Tag: education funding

Helping Chief Blackwell: Cincinnati needs more guns–not less

Gun grabbers and pacifists are licking their lips with all the recent violence in Cincinnati involving guns. As Channel 9 released the report below and the Cincinnati Enquirer pandered to the same class of the panic driven drivel, the root cause of the gun violence was ignored in favor of a progressive objective seeking to demonize personal firearms. Here is how Channel 9 presented the case for which the burden fell on Chief Blackwell.

Cincinnatians have been barraged with the reports of 168 shootings so far this year. They include the recent gun battle on I-75, gunfire ringing out on our streets in broad daylight, teen-agers getting shot and teen-agers doing the shooting. There’s one thing all these incidents have in common: a gun.

 

That’s what I wanted to talk about with Chief Jeffrey Blackwell when I sat down with him Friday. Guns have been on his mind too.

 

He produced a daily report showing shootings are up 23 percent this year compared to the same period last year. Homicides are down, but he agreed that the recent violence has created an atmosphere of unease. 

 

His short-term response to the outbreak of gun violence is to create a new “gun-reduction program,” a group of 13 officers who will focus on the people police know of who are responsible for much of it.

 

 

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2015/06/03/sentinels-support-chief/28408041/

 

http://www.wcpo.com/web/wcpo/news/crime/cincinnati-police-department-90-day-plan-includes-moving-more-officers-to-the-streets

So I’m going to do Chief Blackwell a favor, and explain to him the cause and how to remedy the problem that the city manager of Cincinnati has placed upon his shoulders. First of all the reason for the increase in gun violence is that the news reports from Baltimore and Ferguson have shown the criminal minded how to avoid prosecution and harassment by the police. Now that they’ve seen how mobs of people can protest the police and how the police have been neutered, particularly in places like New York City, and Chicago—respect for the law is at an all time low. Poor quality politicians and the media have fanned the flames of violence provoking it in many cases in inner cities where government dependents reside in a high concentration. The net result is an increase in the statistical violence involving guns in Cincinnati, and just about everywhere else where large concentrations of public housing, and welfare dominate the per capita population.

Yet in areas where there is a high concentration of gun ownership, like Mason and West Chester, Ohio—there is almost no gun violence per capita or by volume of gun ownership. That is because the quality of people in those areas are different—there are less thugs per capita in those areas. So a simple gun reduction program won’t work, because guns have been invented and bad guys will find them just as they do illegal drugs.   Reducing gun ownership within the city of Cincinnati will only guarantee more violence, not less—because when those who behave with an animalistic desire to suppress others drives criminal behavior against the innocent—the lack of guns allows for an unbalanced defense against thugs. Thugs are those who wish to impart violence against others to fulfill their own personal objectives. The victims may not desire to take part in that desire but if they don’t have a gun to equalize the ill intent, the thug will have the advantage 100% of the time without any resistance.

Progressives and other community advocates who lazily wish that guns had never been invented and fantasize that more government workers could manage all the elements of society into peace if only there were no more guns are the cause of the violence and the delay of the solution. They are the cause of the increased violence coming and going then point at the guns as the villains. Well, they have lost their seat at the table. There is enough history and facts now to dispute their fear based diatribes. Fewer guns increase violence, more guns reduce it. It’s a very simple equation.

If the violence within Cincinnati were to truly be reduced, then more homes with more guns should have them. There may be a slight spike at the beginning of such a proposal where the guns are used to dispel the efforts of a bad guy but once word hit the streets, the cockroaches would return to their hiding and keep their crimes from the eyes of humanity—for the most part. Give some shotguns to the old men who sit on their porches in Avondale talking about the old days—and let them eliminate the violence on their streets, the car break-ins, the drug deals, the gang gatherings—and it will quickly be shown how effect a pro gun program in the hands of private citizens truly is.

Take those same old men in Avondale sitting on their porches with shotguns painted against the reality of our day and they would be arrested for poor handling of a firearm and disturbing the peace while the members of a gang stand on a street corner down the road and laugh. The old men are an easy arrest for the police and keeps their captains off their backs for lack of arrests—but the kids down the road are difficult. There are legal entanglements and revenge killings—and they are just too much trouble. No cop with a family wants a cartel killer to show up on their doorstep, so they leave the kids alone. The gang is just too much trouble to deal with. Cops will show up to take a report after violence has occurred, but they just can’t do anything until a crime is committed making them virtually powerless to stop anything before a thug committees a violent act.

So what is Chief Blackwell supposed to say to a bunch of panicky politicians wanting a quick fix to a problem they created with progressive policies?   Tell them the truth, or tell them what they want to hear—that he’ll focus on getting rid of guns off the streets. To liberal progressives, that is music to their ears, so they might be appeased—for a while, but it won’t solve the problem. Violence will continue because those in charge have been deemed weak by the thugs, and that will only breed more thugs—not less. Before crime can really be solved management must admit that some of their citizens are thugs, and that they seek to correct that behavior with a basic respect for humanity. Those failing to adhere to that basic respect must be dealt with in the only way they understand—with force. Then and only then will violent trends decrease, and assumptions toward civility be cultivated successfully.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

West Chester Will Fight Anything: What makes a good community successful

I’ve discussed this Community Foundation deal set to take place at the location of the old Lakota Union school on Cincinnati Dayton road before. The proposal is to build a Boys & Girls Club at the site offering all day kindergarten for Lakota students—which is a fancy way of saying that it’s a full-time babysitting service funded by the taxpayers for residents of the Lakota schools district. In spite of the $40,000 that Lakota spends each year on the change agent Jeffery Stec to build public support for the union fees the public education employees extract from the tax payers each year, the school board has partnered up with the socialite Patti Alderson and former No Lakota Levy advocates to build a consensus within the community toward future school levies. The next levy is due to take place around 2017. With all the money spent, it just wasn’t enough to hire a progressive cheerleader from Cincinnati—other deals had to be made to keep public opinion in favor of the school system to over 50%. It’s a bit of a shell game going on behind the Boys & Girls Club at the proposed location. Everyone gets something out of the deal, even the tax payers who want to use the free babysitting service—except for a majority of the tax payers who end up paying for the whole enterprise. For them they are supposed to buy into the seemingly good intentions of the Boys & Girls Club mission to replace the parenting of young people with a progressive leaning education centered on altruism.

What is interesting is not that bandits, thieves and social parasites behind the issue, it’s the opinion of some who advocate on their behalf which I couldn’t help but notice in the comments section of the latest Journal News article on the matter, seen below. I’m certainly not one who demonizes builders and developers. I see those occupations as a creative enterprise. I am a fan of the Liberty Way developments and I love the Union Center Blvd developments. But I like to see a resistance that forces those developers to be either better in their presentations, or cleverer in what ends up finally built. Resistance is the key to good management. Those who do resist are not bad people or impediments to progress. Politicians have a tendency to lay down to developers because it is those type of businessmen who tend to contribute to political campaigns hoping that at some time in the future government will get out of their way to allow them to make some money. That leaves the private citizen as the natural counterbalance between these two forces that are needed to maintain good government. It is because of the many private citizens in and around West Chester that there are so many good things happening in one of the most affluent areas of Ohio. Yet the below comment was left on the mentioned article and illustrates a sad belief to the contrary.

You have to love West Chester. They will fight anything. Over the years, the community has fought a community Rec Center, a 1,000,000+ sf upscale Steiner development on Cin-Day (Yes, the same one building in Liberty), a YMCA, the schools, a new Kroger, a Christian school, sidewalks, bike paths and a Boys/Girls Club. Sounds like a great place to live.

http://www.journal-news.com/news/news/group-aims-to-stop-demolition-of-former-school/nmSWq/

In the article Danielle Richardson and the West Chester-Union Twp. Historical Society, essentially propose to the Lakota school district to buy the old school for the cost of $1—to clear it off their books and turn it over to someone else to manage. The Historical Society has an interest in the century old school building to maintain the image of Old West Chester as a hub of tradition to remember the roots of what made the area great to begin with. If everything that is built is new, then the roots will be lost forever of what attracted people to West Chester in the first place. If there is nobody challenging all these projects, such as the commenter above, everything that makes West Chester great would be lost forever—and changed into something else. For Lakota, which is a very progressive government organization—that is their intended goal on a social level—to change the behavior of the community at large, so their actions must be met with resistance. That’s why they hired Jeff Stec at a rather expensive cost to “change” the minds of the public toward support of a tax payer funded institution. New members of West Chester by their own destructive predilections want to change things into what they left behind. If everything is new and there is no sense of history, then they can feel equal to the people who have lived in West Chester for years. It’s a natural weakness that comes from the type of people who transfer to various locations around the nation. They are rootless by nature, so often have a tinge of jealousy toward those who do have a sense of belonging to a community or family.

