Tag: education funding

Ayn Rand’s 1961 Capitalist and Communist Warning: Why Apple is successful and everyone else copies

The Ayn Rand Institute recently posted the below video from 1961 by Ayn Rand herself about capitalism and communism. At the time there was a lot of debate about which was better for society. The political class and intelligentsia decided they liked communism whereas the American people still in love with their John Wayne westerns and old-fashioned ideas of westward expansion loved their capitalism. Democrats and labor unions in a partnership with each other decided that they would avoid the name of communism in much the same way that Fidel Castro did during the period that he was trying to convince Cuba to turn toward Marxism by denying that his proposed dictatorship was a party of communists. Of course we know by history that it was a complete lie, just as history will show that in America public schools, colleges, and the federal government itself has fully embraced communism all along—and sought to teach children those “communal” concepts from before even kindergarten. Visit any daycare facility and you will see communism being taught to 3 and 4 year olds in great abundance. In 1961 Ayn Rand was despondent as to how the great America could even conceive of making the mistakes she had just escaped from in her mother Russia. So she made the below recording to the Presidents Club of the American Management Association to contemplate why.

Speaking of management associations and the innovations available to America it is an aspect to my life that I know first hand. I came to know Ayn Rand and the ARI work because I share with them very similar ideals about how business should be conducted and why capitalism is such a vastly superior mechanism in any global marketplace. I never read Ayn Rand until just a few years ago, yet I lived my life nearly in parallel with her character Howard Roark from the great novel The Fountainhead. When I finally did read it I wondered how I had traveled through life for over 40 years without running across it—and once I did I understood completely the intentions of the novel.

For me the most powerful part of the book was when Roark refused to be a member of the architectural board for the World’s Fair exhibit because of his strict personal revulsion toward collectivism. I too have been invited and had to decline many such associations and it has cost me likely millions in so doing. For thirty years I have been given many, many, many opportunities to do just as what was offered to Roark in The Fountainhead and I declined for the same reasons so to keep my own integrity intact. I had never heard of anybody doing the things I had been doing and taking the social positions I had until I read The Fountainhead, which was really the first time I had a measure that I was actually right in my instincts—and it was good to hear Ayn Rand from beyond the grave tell me she understood.

I had for years been struggling with the communism so present in American business—everything from Six Sigma concepts to Jack Welch management methods. I was sent to many classes over a great deal of time and on day one I lost interest because essentially what they were teaching was classic communism—not capitalism. It was no wonder that companies struggled with profits and innovation and I had no desire to learn such a stupid thing. I often refer to my years at Cincinnati Milacron as one of those pinnacle moments of understanding. I was sent to a Lean Manufacturing seminar as a hand-picked bright spot in their future only to discover that the company was dying on the first day of class. I lost interest in that company once I realized that they were has-beens and would soon go out of business more or less—which of course they did. My views at the time I couldn’t articulate against the current because everyone essentially thought I was nuts—since I was the lone voice against “consensus” and other focus group derivatives. I knew from experience that I wanted to maintain my individuality because it was within that element that true innovation in thought was brought forth.

I still run into the same opposition—actually every day. But I now have a track record to beat over people’s heads which quiets them. When I was in my 20s and 30s everyone just thought I’d grow out of such thoughts of independence—but instead I just got worse over time the more I saw that my methods worked as opposed to other studies. During the 90s I likely read every management book there was in Barnes and Nobel over a ten-year period, and most of them were so wrong, that they might as well be the equivalent to the latest “quick diet” fad because the methods were built around the same mysticism. Most corporations, and most businesses function like a communist dictatorship which quickly saps the strength of an organization of its most valuable resource—the individuals who actually work for the institution. It isn’t long that a company dies on the vine once a few decades of communist dictatorship ruins them for life. Cincinnati Milacron died in this fashion—as did General Motors. The later was only saved by government bail-outs.

Banking institutions, corporations, political structures—everywhere that there is a hierarchy of a few nameplate administrators who have power over others just by title, communism is found to be at the core philosophy of the leaders within the institution. Many of those tuning in to listen to Ayn Ran only cared about what she had to say about profit—not about the means of obtaining it. Most American businesses in 1961 were already infiltrated with communist ideals through their education institutions. They were already thinking in the wrong manner and were mapping out their own personal destructions even as the leaders built their careers and retirement pensions. Those same individuals might have been paid good money for their leadership—but what they often left in their wake was a declining business, not a flourishing one. I simply refused to play along—and over time it has benefited me and many others because when fresh ideals are needed, they are available because I have not destroyed the means of obtaining them.

As Ayn Rand said, it wasn’t communism that proved to be superior to capitalism. It was that in America capitalism committed suicide because businessmen and women discovered that to be good at capitalism they actually had to be good people to the very core of their being and could not have their egos uselessly massaged by corporate structure. The ability to dictate the lives of others because they held power over their employees’ financial purse strings proved too tempting and they fell in love with the power of communism—the ability to be the center of control of all things distributed to others according to their need. For men, the best way to test this morality is in placing a beautiful young secretary outside of their offices. If they contemplate using their power and influence to bed her—they are not moral enough men for capitalism. For women, if they use their power and position to decorate themselves with excessive sign stimuli and tales of oversea travel not out of necessity—but grandeur for the sake of it—as if to exemplify that they hold a higher title than others and therefore hold the fate of so many in their hands—then they are not moral enough for capitalism and will become seduced by the profiteer communism eventually. Once they do, you can hear the term, “team” uttered from their mouths more and more often as they are always on the search for “communal” exercises intended to achieve consensus. A typical episode of The Office is a good place to start to see this withering, pathetic diatribe of failure manifested through comic relief.

As I write this article my wife and I just bought iPhone 6 mobile devices—which to me is one of the most innovative items on planet earth presently. The company itself is nearly at a $1 trillion market cap valuation, and they’ve done it their way. They are very much as a company the way Howard Roarke conducted his business—vastly independent of other companies. They make the market come to them instead of forming themselves to the market. Many analysts college trained to think like nice little communists wonder why the market evaluation of Apple isn’t already over $1.26 trillion—after all it could be. But Apple does things their way for their own reasons and they are driving the market according to their creative input as a company driven by individuals. Steve Jobs after all was a very informal businessman who didn’t have a college degree, and was actually fired from the company he created. But in the end it was Jobs who made Apple what it is and paved the way for creative minds through an excessive commitment to a capitalism loving culture that made Apple such a successful company. Jobs was one of the first to introduce casual wear to the business place just to break down the top down communist culture of rigid dress codes and oppressive company reminders that the employees served the institution—not the other way around. What Jobs did at Apple he was able to perform because he wasn’t taught in college to hate it capitalism—but to use it to be a creative human being. He was essentially a modern real-life Howard Roarke.

Apple isn’t the only company out there who understands that communism has no place in American business. There are others, but they are definitely on the fringe. I am one of those proud fringe people and I know of several others because like-minded people tend to know each other. But what Ayn Rand said in her lecture to the Presidents Club of the American Management Association was completely accurate. It’s not that communism is superior, or had even won. Communism has seeped into our culture as a profiteer while those who were supposed to protect capitalism were too busy thinking about how powerful they are over their employees, or in banging their secretaries. Instead of conducting themselves in a moral way, they have instead turned toward Apple and tried to copy everything about the company hoping that they will strike gold in the same manner. But they can dress in jeans and follow other similar attributes of Apple, but if they don’t develop a creative—capitalist environment for their employees to prosper in—they will fail leaving the default mode of operation to the mindless communists who will sweep in to save the day with bail-outs, focus groups and the constant reminder that institutions are all about “consensus” building. But they were, and will always be wrong. Successful companies are built by individuals for the sake of creative enterprise and it is there that capitalism shines best and brightest—and for the most people’s benefit. It is what’s missing from our present culture and why everything taught counter to that basic ideal is a waste of time.  American business knows how to get there, but they are not willing to act morally to achieve it—which is why Ayn Rand in 1961 was so baffled by the American approach to the long-standing debate. There just weren’t enough defenders of capitalism out there because too many executives were staring at the boobies of their secretaries—instead of on the next great idea and how to free the minds of mankind to unleash the power of capitalism and the ideals that spring forth from such a culture.

