A friend of mine just opened a new restaurant in Orlando, Florida. Every time I hear about one of these success stories, where an entrepreneur is able to leap all the hurdles placed in front of such an endeavor to open a new establishment I find myself enjoying the announcements more than I should. To me, these types of things should be common place in America. Ideas should be allowed to flourish, and actually encouraged. But the way things are it’s a minor miracle when something like a new restaurant opens because there are so many regulations and looters involved in the process of innovation. By the time all the regulations are satisfied, the permit issues are written, the taxes are paid in addition to all the requirements involved in funding the enterprise; it is only the strongest projects with the most money behind them that survive.
The reason is that America has allowed socialism to permeate every single government position in our country so the amount of government employees that are involved in any entrepreneurial activity directly impacts the chance that a project will survive to actually open. The situation is so bad that John Stossel of the Fox Business Network and Glenn Beck discuss John’s attempt to open a lemonade stand in downtown New York. Watch this video so you can see how difficult it is to even start a business, let alone defend yourself from all the looters who attempt to rob you with law suits and excessive taxes once the business is established.
This is why I get so infuriated by government organizations, primarily schools that push for tax increases. Every business you see is a minor phenomenon. The fact that you see many businesses in your neighborhoods is evidence of 5 to 6 failures for every success. So when a new restaurant is seen opening in your neighborhood or a shopping complex, you are seeing the lucky ones who made it. If an entrepreneur is politically active and gives money to a lot of charities, they find that their chances of success increase dramatically, because paying off officials with political support and getting the crazy emotional mothers of a community appeased with charity work calls off the looting dogs as long as the money flows, but it takes money to pay off such fools. So only the luckiest of the lucky gain the ability to use their money to pay off the trolls who set up shop in our political system.
It is not the “permit” department at your local government office who creates jobs and new ideas. It’s not the regulator of any agency. It’s not the bureaucrat in any capacity who does anything, but creates a barrier for the dreamers, for the entrepreneur. These barriers push up the cost of playing the game so that only those who have been lucky enough to squeeze through the cracks before the looters realize that there is money to be made, make it, because that’s the only way one can achieve success these days. The business needs to either be established or have large financial reserves to combat the looters in court and in politics, or the business must fly under the radar of convention and arrive before the looters realize that the new business is going to be profitable.
I know this tragedy first hand. I’ve been involved in many business start-ups and all of them were made unnecessarily hard by excessive regulation. I once had a building code permit issuer tell me I had to prove to him that the HAVAC unit he was demanding I buy was not required under the Cincinnati Building Code. I spent an entire weekend reading a boring book to prove that the HAVAC unit was not necessary for my change of use submission. In a book of over 750 pages I found one sentence that disqualified my project from the imposition. Once I found it, the administrator gave me a rubber stamp with a smile on his face, as though it was an office joke whether or not I’d find the one sentence out of the thousands that would exclude me. It was literally like finding a needle in a hay stack.
But that wasn’t the end of the road. That was just one issue out of 32 similar complaints by the CBC office, and that was just one organization that had their teeth into my project. There were as many as 7 such agencies that my project had to comply with just to open and my choice was to do the work myself, or hire out a small army of lawyers, engineers, architects and other professionals to do the work of arguing each item for me. By the time all those employees are hired just to meet the cost of compliance the project budget increased by nearly a half a million dollars.
So these days I just write books, and study philosophy. I hire out my expertise because it’s unattractive to argue with all the fools in any endeavor that catapults the idea generators into the quick sand of the social looters. I determined a long time ago that since I refused to play the pay-off game because I find it ethically questionable, and too expensive on the front end, that I have no chance of getting anything off the ground in this modern environment. But I have friends who aren’t so restricted by such limits and they have managed to do the nearly impossible and open new shopping complexes, and restaurants. And for that I admire them.
That is why I get very angry when I hear people proclaim that my friends, are “rich” and they owe their school system more, or they “owe” the township more in taxes, or they “owe” Barry Obama more! They owe their state government more when it is proven that there are too many government workers to pay whose only purpose is to create more bureaucracy, which in turn drives up the cost of compliance as shown above. Anyone who says or thinks such things are correct thinking are fools—and socialist sympathizers. They are parasites to everything America has stood for and are destroyers of its future.
So I do salute with utmost respect my friend and the opening of his new restaurant. The small-minded and looter mentality will look jealousy at him and proclaim that he should do more for his community. They will say that he is wealthy, and if he has enough money to buy a restaurant then he has enough money to pay more in taxes. What those same fools don’t comprehend is that it will take years to return to my friend the money he invested, not just in opening the building, but the cost of fighting the looters along the way. And they don’t know that my friend has plans that will fuel his own retirement in the future and that these restaurants are part of that plan. He has no plans to draw a government pension or a check of any kind. He plans to take care of his own business the way every American should. And every time there is a new cost to him, a new looter who attempts to rob some of his money from him because they are too lazy to do for themselves, it pushes my friend’s retirement further into the future. The ultimate cost is to my friend who has worked hard, created jobs, and fought his way through every kind of red tape imaginable. The cost to the looter is nothing. They simply show up and demand money for doing nothing. It is my friend who must make more money to pay for more looters who have attached themselves to those who create, like my friend.
So congratulations are in order to my friend and those like him who have survived well enough to open a restaurant in the golden land of Orlando, where imagination still counts for something, and making money is expected, and not chastised as criminal behavior by the lazy looters of the government employee. The next time I’m in Orlando, I will stop by for a visit and pay homage to the great ordeal that has become of starting a business in modern-day America as controlled by the looters, the moochers, the derelicts, the welfare recipients, and the mentally deficient who occupy the jobs that make opening a restaurant such a pain in the ass.
There are two primary reasons I accepted the position of Butler County Coordinator for Workplace Freedom. First, with my work at No Lakota Levy, and realization that the union labor in our public schools–specifically Lakota–do not have the will to balance their budget, and will seek perpetual tax increases to meet the demands of their labor force, the public education monopoly must be eliminated to stop the madness of tax increases every 3 to 4 years. That monopoly must end if education costs are ever to be brought down. So I plan to help get the signatures for an amendment to the Ohio Constitution that will allow a state-wide vote in 2013 to make union membership a freedom of choice rather than a requirement under force as the system currently entails under teaching contracts. At Lakota the current contract is up in 2014, so that would allow teachers under that contract to opt out of their union involvement and help Lakota balance their budget. My work as Butler County Coordinator is a natural extension to my mission at No Lakota Levy. The second reason is that during my work on the Issue 2 campaign in 2012, I learned that there were a lot of teachers and other public employees who wished to be removed from union membership requirements and forced due payments. Since Issue 2 was repealed, these employees need to have the ability to at least have the freedom of choice, and this amendment will give it to them. It will not end unions, but it will give freedom of choice to a system that does not currently have it.
The wording of this amendment change with a target date of 2013 is as follows;
Title: To guarantee the freedom of Ohioans to choose whether to participate in a labor organization as a condition of employment
SUMMARY
To add Section 22 to Article I of the Constitution of the State of Ohio
The proposed amendment would provide that, in Ohio:
1. No law, rule, agreement, or arrangement shall require any person or employer to become or remain a member of a labor organization.