An example of this is in Danielle Richardson herself, she is the person at the center of the “chicken” controversy which continues to boil in front of West Chester Trustees. Farms and chickens are part of West Chester’s history and some traditional value toward that memory needs to be made to accommodate that vintage sentiment. New money moved into West Chester and wants to think that the entire community is the Weatherington Country Club. It makes for some good back slapping over drinks to brag about pushing all the hillbillies out of West Chester with all their furry creatures. But, in doing so they destroy the nature of their very investments—which makes no sense, because they improperly value the wrong attributes of a society. West Chester attracted all the great investment it has now, chickens, goats, cows and all—and the old Union school is part of that—and they have value. If the image is allowed to change, then West Chester will become just another community that rises to greatness, and then falls once change agents transform the area into something that future generations despise. Because in thirty years when the new Boys & Girls Club building is old, and all the people who constructed it are dead and gone—nobody will want to preserve all the cheap construction that looks new in 2015, but will look out-dated in 2030. And where will that leave West Chester?

When Randy Oppenheimer from Lakota announced in April 2014 that a joint agreement between the district and the club to operate an all-day kindergarten program on the site was evolving and they were seeking public input—Lakota put Jeff Stec on the case in the form of three public Community Conversations that were held in June to garner public input. Pro levy school types showed up to listen to the paid change agent, but anti-tax people generally stayed home knowing what Stec was. His job was not to garner input—it was to change minds. It’s the old Saul Alinsky Delphi Technique trick talked about over the years—only dressed up with some new terminology. Lakota does not want to make a deal to preserve a piece of their history, they need to make a deal that pulls levy supporters and anti-levy supporters together, so they are using the Boys & Girls Club for that reason. Lakota to do the right thing should do as Randy suggested, and that is auction off the property. If the people who want to build the Boys & Girls Club are really interested in developing the property, they should pay for it without an alliance with government assistance to get premium property dirt cheap—and see what the market value the project will garner in the free market. If that happened, minds would change rapidly into a different direction. It would be my guess that the Historical Society would have more value for the property than the proposed Boys & Girls Club, unless Patti wants to cover the costs herself—which she could do. That would be the best way to proceed.

But to the people who think like the commenter in the Journal News article, they are missing many elements to the story. What makes West Chester great is not rubber stamping all the side-walk proposals, the YMCAs, Libraries, and Krogers, its in fighting for a standard of living that makes our community a—brace yourself—“community.” A community is more than a bunch of buildings and socialites who want to be remembered for their charity, or a school that wants to throw money at their out of control labor union, it’s about people, their history, their chickens and the connection to the past that gives a place a sense of grounding—even to those who move from far away seeking something of substance to fill their lives with meaning. West Chester is good because it has a vigilant population that will fight for its history mixed with a nice conservative base of finance that will make new things for people to enjoy. It takes resistance to offer proper management and an honest government that can make the best decisions possible. And in West Chester there are plenty of those types—and we are lucky to have them.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Evil Behind Dennis Hastert: A need to be “holier than thou”

With all the coverage of the House Speaker Dennis Hastert federal indictment accusing him of violating banking laws by agreeing to pay $3.5 million in hush money to a young boy lover from his high school teaching past, I think once again Alex Jones most represents what I think is at the core of the problem. Listen to that report below. It’s long and full of illustrious contemplations, but mostly my experience says that they are more correct than not. It would be likely there were many inside the Beltway that knew Hastert had a sexual interest in phallic fantasies and like Jerry Sandusky at Penn State. It was overlooked in favor of the collective welfare of the imposition. If Hastert did molest a young man while he was a wrestling coach, he was completely incapable of being Speaker of the House all these years that he was. He did irreparable damage to the government institution of congress because of his double stance—in public he was family first, in private obviously a phallic pursuer. It stands of great concern that those with the most power in our present society are those guilty of something—generally. The gates of power open to those least able to weld it as a strategic objective to get the expectations within reach of the worst society has to offer which is why I lean toward this Alex Jones report with an ear toward seriousness.

It’s a matter of trust. No matter what anybody thinks of Rand Paul’s stance against the NSA phone collection records clause within the Patriot Act, if child molesters and criminals are those in charge of all these government programs, there is no hope of any of those programs working in any capacity.   There are two things wrong with Hastert; he is essentially just as much of a pervert as the scum bag at my home district of Lakota who was caught taking pictures of little children in his class. As a high school teacher Hastert abused his authority in that role to satisfy a sexual predilection. That’s a big problem in and of itself which I have covered extensively. How many sexual predators are in our public schools? I would argue that there are entirely too many. If your kid goes to a public school, there are likely at least one or two teachers that have this problem. It’s an epidemic that should force public schools to shut down for the safety of children. Forget about the bicycle helmets. Parents who are terrified of every elbow scrape their children experience are sending their children to public employees in government schools who are conducting sexual exploits on a mass scale. Most aren’t caught, which is the most terrifying aspect. It took Hastert several decades to get caught and even then the abused kid took a long time to build up the courage to call him during a CNN interview on the air.

The worst of the matter however is that with all the baggage after Newt Gingrich went down in congress after having an affair with a young congressional aide, Hastert was still promoted into the third most powerful position in the world. These were some of the biggest advocates for family rights and conservative values in the nation’s government, and they turned out to be as dirty as dirt as far as moral compasses and ethical behavior. These are people offered to be the best that government can present as its caretakers—which is of course pathetic.

However, if the situation is every bit as diabolical as Alex Jones proposes, which was revealed in public schools like Mason and Lakota in Ohio, then why wouldn’t Capital Hill be every bit as sexually promiscuous? Why wouldn’t senators and congressman have “boy toys” and young enamored females clamoring over their power at their beck in call seducing their logic in favor of contaminated sequencing? Lobbyists can gain leverage over contaminated clients with sacrificed ethics in exchange for prostitutes. K Street is one of the vilest places on earth presently, especially at night—yet prostitutes thrive right out in the open for a reason. Once a member of government has compromised themselves they lose the ability to say no to anybody. They are all too eager to trade sexual release in exchange for their moral decision-making ability, and once they’ve done it, they are toast for life. Nobody will ever believe anything they do. And for those who guard the gates of power, it is now required that there be some knowledge of some impropriety in their candidates before achieving any credible level of power.

For instance I doubt heavily that the anxiety over Rand Paul and Ted Cruz within the senate is due to their Tea Party politics—but rather because they have not been around long enough for the other members to possess “dirt” on. There are not yet stories of sexual impropriety or drug parties where they have been seen with others in a compromised position. When John McCain speaks that Rand Paul needs to learn the rules of the senate, I doubt he’s talking about procedural orthodox. Likely Paul has read and understands the rules of the senate better than McCain. It’s the unspoken rules that McCain is talking about, where members of both parties know of some impropriety, whether its sex with some boy toy, or an affair with a young woman, a night out with prostitutes, drug parties and other types of information that requires hush money. The reason is that the “holier than thou” types are not equal to those who have compromised themselves, so until they become soiled, they can’t be allowed to hold power, otherwise it will raise the bar for everyone else, and that can’t be allowed in Washington. The establishment would crash in on itself. Yet that is the expectation from those who elected those people to office.

