Tag: Economy

The Debt Ceiling Debacle: Government needs to be cut by 75% or more

The values expressed by the June 1st made-up deadline for the debt ceiling talks were that it was a bi-partisan agreement, which prevents a first-ever default, protects Biden’s key priorities and accomplishments, and rejects extreme cuts to programs for veterans, seniors, and what families count on. It protects Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid and keeps President Biden’s student loan relief program for 40 million hardworking borrowers. That is what the White House is saying about it, and it’s the kind of deal you will always get from a corrupt government with a serious spending problem. And the feeling is that Keven McCarthy got suckered even though members of Congress I like from my area; Jim Jordan and Warren Davidson were happy to push back a bit from the Republican perspective; ultimately, these budget fights are going to get messy and would have been better done now than later. Essentially, Republicans bit on the phony deadline for debt payments that Janet Yellen set from the Biden administration, and House Republicans didn’t want to be blamed for a default. We are dealing with radical employees here; it’s precisely the same argument we have been making for years in public schools where the government simply adds too much payroll, then expects taxpayers to pick up their massive expansion of government through job creation, then overpaying those employees. I tend to agree with Davidson and Jordan that McCarthy played a nice game, but in the end, there weren’t wins to justify the effort, and the Biden Democrats get to celebrate a win at taxpayer expense. 

We aren’t all on the same page with this one. The government needs to be radically shrunk, and it will put a lot of people out of work. The entire issue of these budget talks really comes down to whether we are a better nation with all the government workers we have who do so little for the nation in general. Most government workers make 30-40% above market value for jobs that aren’t needed in most cases. And we could likely afford to cut 75% of those and still get an operational government, much like Elon Musk did at Twitter. Real people who run real companies understand that budget impacts on the payroll are the biggest problem of inflated budgets. If employees get increased productivity with their staffing, and that productivity is valuable to the world, then a company could be said to be successful. But we’re not talking about that with this budget problem with our government. Government is a make-work enterprise where they fill positions we don’t need and pay people too much money to perform the job. I would say that the utilization rate of those employees is under 5%, where it should be somewhere between 70% to 90%. That’s the effective time employees are actually doing their jobs while being paid. What we are dealing with when it comes to government workers are lazy radicals who are hidden from job performance by government labor unions who continue to want to throw bodies at positions they create to expand government and take credit for it as politicians. And politicians are never going to give those jobs away without a major fight. And this debt ceiling talk of 2023 would have required people negotiating who actually want to fight. 

And the kryptonite for Republicans is always military spending, but even with that topic, do we really want to waste money on a woke military? In my view of this problem, everything is on the table. What does our military really do for us these days? It seems to only serve for wars that help globalism. It’s not preventing war with China. China has their guy in our White House. They are fighting wars through finance now; nobody is planning to fight a ground war now or in the future. So, Republicans need to be willing to go there. And they must be willing to take away the credit cards from big-spending Democrats and let them have their head-spinning moments. At some point, we are going to have to call the bluff of the big government types and stop wasting money on these massive government programs in every category. Lots of people need to lose their jobs, and a resizing of the real needs of our federal and state government needs to occur because, at the core of it, that is what we are talking about with these talks. Nobody wants to end well-paying jobs for a government that know-nothing politicians created for a job that society generally doesn’t want or need. We are going into debt to do jobs so that foreign interests can make money off the interest rate, and the only entities benefiting are the communist labor unions attached to the government workers. It’s a treadmill that goes nowhere, and we waste all our time and money on essentially nothing. Our nation has not improved because of all the money wasted on these jobs, and the economic value is a negative rather than a positive. We are paying a lot of money to get in the way of productivity, not to enhance it. 

And that’s where the really hard decisions come into play. We all have family members who work in government and did what they needed to to get a job with the government at that overpaid rate, with all the days off and work-from-home policies we have seen over the past several years. Government workers don’t think they owe any productivity to society. They believe that society owes them a job and that they’ll show up for it whenever they get around to it; that is the true cost to the productivity of our culture. We are paying a lot of money for a government that doesn’t do what we need it to. And unless Kevin McCarthy was willing to argue on those merits, the Democrats would own him in the negotiations. McCarthy made a good show of it, working himself over the Memorial Day Holiday, but Democrats knew from the beginning that all the mainstream Republicans could not fight the budget battle where it is really the costliest. Nobody wants to admit that their friends, family, and fellow union members are actually performing worthless tasks for a worthless government. Eventually, we will have to have this discussion because it is what makes deficit spending such a catastrophe. One that few, perhaps only the 20 or so freedom caucus members, are willing even to discuss. Government, in general, with all their labor unions attached at every level, is a bloated machine of communist corruption of no value, and to be a healthy country, those government jobs need to be private sector jobs at a much lower wage rate. And that would essentially destroy the inflated economy of the Beltway culture that entirely exists on debt, not the actual value of the jobs that fuel that economy. Then until we are willing to have that discussion, which is inevitable, we will continue to see debt ceiling discussions like this one with precisely these results. Kevin McCarthy never had a chance because he was making the wrong argument. The government positions that make up the bloated budget we are dealing with need to go away. People will have to be out of work. And the government will have to be significantly minimized, by 75% or more, because anything productive never happens. And we are a long way from that happening with these government politicians. A long way away from reality.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The New Alamo in America Coming in 2024: It will be fun

The bizarre approach that Miller Light had in attacking their beer-drinking customers recently with a suddenly out-of-fashion feminist position was very revealing. On the one hand, it was a message to the public by the beer-making corporations that they were making a power move and saying, don’t think you will escape wokeism just because you left Bud Light for Miller Light. Woke policies are coming to a corporation near you brought to you by BlackRock and friends. We are taking over all your corporations to the point where you’ll have nowhere to go. So, get used to it. But then there was the more absurd notion that feminists were actually going to take the sex out of beer drinking and get away with it. As if they didn’t already know that many men drink beer, so the women in their lives look better, more like the girls in beer commercials, and that this latest attempt to ruin culture with a bunch of dumb rules and regulations pointing at social appeasement was actually going to work. I found the information interesting, actually quite revealing and encouraging even. At least now we knew how to get young people to stop smoking pot in our culture, put some of these woke ads out showing transvestites and angry potato-looking women using the product, and it was a sure bet that consumption would go down. Yet a bigger plot was unfolding, and it became obvious that the election of 2024 was presenting us with a unique opportunity. America was having a modern version of the Alamo, and it was unfolding on a global stage. 

