forces reshaping housing markets globally and the erosion of the American Dream. Institutional investors operate with access to cheap capital and sophisticated financial instruments, enabling them to dominate local markets and set rental prices that further strain household budgets. When ownership becomes unattainable, wealth accumulation stalls, and generational inequality deepens, creating a society increasingly divided along economic lines. The presence of these investors also distorts housing supply, as homes that could serve as affordable entry points for families are removed from the ownership pool and repurposed for profit-driven rental schemes.

Failure to address this imbalance has profound social and economic consequences. Young adults delay marriage and family formation because they cannot afford homes. Communities lose stability as homeownership declines, and wealth inequality deepens as property ownership consolidates among institutional investors. Ultimately, the American Dream of homeownership becomes unattainable for a growing segment of the population. The current housing crisis reflects a failure to adapt to evolving market realities and cultural values. Continuing to build large, expensive homes in the face of declining affordability and changing consumer preferences is economically unsustainable and socially detrimental. A strategic pivot toward smaller, affordable housing—akin to the post-WWII ranch-style model—offers a viable solution to restore accessibility to the American Dream. Developers, policymakers, and financial institutions must recognize that the market is in charge, not the egos of those who seek to maximize profit at the expense of social stability. If this shift does not occur, the consequences will ripple across generations, transforming a nation of homeowners into a nation of renters and undermining the very foundation of American prosperity. The time to act is now: by embracing affordability, sustainability, and inclusivity, the housing industry can realign with the values that once made homeownership a cornerstone of American life.  But price increases, as a solution to fill the empty minds of vacant personalities, are the driving force here.  Everyone can’t be rich; they don’t have a mind for it, nor do they want it.  But we have been caught in giving everyone a sense of wealth without them doing the work of wealth, and in the process, we have opened Pandora’s box of illusion that many are perfectly willing to exploit for a short-term gain.  But the cost of those short-term gains is now before us, and it’s wrapped up in this whole affordability debate.  And looming in the background is the mechanisms of Marxism that knew what they were doing all along.  Once people throw in the towel, what will they want?  That’s what has happened in New York with the new communist mayor there.  And behind it all, there is a push to hide from the world the moral bankruptcy of the instigators if what gets ushered in behind the carnage is socialism and government-driven price controls.  When really, what was needed all along were market-driven sentiments of pure capitalism; if only people had listened to those market forces instead of trying to control them.

References:

[1] U.S. Census Bureau. Historical Housing Data, 1945–1960.

[2] U.S. Census Bureau. Median Income Trends, 1945–1960.

[3] National Association of Realtors. Housing Price Trends, 1980.

[4] Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED). Median Home Prices, 2000.

[5] Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED). Median Home Prices, 2020.

[6] Housing Affordability Index Report, 2024.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Affordability in Crisis: Why Price Hikes Are a Symptom of Deeper Economic Mismanagement

 The Illusion of Prosperity

Affordability has become one of the most pressing economic issues of 2025. Everywhere you look—groceries, housing, dining, even basic services—prices have surged. Politicians blame “corporate greed,” consultants preach “raise your prices,” and consumers wonder why their paychecks don’t stretch as far as promised.

I warned about this years ago in my book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. The affordability crisis isn’t a mystery—it’s the predictable outcome of government interference, consultant-driven short-term thinking, and a cultural abandonment of lean principles. What we’re seeing now is the result of artificial wage inflation, cost-plus pricing models, and a failure to defend capitalism’s core logic.

Section 1: The Wage-Price Spiral—How Policy Broke the Market

The roots of today’s affordability problem lie in political decisions, not market forces. When Democrats pushed for a $15 minimum wage, they claimed it would lift millions out of poverty. On paper, that sounds noble. In reality, it distorted the entire wage structure.

• Minimum wage hikes ripple upward: When entry-level pay jumps, mid-tier and senior wages follow. Businesses face higher labor costs across the board.

• Inflationary pressure kicks in: To cover these costs, companies raise prices. Consultants reinforce this with “cost-plus” advice—pass it on to the customer.

• Purchasing power stagnates: Even if workers earn more nominally, real wages barely improve because goods and services inflate proportionally.

• Nominal wages rose 78.7% since 2006, but real wages (inflation-adjusted) grew only 11.9%.

• Inflation spiked to 9.1% in June 2022, while wage growth lagged at 4.8%, creating the sharpest negative gap in decades.

• From 2024 to 2025, inflation cooled to ~3%, but real wage gains remain modest—about 0.58%.

Timeline of Key Events:

• 2020: COVID pandemic disrupts labor markets.

• 2021: Stimulus checks and remote work incentives distort supply-demand.

• 2022: Inflation peaks amid supply chain chaos and wage hikes.

• 2025: Affordability crisis persists despite cooling inflation.

Section 2: Consultants and the Cost-Plus Trap

Post-COVID, businesses faced unprecedented disruption: supply chain chaos, labor shortages, and regulatory burdens. Enter the consultants—the self-proclaimed saviors of industry. Their universal advice? “Raise your prices.”

This is the lazy solution. Instead of driving waste out of operations, consultants push cost-plus models that normalize inefficiency. Every added layer—compliance costs, consultant fees, expedited shipping—gets baked into the price. Customers end up paying for waste, not value.

I warned about this in The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business:

“Consultants rarely take risks; they profit from yours. They stand on the sidelines, leeching off success, and when times get tough, they tell you to ‘charge more.’ That’s not strategy—that’s parasitism.”

Section 3: Global Contrast—Lean vs. Bloated

While American firms inflate prices to cover inefficiencies, Japanese manufacturers pursue the opposite: lean manufacturing. Rooted in the Toyota Production System, lean focuses on eliminating waste, optimizing flow, and maximizing customer value.

Toyota vs. Boeing: A Tale of Two Philosophies

• Toyota: Continuous improvement (Kaizen), Just-in-Time inventory, and employee empowerment drive costs out of the system.

• Boeing: Historically relied on cost-plus contracts with government clients, but has adopted lean principles in recent years to remain competitive.

• Boeing’s move toward Toyota-style production—standardization, automation, and flow lines—helped reduce assembly time for the 777X and 737 programs.

Key Insight: Toyota’s lean culture treats waste elimination as a moral imperative. Boeing, under pressure from SpaceX and Airbus, is learning that lean isn’t optional—it’s survival. 

Section 4: SpaceX—The Lean Disruptor

SpaceX represents the next generation of manufacturing efficiency. By vertically integrating production and reusing rocket boosters, SpaceX slashed launch costs by over 90%—from $25,000/kg to under $1,500/kg.

Compare that to Boeing and Lockheed’s United Launch Alliance (ULA), which historically charged $400 million per launch. Even after aggressive cost-cutting, ULA’s Vulcan rocket costs $110 million—still far above SpaceX’s $69 million Falcon 9 price.

Why SpaceX Wins:

• Reusability: 98% of Falcon 9 boosters reused.

• Vertical Integration: In-house production of engines and avionics.

• Lean Thinking: Eliminates waste at every stage, from design to launch.

