Tag: education funding

Storm Clouds Gather over Lakota: S.B.5 forces union concessions that saves millions of dollars

Doc Thompson and I talk about the historic signing between the Lakota Education Association and the Lakota School Board on 700 WLW of the new contract that removes “step increases” from the financing scheme the district has been struggling with. Click here to listen to that detailed conversation that covers everything from storms to Senate Bill 5. This is the first time in Lakota’s 54 year history that such an agreement has been achieved. But for me, it’s too little too late, and too little when much more is needed.

As the storm clouds raged in over the Lakota Administration building around 7:30 pm May 23, 2011 bringing threatening weather with such wind gusts that the windows rattled, the Lakota School Board meeting was postponed while everyone present sought shelter from a would-be tornado. Channel 19 was there filming the event as a musical act was wrapping up, and effort from Ron Spurlock to create a meeting atmosphere that relieved the tension that had festered in a community that feels overly taxed on one hand, and a teachers union that never knows when enough is enough. I admired the work Ron has been doing, and he seemed o me to be functioning as the ideal superintendent for the Lakota district. He understands the way educators think, but he’s not unrealistic to what’s going on in the outside world. He’s a likeable guy and it shows. He is a perfect example of how leaders emerge in crises, and he is what has emerged as the previous superintendent left town during the last levy attempt.

The Channel 19 reporter told his cameraman, who then told a guy back in the tech booth that a dangerous storm cell was coming our way, so Joan evacuated the room to seek shelter stuffed into the back of the building away from the bouncing glass windows. My wife and I looked at the storm outside then at the people who that had forced so much pain on our community with the union contract, and elected to go outside into the storm to watch the fascinating clouds roll in. We joined the TV people wo had already gathered outside to get weather shots for their various stations. It was more dangerous outside for sure, but the breeze felt good and if a tornado touched down, we’d be able to see it hopefully in time to get to some cover.

Much to my surprise Ron Spurlock joined me outside along with Jenni Logan. We had a nice conversation, nothing serious. I purposely wanted to avoid doing a lot of talking. After all, they had a reason to celebrate and I didn’t want to rob them of the experience. The relief on their faces that the LEA actually negotiated a deal in record time with them without discussion of strikes, or other hardships, was nothing short of stunning.

As bits of mulch kicked up in the wind and became dangerous projectiles that the cameraman shielded their cameras with their hands to protect, I saw on Ron’s face a genuine love of the district and a joy of actually having some good news. So I kept the conversation friendly. This was not the day for contention. Even though the storms were spreading over Lakota from above, by an act of nature, it was nothing compared to the storm that had settled psychologically within the members of the community. So Ron and I stood outside with the news crews, joined by Jenni and watched the dangerous storm with the relief similar to those that are enjoying the relief of a hurricane that had move on.

After a half hour, the storm cleared and the meeting resumed. The contract was voted on quickly and the meeting ended. My wife and I left quietly.
On the way home I thought of the teachers union that had held out all this time and nearly bankrupted the district with their refusal to deal with the school board, to act like children to keep asking and asking for more money when the district has already well-compensated them. Then the reality hit me about their actions. They didn’t give up anything. They weren’t suddenly working with the district and the community that must pay their wages. They have their eye on the bigger prize, of repealing S.B.5 from law in November. It is that law that they want to get rid of and the union strategy is to give up these short-term fights for the greater prize of being able to continue to extort excessive wages from the community in the future. S.B.5 will give school boards such as Lakota much more leverage in contract negotiations. It will take away the unions ability to create work stoppages through strikes which is a heavy-handed strategy the union uses often. The LEA has threatened strikes twice in the last 3 years. Once in 2008, which came down t the wire and then a threat of another in March of 2010, both incidents were over wages and benefits. So the union does not want to lose the ability to use such tactics against the community. So the realization hit me hard that while we were all happy and celebrating at Lakota, a more sinister villain loomed on the horizon.

As the clouds parted to reveal a bit of the setting sun, and the cool breeze that follows such storms was refreshing our faces as we drove with the windows down, my wife and I enjoyed the moment for what it was, a moment of relief in a war that would resume tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow over the repeal of S.B.5.

It was S.B.5 that brought both sides to the table. It was the fear of it that forced the union to put on a friendly face and work with the community so they could claim as much during the campaign to repeal. So my mind went to work on what those next steps would be, as I took a breath and enjoyed the moment for all it was worth.

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

Pirates and Politicians, Same Thing: One uses a cutlass, the other uses a pen to force us into serfdom

Doc Thompson of 700 WLW discusses all the various ways politicians are misspending our tax dollars.

This is a rich country. We have plenty of money, and if you don’t believe me, ask Halliburton. There’s plenty of money out there; don’t fall into the trap of this whole deficit argument. The only question is how to spend it.

Van Jones, Former Obama Administration Green-Jobs Czar

It is not a false statement to call people like Mr. Van Jones a simple looter. Comments like what he has made, such as the one in the example, are statements rooted in sheer ignorance. But this is not an article to condemn only Van Jones. This is an article about condemning all those like him that look to the tax payer to fund their looter mentality. I write this on the heals of watching the new Pirates of the Caribbean film, which I liked a lot, but when watching the behavior of the pirates, and their mentality, I fail to recognize the difference between any official that asks the tax payer for more money to fund their “big ideas” when the reality of what they are doing is stealing the money outright. Yes, stealing is the correct term.

Why is stealing the correct term? Well, politicians are using tax money in many cases to buy votes. Lyndon Johnston was doing that as president. He was openly creating government programs that had to be funded with tax payer dollars to care for voter demographics beneficial to him politically. In other words, he took money from people who wouldn’t openly support his programs, but took that money in the form of taxes. If the tax payer refused to pay taxes for the programs he created then the tax payer would be arrested under force and thrown in jail. FDR did the same thing in the 40’s. Roosevelt wasn’t interested in being a president; he wanted to be a king. How is that any different from a pirate stealing the resources of a vessel at sea under a black flag? It’s not. LBJ justified this theft by declaring a war on poverty, which he lost, because if the war on poverty truly wanted to be won, the free market would be more openly embraced. Capitalism would be the goal, making money would be the goal, because if a society desires not to have poverty, it would be more in the business of making money so there is more money to be had. Not just simply printing money, like the Fed is doing now to cover the looting they have been doing for years, but actually producing goods that can be exported to a buyer in another country. That’s how you fight poverty.

Karl Marx spent most of his life in poverty, so it is no wonder he looked with jealousy at the world around him and wanted to steal from them. So he came up with communism as a way for people like him, that didn’t know how to make things, and didn’t want to work for a living, to loot money from those that do make things. Since he was a poor man himself, he didn’t understand the value of money. He thought like Van Jones does, that money just existed out there in the world and he needed to find a way to take it from those that have it and give it to people like him, in other words, outright theft.

Each week portions of our pay are taken from us without our consent. This money is taken under the justification of caring for the government. But if you are a person like me, that won’t use Medicare, that won’t draw a Social Security check, that doesn’t want government to be so big. That doesn’t want to support a system that breeds “legal” piracy, you don’t have a choice. I want government to be smaller, so it can be better managed. I don’t want my money taken and used for such purposes as to the expansion of government. In other words, my money is taken and used for purposes I’m against. It is not for the greater good of government, or the country, it is for the looting and plunder of pirates that instead of dressing as Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean they wear a suit and tie. In function they are no different. I will debate anyone that wishes to challenge me otherwise. If they do they are fools, because they are simply covering for crimes they know to be true and are complicit in that crime either through ignorance or their own corruption.