The attack on American corporate culture in almost every category reveals much about what the enemy has been plotting and scheming behind closed doors for years. Suppose you want to listen in on the latest Bilderberg meetings that were held May 18th through May 21st  this year at Prestana Palace in Lisbon, Portugal. In that case, you can save yourself the plane ride because the Miller Light commercial reveals everything any secret society might want to contain. The strategy is clear from the globalist aggression against sovereign nations, especially America. And the pressure is something they are not holding up well to. The arrogance of the woke policies against companies that Americans thought were distinctly American, like Bud Light and Miller Light, like what Disney is going through, and they are doing it to their own detriment because the system put in place is that entrenched through the kind of CEOs our culture is making these days, is bringing to a collision a long-held belief in the powers of communism and what it could actually do as a means to global control of the world. The attack is on choice, slow conditioning toward sameness, and the assumption that people are so stupid that they will put up with it, as opposed to the market forces that brought all these various options to our minds in the first place. It’s a who-created-who kind of debate unfolding in many unique ways in the year 2023 and the election year of 2024. And this plot is unfolding even more dramatically as those same forces presented Ron DeSantis to the world as the next presidential candidate, as Elon Musk is part of the symphony of discontent attempting to sell him as an option to Donald Trump. 

I’m not a fatalist; I always think there is a chance for good things to happen. But even the Alamo, as history remembers, resulted in the massacre of American heroes. We are about to have our own kind of last stand in America with the 2024 election and the hostile forces against America, know it. And I see it as a unique opportunity to have a revolution against these globalist tyrants without bloodshed, which usually accompanies these kinds of military attacks. That is, after all, what BlackRock has been doing to American companies; it has been an attack designed by the forces at the World Economic Forum to change the world into their desire. Not the consumer sentiment measured by market value.   What is the real issue here? Who decides market value, the choice of market saturation in the pursuit of profits by corporate interests, or the arrogance of corporate interests to believe that they shape public objectives like some cow being provided to migrate itself straight into the slaughterhouse to be consumed as a sacrifice to the efforts of global collectivism. Even King Solomon’s Temple was aligned with the needs of sacrifice as its core tenant of design. The Temple was aligned with the east, where the sun would rise and settle in the west, where the Ark of the Covenant resided. A high priest would offer up a sacrifice, probably a sheep or a goat, on the east side of the Temple, then sprinkle the blood on the Ark in the Holy of Holies in the west part of the Temple, believing that it was necessary to appease God. And many of these crazy characters involved with globalism believe much the same thing, and sacrificing profit, sanity, logic, and political power are at the foundation of their actions. And we are seeing a kind of Alamo situation setting up for the 2024 election, with many ideas colliding for a final stand. 

It’s a good thing to have this kind of Alamo standoff; it means that our constitution works and that hostile forces that might plan against America can be fought without bloodshed. As ugly as everything is, the beauty is that our checks on such powers are keeping the forces of globalism from doing what they’d like to do without resistance. And it is great that someone like President Trump is making himself available to be the headliner of this modern Alamo fight. It has forced the attackers to reveal their positions too early and often. It has stirred up anger that politics usually don’t have the opportunity to express. When globalism feels it must attack beer brands, for a lot of people, that’s the final straw. And it suddenly has awakened even the most casual voter. So it will never get easier than this election of 2024 to defeat globalism and fight for our country’s preservation than this upcoming election. It may be the only time in history when such an opportunity to fix things would come from simply controlling an election. To ensure we have an honest election without all the American intelligence and tech billionaires contaminating the election process for their globalist candidates. In this election, all people have to do is show up and vote because it will never get easier than this. The 2024 election won’t require people to take up arms and fight in a bloody rebellion to take back their country and overthrow hostile intent. All people will have to do is show up and vote. And you can see that already becoming known to people as they have stood by President Trump through all the news headlines that have been thrown at him. The more the established order throws at him, the more people support him, leaving Ron DeSantis’s fantasy an option not even on the table, where the globalist forces thought it would sink Trump. The strategy is clear; the hostile characters are now well-known and have been exposed to their hiding places. And 2024 is shaping up to be a modern version of the Alamo in America, a final stand between capitalism and communism, between sacrifice and life, and good against evil. And I think it will be a lot of fun, and America will invent future patriotic songs to commemorate the terror of these times with ballads of heroics and tenacity.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Why Property Values in Butler County Could Go Up By 42%: And What Nancy Nix and many others are doing to Protect taxpayers

It was a very beautiful day looking out the windows of the Office of Nancy Nix as the Great Miami River gently rolled by as it has for many thousands of years. I looked down from the third-floor vantage point into the park that used to be the movie theater in Hamilton, where I first saw Sleeping Beauty and reflected on good memories from childhood. The weather outside was perfect for a day in May of 2023, so it was an excellent reflection of the long history of Butler County, Ohio, where the city of Hamilton had seen so much history, lots of good days and rough times to say the least and of course, the river flows by regardless of what human beings cause themselves by way of trouble. And the topic that Nancy and I were set to talk about, captured well in the video above, was historic trouble. The short story was that Butler County and nearby Clermont County were being penalized for being affluent areas that had recently enjoyed dramatic economic growth. It made an easy target for the new Ohio Tax Commissioner, Patricia Harris, in trying to correct the many sins of the past, where the government had kicked the can down the road over a long period of time. She had decided that there was nowhere left to kick it. So this wasn’t something that just happened well before Nancy Nix took over in Butler County in the very important auditor position, this crisis was brewing, and now it was splashed all over headlines from a recent I-Team report that indicated property values in Butler County were going to go up by a recommended 42%. That meant that property values for a $250,000 house were suddenly going to be at $355,000, an increase of $105,000. And people were not happy about it.

At Thanksgiving Dinner, such news might sound great; people might even open a bottle of wine at the success of their investments in real estate. Suddenly things on paper looked much better, and their homes were worth a lot more. But in Butler County, regarding 8 of the ten school districts, there would be tax increases proportional to that value increase which was going to impact homeowners negatively. For instance, the school district of Ross, right across the river from Nancy’s office, as we spoke about this matter and looked in that direction, they just had a vote to defeat a tax increase for that school. The levy had failed for the third time. But now, because of this news from the Ohio Department of Taxation, Ross is holding off on trying for another levy because they will gain a lot of new revenue from the new tax rates of these inflated property values. That’s the kind of thing that has people so upset, and for good reason. In a lot of ways, the recommendation from the state is taking away a fundamental right of property owners to manage their local governments by essentially taking extra tax money without a vote, with just a decision by the state to calculate these varying percentages based on sales data recorded during a very turbulent time that does not represent the norm.   According to the state, which then imposes the percentage rate onto auditors like Nancy Nix, they take a three-year sales reflection of what they think is market value during their state-mandated triennial update. But for this one, that analysis period was one of the worst in the history of the world. Looking at sales from 2019, where America had one of the best economies in human history, then the following year with Covid lockdowns, then the volatility of runaway interest rates resulting from the Biden presidency and the economic tampering of several government controls, the data collected is far from the norm, and has resulted in these crazy recommendations which Nancy Nix and other auditors are questioning, aggressively. 