When we send children to public school, it does not occur to us that our children will be abused by their teachers. Yet it happens more than anybody cares to admit to. It happens enough that it’s justifiable to shut down all those public schools to protect children from the molesters. The same with members of our republic, when we elect someone it is not enough to send them to Washington and go back to our entertainment trusting that those representatives will not blow away into the winds of corruption. When they do go bad, we need to get rid of them and replace them with somebody better. But before we do that we have to admit to ourselves that the process is broken and weak-minded people are those in charge selfishly hiding their own improprieties and corruption through intimidation toward those who have not yet committed sin.

When guys get together to drink, or go to Vegas, they commit sins together. They bond and share secrets which deepens their relationship. But if they went to Vegas with a guy like me, a person who won’t belch, fart, or get drunk in a strip house, I would be looked at with great suspicion by the majority of other guys who wanted to take part in that behavior. I would and have on many occasions interrupted the type of bonding those imbeciles wanted to exchange with each other—little sins that build friendships on impropriety so that corruption can evolve into a new standard. My behavior sows mistrust because I insist on being “holier than thou.” If I had a nickel for every time that term has been thrown in my direction—I’d have all the money in the world. Yet it would be assumed that such a character would be desired—but its not. The masses want the scum bag, the child molester, the adulterer and the drug addict—they want the imperfect idiot so that the others won’t have to live up to the standard. That is the heart of our problem in our American republic.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert should lose everything he gained from public office—especially the money he made as a lobbyists pulling the strings of government and showing the highest bidders where the bodies are buried in Capital Hill. He didn’t just have an affair with someone outside of his marriage; he molested a student in a class he taught—a boy for God sake!   And he was paying large amounts of hush money to keep it quit. His bad decisions made him a compromised public official and those are the people who are supposed to figure out if we go to war, or if we manage our national debt? No wonder nobody stands up to President Obama and all his executive orders. It’s highly likely the White House has dirt on just about everyone on Capital Hill and this story broke now for a reason. This has been going on for a long time with Hastert, so why break the story now? That is the big question, and is the reason that anybody who has compromised themselves, should remove themselves from office, because they are not capable of leading anybody anywhere. So I’d advise you dear reader to listen to the Jones broadcast and take with it the evidence presented, then look at your own situation with your own representatives and contemplate what you are willing to do. Because good people need to do something, because they are grossly outnumbered by the wicked.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

U.S. Economy Drops 0.7%: The cost of too many rules and regulations

Not surprising the U.S. economy contracted 0.7% in the first quarter of 2015. At least it wasn’t a surprise to those outside of the Beltway, and progressive cities of Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and San Francisco. Everywhere else in the America they saw it coming. Only in the progressive quarters of the nation are the illusions of government tampering not glaringly evident. Unfortunately, most of the surviving newspapers of any merit are still located in those cities, and the reporters there seemed alarmed by the economic retreat into the negative numbers.

No matter where you go in America, there is a big problem. Work ethics are at an all time low. Employees expect higher wages than ever for doing the least amount of work. Yet their competency is dismal. It is actually shocking now when someone does what they are supposed to do in a task, as opposed to doing something incorrectly. Competency is in short supply. But that’s not the worst of it. Government regulations driven by slack-jawed attorneys have crippled American manufacturing methods with stifling rules that prevent common sense in creating productive goods and services. There seems to be this infinite belief that more rules imposed on businesses will not correlate into a lack of productivity. Most companies, even large ones these days will declare that they are late to a schedule because they don’t have the manpower to execute compliance toward all the rules they have to contend with. For most companies compliance to their industry is a majority of their occupational commitment.

Government has imposed itself into virtually every crack of every endeavor in the United States which has destroyed the creative process of producing GDP. The evidence of this trend is actually in our artistic endeavors culturally. After seeing the latest Avengers movie I came away disappointed. It was a pretty good movie, but it was of a quality that was nearly television from the 80s quality—which is saying that it wasn’t new, spectacular, or worthy of a big screen treatment. Sure the special effects were good, but the music, direction and overall plot wasn’t much different from a typical Dukes of Hazard episode. Aside from the new Star Wars movies coming out, the film industry looks to be in desperate trouble. Most of the big movies hitting the silver screen are 1980 retreads, Mad Max, Jurassic Park, Terminator, etc. In the 70s, 80s, and early 90s, a new movie seemed to come out every few weeks, many of which were memorable cultural benchmarks, like the Matrix, Twister, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and so on. But with all the talent and film schools out there, Hollywood is incapable of producing anything new. That is a huge problem.

The music industry is even worse. While at Kings Island recently I couldn’t help but notice that many of the young people were mouthing the words to songs that came out when I was a teenager, and heard while at that very same park. Also, the 80s Store was busy with people of all ages relishing all the great memorable aspects of the 1980s that they remember, or want to remember if they’re too young to have actually been there. The 80s Store features film memorabilia from E.T. to Ghostbusters, which is reportedly another retread coming to screens soon this time with women from Saturday Night Live instead of the original cast. I’ll go see it for fun, but do producers think they can recreate the magic of Ghostbusters just by changing women actors from men and stimulate a new audience? That’s part of the problem. The music they play in that store is a trip down memory lane. Back then every week was a new top 40 song and that went on for the entire decade. It was similar to the 1950 and early 60s where the music industry just hit it out of the ballpark with just about every song released. The art in the songs were about things people care about and reflected a culture of capitalism and freedom that was trying to find its way. There was an underlining sense of optimism in 80s music that was not heard in the late 90s or subsequent decades. The music of today is so hell-bent on political diatribes that the music goes out of fashion within a few months, not even years. Creatively our culture is in trouble, the people in it cannot produce original material, and those that can have been ostracized politically out of those progressive cities to preserve the ideology of those regions and our culture is suffering—clearly.

But those are just the symptoms; the cause is in the heavy-handed regulatory climate of our present government. During the 80s, Reagan gave people the impression that the sky was the limit and that the American dream was obtainable. For a lot of people, it was. For some it wasn’t, and for the undisciplined, they spiraled out of control due to indulgence in excess, whether it was money, drugs, or women. But at least there was a belief that anything could happen in America. The 1950s were similar, it was a post war-time, Americans had a good standard of living and businesses were booming. There was no lack of opportunity for those who wanted it as the world put itself back together after World War II. The music was reflective of the overall culture.

When I came out of Avengers: Age of Ultron movie I told my kids that our culture was headed for real trouble. The movie was average at best, and the filmmakers knew there were high expectations after the first movie did so well. Well, the Avenger movies aren’t a shiny penny anymore. There is a level of expectation that the public has and the franchise is slipping. I first noticed it during the latest Captain America movie, which was good-but not as great as it should have been.   With all the resources available from Disney, Age of Ultron was the best that they could do with a comic series that came out in the 60s and 70s? It should be expected that a movie like Frozen should come out every year instead of the occasional hit that it was. Again, with all the resources at Disney, that’s the best that they can do?

While watching Avengers II, the prescreening stuff was obsessed with progressive causes, such as the new ABC Family channel “Becoming Us,” which features a transgender family dealing with a dad who wants to become a woman. Really? Who thinks that thirty years from now in the Kings Island 2015 store that anybody is going to want to buy a t-shirt or hat with the logo “Becoming Us” on it? Progressives are more interested in being a change agent for an extreme minority rather than giving people what they really want in entertainment. Two or three more people might want to have a sex change operation because of “Becoming Us” but the vast majority of people will just tune out because the subject matter turns them off.

Then there is the ACLU case accusing Hollywood of hiring only men for big projects like Avengers instead of women. They ask questions like “why are all the directors of big blockbuster movies all men?” In fact Melissa Goodman, director of the L.G.B.T Gender and Reproductive Justice Project of the ACLU of Southern California said, “Women directors aren’t working on an even playing field and aren’t getting a fair opportunity to succeed.” Goodman doesn’t see the reality on the wall, she assumes that if a woman is cast in some below the line job or as a director that people will rush to the multiplex to see whatever they put up on the screen and it just doesn’t work that way. Transgender issues are not an issue. Boy George in the 80s had great success and people bought his music. But he wasn’t in everyone’s face about it every 15 minutes reminding people of his rights. He just made decent music that people wanted to hear. These days everything is about fairness and regulating an industry into making things fair. To that effect, in order to make something fair the good must give way to the bad, the strong to the weak, and the brilliant to the stupid, which of course waters down the end product in favor of stylish sentimentality. Yet the net result is a blasé commitment to the final product by a customer base indifferent to the consumer drive to participate.