Section 5: Post-COVID Price Chaos

COVID didn’t just disrupt supply chains—it rewired pricing behavior. Firms increased the frequency and size of price changes, often without corresponding improvements in value.

Drivers of inflation post-2020:

• Supply shocks: Energy volatility and shipping delays.

• Demand surges: Stimulus-fueled spending and pent-up consumption.

• Labor market distortions: Remote work incentives and wage bargaining power.

Instead of addressing structural inefficiencies, businesses defaulted to price hikes. Consultants validated this approach, creating a culture of inflationary complacency.

Section 6: Affordability vs. Value—The Chef Ramsay Analogy

Not all high prices are bad. I once paid $4,500 for a dinner at Chef Ramsay’s flagship restaurant in London. Why? The experience justified the cost, offering world-class cuisine, impeccable service, and a behind-the-scenes kitchen tour. That’s value-driven pricing.

Contrast that with a $12 fast-food burger inflated to $18 because of wage mandates and consultant fees. The product didn’t improve; the price did. That’s the essence of the affordability crisis: customers paying more for the same—or worse—experience.  In these examples, it’s all food. The only difference is essentially in the value of the brand built.  Nobody is going to confuse a Chef Ramsey restaurant with the McDonald’s experience.  But even McDonald’s these days is showing really high prices for something where the real value is in affordability.  And the less they cover their margin, the more temptation there is to raise their prices, which then makes fewer people use them for a cheap hamburger on the go.  Everyone loses when prices are raised in this process.

Section 7: Solutions—How to Restore Market Logic

1. Reinstate Market-Driven Wages

    • Stop politicizing pay scales. Let supply and demand set labor value.

2. Drive Waste Out

    • Adopt lean principles: eliminate inefficiencies instead of passing them to customers.

3. Reward True Value

    • Premium pricing should reflect premium experience—not bureaucratic overhead.

4. Reject Consultant Dependency

    • Build internal expertise. Consultants should advise, not dictate.

5. Defend Capitalism

    • Capitalism thrives on competition and efficiency—not government micromanagement or parasitic intermediaries.

The Gunfighter’s Perspective

In The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, I infused into this discussion:

“If you want to shoot down the bandits in the street, don’t hire a posse of consultants who only loot the carcass after the fight. Learn to aim, pull the trigger, and own the risk.  And take the rewards for yourself, don’t share them with the parasites.  The dandies, who only come after all the hard stuff is done, only steal what is won in the fight after.”

That philosophy matters now more than ever. Affordability isn’t about price tags—it’s about value, efficiency, and courage to reject easy answers.

From the book:

“Shooting from the hip is an example of quality and delivery that should be sought after, not avoided.”
(The book reframes quick, decisive action as a strength in business.) [amazon.com]

“America’s Art of War — this book should be taught in every business school in America.”
(Positioning the book as a modern interpretation of strategic classics.) [amazon.com]

“They may have traded their six guns for ties, pens, and emails, but the goals are the same as they have always been: success!”
(Drawing parallels between gunfighters and modern professionals.) [amazon.com]

“A new view of management is unleashed here, termed by the author as ‘ghosting it.’”
(An original concept in the book about leadership and obscure objectives.) [bookstore….ishing.com]

“The old West is not dead but instead is very much alive as we aim our business goals toward space and look to conquer the next frontier.”

Closing Thoughts

America’s affordability crisis is self-inflicted. We let politics override economics, consultants override common sense, and waste override value. The solution isn’t another round of price hikes—it’s a return to market discipline and operational excellence.

If you want more on this, read The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. It’s not just a book—it’s a manifesto for reclaiming capitalism from the parasites and restoring sanity to the marketplace.  I knew when I wrote that book that a tough time was coming, and everything is happening exactly as I said it would.  So I’m not just trying to sell you a book so I can fly my family to London to take them out to eat at Chef Ramsey’s signature restaurant again. The book has been out for a few years now, and it’s done what I intended.  But it would help everyone with this current crisis.  At the point where I wrote that book, I had watched for decades as consultants gutted the businesses they intended to help, because they were essentially parasites by nature.  Not that they meant to be that way, but that was their character.  And when it comes to all these affordability problems, it has been layers of Marxism hiding behind capitalism for a long time that caused the problem, and by another kind of evil, that is precisely what is driving people toward more Marxism because the consultants have essentially blamed the free market for everything, when it is too much tampering and collective value that has caused all the trouble.  So with this debate fully resurrected in a healthy Trump economy, it’s time to talk about the details, and when it comes to that, I literally wrote the book on the subject.  Something I have found is that everyone else in the consulting firms is only dancing around because they can’t look in the mirror and admit they’ve always been part of the problem.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Doug Horton in His Own Words: The Joy of Taking a Shower in Liberal Tears

I’m not the kind of person who spikes the football.  However, just before the Lakota levy attempt in 2025, school board member Doug Horton posted a video (shown here) where he emphasized the last levy won by Lakota back in 2013.  That was a swipe at me personally, so I have to address it, specifically.  He also indicated another Democrat talking point that has been circulating for many years, and that is that I, and about a dozen other anti-levy people, are a vociferous minority who do not represent the rest of the community.  So his message is not to listen to us and vote for his monstrous tax proposal because we love children.  However, these days, many more than a dozen people are opposed to the Lakota tax spending addictions.  And there are a lot more than I who take a position and help out during these political campaigns.  In this case, I had very little to do with the official campaign.  I do the things I always do, but with many more people working on the campaign, and they are brilliant and organized individuals.  And I’m proud of the great work they did.  And that effort is only going to grow in the future, especially with a successful defeat of the Lakota levy, the first one since 2013, which barely, and I mean barely, squeaked by.  Back then, it was Sheriff Jones who stepped over the line to support the public school teachers because he was still mad at the Tea Party effort to make public sector unions illegal in Ohio, which was the side I was on.  It was due to Sheriff Jones’ support that the 2013 levy passed by just a tiny bit, and another hasn’t passed since then. 

And why should a levy pass? It’s not like the community isn’t giving Lakota enough money.  They have a budget of over a quarter of a billion dollars per year, and for their collective bargaining contracts, that’s not enough for their insatiable desires.  It took about a decade, but Sheriff Jones and I are mostly on the same page, and that’s how the ball bounces in politics.  And for this levy attempt, and any others that Lakota proposes in a declining enrollment district with education changing dramatically in the years to come, that’s how it’s going to be.  This leaves people like Doug Horton on the extreme outside, and because he made the statements he did, we must address his point of view as a costly school board member and as a proper representative of the poor management currently on the board.  For many years, we had something of a conservative on the board who worked with everyone to keep more taxes off the ballot.  We even managed to get a majority on the board to control costs, which Horton referred to.  And I found some of his comments incredibly out of touch, especially regarding Darby Boddy, the conservative school board member whom Lakota, as an organization, lobbied hard to remove, literally the moment she was sworn in.  If Doug Horton is worried about Lakota headlines not being negative in the national media, then don’t support superintendents who have sex fests on Craigslist and tell the police that he fantasized about engaging with children who were going to the school at the time.  Horton proposes ignoring the problems so they can receive good press, pass tax increases, and gloss over trouble for the greater good of the school brand, which is a kind of fake sentiment that is at the heart of many problems when raising children.  A topic we could spend many books writing about, given its incorrect point of view. 

