Tag: education funding

Dance into the Fire: The perspective of being fearless

 WARNING…………………….WATCH EACH VIDEO CAREFULLY!

CAUTION was the first reaction from some of the people who saw a sneak peek of my recent video promoting the protection of Senate Bill 5, which John Kasich signed into law at the start of April and brings management controls to collective bargaining agreements established by public sector unions.  A majority of those public sector unions are fire-fighter, police and public school teachers and they don’t like S.B.5 at all, because they have openly abused the system of collective bargaining to the level where tax increases are imminent unless reforms are implemented to the pensions and wage rates they’ve elected to give themselves which are approximately 30% higher than what tax payers in the private sector make as far as a wage.  The severe math problem at play is that as government has grown, and more and more people become employed by government at the high rates of pay, they are beginning to outnumber the private sector tax payers which are stressing the whole financial system.  So it has come time that some control must be implemented, otherwise our taxes will rise to unsustainable levels and the needed reforms will have to be explored later, when it’s too late.  The time for action is now and was on my mind while I was doing some gardening.

A good friend of mine who doesn’t know me from deep in the past laughed at the video, because he liked the metaphor, for the truth and clarity of it.  But he said, “Be careful, you’re playing with fire.”  The humor of his joke had two meanings, first it was a literal interpretation of the fact that fire was used in the video to blast some sack worms out of a tree I’m trying to save.  But his deeper meaning was one of caution, and it’s one I’ve heard from many people over this whole issue of public sector union control.  The perception is that if you mess with unions, especially a police union, then abuse, harassment, intimidation, even death is sure to follow. 

When I was in my teens I worked for an organized crime group out of Chicago with an arm in Cincinnati, unknowing at first, but learned that the restaurant I was working for was a front for that activity (my job was a busboy).  When it was discovered that I wasn’t afraid of conflict I was given jobs as a sometimes bodyguard and driver for the guy who managed this restaurant.  I drove him and his friends around to night clubs and hotels. Several of those friends were Bengal players who were selling cocaine as a side job and women who were gold diggers.  Since I was a straight kid who didn’t drink, smoke, or do drugs I was the ideal driver.  It was my task to bail the occupants of the car out of trouble when drinking impaired their judgment and fights over the women erupted at night clubs.  When people got hurt, badly, or people were caught with illegal activity, there was a judge and former mayor who fixed things up for the restaurant, knowing full well what was going on.  I had dinner with this judge on more than one occasion, and I knew him well enough for him to give me his business card.  “If you get into a fix kid, give me a buzz.  Don’t let any of my officers haul you off to jail before you have them call me first.”  He winked at me as I took his card.  I never had to personally call him but my manager did on many occasions. 

My next job was at a car dealership, also serving at the time as a money laundering front for cocaine traffic.  I didn’t know that at the time either, but when it was discovered that I didn’t take any crap from my senior managers, and would fight anyone anywhere, I was recruited into the business.  They started me off as a repo-man, which back then required me to go to someone’s home and take their car back when they fell behind in payments.  Since I worked for the dealership, I had a key to the car, so we didn’t have to call in a tow truck.  A driver would drop me off up the road and hide while I went to the door to tell the car’s owner what I was there to do.  Most of the time they surrendered their cars to me, but sometimes there was a conflict.

I had an excellent reputation of not backing down so of course I was on the radar for a promotion and that meant drug delivery.  They eased me into the deal by asking me to take a guy downtown during my work shift, I’d be paid on the side since I wasn’t selling cars while I was gone.  The guy had a suit case and when we arrived at the condo very close to Ezzard Charles Drive he went into the condo leaving the suitcase behind.  I was suspicious of what was in the suit case so while the guy was in the condo looked in and saw that there were two bags of cocaine tucked neatly inside.  Being very much against drugs, I left the guy and headed back to the general manager of the dealership.  I reported what I had found in the suit case thinking I was doing the right thing.  My bosses face told me the rest of the story.  He was really angry that I had left his dealer in a dangerous condo.  As it turned out, he had the same card for the same judge I did, and he called the guy to solve the mess that followed.

For the next two years I was harassed by the police everywhere I went.  In fact, I received a remarkable 6 traffic citations in a 2 week period shortly after that incident for seemingly silly traffic violations.  I also seemed to be getting into fights everywhere I went, one in particular was a semi-professional boxer who picked a fight with me in a shopping center parking lot.  He left on his own when he realized that I was hitting him too hard and wasn’t intimidated by him.  When the blood started flowing and the police sirens were getting loader from someone who had called the police, he took off and left quickly and mysteriously. 

The problems didn’t go away when I was in my twenties and thirties.  I’ve had direct conflicts with many politicians over the years, from mayors, commissioners, and trustees.  Most of the time it is the police and fire departments that have harassed my family when they realized that all the mechanisms of control and intimidation did not work on me.  The conflicts originated in the simple explanation that they were in the way of things I wanted to do, or I was in their way.  The difference is they are often willing to bend the rules where I expect to hold them to the law.  To politicians, the law is a malleable element that can be bent to shape the money passed in their direction.  It didn’t take me long to recognize there wasn’t much difference between politicians and those in organized crime.  They all want what they wanted and they often used the system as a weapon against those who stood in their way.  Guns or rules, it really didn’t make much difference both used force to accomplish their aims. 

And this is the general perception of politics and organized crime.  People do not speak out because they fear the ramifications of doing so.  That fear is not unjustified; people have watched and come to accept that thuggish behavior is part of the political process.  They also have come to accept that labor unions are radical and violent and if you fight them, then violence will follow.

Well, I have a good deal of experience with labor unions and conflict.  Click here to read a much more detailed recollection.  I have fought union stewards in company bathrooms, argued with union strikers as they called me a scab, and I would get revenge on them by out-producing them by at least double.  I would do it because I was faster than they were, stronger than many of them, and if some of them were stronger than me, I was smarter.  It didn’t matter how many of them there were, there was always a way to beat them if the person that faced them was not afraid, because like organized crime, politics, or union labor, the fear card is how they extort money from the tax payer.  They use fear to get taxes passed.  They use fear to keep people from breaking the laws.  They use fear to make their labor strikes effective.  Without fear they have nothing. 

And that’s why going against 1.3 million people in Ohio does not bother me.  1 or a million, it doesn’t matter.  I have the second amendment to protect me from politics that are being used against me as does every American.  What more do I need?  If the laws have no value because those who make the law, use the law as a weapon, then what is there to fear once it is accepted that the game of politics is built on fear, and if that fear is overcome, then the truth can be seen clearly. 

The people who use fear to advance themselves, and labor unions certainly are guilty of this, can only threaten to walk off a job, or beat up and kill someone who attempts to shine a light on their illicit nature.  They may hire people to do this for them, or vandalize the property of a target in order to inspire fear of a different nature.  They may even go after the targets family.  They may attempt to hack into the websites of a target, or their email.  They may tap their phones or follow the target and their family around to scare them.  The bottom line is that if a politician, a union leader, or an organized crime lord cannot argue facts directly, they use intimidation to scare people away from the truth, then you can be assured that you are on to something, because they are trying to protect something with that force.  And what they are protecting is often money that was stolen from someone else in one form or another, and they want to keep the issue quiet. 

I’ve seen every form of intimidation the human mind can concoct.  And it doesn’t bother me because I’m willing to counter it.  I do not ask anything of government or the people employed by it.  I put up with government, the schools, the police, and the infrastructure of politics because my friends and neighbors like those things.  As long as they leave me alone, I leave them alone.  But when those groups start asking for money, I get angry because they want something that belongs to me.  And when they use fear to get it I get even madder.  And when they put it in my face and make threats, then they just made a mistake, because they will not be able to win that fight.  Once when a person attempted to follow me around town, I lost them on the highway to a high-speed chase because the person following me did not have the nerve to keep up.  And out of many hundreds of conflicts over the years, that is the general rule.   In the end all you really need is the second amendment and the nerve to go with it.  You don’t have to go out looking for a fight, but if the fight finds you, then that is why the second amendment is there, for when government becomes so corrupt they listen to thugs, organized crime, labor unions, and other fear based scoundrels who want easy access to the pot of money the government takes from all of us, then the constitution is there for our protection. 

I’ve been to court so many times that I know the routine in my sleep.  A judge will not even hear a case unless you appear with an attorney.  Attorneys, politicians, and law-enforcement all have a nice little scam going.  Attorneys use law suites to beat people into submission, especially individuals who have limited funds because an out-of-court settlement is the cheapest way to surrender to a fight that is stacked against the average citizen from the start unless they can afford equal legal counsel that bill at $200 an hour.  An average court case will cost $10K to $50K and few people have that kind of money lying around.  Big labor has certainly used these methods to get what they want which is just another form of extortion. They sue companies, politicians, whole branches of government, individuals, whoever gets in their way. 