The same ridiculous laws have migrated out of entertainment and into mainstream occupations. It is more important to government regulators to have a company hire minorities, women, or immigrants than the best people for a job who can make the best product. If companies don’t show an interest in bending to the will of government sentiment, then a government audit of some kind will come in for a shake down forcing the company to either shut down or pay extraordinary fines as a “payoff.” While all this is going on of course the company is less productive and not making whatever it’s supposed to be good at. The energy of the company is on compliance, not productivity.

Then of course comes the most intrusive element of all, taxation. There is a belief that a corporation should be willing to pay infinite amounts of tax just to operate within the United States. Well, that’s not how it works. Companies exists for one reason, to make money. Not to lose money. If they have to pay too much in taxes, they have to cover their margins somehow, and usually that means either relocating their business to a region that has low taxation—or they will just decide to shut down. There is no moral case for paying taxes to support government programs invented by politicians who know nothing about running a business. Companies will either not produce their product, or they’ll leave the country.

So when it’s wondered why there was a 0.7% drop in GDP during the first quarter of 2015, now you know why. Regulations are too intrusive, taxes are too high, and the political climate is more interested in all the wrong social issues than in actually making things people want. That has created a stifling atmosphere that is quickly evident in our arts, which directly translate over into our more productive sectors of society. Regulations and rules kill GDP. They do not enhance productivity, they hurt it, and in American society there are too many rules. That is why there is a retreat in productive output. Government has intruded itself into the affairs of the American people and the net result is less of what makes us good. Why is that so hard for progressives to understand? More rules don’t work in sports, why does anybody think they would work in business?

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Tea Party Goes to Washington: Rand Paul’s Success at battling the “Patriot Act.”

Very seldom does anything done in Washington D.C. ever get turned back to a reset. Rand Paul’s stand over the Section 215 of the Patriot Act signed into law on October 26th by President Bush is one of them. On May 25 2011 President Obama signed the Sunsets Extension Act which was a four-year extension of the three key provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act. The act stands for United and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism. It was created out of panic, some in the Senate actually had wanted the spying program well before the 9/11 terrorist attacks for the data collection it would allow. Like the TSA which also came as a result of the terrorist attack in New York, the Patriot Act was anything but patriotic. It was a chance for government to grow and become more powerful. 9/11 could have been avoided if only people had been doing their jobs ahead of time. Instead of expecting government workers to perform their tasks of security as the FBI and CIA knew about the planned terrorist attack—the government for a whole lot of bad reasons created the Patriot Act to step all over the rights of Americans as defined by the Constitution with a more ominous intrusive government trading safety for security.

Rand Paul entered the Senate as a Kentucky representative in 2011 on the backs of a book called The Tea Party Goes to Washington. He is often the smartest guy in the room as he has had a successful career as a doctor prior to his bout with politics. Like most Tea Party supporters, Paul is not interested in politics as a way to further his social status. He only seems to care for solving problems the way a doctor would want to solve a patient they actually wanted to fix. This makes him a nightmare for the establishment politicians.

In Butler County, Ohio it was declared by establishment Republicans in John Boehner’s district that Tea Party Republicans were about to go extinct after the 2014 elections. The feeling was that the radical Tea Party types who expected politicians to follow the Constitution were going to be shoved out of the orthodox portions of the party and discredited. Once such a thing happened it wouldn’t take long for everyone to lose interest and go away. CLICK HERE to see how that’s going and what types of things really go on behind the scenes to facilitate that fantasy. But now well into 2015 that isn’t happening. The Tea Party still meets every month, and is still holding politicians feet to the fire and within only four years of entering office, Rand Paul is doing the hard work of what needs to happen many, many more times—he’s actually eliminating laws that should have never existed in the first place.

The purpose of this little article is for the novice to understand what Rand Paul is all about. Likely there will be a lot of anxiety toward Paul for the next couple of years as establishment Beltway types will panic at his resiliency, and buoyancy. Rand Paul is one of the few candidates in the GOP field of potential presidents who I want to see as President, so I put this article up to show newcomers what he’s about and how he handles himself. As shown in the videos included he is equally persuasive speaking to liberal pundits and conservatives alike. As a Republican he is able to reach across the aisle and speak with liberals in a way that doesn’t demonize them displaying a leadership tendency that truly frightens lesser politicians who make their livings with slimy activity. Rand Paul’s exclusive reason for running for president is to put those slimy politicians out of business—which means if his name is on the ballot, I will be voting for him.

Rand Paul has promised to eliminate the Department of Education if he is elected president which is another thing that truly must happen soon if America is going to survive into the 2020s. Without something truly dramatic happening in the public education system, out future generations of Americans will be destroyed before they ever reach adulthood, just because the public education system is so bad. The DOE was created in 1979. President Reagan wanted to eliminate it, but didn’t. CLICK HERE TO SEE WHY. Under President Bush it expanded by double under the No Child Left Behind Act and from there kids under labor union influence have been swept away toward socialism at a maddening pace—which has been a byproduct of a centralized federal effort. Education has to be a state’s rights issues and must be decentralized if it is going to survive in any form. So far only Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and probably Scott Walker are able and willing to do anything this controversial. But it has to be done and soon. Make no mistake about that.

Another federal department that Rand Paul has vowed to end is the Department of Commerce. That department has turned out to be a giant make rich scheme for the well-connected and has nothing to do with the expansion of national GDP. It could be completely eliminated without anyone realizing it was gone. For America to survive these are things that must happen. Failure to do so will lead to a slow integration through collapse into United Nations led efforts to mold the world into one big stew. This is certainly the intention of the Clintons, and appears to be the purpose of the Obama Administration. The Bush family is also perpetually headed in that direction as they always turn toward bigger government each time there is pressure placed to do something responsible—whether it’s providing security to the people of the United States or expanding the economy. For most Beltway politicians they rubber stamp more government expansion and head to K-Street for easy money and sinful recreation—no republic can survive under such conditions and poor leadership.

Rand Paul on the other hand is refreshingly intelligent—and a natural leader. All leaders know that their position is not a popularity contest. Most of the time people will hate you for being a leader—that comes with the territory. Rand seems very comfortable with that role, which is another reason he is such a good presidential candidate. The GOP would be crazy not to nominate him for the presidency if it comes down to a choice between some big government slug like John Kasich, or Jeb Bush. I know for a fact that most establishment Republicans want Kasich in my home town because they want corporate welfare—they want to get rich off the government in all the wrong ways that safety net welfare often occupies regarding poor spending and corruption. Paul has stated that he will get rid of corporate welfare before he touches social welfare—which I can agree with.   I want welfare gone for everyone so to allow recipients to become better. If a company gets corporate welfare, they are allowing government to falsely prop them up against competition, which is not how capitalism is supposed to work. It’s cheating and is no different from “deflategate” in the NFL involving the Patriots cheating that has gone on. It doesn’t matter if you win a Superbowl if you cheated to get there. The same in business, a company isn’t really good if it cheats to be profitable. If a better company comes along that can do something better, then the old company should fail and possibly go out of business in favor of the better company. That’s how things are supposed to work in America and Rand Paul understands that.

Undoubtedly many in the Beltway are secretly hoping that something bad happens during this whole PATRIOT Act issue. There are probably loose plans for false flag events to take place just to attempt to hurt Paul’s stance on the government surveillance programs that are in jeopardy. But in reality Rand Paul knows that the entire NSA could be shut down and nobody would really notice. If the United States would stop fumbling the ball in the Middle East either on purpose or out of sheer stupidity, it wouldn’t take long for ISIS to run out of bullets. And if the FBI and CIA would actually talk to each other there wouldn’t be a need for The Department of Homeland Security. That is just another branch of worthless government expansion. I’m sure as I’m writing this there are plans to rattle the nerves of the American people and to make Rand Paul look bad for his steadfast resolve into shrinking government instead of allowing perpetual expansion. But if everyone holds to the line they will discover that most of the debate is strictly rhetoric. Most of government could be eliminated and nobody in the core of America would notice, or care. And that is the game of chicken that Rand Paul is playing, and for which we should all hope he succeeds. This is what it looks like when the Tea Party goes to Washington. And it’s a wonderful thing for Constitutional purists—for which every American should be.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

How to Defeat ISIS: Pay American Soldiers of Fortune

I stated rather emphatically what I thought was behind the ISIS terrorism and the inability of the world’s government to deal with them in yesterday’s article. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. I have no confidence in any government body to deal with many of the contemporary problems of our day. In the United States there are a lot of lawyers who enter politics to enhance their legal profession, but they lack something very important to the management of tax payer resources—actual experience in management. All of them should have at least at some point in the past managed a McDonald’s at some point so that they might develop a basic ability to manage resources—which they obviously lack. Needless to say that if ISIS and any foreign entanglements are to be dealt with, it must come from the private sector. Governments are by their very nature incapable.