And as bad as all that news was, it was still a good day from the vantage point of Nancy’s office as we talked about the many proactive measures that she and area legislators were doing to help solve the problem. Regarding that, a new Fox 19 article had hit, and I was talking to Senator George Lang about it, where he is proposing a way to change how Ohio’s property values are reassessed, which is obviously needed. Politics aside, Patricia Harris, the Ohio Tax Commissioner, had just been appointed in January of 2023 and obviously could use more time on the job before destroying everyone’s tax bills based on some bad data compiled during her first few months on the job. And George’s proposal as a legislative solution would definitely help her and the people connected to her decision. But the Ohio Department of Taxation itself, according to the spokesman Gary Gudmondson was already headed down the wrong road by digging in with obviously flawed data by saying, “We don’t change our recommendations in response to a county complaint.” What he means is that the Ohio Department of Taxation doesn’t listen to people like Nancy Nix, professionals who have been doing this kind of work for most of their adult lives. Instead, her job was to listen to what they recommended and live with it because they held all the cards. 

Yet, there is optimism on the legislative front; in addition to the good work that George Lang is leading, there have been further meetings involving Sara Carruthers, Rodney Creech, Jennifer Gross, and Thomas Hall. Treasurer Mike McNamara, Clerk of Courts Mary Swain, and Recorder Danny Crank are working aggressively to propose short-term and long-term solutions. Some of them are legislative, such as what George is working on. Some would involve amendments to the State Constitution, which are obviously long overdue. Others are things that Nancy Nix and the names mentioned can do as proactive measures. It’s not all bad news. But ultimately, these rate hikes are the result of years of government mismanagement from the state level imposed on regional government, where the most accountability to the voting public is supposed to be the key to all decision-making. But in this case, stuck against the cost of volatile bad decisions, especially during the Covid period, the impact of those decisions is not flowing into people’s property value assessments which are being penalized because they live in areas that were disproportionately well off in relation to other parts of the state that didn’t do so well. And now, we must sort it all out in a way that makes Ohio an attractive place to continue investing in. Otherwise, people might leave for destinations without these kinds of problems. The burden falls on the Ohio Tax Commissioner to develop better strategies for recovering costs from kicking the can down the road for so long and analyzing the market temperament correctly with a better sampling than what the last three years have shown, as they were the worst three years in the history of life on planet earth. And that isn’t the fault of innocent people who have lived in their homes for a long time and plan to stay in their homes. This is the task that I think Nancy Nix is doing a great job of representing Butler County under very turbulent times. But like the history of Hamilton itself and the Great Miami River that flows past her office, we are living history that will be remembered for a long time to come, and that history is made better by some of the great people who are tackling this problem aggressively in defense of the innocent who might otherwise be victims of bad government, such as we are seeing now with the Ohio Department of Taxation in its first few months of a new commissioner. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Cause of Economic Depravity: Duds, derelicts, scumbags, pot-smoking losers, liberal behavior that destroys society

Where else would you want to celebrate a silver anniversary but Costco? Yet that’s where my wife and I went after 35 years of marriage to spend a day together and enjoy what the new Costco in Liberty Township, Ohio had to offer. Out of all the options that are out there, all we really wanted to do was buy a new kayak for some 2023 adventures and have a hot dog meal together. And that’s how it is when you are married for so long. You get a real feel for what your spouse likes, and you get to graduate from any pretension of social circumstance. And the new Costco is fantastic; it was bustling on a Sunday afternoon, and it seemed much busier than it was at the previous location down at Tri-County, which is several miles south of Liberty Township. Now I’ve talked about this situation before, how money tends to move from neighborhood to neighborhood based on the rejection of liberal areas as opposed to conservative regions. Money flows to where conservatives reside, generally leaving behind the toxic stench of liberalism, and you can plot this out on a map all across America. And that was never more obvious than when the Costco in Tri-County moved just a few miles north to Liberty Township, Ohio, to essentially get away from the derelicts that were attending that store, driving away good people who otherwise would have wanted to visit. 

And my wife was certainly one of those people; she would never have felt comfortable going to that Tri-County Costco to have a hot dog meal to celebrate a wedding anniversary. We would go there to have an occasional hot dog together and meet for lunch or while busy things were happening in our life, and it was convenient. But there were a lot of slugs at the Tri-County store that the new store just didn’t have. Now Costco is an excellent example because it has a stable baseline measure. You must have a membership to even get into a Costco store, so a unified value is already established. That means that the typical attendees are regionally inspired. And during our anniversary meal at Costco in Liberty Township, the store was jam-packed, and there weren’t any derelicts, slobs, or slugs of any kind, making it a very nice experience. I’m sure Costco and other businesses would never admit to this problem because it would get them into all kinds of social trouble. But I can say it. People don’t like to be around slugs; when a store gives them a slob-free experience, they will flock toward that economic opportunity. And when I say people are not of a preferred standard, I’m not talking about skin color. There were plenty of diverse people at the Liberty Township store from all over the world. But they at least shared values of a social standard that was refreshing. The cars in the parking lot were all nice; there were not a lot of people with neck tattoos, looking like they just broke out of prison. Nobody smelled like pot smoke standing in line with us. It was nice, and the people there agreed, and it made shopping for things much more fun. 

This is a problem of social management; when an area government becomes too big and starts looking to make victims of its residents, then the bi-product is liberalism. And from there, bad behavior is often rewarded or overlooked. And social conditions in that community go downhill quickly. This can happen in just a neighborhood or in entire states, such as California is these days. It can ruin a community over a decade, or it might take a generation, but eventually, when nefarious characters start bringing bad behavior to a region that people call home, then good people tend to stay locked up in their homes, or they move away. And Tri-County is one of those obvious areas that used to be one of the most vibrant centers of economic activity in the state of Ohio. But as liberal policies failed to regulate bad behavior, then good money packed up and left. And people who had money simply stopped coming to visit because they didn’t want to be around the bad behavior of an out-of-control youth or people who obviously were not sharing values of worth with other people. They didn’t dress well; they spoke poorly to each other and otherwise presented themselves as disasters of intellect and objectionable to a shared experience. This is the cost of too much government that imposes high taxes that pushes people away, leaving behind only the leeches who live off the efforts of others. People with money tend to have values that attract it, so economic depravity follows liberal political policies. There aren’t many places in all of the world where liberal policies equal sustained wealth generation. Wherever big government imposes bad social behavior degradation is soon to follow, including well-known cities like Paris and London. 