But the money we produce as tax payers creates this whole infrastructure.  And the perpetrators of legalized theft, whoever they are, use fear to keep us from looking at the situation honestly, because once we know it’s a scam, we may not support it.  That’s what they fear, that the public will realize that they are all a bunch of mindless thugs who use muscle and intimidation to gain leverage on a unknowing public.  

I’ve put up with their games for over thirty years, and I’m done.  I am not willing to participate in the lie of politics.  If that goes against the “muscle” of politics so what, I won’t see anything I haven’t seen already.  In my older years here, I have grown very fond of playing with fire.  So I appreciate the concern, but I’m not the one who’s going to be burnt by it.  It will be the people who are up to no good, who insist on manipulating with fear the facts to rob good people of money who will be burnt.  Because to me, they are no different from the pests I had to burn out of my tree to save that tree.  Taken individually, I’m sure I’d love all the little caterpillars in that nest.  But when they build a nest in a tree I’m trying to save, I have to identify the problem and solve it.  The same holds true for public sector labor unions that have set up a nest on our tax dollars and are threatening to kill everything the tax money is supposed to be spent on. 

I’m going to call it the way it is, and by a rule, if someone is using fear of any kind instead of truth to get a point across, they are hiding something.  Fear used even in the form of a mob chanting in any threatening fashion is a sign that they are hiding something, and can’t be trusted.  I’m not willing as a tax payer to contribute to a system I can’t trust and I’m willing to remove any elements that get in the way of an honest exchange of ideas.  Nothing else is worth the money.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

American Air Supremacy: But do we have the courage to keep it?

Zero’s Kates and Vals appeared over the crowd as explosions went off everywhere in the blistering July heat. The heat index was 115 degrees on the runway and the sun was relentless as the roar of World War II piston engine craft filled the sky with an unmistakable pulse. The re-enactment of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was underway by a group of stunt pilots flying restored fighters in a pyrotechnic reminder of just how badly governments of the world have desired to extinguish the power of personal liberty known as the United States. The show known as Tora! Tora! Tora was just one of the many shows displayed at the 2011 Vectren Dayton Air Show, but for me it was the best because of my love of piston engine aircraft. You can see my personal video of that show and other highlights here:

I’ll have to give Michael Emoff (Chairman U.S. Air and Trade Show Board of Trustees) credit; the seats from The Chairman’s Club were as good as it gets for a show of this magnitude. The catered food all morning and into the afternoon was wonderfully refreshing, as was the constant supply of 6 different beer selections. But the truckloads of bottled water were essential, and made the show a comfortable success. I cannot argue that the entire show took place in my lap from that vantage point, and it was a delightful endeavor. On the other side of the fence, the massive hoard of a crowd packed in close to see the action, and it looked hot over there, with no room to breathe for many people.

The Chairman’s Club is a section set up for exclusive guests and many in the aviation business comfortably packed the tables in front of the gigantic mess hall tent, which did lower the temperature considerably with its high vaulted ceilings that allowed the hot air someplace to go, and to cool. It was a good design. The ice cream prior to the Thunderbirds show was a nice touch even if it did melt in a matter of minutes. As is the custom, many of the pilots and parachutists come to The Chairman’s Club to refresh after their portion of the show and meet some of the guests who help put their planes in the air. It is a chance for both sides of the aviation business to meet each other up close and personal. I told one of the guys who had drug his parachute into the area to repack after he had landed just moments after falling from 16,000 feet, “Bet you wish you were still up there.”

He looked at me and laughed, “It’s about 50 degrees up there. It’s a scorcher down here.” Sweat dripped off his forehead as he folded his pack over tightly.

The F/A-18 pilots came and took turns taking pictures with many of the GE employees present. For many of them it was a moment of pride to see the Super Hornet’s take off from the tarmac and go almost instantly vertical. The clouds dotting the sky prevented long runs at the airstrip, so the F/A-18’s kept their speeds under the speed of sound, but the vibration and roar of those F414-GE-400 engines brought a line of high level employees to the pilots when they showed up for some relief from the heat and to provide the customary pictures and autographs.

It was obvious that even from the pilots faces that The Chairman’s Club was an oasis upon that landscape of blistering heat that was closest to the flight line and the first stop to recharge their bodies.

But even with all the high performance displays of the F/A-18’s, the Thunderbirds in the F-16’s, The B-1B Lancer with its 30,780 pounds of afterburner thrust, the fantastic modified stunt plane by Oracle called the Oracle Challenger, specially built for Sean D. Tucker and his fantastic aerobatics with jaw-dropping stunts, it was the World War ll era fighters that I found the most attachment to.

There was a Corsair in the air which set my mind back to the heroics of Tex Hill, after Hill completed his tour of duty with General Clair Chennault and the Flying Tigers over China. There was a B-25 Mitchell that I’ve always loved, the sound of the 2 Curtiss-Wright Twin Cyclone engines pushing out 1,700 hp each punching the air with American brutality. It was the B-25 that made up the 16 bombers who took off from an aircraft carrier to bomb Tokyo five months after Peril Harbor on a mission known as The Doolittle Raiders. I had the opportunity to get up close and personal with this plane during the show which I included in my video because of the distinctive sound of its engine. The plane is the prototype of what would become the fantasy of The Millennium Falcon in Star Wars, and it’s a favorite of mine. It was the display of Tora! Tora! Tora! That captured my attention the most.

During that re-enactment of the bombing of Peril Harbor the planes flew in multiple trajectories, crossing each other in complicated ways through smoke and explosions. Many of the planes made bombing runs 20 to 30 feet over the runway multiple times, which was impressive. A reminder of what governments are capable of cannot be ignored when anybody attending this air show can witness firsthand the power at play through the machines of aviation in defense of freedom.

America without any question invented aviation, and that birthplace was Dayton, Ohio, which gives the Dayton Air Show added meaning. It was the Wright Brothers who using good-ol’ America horse-sense invented flight with a kite like plane built on the principles of a bicycle. It was the bravery of people like Chuck Yeager, Tex Hill, The Doolittle Raiders and Howard Hughes who pushed what flight could accomplish in war to advance aviation to the levels seen in this show. Case in point, the B-2 Bomber made an appearance; it took off from Arizona that morning, arrived at preciously the correct time just a few hours later in Dayton. It made two passes of the air field blasting its engines on the second pass, then heading to Peoria, Illinois for another air-show just 45 minutes away for that craft, on schedule of course. The B-2 would then land back at its home base, it’s pilots home in time for dinner after traveling all over the United States in the course of the day. The B-2 is the culmination of years of bravery and technical innovation. It is evident when attending air-shows like this, that if an enemy of the United States wanted to attack America, like the Japanese did at Peril Harbor, and the Soviet Union attempted to do in the space race economically, and failed, that the heart of America, the spirit that advanced aviation to the modern levels of the B-2 bomber would have to be removed. No country in the world can compete with the United States because of America’s development of aviation.

If one cares to understand the mind of the enemy, and America will always have enemies, they will read what the enemy does. The most recent is the radical Islamic elements in the middle-east, those old empire builders of the Persian Empire who still despise America for its role in dividing up the Middle East after the Treaty of Versailles, or the Chinese communists who fought America in Korea through support of North Korea, and Vietnam with Russian support. There is no question that in many palaces and luxury meeting rooms all across this world the topic comes up, “How do we get rid of America.” It is clear in the Sun Tzu classic, which I personally studied for over 10 years, The Art of War, that the best way to destroy your enemy is by prevailing over those who have already lost. That is the essence of that classic piece of literature which is currently studied aggressively by Chinese and Japanese military, government and business leaders. And the way to beat America is to convince Americans to strap themselves down in debt, so they do not have the money to spend on their wonderful aviation and technological development.

The Space Shuttle Program just ended. Under the Obama administration NASA along with the Joint Strike Fighter have both been targeted for elimination because America has spent itself into catastrophe, and is no longer making investments into aviation like it has over the last century, culminating into the B-2 Bomber.

The F135 Joint Strike Fighter has also hit the chopping block, at least it’s back-up GE/Roll Royce engine. It is easy to see who America’s enemies are because they are against the construction of this next generation aircraft.

It is interesting to hear what people on the political left think are appropriate in debating budget negotiations. Listen to this simple-minded person talk about the budget battle taking place, and what is appropriate in that conflict. Obama and his people are big union supporters, and Lockheed Martin, GE and most in aviation that are behind the Joint Strike Fighter are giant unions, yet there are many who subscribe to the theories of cutting defense spending and NASA to pay for the destructive entitlement programs created by politicians to purchase votes. Those same people believe that the right thinks just as devious as the left. They are all off the mark in my opinion, but aviation to me expands America in every possible way, and should not be negotiated with by either side as some type of bargaining chip. Everyone wins in aviation no matter what the political affiliation left, right or middle. The only losers are other competing countries.