Rich Hoffman

CLIIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

 

The Control of Net Neutrality: Third Way economics reinvented

One of the great failures of the human condition is the personal desire to control other people through manipulation, social titles, and just sheer domination. Anyone who has worked in an environment where other people were constantly in interaction, they have witnessed this desire for control over others in all its dysfunction. Control is essentially the primary reason for the governments’ desire for gun control over its population. It is also the primary reason Obama through the FCC wants control of the internet through Net Neutrality. The control desired isn’t anything needed, but is only to satisfy the egos of bureaucrats and their lust to have the kind of control over others that they can’t get in their personal lives. If the root cause of the human desire for control is analyzed in most situations it will be found nearly 100% of the time that those who desire control over others most are those least secure about how to guide their own lives from moment to moment.

Often control is disguised to be seen as a helpful measure. An insecure parent might desire to control the finances of their children so to keep them close—so not to leave them vulnerable to social judgment which might otherwise be noticed. A boss might desire to control an employee they know is superior to them by crafting mundane procedures to wear down the challenging individual in hopes that the tasks will hone down ambition so corporate superiors might not notice. And the government at all levels–from the local zoning board all the way up to President of the United States can’t resist controlling other people through rules and regulations. For the political employee it is difficult to resist when power is confiscated through government mechanisms and provided to the desk of a bureaucrat the means to sort through and re-distribute the fruits of productivity to those they deem worthy. For the zoning administrator the rich land owner who wants to build a new garage will have to pay more and grease many more wheels to get approval than the hot young blond who wants to build a deck to sun bath upon. When the rights of others must be filtered through some government bureaucrat abuse through control is a common occurrence.

It is because of this human frailty desiring control over others that economies struggle and do not reach their full potential. It is also why there is much resistance to laissez-faire capitalism as opposed to socialism, communism, or some mixture of those ideas, especially by the political left. If the mind of those who call themselves democrats is analyzed correctly, it will be discovered that deep down inside they typically have serious personal control insecurities—which is why they are Democrats to begin with. Those who lean liberal tend to be insecure with themselves and desire to use re-distribution of resources through politics as a means to inflate their personal power over others. This was never more apparent than in the 1990s when then President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair attempted to hide their human frailties behind economic policies that pretended to support capitalism, only with a new spin on the type of socialism that control addicts desire most. They called it “The Third Way.”

In politics, the Third Way is a position that tries to reconcile right-wing and left-wing politics by advocating a varying synthesis of right-wing economic and left-wing social policies.[1][2] The Third Way was created as a serious re-evaluation of political policies within various centre-left progressive movements in response to international doubt regarding the economic viability of the state; economic interventionist policies that had previously been popularized by Keynesianism and contrasted with the corresponding rise of popularity for economic liberalism and the New Right.[3] The Third Way is promoted by some social democratic and social liberal movements.[4]

Major Third Way social democratic proponent Tony Blair claimed that the socialism he advocated was different from traditional conceptions of socialism. Blair said “My kind of socialism is a set of values based around notions of social justice … Socialism as a rigid form of economic determinism has ended, and rightly”.[5] Blair referred to it as “social-ism” that involves politics that recognized individuals as socially interdependent, and advocated social justice, social cohesion, equal worth of each citizen, and equal opportunity.[6] Third Way social democratic theorist Anthony Giddens has said that the Third Way rejects the traditional conception of socialism, and instead accepts the conception of socialism as conceived of by Anthony Crosland as an ethical doctrine that views social democratic governments as having achieved a viable ethical socialism by removing the unjust elements of capitalism by providing social welfare and other policies, and that contemporary socialism has outgrown the Marxian claim for the need of the abolition of capitalism.[7] Blair in 2009 publicly declared support for a “new capitalism”.[8]

It supports the pursuit of greater egalitarianism in society through action to increase the distribution of skills, capacities, and productive endowments, while rejecting income redistribution as the means to achieve this.[9] It emphasizes commitment to balanced budgets, providing equal opportunity combined with an emphasis on personal responsibility, decentralization of government power to the lowest level possible, encouragement of public-private partnerships, improving labour supply, investment in human development, protection of social capital, and protection of the environment.[10]

The Third Way has been criticized[11] by some conservatives and libertarians who advocate laissez-faire capitalism.[12] It has also been heavily criticized by many social democrats, democratic socialists and communists in particular as a betrayal of left-wing values.[13][14][15] Specific definitions of Third Way policies may differ between Europe and America.

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

In other words, the Third Way is identical to the corporate boss who is technically incompetent who steals the ideas of a superior minded employee so to impress their bosses when performance reviews are requested to drive up job security. Government has recognized that socialism and communism tend to rob people of initiative, so they give the illusion of capitalism so that the work excess produced can then be stolen and re-distributed to their political supporters to keep them in power. So essentially the Third Way is socialism without the title designed to hide the intentions toward control. It would be equivalent to the jealous husband who won’t let his wife drive a car under abusive circumstances—afraid she might find a better lover—by telling her that driving is dangerous and that he loves her so much that he doesn’t want her to get hurt. That is the essence of the Third Way economy patterns so prevalent today, introduced by progressives like Bill Clinton and heavily supported by open socialists like Barack Obama.

The point of this article is to illustrate what is really going on behind Net Neutrality. Under the current policy of Internet regulation and creativity, it is essentially a model of laissez-faire capitalism. Products are bought and sold rapidly in great number because there is an incentive to make money—so a very diverse number of products are available to consumers at a wide range of prices driven by competition. Government regulation hardly exists on the Internet and this has allowed a market sector to flourish—much the way the economy in America did during the 1920s, and 1980s under presidents Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan.   Communists and socialists however have had their presidents elected in most of the other periods and the result has been lackluster economic growth—except for the advent of the Internet. At the heart of the desire for Net Neutrality is the desire to control the economy and the people who make it up.

There is no problem with the Internet, there is no unfairness. Everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed or fail on the Internet because of its limitless creative options. It has regulated itself through competition the way laissez-faire capitalism tends to anywhere it is utilized without controls imposed upon it by weak-willed personalities. Net Neutrality is all about control over others. That need for control is built on inner insecurities by lesser individuals who want to appear as equal or even superior to their betters. With Net Neutrality weak people who know they can’t compete in life need the protection of government so that they can feel equal to everyone else. Under open market capitalism, they can’t, so they must sabotage the successful so that they can feel equal. That is what is called “social justice.”

Net Neutrality is all about control and insecurity. It’s about a government that is useless trying to make itself relevant with “social justice” by stealing from the productive and giving to the lazy. It is just another version of the Third Way. It’s a scam—just like most things in government are. It’s an attack on laissez-faire capitalism. It’s all about control from inferior minds over superior ones in the only way that such an arrangement can occur—through manipulation, emotion, and a promise of security from illusionary concerns. Net Neutrality is a false argument against freedom by a lying government for the sole purpose of convincing the strong to give up their rights to the weak so that social justice through the Third Way of compromise can occur—which is nothing more than a way to hide the inadequacies of failed personalities from the realities they’d otherwise make for themselves.

 

Rich Hoffman

CLIIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

 

Pigman Fights Radical Islam: Want to strike back at ISIS–start with Bosch Fawstin’s creation

 After a friend of mine read my latest Cliffhanger installment they informed me of the comparison to a character named Pigman—which at first I thought was an insult. These are interesting days for the intersection of comics and the “clash of civilizations” indeed. The real-life adventures of a former al-Qaeda militant has become a popular comic book in Indonesia – the most populous Muslim nation in the world – chronicling his transformation from enemy to ally in the fight against terrorism. DC Comics, the home of Batman, sent the classic superhero to Paris and replaced sidekick Robin with a French Algerian Muslim known as Nightrunner. “The 99,” is a comic book creation out of the Middle East featuring 99 superheroes, each representing a different aspect of Islamic culture. “The 99” has received the blessing of President Obama and is working with other DC comic heroes as well as becoming an animated TV series. So there is a lot of literary and creative propaganda out there representing many of the real life tensions percolating under the surface of superficial reality.