Developers have solved this problem of protecting retailers by having privately managed offerings, such as Liberty Center, which is near the new Liberty Township Costco, or the Greene in Dayton, which are self-contained cities of their own. They give you the look of a city environment but are carefully managed to keep away the derelicts and slobs. You won’t find gang behavior in those places with graffiti all over the walls, and that’s what shoppers want. They want to be free of such menaces so they can spend their money on things they value without the threats to their safety, perceived or real. I know many people who have tried to give Over-The-Rhine a chance in downtown Cincinnati only to have their cars broken into and have the women catcalled by unchained youth openly smoking pot on street corners. Only liberals are willing even to look the other way with that behavior. Conservatives, they just don’t go, and they keep their money. And those are the facts, bad behavior pushes away financial wealth and creates a depleted condition. Then it’s so rare to have such an experience as my wife, and I had at Costco that it was nice enough for us to celebrate a wedding anniversary there and to relax. There were a lot of people, but the crowd had shared interests. Many were like us; they wanted to buy a new boat, then right next to it, there were bacon and potato skins. How could you not like that? But nobody wants to deal with people with very little value for things in life, regardless of skin color. Bad behavior will turn away economic activity more than any other detrimental condition. And when communities like Tri-County fail to manage their standard of living and let things slide downhill, the public transportation system starts to bring duds in from the deprived areas; then, the virus spreads to those nicer areas. And it is a virus; it’s a virus of bad conduct. It either spreads to others directly or it inspires them to pack up and leave for an area without such people. And that is a condition of management that is consistent no matter where in the world you go. And it’s why my wife and I went to Costco for our 35th anniversary as opposed to any other place.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Why We Love Freedom: It’s the key to economic viability and production in any culture

It’s one of the things I like most this particular time of year, the spring months ahead of summer, when stores like Cabela’s put out their Holiday attire. With Memorial Day and the Fourth of July coming on the horizon, there are a lot of patriotic garments that they offer to satisfy the sentiments of their customer base, which, to say the least, are not Karl Marx fans. It’s always a reminder to me of where people are generally, away from the news and in reality. When I travel around the country, it’s pretty easy to see where people are politically. And Cabela’s understands that, as does Bass Pro. The same company essentially owns them, but they know their customers, and I enjoy going there to see what’s the latest in outdoor trends. These stores, dedicated to adventure and patriotism, are such wonderful assets, and I have never gotten tired of the Cabela’s in my neighborhood of Cabela’s West Chester, Ohio, since it opened. Let’s just say I spend a lot of time there. On this particular visit, I found a really nice Under Armor camouflage shirt that would be perfect for the summer season and all the outdoor activities I have planned. And it had a nice logo on it that said “Freedom.” It was a whole marketing line of t-shirts they have in all kinds of colors and styles, and they were selling like hotcakes at a maple syrup festival. I bought the shirt and other related items and immensely enjoyed the experience. But I had to ask myself as I watched others doing the same thing, what does everyone think that “Freedom” means? Why do we say it? Why was it such a powerful marketing tool? Under Armor is trying to appeal to those sentiments, so why was it such a powerful statement that might provoke someone to buy it, as opposed to a statement that might say, “Compliance?”

What do we mean when we say we want and expect “freedom?” Freedom from what? Freedom from government, Freedom from our parents? Freedom from work? Freedom from corporate influence, hostile governments, greedy financial institutions, politics, taking our kids to soccer practice, public schools that can’t spend our money correctly and waste it trying to indoctrinate our children into a Marxist ideology? We have a lot of hooks in us by the nature of living life. But if we had to put our finger on the specificity of the meaning of Freedom from an American perspective, the way Cabela’s is marketing it is the Freedom to live your own life the way you want to. It’s undoubtedly not Freedom from responsibility. And the more successful you are in life, obviously the pressure of responsibility increases. But what is specific about American Freedom is the notion that the value of a developed individual life is recognized as significant, and the results of that development and uniqueness benefit our national culture. In America, you can be a slug, barely rubbing two pennies together and living out of a van, nearly homeless, or you could work hard and become an executive for a major company. In America, you can literally have access to anybody at any level. A woman can date a multimillionaire if she is attractive and can get their attention, as opposed to a more controlled society that works within a caste system, as it is throughout India, Nepal, and into China. In Iran or Pakistan, a woman might be the most beautiful person in the world, but nobody would know because of their regimented society. And the hope to date or even marry someone outside of that rigid system is an impossible concept. 

In America, we have an expectation of choice. We can choose to be successful or not, to spend time with people of any level of input. Of course, you would have to work hard to move through social circles, but if you choose to work toward those goals, the doors are open to the hard worker, and we have that Freedom of choice. And you see that when you travel and go to summer activities where people have RVs and boats, earned assets that represent their hard work or lack thereof. I am always amazed by the variety when I go to campsites with our RV and my children. Some people have multimillion-dollar rigs decked out with all the luxury one could imagine. Many times, those rigs are more elaborate than their homes. And they might be parked next to some scrappy dude who hasn’t washed in a week living out of a tent in the bed of his truck with an American flag stuck out of the hood with a crude drill hole applied to stand it proudly upright. And they will talk and kid around with each other without any pretense of snobbery. They subconsciously appreciate each other’s choice to live a free life. And the results of those decisions provide different toys in life to enjoy. But they celebrate their ability to make that choice and not have a government or social construct make it for them.

This is why China must steal nearly a trillion dollars a year in intellectual property theft because even with the rigged financial system that has put them on the front burner for corporate communism, their culture is dying regarding creativity. They might have a lot of hard workers and an obedient society ready to do whatever they are told. But they aren’t very creative, which is common in communist cultures. Yet invention comes from Freedom. Good ideas are born when people are free to think outside the box. I have had several occasions in my life where I’ve had to deal with the United States Patent Office, and let me tell you, it’s always very busy. There are a lot of good ideas in America born every day, and those ideas come to those who are free to have ideas and are bold enough to act on them. And boldness comes from Freedom of choice. When people are free to express themselves either boldly or rigidly, there are consequences to that behavior that have predicted results. But when people are not free to think for themselves and act accordingly with some sort of market incentive, a society quickly shows the results in stagnant behavior. So in that regard, which is why Cabela’s markets “Freedom” the way they do, Freedom is an essential ingredient to the potential for a vibrant and inventive society. And that’s what we celebrate in America, the Freedom of choice. And from those choices, we have seen proof that society flourishes without a complicated caste system driven by religion or politics in limiting options for the human experience. And that’s what we celebrate on our patriotic holidays, the ability to have a choice. And perhaps to show off our new boats, campers, fishing poles, guns, the things we could buy because we chose to take a risk and hit it big, or work hard all our lives and treat ourselves to a new toy. Or just to spend time outdoors with family and friends because we have the leisure time to do so. Freedom is important to the American lifestyle, and it’s more than a tagline that refers to the period of the Founding Fathers. It’s an important attribute of our economic viability and our culture’s purpose. And it’s always under threat by oppressive forces that are jealous of it, and it’s something we must defend diligently. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

I Never “Hang Loose”: Always wear a suit and tie to show respect for work

It was St Patrick’s Day in West Chester, and I had people from the other side of the world with me at a table for eight on the busiest night of the year for a very popular Irish Pub. March Madness was on TV, the music was loud, and there was green beer, as much as anybody could ever want of it. The people I was with had come from a long way to see me, so I wanted to show them the festivities of how Americans celebrate such a unique day, and they were having a lot of fun witnessing the cultural phenomena. But we were all dressed in expensive suits and still had on our ties, which for me is usual. We felt lucky to have a table with such a large crowd when the rest of the place was standing-room only. There were a lot of people singing and dancing everywhere, so having a nice seat in the back of the room to see it all was quite a nice experience for my guests. It was a great evening, but our table attracted a lot of attention because, as I’ve explained before, I don’t dance, and I certainly don’t loosen up, and I was still dressed and would continue to be dressed as if I were going to a formal occasion. That prompted a really large lady in her middle years dressed all in green with Irish-inspired pom poms to slide her chair over and lobby us to take off some of our clothes and loosen our ties. Obligingly, some of the members of our table did so immediately, and the gazes all turned toward me. That’s when I explained to the lady that this was as loose as I would ever get. I put my fingers between the collar of my shirt, fully buttoned, and my neck and explained that if I could do that, that was loose enough.