Want some proof? Of the 62 members of Congress that left office in 2008, 16 of them now work as lobbyists. Of those 16, 13 are Republicans. Between 1998 and 2004 43% of those former lawmakers became lobbyists. What is a lobbyists? A lobbyist pushes law makers to pass laws that give the organization that hires the lobbyist to have a competitive advantage over either the government itself, which is essentially a pay-off to avoided excessive regulation, or to gain an advantage over another competitor. This isn’t happening in isolated cases. This is the law of the land. It’s common practice! Think about it, why do we need so many laws? We already have a constitution. With every new law passed, there is money involved, money for attorneys, money for tax collectors, and a reason for politicians to be in session and not off doing something actually productive. Law makers are no different from a fry guy in a local fast food restaurant. If there aren’t any customers, they don’t have anything to do, so they’ll just shuffle the French Fries around the fry bin to look busy. Law makers create new customers with our money so they can have something to do and a reason to exist. And in the complicated laws they pass, lobbyists will then hire them for the knowledge on how to comply with that legislation. That’s how a thief gives value to nothing using the plunder of our resources.

To put the whole looting scheme into terms we can all relate with, lets look at school funding, and something we all must send our children to, so it affects virtually every single one of us. The teachers union lobbies law makers for legislation that protects their members. This is why in Ohio school boards can only negotiate approximately 15% of their total budget costs. The 75% to 85% are completely off-limits because they involve wages and are the largest cost of a school system. This means every time a teacher gets a higher degree, they must be compensated according to state law, because the OEA lobbied for the creation of that law. So when a school like Lakota is told that a $160 million budget is not enough and the question is asked, why? The answer is that labor costs that have no limit in their ceiling value are exploding the budget. Since in Ohio property tax is the primary way of funding schools, a school system has no choice but to ask property owners for more money. For a property owner like me, that thinks an average wage of 63K per year is too much to pay a teacher, I’d favor something more reasonable like 49K to 55K, but that doesn’t matter because the contracts were negotiated with the lobbyist not the tax payer. The politicians made the deal to buy votes from the OEA members in order to secure a deal to put the politician in office so he can collect tax money of their own in a different way. It’s lucrative otherwise they wouldn’t be fighting so hard for the opportunity to loot the public. And all the money used is coming from the tax payer. In this case my property value is looted to support values and education I think are mediocre and too expensive. But I have no choice. If I don’t pay, I would be prosecuted. Yet a prosecutor won’t touch the illegal activity that goes on in schools to pass a levy because a deal is made with the money the members of the teacher’s union supply. The prosecutor won’t touch the issue because they don’t want to deal with the political fall-out involved. The teachers union is too powerful, and not worth the political fight.

Why is the teacher’s union so powerful? Because they have many members and if you want to teach in the state of Ohio, you must be in a teacher’s union. There is no choice. So for every school built, and every teacher hired, a new union contributor is born. Each member contributes money to the union through their checks to feed the system. They do this because teachers know that the union has negotiated a larger than average wage for them, about 30% more than they’d earn in the private sector for the same job. The union knows it must negotiate wage levels that high because teachers are less likely to complain about spending their money on union dues if the teacher has a money surplus each week. As long as the union collects the dues from its members it can then dangle that money in front of politicians to achieve their goals. If teachers made less money, they’d be less likely to openly pay a portion of their check to union dues. But since the teacher is paid with taxes and the dues paid lobby the tax payer’s representatives who then make deals with the unions which then turn around and drive up the costs of the service on both ends, the cost of education goes up, and the elected representative has wasted tax payer’s money. The tax payer is spending money on the politician for making deals and not doing the business of the people. The money is stolen from the property owner and then used against the property owner in the form of higher taxes to support the structure of the scheme.

The tax payers just want their children taught. They want their children to read, write and know how to do math. But educators have made the whole business so complicated that they know in order to rally tax payers behind their cause they must hide the shell game behind local sports, like football, or basketball, things that the whole community values, while the real problems lurk under the façade. That is why sports are the first things districts cut, it’s to loot from the community the thing the whole community values in order to extort a vote in the next election to increase taxes. The message is “you will have something taken from you. You’ll lose your social event, (football games) or you’ll lose money from your property value.” Pick your poison.

But what if I don’t want to pay the extra cost? The answer from them is that “you aren’t patriotic,” or “you don’t like children,” or “are you so poor that you can’t afford the higher taxes.” These are the same games played with our politicians to convince them to work against us. But what if you still don’t want to pay? “Then you will be prosecuted.” The money will be confiscated from you one way or another. That’s why such people are simply looters. They are modern pirates out to loot our wealth. They take from us and give to their whore houses, liquor and other scandalous behavior. And by whore houses, that doesn’t always refer to sex. There is a lot of ways people whore themselves.

That’s just on the local level, in your school. Such things are happening in the building of bridges and highways. In the transfer of property from residential to commercial use, in the creation of every new federal program. If such looting wasn’t going on, K Street and the corrupt activity that goes on there in Washington D.C. would dry up like a mountain town in the Wild West that only exists for the benefit of the gold rush. When the gold went away, the town died. In Washington, the prostitutes that walk the streets with police officers driving by them all day long, the pimps that stand in the middle of the street watching over “their girls” all night, the drugs and bribe money that passes hands across the dinner tables would go away. But all those things are thriving to this very day, at this very hour just steps in front of the White House while Obama practices shooting basketball on the White House basketball court, that we pay for too. Stand on the corner across from the Days Inn on K-Street from 9 to 12 PM and watch the prostitutes standing there with their fish net stockings, their skirts that are so short you can see their panties standing up. Their long high heels force their butts to strut unnaturally as they get into a car, drive off and 15 minutes later that same car comes back around the block and pulls up. The girl gets out, joins the other girls, if any are left, then within 10 minutes, depending on how good she is, she’s back in another car and back around the block. I watched one night the same girl get into 5 different cars over the course of an hour and a half.

Who are the customers, lobbyists out-of-town and away from their wives, spending the money that comes easily for them. They are some of our elected representatives. They are mostly men enjoying their plunder, the same as pirates did in the sinful town of Port Royal. What’s the difference? The plunder was stolen whether it was at gun point on the high seas or under threat of jail. What’s the difference? Very few of us would choose to support this activity. So why do we, because we don’t want to be harassed by the government that we pay for?

Through taxation we have created a political class that believes just as kings and queens did in Europe that they are our rulers. They are entitled to loot from us, to rule us as they see fit. And to pay for their service we are taxed on virtually every movement we make in society. We are taxed for every item of food we eat, every gallon of gas we buy. We are taxed for the cloths we wear and the cars we buy. We are taxed, taxed, and taxed working toward goals that are not our own objectives to sums of money we don’t agree with, to support a public social class that thinks it rules us. There is only one term that describes such a person and that is a serf.

What is a serf by definition?

1. A member of the lowest feudal class, attached to the land owned by a lord and required to perform labor in return for certain legal or customary rights.
2. An agricultural laborer under various similar systems, especially in 18th- and 19th-century Russia and eastern Europe.
3. A person in bondage or servitude.

Doesn’t that sound like what we are? Like with the school systems, I am legally bound to pay for a school system against my wishes? My property is taken from me in the form of money so that I may retain my right to property in the form of land. That is theft. I don’t give willingly to my community, the way I’d prefer it. It is taken from me and spent in ways I find disgusting and sinful, unethical. Yet when I get up in the morning and go to work, I pay over 50% of my earnings as a serf.

The Road to Serfdom:

If we’re only a serf to them why not call them what they are. We may have to pay them as a legal obligation, under the threat of the law that they control with the money we give them, but don’t endorse their behavior with legitimacy. Don’t call them “sir,” or “your honor,” or any respectful designation. Call them pirates, thieves and liars, because they are. It’s not extreme to call them what they are. It’s not out-of-place just because they wear a suit and not a pirate hat and sword. They don’t need a sword, because they have a pen which truly is more mighty and dangerous. It is with the strokes of many pens that we are no longer Americans working for liberty and justice, but serfs working to support giant programs that our citizens are now addicted to like drug addicts that will never get enough. We are now committed serfs that are losing more and more of our wealth to support the extortion of radical pirates with only the mind of a looter. They are willing to take from us everything we have to give until we can’t give any more. It is the same thought process of the master against his slave that only has use for the slave as long as the slave is productive.