2. No law, rule, agreement, or arrangement shall require, directly or indirectly, as a condition of employment, any person or employer, to pay or transfer any dues, fees, assessments, other charges of any kind, or anything else of value, to a labor organization, or third party in lieu of the labor organization.
3. Any person, directly or indirectly affected or threatened with any harm by a violation of this section, may bring a civil or equitable action to enforce this section, and upon prevailing, shall be entitled to injunctive relief, reasonable attorney fees, costs, and other damages.
The proposed law would not:
1. Prevent any person from voluntarily belonging to or providing support to a labor organization. 2. Apply to agreements entered into or renewed prior to the enactment of this section. 3. Conflict with federal law or apply to federal employees.
To implement this public vote, which appears even at this early stage to have major support from all Ohioans of all demographic groups and party affiliation we will of course need to collect thousands upon thousands of signatures which could take us the rest of the year. Many of us who watched how the unions repealed Issue 2 gawked at the way the union machine was able to twist the arm of their members to gather so many signatures and put the repeal effort on the ballot. So we learned from them, and implementing our own signature collecting push have decided to pay employees to gather up these signatures. We are a tired group and we must get back on the horse and start now if we want to meet the timeline discussed. So as Butler County Coordinator I will be paying employees for those signatures. And the pay is quite good.
Working for me in collecting signatures, it would be a great opportunity to make extra money as a second job. It would be wonderful for young people who want the political experience and relatively easy money since this issue is one that most people agree with. This issue is not as contentious as Issue 2 or other political initiatives were, this one is all about freedom, which is something all Americans can get their minds around. So collecting the signatures won’t be very difficult, it’s just a matter of doing the footwork.
I am taking applications at the link below. If you want to work for me, fill out that application, I only need the primary information. I’m not particularly interested in a detailed work history. I just need the basics.
I would especially encourage those who are fighting tax hikes in your schools, principally Fairfield, Talawanda, Ross, Edgewood, Monroe, and especially Lakota to help out with this. This is your end game; this is the light at the end of the tunnel. If you can end the union monopoly in these public schools, you can bring an end to the levy requests every couple of years. If you were already willing to distribute information to fight a tax, and have went door to door in those campaigns, this is a lot easier, and I’ll pay you! Instead of trying to stop a tax initiative by the unions only to have them come back with a new tax hike six months after a defeat; this amendment is the step in the direction of ending that maddening process once and for all.
To learn more about the group I’m working with you can visit them at the link below. You can still help and do everything I spoke about above no matter where you live. We have coordinators in most counties across Ohio and you can find them at this link, so this isn’t just for Butler County. But if you want to work for me directly, you’ll need to be able to collect signatures for Butler County.
For those who are interested, you can contact me here, or at the contact info at my home site of www.OVERMANWARRIOR.comwhere I can get into more detail, talk about the lucrative pay structure and answer any questions that I couldn’t cover here. If you’d like me to come and speak to your group, your Tea Party, your gun clubs, your YMCA organizations, whatever the gathering, just give me a buzz. I don’t want to fight tax increases in my schools for the rest of my life, and I’m sure you don’t either. This is the ultimate solution of freedom and fairness that is lacking in the current system and it needs to happen by 2014, so we need to start now.
Below are a couple of training videos to make things easier that were used to collect signatures for The Health Care Freedom Amendment that was successful in 2011. We are approaching this signature gathering in the same manner. So the information is still valid for this endeavor.
This is thanks to you and your other money-grubbing cohorts. We’ll be moving to Mason. Enjoy losing more property values.
Norma Stits February 25, 2012 at 4:35 AM
That poor woman actually believes what she says. She believes that I am greedy for not wanting to pay more money than we already do in taxes. She also believes that there is no end what current residents of the Lakota School District will pay in higher taxes, therefore ruining their property values forever and making the taxes so high that nobody will ever be able to afford to buy a home in the Lakota District because of the taxes. People like Norma actually believe there is no end. She would pay forever whatever was asked by those extortionists of public education.
Well, sorry to break it to you Norma, but you are wrong. Taxes don’t just affect you in your tiny little world of your tiny little home around your tiny little family. It affects commercial interest too, and commercial business has been dried up for 5 years because of the current tax rates which need to come down, not go up. You know who those “money grubbers” are? Those evil people who build and run the shopping complexes and restaurants you visit. In Norma’s world those people should give away their services for free. They should not seek to make a profit. They should donate any earnings they make to the “youth,” so that people like Norma can have a free education for her little children whom she’s too lazy or insecure to teach herself.
Well, I have two grown daughters who are quite attractive, and because of that I’ve met many young people, particularly males that have come out of the Lakota, Fairfield and Mason school system, and I’ve seen what the schools are teaching first-hand, and I see how stupid many of these kids are when basic things are explained to them. They are future products of stupid parents like Norma, ill prepared to even pay rent, hold a job, let alone—vote. I’ve met kids who show up and attempt to impress me with big words only to see they can’t hardly pull their pants up because they are trying to copy the black culture of their favorite R&B artists, (and I say R&B in an attempt to be respectful and not come loose on a diatribe about the degradation of music). I’ve seen kids who think a fun night out is to get plastered in drunkenness and that somehow I’d be happy to let my daughter wake up passed out in a room full of guys stoned on marijuana. My kids wouldn’t do such a thing, but the boys look at me strangely and roll their eyes when they think I can’t see while I speak about why those kinds of activities are wrong. They really don’t understand! These boys don’t understand either why I expect them to have jobs instead of playing X-Box when there are bills to be paid. Or why I’d be upset that they’d rather take a welfare check so they’d have more “time for themselves.” I’m not talking about poor kids in the ghetto; I’m talking about nice middle-class kids from Lakota and Fairfield.
Through my daughters I’ve had to learn the terrible truth that there are thousands of girls who are on Care Source, which is a form of Medicare that bails out these kids when they have sex, and get pregnant because their schools and stupid parents like Norma tell them it’s alright, that there are no consequences to actions. A boy can get a girl pregnant and it’s alright, the government is there to bail them out. The boys often claim that the act of sex just happened, that it was beyond their control. Yet it was. A boy had to stick a penis into a girl and inject semen into her like some parasitic animal in the wild, without thought or care. Without any thought about the next step, because the schools have taught these kids that the government will pick up the slack and pay for everything. Thousands upon thousands of kids think this way. Twenty years ago it would have been shameful to see a girl in her freshman years pregnant in school. It was scandalous. Today the teacher holds a baby shower for the girl in her classroom. The kids and their welfare mentality are victims of their environment and parents like Norma.
Norma may put her kids on Blue Cross and Blue Shield, but her behavior supports a system that endorses everything and more mentioned above. Ladies and gentlemen—and Norma, we are in serious trouble—culturally. Our youth is broken in ways that no amount of money can fix. They are truly victims of this age of broken homes, divorce, and intrusive public education establishments.