Well, this lady had invested her entire reputation in this action, and all the people at her table, who looked like another train derailment in Ohio by the way they were dressed and behaved, chided her quickly that her magical womanly charms didn’t seem to be working. My action was not anywhere in the script of social behavior for pub behavior, so there was an awkward moment. So she rewarded the people at my table who had taken off their ties and loosened their shirts with ostentatious flirtation as if sexual opportunity might have been even a remote possibility. But I refused to budge and proceeded to make fun of her loose clothing and her entire table. I have a rule in life: I just don’t do the kinds of things she asked under any social pressure. I usually would never be in such a place where drinking was the key activity and singing to the music of classic rock songs played so loudly that it could burst your eardrums. But we were far enough away to at least have a conversation, even if we had to be so close to each other to speak that intimacy was the very next option. And my refusal was a grave disappointment to this woman who obviously thought she had the charms of a young woman that could easily get young men to do anything she asked for, promising further sexual contact. Once the others at our table realized I wasn’t going to budge, which was no surprise to them, they stopped feeding her encouragement and kept their dress respectful, and that’s how it remained for the rest of the night. The woman went back to her own table, upset and pouting. After another twenty minutes of uncomfortable glances, they all got up and left, and that table was quickly replaced by people standing and waiting for a chance to sit down. 

That wasn’t the only time when people took notice of our table and tried to figure us out. Several of the people with me were taken aside by members of the room and asked what we were all about. People thought we were members of the mob sitting like we were without any dancing and wearing business suits past 8 PM at night. People were very suspicious of us the entire time we were there, and when we finally did get up to leave, there was an odd joy that the people in the room expressed. It was a fun evening and a chance for me to see how other people live in the world. I enjoyed the atmosphere and the basketball. I know my guests had a great time. So it was everything we wanted it to be, but I couldn’t help but notice the negatives, and that traces back to a real problem in our culture, this stupid notion that people can work from home and still be productive and that we can have “casual Fridays” as a rebellion against professional attire, and still maintain the greatest economy in the world. People who think such things are smoking crack. For me, wearing a tie and business attire is the same as wearing weapons of war on a battlefield. It’s a necessity for productive commerce. Nobody wants to deal with some slack-jawed loser with some loose Hawaiian shirt while exchanging business for millions of dollars. This whole notion that such a thing was possible was given to American culture by the lazy Europeans and insurgents of communism around the world looking for sameness among their individuals. Not individual expressions of professionalism, which has always been the standard in America. 

Being loose is not a value system I have any value for. I think Americans should never have accepted the dumb, liberal idea of “hanging loose,” as they say in Hawaii, and bring back from their vacations to Florida, Hawaii, and other places in Europe these dumb ideas about relaxing so much. It should be clear to people by now that all the propaganda we have received about working too hard, avoiding heart attacks and stress, and going to work more casually were all prequels to the kind of work-from-home policies that would come from the Great Reset, a communist takeover of all our industry and to weaken the workforce from warriors of capitalism to mask-wearing submissives who follow instructions from centralized authority and to then become the new standard bearers of a collectivist approach to a new partnership between business and government that provided much less to the consumer than the massive options we had under more freedom and capitalism in general. I dress well because I respect work and enjoy work and pressure. Meanwhile, the government takeover of all things productive was to speak against work, to expand government so that everyone would eventually be a government worker in some form or another. You could see in the court filing that the Biden administration just lost regarding the Covid vaccines the original strategy. The government showed its hand in that one trying to portray Biden as a CEO of the entire Federal workforce, including any contractors, and that a single-point policy infusion would be possible. Of course, the government lost that case because it was unconstitutional, just as all the Covid attempts at a Great Reset were. But these maniacal characters have gotten away with thinking such things because of the kind of barflies that were at that Irish Pub on St. Patrick’s Day.

Loose clothing types who think hanging loose is a value system and that all those uptight, suit-wearing people out there are just working themselves into an early grave with heart attacks and bad health. All of that is untrue. Those beliefs are just early versions of the Covid scare, where health officials could bring communism to our culture through fear of overwork and psychological safety. Drink more. Have more sex with strangers. And waste your time singing to depressing classic rock songs while your country burns to the ground. No, I’ll continue to wear my tie and business jacket even past midnight in such social conditions. And I am very proud to do so. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Losing in Blackjack: What the Silicone Valley Bank failure means to our economy

The failure of the Silicon Valley Bank is just the start of something much worse that is about to happen in America, and nobody can say they weren’t warned. It’s much worse than just banking management that are entangled in risky practices, but these are the effects of a Cloward and Piven attack strategy that has been in play for some time and is at the heart of ESG measurements. When a bank like Silicone Valley Bank lends money to a lot of business startups based on sex, skin color, orientation, nationality, and minority status, then those businesses fail, then obviously, the money will have been wasted. Nobody pushing ESG, including in the stock market, ever figured out how monetary value would be replaced by social scores because there is no value in sentiment. Only in actionable behavior are the efforts of productivity measurable. In that regard, Silicone Valley Bank is not the first, nor will it be the last. But it will be one of a series of failures based on the toxic ESG values that have been pushed on the finance world for several years now, and the results are in these monstrosities of sentiment resulting in horrendous results. The scam was never going to work, and if this is the best that a college-educated society can produce, then nobody should have dared to crawl out of the stone age. Because what’s the point? It’s not a mystery as to the cause, as many are now considering runs on the banks to gather up their wealth before it all disappears. Just remember before you do that this is a similar situation as we saw with Covid, a purposeful attack on the American infrastructure to bring down the economy of America by hostile foreign characters, and this failure was a planned occurrence. Not an accident. 