We are on the path to serfdom, and we are further along that road than many of us are willing to admit to ourselves. Until we are willing to admit to ourselves the reality of these impositions, and to call the conduct of the looters for what they properly are, we will continue down that path until it runs out. That is the nature of the pirate, they will loot and loot until it’s all gone because they lack the ability to plan from one day to the next. They are only concerned for the prostitute in front of them, or the food about to go into their stomachs. Planning for tomorrow’s sunrise is beyond their capacity, and they don’t need to, as long as they have serf’s like us that will continue to feed them.

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

Oh No, Did I Make Some People Mad…..TOUGH: Letters Attacking Me in the Pulse Journal

What you’ll read below is reflective of the stupidity happening in the City of Cincinnati where massive wastes in tax payer dollars are occurring.

Watch this I-Team Report.

What follows is the response to my editorial in the Pulse Journal which is found here: CLICK TO VIEW

Two letters found my comments in this week’s Journal disturbing about the school board and attempted to refute my statements. I’ll present those letters below with my response in parentheses. These two letters come on the backs of Lakota’s contract negotiation with the teachers union.


The 2 million dollars saved is almost the same amount saved from cutting busing. That’s how much money Lakota is saving just in freezing step-increases, which they should have done two years ago, to avoid the current crises. Because the school board did not act in a timely fashion, there are over 600 employees at Lakota that make over 65K per year. Click here to view who they are and how much they make.

Now the letters:

Wrong qualifications listed for No Lakota group

Rich Hoffman of the No Lakota anti-levy group presented an interesting request in his recent letter to the Pulse-Journal editor. His letter solicited new candidates for the Lakota Board of Education and it was striking for two reasons. It was striking to see what the anti-levy group listed as qualifications and it was equally striking for what it did not consider important.

The No Lakota group determined that ideal school board candidates “should be older than 55, be preferably retired or semi-retired, and not looking to use the school board position as a political platform for higher office or to enhance a real estate profession.” Evidently the ideal No Lakota group school board candidate does not need an education, budgeting skills, social skills, communication skills, or any interest in providing excellence in education for the community. Just say no and you’re elected.

The No Lakota group letter continued to infer that current board members “cave to the unions,” that they “intend to overpay the new superintendent” and they are perhaps guilty of “corruption and abuse of the taxpayer.” Our community is in long-term trouble if many of the No Lakota group actually believe those charges.

Although most area residents moved here specifically because of our quality schools, Lakota could still become the next Little Miami district. Imagine that scenario: one home out of every four for sale, property values decline by more than 40 percent in three years, parents paying thousands extra to educate their kids in private schools, and local school decisions made by the state.

No thank you.

With all due respect, Mr. Hoffman, the ideal school board member should be a local taxpayer, interested in providing quality education to the community, understand school funding mechanisms from both the state and local levels, have excellent two-way communication skills, and have the real interests of students and taxpayers at heart. Care and respect for your community does not have an old-age requirement and it is not necessary to be retired.

Al Miller
West Chester Twp.

(Notice that in this survey by Coldwell Banker that nobody mentions schools as being the decisive factor in buying a home. Kind of interesting.

Al, buddy………where did I say school board candidates do not need an education, budgeting skills, social skills, communication skills, or any interest in providing excellence in education for the community? Just say no and you’re elected? Don’t older people have those skills and do they miraculously lose them passed the age of 40? Is that what you’re saying? Al, I expect all those traits in a school board member. In fact, I expect all that and more. I also expect a school board member to be able to balance a budget. This school board has been tasked with balancing the budget and they aren’t doing it, so they obviously aren’t very good at “budgeting skills” as you put it. I could put a child on the school board and they could do the same job as this school board when tasked with a problem.

“Joan, we don’t have enough money to meet our budget needs,” says the Lakota treasurer.

Joan says to the board, “Ok, we need to ask for more money from the community.”

Now, how is that intelligent, wise, or in any way prudent? Like I said, that is the first response a child would have to the problem. Not any of the skills you listed. So what are you defending? Are you saying that indefinitely higher taxes are the way to go, that every time the school needs money, we just throw money at them no matter how much? And I didn’t say the school could fail either. I pay a lot of money in tax each year to that school and I don’t pay to have a crappy school. If those people don’t know how to balance a budget, then they need to be replaced, because we have provided plenty of money to be an excellent school, and continue to do so.

Now, here is the Definition of CORRUPTION, since you brought it up.

1
a : impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle : DEPRAVITY b : DECAY, DECOMPOSITION c : inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (as bribery) d : a departure from the original or from what is pure or correct

So as to the corruption at Lakota, it is illegal to use teachers while on the payroll of the tax payer to use tax payer resources to pass a school levy. That means a teacher can’t talk about it to students. They can’t pass out literature. They can’t even use a school printer, decorate a bus or design pro campaign literature while on the payroll of the school, yet they ignore the law and do it anyway. The No Lakota Group has statements that some teachers spent entire class periods lecturing their students about the merits of a levy passage encouraging those bright young minds to go home and tell their parents to vote for the levy. We also know of incidents where principals have openly threatened through their PTA organizations to boycott Liberty Twp and West Chester businesses that don’t support the levy attempt. Some of these calls were made during school hours by employees of the district paid for by the tax payer. In fact, I have a letter from a principle that was typed on his school computer and sent to all the teachers that work for him complaining about the community not supporting the levy. This was done during school hours with school equipment, and that is illegal. The school board knows about this activity yet does not do anything about it. That is corrupt. It’s also corrupt to call the token cuts to services as needed when the obvious strategy is to inconvenience parents to extort money from them. When busing was cut to save a couple million dollars under the mask of “needed” cuts when everyone knows that the payroll is simply too high and out of control is an open participation in bribery. Pay the levy or we’ll cut services you need. That is wrong. I actually have many such instances of this behavior that will be revealed should the district choose to pursue another levy. We’ve held back on this information for the sake of the community, but it will not be tolerated from here on out.

And since you seem to not understand economics here’s a free lesson for you. Notice that passing a levy doesn’t figure into the equation here. The value of your home is only worth the value it has to potential people who want it. Most people who bought on the back of the housing bubble bought too high, so you are looking at a collapse that has nothing to do with school funding. In fact, higher taxes make your home less attractive, not more attractive. If the school is expected to still be excellent, and taxes stay stable, your value will stay at market value, which is probably too high because you bought your home on the back of a bubble. Passing a levy will actually hurt your value.

Basically, Al, it is your decision if you choose to not see these things, and you have a mentality to throw more money into a bottomless pit. You won’t be one of the people we’d nominate to put on the school board. We already have too many people who think like you working for the school system already.)

This video could be Lakota, Sycamore, or Mason. The problems are all the same yet nobody wants to deal with the real issue.

Now, the next letter.

DO NOT PLACE BLAME WHERE IT DOESN’T BELONG

Let’s get the full story out there please. The Lakota School Board is acting to deal with teacher contracts the only legal way they can. They have canceled the second year of the two-year contract because it could not be funded. They are going back to the negotiating table with the teacher union to achieve the best result possible.

Do not place blame where it does not belong.

The board said they would deal with the situation through a three pronged approach — reduce expenditures, put a policy in place to limit future expenditure increases, and seek additional revenues. Students and families have given, administrators and staff have given, we need our community now to recognize the need, and participate in maintaining and preserving the investment made by this community in our schools. The fact of the matter is that our school district can not be sustained without a levy. There is nowhere else to cut costs. If we want our communities to continue to be a great place for families to live, a great place to raise children, then we have to pass the levy in November.