People who tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about are only mad at me because they don’t want to hear what I’m saying. They want to blindly adopt destructive policies of living that will eventually destroy them with the same intensity that a moth attempts to fly into a flame—because they like the bright light. People like Norma are in love with the idea of socialism and they do not want to see the results of their error. Well, I’ve seen it. I’ve been up close to it through my kids because I stayed involved with them even now that they are grown up, because there’s always something to learn. And I have many friends in the business community who are struggling. It’s not for Norma to say that these friends of mine should not be able to buy another restaurant, or a new second home, because people who build and make things are who move the world, and they don’t owe people like Norma an explanation as to their actions. The money they earn by creating things that people want is not Norma’s money, it’s not the money of public education, and it’s not the GOD DAMN governments! It’s their money!!!!! They earned it!!! Money made and generated is not for some group collective.
There are many problems that must be fixed in this year of 2012 that took nearly a century to arrive at. And those problems were perpetuated by people like Norma who voted in politicians like FDR. These same voters also fantasized about sleeping with JFK, and LBJ and like a porn actress swallowing semen from a stranger, these voters accept the policies of THE NEW DEAL and THE GREAT SOCEITY.
I don’t want The New Deal or The Great Society of which this Medicaid culture of welfare has sprung up and created a whole generation of weak-minded youth who have reckless sex and expect society to pay for it. Doesn’t Orgy-porgy from A Brave New World ring a bell with people like Norma, or let me guess—they haven’t read that book!
“Orgy-porgy, Ford and fun, Kiss the girls and make them One. Boys at 0ne with girls at peace; Orgy-porgy gives release.”
That’s a ritual from that classic book where everyone gets in a circle and has group sex so that all sense of possession and individually is erased from their consciousness. “Kiss the girls, and make them One.” Notice the capital letter on the word “One.” That is because the word ONE is an indicator of an entity onto itself. This is the goal of The Great Society created by the womanizing presidents of the sixties. This is the aim of public education; this is the aim of government insurance, Medicare and Social Security! And these are the pathetic creatures that my kids have to associate with as friends in their peer groups, these children of this distorted government experiment. To see what this Great Society is taking us to just read A Brave New World. That book seemed like a fantasy when I read it over twenty years ago. Now it’s a pending reality.
So call me names you orgy-porgy well wishers, you welfare recipients, you apologists for The Great Society. Your opinions mean nothing to me because your path is clear for anyone with eyes to see. Your story ends only one way, in cultural demise leading to complete social destruction. The end game is as easy to add up 2+2+2+2. One thing leads to the next, which leads to the next in a very predictable manner. Only people who add all that up and give any number beyond the answer of “8” are the ones being fooled. And people like Norma will add up all these conditions and declare that the answer is whatever she decides. If she wants the answer to be 10 then it’s ten. If she wants it to be 20, then it’s twenty. She will say these things because she is not giving opinions based on reality. She is ruled by emotion, the orgy-porgy of our day. The collective orgy of thought and action where there are no consequences with the giant safety net cast by mother government.
So with that, have fun moving to Mason, and don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out. And until your house sells, and since you obviously lack culture, here’s the movie version of that book since you obviously can’t read. Maybe you’ll learn something.
For those who do know better than orgy-porgy Norma, please pass this to a friend to share the classic work of The Brave New World. If they won’t read the book, maybe they’ll watch the movie.
I woke up on the morning of February 24, 2012 with the note you can see below. It’s from a parent in the Pickerington School district who has been watching the actions of Superintendent Mantia here in Southern Ohio. This parent is uniquely positioned to give a statement about Mantia because Pickerington is the school district that the current Lakota superintendent came from in August of 2011. It read as follows:
I’m a parent of students from Pickerington and let me tell you that Dr. Mantia will ruin your schools. She removed almost all music, art, phys ed teachers and librarians. Our libraries used the most current media material and the students loved library where they learned to use podcasts, they wrote book reviews and they had the greatest book clubs. The students loved to read because of the fantastic librarians. They are gone. She has combined music, art and gym together. They currently meet as a group at a school every 6-9 weeks. That means that they only receive physical activity for one week and it isn’t intense activity either.
She took a pay raise one month before she left after resigning. Please watch her and her agenda for the sake of your students, teachers, support staff and your wallet.
As my readers here know, I declared the Lakota School District officially dead after the February 13, 2012 meeting, so I saw no point in going to this latest meeting.It was as predicted more of the same strategy of protecting the wages of the school employees with the smoke and mirrors of fancy terminology that essentially meant nothing. The concession by the Lakota School System to retreat backward as a district with these three public school board meetings instead of restructuring their very expensive labor contracts is deplorable. With this third budget cutting school board meeting, the No Lakota Levy has officially begun the campaign to end this fourth levy attempt which appears to already be underway on behalf of the school board decisions. No Lakota Levy will soon announce a major initiative in reaction to these decisions by the school board. I am done with Lakota as a governing body. I officially cast my vote of no confidence in their direction.
Lakota under the leadership of Superintendent Mantia from Pickerington elected to eliminate 36 more jobs centering on art, music, and physical education, which is consistent with the behavior indicated above by the note from the parent. This is in addition to the 69 positions cut from last weeks meeting that caused me to regulate my opinion as a nail in the coffin to the Lakota educational body as a whole.
During the meeting last night several people were texting me and asking what I was doing, and why I wasn’t there. I told them that I was watching the DVR backups of Ghost Hunters, and my TV show was more important. I said that I thought the ghosts walking around on that TV show were more real than the ghosts walking around at the Lakota School Board meeting on stage, because both were just as effective as managers. In the TV show the ghosts make noise by banging on doors and sending out cryptic EVP recordings. The Lakota School Board does the same; they make a lot of noise with a stupid program named S.T.E.A.M (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) while at the same time cutting those programs with staffing and as Jeff Kursman said at the meeting,
“These aren’t efficiencies, these are reductions. Efficiencies will include things that hopefully we’ll hear about in the next week or two. Things like outsourcing of technology when it comes with dealing with the central office, cutting back on central office administrators…centralizing purchasing or negotiating a better rate in health care. What I see you talking about here today is a degradation of liberal arts education.”
All that was occurring at the school board meeting was a bunch of ghosts making noise to a captive audience. Just like the ghosts in Ghost Hunters the ghosts are powerless to do anything in real life because they are in fact dead. The school board is powerless to do anything but scare people, just like the ghosts in Ghost Hunters. So I see no difference between the school board meeting and an episode of Ghost Hunters. With that in mind I stayed home in the comfort of my home and watched the ghosts on TV rather than waste my time at the school board meeting.
I’m happy to see the comments from Jeff Kursman and others who are now beginning to question the merit of this entire money scheming operation known as the Lakota School System. The key to meeting a balanced budget is to reduce the cost of the services, and that is to drive down the labor costs. Cutting a few teachers here and there is only a band-aid to the situation. Only by making across the board cuts to the 80% of the $160 million dollar budget can the Lakota School System meet its budget supplied generously by the community. Anything less than a contract restructuring with the Lakota labor force will be sufficient.