With that said I can think of a few times in the past where mercenaries were hired to handle instances of violence. Ross Perot during the late 1970s hired a mercenary to get his employees out of Iran during the communist led hostage crises. The American government was not up to the task, so Perot took it upon himself to finance the effort with his own special forces. The other time was prior to World War II. America had not officially entered the war but Roosevelt wanted to do something to help China fight off Japan. The AVG was set up where mercenary pilots were hired with an unofficial bounty to shoot down the enemy and defend China from invasion without America being officially involved in the activity. Guess what, it worked marvelously well. CLICK HERE FOR MY STORY ON THAT. I propose that the best way to deal with ISIS is to turn to the private sector. There are obviously plenty of gung-ho Americans looking for cash and justice against ISIS. ISIS has declared war on America including the assassination of our president—who even if we don’t like his politics and communist roots—is still our president. It’s unacceptable and many of us take such threats very personal. So ISIS has asked for a good punch in the mouth in return.

For this particular ISIS problem the best strategy would be to funnel money through some corporate sponsor—perhaps a face organization just for the paper trail accounting and offer $100,000 a head for each proven ISIS member turned in to an assessor for review. Before the bounty could be collected proof of ISIS affiliation would have to be made, but once displayed a nice healthy check for $100,000 would be issued to the solider of fortune. For many young warriors up to the task and armed with a nice .300 Winchester Magnum Accuracy International all decked out with the $20,000 goodies, they could become millionaires in a simple afternoon with no problem. It would be easy money for a few weeks and would make many people very rich in the process. It would only take a few weeks for ISIS to evaporate into thin air. The hunting would be easy starting in Mosul then chasing them down into the outlying countryside. The problem would be over before congress could get together and figure out what they’re going to have for lunch.

That leaves the next question, how much would it cost to dispose of $50,000 ISIS scum bags in such a fashion? Well, only about $500 million dollars, which is a bargain considering how much other occupations have cost in the past as shown below.

Estimated War-Related Costs, Iraq and Afghanistan

According to the Center for Defense Information, the estimated cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will reach $1.49 trillion by the end of fiscal year 2013.

  In billions of budgeted dollars
Operation FY 2001+ 2002 FY 20031 FY 20042 FY 20053 FY 2006 FY 2007 FY 2008 FY 2009 FY 2010 FY 2011 FY 2012 FY 2013 Total
Iraq $53.0 $75.9 $85.5 $101.6 $131.2 $142.1 $95.5 $65.9 $45.0 $9.6 $2.9 $808.2
Afghanistan $20.8 14.7 14.5 20.0 19.0 39.2 43.5 59.5 104.9 113.9 105.7 85.6 641.3
Enhanced security $13.0 8.0 3.7 2.1 0.8 0.5 .1 .1 .1 .3 11.24 8.24 48.1
Totals $33.8 $81.2 $94.13 $107.6 $121.4 $170.9 $185.7 $155.1 $171.0 $159.4 $126.5 $96.7 $1,497

Read more: Estimated War-Related Costs, Iraq and Afghanistan http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0933935.html#ixzz3bRfvYi8F

It’s pretty evident that the capitalist approach is far cheaper than state sponsored occupation. It’s not even close. There are plenty of volunteers in America perfectly willing to sign up for that kind of thing including myself. Who doesn’t want to make a year’s worth of wages in a few days? The ISIS terrorists are armed, but they don’t have an infinite supply of ammunition, so they are not very deep on the bench. Their knives won’t do much good against American soldiers of fortune.

So why not do it. It’s not like anybody would have to officially sanction it within the American government. Just get the money funneled to the guys, and don’t prosecute them once they re-enter the United States border. The entire ISIS problem would be gone and the world could return to peace—if that’s really what anybody wanted. It’s been done before and it will be done in the future. It’s being done right now by somebody somewhere, just on a much smaller scale. So hire the money guys to take care of the problem so the American government can have clean hands and deniability. It wouldn’t cost anything significant given the implications of further inaction.

The lesson to the story is an old one, state sponsored efforts like what we typically associate with in war, such as World War II and WWI, Vietnam, Korea—are inefficient ways of dealing with conflict. Loyalty, honor, and sacrifice are ridiculous when associated with service to a collective entity. What works best, and most honestly, is capitalism—making it profitable to win a conflict. That’s when problems get solved, when there is a financial gain to be achieved in resolving an issue. Right now the money is on the financiers of the fear that comes from ISIS, so the conflict is poised to linger for years. Only when it becomes financially viable for individuals to profit from the conflict will the situation end. It is then that governments will no longer feed conflicts from under the table allowing groups like ISIS to flourish that the well of support will dry up and end the sieges seen so prevalent today. Once individuals can profit the financiers of terror will have to hide in the cracks leaving ISIS alone to run for their lives, and the roots of this vast evil will be pulled away from their nourishment. The solution is a no-brainer, so why aren’t we doing it? That is a question for you to ask and answer dear reader. That answer will also prove what I have been saying all along. Governments will never be able to solve such complicated problems like ISIS. But to the private sector using capitalism as wind in its sails, the problem becomes suddenly very easy.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Only 50,000 ISIS Nut Jobs: The strategy of global fear

Before I talk about this whole ISIS situation, as both proof of gross mismanagement from government toward a radical group that fancies world domination, but also the perpetuation of conspiracy with strategic objectives aimed at the United States—I’d ask you dear reader to take some time and watch this Alex Jones broadcast shown below. Jones is a little too emotional for me, and reactive—but he cares about what his group investigates. His Infowars group does a lot of good reporting digging too deeply into things sometimes, but that’s better than the alternative. For instance, in the report below, Alex Jones gets the new Mad Max film wrong. All the men do not die at the end and Fury Road is not a feminist film designed to destroy male leads in motion pictures. But most of the rest of what is reported below is good, and better than what is being offered on the nightly news. Watching this report puts on the table just how much is going on today, which exceeds what most people can or are willing to deal with. It is in this climate that Americans must make decisions about the ISIS terrorist situation in the Middle East.

ISIS continues to terrorize the world with threats while destroying extremely valuable archaeology in the Iraq region essentially unhindered by any reminder of justice. For perspective, the troop numbers for ISIS consist of somewhere between 50,000 hardened radicals with an additional 150,000 boot lickers. That essentially is the size of a crowd at a typical professional football game in America. That’s not very many people—yet the militaries of the world have not been able to stop ISIS in any real way. Why is that? A real concentrated military campaign by Zimbabwe should be able to handle 50,000 nutcases—yet even the United States has not been able to stop their military advancements.

That means the governments of the world are behind the ISIS radicalism and the media involved is in the business of making the Islamic radicals appear to be larger than they really are to spread the theocracy that they are advocating. The reason is to support the Vico cycle for which we are all on, using the chaos of anarchy to advance the world to a new social cycle of theocratic origins for which government control is aligned. A people who easily worship a maniacal deity is likely to also worship the mediators in government who offer keys to the kingdom of the everlasting, which is what government fantasizes is their role in human affairs. Using fear and turmoil to advance a theocracy built on collectivism, the global governments hope to unite under a big tent of United Nations advocacy. ISIS in this case serves two objectives, first it provides a common enemy the world can hate, and two it advances a theocratic notion of human management. By attacking directly the Christian faith, the world might unite under Islamic influence in reaction to the spread of a Middle Eastern caliphate. So nations are sitting on the fence and essentially letting a stadium full of radicals turn the world toward self-destruction.