Back when the first levy failure happened, the “no” people said they wanted the district to make serious cuts before they would support a levy. The cuts have been made. The cuts continue to be made. What is their argument now?

We must recognize that our school district and the school board are limited by law and mandates. Dedicated and civic minded individuals who genuinely care about the future of this district and these students would be welcome to be a part of the solution. Please be a part of the future of our communities and support our schools.

We must pass the next levy in order to have a sustainable and continuously excellent school district.

Andrea Henderson
West Chester Twp.

(Andrea, those cuts have not been made. The school board cut buses, laid-off some newer teachers, and made sports a pay for play deal. All those cuts are designed by the OSBA to inconvenience parents and force them to vote for a levy the next time. These strategies are taught to school board members at Levy University in Columbus. I know many school board members that have taken this class, so I know what goes on there.

Now, as to the district being limited by law in what they can cut, what you’re talking about is the teacher’s contracts and the protections the OEA have lobbied on their behalf. That is the very reason that Kasich signed Senate Bill 5 into law, to give the school board the ability to control their costs. So technically it isn’t illegal any more to attack those contract costs. Unions are scared to death of this bill, which is why they are trying so hard to get the bill repealed. Notice how these teachers speak in extreme ways. “It will destroy what we fought for, for years.”

We can’t afford their union. We can’t afford their collective bargaining. These rights they are speaking about are a result of FDR and LBJ, and their big government policies. They aren’t rights granted by the US Constitution and we are not required to pay for them as property owners. It should actually be discussed that it’s unfair to property owners to be forced to pay for the high expectations of these union employees.

Once those current teacher contracts are up, school boards can deal with that 85% of their escalating costs that have been illegal. Besides the potential problem with the law restricting control of those employee costs, we also have the trouble with quantitative easing that is about to hit us all hard from the federal level, so asking for a higher taxes will destroy many families. Oh, you don’t know what quantitative easing is. I’m sorry. Here’s a lesson.

The sad thing is, and I don’t mean to pick on you, there are thousands of people who think the same way you do, and they’re all wrong; that you are willing to write these people a free pass. For a district to be forced by law to incur further taxation is insane, foolish, and pure extortion in the simplest form. Anyone that supports such measures has an education that has failed them completely. Supporting your school does not mean tossing money out the window of a runaway bus. Supporting your school means solving problems when they come up. Squeezing the property owners for everything they have while an aggressive teachers union has negotiated a scam on us all, to maintain an average wage of 63K per year is insane. People who say “good” and “money” in the same sentence do not understand the value of things, and are ignorant to what makes something better than something else. You cannot rape and pillage a community of its resources and expect it to last.

The No Lakota people have different degrees of resistance. For me, I want education reform completely. I don’t like the current system, and I want to see major changes. It’s not worth 10K per kid. The senior citizens in our group are on a fixed income, and they can’t afford the tax. And the business owners in our group are people who have been hit hard by the recession. They are sitting on property that they invested in years ago that should have been paying them back by now, but are currently sitting vacant. Further taxes on that property only drain more money from them. So when people who don’t value money say these people are rich, and should pay their fair share, they sound like fools because they aren’t the people who are building up the community. The people supporting these tax levies are typically people who have kids in the school, they moved to Lakota to be a part of a good community, they want sports for their kids and all the electives of a large school, but they also want it cheap. They want the “shared” costs of the entire community that pays these costs year after year. These are the same people who will move out of Lakota when their kids grow up and leave the community, and those parents will downsize to another home in Florida or someplace else. Meanwhile, they’ll leave people like me with the bill they racked up. So don’t lecture me about what makes a good community. The people who want this levy are people who want something good cheaply and you want it for your own selfish reasons. When your kids are done with the system, chances are you’ll move anyway. )

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

Changing a Flat Tire in the Wasteland: Those who take away S.B.5 will be responsible

We have a real problem. Public officials have paid themselves too much. They don’t want to surrender any of that funding now that they’ve looted our tax money for everything that has been sent in their direction, so their solution is to increase taxes to pay for their “public service.” This is true of mayors, city council members, coroners, teachers, superintendents, virtually every public official. Listen to Doc Thompson of 700 WLW talk to a Lance Burton from Channel 9 about their latest investigation into public employee salary problems.

Toward the end of this broadcast I came on with Doc to give an update to the new contract concession made by the Lakota School System with the LEA. The LEA still needs to vote on the concession, but the process has started.

This is one of the key reasons that Senate Bill 5 was passed by the Ohio House and Senate and signed by Governor Kasich just over a month ago. Public employee costs have sky-rocketed in recent years. There is no management control of the public’s money, and the only solution those public officials can come up with is higher taxes. This is the primary reason school districts all over Ohio are failing.

They all have one thing in common; their labor costs are too high, and when those labor costs are analyzed, it is clear that the public officials have paid themselves 30%, or more, above the average wage of the non-public sector employee. It was their lack of discipline that led to the budget shortfalls, not a shortage of cash supplied by the community. Public officials seem to all share the same mentality, tax more to pay for their big spending.

Look at all the police cars escorting Joe Biden to a fundraiser for his boss. Seems like a waste of money to me.

This is certainly Todd Portune’s solution to the stadium shortfalls in Cincinnati. Portune is a commissioner of Hamilton County. He was warned years ago of the potential problems with the stadium deals, but everyone just kicked the can down the road. Now it’s time to pay up, so Todd wants a sales tax on the fans, as if the cost for a professional sports ticket wasn’t already high enough. Todd does this because he doesn’t understand any other option, tax and spend. Or spend then tax. Same difference.

It is on the back of all this news that a recent Quinnipiac poll of 1,370 voters reported that 54% of Ohioians support repealing S.B.5 as opposed to 36% that support keeping it the law of the land.

I am proudly one of those 36%. I think S.B.5 is the only hope for the future of the state. It is the only tool on the horizon that will allow citizens to get these out-of-control costs under control. It is because of the passage of that bill that Lakota and the LEA even met at the table in record time and made a deal to eliminate the step increases. It is the LEA through the OEA (Ohio Education Association) that decided that S.B.5 would destroy their grip on politics and communities so they made a concession now to take the edge off. Because not only do they seek a new levy in November, but they also want to put on a softer face so enough Ohioans will see things their way and vote to repeal S.B.5. But consider that without S.B.5 as a threat, nobody would be talking. The LEA, the OEA or any government employee wouldn’t even consider negotiating. They haven’t in the past, and based on the rates of pay they have given themselves under the generosity of Ohio’s communities they won’t in the future.

I can only conclude that of that 54% those are the people that either work in government or want to. They are the type of people who look to some “jack pot” to solve their problems in life. They are those types of people that crave a “government job” because of the high compensation and security that is unheard of in the private sector. They are the reason that having too many people work for government is dangerous. Having a government that is too big means democracy, or even a representative republic dies, because people will not vote against themselves, and if government is the way they make their living, they aren’t going to cut their own throat, even if that is what’s best for the state or nation.

It really comes down to this, if S.B.5 is repealed, and everything goes back to the way things were, then the situation we are seeing, where schools are going bankrupt, cities are struggling to avoid bankruptcy, and deficits are percolating in every government position for lack of tax money, yet the society paying the taxes are already spending 50% of all their income on taxes in some for or another, and it’s not enough, only bad things can happen. Those bad things will happen soon, before the 2012 presidential election. And when those bad things happen, if the state of Ohio does not have S.B.5 to protect ourselves, Ohio will fail miserably. It will push out its residence and business community with excessively high taxes to meet the greedy public employee expectations, or those public employees will bankrupt the whole system. And the devastation will be on the backs of those 54% who voted to repeal S.B.5.