Karen Mantia has brought with her to the Lakota School System a strategy used at her last job of Pickerington to diminish the quality of the district in order to force parents to pass a tax increase to sustain their inflated union contracts. And to execute that objective she and the school board are willing to destroy everything that is good about Lakota to protect the wages of their union allies. That’s what these ghosts of Lakota were doing, and why I’m not interested in anything they have to say any longer. Instead, the No Lakota Levy will be shifting gears to approach our tax fighting methods without the assumption that Lakota will see the light and come to their senses by listing to our arguments. Now, we must assume that they are not even relevant, and we must find ways to remove their impact from destroying our community in an extortion ring that is evidently well underway. If this fight for more taxes were for the kids truly, then these ghosts of Lakota would not use the kids by stealing from the community’s $160 million dollar budget and take away programs while protecting employee incomes at the expense of the children.
So for now on, I will treat these employees like the ghosts they are, as irrelevant to the land of the living, and powerless to us all if they are robbed of their ability to invoke fear. Because as far as usefulness, they are lacking completely in any ability required in the real world, and are truly manifestations from the land of the dead.
Sometimes the best way to see something clearly is to back up so you can put it in focus. It also helps to not view the world exclusively through one particular specialization of which one makes a living. Living life should be a constant adventure of always learning and expanding ones viewpoint, and not relegating a perception to just those within the field of one’s occupation. This is the role of philosophy and story tellers, people I enjoy spending time around more than any other, because they often see the bigger picture of things, excel in this skill and do society great justice when they share the fruits of their labor.
The dark story of making The Hobbit is one that has held the project up for years and is yet another story about how labor unions are corrosive organizations. And its statements like that which have blacklisted me from any future work within the Hollywood community. I made this choice consciously knowing that I will instead shift my attention in these middle years of my life to writing novels instead. So I am happy to let my whip work and other entertainment talents drift into the nature of that independent task of authorship. Because there is no going back now, I’ve said too much.
But what I said needed to be said. It’s the things that Peter Jackson doesn’t want, or need to say. It’s the things that the distributors at Warner Brothers can’t talk about even if their opinions are harsh on the matter privately. This is because a subtle harness is placed upon the entertainment industry and that harness is the exact same gag that exists on public education, and is preventing the open learning and creativity of millions of children from realizing their full potential. It is that of the labor unions.
During Lord of the Rings, the production could be said to be very successful because Peter Jackson as a director is extremely personable, grounded, and fantastic at multitasking. He kept his set fun which allowed for a bonding to occur between his technical staff and his actors which showed up on-screen in a tremendous way. It is unlikely that Lord of the Rings would have been such a great production if Jackson had not been the director, or if the entire film had not been shot in New Zealand.
My wife and I made serious plans to move to New Zealand in the early years of our marriage and live on a sailboat. So I understand the appeal of a country that as of now prides itself on rugged individuality. When one thinks of New Zealand government of any kind does not come to mind, just big open fields, mountains, horses and–sheep. But the one great thing that I’ll say about New Zealand that the film industry can’t say is that one of the reasons Lord of the Rings went together so impressively, and all members of the crew got along unusually well, and communication worked at all levels was the absence of a labor union in New Zealand involving the actors and technical unions. Before Lord of the Rings came out there were only a few major films to come out of New Zealand, The Man from Snowy River films, and the George Lucas spectacle Willow. So the labor unions didn’t protest too intensely when New Line Cinema aligned with Wingnut films to produce a massive three film adaptation to the Tolkien classic, the unions didn’t pay much attention. Jackson wisely shot the films back-to-back while Fellowship of the Ring was still in post production and had not yet hit theaters. The Lord of the Rings films were able to be made outside of the chaos of the usual Hollywood production without a lot of union influence in an almost campfire style production where everyone bonded on the set.
However, success breeds the looters, and after multiple Academy Awards the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance union from Australia decided it wanted to move over into the New Zealand market because they feared that such high-profile big budget films in the future would go to New Zealand instead of Australia where the Star Wars films were shot over similar concerns. These big productions could not be done in the United States, because there is too much hassle these days over labor disputes, so film companies run from unions out of necessity, and in this case New Zealand is the last far-flung corner of the globe without one of these labor unions controlling the industry, so The Hobbit will be the last of its kind. The unions took action against The Hobbit production joining with the Screen Actors Guild and four other international unions to boycott the production.
Peter Jackson in an effort to save his home country of New Zealand the thousands upon thousands of jobs The Hobbit would bring to craftsman and film personnel refused to buckle under the union pressure and called the union what it was, a bully looking for money, membership and power. He threatened to take the production of The Hobbit and its $300 million budget to Europe in order to make the film. You can read that article here:
Thankfully the whole situation settled as thousands of New Zealanders protested to keep The Hobbit production in New Zealand, so the unions backed off socially, and Jackson was able to go and make the film the way he likes to make them. For me personally it is very nice to see Peter walking around on his sets casually without all the egotistical authority that so many of his predecessors displayed. It’s Jackson’s directorial style to be very open, fair and forthcoming in his dealings with his cast and crew. Jackson is certainly a director who would suffer from too much outside control on his projects which is what the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance union was trying to do. They saw Jackson’s success and they wanted to loot off his back, off his creations, and his relationships so they could get a piece of the pie for themselves.
This is what teachers unions have done to our schools. It’s no different in any respect. A school cannot pick up and move like Jackson threatened to settle a union dispute. A community has a school and it’s fixed in place. So if a union infests it with their looting tendency, the community is forced to deal with the extortion measures they employ.
The Disney Company deals with the unions by tossing more money at the problem which is why the Pirate films are so expensive. Disney has the advantage of generating a tremendous amount of money through their subsidiary companies, so they can play that game. They are too big to fly under the radar like Jackson does today, or Spielberg and Lucas used to. Notice that as Spielberg became bigger and more successful over the years, that his films seemed to become more and more bogged down. He still makes pretty good films, but nothing like his final year as a master filmmaker in 1993 with the release of Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List. I know people get angry with Spielberg and Tim Burton (who I think is a fantastic director) for sucking up to the Obama administration now, and the Clinton administration’s back in the 90’s, but at the heart of that evil is a desire for creative people to make their movies as a wall of opposition known as the entertainment unions stand in the way. The union influence shows up in the final product and it does rob the production of some magic. The audience can tell the difference and it does affect Hollywood’s bottom line. They respond by making more comedies, and easy productions that aren’t overly complicated and can be shot around Los Angeles or Las Vegas–easy set ups. The creative minds behind the movies attempt to keep the protesting communists who run the labor unions at bay with appeasement. Disney throws money at unions to advance a project which works, but prevents smaller film makers from being able to compete on equal footing, because the unions hold all producers to the same standard as a company like Disney. Unless the filmmaker makes the film out of the country like Jackson has, they find themselves encumbered needlessly both creatively and financially.