The ultimate game was to collapse the stability of the dollar and then prop up that value with government bailouts, which is precisely what Janet Yellen of the Biden administration is proposing to do. Why do you think the former head of the Federal Reserve has been so active in World Economic Forum activities and even a figure involved in Ukraine? Why are these people making secret trips to Ukraine in their positions, Janet Yellen, Merrick Garland, and those with no jobs related to anything in Ukraine? Anybody with the haircut of Janet Yellen coming back from Ukraine and asking for more financial aid to that strange country and its politics is just as dumb as the person who wants a haircut as she has. Who could think that a haircut like she has is a good idea by choice? Yet such an assumption is just as foolish as trusting her with any financial advice. She did during her role as head of the Federal Reserve as they all do; they ran the Fed recklessly and as a big government stooge printing money with quantitative easing that effectively wrecked the economy. It started before the collapse of 2008 when bad loans to the housing market crushed the industry. At that point, a unique relationship with Larry Fink, who would go on to make BlackRock one of the most influential companies in the world, would buy up that bad debt, and the Fed would print fake money and flow it into Wall Street, with an arrangement to Fink, and they would buy up the assets and use all the funny money to take control of the boards of many corporations, to impose these ESG scores on them and change the value for which they operated. Gone were the profit and loss statements of tradition, but now it was all about how many gay activists were in management, how many minorities, and whether men could suddenly have babies and would have to go on maternity leave. With such values, what did anybody think would happen?

The way these banks have been lending has been like the gambling addict at a casino late into the morning from a crazy night of drinking and whoring around mindlessly, playing Blackjack. Who in their right mind would bet all their money through every round, thinking they would hit 21? Hitting 21 in Blackjack, of course, is the ultimate goal. For finance, it would be like loaning money to the next Google startup company and having them all become gloriously successful every time. But unfortunately, in reality, there are not many Googles out there, and in Blackjack, hitting 21 is an extreme anomaly. Usually, you can get close with a 17-20, but you rarely hit 21 without going over. An aggressive player trying to impress someone from the opposite sex will constantly hit over 21, and they will lose all their money rather quickly. This has essentially been the strategy of this new ESG market. But I would not say it has been stupid, just as the dealer in Blackjack always has the ability to play the game after all the other players have played their hands. The House statistically wins the most often, and in this banking game, the House is the Federal Reserve. And they are not loyal to the American economy.

In conjunction with the government, the Fed has allowed people to conduct their lives with risky behavior so that they will become trapped and need the government to bail them out. Then once that happens, people will give up their independence from the government to get out of the mess they put themselves in. Like the Blackjack player who spends their life savings betting on 21 at the table only to find out that they have lost all their money, but they still want to play, they borrow money from the House to continue playing. But the House can print their own money, so it’s no skin off their back. Meanwhile, the gambler just keeps getting deeper and deeper in the hole until they lose their personal independence for the rest of their lives because they are so far in debt. And that is the military strategy against the American market, which was purposeful. It was designed to destroy value and replace it with sentiment. The banks, hoping always to hit 21 just like any mindless gambler might, bet on all the wrong risks based on all the wrong values, and of course, they have lost far more than they’ve won, leading to these banks collapsing.

Meanwhile, for those who have lost their life savings, the Fed, with indirect means of supplying money, is just printing money and giving it out like candy. And people will take it because they don’t want to face the destructive facts. In such a desperate state, they will continue to support an all-powerful government because only such a government can back the money they have printed to stay in power. And in this way, Republicans and Democrats find themselves united at the Blackjack table, hoping to hit always 21 in desperation because it’s the only option they have as a result of ESG values that have changed finance into such a devastating industry run by thieves down on their luck and trying to hide it with quantitative easing. And after years of such behavior, we only see the beginning of such failure.   The government gains power, while the individuals lose their freedom and become slaves to those they are perpetually in debt.  

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Island of Misfit Toys: A government built around failure can’t be successful

Before we move on from the State of the Union speech by Joe Biden for the year, we have to talk again about the vast differences between Republicans and Democrats.  It is more noticeable in business than politics because, typically, in the horse race of political campaigns, the measures of success are all wrong.  We judge the winners and losers by the popularity contest of a vote by society and not the psychology of why people vote for who they do.  And when Democrats are in office, especially where the room is divided up in such a way, and there is such a terrible president in the White House, the differences become obvious regarding political ideology.  Those who clapped for what Joe Biden was saying and those who didn’t really could be divided down a line of thought known in business called The Oz Principle, a favorite book of mine.  Some of its concepts I have taught for years, and what’s specific in this book, is the clear division between “Above the Line” thinking and “Below the Line” thinking.  The line being talked about resides along the razor’s edge of positive thinking and negative thinking.  Positive thinking people are always trying to find a way to talk about how full a glass is, for instance, while negative thinking people are looking for the glass to be less than half full and for the contents to be excuses for why things cannot be done.  When Republicans are in office, Democrats tend to be able to hide in the background and hide their general negativity about all things in the world, using Republicans as a kind of shield from reality.  But left on their own, when they are in charge, their negativity is something they can no longer hide, revealing to the world who they really are. 

Watching the people who supported Joe Biden during his speech was like watching the old Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer show about the misfit toys, all the broken stuff that nobody wanted to play with.  And that’s fair.  Not everyone in the world can be a blistering success.  Not everyone is a beautiful person or intelligent.  Some people are just lazy screw-ups with square wheels in life, and you can’t have a society where they find themselves thrown away and useless to the world around them.  The Democrat Party, in general, is made up of those broken toy types.  But under Joe Biden, who was obviously put in place by a corrupt and overfunded Deep State, protecting itself from the reforms of an angry public, the island of misfit toys was much more obvious.  The Democrats felt empowered to display all their negativity that is outlined in The Oz Principle, as if spending money in government could support their Below the Line thinking with dollars spent.  All the negatives in life are their utilization of articulation; the “I don’t have times” and the “I can’ts” are supported with inflated budgets and wars around the world meant to hide their lack of ability.  And it was never more obvious than in Joe Biden, a messed up old man who takes showers with his daughter, has a drug addict for a son, was put in place by illegal means to protect the crimes of the century with purposeful Covid terrorism.  And all he can hope to do to cover up his massive failures is to stoke a world war between Russia and Ukraine to hide the fingerprints of all the acts of globalism that have destroyed so many lives and are looking for a diversion from mass opinion into their many crimes against humanity. 

Putting all the broken toys in charge might be seen as an act of compassion, but it won’t result in a successful society.  And in all endeavors, we measure success by results, and the Democrats can’t show any positive results.  All they have done in the world is find a home for all the misfit toys of Below the Line thinking that often holds people back from success.  In business, such identifications are meant to be destroyed; otherwise, you cannot have a successful enterprise.  The leadership of an organization must be committed to thinking Above the Line in a positive way that resolves problems.  Not in a Below the Line way that allows problems to continue.  And that was essentially the entire political platform of the Democrat Party in 2023’s State of the Union speech.  The State of the Union was about justifying Below the Line thinking, the excuses in life for why there are misfit toys, to begin with, and building a country around all the broken stuff.  And that just isn’t the kind of message that people who live and come to America want to see.  While the Republicans sat in their seats for most of the speech, the Democrats clapped enthusiastically over very negative observations meant to be covered with massive amounts of spending, hoping in the back of their minds that the country would be destroyed before anybody figured out what a bunch of frauds they are.  The differences were clear, as they usually are in cultures where the negative Below the Line people are in charge or have too much influence in their culture.  Their lack of success and appeal often means more money wasted and less productivity utilized, whether the endeavor is for a business or a country.