Then there’s Pigman, the jihadists’ nemesis and the protagonist of Bosch Fawstin’s latest graphic novel “The Infidel,” a story of Muslim twin brothers whose lives veer in polar opposite directions in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. “The Infidel” echoes Fawstin’s own journey from his Albanian Muslim beginnings, to apostate and Ayn Rand devotee—which is quite a swing in reality.

Fawstin is a cartoonist who scored an Eisner Award nomination – the comics industry equivalent of an Oscar nod – for his debut graphic novel, “Table For One.” He’s also a FrontPage contributing artist and the author/illustrator of ProPIGanda: Drawing the Line Against Jihad, a collection of images and essays that serve as a companion piece to “The Infidel.”

http://fawstin.blogspot.com/2012/04/who-cares-about-islam.html

http://fawstin.blogspot.com/2009/03/propiganda-drawing-line-against-jihad.html

When I first looked up Pigman I thought it was a reference to the 1968 novel—and I couldn’t see how that would be applicable to my Cliffhanger character. This same friend for quite a while has been uttering that Cliffhanger should be a graphic novel, but my argument has been that I need the literary structure to tell my story. A picture is not always worth a thousand words if each of your words represents a thousand ideals. So a well written novel or literary story still has a power that I don’t think graphic novels and even movies can fully utilize. When the focus on an image is the premier concern—something usually gets lost in the translation as a compromise. In literature compromise isn’t needed, and readers are free to paint their own pictures in their minds. However, that’s not to say that is the case with Pigman.

In a time such as we live in now where any language against jihadist activity is considered radical and an invitation to personal destruction—I have to admire Bosch Fawstin for having the testicular fortitude to take the approach he has. He’s talented enough to work for any major comic house, but he has taken the independent path and built a character that is opposed to the political structure currently in place. In that respect he and I are in the same situation. He knows that any work he does for the industry will have to come from himself—because nobody is going to hire him due to his strong beliefs now that he’s shown them in the Pigman character.

The crime that Fawstin has committed which orthodox media and politics have deemed so terrifying—is that he clearly has identified the jihadist activity from Muslim religion as a vile evil and he doesn’t stray away from the designation. In a world where everyone seems indecisive on Islamic radicalism—especially in a creative capacity, Fawstin has drawn a clear line in the sand for all his readers to observe. Islam based on his experience with the Koran is evil and he uses his character of Pigman to become the worst nightmare of the jihadists inflicting terror upon humanity. For that reason, I LOVE PIGMAN!

So I can see why my friend drew such a parallel between Pigman and Cliffhanger. Fawstin and I are doing similar things for similar reasons. It is up to creative people like us to see evil where it is hiding and root it out through our mechanisms so it is easy for others to see. That is clearly what Pigman is all about. For a change there is a superhero for those in the current freedom movement doing the kind of work that might not be appreciated for another half century. It might not be readily acceptable in our current mainstream culture, but 50 years from now I have a strong feeling that Fawstin will become a cult classic and will go a long way into shaping the kind of culture that young people will be looking for in the aftermath of our current tribulations.

Traditional comic heroes like Batman, Superman and many of the others have had artists handling them over the last couple of years steering them in a progressive direction. Superman a few years ago gave up his American citizenship to fight for the United Nations, and of course Batman had the little Muslim guy Nightrunner as a viable—more global sidekick in an effort to push the cape crusader into a wider market. The Green Lantern re-launched as a gay hero—attempting to take such radical ideas into the mainstream. So it is certainly worthy for a talented guy like Fawstin to make Pigman as a conservative argument against the progressive tide and to let history determine the victor. In the end, the trend will show that the progressive attempts will fail, because generally people don’t respect those types of approaches. Most people by default are more comfortable with conservative ideals when they can get them, because society in general when stripped away from political motivations is right of center in value. So it is likely that Pigman will have a longer shelf life than someone like The Green Lantern or even Superman if that United Nations crime fighter trend continues away from the traditional, truth, justice, and American way approach. Pigman is not about political correctness—which comics have traditionally stood against. When comics start pandering to the political establishment, they are suddenly, “uncool.” And they won’t last when there is competition like Pigman out there that more appropriately articulates the concerns of modern audiences.

After watching the severed heads, and brutal murders of late from the ISIS insurgents in the Middle East and how weak Obama’s political approach has been in reaction, I know I personally want to see someone punished for the evil inflicted. We aren’t getting that satisfaction in reality, but in our minds, at least we are not broken as a people. Bosch Fawstin is proof that the minds of Americans are not yet destroyed by the insurgent application of terror from continued social stress and political policy directly applied through mainstream culture. Comics live and breathe beyond the mainstream and the more orthodox they become—such as in the latest movie adaptations, the more need there is for characters like Bosch Fawstin’s Pigman. So I consider it a privilege to receive such a comparison. It’s a tough fight out there—and it is good to see another valiant character taking care of a market sector that is desperately in need of a strong opinion. And Bosh Fawstin is not short on opinion—which is the greatest gift a comic book artist can provide to the world.

Rich Hoffman

Visit Cliffhanger Research and Development

Latté Sipping Prostitutes: Tackling tough subjects in the latest Cliffhanger installment

As much as women think they have made great gains in the world of voting and the workplace, women are still used and abused terribly under the flag of collectivism. They are expected to act in unison—as a collective group and often behave in such a fashion making them a serious barrier to logic when hard decisions have to be made. It is probably one of the hardest things to write about in regard to correcting aspects of politics and philosophy plunging our society into the current quandaries that we find ourselves in—but if proper correction of modern problems are to have any hope—this problem must be identified and dealt with so that civilization can fix them. That is why the next chapter of my Cliffhanger story The Curse of Fort Seven Mile deals exclusively with this problem. Here is the description of the chapter from the book as it appears on Amazon.com.image

A school board president, a chamber of commerce CEO, a teacher’s union president and a wealthy socialite plan the demise of Fort Seven Mile’s new mayor after a brutal attack by Cliffhanger upon the police force. A sinister plan is hatched during their weekly latté gatherings where the four women routinely plan the manner of politics around their community along with their fantasies of sadomasochism, gossip, and social treachery.

Their grabs for power escalate as they organize a union protest at the Mayor’s home in a hope to diminish public approval of the beautiful Misty Finnegan and draw out the bandit Cliffhanger with a trap only the crafty mind of Patty Latrine could fathom. What they discover is a secret nobody could even comprehend leading to events that will change life as they know it forever.

 

Long time readers here will recognize the title as a joke that has evolved over several years. Specifically, I have used such a term often to describe the type of people who illogically vote for continuous tax increases not from individual thought processes, but from the pressure of their peers. Once it became obvious to me that women were being used by other women to promote obvious trends in politics that were disastrous to our society it was clear that the tendency needed to be called out so that it could be recognized and corrected. Men have been slow to join me in pointing out such a tragedy because they have been pinned into a corner with a check-mate in regards to social conduct. If they support such viewpoints as I have proposed, then they are cast about as Neanderthals and sex is cut from their lives with surgical precision.

This has always been by design, progressive groups knew that this would be the biological component to their movement and they sought to exploit it behind the flag of feminism. Like in the story described above, every community has some variation of the characters mentioned. Sometimes there are men included, but the basis of most society presently conducts their schemes against the voting population in much the way that the ladies in Latté Sipping Prostitutes do. And usually the groupings are broke down along similar political lines. The evidence can be seen at various Chamber of Commerce events and charity fund-raising efforts. Always the intentions from a distance are good—but the subtle underbelly of the strategy is often sinister—and deeply complicated. To hide that complicated web of motivations men have been urged to go along to get along and turn off their brains.  It is likely one of the biggest modern problems that is facing our culture which nobody talks about. But they should.