Doug Horton and many others in the background have worked hard to destabilize the school board so that they could get rid of the conservatives and essentially get to this big facilities plan, which has been in the planning phase since Trump’s last term, a very long time.  And they believed that if only they had enough liberals on the school board, the community would pass the levy.  And my thoughts have been for a long time to let them have the school board, let them try to run a levy, and let that levy crash and burn when they find out just how many people in the community are against them, many more than just a dozen or so.  In the case of this levy, the defeat was even more than I thought; it lost 60% to 39%.  I thought our side might get into the high 50s.  I was impressed to see it hit 60 in a down-year election, where engagement was naturally low.  It was actually a good simulation of what we expect Lakota to do next, and that is try to slide another levy under the door in May when people want to forget about school and turnout is low, or in August when nobody is thinking about politics.  Turnout was not very vigorous for this election, and still, Lakota lost massively, so that’s a good start for the tax defenders.  And it proves something even more profound that I knew we had to get to once we essentially kicked the control of the school board over to the liberals.  They needed to see what I’ve been telling them all along, which they obviously pay attention to, because Doug Horton essentially announced it to the world as a matter of fact.  People are not with them; they are against them in massive ways.  And they never believed it because they don’t speak to people outside their social circles, which are proportionally very small. 

The biggest problem with our conservative majority is that we let them play the game of division; they got our people all fighting each other with the belief that, in the vacuum, they would regain power and win the hearts of the public.  And Doug Horton does represent the rest of the board, especially Julie Shaffer and Kelly Casper, in his point of view, and that is the public would spend money on their dumb ideas if only I weren’t around, or a dozen or so noisy people, which they have justified to themselves as a small minority.  What reality says, however, is that those voices represent a majority of the Butler County population, and as I said would happen, when given a chance to talk, they would voice their opinion at the ballot box.  And they did, they crushed the Lakota levy.  I don’t think about it too much, but when I see videos like his, it’s a grotesque reminder of just how stupid some of these people are, and it really makes me sick that they are my neighbors.  I’ve lived in the area longer than most of these pro-levy types have been alive, and I will be around long after all of them are gone.  To me, they are the unwelcome noise of a thriving community, where people come from other places and bring their misguided ideas with them, which are socially very destructive.  But when things get tough, I like to let people show what they have, and he certainly did.  And rather than warn them not to pass a levy, I’m fine to let them try, which they did.  And what I said would happen, happened.  And it was because a lot more than a dozen people got information to the voters that helped them make the right decision.  And the amount of support we have had in that effort has grown over the years; it hasn’t declined.  The real solution lies in young people like Ben Nguyen, who was just elected to the school board, and I think will bring many good ideas with him, along with healthy and intelligent debate.  And we’ll need about three or four more like him to push off all these ridiculous liberals.  But first, they had to be exposed for what they were.  And they have, so now it’s time for a lot more work, focusing on school board building rather than defending our property values against those who are clearly out of touch and not very smart.

Rich Hoffman

We’re rebuilding the school board. Good management is the best way to defeat tax increases.

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

The Dinosaurs Will Eat You: More killings in Over-the-Rhine, in Cincinnati

It has been a sick experiment to watch, but the continued denials about the nature of the big, violent fight in downtown Cincinnati recently, in attempting to show that it was a racist incident, and that the white people had it coming, was the attitude.  While just a few blocks to the north in Over-the-Rhine, there were back-to-back killings in an area that Cincinnati has been trying to reform for years into an economic zone.  The shootings on one night, just a few days after the music festival fight at 3 in the morning, involved one guy, 35 years old, who was shot to death in his car just north of Liberty Street by a person in the car with him.  He was shot in the chest, head, and other places violently by a shooter dressed all in black who left the scene.  The next night, a young woman, 34, was shot many times in the back by someone shooting out of a car in a particular direction, just a very short distance away from the previous shooting.  Police say it was an accident, that she was not the intended target.  The shooter was shooting at someone else and accidently hit her.  She was shot 15 to 20 times, which is an awful lot for an accident.  But these shootings received very little national attention because they were all people of color killing each other.  But they display a much bigger problem that has been brewing in the background for many years, and is the reason that President Trump has federalized the police in Washington D.C.  Many cities are suffering through this problem and Cincinnati has been getting national coverage for how poorly race relations are in a town that is supposed to be ideal throughout the nation.  This is a much bigger problem than the fight that has received so much coverage, and there has been an attempt by many involved to justify it.  The bar is so low because of the mass killings that go underreported, that if people live through a brawl like we witnessed, the expectation is that everyone should be thankful.

The two killings point to a much more violent Over-the-Rhine than the City of Cincinnati wants to advertise.  However, that is nothing new; I have warned many people over the years about the dangers of creating an enterprise zone in that region to provide economic stimulus.  I have informed two mayors and many other politicians over the years about the risks of redeveloping Over-the-Rhine into a commercial millennial hotspot, comparing it to Jurassic Park.  The dinosaurs will eat you; they can’t be kept in a cage on adjacent streets to Vine Street, as it runs through Over-the-Rhine.  That’s what I would say to everyone I described the situation to.  And it wasn’t a skin color kind of thing; it was behavior acceptance, and I would know well.  I used to buy my car tires from a place that would change them on Liberty Street, right in the vicinity of these recent shootings.  I used to do a lot of rough work, and I drove a kind of tank that always had its tires destroyed because I would frequently enter rough neighborhoods. As a result, I would buy $5 used tires all the time.  My perspective was not one of isolation, looking at everything from the suburbs.  I spent a lot of time in the belly of the beast, and when I say that the people there are like dinosaurs, that is to say that they behave like animals hungry for the destruction of other people with a kind of mindless violence that erupts suddenly and brutally.  It’s almost amusing to watch the nightly news attempt to humanize these stories, making them more relatable to people not living in Over-the-Rhine. 

I have a couple of daughters, and would hear their stories and stories of all their friends who enjoyed the mystery and rawness of visiting OTR as it was sold to the world as an enterprise zone, hoping to lure young millennials to come downtown to see their many restaurants and microbreweries.  I would tell them that if they had to go, they should ensure they carried their guns.  One of my daughters practically lived in the OTR for a few years, and she always took her weapon, and it’s probably the only reason she has survived all those visits.  Police have managed to keep Vine Street somewhat reasonable regarding crime up to Liberty Street, then over to Findlay Market, and Music Hall.  However, I know many people who have tried to go to the OTR to socialize with other hipsters, and they have had many horrible experiences.  I warned my daughters, and eventually they understood my concern; the idealism of youth wore away as they realized the harsh reality that everyone else was facing.  The dinosaurs will eat you if you go into the OTR.  Most people feel lucky to come away from the OTR with just a car that occasionally has its windows knocked out, and carjackings or theft would happen all the time.  Because of the political sentiment at the time for white people to prove they weren’t racist and would be happy to socialize with black people in Over-the-Rhine, people would take the risk to visit as an almost thrill to survive.  It was more exciting than just going somewhere in the suburbs and having drinks with friends.  Because going to the OTR proved that white people weren’t racist to black people, even if in proving it, they risked their lives. 