What is the RT? That’s an English-speaking progressive channel that stands for Russia Today. That’s why the temperature in Moscow is listed in the bottom corner. They are a propaganda arm of modern Russia, and if you think they don’t still have a grudge against America, they were one of the few countries to not accept the full title of the recent Hollywood film, Captain America.

As I watched the Dayton Air Show it was apparent to me that many of the enemies of America are now attempting to destabilize the United States not with stealth weapons, or even spies. They are trying a much more sinister weapon called progressivism, which is designed to lower American defenses, drain our wealth and keep us from spending money on the kind of technology on display at the air show, because the enemies of the United States cannot reach that level of technology. All they can really do is corrupt our youth into becoming lost adults who don’t remember Pearl Harbor or people like Tex Hill.

Progressives are attempting to inspire the youth culture to live aimless lives with an un-heroic pretense. Those enemies will do everything they can to topple the United States from the inside out, because that is the only way they can rule the planet, and their respective portions of the world. For now, they’ll use the United Nations for their own agenda, but once America is gone, and the money it puts into supporting world peace with it, the tyrants will have a new day and chance at spreading their tyranny across the face of the plant.

How can I say such a thing? Entertainment is always a great measuring stick to the values of a culture who produces it.


In some future air show, people will attend and wonder how a civilization who built such fantastic ancient machines like the Joint Strike Fighter, and the B-2 Bomber simply disappeared and stopped the technological advances that America seemed poised to create.

As I watched the F/A-18F pilots stand with a group of people in The Chairman’s Club under the elite protection of all the elements present, the people who build the planes and the pilots who fly them, I wondered how many of those people really understood the fight that was really happening outside those protected confines, out beyond the crowd of burnt up citizens scanning into the heavens at the fantastic aerial display going on in the sky, or the small children buying toy air planes from a vender proudly holding the toys as if they were treasures more valuable than gold, because the toys themselves represent power, and freedom. Who among anybody really understood the games being played and the stake of the games, which with all the proud patriotic celebration of the past that the future is in such jeopardy, did anybody really know?

I don’t believe many of those people out of the thousands around me really put much thought into it. As long as the beer was cold, the catered chicken and beef cooked to perfection, and the side dishes were immaculate, the politics of the day were other people’s problem. The air show was to be enjoyed and once over, we would all return to our VIP parking spots right outside the fence and be on Highway 75 before most of the other people would be headed to the vast parking lots packed with cars over a half a mile away. And of all those masses, the focus was on the past, at what we had done in that past both distant and recent. But the future is in jeopardy if that same American spirit that put those planes in the air does not survive the peril of progressivism, given to the United States from foreign enemies by spies and double-agents using the long proven instructions spelled out in Sun Tzu’s, The Art of War.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Learning what a Republic is: The Continued Lessons of Star Wars

I could not help but notice at my favorite book store that many of the works that I used to only find online, are now in stock, on the shelf. Work by Thomas Paine, John Locke, and all the works of Ayn Rand are easy to find, and this is fantastic news because people are hungry for knowledge. The Federalist Papers are even now stocked on the shelf in abundance. Ten years ago it was only law students who bought copies of it, now it’s an older man in his upper 60’s as I watched him thumb through it’s pages prior to purchase.

Political discussion is often not just about the topics on the nightly news. Recently, a friend of mine gave me a copy of The Original Argument, which was endorsed by Glenn Beck as a way to explain in today’s language the meaning of The Federalist Papers. I enjoyed The Original Argument so much that I read it twice while on vacation recently, and it occurred to me that The Original Argument was not a rule book so to speak intended for lawyers, but it is a political philosophy that speaks a truth established by 4000 years of human history. It does not belong in the political science section in a book store, but in the philosophy section.

But as a friend of mine uttered in frustration the other day, “what are we to do about all this!” The frustration of thinking all their lives that everything was OK in the world, and that politicians were sleazy, but not considered downright evil, and finding out that in fact there are many things that have been going on that people are just learning about because they are reading again, can be very overwhelming. Catching up on 200 years of American history in the span of a year or two like many Tea Party enthusiast are doing can send a person to burn out quick. So it’s important that people remember to have fun along the way. It’s even better if people can learn while they are having fun. Fans of Glenn Beck will notice that Beck is an obvious Star Wars fan. It will also be noticed that there are a lot of Tea Party patriots who are increasingly creating Twitter accounts along the lines of “Jedi Patriot” and “Empire Fighter” in an obvious homage to Star Wars. In our modern age, Star Wars has become a form of modern philosophy, not just simply entertainment. Star Wars is a great way to think about all the things that are going on in the world around us, while also taking a vacation from the intensity of those revelations. After all, the film The Phantom Menace was not about a young boy who grew up and became Darth Vader. That is just one of the sub plots. The Phantom Menace was all about a senator who wants to be emperor, and he uses many people in obscure ways to create the circumstances that will allow him to grab power for himself. It’s all in good old-fashioned fun, but the sincerity behind The Phantom Menace is actually incredibly sophisticated, which is the genius of Star Wars.

The films of Star Wars consist of only 6 two-hour movies and that is what a majority of the fans think of when they hear the name of Star Wars. But for fans who wish to dig deeper, Star Wars tackles many of the problems of our modern times using the language of mythology and the latest entry to that mythology is the MMO computer game called The Old Republic due out later this year and it’s something my wife and I are looking very much forward to.

Glenn Beck uses Star Wars metaphors to explain many of the complicated topics of our day because Star Wars is the only work of art in modern times which attempts to tackle the complicated nature of human failure and evolution as a species. Star Wars is a basic tale of good and evil, but it goes much deeper. With over 100 books, the 6 movies, cartoons, video games, comic books, amusement park rides, Star Wars is a formidable aspect of modern culture which I’ve written about in detail at this article: CLICK HERE

What is even bolder within this Star Wars mythology is this whole new path the franchise is taking in exploring The Old Republic. There are now two novels and two videos games with the addition of the computer game being previewed here, which explores what life was like in The Old Republic which takes place over a thousand years before the events shown in the films most people are familiar with. The idea of the Sith, the villains in Star Wars is to explore the influence of evil and this is done not just in a spiritual way in these stories, but also in a political way. It is the first work of art that I can think of which has mass appeal that attempts to do anything like this. It does not limit itself as an examination of religious influence, or political study, but as an all-encompassing investigation through the story lines of what causes the rise and fall of civilizations.

I am a fan of the works of writers like Thomas Mann and his Magic Mountain, and Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West, and I will state in that context the collected works of Star Wars are every bit as sophisticated and meaningful. In Star Wars the entire galaxy is part of a republic. Not a democracy, but a republic. This is similar to what planet Earth is facing in whose political philosophy will emerge as the world shrinks, will it be a republic like what the United States has had so much success with, or will it be various degrees of socialism similar to what Europe and many eastern countries have experimented with.

The most important contribution is that in the galactic government of Star Wars, it’s a republic that is pursued, and provides an interesting model for how Earth should proceed. It is the Republic of the United States of America that should teach the rest of the world how to be a free people, produce their goods under the umbrella of capitalism, and interact with one another with respect under that accepted philosophy.

What gives me hope is that Star Wars is the best education device that young people have to counter what they are learning in public education, and politicians who crave socialism where the philosophy of a republic is not taught to them. It is entertainment that is providing the best education to society, and because of the popularity of Star Wars it is evidence that many people are learning about it.

Glenn Beck understands that Star Wars is a modern work of political philosophy and science. When people who love freedom want to know how America is supposed to function, books like The Original Argument are fantastic. But it cannot be disputed that free life will always stay within the confines of the United States borders. As the evidence of illegal immigration have shown, millions of people all over the world want to become a part of the Republic of the United States and we owe it to those people in America to help not just open our borders to them, but to expand the freedom we experience to those far reaches of the globe so that there can be a grand Republic of Earth. And to get an idea of how to do that, Star Wars is the best work of art available to help show how that process should look, and what type of hurdles will stand in the way, so that freedom can be experienced by anything that breathes world-wide.

So before going crazy, choking on all this information that has always been there, but is being re-discovered, it is good to have a device that can give your mind a vacation. For me, it’s a love of pirates, and Star Wars. Star Wars allows the mind to swell without limits without becoming lost in the fantasy. And I look very much forward to the age when the kids who are growing up with this expanded universe of Star Wars start to run the country, because that is a time when things will dramatically change for the better, because they will understand that America is a republic and not a democracy and the only hope the entire world has for freedom.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

S.B.5 IS UNDER ATTACK: Do you have the courage to keep it?

That video created a hail fire of anger among the public sector union class over the weekend because it was evidence to them that the side protecting Senate Bill 5 is able to muster up the support of high-profile national names too, like they have been doing.  Unions hate competition!