Even though I have written about this problem extensively and provided vast amounts of scientific data to support the conclusions and discussed it over hours of talk radio—the best format to explore the problem is within fiction. It is within the context of a story that the various psychological layers of the forces at work can be properly explored in all their connecting fashions. The primary antagonist in this particular story Latté Sipping Prostitutes is Patty Latrine—the wealthy socialite. Every community has some version of her and she is found among all the various groups herding women along like sheep toward a destiny not always to their liking.

The main protagonist in Latté Sipping Prostitutes even though she doesn’t have a line of dialogue but is only seen and talked about is the new Mayor of Fort Seven Mile, Misty Finnegan. As a woman she is truly a liberated free-thinker who is independent to such an extent that she lives beyond the control of Patty Latrine which makes the socialite feel very insecure—an emotion that she’s not used to experiencing. What has the women of her group so up in arms over the new mayor is that Misty is home schooling her children which means she doesn’t blindly support the public education system that Patty uses to advance her social strategies. To make matters worse Misty is a beautiful woman and the socialites under Patty’s leadership find the mayor to be a threat to their own power of seduction—that ability to perk out a lip or flirt with men in a way to get what they want when they want it. (Most human communication is non-verbal and women are great at it). Misty Finnegan’s presence as a powerful political figure of a truly strong and independent woman creates major problems for Patty Latrine and her minions of latte sipping despots who will do almost anything to stay in Patty’s good graces.

So what do the Patty Latrines of the world have that other women want—and why would women as a collective group even be prone to her strategies? Well, that is part of the problem and I’ve seen it firsthand—which I write about extensively in this latest Cliffhanger installment. Women like to have places to wear the jewelry and cloths they pick up here and there either from men, or from a shopping spree and people like Patty give them someplace to wear them. It’s just another form of control. If men committed sins in the past by not allowing their wives to drive a car, or getting them continuously pregnant to keep them from running off with another man, women like Patty Latrine use social status to do the same, by controlling the flow of politics at a communal level. If you don’t do and say as Patty does, an invite to her next charity dinner won’t come and nobody wants to be cast out of such events when everyone will be there!

It used to be the good ol’ boys network that was the vile centerpiece of corruption and discontent in every community, but that is no longer the case. Now it is women and they are every bit as bad as the men were. But they have the social mask of goodness to hide that evil behind built by progressive strategy over time to suppress judgment against their actions. What both groups did was wrong acting as a collective unit. Individually, if spoken to, they would say one thing, but within the peer groups of their Central Committees and social networks is a “team” approach which often requires them to act against their best judgment. That is where the trouble starts and the evil driven by a lack of personal authenticity creeps into the picture to bring with it corruption—because once a human being makes such a decision, they are willing to compromise on everything and they lose their integrity.

My work of course in The Curse of Fort Seven Mile is intended to be thought-provoking. For that reason I am particularly proud of Latté Sipping Prostitutes because it is such difficult subject matter to properly articulate. I don’t see many creative types in literature or film attempting to grapple with this problem—so it is advancing unhindered throughout our social structure without analysis, but, not in this new installment of Cliffhanger. After completing the story I knew that I had pulled together some difficult elements and readers would benefit from the result. That result might be controversial but it’s honest and leads to an exciting and unique chapter to the Cliffhanger story arc. A chapter that’s a lot of fun, but is brutally honest in a way that I’m known for; Latté Sipping Prostitutes is one of those stories that has a lot going on but is all too revealing. It might ruffle some feathers but to my intention, that is the difference between good literature and slack-jawed news articles.

The new installment can be found at:

http://www.amazon.com/Latte-Sipping-Prostitutes-Curse-Seven-ebook/dp/B00TBW2D12/

CLIIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Rich Hoffman

Visit Cliffhanger Research and Development

Fighting Off Vico: The answers are at Cliffhanger Research and Development

It is obvious that the world is losing it’s understanding of the root cause behind innovation as isolated factions are continuing to perform such miracles, but society at large is lost as to what to do about them. As the current of world civilization desires to move toward the Vico model of four stages where presently anarchy is giving way toward theocracy it is clearly a mistake to my eyes. So I have decided to do something about it which begins with philosophy and ends with the preservation and continuation of innovation. (CLICK HERE TO REVIEW THE VICO METHOD)

One of the greatest restrictions to modern innovation is the diabolical menace of failed philosophies.  Without a correct way of thinking, new ideas created by human minds cannot ignite into their true potential.  So I am resurrecting an idea from my past—something I started a long time ago which can be seen at the new website of Cliffhanger Research and Development below. At Cliffhanger Research and Development the products produced must then not be technology itself, but in correcting the failed philosophies that are currently restricting the proper development of innovation.  So contained within the written works produced by Cliffhanger Research and Development are examples of real technology and historical records that are true – but are suppressed behind a veil of static social systems intent to carry civilization through democratic anxieties backwards instead of toward innovation.  The plot lines of these works are never-the-less exciting, and action oriented, but the underlining expectation is to make readers aware of these emerging technologies and put them into a context that can be understood as a whole instead of fragmented efforts by well-intentioned inventors.  Some of the topics explored are:

Regenerative Medicine  Cures for Cancer

Self Navigating Flying Personal Vehicles

Unexplored Aspects of Mankind’s Origins as a Species

Anti Gravity Technology

Benefits of Civilian Space Exploration

Alternative Fuel Sources – Thorium Energy 

The conflict in such stories is always the struggle to introduce a new dynamic force of such emerging technologies against the static patterns of conformist orthodox.  To put it more conventionally, the desire to carry society toward the merry-go-round of the Vico method which is a case of continuously rising and falling civilizations that are only measured in history books—is a cycle that needs to be broken with thought so that action can take place. To fight such battles, new heroes are needed which are featured in the collected works by Cliffhanger Research and Development seen at the link below.

 CLIIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

For instance, in my novel Tail of the Dragon, the content of the story is one of emotional conflict, car chases, legal entanglements and non stop action. But it is clear that the star of the show is technology—in this case a 700 HP engine that runs on vegetable oil. During the car chase the police confiscate all the fuel stations along the chase route leaving the fleeing bandits with no place to refuel so that eventually they will run out of gas since the police and military were unable to stop the armored car being used in the chase. So the unusual feature of this particular car which the protagonists drive allows the car to be refueled at fast food restaurants with used fryer oil making for some interesting chapters. As the author my point in such stories is not to just introduce a plot device that had never been used before, but to make readers aware that such a technology exists so that action can be taken to embrace it when they are told by the governments of the world that there are limited options to their rising gas prices at the fuel pump. Or those politicians who wish to attack “big oil” with the new religion of environmental concerns with the subtly hidden desire to carry society back to a theocratic culture driven by earth worship can be challenged with options not before considered. The United States produces a lot of that vegetable oil as waste from its fast food industry and if the waste were captured, it would certainly have an impact on fuel costs and the dependence on foreign markets. The Tail of the Dragon story is meant to bring these unique technologies to the minds of readers in ways they wouldn’t have otherwise considered.

In the Cliffhanger series The Curse of Fort Seven Mile, I am presenting a large contingent of very controversial proposals within the context of a classic action adventure story. My first love in life has always been philosophy, but my actions have always been mechanical. I’ve always been good at identifying things that are broken mechanically, or intellectually—and fixing those items quickly. So I started off in life as an inventor. That’s how Cliffhanger Research and Development began in the first place. So the plot behind The Curse of Fort Seven Mile is more fact than fiction as Cliffhanger Research and Development is featured prominently as a company involved in all the above technology. What is preventing that technology from emerging into the human realm is the static patterns of modern political systems which need to be broken so that marvelous inventions like the ones featured can emerge and bring with them fulfillment. Ultimately to perform that task it requires a divorce of the Vico method which is something the human race has never achieved. It has pushed against it a time or two—the latest being the creation of the United States—but politics driven by insufficient aristocratic human desire for social titles always pulls mankind back to the precipice of Vico.