The truth of the matter is that many of the people who have caused the problem have attempted to introduce dangerous enterprise zones into these communities without changing their behavior.  And the police know who’s in charge.  The police likely know everything about those two shooting cases mentioned, but they don’t want targets on their backs, so they leave the shootings unresolved.  Likely, they were both gang-related and or drug-related directly.  And police have no prospect of getting control.  The unions don’t want the trouble.  Recruiting is horrendous because nobody wants the job.  And the political characters are unsupportive and wholly disconnected from reality.  Investors were suckered into proving they weren’t racist by investing in businesses along Vine Street north of Central Parkway, only to realize that the violence loomed just a few blocks over on all sides, especially north of Liberty Street.  As a dare, I once walked up Vine Street at 2 AM from Central Parkway to McMillan Street on the University of Cincinnati campus, and from what I saw, there is no saving the people in that region without a significant behavioral change.  Crime ran the zone, and no amount of love from people moving in and proving they weren’t racist by living alongside people barely able to function as animals changed anything.  Crime goes underreported, even mass killings, because everyone wants to believe they can tame the dinosaurs.  And they can’t.  The dinosaurs will eat anybody they want, any time, and in any place.  And that’s the kind of attitude that was confronted on the streets of downtown Cincinnati after that music festival.  There is an entitlement to violence that is validated every time some gang kills someone in Over-the-Rhine, and that level of violence has been accepted.  Because liberal society doesn’t want to admit to itself just how bad it is, it wants to believe that reform is possible.  And it isn’t.  Only law and order will work, and that starts by kicking in the doors to the people who did these killings and arresting them, prosecuting them, and probably giving them the death penalty.  Because anything less, they don’t and won’t respect.  They reside in the shadows of the night, awaiting more politicians to lure innocent people into their neighborhood to rob and pillage ruthlessly.  And they have nothing to fear, because they don’t fear anything, especially the law.  When people ask me why my carry gun is a Desert Eagle .50 caliber, I have a lot of experience in those kinds of neighborhoods.  And it’s the only thing they understand.  The only law they obey.  And it is the only way that reform in those crime zones can bring about peace.  All the police and politicians know it, but nobody dares say it.  And that’s why the crime continues.

Rich Hoffman

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I Would Have Shot Them: No protestor has a right to throw rocks, under any conditions

I would have shot them, the protestors who were throwing rocks at the ICE vehicles leaving the illegal immigration raid on the pot farm in California.  Rocks are considered a deadly weapon, and any federal agent who is hit by a rock is no different than having some lunatic lunge at them with a knife, or to fire a shot from a gun.  And throwing rocks into the driver’s side window of a Federal vehicle, shatter-resistant or not, is solid enough ground to use deadly force to stop.  With shatterproof glass, once a window starts to become compromised, and some of those vehicles were, continued impacts in the same area could allow the rocks to get through, and those could have been deadly.  The ICE agents did not have an obligation to flee, which they were trained to do, and that is part of the problem.  We are a stand-and-fight country, especially when it comes to law enforcement.   Those agents were just doing their jobs, and those rock-throwing ICE protestors were crossing the line with encouraged violence.  And part of that encouragement was that they did not think that the ICE agents would fight back, which encouraged the violence in the first place.  The reason many of these protests are so violent and dangerous is that there has grown an expectation that all government employees have been trained to flee rather than fight, and this has caused unwarranted aggression to grow with the expectation that violence would only flow one way.  And it would be far healthier for society to understand that impeding government operations with deadly force opens the door for a deadly response.  And as hard as those protestors were throwing those rocks at those fleeing vehicles, their deadly motivations couldn’t have been presented more obviously. 

I know it’s a pain in the neck to fill out the forms when you do shoot someone, but this California case called for it.  And it would have made future protestors think twice before doing it again.  All they would have had to do upon a rock impact striking the driver’s side window was to get out of the car and open fire into the nearest perpetrator, shooting to kill.  The paperwork processing would have been fine.  I know that the bosses of the ICE agents, trained under years of progressive understanding, have been taught to use non-lethal force and to play patty cake with these kinds of people, and none of them want to kill protestors on their watch.  So they put these ICE agents out knowing that the environment is more dangerous because of their policy decisions, because they encourage violence by not meeting it when it presents itself.  And now an entire generation of protestor types believe they can exert deadly force without having it turn back on them, and nobody takes it seriously any longer.  Nobody should think that throwing a rock at anybody is appropriate under any condition.  And at some point, ICE agents need to fight back.  Rubber bullets and stun guns just aren’t enough to use against stringy-haired socialists and radical left-wing America haters.  Before a protester arrives on the scene to throw a rock, they need to be aware of the potential consequences.  And these kids in California had no such fear, even to the point of running right up to the passenger’s side window of fleeing vehicles and tossing big rocks with all their force into windows they didn’t know were shatter-resistant or not.  At the least, they cause a lot of property damage that taxpayers are on the hook for, and the preservation of their mangy lives wasn’t worth it.  Once they decided to throw a rock, all consideration for their preservation was no longer relevant.

And is this what we’re talking about preserving, as far as the jobs illegal immigration performs, to work as underage pot pickers on a farm that provides marijuana to an already sketchy market?  I love the work ethic of immigrant labor.  I always appreciate hard workers.  But we’re supposed to believe that we have to accept tens of millions of illegal immigrants to cover jobs like this pot farm in California?  These are the kinds of jobs that I find personally useless, and if that’s what it takes to bring down the price of pot in legal states, then let the prices fall off the rocker.  Clean operations that are financially solid wouldn’t need illegal immigration to perform basic tasks.  And now watching some of the ridiculous comments from some of these ICE protestors, such as the current L.A. Mayor, are grotesquely overstated.  Even going so far as to say that we won’t be able to get our cars washed if we deport all these illegals.  If we deported tens of millions of illegals, it’s evident that legitimate businesses would be just fine, and people would not notice.  But what would be impacted are all the illegitimate businesses that are operating under the table, and that sounds like a good thing, not a bad thing.  Eliminating under-the-table labor would force many companies to clean up their current employment practices, which the California facility was found to be guilty of.  And defending that way of life was why rocks were justified in being thrown?  I don’t think so.  This isn’t a free speech issue; it’s an insistence on breaking the law issue, and ultimately comes down to law enforcement and whether everyone respects the basic premise of law and order. 