As I see the previews and clips coming in from The Hobbit I am starting to get excited, because such films—stories of such depth are rare for all the reasons described, and are true treasures of our culture. I desire a world where people can speak and do business with each other without the looters standing in the way trying to make easy money for themselves. And yes, my comments here about the education unions have blacklisted me in entertainment which will go on forever. But I have other talents and I’ll use them to tell the story of how human beings get themselves into these fixes. It’s a difficult thing to balance out the need to make a living and then to make a living that is honest and true. Because the chances are, even if you are a wealthy film maker, if your love is to make movies you still need the industry system to make them, so you do your best to shut your mouth and put up with the parts you don’t like. You give money to the Obama administrations as a payoff to a mobster thug and hope they leave you alone politically. And the same holds true for the teaching profession. Or any profession that is controlled by labor unions, it’s hard to come out and speak against it, and to call it what it is, because the system is designed to exclude any voice of dissention. But I will do it, because I’ve already started the process, so I might as well see it through. And in the meantime, I will cheer with much vigor the upcoming film The Hobbit for all these reasons and more. Great stories are so few and far between, and I’m so excited about this one that I may just go get in line for it right now.
So for those who wonder why I’m such a mean guy who hates so many teachers, and their unions, have a look at this wonderful segment by Glenn Beck on the condition of Greece right now, since they are the result of many of the politics from Socialist International. It is to avoid becoming a future Greece that I fight so hard, and criticize so ruthlessly. It’s to eliminate those in our public debates who wish to take us down this road that are my intended targets.
As the Lakota School System attempts to paint a picture of efficiency and community awareness by putting their troubled school board members into the back ground and promoting their former levy advocates to the forefront in a publicity campaign of competence, there is a sinister wave of reality that is sweeping the nation regarding the trouble with labor unions in education. Have a look at the latest attempt by the Lakota School System to advocate their need for another levy in 2012 by showing the public how hard they are working, as if such measures would earn them the trust of the Lakota residents.
Reading this Enquirer article about Julie Schafer brought my mind to a Marty Steer review of the new book called Special Interest: Teachers unions and America’s Public Schools that is worth mention. So I have included Marty’s review below in its entirety. The specifics of this review are that the union element is completely corrosive to the public school system, and this is detrimental to any discussion of school funding. This review by Marty validates much of what I have been saying about public sector unions, and I will go further than Marty does by stating that no further public funding increases should be provided to any government school until the unions are dismantled. Because only then can correct assessments of the true cost and value of public education be ascertained.
Lakota in their lack of admission to their labor union problems believe that highlighting the sacrifices of their new star, Julie Shafer exhibited in the Enquirer article will successfully hide all the negatives engaged by the Lakota Education Association in driving up the labor costs to unreasonable levels. The how, why, when and where of how this has occurred are shown wonderfully in this review by Marty Steer seen below. Enjoy!
SPECIAL INTEREST: TEACHERS UNIONS AND AMERICA’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Terry M. Moe
In January, 2010, Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) gave a speech to the National Press Club that electrified proponents of school reform sending a surprising promise of hope. She called for sweeping changes in how school districts evaluate teachers, agreed to standardized tests, and favored a plan to get bad teachers out of the classroom. Even the New York Times headlined the breaking news, “Union Chief Seeks to Overhaul Teaching Evaluation Process.” Only problem: this doesn’t compute – especially given her staunch union track record. Today there’s pressure being put on unions that is threatening their survival, but they know how to play the game. Whitney Tilson, founding member of Teach for America, hit the nail on the head. “You know the saying. When you’re being run out of town, get out in front. Make it look like a parade.” (Pg. 269) And she did.
Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools, was written by Terry M. Moe,StanfordUniversity professor and senior fellow at the Hoover Institute. His book is exquisitely researched and highly praised by formerNew York City and Washington D.C. Chancellors, Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee. He begins with a description ofNew York City’s “Rubber Room,” the place where incompetent teachers go to relax while they draw full-salary, full-benefits and time to plan their paid vacations. But he ends with a ray of hope that reform will come, but not immediately. Taking you inside the operation of the teachers’ union, Moe reveals the details of their agenda and the consequences of their power. If the general public knew the truth, they’d be outraged and just maybe next time we’d do a little better at the ballot box.
Before digging into Moe’s book, I’d suggest Googling “A Nation at Risk.” Since Moe refers to it often, it would help to be familiar with this 1983 report to the Dept. of Education that addressed the alarming decline of American education. 25 years later, it had not improved, nor has it since. For the first time in history, they concluded that students did not receive as good an education as their parents, and we are now into the second generation of further decline, soon to be the third. That also just happened to be the time when teacher unions were forcefully on the move.
History: In 1857, the National Teachers Association (NEA) organized as a professional association of educators. Their mission was to meet high standards, attract well-trained teachers that were paid a professional salary and protected by tenure. It was controlled by superintendants, principals and other administrators responsible for making the key decisions. They were also in the business of removing schools from the clutches of party machines and patronage. This worked well for the first 100 years. Throughout the 60s and 70s NEA made a nationwide presence. They didn’t formally declare themselves a union until 1969, but acted like them, as did their union competitor, AFT. By the 80s membership soared and unionization and collective bargaining had now become the norm. (Pg. 44-48)
The Union’s Job: According to unions, they’re only doing their job: represent the special interest of the teacher by negotiating higher salary and benefits, protect them from job loss, issue seniority which protects bad teachers, guarantee a single-pay policy which disregards teacher performance, oppose accountability and school choice. Since the unions now replaced principals, superintendants and administrators with union control, they effectively run the show through the tool of collective bargaining. What follows are some of these “bargained” rules: (pg.174-175)
Teachers can make voluntary transfers to other schools based on seniority.
Senior teachers can take junior teachers’ jobs requiring junior teachers to be laid off first.
Principal is required to give advance notice to teachers before visiting their classroom to do an evaluation.
Use of standardized student tests for evaluating teacher performance is prohibited.
Unionspecifies rules for improvement, mentoring bad teachers, procedures to be followed in any effort to dismiss a teacher, and more.
Unions determine the number of faculty meetings and their duration.
They determine the number of parent conferences and other forums in which teachers meet with parents.
They determine how many minutes teachers can be required to be on campus before and after school.
They determine class size, number of courses, periods, or students a teacher must teach.
They determine non-teaching duties that teachers can be asked to perform such as yard, hall or lunch duty.
They allow teachers to take paid sabbaticals and give liberal options for personal leave days.
They control decisions about school policy, assignments, transfers, and put non-instructional duties in the hands of committees on which teachers participate and may have a majority.
Teachers are allowed to accumulate unused sick leave for years and to eventually convert it into cash windfalls.
Unions control grievance procedures that teachers can invoke if they feel their rights have been violated.
They give union official teachers time off to perform union duties (which requires school to hire a sub)
And they have access to school mailboxes, bulletin boards, classrooms, etc. to use for its own purposes.
Though collective bargaining doesn’t apply to all teachers unions, it is an accurate example of rules taking place within our public schools. The question is, does any of this have to do with what’s good for the kids? Who benefits?
Power, Politics and Reform Unionism: Together the NEA and AFT have over 4 million dues-paying members and collective bargaining is still the norm. That’s not to mention forced unionism which helps getting the legislation they want. They do it through the politics of blocking. Unions overwhelmingly support Democrats only with campaign donations and give more than any other organization, including SEIU. Democrats, in turn, feel obliged to support them. So even if a Democrat candidate genuinely does want reform, they’re between a rock and a hard place. There are organized Democrats who genuinely want reform and engage in what is called “reform unionism.” They ask for account-ability, teacher evaluation, school choice, etc. but here’s the rub. The union agrees with all of the above as long as it’s THEY who set the rules! In other words, they’re forced to buy something that isn’t going to work anyway. Enough said.