The public union sector class, which is what we should call them, as they claim to be the entire middle class for voter identity, was able to gather 1.3 million signatures to repeal Senate Bill 5 after John Kasich signed the bill into law that went into effect on July 1st 2011.  It is because of S.B.5 that the OEA (Ohio Education Association) all over the state of Ohio scrambled to pass their teachers union contracts, so they would be grandfathered in when the bill became effective.  The union knew that they needed to appeal to the masses if they hoped to successfully repeal the bill in the fall election by putting on a softer, more cooperative face.  But even more important, they needed to protect their members from budget cuts before S.B.5 could be used against their tyrannical grip on local tax budgets.  The effect of these contract negotiations placed districts like Lakota, which is the 7th largest district in the state of Ohio into financial solvency again where before the contract negotiations the finances were grim. 

That is just a sample of what S.B.5 as a bill will be able to do for the tax payer.  The out of control costs that are currently at play in all government positions, especially teaching positions, can be managed finally by the local district.  There is a lot more costs that must be managed which will continue to make school districts fiscally viable. 

The same people against Senate Bill 5 are used to push environmental issues. Notice how it’s always about children.  Progress Ohio, who has produced many videos like the Anti S.B.5 videos shown here is a progressive group which seeks to “progress” society into the progressive trends that we have been traveling down, and they are at the front of the labor movement politically.  You can learn a lot about these types of people by studying what they think is important.  The children are put in the front row used as props, and the topics are always emotional.  This is why these people cannot be allowed to give themselves pay increases, which is what has been happening.  They have no monetary discipline.  It’s ok to hire people like this to be a park ranger, but they are an overly emotional group that exaggerate everything, and are not capable of firm business decisions.  Anytime money is at play, business decisions must be firm, and understood.  

Saturday I received this email from a friend of mine with thoughts about the upcoming Lakota levy, which even though the school board solved their immediate problems with the new contract is looking to cover the cost difference lost in state funding and federal allocations in the upcoming years, and they seek a tax increase instead of the options sent to me in the email by my friend.

_______________________________________________________________________

Rich,

I hope you are well.  I continue to track the ridiculous actions of your district.  What is not making sense is why deficit spending platform is not the main theme against a levy.  In addition, there is no need for a levy, even under their current June assumptions until 2014.  Therefore, there is more time to make them:

1.       Updated and renegotiate health care and not continue to carry such egregious increases in assumptions upwards of 9.5%

2.       Change the split of health coverage with employees

3.       Remove pickups for employees

4.       Remove administrators raises

5.       Remove step raises

6.       Look more closely at their revenue assumptions

a.       2010 the district collected over $75.6 million – 2011, they say they will only collect $71.4 million.  Ask for a “BUDGET TO ACTUAL” NOW THAT YOU HAVE YEAR END TO SEE IF THEY UNDERSTATED REVENUES BY $5.1 MILLION.

b.      If they understated revenue in 2011 by $5.1 million, you need to carry that forward for 5 years and you pick up $25 million in revenues

7.       Benefits are not impacted at all, yet the community is suffering.  That MAKES NO SENSE

My thoughts for your day.  Let me know if I can help!

________________________________________________________

I have a lot of people who work in various education positions all over the state who send me information like this.   They are frustrated with the way the system works and want to see changes made.  This guy is one of them. 

My response to him was that until school boards use S.B.5 to bring their costs down, the real costs such as what he assessed in his email to me, then this school tax levy game will continue.  As of right now, the school board knows the unions will never go for removing step increases, taking real pay cuts to bring labor wages in line with the private sector, change the health care coverage, the union won’t agree to even one thing on his list, let alone all of them.  That is why Ohio needed S.B.5, because collective bargaining has driven up public employee costs since 1983 to such an extent that now it is abusive to the tax payer, and has been for some time. 

It is these same public sector unions who have tried to label John Kasich as a Wall Street Stooge, as though Wall Street were the ultimate evil in the world.  And they of course hate Newt Gingrich who is a presidential candidate who has advocated unpopular big government warnings. 

Many forget, because their memories are shallow that it was Newt and Kasich who balanced the budget in the 90’s in the Federal government which Bill Clinton reluctantly went along with.  And these are the guys who are involved in solving Ohio’s budget problems which can be seen as a microcosm of the nation’s problems. 

The public union, big government types know this and they have their own weapons they plan to use.  Of those, is Bill Cunningham of 700 WLW who has for a long time considered himself a libertarian/conservative, but is mysteriously in favor of big public unions.  Bill is the guy at the end of the above Kasich video shaking his hand.  Cunningham seems to only advocate change so long as it doesn’t interfere with his income where his real allegiance appears to be his law practice, which of course employees many public employees who work hand in hand with public sector union employees every day and has made him personally wealthy.  One of those is his own wife, who is a current judge in Cincinnati.  Sheriff Jones of Butler County, who is my neighbor and a fellow Tea Party supporter over immigration reform, is one of the charismatic Republicans who the unions have targeted to help lead the march in repealing S.B.5 this fall.  The TV spots are being planned for this as I write this article featuring all the great feats that your local police and firefighters are doing for your community, kissing babies, helping old ladies across the street, and why they need S.B.5 repealed. 

Sheriff Jones is the same guy who has openly stated that he doesn’t understand where all the jobs in Hamilton have gone, as he marches to the FOP drum of union brotherhood.  So economics is not his strongest topic, but using emotion to win elections is.  After all, this is the same guy who wants to sue Mexico for all the illegal drugs coming into America.  Here’s a hint Sheriff Jones, they left because union wages closed down Fisher Body in Hamilton, Norwood and other places.  The union’s wages and benefits were just too steep to cover those costs, so they left.  My grandfather worked there, and I know what kind of pension he had, and even when I was a little kid, I wondered who was paying for him and his friends when they were in retirement.  It didn’t add up.  In fact many people in my family were or are union people.  And they are wrong to blindly follow union mandates just to protect their pay check.   They’ve all been told. 

The union strategy of course is they think people like Bill Cunningham, Bill Seitz, and Sheriff Jones who are Republicans with connections to Fox News can somehow offset swing voters into doubting the validity of S.B.5 into a repeal.  What is forgotten is that these Republicans are the types who have built their lives around public sector service, so they do not have an objective opinion.  To them politics as usual is the only politics there is. 

To people like me, politics as usual is simply too expensive, and cannot endure.  It is a shame that the police and firefighters unions have jumped in front of the teachers unions to shield them and muddy up the fight for reform, because it will also expose how bloated those services are  in the dispute.  Emotion will not win this battle, this time.

Listen to Glenn Beck explain the pension pyramid at about the 7 minute mark to understand the beginning of the problem.  Glenn Beck is 100% right when he says that these problems can only be sustained for one generation.  Politicians like Sheriff Jones and Bill Cunningham are part of that generation who voted for the whole thing, and it is difficult for them to admit to themselves that they brought us to this terrible crises.  So they defend their mistakes just like a person caught in a lie tries to justify what they’ve done.  But the facts are the facts. 

There is no question with 1.3 million signatures public union membership has tipped the balance of power perilously close to ending what the American republic was founded on.  When employees can vote themselves raises, which public sector unions have notoriously abused at the expense of the tax payer for years, even the big government President FDR himself cautioned us against it.  President Kennedy was the man who through executive order, made public sector unions legal, which should have never been done. 

Click here to read President Kennedy’s fatal error:

If you want to know the truth, of why these public sector unions want to maintain the status quo, all you have to do is follow the money. 

Click here to see what West Chester police and firefighters make, which is within Butler County, Sheriff Jones’s territory and FOP brothers, to see what they are protecting…………………

…………..go ahead, you want to know the truth don’t you.  CLICK HERE:

And Lakota, one of the largest schools in the state of Ohio also located in Butler County.   Why do you think the OEA wants S.B.5 repealed?  Go ahead, CLICK HERE:

It will take a very high voter turn out to protect Senate Bill 5.  Nobody is asking anybody to take a rifle into a field and defend their liberty from tyranny……….not yet.  You still have the opportunity to protect yourself from an ever-expanding government by simply showing up to vote.  The unions will certainly show up, because their income which they get exclusively from the tax payer depends on it.  So they will be there.  It must be expected that they will have almost 2 million voters who will show up and cast a ballot in November.  This is why it is dangerous to have too many government workers.  When they outnumber the tax payers, they can enact policies on their own at tax payer expense.  They can vote themselves raises, which is why they make so much money, and management is powerless to do anything about it, because Ohio Revised Code created under union lobby power has prevented management controls and driven up the costs.  

So in November, If you don’t see through the smoke and mirrors and allow yourselves to be conned, you will not only be responsible for higher taxes which will come your way in order to pay for all these elaborate public employee salaries and pensions as the system collapses on itself, but you will have turned away from an opportunity to march toward the America as it was intended to be in favor of an American headed in the direction of Europe.  And it will be your fault, because John Kasich along with the house and senate did exactly what they said they would do, and that is stare the problem in the eye and do the hard thing even when the status quo makes threats and harasses them. 

Click Here to read about how the SEIU threatened Ohio Senators in a restaurant, to attempt to threaten them into not voting in favor of S.B.5.  CLICK HERE!