If the United States wanted to, ISIS could be ended in about a week of truly diligent effort. America has the tools to do so and there are easily enough Americans who would be willing to fly over to the Middle East and engage directly one for one the ISIS radicals. But the government will not get behind the effort because they obviously want the strategic implications of the terrorist organization to manifest to full maturity—which is the end game of a resetting of the Vico cycle.

The situation can be very confusing if taken through the prism of all the news stories hitting Americans at the same time. But even that is by strategic design. By overloading the American people with critical news events, there is no emotional capacity to deal with the ISIS issue—there is no will to unite behind ending the problem so long as it stays far away in the Middle East—while the caliphate around the Mediterranean forms around the collapse of the Greek economy, soiled deals between Turkey and Russia and the European Union holds on for dear life from being sucked down the drain as a failure. Northern Africa is falling toward radical Muslim influence as two of the major dictators from Egypt and Libya have been removed in favor of a subtle communist insurrection led by the Muslim Brotherhood, and we have on our hands a global crisis. All this is happening while China pushes the limits in the South China Sea threatening Japan and American interests. Meanwhile as seen in the Infowars report the same communist insurgents behind the Muslim Brotherhood are making their moves in minority communities in the United States such as in the Cleveland riots challenging regional police forces and pushing for a DOJ controlled national force—essentially nationalizing the police in America as a military unit controlled by the central government. Can you smell what’s cooking in the kitchen dear reader?

There is a lot of money to be made from emerging markets as old strongholds in America and Europe topple and investments made throughout Africa, Russia and China emerge through the current geopolitical turbulence. If money is followed as to who has withdrawn their financial support from those old markets and invested in the new, the instigators behind the ISIS terrorism will begin to be clear. It is then that the answer to the question would be answered if anybody dared to look. But fear of hit squads and being politically ostracized through financial support prevents such inquiries, so a continued insurrection of a stadium full of insurgents will continue to rule the hearts and minds of the world against common sense. There is nothing rational about the entire ISIS problem. And there is nothing religious about its continued perpetuation. It essentially all comes down to money.

For the communists at the heart of all these insurrections they also win by painting the extreme rich as evil capitalists who are instigating all these events from the comfort of their poolside phones. Capitalism will take the blame when it is not capitalism at work behind these wealthy radicals, but the evil brand of cronyism. Wealth under cronyism uses the political process to eliminate competition and protect their investments not through vibrant competition, but by cheating using greasy politicians to run cover in destroying emerging markets to hedge their bets in a lazy way through economic tampering. The villains of our society make billionaires look like the bad guys causing the clueless to clamor to communism for fairness—but what they don’t know is that this was all part of the strategy from the beginning. The entire escapade, the communists behind the riots in Cleveland, the ISIS terrorists, the collapse of the European Union and the transfer of wealth from superpowers to developing countries all point to a singularity of cronyism advocated in a direct way to demonize capitalism and force the youth of the world toward an embrace of communism.

If Americans were allowed to solve the ISIS problem it would quickly. But America is being deliberately held back from resolving the problem through political indecision and slack-jawed cronyism to evoke a reset of the Vico cycle. The end game is a unification of the world behind the theocratic desires of a class of global citizens who want to rule the world. It’s as diabolical of a plot as a typical James Bond film—but in this case it’s real and lacking the beautiful women or cool gadgets of “Q”. So to answer Bill O’Reilly who asked this very question about why America doesn’t just kick the crap out of 50,000 ISIS radicals—it’s because all the facts of the case have been hidden from view and therefore proper assessment of field reporting. The situation is far bigger than a regional ISIS problem, it’s a global chess move toward something else entirely using the pawns of radicalism to advance a theocracy in favor of global domination—and it all starts with 50,000 murderous nut cases hailed by villains as heroes of a New World Order. To that extent, Alex Jones is not overstating the end game. It’s only that such a realization is too painful to accept. But it is a grim reality revealed all too clearly by the inaction of the United States and the world in general, against ISIS.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Thank God for an American Gun Company in Springfield MA: The .500 Magnum, the most powerful production handgun in the world

When I cover for Matt Clark’s radio show on WAAM in Ann Arbor, Michigan on Saturday June 13th I plan to play an old T.G. Sheppard song he did with Clint Eastwood called, “Make My Day.” The song is a country song done after the success of the Dirty Harry film Sudden Impact as a tribute to that classic cop drama featuring the .44 magnum from Smith & Wesson.   The song itself is a fun romp through common sense as seen from behind the trigger of a gun owner. Since I first heard that song shortly after watching Sudden Impact as a very young man, I have been in love with the company of Smith & Wesson. It has always represented to me a classic American company full of patriotism. The factory itself is located in the middle of an extremely liberal part of the country that is heavily dominated by labor union mentality and progressive politics. But Smith & Wesson has maintained itself as a dominant player in the firearms manufacturing world stage from its Springfield, MA factory off Roosevelt Ave for a long time and is a testament to the ingenuity of American resiliency. Firearms and aviation are still global manufacturing fields that are specifically dominated by American methods making the Smith & Wesson factory to me one of the most sentimental acts of patriotism available today.

It was largely that sense of sentimental patriotism that made me want to have the Smith & Wesson .500 Magnum. There was a lot of controversy when S&W released their Model 29 Dirty Harry gun when it was declared then that it was the most powerful handgun in the world by Clint Eastwood himself at the start of Magnum Force. 

  There were other handguns that were more powerful and it became well-known that S&W were overstating the power of their .44 magnum Model 29. Sure it was a powerful gun, but it wasn’t the most powerful. Regardless, Model 29 sales soared throughout the 70s into the early 90s when progressives launched a full-out attack during the Clinton years against guns and their manufactures. Clint Eastwood turned to more serious films and never returned to Dirty Harry after the film the Dead Pool in 1988 leaving the S&W Model 29 hanging a bit in a changing marketplace.

Instead of turning tail and running for history the tenacious engineers at S&W went back to the drawing board looking to officially become the most powerful handgun in the world—this time for real, not just in movie reference. That’s when they came up with the X-frame revolver series which produced the .460 Magnum and the massive .500 Magnum. With that .500 Magnum S&W had officially become the most powerful production handgun in the entire world, and because of the patented X-frame design, it will hold that title for a number of years.

It is for this reason that I had to have one. It wasn’t just to own the most powerful production handgun in the world; it was to reward S&W for standing the test of time, competition, and politics to emerge with such a massive personal firearm which clearly went against the grain of social pressure. I respect S&W immensely for holding firm against the tide of progressivism that surrounds their facility in Massachusetts. In a lot of ways they represent the kind of pressures going on all across the nation and world in general. Instead of backing off and tucking their tale to hide, they went to the drawing board and invented something that was unequivocally the most powerful and dominate handgun around. In a lot of ways it’s a lesson for how we should all handle the pressures of progressivism.

That’s certainly not to say that we should go out and shoot anybody. When I brought the .500 Magnum out for the first time around a lot of seasoned shooters over the Memorial Day weekend, there weren’t too many who wanted to fire it. The sheer size and power of it is extremely intimidating. Most were happy to just look at it in the case I brought it in. I had brought along $200 of ammunition just for that gun, and there still weren’t many who wanted to fire it outside of my son-in-law, and myself. Its one of those things that is a deterrent to improper behavior just in knowing that it exists, and in a lot of ways it represents the resiliency of Smith & Wesson as a company serving as a kind of last stand of classic value in a land of progressive erosion. My brother-in-law shot the gun into a nearby river and when a geyser erupted in the wake of the bullet scattering water in multiple trajectories as though hit by cannon fire, he declared, “Holy shit………..I’m good for life.” That is the kind of punch the Smith & Wesson announced to the world with their determined effort to product Model X revolvers while the rest of the world was going softer, smaller, and more Brady Bill friendly.