Has anyone tried REAL Reform? Yes. Has it worked? No. Why?
New Orleans: Quite successful but happened only as a result of tragedy: Hurricane Katrina. Because so many schools were destroyed, all the teachers were dismissed and the “local unions and its formidable power was essentially wiped out.” So free from the constraints of union power, guess what they built? Charter schools. Children in New Orleans now choose their school. 61% of them choose charter and most of their teachers are products of the revolutionary new real reform organization, Teach for America program. (pg. 215)
New York: When you read about theNew York “Rubber Room” you’ll know why theNew York school district is in deep trouble. Mayor Giuliani tried using his mayoral influence to achieve serious reform in the 90s, but failed. Mayor Bloomberg also tried with a little more success. His Chancellor – Joel Klein was good but his success also came at the price of a “buy-in” that ultimately didn’t work. Albeit a genuine attempt, they also failed. (pg. 220)
Washington D.C. D.C. has long been known as having one of the worst school districts in the country. It’s not from lack of money. In 2009, reported current-spending was $17, 542 per student. Including estimates on school construction, more like $28,000. Yet in terms of academic progress, they came in dead last. Parents were fleeing to charter schools. In 2007 newly elected Mayor Adrian Fenty, a serious reformer, gambled on hiring Michelle Rhee as Chancellor. (pg. 230-231) The unions didn’t know what they were up against. Rhee cleaned house. She even made the New York Times front cover pictured as a witch with a broomstick. Facing a union that had been weakened, she did more than anyone could imagine yet ultimately lost the battle when Fenty lost the 2007 Democratic primary to Vincent Gray. Moe writes” Rhee spent nearly three years bashing her head against a wall of union power, and for what? To bring about changes that are simply common sense and should never have been needed in the first place. They were needed because…the teachers unions have used their power to impose a labyrinth of onerous work rules that prevent the schools from being effectively organized.” (pg. 237)
Two Major Reform Projects
No Child Left Behind (NCLB Act), signed into law in 2001. was set to improve performance while ensuring that no child would be trapped in a failing school. The idea was to increase accountability, allow school choice, and flexibility in the use of Federal funds in exchange for strong accountability for results. While well-intentioned, “some of the most critical flaws arose because their designs were influenced by the unions and their allies – who don’t want educators held accountable and were using their power to purposely create a kind of “accountability” that would be weak and ineffective,” said Moe. Through collective bargaining they succeeded in eliminating private school vouchers and used their powers to ensure that NCLB was almost devoid of serious consequences when districts and schools failed to do their jobs. To date NCLB has been relatively toothless. (pg. 323)
Race to the Top was the work of Barack Obama and Arne Duncan, Obama’s appointment for the Dept. of Education. In a speech on education he reinforced his commitment to basic reformist ideas when he said “States and school districts need to take steps to move bad teachers out of the classroom…I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from consequence.” (pg. 359) Though his words were strong, action was weak and he, too, left with a “buy-in” option on the table which effectively stopped any real reform. The only good it did create was an explosion of reform activity that if kept alive can work to dismantle the power of these unions.
Other Significant Observations and Facts:
Teacher Benefits: Average teacher salary most likely in the $60,000 range – in the $40,000s for newer teachers and can easily become six figure for administrators and more. Add to that an attractive guaranteed pension and health benefits which for many is free. Not bad for a nine month job with seven or less work hours per day.
Union Strength: Massive membership, and politically massive money speaks.
Undoing a union: Not likely because you can vote out a bad politician, but you can’t vote out the unions. Reality: Unions are here to stay.
School boards generally stand in support of the unions. Critical to know candidates’ stand when you vote.
Mayoral support in your community reaches more constituents than does the school board. Important to know.
The Dance of the Lemons Description for bad teachers who are routinely given an unsatisfactory evaluation then passed around from school to school. (190) which of course is because they can’t be fired.
Hillary Clinton Think she’s a better option? Better think again! AFT’s Pres. Weingarten supported Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama. (pg. 268) When it comes to education, Hillary’s worse. Hillary has been the union’s candidate right down the line. (pg. 369) Her record shows she opposes any and all attempts for school reform.
Teach for America is a privately funded organization that recruits, trains and places thousands of college students to teach in the most disadvantaged public schools. Though TFA has proven to be a gold mine of talent for the schools, they are trashed by the unions and obviously pose a threat. (pg. 313)
My Own Observations
In 1983 “A Nation at Risk” concludes that students did not receive as good an education as their parents and we are now into the second generation of further decline, soon to be the third. In 1998 “A Nation Still at Risk” found that “American 12th graders scored near the bottom on the recent Third Int’l Math and Science Study. U.S. students placed 19 out of 21 developed nations in math and 16 out of 21 in science. Our advanced students did even worse, scoring dead last in physics. This evidence suggests that compared to the rest of the industrialized world, our students lag seriously in critical subjects vital to our future… if we continue to sustain this chasm between the educational haves and have-nots, our nation will face cultural, moral and civic peril…. We should be able to rely on our schools to fortify students with standards, judgment and character. Trashy American culture has spread worldwide; educational mediocrity has not. Other nations seem better equipped to resist the Hollywood invasion than is the land where Hollywood is located.” (A Nation Still at Risk by William J. Bennett…) http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/6310
If we allow even one more generation of children to be subjected to the abysmal state of affairs in our public educational system, I think there’s no question we will lose this great country. Today we are at the crossroads in education. Based on growing realization by outraged parents, citizens and communities about the truth of the union agenda and reality of our academic failure, teachers unions have never before been as threatened as they are today. Moe feels confident that “we stand at a critical juncture today that can undermine the unions and put the system on a new and radically different path, and make reform a reality.” (pg. 345) He does see a light at the end of the tunnel, but we all need to own that knowledge and spread it. Now!
Marty Steer
Dec. 29, 2011
RecommendedReading:
“Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools” by Terry M. Moe, followed by
“The Beekeeper: Michelle Rhee Takes on the Nation’s Worst School District” by Richard Whitmire.
Note: (If you haven’t already seen “Waiting for Superman” Michelle Rhee plays a role in that documentary and I believe the “union master” Randi Weingarten, makes a pitiful appearance as well.) This movie will rip your heart apart but needs to be seen.
I’ll have to say that I agree with this father who saw the nasty comments his daughter put on Facebook about him and his wife. Should the father have unloaded a clip from his .45 into the laptop of his daughter for what she said about his family on Facebook? Absolutely!!!!!!!
I still get many questions as to why I do not have a Facebook account. The answer is that I think Facebook is evil, and I don’t care to participate in it. I do put a Facebook “like” button at the bottom of my posts and I see every day that hundreds of my hits come from Facebook where my readers put links to my articles on the Facebook walls to share with their friends. I recognize the upsides to having Facebook, it keeps you in easy touch with family and friends, and provides a timely status as to the activity of a person. As a matter a fact, a co-worker of mine just yesterday was trying to get a flight out of Dallas but it was delayed, so based on his Facebook page he was able to announce to everyone concerned that his flight would be later than anticipated.