It won’t be on my back or the back of the 36%. We are trying to fix the situation. Those who want to take away S.B.5 essentially want to take away the tool we have to fix the problem.

Imagine that you were trying to change a flat tire. And our funding problem is flat. People can’t afford higher taxes so the air is out of the tire. So you want to change the old tire to a new tire, one that doesn’t require so much air to fill it. Air of course is the taxes we pay. So we jack up the car to change that tire. Senate Bill 5 is the jack we use to raise the car and replace the flat tire with a new one. And along comes a bunch of people that want the tire to stay flat, because they don’t want the car to move. They want to be stuck, because they benefit from the car being stuck. So they take away the jack.

Without the jack, how do we change the tire? You can’t. The tire will remain flat.

That’s what’s at stake. There are a lot of people like me that are willing to change the tire so we can move the car down the road. But if the car stays stuck, and stranded, broke and useless, it will be because of the fools that took away the tools to fix the car.

If that happens, the blame will be solely on the backs of the idiots that took away our jack. (S.B.5) People like me will survive. I’ll do like a lot of productive people will do; I certainly won’t look to open a new restaurant or business. I may not even want to live in the state. I might move to another state like Texas or Florida that doesn’t have such high taxes. Or I might just do the minimum to live so I don’t get taxed too much, because what’s the use in doing the extra work if some scumbag, politician is just going to pad their pockets with my hard work. Meanwhile, the public officials striving to do almost nothing to earn a six figure income all off tax money will find themselves far worse underfunded than they do now. And it will be their entire fault. They will be kings of their own wasteland, a kingdom of their own bankrupt making left scratching their heads and crying about how they arrived there. That’s when I’ll laugh in their face and remind them that they took the jack, so the car couldn’t move. Now they are stuck and rotting along the side of the road in a wasteland of parasites and will only have themselves to blame.

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

Mark Mallery Sues the City of Cincinnati: Looters, thieves and scum bags strike again!

Who are the modern looters of our society? Doc Thompson of 700 WLW explores that concept in this fantastic broadcast.

It is a disturbing trend that we are seeing, which has been occurring for a number of years. There are two kinds of Americans. There are those that desire socialism, where a cradle of collectivism will provide a utopia of love, understanding, fairness, and collective salvation. The other kind of American looks to the traditional values that made the United States successful in the past, and believe that the same traits that made the United States great then can do so in the future. The first type of person believes that for collectivism to work, society must rid themselves of all desire for violence and personal property. The second type understands that conflict is part of the human condition, and that by harnessing that conflict in a positive way, capitalism will bring great inventions and production capacity to society. They honor property as a way to measure themselves and their achievements and as an incentive toward competition. Property is like a scoreboard in a football game. It lets people know the score of the game.

Spirituality, which both versions of living struggle with is knowing that the game you’re playing doesn’t matter in the long run. It only matters on the field of battle. When death comes, the games of life matter very little. The scoreboard only reflects the status of the game.

Now playing all these versions of existence against each other are looters, and thieves. In an uncivilized society, looters put on a mask and rob people in side alleys of their wealth. In a civilized society, the looters put on masks too, but they are the masks of authority, and they rob you without threats of violence, not openly. They rob you with the threat of potential violence inflicted by some random act beyond your control, which they as an authority figure can protect you from. So what they do is basically extort from the unknowing, naive victim, “protection money.” These are looters. They are anybody that makes a living off the public. Anyone that takes, but does not give back. For instance, Barrack Obama is a looter. Not because he’s a black president, or even a democrat, a progressive or a socialist. But he is a looter because he could never have personal success without public work. He’d not sell one book if he wasn’t running for president or if he wasn’t the current president. And none of the money he earns is for the personal worth of what he produces. He earns money for what he won’t do to a company, such as GE. Companies throw money at Obama and his progressive friends in congress and the senate to avoid regulation, and to create regulation against enemies. Obama earns his money by this process. Not by creating a product, or even working a punch press. He simply loots off the public to facilitate a process favorable to thieves. Without public office, his ability to produce in society would be non-existent. That makes him a looter.

This does not include the one or two term politician that just wishes to contribute something to their community. This term of “looter” does apply to the career politician who just takes, and takes and takes. They spend their time making new laws with the money they’ve looted so that the new laws will make it easier to loot you.

A good example of this is Mayor Mallory of Cincinnati. He reveals his true intentions. When the city cut his car allowance, as heard in Doc Thompson’s broadcast, he sues the city to recover those costs. His actions show that he ran for mayor, so he could put on the mask of authority, and therefore openly rob anyone he chooses. It’s no different from a thief.

Other examples are school superintendents. They are retiring from service to the district, then being hired by the school board just two days later, which is legal, and taught to them by the OEA. The OEA lobbied for that legal precedent so they could dangle the greed carrot in front of school superintendents and buy them off. Click here to see the I-Team report. It’s a very common practice. With superintendents, the money flows easily and all that is required of them is to maintain an “excellent” district which requires lobbying the Ohio Board of Education, and to secure funding when it’s needed. So when the teachers unions present “looter” style contracts, the superintendent signs off on it and gets the levy passed to pay for it. That’s the game, and they are looters.

When I have to spend the day in court on occasion, it never ceases to amaze me how many people are employed in positions that are simply “looter” positions. The only contribution they give society is in the handling of a driver’s license, or the processing of a court document. Most of the activity that goes on, including the issuing of tickets, the legal maneuvers of lawyers, the process of issuing permits and every form of “red tape,” the grandparent of apathy, are positions created for the thief and carnival con artist to lift money from you and place it their pocket. The role of the teacher that proclaims that their master’s degree merits 90K per year is no different from the fast talker at the county fair that asks you to step right up and try to throw the ring around the pop bottle. After he’s scammed you from your money you realize that the rings were weighted so it was nearly impossible to get the ring on the bottle. The same with schools and balanced budgets, the levies are weighted against the community, so the money tree can keep on growing, thriving off the money looted from that same community. The looters use fear to keep you from seeing what their hands are doing, or what their hearts truly desire.

When in doubt, remember the school superintendents that say, “money doesn’t matter to me, I am committed to the children,” yet retires from their job one day, and two days later is rehired so they can collect a full retirement pension, and a full salary. Or the mayor that proclaims that they are doing what’s best for the city he runs, while at the same time suing that same city over a car allowance.

These scum bags are thieves, creeps, and losers that only gain power because you empower them to take it from you with your desire for peace, which they use as a weapon against your sovereignty.

Yes, there are two kinds of Americans. The first kind desires socialism, and it is under this system of government that the thieves also desire, because it creates a society of easy victims that will empty out their pockets in a desire for peace. The second kind of American is the enemy to the thieves, because they aren’t so easy to fool. The thieves under that second type of American have to use a literal mask to do their looting, because they are forced to hide from the mainstream.

It’s important to know who you are, the first or the second, because there is no in between. There is no gray area in this matter. To know the answer, you must know your heart, are you a looter that wants something given to you without giving back, or are you a producer that just wants to live your life free of being robbed?

You better know which you are because America will not survive both. We can’t be home of the brave and home of the coward and thief at the same time.

Rich Hoffman

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

Lakota Hopes to Freeze your Memory: The LEA and the school board freeze step increases

BRIAN COMBS OF 700 WLW ANNOUNCES A CONTRACT CONCESSION AT LAKOTA SCHOOLS

I’m convinced that today the majority of Americans want what those first Americans wanted: a better life for themselves and their children; a minimum of government authority. Very simply, they want to be left alone in peace and safety to take care of the family by earning an honest dollar and putting away some savings. This may not sound too exciting, but there is something magnificent about it. On the farm, on the street corner, in the factory and in the kitchen, millions of us ask nothing more, but certainly nothing less, than to live our own lives according to our values—at peace with ourselves, our neighbors and the world.