The protagonist in The Curse of Fort Seven Mile is a vigilante by the name of Cliffhanger who has found that the world was not ready for the inventions of genius, so he sets out to bring justice to the unfortunate in the classic way that a good guy punishes bad guys, but there is a deep analysis as to what makes bad guys really bad. It’s not enough for me to just say that so and so is an antagonist and that they deserve to be punished so that good people can flourish—I feel I need to show the depths and causes of such villainy, so that readers can recognize it in their own lives and take action against it. But Cliffhanger isn’t just about saving damsels in distress and unfortunate victims of ruthlessness. Cliffhanger is a hero dedicated to breaking the cycle of Vico and unleashing the hidden potential behind human innovation on a mass scale that will bring to the world a renaissance of thought followed by action.

I was inspired to this effort ironically because of my admiration for H.P. Lovecraft while playing the very involved game, Arkham Horror. It took a century for readers to begin embracing Lovecraft’s ideas—which have just now taken root. He has a similar style and approach to his subject matter as I do, so it is clear by the Lovecraft roadmap that it sometimes takes a long time for a set of ideas to take hold, but once they do, they have a major impact on the thinking of society—which is what I’m most concerned with. Unlike Lovecraft who was haunted by terrible nightmares and a sickly body all his life until his early death living week to week in poverty—I am individually quite successful and resistant to various forms of offense conducted toward those opposing Vico’s cycle. So I can write and commit myself to this Cliffhanger Research and Development project without concern of hiding myself as a ghost writer the way Lovecraft had to—or bending my work around the criteria of a New York small press publisher. Knowing that it will take a while to sink in—I am free to tell the stories that need to be told without caring for their immediate reception. My target audience is not the masses at this time—but those who are capable of innovation. I’m looking for the unique individuals out there who understand the foundations of leadership. I want to provide them with a virtue that they can get no place else. For now it starts in these stories, but as time rolls on and away from Vico—it will find its way into education processes, laboratories, and the precipice of space as mankind for the first time breaks the shackles to anarchy and the chains trying to drag it back to theocracy.

Of course this is no small attempt—but then again, I understand that with all the good things I do on a daily basis—it will be Cliffhanger Research and Development that will be remembered. As a beginning endeavor it is just a seed now, but with the nurturing that will be provided, it will grow into a rather large force with deep roots able to withstand the tests of time. And it all starts with the click of a mouse.

CLIIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Rich Hoffman

Visit Cliffhanger Research and Development

The Obama and John Kasich French-Kissing Budgets: It will cost Lakota $5.9 million and worse–yet another levy

 

John Kasich has shown that he is fully capable of surpassing Pete Carroll’s Super Bowl losing decision as the dumbest idea to date. Failing to address the runaway costs of Ohio public schools by giving more money to poor districts while taking money away from the wealthy ones—he proposed early in February 2015 to solve the gulf with a tax increase. His comment to the wealthy districts was, “If you live in a district that can afford it, you can help yourself.” Essentially what he means is that he’s redistributing the wealth of Ohio tax payers from well-off regions to poorer ones with an established result to raise taxes on communities hosting gigantic schools with treacherously inflated employee wages like Lakota. Taking the largest schools hit in Butler County will be the Lakota Local School District—where I live, which will lose a total of $5.9 million over the next two fiscal years. A neighboring distinct to the west, Ross will lose $438,765. Talawanda to the north, $594,482. As residents we already pay state taxes intended for the unconstitutional distribution of public education—yet Kasich is taking that money and passing it out disproportionately to districts deemed more needy than others, then telling wealthy districts like mine to raise taxes and take care of themselves—all while taking our state tax money and dispersing it like Santa Clause everywhere but in Lakota and other Butler County schools. Then to make matters worse Kasich said this to a Cleveland newspaper—which is appalling. It looks like Kasich and Obama put their budgets together on the same napkin at the same bar, French-kissing each other when they thought nobody was looking—because they are both just as ridiculously stupid.

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Gov. John Kasich said he doesn’t consider his new school funding plan to be a redistribution of income, even as it sends more money to poor districts and less to richer ones.

“It is a conservative point of view in that every kid should be in a position to thrive,” Kasich said.

“I don’t see it as redistribution,” he added. “I see it as a formula for driving resources to kids.”

In an appearance at the E Prep and Village Prep Woodland Hills charter school campus in Cleveland his morning, Kasich said he expects “a lot of squawking” when he releases the changes in state aid to individual districts this afternoon.

About half of Ohio’s districts will see reductions, he said, despite him adding $700 million in aid to schools overall.

Kasich said he wants to send more money to district with less “capacity” to pay for schools and less money to those that have the income and property values to cover the costs.

 

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/02/gov_kasich_says_his_school_fun.html

 

http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/news/kasichs-education-speech-under-way/nWCBT/

http://www.journal-news.com/news/news/budget-increases-funding-for-poorer-school-distric/nj4tr/

The ultimate failure in this debacle is in believing that more money will actually help kids in a poor community—as if money alone will make schools better. Government schools suck because government is incompetent. You could throw $1 million dollars per pupil into a poor community and the money will be completely wasted on teacher salaries, new paint for the schools but not a single elevated child—because schools do not make children great. Teachers don’t make good people. Parents do. Schools and teachers can assist, but they can’t take broken Humpty Dumpty families and put all their broken shells together again if their home environment is full of drug addicts, gamblers, whores, or people who enjoy watching the Bill Cunningham show. It doesn’t work now, it hasn’t worked in the past, and it certainly won’t work in the future. Money does not make quality. People make quality and there is a reason that kids in richer districts do better scholastically than poor kids. It’s because their parents generally care more about the outcome of their kids and there is likely peer knowledge of similar families who also care about the fate of their children. In poor communities very few people care about kids. Teachers generally pretend to, but in the end, if their union calls for a strike—they’ll march in the streets and leave the kids in need of a mentor. Most teachers are unfortunately in the profession to make money. I believe they start out well-intentioned, but a few years into their mandatory union membership—they become socialist radicals just like the rest of the employees in public education. And those employees aren’t worth the money they demand to be paid.

That is the real issue—the money the employees cost a district. A properly run school district would wisely cut all their most expensive employees and let some other school have them—hiring cheaper teachers who will do the same work for half the cost. Experience doesn’t mean much in public schools because kids aren’t learning anything anyway. Government schools are simply an expensive state funded baby-sitting service and nothing more—for parents too busy to care for their own. So they pawn their kids off on society to raise and hope the school will cover their faults. At least in a wealthy district the parents ask how the child’s day went and try to bring some semblance of family structure to children. In poor districts—an intact family is as rare as an eclipse. Money can’t fix that problem.

As for pre-school education and subsequent grade school skills—teaching itself has entered a new age, and the government schools are way behind the curve. For anybody who hasn’t yet learned, there is a thing kids have these days called, LeapFrog—which is a computer tablet intended for kids 3 to 9 which teaches them math, grammar, and other logic skills. If I had one of those when I was a kid I would have been done with all the skills of grade school before 5 years of age because the programs are so good, and intuitive. The government school profession is no longer effective in this fast paced age of massive data consumption. Kids are bored with public school by the time they are in the 2nd and 3rd grades and learning for them becomes a chore instead of a pleasure because of the way its sold to them in public schools driven by radical—expensive labor union personnel—is destroying our youth—not helping them.

So Kasich has made an epic error. To mask his lack of courage in dealing with the public labor unions, he has instead punted to the local districts to allow them to fight it out due to his progressivism.   He might as well be Obama in the Ohio capital at this point. Sure he moved some money around to create a surplus, but he largely did it with wealth redistribution like this situation with the schools, and by taking federal money. He’s not a conservative—he is the definition of a RINO. If he were a governor in New York or California—he’d call himself a Democrat because that’s where his values and leadership point to as far as values.