But—Facebook does too much, knows too much, and tricks the user into revealing too much about themselves. About ten years ago I read a book by Jim Marrs called Rule by Secrecy. It’s a conspiracy theory book that talked about the Bilderburgers, the Rothschild’s and the One World Order type of stuff as might be expected. It also spoke about the methods the CIA and FBI were employing to attempt to put chips under everyone’s skin so they could track them easily. When I finished that book I wrote in the front, “THIS IS A VERY DANGEROUS BOOK.” I meant dangerous because knowing such things can warp your view of the world and can take the mind down a rocky slope of disillusion. However, at the time of reading that book people were openly angry about the cameras that police were having put up at traffic lights calling them “big brother” and the idea of tracking people anywhere they went was still science fiction. So the CIA and many other organizations found a more subtle way to impose their will on the American and world population so to make their job much easier, they found a way to trick us into giving them all the information they’d have to spend months, perhaps years gathering and allowing our own need for voyeurism to drive a complete end to our freedoms. They put their money behind Mark Zuckerberg and allowed the program of Facebook to do all the work for them. Apparently the CIA is so in love with Zuckerberg that the Facebook founder has earned the ominous nickname from the intelligence community—the Overlord.
Now, it must be disclosed that the segment you just watched is from The Onion which is a social satire show on the Independent Film Channel, which I am a fan of. So the facts shown in that episode are rooted in reality but are not literal. For instance, I don’t think Zuckerberg is an official CIA agent. But, the billions of dollars that came his way came from somewhere and as anyone who works with money knows, “he who has the gold rules.” Zuckerberg didn’t have any money, but he had the ability to make something like Facebook which a whole army of government workers couldn’t fathom, so they took our tax money in indirect ways and gave it to Zuckerberg to purchase his alliance.
Yes—I’m aware that the CIA is reading this. The FBI is too. Go drink another coffee boys, and see if there’s another doughnut in the break room, because I could care less. I know a few agents and my assessment of them are that they are government workers, just like cops, and teachers, and I have made it pretty clear what I think of them. They have a high opinion of themselves that is not based in reality, but on the strength of their pay checks, which to me is just looted money. I don’t value their service and they don’t keep me safe. I’m perfectly capable of doing that for myself. Because of my beliefs my family has been followed, bugged, and harassed for years. It was really bad in the late 90’s up until around 2005. My wife was followed all over town by strange men in white vans. When she’d go to the grocery they’d get out and follow her around the store.
None of this ever got violent. It was just harassment. It started when we took our kids out of the Mason School System to home school them because we disagreed with the 4th grade curriculum of teaching children to put on a condom. We felt that sex education was our job, and our kids were not interested in sex in the 4th grade, so we elected not to participate. The school retaliated by trying to separate my wife from the kids during school events which my wife frequently volunteered for, so we pulled the kids out of school and taught them ourselves. It was one of the best decisions we ever made as parents.
But the social ramifications where ominous, our families turned against us in a radical way, some of that family worked for school systems as superintendents and teachers. The police began to harass our street. Neighborhood kids began to harass my children as they rode their bicycles around the neighborhood. I responded by video recording everything that happened and the police responded by recording everything we did. After a few years of this it became evident that we were recorded everywhere we went about everything we did.
The constant pressure was unsettling to my wife who treasures her freedom and privacy. We’d have conversations knowing that there were listening devices picking up on everything we said and it took her a long time to realize that the idiots on the other end of the line were just mustache men with fat bellies and inflated egos propped up with tax dollars. They were to my mind peons to my overman concept. As I explained to my wife about 10,000 times, “who cares if a fly on the wall sees or hears what we do. Who cares if they can hear us having sex? We don’t mind the dog at the end of our bed as we kick him off, why should we care about some FBI agent, or other law enforcement personnel? What is there to know about us that we don’t want them to?”
So I am aware that these days virtually nothing is private. The scanners at the airport can see through your cloths. Drones can fly outside your bedroom window. And recording devices can pick up everything you say from many yards away. This information is obtained by the cowards of the government who have turned our hard-earned money against us by stealing it from us through legalized theft and propping up citizens like Zuckerberg in the name of safety. I am not troubled that Google watches every email I send and receive. I view such things as information given in a public place. And if people want to see what I put on YouTube have at it. That’s why I posted it. Or this blog site, I put it up to share with people so they might learn something. If it was private, I’d keep it in my head where it’s safe. But Facebook crosses the line for me. It has evolved into a form of behavioral control that I reject completely. It crawls too far into people’s lives and does everything that Jim Marrs warned about in Rule by Secrecy by making people want to behave like herds of sheep, which goes against everything I personally stand for.
Because of Facebook, my extended family often knows things about other family member’s way before my wife and I do. Facebook allows for that voyeuristic tendency, that secret passion to look at what your neighbor is doing from the comfort of your own home. But it’s a trick; your behavior is being plotted and analyzed carefully. Your contacts and the entire network of your contacts are scrutinized by pot-bellied piggies on the other of a monitor. Everyone is watching each other looking for leadership. The herds of Facebook users are being watched by the herds of the government workers in the CIA and none of them have the guts to step away and be independent.
What I mean by independence is doing things in your life without looking to see what your neighbor is doing, as if reassurance is needed. It is that human need for acceptance, which causes us to look at another human being and see if they have done it first before we dare try that is the downfall of our civilization and Facebook perpetuates it by encouraging it.
This is why those who fear to stand on their own two feet and be comfortable in their own lives can be controlled by some master—an overlord if you will. In my family, it took me almost 10 years to get my wife used to the idea that she could and was watched everywhere we went. It was a trip to Cancun where all our cloths were all over the beach and a Mexican security guard patrolling the area was trying to get a peak of the action. My wife saw the behavior of voyeurism that was inherit in all human beings as we dealt with the guard. I treated the guard like he was as useless as a dog at the end of our bed. His eyes and opinion mattered about as much to me as a fly on the wall or the dog at the end of our bed. And what he said to the other dogs at the guard-house mattered as much. It didn’t matter that he had an AK-47 in his hands. Having a gun is one thing, having the courage to use it, or the knowledge, is another. After that, the unnerving sensation that we were constantly being watched and analyzed by weak-minded, fearful human beings had less impact. We had shifted gears as a couple and learned to live our lives from that perspective.
It still doesn’t make this entire tendency toward voyeurism right. It just means that my expectations for the human race must be broke down into another category. And Facebook is a good gage of that. Those who use it to spy on their friends and neighbors, or even those in law enforcement are of the “sheeple” mind-set, which is they are comfortable in the herds of human existence and can easily be steered about by the overlords like Zuckerberg and the CIA.