So I would have shot those protestors on the spot after the first rock had been thrown.  Granted, my profile type would likely keep me from any kind of federal employment.  I am a very aggressive concealed carry individual.  I openly walk around ready for violence all the time, and everyone knows it.  I would prefer not to shoot people, but I am always prepared to do so as soon as danger presents itself.  And my thinking on that is to call a spade what it is, and not to feed the perpetuation of violence with passive presentation of my livelihood.  And if everyone had that attitude, there would be a lot more respect for federal agents than we currently have.  However, the kind of administrative personnel we put in these jobs do not hire people like me; they have made a lot of DEI hires who would prefer not to blame people when bad things happen.  So that’s certainly part of the problem.  But until we do start seeing people shot for perpetuating violence into an otherwise peaceful society, we’ll see increases in violence that we just can’t tolerate, such as in the ICE raid on that California pot farm, a place of business that shouldn’t have been operating on a good day.  To keep a company like that alive is only making society worse upstream by producing the product it does.  So it would have been good for the government ICE agents to stand and fight, rather than flee and retreat as rocks were being thrown at their vehicles.  The moment a rock struck a car, the entire engagement changed, and deadly force should have been used.  We have to stop playing nice with these anti-American forces.  I would even go so far to say that lethal force should be used upon the burning of the American flag because such a jesture isn’t a free speech right, it’s a purposeful display that the laws of America are being cast aside, which makes the people doing so very dangerous, and in need of removal to maintain the peace.  And those are the discussions we need to be having.  And if I were driving those cars, there would have been less rock throwing, because those protestors would have been shot where they stood.  I would have gladly filled out the paperwork and still been home in time for dinner without a second thought.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

When Will the Price of Eggs Come Down: Understanding the basics of economics

It is truly stunning how poor people’s educations are these days, and they don’t understand the basics of economics.   I grew up thinking a lot about Kunta Kinte, the main character from Roots, who was very popular on television during my childhood.  Not that I’m a supporter of the 1619 Project or anything below the line like that, but if I had been growing up during the abolitionist period that led to the Civil War, I would have been a hardcore anti-slavery guy, and I would dare say that if not for the United States, there would still be slavery in the world because that is how the world did business in that period.  I’m pro-freedom for everyone on earth, and I hate authority over anybody as a general policy.  So I found it repulsive while watching Roots that slave owners would cut off the feet of Kunta Kinte so that he couldn’t run away.  Or that enslaved people were not allowed to learn to read, which to me is just as crippling.  Keeping people dumb and disabled is a means of controlling them, and I flat-out don’t like it for anybody.  I spend a significant portion of my life trying to teach people to be brighter so they can taste the benefits of free life as much as possible because that is the heart of the human experience.  And for me, that includes drug use or any kind of dependency.  If it robs people of self-initiative, I am against it.  That is precisely why I have hated our public education system in America since the Department of Education was created, because it was terrible and inspired to make people dependent on other people rather than teach them to be free.  That’s why I have fought against public education most of my life.

However, what we see coming out of this new Trump administration is astonishing regarding how economies work.  The basic laws of supply and demand are not known to people in general, and they want to see why the price of eggs is not lower than it is with the flip of some switch that President Trump controls.  I don’t think the New World Order ever thought someone like President Trump would ever be in the American White House again because they were not prepared for the level of competency that he, as an American business executive, brings to the office.  I don’t see anything that Trump is doing as unusual.  Controlling and cutting costs are the very basics in any business endeavor, and what the Trump administration is doing is essential business.  It’s what we should be doing everywhere.  But it exposes how dumb many people have become because they are modern versions of poor Kunta Kinte.  They may have their feet and be able to read.  However, the wisdom of humans in using those tools has been destroyed by a public education system and a philosophy of globalism in general that has made them no better off in life.  Their years in school have crippled them in just the same way that enslaved people were crippled by their masters for all the same reasons.  And because of that, people don’t understand why prices are so messed up on everything these days, and when Trump says that he is going to fix it, they don’t know that it’s much more complicated than just flipping on a switch and everything returns to normal.  No, we are dealing with government forces who, through policy, have actually destroyed entire market sectors in a wealth redistribution scheme of socialism at large, and the amount of evil involved exceeds what most people can process.

The price of eggs, gasoline, or any consumer goods starts with the burden of an over-regulatory policy that crushes small egg manufacturers out of business and leaves only the corporate conglomerates with massive lobby power in Washington to survive.  They can afford the high prices of eggs because government policies destroy their competition, so they can maintain their margins through a monopoly status.  Especially since COVID-19, when administrative fools made a power grab for global authority and burdened all economic policies so that many companies couldn’t survive.  Many companies went out of business during the Covid period, and many never bounced back after they bought hook, line, and sinker the scam of Covid protocols, all the work-from-home nonsense, elimination of multi-shift fulfillment, and a transportation industry desperately looking for over the road truckers to keep everything in the American economy moving at the speed of business.  Eight years of Obama and 4 years of Biden, with just 4 years of sanity in between with Trump the first time, has left the American economy a disaster with too much government tampering through regulation, and that is why the cost of eggs is high, and many other things.  There aren’t enough suppliers to compete with each other because all that has survived were the big corporate conglomerates who are only in business now because they could afford to buy through lobbying power, politicians that would keep them safe from too much regulation.  But under these masked communist administrations, which Obama certainly was, and Biden was trying to mimic, regulation was their weapon, and Covid was the ultimate regulatory weapon that could mass shape the economy of the world toward centralized state control of all assets and prices could be whatever they decided they were. 

The ultimate target was the fossil fuel industry. The government believed that if prices were too high, people would choose to use public transportation and move to electric cars and alternative solar energy as an occult dedication to Mesopotamian religious beliefs of nature worship on a mass scale.  These governments had so little respect for people in general that they thought they’d get away with everything, that if they didn’t teach us to read and cut off our feet so we could never run away, we’d be their political slaves forever.  The way to bring down prices is to make it more conducive for more egg manufacturers to compete with other egg manufacturers so that prices will come down to the best supplier.  That’s how basic economics works; the more government tampering, the higher the prices.  The less, the cheaper.  The balance is in how much regulation is needed not to discourage upstarts and still produce products that are generally safe outside the normal market controls.  And for that to happen, Trump will inspire prices to come down within a few months.  And within a few years, economic pricing will dramatically change.  But it won’t happen in just a few weeks.  People who would even think so, shows how badly they understand things, such as fundamental economic theory.  I majored in economics in college, and many people thought I’d make a living at it because I was good at understanding the concepts in a way that was difficult for other people to get their minds around.  But these things are so basic that I would have been bored to death.  These are the basics of human existence and aren’t complicated.  It’s great that Trump is back in the White House, and it won’t take long to make the American economy the best in the world.  We will start to see the signs of that during 2025.  But it will be slow and gradual, not dramatic and fast.  It takes time for small businesses to form to take on the corporate conglomerates and to bring prices down with competition.  And until there is more competition for everything, prices will be high.  

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

The 400 Dumb Economists Against Trump: Destroying globalism and their wealth redistribution of looted American value is the top priority

I am happy to argue with any economist, especially the 400 or so who have come out against President Trump’s proposed tariffs on imported goods once he is in for another term of office, that they have no idea what they are discussing.  Or that their hatred of Trump’s tariffs is purely because it goes against their strategy of globalism, where the United Nations would control our managed economy.  Not the United States.  Just because 400 people say something, or even a thousand, it doesn’t change what something is.  And when they say that Trump’s tariff policy will destroy the American economy the first time around and in the future, some context is required to understand what they are saying.  Economics was one of my majors in college.   So was philosophy, and while in college, I thought both were disastrously stupid wastes of time.  I went to college knowing way too much for my good.  I had a very unconventional education up to that point, so it was easy to see what was happening.  Mostly because different kinds of people study economics and philosophy, it was easy for this globalist ruse to be concealed because nobody knew one from the other in their social circles.  But it was obvious to me that Marxism was written into the economic books even as far back as the late eighties when I was in college.  And I knew that because that’s all they taught in philosophy class.  For me, it started with a study of Eastern philosophy, which was meant to open the door to the Chinese way of thinking about the world, and of course, they were outright communists.  So once everyone was taught in college how smart the Chinese were, then students who didn’t know any better would adopt communism as their mode of managing people and, of course, economic activity. 