As for the development of the I-75 corridor in Southern Ohio surely he knows what this means. He remembers the Lakota fights of a few years ago, and now because of his decision, he’ll see them again. If he thought they were bloody before, he and they haven’t seen anything yet. And those fights will be in the newspapers, and they will influence investment into the area at a critical time—and he’ll be to blame. I can say that I’m not alone in anger on this high tax proposal by Kasich of the Lakota and Mason area. Paying for overpriced government babysitters isn’t going to go over well and it will take a while for those districts to pass a tax increase because of the fights coming—so public relations of the area will take a hit. And the blame will fall squarely on John Kasich. Once something is done—you can’t undo it. And now he’s simply blown it. He has fallen from a political star to a simple grain of sand on a vast beach being washed out to sea by larger and larger waves. Any hopes he had at greatness are now washing away with the high tide as he panders to the power of the unions with a feeble attempt to appease them—which of course won’t work. His decision and budget proposal regarding education will have a catastrophic effect and the blame will be solely in his possession.

Rich Hoffman

Visit Cliffhanger Research and Development

Facing Down Evil: A brief history of Iraq and why America went to war

It’s OK to hate evil, in spite of any Christian sensibilities toward turning the other cheek. Sometimes its far worse to turn away from evil than in not loving thy neighbor as thy self. Evil is evil and it must be recognized and dealt with. For far, far too long Americans have been reluctant to pass judgment on evil for fear of appearing as “judgmental imperialists” to the rest of the world—and that has been a mistake. To see evil in all its gruesome antagonism and to understand what the Iraq War and Afghanistan War have always been about watch the video below.  I can’t guarantee that the video will still be up when you have the chance to see it dear reader—but for those who catch it before it’s taken down, it is horrible to look at. What is in the video is a row of prisoners under the control of ISIS. The terrorist group is behind the row with firearms waiting for the approval to fire. Once they get it, they unleash their violence into the heads of each prisoner one by one before unloading their magazines into the helpless bodies. While watching, ask yourself what any of those people could have done to possibly justify this horrendous action. Nothing comes to my mind and I can think of a lot of things. The only proper designation is that the act is pure evil by an evil group of people and it deserves answers from a just people in a just nation.  Warning, the video is very violent.

I was happy to find that Glenn Beck the day after a Jordanian pilot was burned to death inside a cage by ISIS terrorists had a similar reaction as I did. Even Beck is tired of pussy-footing around with terrorists as he showed the pictures on his Blaze website. The video was even worse than the still photographs. I think it was in many ways worse than the above assassination of the prisoners because it was just so cruel. The video was cut together with very cartoonish music and was done with the type of theatrics that might have been seen in the worst James Bond villain. Glenn Beck put up the pictures below.

http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/glenn-beck-the-world-needs-to-see-the-depravity-of-the-islamic-state-graphic/

In the movie American Sniper many opponents to the Iraq War have come out against the United States premise of occupation and have said that Chris Kyle and others were not heroes in that war-torn land. As much as I sympathize with the debacle that was the Sykes-Pikot agreement which ultimately broke up the Middle East into French and English territories after World War I what has been the result of that entire region with the exception of Israel, has become like a giant inner city in America. The good intentions of bringing civilization to the Arabs have resulted in a theocratic society rolling in poverty, aggressive religions, and communism in their core economic beliefs. They are now a very dangerous people in the Middle East because of their belief systems and that has left them vulnerable to the most aggressive, and repressive of their kind to emerge as global bullies.

George W. Bush knew of the complexity in the Middle East and took it upon himself to find a way to remove Saddam Hussein from power—to complete what his father had started. The so-called WMD’s in Iraq were moved across the border and hidden in Syria to be used later by Hussein knowing that U.N. inspectors would be looking for them. Of course the United Nations never found the weapons, but America went to war anyway—basically to punish evil. However, Bush didn’t do a very good job of explaining the reasons behind the Iraq War and once Americans discovered that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They thought that Bush had lied just to provoke a conflict. The intelligence from the region indicated to Bush the kind of violence being conducted similar to what we are seeing today from ISIS. So off flimsy intelligence, and a moving target scuttling the WMD’s across the border, George Bush went on a Christian crusade into the heart of the Middle East to punish evil as he saw it. Likely he felt the way we do now in seeing prisoners burnt in cages and shot in the head one too many times to turn away. When you have the United States military as a weapon to use, he did—and I can’t blame him.

President Obama did similar acts for different reasons. He seems to enjoy the caliphate of Islamic extremism going on around the Mediterranean. Just like Bush before him Obama has used his power to assist those he identified with. Who does anybody think the rebels were in Libya who toppled Gaddafi? Obama made the decision to act alone without Congressional approval to basically assassinate Gaddafi, arm the rebels and topple that dictator so to make way for the caliphate to strengthen in the power vacuum. He supported similar actions in Egypt, and if anybody has forgotten the Benghazi situation—clearly some of the same work was at play there as well. Remember when Bahar al-Assad was accused of using chemical weapons against his own people in Syria and Obama empowered him with inaction choosing instead to arm the rebels. Well, where does anybody think ISIS came from? Where did they get their weapons—who gave them all the weapons of terror to use for a push back into Iraq after Obama announced that he was pulling out all American ground troops? ISIS didn’t get the weapons out of a Cracker Jack box, and they certainly didn’t make them. The weapons used by ISIS are a combination of Soviet tanks, and large advanced U.S. made systems acquired through direct raids, rebels who have joined ISIS, and black market purchases stocked by weapons floating around the Middle East from the Libya deal, and Syrian debacle. So the Middle East is now a mess. On one hand George Bush punished the radicals in Iraq with war. Then Obama sought to undo all the gains made by that advancement—right or wrong—by pulling back the troops and funding those rebels who wanted to form an Islamic caliphate. So look what happened, ISIS wanting to take back Iraq from the American occupation used American weapons to retake the region and now they are on a killing spree—and it is grotesque.

ISIS not even grateful to Obama for giving them all those weapons threatened just a few weeks ago to cut off the president’s head in the White House so to inspire further fear. Yet the president did nothing to step up aggression against such a rival, baffling critics. The whole modern trouble with ISIS is just another Fast and Furious scam gone terribly wrong on a massive scale and now torturous thugs are armed with American weapons giving them superiority over the innocent—and America isn’t there to help this time—and have no plans to do so—because the same president who empowered them, refuses to raise a hand against them—even when they threaten his life as well.

There is no way to step back and not have an opinion on the matter. America like it or not is all over the issue which was originally started by the English and French. Yet even when France was attacked recently by ISIS terrorists—Obama didn’t go with all the other world leaders to march with them in solidarity against ISIS in Paris. If the event had been a global warming conference, or a sick turtle caught in some mud pit in Florida Obama would have attended—but in a show of solidarity against ISIS—Obama didn’t show up against the radicals even though he loves his European allies. Why?

Evil is all around us and it is acting against our sensibilities at every level. The Middle East is now beyond hope. Good people are being killed there every day violently by terribly bad people, and those bad people are going unpunished. Leftists in America have empowered that evil with their passive actions—and literal actions—and the responsibility is now on the United States to correct the situation. That responsibility won’t just go away because it’s inconvenient. That Jordanian pilot was helping with Obama’s bombing campaign against ISIS, so we have an obligation to set things straight. The killings of these innocent people in the Middle East has to stop and before that can happen people need to understand what evil is and make a judgment to act against it. The intelligentsia class from American and European society are wrong about leaving the Middle East alone. George Bush, with all his faults had it right. Evil cannot go unpunished and under Obama, it is. Inaction in the Middle East is helping evil spread like a wildfire upon dry grass under a heavy wind. Unfortunately the wind in this case has come from the White House—and that is a question that needs to be answered only through the prism of proper identification of evil itself. The situation is very, very serious.

Iraq had evil in it before America “invaded.” The war was about stopping that evil. It wasn’t about oil. It was about beating evil. An evil that provoked a do-gooding president to do something about it—and another president to feed it like a pet.