The evidence is right there at the State of the Union speech for anybody looking for proof of election fraud.  The American people did not vote for that island of misfit toys, the trains with square wheels, or a “john in the box” instead of a “jack in the box.” People naturally feel sorry for the Below the Line types who have an excuse for everything in life.  But they don’t want to lose in life because all the broken toys are in charge, and thinking negatively about everything.  The Democrats were there because of a corrupt system that is protecting their own negative assumptions in the world.  Like most companies where Below the Line people are continually trying to sabotage a positive message, we have in our current government a negative message that has been inserted over a positive presidency, and the results are less than enchanting.  And the disappointment in people can’t be hidden with cable news polls sampled in Paul Ryan’s bathroom and hope that it represents American’s hopes and dreams.  What really makes the world work is the difficult task of thinking Above the Line while the rest of the world wants to be lazy and negative and think Below the Line.  And when you build an entire political party around negative Below the Line thinking, then success will be in short supply, which was obvious at the 2023 State of the Union message.  It was a clear contrast that Republicans and Democrats couldn’t be further away from each other, showing a truth that isn’t so obvious any other way.  What Joe Biden proposed was to spend trillions and trillions of dollars and to go to war with Russia in the hope of hiding all their negative positions, which they know Americans will reject, gay rights, union rules that make America less productive in a global marketplace, inflation, the Hunter Biden laptop, an FBI that is essentially an arm of the Democrat Party serving a Deep State that wants to destroy the world.  And nothing was positive about anything on the Democrats’ platform, only excuses and Below the Line thinking, which was much harder to hide when they were the only ones on the stage.

 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Lakota 5-Year Forecast: What do I think of it?

Since the most recent five-year forecast by the Lakota school system just before Thanksgiving 2022, I have been asked hundreds of times what I thought about it. I’m happy that the government school doesn’t plan to ask for more money until 2025. There are elements of the radical teacher’s union background who think that we haven’t had a tax increase since 2013, and before that, there were a lot of fights on three previous attempts to stop the school from taking more money from the public, so the push has been that its time to extract more money from the community. Before we elected three board members that are supposed to be conservative to the board, the previous school board was very liberal and wanted to take the surpluses that we had and spend that money on new facilities projects. There is this belief that is built into the progressive mentality, which believes that Lakota is the largest employer in our region of Butler County and that they deserve to be treated with respect and always have new things, like state-of-the-art school buildings, and nice amenities for the staff to work in, because if we want to recruit the best teachers to the area, that we have to do those things in order to stay competitive. In reality, the unionized teachers go where it’s good for them financially, and as we have learned, there are quite a few of them who are swingers and alternative sexual lifestyles participants, so access to other such people is as big of a decision for them as anything else. Access to bars to pick up 22-year-old kids and younger is a significant benefit for them and part of their decision-making process. Communities with block parties happening often and providing plenty of socializing are very attractive to new Lakota staff recruits. They really don’t care about a nice new building; they care about access to other people who are just as deranged as they are. This is why there hasn’t been a mass exodus after all the drama about the current Lakota school board superintendent. Instead of being a detriment, it has been a recruiting tool because it advertised to the world what Lakota is really about, which has been far more enticing than anything taxpayers could spend money on.

Yet, the Lakota school system has a large tax base; if anything, Lakota should be looking to lower taxes. There are a lot of residents who support 17,000 students with valuable property that is much higher than other school districts. And that’s before all the commercial real estate is taxed. That revenue is only increasing, especially by the Liberty Center part of the community where a new Costco and many new wonderful developments are emerging, so with Lakota operating at a surplus for much of the last decade, that is because student enrollment really hasn’t increased, but property value and commercial opportunities have increased dramatically. So we are talking about millions of dollars that Lakota has benefited from and wasted on employee raises for essentially a terrible product, a free babysitting service to the community. But even with all those benefits, we had a previous school board that wanted to spend, spend, spend into oblivion so that they could ask for more money with a tax levy. And that was the talk from 2020 until 2022. That the Lakota school board felt they hadn’t asked for money for a long time, and it was time to do so, regardless of whether anybody really needed it. And that assumption comes from a unionized workforce that wants all the benefits of employment without any downside of management control. They want facilities; they want fewer students in the classroom. They want unionized bus drivers who call off work for every sniffle they have and blame it on Covid. Lakota has mismanaged itself into a complete disaster of an organization, with poor report card showings happening since Matt Miller took over as superintendent. So on the performance side, Lakota has been a disaster, and they don’t deserve a dime in addition to the many hundreds of millions that their budget currently is. They get enough and should be giving back a lot of that money by lowering their current costs. 

When I heard the 5-year forecast and saw the PowerPoint they presented, it made me sick because of a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff that few people know about. While I’m happy that Lakota announced that they had enough money to stay solvent until the year 2025 and had to gag at the school board praising the treasurer for a presentation that should be expected, not praised, I could see clearly that a lot of Lakota’s assumptions on money is built into their lack of preparation for a professional world. Like all progressive institutions, they have a presumption of entitlement and don’t expect to be judged by performance, and that is clear in their 5-year forecast. Contained within it are all the assurances I wanted that there wouldn’t be further pushing for a tax levy from Lakota as the radical liberal types had been wanting. I know that Lynda O’Conner didn’t want to deal with a tax increase, and only a few months ago, she and Issac Adi met with me in a super-secret location in someone’s basement to talk about the problems at Lakota. At that time, we were working out their problems with Darbi Boddy, who I continue to think is the best school board member I have seen in decades. I want four more of her over the next few years because if we do have more like her, Lakota will be forced to live within its very generous budget and not ask for more money. They wanted to talk me away from Darbi; I wanted to find out why they didn’t like her suddenly. But at that meeting, I told them, as I tell everyone who asks, I generally don’t care about Lakota until they ask for more money. I think the product is garbage, too expensive, and that they teach radical leftist concepts to the next generation in my community is reprehensible. And in that 5-year forecast, they addressed all my concerns that we talked about in that private meeting. 