They gave Ohio S.B.5.  The question is now, as a tax payer, do you have the courage to keep it?

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Me………..Too Hard on Cops: The buffoons of politics

The people who have read my early draft of Tail of the Dragon, my new book due out in 2012 all have had a common reaction, “Great story, but wow, you really hate cops!”

No, it’s not that I hate cops. I hate politics, and police officers enforce the law of politicians. I see many of the laws that are currently on the books in any city, state, or federal ledger to be simple work creation measures designed to give law makers something to do, a way to justify the enormous amounts of money we pay them in public office. Sometimes, the police that are hired to enforce, “the law” have legitimate claims to danger such as bank robberies, drug busts, and armed confrontations. But most of the time and we all know this, police offers don’t have a whole lot to do, so they become the minions of the bloated politician and the rules they have created who have lost all common sense. Case in point, the video below is of a group of young girls who want to raise money to go to a water park by selling lemonade. The police shut down the stand because it is against “the law.”

The permit process is largely created under the guise of authenticating an endeavor. The original thinking is that if people will take the time to get a permit, then some measure of control can be enforced by whoever issues the permit, and that is for the public good. But like all things in politics, permits have become a cash cow and a form of abuse culminating into complete breakdowns of rationality, such as what happened to these poor little girls.

But it doesn’t end there. Police are law enforcement created to enforce the law. They are not law contemplators. They take orders like blind machines and do not question the authenticity of their superiors. If a law is bad, they have no opinion. If a prosecutor or some other law-maker wants to twist the wording of a city ordinance for their own ends, then the police can be called in like a private army to wreck the lives of whomever is at fault, whether those at fault are even aware of their illicit deeds. Because nobody can claim ignorance to the law, even if the wording is something you think you understand. If the prosecutor “interprets” the wording differently than you do, then you will be in court to battle out the definition and case-law will be created off your case. This is the situation with the woman in this next video; she is building an organic garden under what she believes to be the law. But a politician looking to make a name for himself doesn’t like it, so he is shutting it down, or trying to.

A common occurrence in dealing with any large organization private or public is that accountability is often less enforced because of the sheer number of people employed. This makes dealing with them a real problem especially when a mistake is made on their end. In the video below the homeowner went to jail and lost everything because of a bank error and it was the police who showed up and put him in jail. Because the interpretation of the law almost always favors lawmakers and those lawmakers are closely tied to those who give them campaign donations for their elected office, the police can be made to completely serve the needs of those with power.

Meanwhile it is all of us who pay taxes that fund the entire enterprise. We are funding our own demise.

Without some sort of check’s and balance system which is what court is supposed to be, the law will grow itself out of control. Small ordinances created with good intentions will shut down the lemonade stands of little girls trying to learn to become entrepreneurs, or people participating in self-reliance by growing their own food. Or homeowners who get stuck trusting the system and being caught in the middle of an error, spending the weekend in jail and having their assets seized while a bunch of public employee buffoons try to figure out what to do and how to cover up their mistake. It is the police that these public officials use to perpetuate their activity. We are headed toward this type of situation which can be seen in Greece, where secret police dressed in plain clothes are able to arrest people from the crowd, because “the law” states it’s for the public good.


So is my story, the Tail of the Dragon anti-cop. No. But it does question the validity of law enforcement and the entire process from which law is created and then used against the tax payers who paid for it. All too often what we discover in any reasonable investigation is that the law was used to make somebody wealthy, and law enforcement was there like a personal army to advance the strategic position of those in power to gain an advantage over those they seek to crush.

Police are needed to some extent to keep some order in the world. But how much is too much, and what power should they be given? For me, as a general rule, if a cop has time to sit on the side of the road and pull people over for speeding, or for not having on a seat belt, then that is one cop too many. If that is all that officer has to do but harass the public for more money, then we are wasting our money on that employee. Because it’s such people who will come to your house to arrest you for some run-in with the law, whether it’s your child setting up a lemonade stand, or you not growing in your front yard what the politicians think you should be, or worse and most likely, you’ll find yourself in the middle of a bank error. It will be the cop who’s doing nothing on the side of the road who will be on call to serve the needs of corrupt politics, and the scam is ultimately on you, the tax payer. Because it was you who put that cop on the street to begin with, with a great salary, and attractive pension under the watchful care of a public sector union, the FOP, which is so closely tied to politics they might as well be the same thing. No, I’m not too hard on the police in my book.

Just hard enough……………………

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

TAKE AWAY THE CREDIT CARD OF CONGRESS: Yes, Obama actually blamed the current congress for the debt crises

If you are concerned about the direction of this country, and want to contribute to the solutions, the first thing you should do while reading this article is give yourself the time and watch all these videos completely at least once.  Then take your time and let it soak in.   Then send this link to your friends in an email and spread the word. 

I started my Saturday morning like almost all of them, at 4:30 AM where I catch up on my reading, emails, news I missed, etc.  My daughter sent the a picture she took of herself before she and her friends went to see the new Harry Potter film on Thursday.  In the picture she is magically levitating all her favorite things, the mask her mom and I gave her from the Yucatan, a can of Coke, a toy of Yoshi, and her XBox controller.  Her picture was intended to be fun but it made me think of President Obama, how he seems to believe that everything can be solved with the wave of some magic wand.  I spent some time reviewing material from a friend of mine in Ann Arbor, Matt Clark who does a radio show on WAAM and was hitting some very good points on his podcasts about the federal problems with the debt limit, which can be heard below.  Then Darryl Parks of 700 WLW really impressed me with his dead-on take of the same situation.  I mean he nailed the situation precisely!  Listen to that here:

While I was listening to Darryl, I received an email notification by David Plouffe on his new blog post from the White House website.   View it for yourself:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/07/15/compromise-isn-t-dirty-word?utm_source=email121&utm_medium=graphic&utm_campaign=compromise

It told me to watch a video that President Obama did several months ago where he was sitting down with a group of students to explain the merits of compromise.  In that video I saw a man who shows what he is really good at, being a teacher.  And that’s where he belongs. 

What is happening in that video is The White House is trying to do damage control to the mess the President has created for himself.   They dusted off a video from a few months ago where the president is very likeable, and speaking honestly, and they released it today to build him up politically so he can establish consensus against the Republicans in this most recent budget battle.  What the video, and blog post is in essence is more of the same kind of politics that have buried this nation in debt with smoke and mirrors and side-show acts.  The facts cannot be ignored with emotion, which is what The White House is attempting on the heels of the very arrogant press conference given by the President yesterday. 

Did he really say that? Obama at the beginning of the press conference below said that congress had run up the credit card so the debt ceiling needs to be raised? What congress is he talking about, because that debt hasn’t been ran up in the last 6 months? How misleading…………………………

President Obama wants to raise taxes on the rich and he thinks that he is one of those “rich guys.” Twice in the President Obama’s speech Friday, July 15, 2011 he stated in his official statement regarding the debt ceiling negotiations “A person in my position,” as though the wealth he has he created himself. He thinks he is equal to all the job creators out there who actually take risks with their money to create an industry. There is a vast difference between a well paid politician like Obama, and a job creator, and he doesn’t understand that difference.

This tendency of politicians to believe that they are “special” in some way, or even equal to people who actually create jobs is preposterous. At Hollywood parties, which tend to lean toward the left politically, people like Steven Spielberg and Jeffery Katzenberg usually donate large sums of money to the presidential campaigns of people like Obama. And what they pay for with their donations is the ability to be close to the President. They get to sit up close in fund-raisers, and they get to shake hands with him, and usually get a picture taken with him.

Back in the 90’s Bill Clinton used to rent out the Lincoln Bedroom to his celebrity friends as a way to raise money for the DNC. The cost of that access is expensive. The problem is the White House is not the Presidents to sell, especially for political reasons. It wasn’t under Clinton, Bush, or Obama. The White House is the people’s house, and we let the President live there while they do the countries business.

One of the problems in America is this tendency of the rich and powerful, to desire to be close to a powerful politician. This doesn’t make any sense. Because the rich and powerful like Spielberg and others who create things from nothing, and employee thousands and thousands of people with their efforts are different from the politicians, and under no circumstances should have to pay to see their elected representatives.

America goes wrong by letting Presidents like Obama think they are royalty of some sort. When powerful people pay money to see a President something is wrong.

Could President Obama produce a film like Transformers? Could President Obama run a manufacturing facility? Could he even make payroll for the employees who count on him to make good decisions for their livelihood. No.

Obama should be the one to pay to see people like Spielberg. President Obama doesn’t make anything, he doesn’t do anything. He doesn’t even make decisions. Why do we honor him by throwing money in his direction? What does he have of any value but the title of President?

How valuable is the title of President?