Rich Hoffman

Visit Cliffhanger Research and Development

An Insulting Budget Proposal: What happens when you let a drug abuser become president

What happens when you take a former drug abuser and put them in the White House and ask them to come up with a budget? Well, you get the 2015 budget proposal by president Obama who brought out his budget this week with great fanfare only to essentially reveal it as a word for word utterance of the preposterousness shown in the recent Greek election. In Greece the communists are now in control of the economy which swore to reject the austerity measures there. In the United States, Obama declared the same with an insane budget against austerity as reported by USA Today:

WASHINGTON — President Obama submitted his $4 trillion budget wish-list to a Republican Congress Monday, calling for a return to increased domestic and military spending to be paid for in part by higher taxes on the wealthy.

The plan includes a $478 billion public works infrastructure program for roads, bridges, and transit systems, to be financed by taxes on overseas earnings. The budget calls for new tax credits and other initiatives devoted to education, child care, paid leave, and infrastructure, with tax hikes resulting from the closure of tax loopholes. The president also wants to put an end to the automatic across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration, calling for a 7% increase in spending over the budget levels he agreed to in a 2011 compromise with Republicans.

“I want to work with Congress to replace mindless austerity with smart investments that strengthen America,” Obama said in a speech at the Department of Homeland Security. “I’m not going to accept a budget that locks in sequestration going forward. It would be bad for our security, and bad for our growth.”

 

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/02/02/obama-budget-399-trillion-republicans/22695611/

For those who don’t know, austerity by definition is a severity of discipline, regime, expression, or design—a saving, economy, or act of self-denial, especially in respect of something regarded as a luxury. Obama instead of austerity applied to an out-of-control government suggested even more debt, spending, and taxation. It really is amazing that he even could conceive of such a proposal as to actually put it in printed form, because in reality, it amounts to the blithering of an intoxicated drug addict. It is amazing that this kind of nonsense even gets print in USA Today without a complete castigation for the mere proposal. Who is going to pay for all this stuff—the “rich?” That’s the plan, just increase taxes on people who create wealth? He’s kidding right?

Well, apparently taxing the rich and bitching about austerity is the essence of Obama’s entire budget proposal which is as ignorant as giving the keys of a nice new car to a slithering drunk barely conscious. It’s not even in the realm of viable possibilities, let alone considered seriousness. Yet Obama put out the proposal and the media covered it as if it were a legitimate attempt which was only laughable to those who can actually read.

Obama is an embarrassment to the United States and is a functioning communist based on the type of values he expresses. “Laughable austerity” means he doesn’t think there should be financial restrictions that are confined to a budget at all—his world view is simply beyond consideration of any legitimacy. It is as loony as the slap stick Greeks believing that their debts can be forgiven without payment and that the social spending they are all addicted to can continue forever. One might expect such stupidity in a country like Greece, or some Middle Eastern armpit of a world where economic activity is traded in goats—but in America—such budgets as Obama’s 2015 anti-austerity proposal doesn’t even count. Congress should have stopped the delivery of the proposal right at the door without even wasting further time—and sent them back to the White House unopened. Unless the President’s budget included budget cuts—and a reduced deficit plan—there isn’t any worth to it. It was disrespectful to the American people to even print such foolishness on actual paper.

Corporate taxes are already too high, yet Obama proposed a 14% one-time tax on overseas profits. He proposed $478 billion over six years for roads and bridges and he suggested a $38 billion dollar increase in defense spending over sequestration levels due to his mismanagement of the conflicts in Syria and Iraq. Obama’s numbers don’t even come close to balancing out; he expects to increase the national debt to 26.2 trillion dollars by 2025. That is insane!

Look, if someone put such an insult on my desk I would have likely blasted them out of a canon in less than a second. So I have no personal tolerance for that kind of thing. Congress should deal with this recklessness appropriately and set an example that future losers in the White House will never forget. Because if they don’t, more attempts like this one will be tried—and its about time that Americans learn the hard truth about our economy rather than through politicians who are obviously mentally deficient and seek to hide it by giving away other people’s stuff.   Obama is a spending addict—just as he needs to chew gum to keep from smoking cigarettes, covering up his drug abusing past, and his Marxist teachers who made him the person he is today.  He has an addictive personality. He needs an encounter group to help him with his various addictions. He doesn’t need more enablers in his life. He needs to hear the word “NO” much more often and to be treated like the louse that he truly is. Obama is a reckless loser who happened to talk himself into winning elections by giving things away to those too lazy to work. It doesn’t make him capable of putting together a budget—obviously. So his proposal deserves the ridicule measurable to the insult of even trying.

Rich Hoffman

Visit Cliffhanger Research and Development

Worship of Mumbadevi and the Almighty Dollar: What traffic patterns in India say about their culture

One of the great miracles of our day is that communication is now easy for the world, and global commerce is now an assumption. That is good for people who have lived far away from capitalism for far too long stuck to the old village mentality of communism which has plagued most land masses around the world into poverty. For as much as modern politicians hope to relieve the poor of their misery, by standards compared to the rest of the world, even the dead broke in America are far better off than they are most anywhere else. So it is hard to explain to people generations taught into the follies of collective endeavor why American concepts of good living should be adopted elsewhere in the world.

I am certainly not one to impose my culture on others. I have a generally live and let die attitude toward the rest planet earth except in my writing where it is obvious that I care a great deal for the success of every living human being. So for that success to work certain conditions have to be in place to allow the human race to flourish. The general rule is that the more authoritarian the government whether it be a business or a country—the less creative input that citizens have toward the fulfillment of national GDP. For instance, in America, creative companies like Apple, Pixar, Lego, Microsoft, and the Hollywood studios produce more personal wealth and opportunity than most GDP economic purchasing power in most countries, such as Iraq, Iran, India and everywhere else where theocratic religion and communist philosophy are holding back the intellectual power of the people inhabiting those economies.

There is a reason that creativity and personal freedom are utilized in those flourishing American companies because the intention of that strategy is to allow minds to think without the pretense of authoritarian concerns. The end result is a much more robust workforce that directly contributes to the wealth creation of any given enterprise. The more restrictive that minds find their society—the less innovation and wealth that will be created there. It is a very simple formula really. Even in the United States where freedom of thought is taken for granted, not all companies understand this concept, and many still attempt an old approach to job creation that embodied the top down approach so common when America was much more theocratic.

But with the communication barrier down due to the Internet, people from those far corners of the world are able to read the things I say, and they have been up in arms in anger at me in India recently—because of my articles against Obama’s fundamental third world country upbringing and obvious view of humanity that was shaped in that region. The primary reason that President Obama is so messed up intellectually is that he wants to turn America into the type of people he was raised around in Malaysia which means a theocratic society mixed with Hindu and Muslim influence along with small “C” communism so common in most third world economies.

To measure success, which has only recently been readily available to the world because of social media—web sites like this one for instance—much can be learned by looking at how other cultures live. Their lifestyles are directly applicable to their fundamental beliefs. For instance, take Dallas, Texas as an example. When landing at an airport there vast spans of wealthy homes can be seen from a West to East approach complete with swimming pools and large yards. Oil fields are also seen as well as sprawling industry and much economic activity. The highways below are orderly, and speedy—because people have places to get to quickly and without bringing harm to their vehicles.   The airport itself is a sprawling complex with four basic terminals spread over a great distance. The only way to get around from one to another is with a tram system because the terminals are not connected all together to allow room for all the planes coming and going to maneuver. In Dallas to deal with all the economic activity, the airport is spread out to handle all the business there.

Now do the same in Mumbai, India, the wealthiest city in that theocratic country. For centuries the Indians blamed the English for their imperial grip on the people there and thought their freedom gained in 1947 would cast them onto the world stage, but like China and the city of Hong Kong—also a British territory—the best things economically related to Mumbai were put there by the “invading” country. These days landing in that city involves miles and miles of slum neighborhoods that look like children building forts out of cardboard boxes and the economic activity looks like the blood stream of a patient dying on an operating table—its chaos and dysfunction. The traffic patterns are random and impulsive assuming that nobody is more important than anyone else in the mass collectivism of that ancient civilization still struggling to climb out of the Stone Age intellectually without the capitalism attempted by the British.