The song “Make My Day” embodies that same S&W tenaciousness, and is what most of us feel now that we are backed up against the wall by a progressive infusion into the national media. It’s why I still love that song and the S&W company after all these years—and is why I’m going to use it as an intro to the radio segment I plan to do for that particular half hour. It’s a metaphor for what we all have to do in America and the kind of attitude it takes to get there.

The theme of the song and the reason that out of all the cop dramas that have come out over the last four decades, Dirty Harry is still popular. The power of the .44 magnum from Smith & Wesson gave the Clint Eastwood character the assurance that no matter what kind of firepower he faced from the bad guys, he could out-gun them. Smith & Wesson to assure to their customers that they could always have that same type of personal assurance offered up the .500 Magnum for that very reason. Like the song brings to light, whether it’s a motorcycle gang, a collection of thugs, goons or punks who hide out in the night, Smith & Wesson provides their customers the assurance that they don’t have to be concerned with threats to their personal sanctity. That after all is the key to the American system of government and economics. Groups, no matter what their background whether it is an officially sanctioned government or a group of criminals desire to use fear to control individuals. When someone possesses the most powerful production handgun in the world it buys the assurance that no matter what a group tries to do to inflict fear on individuals, which the owner of such a gun doesn’t have to be afraid of anything. It is when individuals are forced to deal with each other on equal footing that a respectful culture of Americans emerges. Peace through superior firepower in the hands of good people.

Among gun owners it is found some of the best people functioning in the world today. Recently my same son-in-law who shot my new .500 Magnum visited his family in Great Britain who were shocked that he and my daughter had so many guns. In England it was appalling that anybody could own a personal firearm. My kids drove the point home by stating that guns are so prevalent in American culture that they had matching his and her 9mm semi-automatic pistols. That prospect was astonishing to the English family members who were functioning from a totally different culture. It is that kind of mentality that progressives here in America are trying to breed into our culture and currently surround the Smith & Wesson factory in Massachusetts. But the biggest difference between American society and everyone else is really the number of guns available to individuals. With so many guns come secure investments and limited government to abuse their power on helpless individuals. That is the point of the “Make My Day” song; it suggested that Dirty Harry actually looked forward to righting wrongs because he had such a powerful handgun in the .44 magnum. Because he was prepared, he looked forward to using it and didn’t have to live his life apprehensive as to what might come next.

In a lot of ways I have to thank Smith & Wesson for sticking around and fighting it out all these years. They answered much criticism to their product line by offering truly the most powerful production handgun in the world and to reward that tenacity—I bought one. To me it is a marvel of modern engineering achievement that is the backbone of the American system of government. Those who are against that American system are those who want to put the gun manufacturers out of business so that the firearm culture in the United States might abate. But that’s not going to happen, and now that I’ve given myself a taste of such a powerful gun in the .500 Magnum, I have a reiteration of a whole new category of Adam Smith philosophy to dust off and shout to the world. But before I do that I’ll give WAAM listeners a treat to what started it all for me, an old T.G. Sheppard song from a famous Clint Eastwood film that defined more than a cop drama to a Hollywood industry offering a story they thought would come and go without much memory. It was Smith & Wesson who was a silent credit in that film which defined for America a subtle key to its global success. When it comes to American success and self defense—the bigger the better—and because of S&W customers can legitimately get the biggest and best that a human hand can hold defending capitalism with all the self-assurance of Harry Callahan. There’s nothing wrong with that. As it says in the song, “It was Smith & Wesson that taught them a lesson, Go Ahead, Make My Day.” Obtaining my own .500 Magnum not only made my day—it made my century.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Treasures of Brownells: A gift to the American shooter

Even though I felt at the time that I had lived five lifetimes before I ever hit 20 years of age and had some college under my belt along with two yeas of gunsmithing school, that a fresh-faced kid from Southern Ohio was going to struggle financially under that chosen profession.  Customers after all like seasoned veterans for that kind of work and I hadn’t been around the block much in the shooting world—not officially anyway.  So as a young gunsmith in a little shed behind our home, I was getting work—but it wasn’t the type of high-priced work I’d need to care for a growing family while keeping my wife home so that she could care properly for our children.  The other issue was that clients who would give me a shot as such a young face were the type of people who were in trouble with the law and did not want the older, and orthodox Federal Firearms License holders to handle their needs.  I couldn’t bring those types of people around the house with a one and two-year old children running around.  The other issue was that I needed more experience on the craftsmanship end.  So I took my acquired skills learned through gunsmithing and took professional jobs that required frequent measurements of .001 of an inch reading micrometers and calipers so that I’d develop all the hand skills of the gunsmithing trade.  Along the way I’d write books, get more involved with bullwhip work and spend another five lifetimes over the next twenty-five years getting lots, and lots of experience using many of the gunsmithing skills I had to do work for various companies.  Whereas I made the money to take care of my family in lots of unusual ways my love of gunsmithing never really went away. And one of the great memories from my past during the early days of my marriage to my wife before we started a family was the constant books and catalogues from Brownells which populated our home with huge stacks of shooting literature.

My love for America was shaped during my youth by a gradual introduction to Brownells through my gunsmithing school and our frequent trips to Gatlinburg, Tennessee.  I loved the common sense of rural Americans who found the popular Smoky Mountain resort town such a destination of choosing.  And under that culture was a love of guns, and the people at Brownells even more than the NRA loved the business side of firearms to a point that I found it easy to connect to.  They are such a great organization who unselfishly taught so many neat tricks that they preserved in a way I thought greatly beneficial an aspect of American life that I could see vanishing before my eyes.  Only in the gun circles of companies like Brownells was the true nature of American life being preserved in the way the Constitution always intended.  The videos shown here are just a small example of how Brownells approach the business as they teach how to clean and repair a basic single action revolver.  They additionally break down the care of AR-15s and SIGs with the same patient instruction and they do a lot of this for free.  Also on their website is a section that offers schematics for just about every gun in production so that if you need a little sear for some obscure gun you found at a trade show, you can order it by part number and get a replacement.

When I finally bought my .500 magnum recently after many years and miles of contemplation dividing up my busy life, I took a little more time to admire the vast stock that Bass Pro Shop had to provide materials to the shooting sportsman.  I told my wife that having a place like Bass Pro around would have been very helpful in my early days of gunsmithing because there was nothing like that back then.  You had to go to Gatlinburg or some other exotic place to get that type of positive American atmosphere, let alone the unequivocal support.  But I also told her that Bass Pro had good stuff on their shelves, but that they were no Brownells.  That’s when I realized that I hadn’t visited their site since I stopped performing gunsmithing, so I pulled them up on my iPad and reconnected with an old friend.

I was so happy to see that Brownells was still going strong. They still offer their gigantic full color catalogue which was very expensive back in 1989—it must be ungodly today—but they still ship them to their customers.  They offer hundreds of how-to videos on YouTube completely free of charge and have that same American enthusiasm for the shooting profession they have always been known for, which was a relief.  So it didn’t take me long to reconnect with them after two decades.  As foreign as it sounds, a few decades can get away from you if you don’t watch your time carefully.  I am very selfish with my time because I always have so much going on.  Shooting was only a part of my life, so when you get busy with other things like philosophy, politics, legalisms, economics, and raising a family the proper way, months and years fly by like lightning across the sky.  But it’s never too late to come back to an old project which for me began with the purchase of my .500 magnum from Smith and Wesson.

Another thing that came up when I was younger was the stigma of shooting. I certainly felt it during the late 80s into 90s as the Clinton administration looked like it would be successful in banning military style firearms after the Brady Bill.  I didn’t know at the time if the shooting profession itself was going to be banned all together—it looked that way at the time.  I wasn’t sure how long a company like Brownells would be able to continue doing what they were doing.  When it comes to gunsmithing, they are the primary supplier.  They are the backbone to keeping the shooting industry humming along.  As progressive political activists like George Soros attempt to buy up American gun manufacturers to strategically end the supply of guns in America to private residence, it is the many years of commitment to building a client base of gunsmiths all across the United States that will ensure that shooting never dies out in the only free nation on earth—at least free in principle.  So long as there is a Brownells, there is a gunsmith somewhere who can build a gun from scratch.  Gun manufacturers are not necessarily needed.  But gunsmiths are—and because of Brownells, there are still a healthy number of them around who can keep the sport alive.