It’s not valuable at all. It’s ceremonial, but otherwise virtually worthless. Politicians do not create jobs. Presidents don’t, governors don’t, no senators or congressman, none of them do. They are simply managers hired by the public to manage. They are not leaders. They are not lords, or elites. They are certainly not royalty. Anything they do make they take from a tax payer. It is not “they” who make it. It is someone else. The politician simply gives it away.

It is laughable that Barack Obama thinks that somehow he is equal or even superior to the other wealthy people he is calling for to pay the taxes he wants to increase. How hard is it for Barack Obama, who gets paid to do a management job, to ask for more money? The money comes easy to people like Obama now that he’s president. And like a lot of politicians, they have lost touch with reality because real money makers throw money at politicians hoping for a legislative favor later. That is because the politician has the power to legislate, to create new rules.

Those new rules are often the kind we don’t need. The politician makes legislation to pay back his contributors. Where the process fails is that the politician believes that there is value in their legislation. They begin to believe that they actually produce something, which of course they don’t.

Nobody should be idolized who creates nothing. Yet this is the culture of politics. When you shake the hand of one of these creatures, they almost seem to expect you to kiss their hand. They all sound like Barack Obama when he says, “I’m one of the elites. I’m willing to make the sacrifice. I’m not asking people to do anything I’m not willing to do myself.” They are willing to make that sacrifice because they didn’t earn the money to begin with. Everything they have has been given to them by someone else and they are like spoiled children who arrive at adulthood without a concept in their brains of the value of anything, because everything came easy to them.

It is easy for such valueless people to insist on more taxes because for them, all they have to do is agree to let Steven Spielberg take a picture with them and they generate millions of dollars. What they forget is that they are no different from the parent who pays money to have their child take a picture with Santa at Christmas, or the Easter Bunny. They are just props of authority that have symbolic meaning. They are employees in a costume and that costume can be taken off and put on another without the children being any wiser.

The President of the United States does not have a right to demand taxes for the rich. Nobody can even make a case for why tax payers should fund the current level of government. I’m looking for a tax cut, not a tax increase. How is the President taking money from me and giving it to some program that supports his political base my responsibility. That’s theft. All this talk about people paying their “fair share” is coming from the type of people who have no value and steal money from people to begin with, then tell us that the richest of all must pay more…………….for what reason, to pay for what? Medicare fraud, Social Security retirement benefits when the age of retirement is going to be going up for my generation to 70 perhaps 80? To pay for a Department of Education that is a complete waste of money, or an EPA that is driving up the cost of energy, a Department of Justice that is abusive and is picking winners and losers? What about the FCC who is advocating Net Neutrality. Why would I want my hard-earned money spent on any of that government waste? Why is supporting that waste my responsibility in paying my “fair share?”

Only a person who has no value for anything can make such requests. And President Obama is such a person. He’s a token representative of the same value as the guy we hire to play Santa Clause at Christmas time. The trouble starts when Santa starts believing that he actually lives in the North Pole and can circle the globe in a single night giving everyone presents. President Obama is suffering from his own delusions believing that he has such power and it is sadly revealing to hear him speak with an attempt at authority. Why doesn’t someone tell him he’s wearing the clown costume and is in a circus, and he’s only being laughed at. Because he doesn’t seem to know that’s what he actually is. He at least needs to understand the occasion that he’s entertaining for. Because his idea of raising taxes in even the slightest degree belongs in a carnival with the rest of the scams of a summer time festival complete with cotton candy, popcorn and hot dogs.

I hate to rub it in, because a lot of people in the establishment do not like John Kasich, who is the current governor of Ohio.  But you balance a budget doing what he has done, granted he’s not very popular, but then again most real managers aren’t. 

It doesn’t take magic, it just takes guts, and the will to do the hard things even when they may be unpopular, or hurt people’s feelings. The nation needs politicians to do what we hired them for, and that’s to manage the government, not think about how they can keep a job on the gravy train to the carnival.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

All About the Stacy Schuler Sex Case: Who’s responsible?

For all those who think that the Stacy Schuler case is about sex, or the advantage that young high school boys had in being able to have sex with a teacher, a representative of authority for the Mason School District, one of the most prestigious in all of Ohio, you are mistaken.  The Stacy Schuler incident which she has now admitted to being guilty, and is now trying to prove that she was insane when the offenses were committed, is all about the cover-up.  You can hear all about the Stacy Schuler case from 700 WLW. 

On this site I have an article that was published just prior to the levy attempt in 2010 of which Stacy Schuler was interviewed, promoting emotional health and well-being.  You can read that article here:  Just click to view. 

It is clear that the school district did not judge Stacy Schuler as insane otherwise they would have been reckless in their employment of her, and they certainly wouldn’t have let her give interviews as a school employee to help promote the good will of the school district and participate as a face of the school to the community.  Maybe that’s because her boss, George Coates the assistant principal was sexting her himself.  After all, how did nude pictures of him end up on her school computer?  Other students were aware of what was going on, and this behavior went on for quite a long time but nobody did anything about it.  The superintendent himself, Kevin Bright, left town to take a job up in Cleveland, as an assistant.  Why?  George Coates resigned from the Bahamas when he learned Stacy had been arrested, and now he is working down in North Carolina.  Why? 

There is more to the story than just a sex addict that was being taken advantage of by sex hungry football players.  The facts of this case are that Schuler has admitted to the offenses, they took place in her home, at least most of the time, possibly on school grounds at times, and more than one sex partner was involved at the same time on occasion.  The problem was, if Schuler was insane, inviting young men to her house to satisfy her sex addiction, then why did the school district allow Schuler to be a representative of the district?  Are they going to claim they didn’t know, because they did?  George Coates knew because he was involved in a relationship with Schuler while all this was going on.  The district knew Coates was guilty of involvement with Schuler when he resigned, yet they pretended that this was all an isolated issue. So the acts of Schuler were known by other students because word had gotten around that she loved sex, and those kinds of rumors don’t get around without administrators knowing about it. If the administrators didn’t know about it then they are completely incompetent to administer anything.  If they did know about it, then they are guilty of doing nothing about it, which is even worse.

So which is it?

The reason for the anger which has emerged around this issue is that people suspect that Stacy Schuler is pleading insanity because she is so guilty that she has no other choice.  But the anger runs deeper than that.  Apologists will argue that if young men want to have sex with a sex starved teacher then they should be able to.  But that’s not the issue.  What we pay for in a teacher, a professional, who will frustrate the efforts of sex hungry young men, which nearly every high school aged male student is, is a person who will instill value into their students.  For the school district to knowingly allow a teacher like Stacy Schuler to be in a position of power with these students and to allow them to use her for their own pleasure is not what the schools are selling as a service to the community. 

When we send a child to school, we expect an education of some degree. We also expect our kids to be safe.  When a school teacher invites students to her house for sex, and buys them beer so they are partially intoxicated while doing the act, and these arrangements are made at school, the school itself has failed to employee a suitable representative. 

It is the job of the school, when it finds out about these kinds of issues, to act on the safety and behalf of the students and the parents who send their children to the school.  Allowing a teacher to seduce the sexual whims of young boys who should be learning to conduct themselves properly in the care of the school is an improper use of resources.  If it is discovered that the teacher employed by the district is in fact insane, then she should have never been used as a spokesman for The Cronline magazine where the district used Schuler as an example of their bright staff.  Schuler gave a competent interview about physical and mental health of all issues.  Who would even imagine that within 9 months of that article this person would be pleading insanity on a sex case.  But the worst issue of all to me is that when George Coates, her boss and superior administrator didn’t try to help Stacy.  Instead, he wanted a piece of the action and helped perpetuate the behavior. 

I understand that these things will happen.  Humans are after all human.  But when we are told by school districts that we need to spend more money on education, because these hired professionals, who are teachers and administrators, know what’s best for our children, and all we have to do is pay more money, and all our problems will be solved forever, the facts are misleading. 

I expect out of the tax money we spend on schools to not have activity like this going on.  Is that too much to ask?  We have a teacher who was a star at Mason High School pleading insanity in a trial that involved students and administrators at that school.   This case is not about the sex itself, it’s about accountability and responsibility, and when the school district simply moves around some staff members to shove all the dirt under the rug, and spins the whole situation around to play themselves as a victim, my question is, who is responsible for this woman’s actions?  If not herself, if not her employer, then who?  Are we to believe the students of the school itself are to blame?  Who’s going to take responsibility, because a lot of money is spent on education, and results are expected.  Not what we are seeing in this case, which reveals much of what is wrong and why it must be reformed before it’s too late. 

This is not isolated to the Mason School System.  Lakota, the other big prestigious school in theCincinnatiarea had an even worse case during 2010.  Click here to read all about that incident which was successfully contained before the story swelled to the level the Stacy Schuler case has.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Liberty Twp Tea Party Turns Two Years Old: The Rise of a New Guard

The evening July 11,2011 sun beat hard upon the converted barn at the Niederman Farm where the Liberty Twp Tea Party met to celebrate their 2nd year.  There have been a lot of battles over the last couple of years, and as we gathered for the pot luck dinner it was evident that there would be a lot more. 