The highways have lines on them separating traffic, but nobody follows the rules. Some drivers drive right down the middle of a lane that might be four wide, yet there are six lanes of traffic crammed into it—with everyone going their own way. In the city it is even worse as seen in these accompanied videos. There is no order in their approach to traffic, just like their rudderless economies. Without help from the capitalist West, India would slide back into the pre-deluge days of Biblical apocalypse. However, the Indians reading my statements about their country have become angry and have taken insult blaming Americans for having a third world view of their country by looking down our noses at them. Well, it is a third world country that is currently restricted by collectivist oriented religions and political philosophy. Sure I like Indian food, and I like their history—but as for having a dominating economic force—they are sadly behind the times and are a world liability to growth throughout the planet.

It is not enough to surrender modern life to the gods of theocracy then complain when other cultures out-perform them with sheer economic power. In Mumbai they can pray to Mumbadevi all they want, but it won’t fix their nation. Only by accepting the success of the West and putting their own spin on it can they hope to do that, because to date America is the most successful country on the planet taken as a whole, as to culture, racial dissemination, and raw GDP. And the lesson for Americans is to stop apologizing to the world for being so good. It would be excellent to help India become more American, but it would be bad to ask people in the United States to become more like those in India. That would be morally reprehensible.

The traffic patterns in India tell the whole story. Yes, they ride tricycles, motorcycles, small little cars and even animals that can keep up on the highways of India and they don’t crash into each other as much as you would think. But they don’t get where they need to go in a hurry either. This system works just well enough for the Indians because they are a society functioning from collectivism in their religions and political systems. Thus, they carry the same limits to their businesses. This is the primary flaw in their thinking. They can be angry that somebody points it out to them, but it doesn’t make them better by default if they eliminate a superior culture to their eyes and ears. The fact remains that compared to the West, India does not produce enough GDP on their own to care for their people and that is a major tragedy—which then feeds the theocratic nature of their entire national consciousness. 

The key to any endeavor whether it is a small business, or a massive national economy with one of the world’s largest populations—is that freedom of individual thought provokes positive economic growth. This basic psychological emphasis can be seen in the traffic patterns of any society. In India, its chaos and slow, In America it’s orderly, and quick. It’s quick in America not because we’re all godless heathens, but because we have things to do and buy. Theocratic cultures might state that such consumerism is false material worship, but then again, look at the living conditions between the freedom driven culture and the theocratic one–then declare such a thing to be a sin. American standards are only demonized because the rest of the world can’t compete based on their false ideologies which limit economic activity. And now that the world is so small, and those in India can now see how people think in the West—they of course will feel bad. The question is, what do they plan to do about it? Will they just bow down and pray to the Koli goddess Mumadevi, or to the almighty dollar. They all have value in the eye of the beholder—but which one makes lives better, and which one worse? The answer is easy—but the admission is not for the culture that is failing.

Rich Hoffman

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Dana Loesch and the New Counter-Culture: Superbowl and American football

I was never a fan of the first major counter-culture movement in the United States. You might say I hated it with every cell in my body. Even as a little kid I despised the dirty, smelly, tattooed hippies with their long air, and smoke smelly cloths. I’ve never liked what they stood for, and I have never thought for one half of a second that there was something that might come out of their brains that might have value. Ever. So it should be assumed that I am a big fan of the new counter-culture movement that has risen up to undo all the terrible impositions induced by the old scum bag hippies. It brings great pleasure to my mind to watch exchanges like the one below with Glenn Beck and his very articulate news personality on The Blaze TV, Dana Loesch who quite successfully punches all kinds of holes into the Washington Redskins debate below. I was thinking of this interview during the recent Superbowl as the game of capitalism played out on such a vast national stage. The game was complete with all the wonderful commercials displaying American products arriving to a marketplace thriving with freedom and unapologetic profit. So I thought it was time to revisit this clip and share it in mind for the wave of counter-culture behavior that I know is coming.

My friend Doc Thompson and his producer Skip LeCombe are part of this counter-culture of goodness that is spreading rapidly. If you haven’t listened to their radio show in the morning from 6 AM to 9 AM on The Blaze Radio network you are missing a rare treat. You can get them on satellite radio and is one of the best morning shows in America presently, and is a force behind this new counter-culture movement hell-bent on destroying the one created by the vile old hippies. Their show is extremely funny, and informative in a way that talk radio has not been able to produce since its inception. It’s a little Rush Limbaugh, a little bit of The Daily Show, and a good ol’ fashioned variety show that might have been heard at the start of radio. But better yet, Doc produces the kind of material that makes the faces of progressives melt clean off—which I find delightful.

Yet Dana Loesch is unique as shown in her above video with Beck. She is uniquely qualified to make arguments against progressives; she is very pro-gun, very pro constitution, and extremely liberty minded and knowledgeable about history. She is the exact opposite of the kind of losers who found themselves attracted to Charlie Manson’s family of communists and dope smoking losers. Dana is a counter-culture to the counter culture-movement. She’s young, attractive, and smart and she can argue with anybody leaving all the duds from the hippie generation in intellectual dust with obvious superiority. To say the least, I’m a fan of Dana.

Progressives have intended from the beginning to “progress” beyond American pride. They have attacked American football because they know it’s a game unique to the United States and the most powerful economy in the world. They have attacked it to bring down the capitalism that drives that massive economy and to a large extent, for over thirty years, the erosion from the old hippie has moved unchecked against tradition. So to counter that erosion a new counter-culture movement is needed to push back against that social destruction. It has been emerging for a number of years, but Glenn Beck has managed to put a point on it that is directed in very positive ways. Doc Thompson found a home with The Blaze because of Beck, and so has Dana, along with a whole host of similar counter-culture stars in the stable of the creative studios now built in Dallas.

Progressives wanted to destroy the Star Spangled Banner sung at the Super Bowl just like they wanted to change the name of the Washington Redskins out of guilt for some perceived sins long ago committed. But they didn’t know all the history involved, just like they ignored that the Redskin name came from one of the first Native American coaches for the Washington-based NFL team. Progressives just wanted change and they attempted to use guilt to provoke that change, just as they have tried to use guilt about the economy to redistribute wealth to the far corners of the world to indirectly feed communism and its massive failure.

Every time I watch a Superbowl in America I am reminded of what a great country it is. I love the pageantry before the game of all the pre-event ceremonies during media week. I love the half time shows. I love the commercials. I love the violence and strategy of the game itself. I love the Superbowl parties, the chicken wings, the beer, I love all the gatherings of family and friends that often come with viewings. I love watching the game on big televisions and I love the commentary by the various media personalities before and during the game. I love everything about it—and much of that is what the first counter-culture movement sought to undo.

The NFL rose to prominence during the hippie movement of the 1960s, so it deserves credit for staving off the impact. Even hippies enjoy football in America, so the game itself has cast doubt upon the thoughts of even the most ambitious hippie. The Superbowl in 2015 cost over $4 million dollars to run a 30 second commercial during the broadcast. And it cost a minimum of $9,000 per ticket to attend the game in person. That value is a created exception to the tide of the rest of the world hoping to spread the message of the dirty hippie to the soccer stadiums and sports forums everywhere. In America they have failed.

As much was said about Marshawn Lynch’s bizarre interviews during media week, he really livened up when he did a commercial/interview for Skittles. It was another fine example of capitalism by a popular player who really increased his brand with controversy leading up to the Superbowl. Many throughout the world would find the behavior disgraceful in that it was an open example of American product placement. But I love it.

It’s good to see a counter-culture movement coming out in defense of capitalism for a change instead of standing against it. And of that counter-culture Dana Loesch is the new Oprah and Connie Chung. Those old names helped feed the previous counter-culture movement—the progressives and excessively liberal Democrats slowly eroded the value of American society with guilt and sappy old hippy dialogue against capitalism. But their time is waning to a new movement which is emerging preserved by American football and maturing under fine people like Dana Loesch. Because of people like her, the Superbowl this year was just a little bit sweeter—pointing to a future that should be much better than the present as the hippies whither away into dust and are replaced by people like Doc Thompson and Dana Loesch.

Rich Hoffman

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