It’s easy to forget what America was always supposed to be when you watch the nightly news and read from its newspapers—particularly those from New York and Los Angeles.  But America is quite alive and well in the stores of Bass Pro and the pages of Brownells.  Of that later, Brownells is in a class by itself, and if you are a shooter, it would be a good idea to know who and what they are.  They are a tremendous resource for the modern American shooter—which is a unique company specific to the United States.  You won’t find an equivalent company anywhere else in the world.  Sweden can make tables and chairs for their IKEA stores, Germans can make their cars, France can breed women with unshaved armpits, and the Chinese can continue to make the stuff that Americans want to buy at Wal-Mart but there is nothing like a Brownells in Mexico, Brazil or Australia.  They are specific to the culture of Americana that we all know and love and are the backbone of our lifestyle of freedom.

My return back to my roots is the awareness that strategically progressive activists have sought to end businesses like Brownells and its customer base.  After what I’ve learned in all the other aspects of my life which has filled these pages with so much color and candor is that the best way to defeat that strategy is with an unapologetic embrace of the American art of shooting and caring for our guns.  And when it comes to caring for guns, Brownells as a company are the experts.  A look through their catalogue is enough to make a grown man weep.  There has never been a better collection of tools and gadgets anywhere between the covers of a big catalog.  Brownells does everything right and are a treasure from my past that I am happy to see just as strong today as they were then.  Brownells is the blood behind the body of the shooting profession.  They are what helps keep an interest in the NRA and other shooting organizations so robust, because Brownells keeps guns working and passed down from one generation to another constantly building a client base that has not be snuffed out by activists hell-bent on making America into a restricted nation like Europe.  Brownells keeps the gunsmithing profession alive and is the best source out there for keeping those family treasures functioning and robust.  And if you didn’t know about them dear reader, well, now you do.

http://www.brownells.com/

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Bankruptcy of Chicago: I told you so two years ago

Lets see, two years ago when I was talking about the need to control the Lakota levy in my home town of Liberty Township, Ohio I did a warning video shown below where I emphasized voter management to avoid the kind of diabolical situation that takes place on the macro scale in places like Detroit and Chicago. Detroit filed bankruptcy and I said in that video that Chicago was about two years away from the same fate. Of course people thought that I overstated the problem and was speaking as a right-winged pundit dramatizing the situation for political gain. Well, it’s been nearly two years and Chicago is exactly where I said it would be. Here’s the video as it was presented.

Chicago under progressive Obama friend Rahm Emanuel made a deal with the striking teacher’s union a few years back that has now caught up to the city. Municipal bonds within Chicago have been downgraded by Moody’s to a “junk” status which is a nail in the coffin leaving nowhere to run for the third largest city in America filled with progressive policies that have bankrupted it. It is a failed society and has avoided showing that failure with debt spending. America as a nation is on the same path, but the overload hasn’t quite caught up to Washington yet. In Chicago that happened a long time ago, and once the teacher’s union in Chicago had a major strike that Emanuel settled with appeasement it toppled any hope of austerity to recover years of overspending. Public employees pensions are so underfunded that the shortfall is nearly equal six times the annual budget for the entire city. It’s quadruple what it was only a decade ago which works out to $60,000 per Chicago household. Progessives within the city hoped for a bailout from the state. However Governor Bruce Rauner has refused to even consider such an action stating that Illinois has its own problems, and won’t be bailing out Chicago’s runaway public employee costs. So progressives are turning toward the hope of further tax increases and we all know what will happen next. To understand the enormity of this tragic situation watch all the videos included in this article. These problems will soon be at your doorstep as well no matter what part of the country you live in.

The responsible thing is to attack the parasitic nature of public sector workers in our hometowns in an aggressive fashion to avoid the problems that Chicago is currently facing. There is no way out for them, just as the Greeks are learning. Socialism doesn’t work and that is the means of economic mobility progressives utilize and believe in fervently. In communities where they have had their way for years, they have destroyed their economies. In the case of Chicago progressive supporters look around at the vibrant culture that is present, the nice mix of businesses, and the standard of living and believe that they have a progressive utopia. But that utopia was built with debt. It wasn’t legitimately created by value, and there was always an assumption that somebody would bail them out of their troubles because they were too big to fail. That bail out would likely come from the state or the federal government—or at least that’s what progressives believed.

Many feel that my criticisms of the teaching profession are unwarranted and mean-spirited. They assume that because children are involved that unlimited money should be spent on education. However there isn’t a single statistic that shows that all the money spent per pupil anywhere in America on government schooling makes subsequent generations better in any way at all. Public schools are cesspools of liberal driven social concerns more interested with programming children to become future progressives than actually intelligent members of American society. That leaves the entire value of the teaching profession to be categorized as a simple babysitting service for busy parents who may not be liberal, but are too busy to raise their own children and too poor to send their kids to a private school. That is the typical tax and spend voter who supports infinite school levies and teacher unions out-of-control regarding their financial expectations.

Public schools may have value as a baby sitting service, but they don’t have enough value to bankrupt a city, which is what’s happening in Chicago. The public unions in Chicago did not regulate themselves and kept asking for more until they ran out of money. When the money went dry they continued spending in a deficit mode until finally it was determined that they would never be able to recover financially and had their bond rating lowered to a junk status. Moody’s did them a favor by giving them plenty of time to right their ship in Chicago. The numbers were on the table a decade ago. I reported on it two years ago, and now it’s done. Chicago is bankrupt—they just haven’t gone through the formal procedure of it yet.

For years the rest of America who were not progressives were told that their way of life, their steadfast conviction to actually paying for things with cash on hand and saving up for things they didn’t have cash for avoiding debt like the plague, was a backward approach to social living. People like me were told that my cowboy hats and love of tradition were stuck in the past whereas cities in California, New York and specifically the city of Chicago were the way of the future. Of course I never bought it for a moment, because I knew better. The proud supporters of Chicago who advocated all the progressive lifestyles spent way too much time riding the coat tails of Michael Jordan and other athletes while running up bills for their massive progressive society that they could never pay in many lifetimes expecting everything somehow to magically work out in the end. Of course that is a path to destruction.

I live in an affluent area and know a lot of people with financial means. I understand what motivates them and what doesn’t—and higher taxes will guarantee that they leave for places where someone isn’t trying to dig into their pocketbook to steal the money they worked hard to make. My video was a warning to my school district not to follow the way of Detroit and Chicago and to stop the bleeding now before it’s too late. Sure those who want more tax payer money to fund their unrealistic wage expectations will be mad at me, but they aren’t the people who have to pay the bills. Those who control budgets are seldom ever liked and those who manage multiple resources are even less so—but they still have a job to do, and that job is seldom ever popular. But if that job of management is done correctly, people are better off than without it. Without management you get the trouble seen in Chicago. With management, bills get paid and society advances with a vibrant skyline.   Governor Rauner is taking a page out of the Scott Walker book and doing the unpopular task of controlling costs in his state. Walker broke the code with the labor unions up in Wisconsin much to the benefit of millions of people. Illinois really has no choice but to follow the example. As far as investment dollars Chicago is only an hour south of Milwaukee so if investments are to be made in the area and taxes are too high because of out-of-control spending, then those investments will go to areas where financial management of resources is occurring, instead of the bottomless pit that is currently sucking in the famous windy city voraciously day by day.

Never let it be said that I didn’t tell everybody about what was going to happen in Chicago. And I wasn’t the only one. It should also be noted that when I put something up here for analysis, no matter how crazy it might seem at the time, that eventually time will prove it correct. Also, I have an extremely long memory, and I will bring it up in the future. The Chicago tragedy hasn’t been heavily covered on the mainstream news even though it is clearly one of the biggest tragedies in America at the moment. The liberal driven media really can’t deal with the reality of one of their treasured cities failing in such an epic way. But it is, and I’m making sure that everyone knows about it, and that the evidence was fairly easy to see on the horizon. So when it comes to other things that I am saying now—please listen. I don’t say all these things for my health. Because if I feel strongly enough to put something in print, it’s because there’s something to it.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.