Ronald Reagan, 1976

Matt Mayer of the Buckeye Institute talks to Doc Thompson about union indoctrination in public school. This is a big problem lead by the OEA and the LEA. Listen to that very informative interview here:

The 1,190 member Lakota teacher’s union is set to vote on approving a contract that will eliminate step increases which will be a true “freeze” on wages, which is considered by many to be an unprecedented move. Many consider such a “sacrifice” by the union as a reasonable concession. As I watch the union’s movements closely, what they are doing is showing that government doesn’t need S.B.5 to create an environment of reasonable negotiation. They are using this negotiating strategy to point to in the fall when they are going to attempt to repeal S.B.5, and proclaim that the unions have been reasonable and worked with the school board.

The only reason they are doing this now is because it has now become evident that the unions have pushed things too far. Teachers are only working 9 months a year, 8 hours a day with some take home work on occasion, and they are being paid about 30% more than everyone else who pays their wages and are working longer hours each day and working 12 months out of a year. People are aware of the scam, and now the teachers union knows that S.B.5 could end their grip on local politics, so they are doing the only thing they can do, and that’s attempt to put on a softer face and appear to be “working” with the communities.

My opinion on the step increase removal from the contract is that it is a nice gesture that is about a year and a half too late in Lakota. It’s probably about 5 years too late in economic reality all across the state. Teachers showed no restraint in negotiating their contracts with lap-dog school board members, leaving the average wage at Lakota to be over 63K per year. About half of that 1,190 member organization makes over 65K per year going as high as six figures for a teacher. (For a review of what step increases are listen to this broadcasts between Darryl Parks and I from way back in September of 2010.)

The trouble is that these teachers believe they are entitled to this amount of money because they have, “seniority,” “specialty certifications,” and various degrees. They have the same mentality as those that have grown to accept Medicare and Social Security as “entitlements” instead of calling them what they really are, and that’s welfare programs for the elderly. Politicians for years have been successful in convincing Americans that they have a “right” to other people’s money regardless of how much they’ve paid into the system. And history shows, especially in regard to Medicare that if the money is on the table, coming from the invisible hands of tax payers, then there is no shortage of people willing to over-charge for services, or to go to the doctor for every ailment, because they can. And doctors are all too willing to prescribe medication to a patient to help out the pharmacist, and to help his patient. After all, all it takes is a doctor’s note to get out of work, so the doctor wins both ways. He helps a colleague make a few bucks, and he gets to get the patient out of some work so everybody wins. That’s what you get out of Medicare. It’s a big pot of money that everyone wants to stick their hand in and fill their pockets. Being human nature, it’s all too tempting to take more than is needed, because it’s there. So the more you put in front of people, the more they’ll want to take. Using Medicare and Social Security as an example, of the $31,406 Washington has spent per household in 2010 $9,949 will go to just Social Security and Medicare. And it was like that from the very beginning. This quote from the Harford Courant, July 2nd 1969. “Social Security officials conceded Tuesday that the cost of Medicare and Medicaid are running way over original estimates.” The more we put in, the more thieves there are to take it out.

This is what teachers have done. Communities have put a lot of money in their community pots by way of property taxes, and teachers using tenure, step up and have taken as much as they could carry. The newer teachers are all too happy to wait in line behind those with seniority because their leaders in the unions have made good on their promise that if the money ever gets too low, they’ll just go back to the community and refill the pot. They do this because they believe they are entitled to the money. They believe that their degrees, or their years of service make them “qualified” for a certain amount of money. Well, their degrees don’t mean anything to me. Why do we need a teacher with a doctorate, or even a masters to teach 1st or 2nd grade. I’ve seen home-school moms do a better job in their kitchens. So why should a school district have to pay wages that are excessively high for a teacher that is over-qualified? The teacher with their hand in the pot will say they “earned” the “right” to that amount of money because they did the work at college. Well, I didn’t ask those teachers to go to college. I didn’t ask them to get a master’s degree. Those types of deals were made by crooked politicians with OEA lobbyists to create laws that allowed those classifications of teachers to take more of the pot away quicker. It’s a little scam they’ve worked out in Columbus. I didn’t agree to be robbed of my property tax to participate in such a foolish system. That kind of deal was done behind my back and I don’t like it!

In the private sector the teacher would be paid based on the value of their service, not some arbitrary figure come up by politicians from 30,000 feet that haven’t a clue what education is supposed to be. They are only in office so they can take from another pot provided by the tax payer. These people with their hands in the pots, teachers unions, politicians and the like are simply moochers. They rely on a producer, such as myself, and most likely a majority of the people reading this article, to put money into that pot. I have no respect for a moocher.

Is moocher too strong of a word? What other word is there? That’s what they are. The OEA is doing what kids do when they play house, they are coming up with a set of rules that they negotiated with themselves, and values that they created for the confined little world that exists only to them in their bedrooms. They are moochers because they don’t contribute anything useful to society. Parents are paying these people to watch their kids while the parents work. And the moochers have invented all kinds of titles and regulations to make their little game seem relevant. They are doing the job that parents are too busy to do themselves.

When my kids were going to school, my rule was that if the teacher cared enough about teaching as I did, I let my kids listen to that teacher. There were a few teachers that my kids had that were very passionate, and I admired those people. Not because they had a degree, a title, or tenure. But because they had passion for life. For the rest, the majority, that just lived an idealized life, just waiting for school to let out for the summer, that took every personal day they could, and was just doing their time waiting by the pot of taxpayer money to come available so they could reach in and take all they could, I told my kids to watch out for people like that. Watch out for sinners dressed as “saints” I’d tell them. Be careful of the con artist with the smile on their face waving you into someplace they want you to go. I warned them about such teachers with the same caution that I’d warn them of a strange old man trying to get a young girl into their car. Whether the danger is physical or mental makes little difference to me. “Watch out what people try to pour into your minds. For every negative that someone tries to give you, you must off-set it with four positives. If someone tries to give you an ignorant thought, cleanse yourself with a book before you go to sleep. The process of reading will help your mind work out corrupt thoughts the same as water assists in the digestion of food.” That’s the kind of talk I had with my own kids. And my advice to parents and children everywhere is the same. “Be careful what you let people tell you, especially moochers like the OEA that are only out to build a financial empire for themselves with money from the pot we created.”

So what are the teachers at Lakota giving up in voting away their “step increases?” They are agreeing to not take away money the community hasn’t even put into the pot yet. They are agreeing to keep all they’ve taken already, but not to take too much of what we put in next time, since the pot is empty again, after the community just filled it.

We all know the answer to this. We’d tell our children who drank too much Kool-Aid and came back to the kitchen crying after the pitcher was emptied, “I want more.” We’d say to them as reassuring as possible, “You should have thought about that before you drank it all up.”

What the Lakota teacher’s union is essentially saying is “we’ll keep drinking just as much Kool-Aid as we always have, but we won’t ask for more, so long as you keep the pitcher full” Now it’s our responsibility to tell the children, “we can’t afford to give you so much Kool-Aid. You need to drink less.”

Rich Hoffman

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

Pirates, Freedom, and Key West: What’s more important, order or happiness?

A week ago I shared a private family secret, our love of pirate ships, the constructible strategy game. Everyone that knows me well knows that I love pirates. It’s not the lawlessness nature of them that I like, but it’s the romantic idea of freedom that they represent.

I’m not normally a fan of liquor commercials, but I think I may have just seen the best one ever produced in this Captain Morgan advertisement. The makers of this commercial got it right. It may as well been ripped straight out of my mind. I LOVE IT!


The only thing I would have done different is the French vessel would have been sunk, the treasure looted, then Morgan’s crew would enjoy the drink. But, close enough.