Western philosophy, starting with the Greeks, was rationalized into failure by discussing empire building, starting with Alexander the Great, and then studying the Decline of the West as Spengler proposed.  So I frustrated the professors of these classes infinitely because I had already read all these books before I ever stepped into their classrooms and had figured out what was going on even then.  And I recognized what was happening with the transition of the Reagan economy and the one George Bush was proposing when he talked about a “New World Order.”  There was money to be made in globalism, and by essentially robbing the capitalist economy of America and redistributing that wealth to other countries that were choking on their following of Marxism, which was detrimental to their economies.  Many people would make a lot of money off stealing American wealth and redistributing it to countries that didn’t have much of an economy, and that is how the communist government of China became such an economic powerhouse.  But it’s also why a country with over a billion people still struggles economically with the United States, which has only a fraction of that number producing goods and services.  The reason that America had so much money was capitalism.  The political left then, as they are now, was very committed to destroying the concept of capitalism so that globalism could occur and wealth would then be managed by a Marxist-oriented government in the United Nations.  Now, let’s fast forward to our present time and note that the head of the United Nations today is Antonio Guterres, who is an outright socialist.  So, things have been moving in that trajectory of thought for many years.  Rob the wealth of America and give it to the rest of the world through wealth redistribution run by Marxist, socialist, and communist governments orchestrated by the United Nations, with the World Economic Forum setting policy in the background.

When Mitch McConnell says that he is critical of Trump’s tariffs and supports “free trade” policies, he is essentially saying that he defines free trade as the looting of American wealth without any defense.  He’s speaking for his father-in-law’s shipping company, which is set up in China and is the source of much of his family’s wealth.  When you have Republicans like him, who needs Democrats?  But don’t forget, just because authorities don’t want to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 virus in Wuhan, China, doesn’t mean that they have a valid reason for it.  Don’t ask the investigators to investigate themselves.  They know as everyone does now, that Covid was a bioweapon constructed to destroy cultures with health regulations, and they were looking to bring down Western civilization with it.  During an election year in the United States, right after Trump clamped down on the trade tariffs against China, COVID-19 was released from China and spread aggressively into the United States.  China never locked down the way the rest of the world did, and they were pretty arrogant about it.  They convinced us to shut down our entire economy while they did very little because they knew the nature of the virus and why it existed in the first place.  And likely the most apparent straw that broke their back was Trump’s tariffs.  They needed to get him out of office so the trade imbalance between China and America would stay in the favorable category toward them, the looting of American wealth and redistributing it into the communist country of China.  It was Globalism 101, taught in the college classes I attended in the late 80s and early 90s.  And it was always an overt attack against America for the ultimately planned destruction of capitalism in general.

So when Kamala Harris says that 400 economists are against Trump’s tariffs against other countries to set things right in the United States, I would happily argue with all of them about how wrong they are.  Just because there are many of them doesn’t mean they are right.  The most valuable thing I learned in college was that most people are wrong.  Just because many people think something, it only means that they were taught all the wrong stuff.  And it only takes one person to set things straight.  But because of my background, there isn’t a single person in the world who can argue with me about the economy.  And Trump gets it; his tariffs are meant to reverse the destructive effect of trade imbalances with America and will restore sovereign wealth to everyone within the borders of the United States of America.  Globalism will fail dramatically because the Marxist minds running the idea must steal American wealth and destroy capitalism as a concept so they can rebuild America under the United Nations with a centralized digital currency they control from Davos or Geneva.  So those against Trump’s tariffs are those working against capitalism, which is essentially free trade driven by market conditions, not centralized socialist governments.  Those in America speaking out against Trump’s tariffs are looking to profit off the planned demise of America by skimming away wealth as a broker to redistribute it in the process.  When pressed, most people will say that they read Spengler’s book and were planning accordingly.  But Spengler’s Decline of the West was wishful thinking, not capitalist reality.  And they now fear what Trump is saying, and they will cry and scream about the tariffs against other countries.  However, it would be great for America if Trump put his tariffs in place quickly and aggressively; it’s not the American economy that would be destroyed.  Trump’s tariffs will destroy globalism and Marxism and put the value of American capitalism on the world’s stage in ways they have always feared.  And it will be great for the world.

Rich Hoffman

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The World Has Been Run By Stupid People, Like Kamala Harris: Poor people are manufactured by bad decisions and wrong ideas

I’d say you could go back to the first moment human beings gathered together to form some government, but the game has been occurring for a long time.  It’s not new to our modern era.  However, only through the creation of the United States has it been exposed the way it has been, and even created a discussion point about the difference between worthless administrators and those who know and understand how to do work.  And that was the big difference between President Trump and the communist loser Kamala Harris at the presidential debate in 2024.  When people talk about the debate being rigged by the moderators of Disney-owned ABC, they are making an understatement.  It comes down to one fundamental issue I have been dealing with all of my adult life. It culminates in the understanding of free people living their lives to their fullest potential; a massive scam is unraveling.  Who does work, and who is best in a position to lead in some way?  Out of all this, I couldn’t help but think of the very good President Grant, who shared many traits with Trump.  He was a good president who knew how to get things done and made the country far better off.  But his memory is wrapped up in controversy and scandal, and he is remembered as one of the most corrupt administrations in the history of the world.  This wasn’t because Grant himself was corrupt, but because people grew to hate Grant because he was too good and would not bend the knee to an administrative class of bureaucrats, so they smeared his name in history for revenge on how bad and worthless Grant made them feel as people.  The same problem can be found in the ruins of Saqqara in Egypt, where the tombs of their worthless administrators attempted to rival those of the pharaohs in luxury and social impact.  What we see play out is the desire many have for self-worth propped up by the power of government disguised as a social benefit for the sheer desire of self-fulfillment. 

President Trump got where he was by being better than his competitors, resulting from a capitalist system of social enchantment.  Kamala Harris is the product of communist sentiment; she started life as a sex toy side girl who was put into a prosecutor’s office because of how she appeased power.  That is the result of her entire life, which dramatically unraveled on the stage against President Trump.  People thought it was a good debate because she could talk, compared to Joe Biden, who was whisked away to make way for Kamala to sit at the top of the ticket, as Trump said, “like a dog.”  The problem for many is that Trump existed at all as a representative of competence and performance because the Marxists who have been trying to undermine American culture for many decades could not live up to the high example of Trump, so their conglomeration of sentiment manifested by Kamala Harris attempted to throw out all the usual stop sticks that have repealed the human race from success for thousands of years, and Trump wasn’t having any of it.  That made people frustrated with Trump because he was supposed to be more dignified about that disguise, more like Grant was, or the countless pharaohs of Egyptian society, and give the allusion that what the world needed were more bureaucrats acting as village chiefs and ruling through administrative nonsense to give the illusion of leadership. 