But why? What had changed over these last few months when it looked like a tax increase was the only thing the school board wanted to discuss? Well, they chained themselves to a sinking ship in their superintendent, who had gotten himself into a lot of trouble, and once he brought all that brand damage to Lakota, he threatened the public like some entitled, spoiled brat, all to hide his terrible performance since he was hired in 2017, and obviously the school system itself needs time to recover. Their former treasurer Jenni Logan, Matt Miller’s partner for a long time, suddenly left in August to become one of the seven indictments against Roger Reynolds in an upcoming trial. And that same month, all the crap literally hit the fan regarding the superintendent’s bizarre sexual lifestyle, which was revealed because he decided to pick a fight with school board member Darbi Boddy and her supporters. So there has been a bloody battle, and Lakota has brand damage because of it. If Lakota tried for a levy now, it would take more than three attempts to get it passed, and they know it. So they have to wait for a while for things to cool off and for the politics to change in a more favorable direction for them. They hope that if the people of Lakota just go back to sleep, they will be able to return to the good old days when nobody wanted to come to school board meetings, and they could have fantasies about tax increases for their progressive lifestyles. Jenni Logan didn’t leave a good job for a couple of bad ones at the commissioner’s office and at Ross schools for her health. There is a lot of bad behind the scenes, so when I see a report like this, it says Lakota needs time to recalibrate and repair its public perception. But it doesn’t change a thing about their internal management; they are a disaster with out-of-control employees who are too expensive and, most of the time, should not be around children. And no public relations firm in the world will be able to hide that pile of garbage by 2025. That’s what I think of the new 5-year forecast.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

I Hate Liberals and I think God Hates Them Too: Why things cost too much

God never came to me and said that it is bad to hate people or things about people. I have heard plenty from people who think they have a better understanding of the world or comprehend scripture for me and interpret meanings they see for political reasons rather than understanding the truth of a matter. I would say that those people who tell us that hating people is bad are people I hate emphatically. It is good to have hate in your heart because it gives your value judgments some place to go rather than bottling up those emotions. I hate lots of things and lots of people. And I sleep very well every night and don’t carry around a lot of emotional baggage about anything. Because I don’t ask myself not to have value judgments, I am very judgemental. If I hate something, it’s pretty apparent; I don’t try to suppress it out of politeness. I let it out and communicate it, usually in some way that isn’t destructive. But I think hating is good and that the world would be much better off if we had value judgments and expressed them appropriately.

This is how it should be

I hate slow people. I hate liberals. I hate globalists. I hate people who waste money, are anti-family, and think about molesting children. This “love people no matter what stuff” is a lot of the reason we have so much evil in the world. And while we’re talking about things I hate, I hate evil. I am not a fan of the concept that evil does the world good by providing a measure for it. I am not an oriental who believes in the yin and yang concept of light and darkness entwined together and balanced in our lives on earth with a kind of harmony. I hate evil and seek to destroy it and everything that comes with it every day of my life, every hour of every day. And it makes me happy to fight evil, think about ways of destroying it, and to rid all life of its corrupt presence. I hate people who tell me that I should love others we know we should clearly hate because they are wrong. And until God says otherwise, my policy will remain.

Another thing I hate is roundabouts. I have lived in Butler County, Ohio, most of my life. I’ve traveled the world plenty of times, but a long time ago, I learned that Butler County was a great place to live, so I’ve stayed even when people I hated, like pin-headed liberals from the coasts, moved in because it is one of the best places to live in the world. I’ve put up with liberals out of fairness. But I hate them; they are terrible people, raise terrible kids, and make terrible lives for themselves that spill over into their neighbors, and from my perspective, there is nothing to like about them. So my wife and I were out on the town and coming home. Our route took us down a road in Butler County with three roundabouts that didn’t used to be there. I used to travel down that same road at 100 MPH, and now you have to slow down to 25 MPH just to go around one of these ridiculous European monstrosities of Agenda 21 invention. And while driving 100 MPH, there used to be vast fields full of corn and cows, and life was wonderful. Now it’s a bunch of snot-nosed levy supporters who roll over every day thinking that everyone is in a hurry to help get their kid to soccer practice so they can get a scholarship and send them to college to breed more people like Hunter Biden. But on this particular day, as we were approaching one of those roundabouts, a stupid little electric car with a slightly faded bumper sticker for Biden/Harris pulled in front of me and was going 27 MPH in an area where the speed should have been 45 MPH. Also on that slow little car that belonged in Europe, and clearly not in America, were “coexist” stickers, a Ukraine flag, and a “WeAreLakota” sticker from the local school. And I was stuck going under 30 MPH until we could clear the next roundabout, and I could roar past those liberal losers with 400 HP of American fury at the first opportunity. 

While I was yelling at the car in front of me, my wife was telling me not to hate people while also telling me about her trip to Walmart, where a friend of hers who has worked there for many years was distraught over the price of a dozen eggs, which had spiked up to $5 for a dozen. I told her for the ten millionth time in our many years of marriage that the cost of things always goes up when liberals inject themselves into anything because liberals are slow like that stupid little electric car, and when things are slow, they prevent the flow of economic value. When things are fast, they are generally cheaper because there are fewer barriers to a marketplace that can add more competition. But when liberals create too many rules and lay down across the tracks of progress, and slow the world down to their lazy speed, costs always go up. It doesn’t matter if its politics or process improvements in business, usually the first indicator of runaway costs are liberals who go too slow and bring too much bureaucracy to processes, and when it is understood why something is too expensive, it’s because of too many slow people in the process not doing the work that needs to be done, which then creates less of whatever is being made, which then creates artificial barriers to entry resulting in increased costs. In the business world, if it takes you three weeks to make a product with all the compliance it takes to do it, that product will cost a lot more than a product that only takes a week.

To illustrate that point, I was also out recently at 2 AM and drove by a casino that is by my home, and the parking lot was full, all the way into the outer lot. And I hate to see that because people who feel a need to gamble and take chances in life choose to spend their time that way instead of in a more productive manner. These great people are natural risk-takers; they were wasting their time betting on cards and numbers rather than applying those same skills to create new jobs which take precisely the exact attributes. A good government would find a way for those people to gamble their money in business instead of wasting it in a casino. The desire is the same either way, but a productive society always finds a way to get its risk-takers involved in building a productive society rather than sitting in a casino sipping mixed drinks while everyone else is sleeping. But I understand them; they are there in the middle of the night because fewer people are slowing them down in life. And there are fewer rules there too. It’s much easier to get the thrill of a win when you don’t have to deal with slow-thinking liberals who have slowed the world down to their speed, instead of things being the other way around where liberals are forced to go faster and to think quickly and to be more productive because people have value judgments against them that they don’t like. Yes, I hate liberals. I hate them because they are slow. I hate them because they are stupid. And I hate them because they make things cost too much, eat up time, and are pretentious in thinking they can hide their timid natures behind global bureaucracy. I have lived in the same place all this time because it gave me freedom from slow-moving liberals. And since they have moved to live next to me, there is nothing logical in suddenly loving them. No, I hate them. And to the way I think about things, that’s a very healthy reaction to their lives of destruction and mayhem. And I also think God hates them too. I don’t think the pinheads who interpret God’s meaning for things are smart enough to think for God. I think God is with me on the matter, and he hates liberals too.    

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business