Needless to say, I immensely enjoy the marketing strategy of Captain Morgan Rum. The key is to be honest with the sign stimuli that moves your heart to beat, and for me, this kind of stuff does it.

Pirates are one of the reasons that I ride motorcycles everywhere I go, its part of the attitude and culture of motorcycle riding that you can’t get when you just drive a car around. Here is that same woman from the Captain Morgan sword fight commercial doing the next natural thing, doing a motorcycle shoot for Harley Davidson.

That’s why I’ve said it more than once, progressives can attempt to ruin America through the schools, through legislation, through television and other social media, but deep within the human heart is a desire to be free. Motorcyclists today have a taste of that freedom, like the original pirates of the Caribbean did or the open range cowboy or frontier fighter. So in the end, progressives, socialists, communists, Marxists, and every group that wishes social control, will fail, and the reason they will fail is for the same reason the Captain Morgan ads work as visual eye candy, for the same reason that a man, or woman will spend all their extra money to buy a motorcycle, and will flock to a large motorcycle rally like Sturgis or Daytona.

The real Henry Morgan is one of my favorite historical characters. Now this might seem like an odd selection to people who read my work and think I’m a moralist. Morality to me is being authentic. Hiding one’s desires behind a drunken splendor does not take courage. To say that I did what I did because I was drunk is weak. To say I did what I did and I don’t care what you think about and I did it with full knowledge that you would not like it is more the proper attitude.

This is why I like modern-day Key West so much, because it is the closest thing on earth to Port Royal in Jamaica during Henry Morgan’s time. Here is a great documentary on Morgan and Port Royal. Again, I don’t enjoy debauchery, drunken acts, or illicit sex, but I do enjoy honesty, and there is a lack of politics in Key West and an honesty that comes with it that I enjoy. And Port Royal is what it was because it was free of politics and represents what people truly want and desire for themselves without government engineering.

We are at the point, as of this writing, just a week away from the release of the 4th Pirates of the Caribbean film, which of course my wife and I will be seeing on the opening day. Pirates of the Caribbean as a concept of course started as a ride at Disney Land and the interesting thing about the ride Pirates of the Caribbean, Walt Disney was making children films, yet he was obsessed with pirates. Why do you think that is? Listen to Walt Disney talk about his concept for the ride, where he talks about the crimes pirates committed in heroic ways. Nobody these days could get by with talking about this kind of stuff. Progressives have made everything so “touchy—feely” that creative types can’t even discuss the violence committed by a group of people like pirates, or frontiersman in any context by in feeling compassion for the victim of the violence. This is why the closest thing we have today to Walt Disney is George Lucas. Our society today would sue Disney for trying to corrupt children with this broadcast.

The key to Walt Disney is he understood that for imagination to work in the human mind, which is what he hoped to inspire in young people, is that they can’t get too hung up on rules. But young people needed to have their own set of values that they’d build with the mythology Disney gave them with foundation stories.

Modern business executives or politicians don’t understand how Disney thought. In fact, nobody does, because people get so hung up on the rules of living instead of the joy of it. Heck, even people in his family, friends and company don’t understand. We all understand the situation on a subconscious level, but people are unable to reach that understanding under conscious thought.

Oh, by the way, Walt Disney didn’t go to college. He didn’t even finish high school, only had one year. Maybe that’s the key to success. Tests do show that kids seem to become less innovative and imaginative with each year of public school. We seem to teach imagination out of kids.

So when Johnny Depp puts on this costume to play Jack Sparrow again, people will flock to see it, even though many of the people who work at Disney don’t really understand why. They are still milking Walt Disney’s ideas that are over 40 years old now without creating anything new, because the key to success is in the essence behind the myth.

If you follow progressive ideas, and a lot of young people do because it’s taught to them in their public schools and colleges, they hide the lie of their movement behind emotional truths, which then disguises the essence of any given thought. They seek to re-engineer what it means to be human by eradicating the desire for freedom. That desire for freedom to my relief is still able to reach young people. In fact, the new Lego Pirates of the Caribbean is something my wife and I are looking forward to playing with our young nieces and nephews where even those under the age of 10 can get that small taste for freedom manifested in the enjoyment of a game.

It is unlikely that any of the people working on the Pirates film including Johnny Depp understands what Walt Disney understood clearly when he came up with the idea for a Pirates ride in his children’s themed amusement park. Here at the premier, all the participants appear able to feel the energy evoked by the film, but aren’t sure how it translates to the art of living life. To them, the movie realm is a separate fantasy to be lived only with the price of a ticket and viewed in a darkened theater. To me, the movie realm is a reflection of human consciousness and represents the true desires of mankind.

That art is all about freedom, and not waking up in the morning worried about a government telling you what to do, what to eat, what to learn, or how you’ll make your money. It’s a genuine love of freedom, the right to succeed or fail to live or die in the pursuit of it. That’s the magic!

And it was nice to see that the director of the Captain Morgan commercial understood that freedom which he captured so wonderfully in that new clip. It’s one thing to copy off something you like and admire. It’s a whole other thing to understand it, and that commercial does.

These are my kind of people!

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
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Becki Villamagna crossed the LINE: The Empire of Education and Money

The following note is what public education ran by teachers unions is all about. The following letter was intercepted from Becki Villamagna of the Ohio Education Association. This was the email message sent to EOA members.

__________________________________________________________________

A teacher from Springboro is having a petition signing event this Saturday from 11 AM till 1 PM. She lives right across the street from Kelly Kohls, a Springboro Board member who is tight with Shannon Jones, testified in favor of SB 5, the new president of the Warren County Tea Party, and a founding member of Educate Ohio – an anti public education, teacher and union group.

Would put out the word to your contact list? Even if all they do is drive over and clog the street, that would be great.

The address is 4188 Belle Terrace in Lebanon which is off of Pekin Road between St Rt 48 and St Rt 741.

Thanks!
Becki Villamagna
Communications/Political Action
Ohio Education Association

______________________________________________________

The email is a call to action to harass anyone that is for education reform. The union uses an aggressive strategy like this email to radicalize members against anyone that questions how much money is being wasted on public education.

This email is a perfect example of why we must have S.B.5. The more I learn, the more I am convinced that the OEA needs to be completely dissolved as a publicly funded organization. And it is publicly funded by tax payers. The members are radicals that are dedicated to preserving a destructive monopoly.

Glenn Beck did a wonderful show with college students who provided testimony to the radicalization of education, which reveals the true behavior that is behind public, and college education.

Here John Stossel does his own investigation into the public school system government monopoly that is being run by people like Becki Villamagna. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want one cent of my money in any form to go to people of such low quality.


Here’s another show by Glenn Beck. The teacher’s union and radical leftist groups do everything they can to smear Beck for shows like this, but the guy is exposing them. So Beck gets attacked the same way as Becki Villamagna is doing on behalf of the OEA going after Kelli Kohls of the Springboro School Board. This issue particularly angers me because I know Kelli, and she is one of the most sincere people on this issue that there is. She is trying to bring sanity to a monopoly of thugs, and they hate her for it, just like they hate Glenn Beck. Listen to some of the stories taking place all over the country.

If you think that Glenn Beck is pulling your leg, and is the crazy loon the unions want you to believe he is, then listen to John Stossel again, in yet another show on the education monopoly.

People like Becki Villamagna will tell you that this is a FOX News conspiracy against the working people! That is a line straight out of the Communist Manifesto. I have followed John Stossel for a long time. I loved his work on ABC’s 20/20, but he left there to work for Fox News. Listen to him explain why he left ABC to go to Fox. He’s a great reporter. He left ABC to be a reporter. That’s why Fox News is a good network, because they are actually doing the job of reporting.

Stossel reminds me a bit of the local reporter in Cincinnati Brendan Keefe, whom I have the pleasure of knowing. Check out Brendan’s work here if you haven’t seen it already. These stories have been going on for a long time. It has been people like Becki Villamagna that has singled out anybody that speaks out against their monopoly with thug-like tactics.