And to that point, every single economist and government commentator has gotten the situation wrong, which I ran into firsthand when I was young.  In my 20s, I was invited to many powerful shindigs, with the kind of people that made Kamala Harris the person she became.  They were always radical Democrats, and there was no confusing me with anything but a hard-line conservative.  But, since the beginning, people have tried to use me because of my mouth and see if they might ride my coattails to some successful enterprise based on my gift of gab.  So, I was exposed to many people who ran and taught things, especially college professors and economists.  I’d talk to them at these events about their views of the world as they would explain to me that the future of the American economy would be service-oriented and that all the manufacturing jobs would be overseas where labor was cheaper and workers there were more willing to do it.  I would say to them, “That’s not going to work very well,” they would then laugh and assume that I had a lot to learn.  Well, they all turned out to be wrong, and they were not very smart to begin with, even though they were teaching society through colleges all the same points of view, which all turned out to be wrong.  And all these years later, we see just how bad they were.  And it was their kind of people who were trying to push Kamala Harris under the door, hoping nobody would notice how stupid they were all along.  Trump and his successes make them look foolish because he knows better and doesn’t feel even a bit of desire to politely bend the knee to them to make them feel part of the process.  And that is the essential case Kamala made on their behalf. 

But even deeper than that, from the point of view of my grand jury service in 2024, where through many criminal cases, I could see the totality of this stupidity up close, with my unique perspective of the world and its history.  The primary cause of most crime and the defeat of major cities are the failed policies of these destructive Democrats and their Marxist ideas that never valued work and honor but excuses and victimization sentiment.  To protect themselves from analysis, they have just sought to build a government to hide the folly of their failed enterprises.  And people are tired of the mess they have left behind.  Trump represents achievement and quality without bending the knee to an administrative class of worthless bureaucrats.  Harris provides a mask to all the world’s problems in a desire to perpetuate the scam just a year or two longer for their benefit.  Ultimately, they can’t run and hide forever.  They have been trying for thousands of years.  However, under the premise of a free society in America where power was decentralized and put to good use through capitalism, the surviving characteristic of the human race is emerging in ways that were never actually expressed before.  And, of course, the world is angry about it; they hate President Trump.  But Trump is the unyielding character we all want to see opening up opportunities for everyone else.  This exposes people like Kamala Harris, all the political pundits of the world, and the majority of economists of the United Nations as phonies.  And all the people who taught them all the wrong things along the way.  I saw it firsthand years ago, but at the time, I would tell them, “If you say so.”  Maybe they did know something I didn’t.  I gave them the benefit of the doubt.  But as it turned out, they didn’t.  They were just stupid and sought to hide that stupidity through government expansion and an aristocratic approach to the power achieved through mass collectivism.  The world they have made with those approaches is a failure based on their sheer stupidity, and people are tired of putting up with it.  Perhaps, for the first time in history.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Smoke Shops in Ohio: Nothing says ‘Loserville’ more than a pot economy

Nothing says loser like a smoke shop.  I used to make fun of them while traveling through states that had legalized pot, such as Colorado.  They trash up a community.  But now they are in Ohio because a bunch of leftist losers took advantage of a bunch of stupid and naive people and convinced them to pass marijuana in the state, which then says to the world, our community is a bunch of dope-smoking losers.  I can avoid them daily, but recently, while going to Dunkin Donuts to get breakfast for my grandchildren, my wife had to look at two of them right by our house.  Smoke shops have become the new go-to for brick-and-mortar plazas, struggling to find tenants as most companies compete against online sales.  I understand that, too; I was shopping at a brick-and-mortar store in Columbus, Ohio, with a long list of needed items, mostly books.  But they didn’t have everything.  I ordered on Amazon and was able to get everything I needed, fast.  So brick and mortar’s are struggling.  Plaza builders and strip mall operators have too many products chasing too few goods.  Most of them have their usual nail salons and Chinese restaurants in them.  Or if not one of those, a Mexican restaurant.  But it’s been tough to keep them filled with all the brick-and-mortar failures.  Add to that the effects of a Biden economy with massive inflation and over-regulation that has crippled economic flow and you end up with a lot of strip malls at 60% occupancy.  It probably would have been a good idea in our economic planning to say no to some of them before they were built.  But the plans were all rubber stamped and now the owners of those developments are hard pressed to fill them.  So, to save the day, comes smoke shops along with Cheech and Chong to sell pot to a desperate public dazed and confused being taking full advantage of by a criminal government exploiting them until the public rots away with pain and betrayal. 

If I have to look at pot smokers and smoke shops, I can assure everyone that I’m going to be a far less nice person.  I despise pot.  I once had a group of friends in my very first apartment who smoked pot in it while I was gone.  I was 18 then, so I was in the prime age for people who did that kind of thing.  It was everywhere, especially at rock concerts.  I always had, and continue to now, a strict policy of no pot, anytime, anywhere, under any condition.  I had a little parakeet that I kept in a cage in my bedroom.  Yes, I was a weird teenager.  I liked those kinds of things, and while the apartment was a bachelor pad intended to pick up many chicks and have wild nights, I wanted to be married and start a family.  I was tired of party life, and I never liked it.  So that little bird was special to me, and a good companion as I started in life.  When I came home one particular day, after working very hard on one of my first sales jobs, three of my friends had smoked pot and tried to get the little bird stoned.  I was furious.  Actually, beyond furious.  Not only had they gone into my room with pot, knowing how much I hated the stuff.  But they blew smoke onto my little bird to get it stoned.  I had been friends with some of these guys since childhood.  That was the last day I ever spoke to them.  They reached out over the years, but I did not reach back.  Some found the light much later in life, but I did not forgive them.  If Jesus wants to be an idiot and forgive people like that, have at it.  I despise people who do things like that, and I, in general, despise pot users. 

Just because a bunch of loser politicians listened to their donors about the need to get into the pot business, it doesn’t change my sheer hatred of the stuff.  I’ve heard all the arguments; believe me, some really intelligent and powerful people have worked hard to change my mind.  After all, Speaker John Boehner, who is a neighbor and we share many mutual friends, left Congress because he saw the writing on the wall with Trump entering politics, and he became a pot lobbyist.  People like him for years have been talking about the medicinal properties of pot smoke and how you can make a rope out of it.  They have looked for every excuse to use the pot industry as some expansion of business in the state of Ohio, to make it a business-friendly concept to attract businesses to the state.  They tried to justify pot advocacy with economic expansion.  To me, if that is the best you have, then you are a dying economy with a dying workforce run by a bunch of suckers and losers.  John Boehner cries a lot, smokes too much, and was a globalist sellout when he had the third most powerful seat in the world as Speaker of the House.  And he went from that to being an advocate for pot in Ohio, and now we are seeing the results of what people like him have brought to our state.  Smoke shops everywhere. 