As this meeting was taking place Obama and the local Speaker of the House John Boehner were battling over the budget and the debt ceiling.  Obama is approaching the negotiations as though various sides, Tea Party Republicans, moderate Republicans, Rhino Republicans, Blue Dog Democrats, Progressive Democrats, and far left radical Democrats all are committed to 100% of their particular positions, and must be prepared to give a little so everyone can agree.  As I scooped up some potato salad that my wife had made I wondered how a person like Obama could ever become president and even say such a thing.  There’s only one right answer, and the president is missing it.  There isn’t money for the programs his party have given away to buy votes.  That’s the bottom line folks.  All those various politicians have for years purchased votes using our tax money, and now those fools are stuck trying to explain why they’ve bankrupted the system. 

The people around me at this gathering are all there for the same reason, we recognize that the government has let us down and taken the nation on a path it doesn’t want to go.  Not everyone has come to that realization yet, because they still hope that somewhere, there is a magical golden egg that will be laid by some golden goose.  Increasingly, these elected representatives are being seen not as leaders, but as con artists and thieves who have stolen from each of us and sold us back bath water claiming it to be an elixir of life. 

While the various ceremonies of this event were going on the Lakota School System was voting for yet another school levy attempt literally right down the road, not more than 3 miles from our location.  In this meeting, everything that is wrong with the government can be seen in the microcosm of public education funding.  Public sector unions, politicians using their education support for votes, and school administrators hoping to use school boards as a political launch pad to become noticed by leaders of one of the two parties have bought into Keynesian economics, like the rest of the government, and they were wrong. 

When John Keynes introduced his Keynesian economics model from the ever-increasing socialist tendencies of the rest of the world, politicians saw an opportunity to exploit that model for their own accents to public supported power.  Keynes was wrong, and every system using it is failing, including schools.  The correct answer is not more of the same theory, but something else completely.  In schools, the task is to convert over to that system without destroying the opportunities of the kids and parents who support the school.  But in education, just like all things in government, the prices of labor, of the services created by labor, and the revenue which supports the entire foundation are artificially inflated, because competition is not allowed to kill off the waste, because government protects those enterprises.  This drives up the costs everywhere for everybody.  And presidents like Obama and school boards like what we have at Lakota, only know to close that inflated value with increased taxes.  They can’t understand any other option because their brains are not wired to accept anything else. 

At Lakota they are going for a tax rate that is less than what they’ve asked for in the past. This is consistent with President Obama’s comments to Speaker Boehner, “You can’t get everything you’ve asked for.”  In the minds of these people bending a little on their political position is what the process is all about. 

But it’s not.  There is only one right answer, not a mixed drink of many tastes.  With something like a budget deficit whether you’re talking about a local school district, or a Federal government, there is a way you got there, and to get out, you must do the opposite of what put you in that position.  That’s the only way.  If you spent a lot of money-making political promises that you didn’t have the authority to commit the tax payers to, or you are a school district that allowed a public sector teachers union to drive up your labor costs recklessly, then you have to admit that you were wrong, that you spent money that wasn’t yours just as a person addicted to gambling must admit that they have a problem before they can get help. You can’t throw more money at the addict, because they’ll never get better.  You have to take away their money so they can’t go to the casino anymore to throw away our money on some jackpot they hope will fix all their problems. 

As I sat among friends and family I thought about the worst issue in the news of them all, and that’s the case of the murdered little girl in Florida, the Casey Anthony trial where the mother appears to have accidentally killed her little girl with an overdose of chloroform and drove around Florida with the body in the trunk for everyone to smell the decomposing body.  The girl was a reckless young woman, and the prosecution went for the death penalty for the severity of the crime.  Last week, Casey was found not guilty; the jurors didn’t have the inner compass of morality to be able to pass judgment on a peer.  Society has lost their ability to judge. 

Most have anyway, except for the people having diner in a country barn with me on that hot July evening. Of American society, these people who the radicals advocating Keynesian economics, progressive global government without borders, and idealists who have never found their way out of the soviet fueled radicalism of the 60’s, those people call my friends here “teabaggers.”  “Teabaggers, meant to be a term of peer pressure, of insult, an attempt by those who are advocating evil openly, to keep society functioning with their eyes closed and hope that somehow their failed theories will somehow come true in the final hour, and if they don’t, they’ll be remembered for their compassion, and not as the thieves they truly are. 

I feel privileged that after two years, the Liberty Twp Tea Party is still here, and it’s growing.  And it refreshes the soul to partake in these events, as the aroma of barn yard animals and community prepared food mixes in a unique waltz of perpetuity.  Because this is how it was in the beginning, and this is the way of the American, to always be ready for a fight, to roll up the sleeves and eat well before a hard day’s work, or the battle that looms on the horizon.  Because only by the path of those in this barn, is the path to liberty and freedom.  And the only right answer in the entire nation is present on the tongues of those in attendance, because they are the last of their kind and Americais waiting for them to fix the nation that has been hijacked by tyrants of good intention.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Stacy Schuler is Bait in the Water: The greatest scam in 100 years is who holds the pole

As I was preparing this article Stacy Schuler, the Mason teacher covered extensively at this site confessed to the sex charges filed against her, by reason of insanity.  Since her arrest till now, most of the guilty parties who knew about the incident have left the Mason School District for jobs elsewhere.  Why?  Because it’s not the crime of sex that is the problem with that case of Stacy Schuler, it’s the cover-up.  And what is behind that cover-up is what this story is all about. We’ll cover Stacy in more detail later.  She’s not going anywhere. 

A friend of mine sent me the below list of the National Education Association resolutions established for the 2010 Convention held in New Orleans.  These are real strategies that the teacher’s organization is so popular for supporting. 

I was thinking about these issues as news came that Lakota, and Fairfield, along with many other school districts around the Greater Cincinnati area was going to pursue tax increases this upcoming fall.  Those huge national issues were on my mind as I did an interview with Doc Thompson on 700 WLW about the new Lakota Levy which you can hear at his link:

During that interview I received news that an out-of-town customer had showed up to see me in my office, so I found myself split, needing to be in two places at the same time.  Once the smoke cleared a few hours after that interview and my meeting my mind fell to these below resolutions from the NEA.  It is apparent to me that this NEA organization is openly supporting communism, even though they sell themselves as freedom fighters.  What they fail to understand is the freedom they are fighting to free themselves from is freedom from capitalism.  Whether the average member in the NEA realizes it or not, they are fighting capitalism and running toward socialism and much of the money that we are spending in education is supporting a structure that funds that war against the United States.   

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The NEA’s Legislative Program that was adopted at the 2010 Convention in New Orleanssets forth the marching orders for NEA lobbyists and the authority for political donations. Here are some of the NEA’s major objectives:

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Now, I’m sure you as the reader will ask, “What are those people thinking?  Don’t they know what they are advocating?  After all, they are part of the education class, they are supposed to be well-educated and wise…..right?  Here’s the deal, they are no different from most everyone else, who will compromise their personal belief system for the benefit of their income. 

Think about your own job, where your boss tells you to do something, or to wear something to satisfy the conditions of your employment.  Just about every human being who works on this planet experiences this.  The teachers of who belong to the public sector unions like the NEA are no different.  They are willing to trade away their personal beliefs for a well-paying job.  It’s that simple. 

The NEA knows that unless the teaching profession is extremely lucrative, where their members can make a great deal of money, then the employees are less likely to protest their membership.  Members will pay their union dues without complaint because they already make a lot of money, so a few bucks for their dues aren’t a big deal.  And just a few weeks ago the NEA passed a tax on their members, ten dollars to be exact to re-elect Barack Obama.  It doesn’t matter if every teacher who belongs to the NEA supports Obama or not, the NEA is taking their money to elect that big labor president.  The NEA knows that because teachers are making approximately 30% more than those in the private sector, any complaints will be kept to their members, because the teachers have summers off for the most part, a less strenuous work day, and extra money to actually take nice vacations.  The NEA have negotiated what equates to a pay-off of their members to convince them to turn the other way while the NEA advances their socialist agenda on the backs of their members. 

Guess who pays the teacher’s salary? 

We do. The greatest scam of all is that these teacher salaries have been artificially propped up with tax levies to fulfill a political agenda that is anti-American, and the property owners who simply want to educate the children of their community have been tricked into fulfilling the socialist agenda of these labor unions. 

The facts are right in front of us all, however, many people just don’t have the back-bone to do anything about it.  They would rather pay off a thug to avoid a fight, than to do the right thing and that’s to question the whole process, or better yet, to cut the financial support to this massive organization.  What is the real cost of educating a child in America?  We don’t know, because labor union costs using the money you give them for the kinds of agenda items seen above, have driven up the education cost to a level of inflation unprecedented in the history of any free people.  And just like the NEA uses it’s teachers to cover for their socialist march to the destruction of America and hide like cowards behind those members, the teachers themselves hide behind your children as they seek to hide their own intentions of a very comfortable living that isn’t nearly as difficult as they pretend. 