But these are the same idiots who couldn’t find Osama bin Ladin even though he was right in front of their faces and had a porno addiction. So much for the effectiveness of the CIA, they have been dumbed down like the rest of society to watching for the status of people on Facebook to know what is happening. I know firsthand what it feels like to be watched by these people, even targeted. And it’s no different from the spider that spins a web in the corner of your bedroom. Its eyes and ears mean nothing because it is small and harmless. I’m certainly not going to kill it for being there. I might scoop it up and take it outside if I feel like taking the time to do so, but I’m not going to avoid undressing in my bedroom because the spider can see. But I’m also not going to invite spiders into my house so that they can make a mess with a network of webs all over my bedroom, and that is what Facebook is. It’s a web of voyeuristic spiders that just clutter up your life. And since I don’t wish to be tangled in their webs, or constantly brushing them away from my skin, I keep Facebook out of my life as much as possible.
The necessity for the human being to rise past the need for social reassurance is why I look to the overman as the intended goal of our species. If being human is defined by the weakness for public acceptance than moving beyond those needs would be the definition of an overman. An overman does not worry about the overlords. They do not have power over the overman’s life. The overman does not care about the happenings of those pathetic creatures. The overmen do not care if millions of eyes are upon them everywhere they go, for it is no different in the forest where thousands of insects and the cells on the leaves of trees are aware of a human in their midst’s and they observe carefully for the sanctity of their own survival. The eyes of the CIA, the FBI, of Zuckerberg and all the rest are just that to me, the eyes of insects whose lives rise and fall by the nature of their existence. Their feeble minds are bound to imprisonment for all eternity because they are stuck in a world built by acceptance and believe that by controlling the behavior of the masses that they can ensure the survival of all. But it’s just another web built by just another spider which can be swept away in an instant at the will of the overman, and there’s nothing the spider can do about it.
And as to how Facebook is evil let me refer to the definition of evil by one of my favorite philosophers Ayn Rand from the great book Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. “Evil is not consistent and does not want to be consistent. What it wants is to inject itself into the life-sustaining process sometimes—short-range, out-of-context, at whim. To achieve this end, it needs only a single concession by the good: a concession of the principle involved, a concession that evil is proper “sometimes.” Such a compromise is evil’s character of liberty. Thereafter the irrational is free to set the terms and spread by further whim, until the good—and man—is destroyed.” That is what Facebook is all about. That is why it’s evil.
The story of Archie Wilson is a sad one. A Tea Party Conservative, and a bible thumper, Archie is now the subject of a manhunt after his resignation on February 2nd from the Clermont County Commissioner position.
Archie is proof that nothing any public official says can be trusted. Public employees must be measured by their actions not on what they say. Archie who lobbied to shut down the strip club of Déjà Vu in Mt. Carmel recently took a position of integrity in upholding his office. However while he was declaring that he’d uphold the integrity of his grandchildren through his righteous actions, he was supplying cocaine to the prostitute Amanda Lay–age 26–to have sex with him, pictured to the right. You can see more details about this case at 700 WLW where Scott Sloan broke the story in the early morning. The story link is:
Archie Wilson was the type of person who everyone would assume could be trusted. He’s 61 years old and a Christian conservative and was endorsed by the Tea Party. As I’ve discussed here, no member of public office can be trusted. The lure of power the moment politicians get behind a desk with their name plate on it corrupts their minds to such twisted measures as Wilson displayed in these acts of terrible judgment.
This story explains beyond doubt why the foundations of our country must be the Constitution and nothing else, because the minds of men are too weak to be trusted with alterations. Even those who publicly declared themselves champions of the Constitution as Wilson did are prone to fall from grace.
Remember Archie Wilson during every speech you see from now on where a politician declares their beliefs to be pure and in the public’s best interest. Make sure to listen to that voice in the back of your mind that says that you are listening to a liar, because you probably are.
And a note to all those who are to the left of the Tea Party and will look at the Archie Wilson case as proof that such characters have infected positions in the political right. You have your own problems. You can read an example from just last week at this link.
After three years of work, my latest book, Tail of the Dragon is almost complete. As of this writing the novel is at the copy editor and art departments at American Publishing and galleys are soon to follow. The release of this novel still appears to be during the summer of 2012.
The press release below is close to how the final document will look and I am putting it up here at this time to share with my readers as they have followed the process along for many months now.
Tentative press release:
Eschewing authority, one man’s desperate search for freedom evolves into the greatest car chase in American history. It all started with a race to the White House.
In the exhausting presidential-election process, the American people are subjected to candidates’ self-serving hyperbole that threaten freedoms guaranteed by the United States Constitution. The Occupy Wall Street movement, the Tea Partiers, and ordinary voters from every walk of life all want the same thing: freedom from a dishonest government.
But what is freedom?
Nicknamed “The Tax-killer” for his work in fighting tax increases, author Rich Hoffman uses his own frequent altercations with the law to explore that very question. His latest fast paced novel, Tail of the Dragon, chronicles NASCAR-loving everyman Rick Stevens in his quest for freedom after a mundane lifetime of playing by the rules. One man–who challenges authority and incites the government’s wrath all the way to the White House–will discover the true meaning and price of freedom.
“In Tail of the Dragon,” explains Hoffman, “I found that the best way to get our minds around the concept of freedom is to have the characters break every conceivable law and see what happens. Rooted in a political world mirroring our own, it’s more than fiction, I call it faction.”
For an author interview, contact Jeff at bookpr@american-book.com. Hoffman is experienced in all forms of media and is sure to liven up your venue with wit, knowledge, and large doses of entertainment.
I’m excited about the release of this long-awaited book. The work has certainly been worth it. After reading the book about twenty times now I can honestly say that readers will be in for a unique treat that I’m happy to supply. But to quench the thirst that is building for the book’s official release I am putting links to many of the articles that I have written about Tail of the Dragon during this process to make it easy to review the material that has led to this amazing story.
A friend of mine just opened a new restaurant in Orlando, Florida. Every time I hear about one of these success stories, where an entrepreneur is able to leap all the hurdles placed in front of such an endeavor to open a new establishment I find myself enjoying the announcements more than I should. To me, these types of things should be common place in America. Ideas should be allowed to flourish, and actually encouraged. But the way things are it’s a minor miracle when something like a new restaurant opens because there are so many regulations and looters involved in the process of innovation. By the time all the regulations are satisfied, the permit issues are written, the taxes are paid in addition to all the requirements involved in funding the enterprise; it is only the strongest projects with the most money behind them that survive.
It is not the “permit” department at your local government office who creates jobs and new ideas. It’s not the regulator of any agency. It’s not the bureaucrat in any capacity who does anything, but creates a barrier for the dreamers, for the entrepreneur. These barriers push up the cost of playing the game so that only those who have been lucky enough to squeeze through the cracks before the looters realize that there is money to be made, make it, because that’s the only way one can achieve success these days. The business needs to either be established or have large financial reserves to combat the looters in court and in politics, or the business must fly under the radar of convention and arrive before the looters realize that the new business is going to be profitable.
But that wasn’t the end of the road. That was just one issue out of 32 similar complaints by the CBC office, and that was just one organization that had their teeth into my project. There were as many as 7 such agencies that my project had to comply with just to open and my choice was to do the work myself, or hire out a small army of lawyers, engineers, architects and other professionals to do the work of arguing each item for me. By the time all those employees are hired just to meet the cost of compliance the project budget increased by nearly a half a million dollars.