My wife is less tolerant about pot than I am.  We have family members who have bought into the whole “I need pot for my chronic pain” argument, and we have no respect for them or anybody who uses pot for that matter.  We’ve heard that the Indians used pot, so we should too, to be more aligned with “nature,” is what they say.  The Indians ended up a culture driven to extinction with their rain dancing and peace pipes.  And that’s what happens to all cultures that embrace intoxication in any fashion as a driver of economic means.  And my wife returned from that particular visit to Dunkin Donuts very upset that she had to look at those smoke shops because they were signs of an invasion into our community.  We’ve lived in Liberty Township for a long time, me much longer than her.  So we have watched the changes to the negative as all these East Coast people bring with them their Democrat ideas from socialist influence in the places they moved from.  Generally, we put up with it with as much understanding as possible. But seeing those Loserville smoke shops in our nice little community was too much that day.  And for me, it’s the parakeet all over again.  I have no tolerance for evil, and certainly not vehicles of evil, such as pot consumption.  I see nothing good about it, not medicinal, not by making rope, not in a Cheech and Chong movie.  And a pot economy is a drain on all other aspects of economic growth.  Any society that is built on the degradation of the mind, which is what pot is, even as a pain killer, will destroy your society.  And when you see a smoke shop catering to pot consumers, that is the kind of world you are building.  It is disgusting to see and hear about it from people who should know better. 

Rich Hoffman

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The Failures of Globalism: Making corporations the architects of their own destruction

When I think of the Disney brand, I think of shows I grew up with, like Zorro and Davy Crockett.  Those were great family shows that reflected the values of a good and productive society.  And in many ways, this new show on Disney +, Ahsoka, the latest Star Wars television series, is excellent.  But unfortunately, and this is a theme I have been saying for over ten years, Disney is done.  It’s too little too late, and that was obvious when they started making Star Wars movies again, beginning with The Force Awakens, which wasn’t very good.  It was filled with woke garbage and expressed the main problem with Disney buying Star Wars from George Lucas in 2012.  How do you take a movie franchise made by a radically independent person, such as Lucas was, and turn it into a corporate asset filled with emerging woke politics straight out of the World Economic Forum?  The answer is you don’t.  The trouble was evident when they tried to align the production to all kinds of United Nations projects during the filming of The Force Awakens, which was globalism on steroids.  I tried to remain hopeful, but once the film came out and everything that came after, it was obvious that Lucasfilm under Disney would not be as good as Lucasfilm under George Lucas.  Ironically, the Ahsoka series is struggling with itself as part of the plot: how do you overthrow an empire and then become the next established government?  And the answer is that management of anything is hard.  Throwing rocks and having all kinds of romantic ideas about things is easy.  But it’s hard actually to run things once you capture the kingdom.  And that is what is so interesting about the excellent show Ahsoka.  As Grand Admiral Thrawn says in the show, “Make your enemies the architects of their own destruction.”  Globalism has certainly done that to Disney.  It’s an interesting commentary on itself. 

However, this is the lesson for everything that has gone woke, and I do feel sorry for Disney as a company because all corporations that bought into the woke nonsense will go through it.  It’s not just Disney, which is taking major financial hits these days, with the stock price being what it was over a decade ago, and there are no signs of recovering.  It was surreal to watch the train wreck happen, but as a corporation, they were so stupid, so collective based, yet they had all the money in the world to make success happen, yet they couldn’t.  The same could be said of the music industry, fast food, sports, everything.  Disney had a massive media empire, but now the rumors are quite true that they are looking to sell off the losers, things like ABC, ESPN, and many of these satellite companies that have been brand damaged because of woke politics.  The hard lesson is that it’s gone forever once that brand is damaged.  I’ve always been a corporation kind of person because they generate wealth and jobs for people.  I love marketing brands in partnerships, such as with McDonald’s or Coke, which has been common with Disney over the years.  I always love that about Disney World and all their brand alignments.  I love them so long as capitalism is the objective.  Under the woke rules of military implementation of communism through the policies of the World Economic Forum, the goal is to destroy American capitalism through the generators of its wealth.  Disney was one of the first companies to sign up, and it was a horrible decision for them. 

Like the rebellion in the Ahsoka series, Disney is failing to live under its own well-intended rules.  And those rules were that globalism was the future of all civilization.  They were suckered, and they bet billions of dollars on that eventuality.  They thought their brand was so powerful that they would influence the public toward their market needs.  They forgot that the marketplace decides value and that their brand was fragile.  What they thought was robust was only as strong as wet paper. It fell apart in their hands rather quickly.  And the insurgents at the World Economic Forum had planned it that way.  Plotting and scheming the CEOs of all of America’s most giant corporations right in front of their faces, and they all fell for it like a bunch of suckers.  And the public took their dollars with them elsewhere; they didn’t keep spending money on Micky Mouse as Walt Disney envisioned it.  They turned away and moved on to other entertainment options, which is why there is no recovery for Disney as a corporation.  The young people could care less about them, and a good project like Ahsoka isn’t enough to bring them back as fans.  It was too little too late.  The time to make that kind of Star Wars show was back in 2015 because Star Wars essentially became a spokesplatform for globalism, and people were put off by it.  Now, the market has changed completely; smaller media is considered much more valuable because it’s free, and when people see the Disney logo, they think of a big, woke company aligned with political philosophies dangerous to American ideas, which most of the world loves and wants for themselves.  Star Wars would have been better off just putting out the six original George Lucas movies and leaving things be.  But once they tried to expand into corporate control of the brand, they weakened it like sequels usually destroy an original movie idea.  If those ideas aren’t developed in subsequent stories, they burden the original.  And that was something Disney could never wrap their minds around.

I think all corporations that have dipped their toes in the woke rules of globalism will fail or become permanently damaged in the marketplace.  And companies that are anti-woke will see a massive level of support in the coming decades.  I always have a soft spot for Disney because I liked Uncle Walt.  Just like I will always think of George Lucas when it comes to Star Wars, anything done by corporate control might be fun and exciting at times, but it will permanently be damaged goods you can’t trust as a source of art and entertainment because of all the woke inclusions into the story that have now cheapened it forever.  I still think some of the work done at Disney World at Galaxy’s Edge is remarkable from a fan perspective.  It’s science fiction on overdrive if you like expanding ideas and potentials of technology and science, which I do.  It’s a shame that Disney listened to all the wrong people while developing Star Wars under their ownership.  They should have never listened to the wokesters at the World Economic Forum and the terrorists of global economics and their unveiled intentions for communism, China style.  The marketplace was already changing in a way that Disney would have had difficulty adjusting to, but they made it so much harder on themselves and their shareholders with a poor strategic approach that strayed away from accurate economic measures that worked.  So it’s ironic that the new Ahsoka show’s plot deals with this problem, a self-reflection of Disney itself and how good intentions become evil, and disaster always follows.  As they say about Hell, it is paved with good intentions.  And that is certainly the case with all that Disney does these days, and all who took the bait and destroyed themselves as economic, corporate powerhouses that should represent morality and justice as determined by dollars and not woke, globalist insurgents.

 

Rich Hoffman