It’s a terrible game that is destructive to our culture in so many ways and it’s not going to go away, so long as people put up with it.  The first step is in recognizing the facts and not lying to themselves about the intentions of education. It can’t be fixed if we don’t have an honest conversation about it, and honesty, the NEA is a socialist organization.  That’s not an inflammatory statement.  It’s a fact, even if they don’t call it by that name.  All one has to do is understand the definitions to know what the facts are.  But the facts are hard to swallow, which is why these school boards just continue to ask for more and more money to support the whole structure, with no plan in sight to ever give anything back to the community or stop that socialist march.  If left unchecked, they’ll just ask for more money forever until nobody has anything left.  That’s the union way, take all the wealth till nobody has anything and use the greed of their members to undo America for their own socialist plans, so once the destruction has happened, the world can be rebuilt with their vision.  That’s what you do when you vote to pass a levy, or to repeal S.B.5.  You are putting another nail in the coffin of America, and you’re doing it with the belief that you are doing a good thing.  Welcome to the scam of the century!  You pay good money for your own demise.    

While we all work hard to pay all this money to our schools, people like Stacy Schuler, and her bosses are having a grand ol’ time, having sex with students and sending naked pictures of themselves to each other, like Stacy and her boss the assistant principal George Coates were doing.  He moved to a job in North Carolina, the Superintendent Kevin Bright took an assistant superintendent job up in Cleveland to avoid the embarrassing trial of pulling all these people into a court of law and embarrassing one of the most prestigious school districts in Ohio.  It’s all about the cover-up, so the money keeps on flowing.  The cover-up is to protect the funding that finds its way into the pockets of the NEA, even if that means hanging former teachers on the hook as bait while the real crimes continue, funded by our tax dollars.  

If I’ve learned anything about politics in over 40 years it’s that Stacy Schuler is nothing but bait in a nasty game played by those with phantom intentions.  And to see those phantom intentions, all you have to do is pay attention, and connect the dots.  And anyone who doesn’t think the legal profession isn’t part of the game, you’re kidding yourselves. 

No employee who takes tax money for their employment wants to see a public employee drag the whole system down the drain while on the stand.  Guilty by reason of insanity is the best chance to keep this case just about Stacy Schuler and not the gigantic machine that is politics and the funding that supports it.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
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Why Gordon Ramsey is Great: quality, honesty, tenacity and fun

One of my nicknames from people who deal with me professionally is the Hoffmanator. This name comes because most people don’t enjoy dealing with me when they are trying to pull something over my eyes or, they are having a difficult time meeting the production demands of whatever project we are working on. These tendencies of mine are well-known to my family. About a year ago my kids told me, “Dad, you should watch Gordon Ramsey on TV, you’d like him a lot!”

I sort of grumbled that most things on TV are a waste of time, and I have better things to do with my time than watch some chef cook a bunch of French cuisine. My impression of chef’s was that they were flakey, liberal, and socially worthless. However, my wife finally did get me to watch a few episodes of Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares and I’ll have to say, Gordon is my kind of guy!

For many of the reasons I have come to like Chef Ramsey can be seen in this interview.

Ramsey makes it a habit of going into a restaurant that is failing, and within a week identifying the weaknesses of the business and turning things around dramatically. It takes tremendous confidence to do this, and a unique ability to understand every aspect of a business which Gordon Ramsey excels at, and accounts for his meteoric rise to fame. He is uniquely talented, yet humbly approachable. Being one of the best in the world at what he does has not removed Ramsey from his working class roots. As seen in this next clip he is quick to cut to the chase and focus on the immediate faults that are holding back a restaurant from achieving success.

Gordon is primarily about quality. He is not afraid of hard work and despises people who take short cuts to avoid work. He is a relentless pursuer of quality as seen here where he shuts down a Mexican restaurant. His definition of quality is precisely what Robert Pirsig was conveying in the excellent book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The pursuit of something good cannot be achieved by those who scramble to hide themselves in the cover of the crowd, to live a mundane existence complacent to the world around them. Quality starts first with the mind and transcends to the actions of the individual. A person of poor quality in the mind will of course transfer all that into their daily actions. Since Gordon is a person of inner quality, it is easy for him to spot the faults of others who allow their inner faults to translate into material faults in the restaurant.

Ramsey because of his background, an abusive father who beat his mother regularly, a brother who fell to drug abuse, an athlete who almost made it pro, has the unique ability to have learned everything there is to know about food. He did not waste his life away on drugs, reckless pursuits, ego driven social status, he set out to be the best he could be, and as a result, he knows everything there is to know about his field of endeavor. He can sit down even when the cooks in the kitchen are trying to pull the wool over his eyes and immediately identify the troubles with their preparations.

In this next clip I can’t even report how many times I’ve had to do something just like this, even with people who “outrank” me, for the sake of saving whatever endeavor we’re working on. The human mind is a tricky playground, and the kinds of things that motivate people are infinite. However, a bully, a man of small inner value who seeks to redeem himself by forcing the submission of others to his rule is extremely common to varying degrees. In the case of this next clip the manager of a restaurant has allowed his own ego, his need to be in control, to get in the way of the needs of his business. To this man everyone but him is to blame, yet the ultimate problem, and all the employees know it, but are afraid to reveal it, is the bully himself…..the manager. Once Gordon learns this, he deals with it honestly.

We all know people who buy the fancy sports car to deal with male erectile dysfunction, hair loss, or whatever failing indicates a personal loss of testosterone or even personal pride. We all know the type of man who wishes he were a playboy, where women are falling all over him because he wants to be the “stud” of the herd, to live the life of Hugh Hefner, which is only an image. Such people often seek political office or ownership of stores and restaurants so they can achieve a respect that they believe will attract women to them. A dead give-away is a gold bracelet, or necklace, a hand with multiple rings on it, that kind of thing. Men like that are weak behind their flashy exterior. As a general rule, if they were happy with themselves, they wouldn’t be attempting to project a false image. There are millions of them out there, and it can be a terrible experience if you find you are the employee to a person like this.

Many times the person participating in this arrogant behavior isn’t aware of their fault. They live in a state of self-delusion where easy gold-digging women have helped them build that illusion. They often don’t have many quality people in their lives, because they push them away to maintain the illusion. That’s why when Gordon Ramsey spots it in someone; he tells them how it is. He doesn’t do it to hurt them personally, but to actually help them. People who are suffering under their own delusion need to hear it, for the sake and quality of their own lives. So Ramsey will oblige.

Ramsey has been so successful, because his unique combinations of first class knowledge and unpretentious demeanor have let millions of people into the world of culinary art. What is quite remarkable is that Ramsey has had his success in socialist countries such as England yet the principles of success do not care about political philosophy. Success only knows success. Ramsey has had so much success that he is doing multiple shows now. Here he is on Master Chief talking to another guy I like a lot and that was Albert.

I was really rooting for Albert on that show. I know a lot of Albert’s in the world and I like them very much. They are honest, do not hide what they are, and are wise because of their survival of hard living. Ramsey enjoys people like Albert too, but Albert was only a few dishes deep in creativity and to be true to the intent of the show, favoritism without results has no place.

Chef Ramsey is not some stuffy old elite. He’s an energetic boy who loves to play and have fun. He is an infinite source of energy that people find themselves drawn to. My thoughts on his success is that he has managed to find a market niche in a field that government doesn’t understand, so he has been able to apply free-market principles to restaurants. Nobody has gotten in his way because food is an industry that every human being on Earth enjoys, and other than safety regulations it has very little government interference. So the opposition to quality and creativity are not in place. I notice that the restaurant employees of America and in Europe are different. The American’s talk back a lot more. I would love to see a show where Ramsey comes up against the Culinary Union Local 226 in Las Vegas, where they refuse to do certain things he demands because of union rules. But refreshingly, in the culinary world, the kind of labor nonsense that we all have to deal with in public sector unions and other organizations are vacant, allowing people who are truly talented like Gordon Ramsey to excel.

I’m glad my wife and kids talked me into giving Ramsey a chance. I have more faith in television as a result, that everything on it is not some brain-dead monstrosity hell-bent on a progressive agenda. I’ll watch just about anything with Chef Ramsey in it these days. He has even given me an appreciation to what my wife does in the kitchen every day and night as I have been looking over her shoulder to study what ingredients she’s using in her own culinary masterpieces.

Ramsey does what any person of good quality should do, and that is selflessly improve the world around them with honesty, valor, sincerity, and innovation while enriching themselves with everything they can. As Gordon Ramsey improves on his $100 million dollar empire, he deserves every bit of it, because in his wake he builds the world up instead of tearing it down, and shows people how a simple thing such as food can improve the lives of people in every way possible.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com