Click here to see when David Little of Progress Ohio was hired to come after me in similar way, which only ticked me off. In fact, the day they came after me, was the day I decided that the OEA was no longer valid as an organization. They no longer had any credibility in my mind and I would fight tooth and nail to see that they no longer loot anymore tax money. They revealed to me what education is to them, and they confirmed to me that people like Glenn Beck, and John Stossel have been telling the truth. But nobody wants to hear it, because it’s inconvenient for them. After all, most parents see public school as a day care facility, otherwise they’d take a more active role in their children’s life.

Milton Friedman has been speaking about the education empire for years. This empire of terror and money isn’t new.

Kelli knows that the union will be out in force to attempt to intimidate her and the other board members as they vote on the next union contract. The meeting is at Springboro High School May 24th at 7 pm. The best way to end this reign of thugs is to counter what it is they intend to do. So if you are sick and tired of this kind of behavior, show up at the school at that time and at that place and let those union thugs know they have no power to coerce, intimidate, antagonize, manipulate and twist the arm of your elected officials with fear. Because if they were planning to “clog the streets” over just a petition, imagine what they will try to do over a new contract.

Rich Hoffman

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Kasich and the Casinos: The many levels of EVIL all at war for justification

Governor Kasich has drawn a lot of unnecessary controversy to himself by standing in the way of the casino deal in Ohio where voters approved the casinos in Ohio by a slim margin. The casino lobby for a long time solicited Ohio as a possibility for gambling, and for many years I took great pride in Ohio for being a place were gambling wasn’t accepted.

I believe Kasich is legally wrong in what he is doing, since the will of the voter has spoken. However, I can’t say that I blame him, as a resident of Ohio, for not wanting to see casinos in Ohio.

I can only speak for myself, but I suspect Governor Kasich isn’t too far off from my thinking, based on his actions. So I’ll offer my opinion on gambling in Ohio as a possible window into the ethical problem Governor Kasich, in his position might be struggling with.

The Constitutional amendment for casino gambling has been floating around for a number of years. If you look at the chart below, you’ll notice that essentially the same constitutional amendment was dangled in front of voters from 2006, 2008 before finally being passed in 2009. So the vote in 2009 wasn’t a pure vote, done with the overwhelming approval of the Ohio voter. This vote was done just like school levies, where if the amendment didn’t pass the first time, then voters would just see it again a few months or a few years later. The vote in 2009 was passed by beating down the voter, attempting till those opposed just gave up realizing that bigger and bigger waves were on the horizon, and resistance was futile.

2009 Constitutional
Amendment Casino gambling Passed

2008 Referendum Payday lending Failed

2008 Constitutional
Amendment Casino gambling Failed

2006 Constitutional
Amendment Minimum wage Passed

2006 Constitutional
Amendment Casino gambling Failed

2006 Constitutional
Amendment Pro-smoking measure Failed

I see the state looking toward casinos as a desperate ploy by bankrupt souls to cover costs they don’t have the courage to address any other way but by throwing money at the situation. The same people who foolishly conceive that by spending money on school levies, tend to also support infinite amounts of money poured into education, police departments, fire departments and all public services, because in their limited perspective of the world, spending money equals success. These are the same idiots that believe that spending money at a craps table, or by playing dice, or pulling the lever on a slot machine, a person can win.

It is these types of minds that have led our civilization to the condition it’s in. To understand that world, study a casino. Here in Cincinnati, the closest major casino is Hollywood Casino’s in Lawrenceburg Indiana. At first glance, this is a neat place. The parking is cheap. The drinks are cheap. The lobby is extravagant. They have an excellent, all you can eat Egyptian Temple themed buffet that is spectacular. On the way into this palace where the hotel rooms are lavish, and quite impressive, designed to lure the drunk gambler or the illicit fly-by-night lovers to relish in some nocturnal sin, there are giveaways for Harley Davidson motorcycles and other “free gifts” that are designed like insect traps to emit pleasurable thoughts only to trap the poor creature into the actual ambush. The trap is the casino itself, where a smoky room and chaotic noise greets the would-be-gambler. Once inside the temptations of great wealth lures the player to a table, or a slot where the hopes and dreams of a lifetime are placed in the fate of the randomness of dice, cards or a computer selection.

I stood in this place and watched players for well over an hour. My lack of participation was alarming to many of the employees that watched me like a coyote roaming a hen house. What I witnessed in this trap was a decadent place that feeds off the ignorance of the players. I had heard stories for years of co-workers, and some of my own employees that had gambling problems. One woman is a little black woman who was a friend of mine named, “Fuzz.” Well, Fuzz every week when I gave her a check on Friday would proclaim, “time to hit them slots!” She looked forward all week to those slot machines. She spent all her money on those things. She was perpetually broke, and bought most of her attire at dollar stores. She was even on some government assistance even though she had a full-time job. I liked Fuzz, but I felt sorry for her. I’ve known one too many people like her. When I was younger I worked with a guy named Sonny who was addicted to the race tracks in Lebanon. Sonny spent all his money on the tracks, went through at least two wives that I know of, and ended up in a trailer in South Lebanon before meeting a dismal end due to alcohol related illnesses.

Fuzz and Sonny are just the bottom feeders. They represent a modestly small percentage of gamblers in casinos, and it could be argued that if there weren’t any casinos, these self-destructive people would find other way to destroy themselves. But casinos certainly take advantage of self-destructive people. And they by their nature encourage people to become self-destructive.

U.S.50 that Hollywood Casino is built off of used to be a country road leading into downtown Lawrenceburg. As promised by developers, the casino did bring some business to the surrounding area. There are some car dealerships, restaurants, and some shopping complexes, the same ones that seem to go in wherever large groups of people are brought together. One of the fears when Lawrenceburg first brought casinos to the neighborhood was that crime would go up, prostitution would sky rocket and there’d be drug dealers on every corner. Well, that was a bit dramatic. At first glance, Lawrenceburg’s economy did improve. They have retail there they wouldn’t have otherwise because of the casinos, and the prostitution and drug use are like they are everywhere else hidden from view. But, I have family out in Indiana and used to travel U.S. 50 a few times a year to visit them and I remember when the bridge for I-275 was being built by the power plant, so that’s how far back my memory goes. Back in those days, a strip joint was a far-away place. Newport was known as Little Vegas back then and there all the derelict men that wanted fast women and all the things organized crime provided was in some far away land. Not anymore. Concepts Show Club offers topless dancing right in downtown Lawrenceburg, there have been prostitution busts in a few massage parlors, which is carefully swept under the rug, because the local politicians love having the extra tax money to throw at government services, because as we can see historically, politicians use tax money to buy votes, and when there is more tax money collected, there is more money to buy votes. Casinos are simply disguised taxes. They are ways to pull more money away from “working people” so more money can be used to buy votes.

For the casino proposed in Cincinnati there are already discussions about having a strip club near that casino. I remember when Larry Flynt first brought Hustler of Hollywood to Cincinnati and all the controversy over putting that business in Monroe, and people were up in arms about having immoral business in Cincinnati.

15 years later, Hustler of Hollywood up in Monroe is always busy, all hours of the day. My wife and I have been in there, and I really don’t see the big deal. But apparently a lot of people love porn. But is Monroe a better place because of it? No. Monroe has struggled. They have the big discount outlet mall, and Traders World, but no major business has gone in around Monroe. No big new companies. Only little retail centers.

That is the same model in Las Vegas, Vegas is shows, restaurants, hotels, but how about those manufacturing jobs that actually employee people, not in service jobs, but production jobs? Why do people go to Vegas? Prostitution is legal in Nevada. So they go there for that. They go there to gamble, and maybe catch a glimpse of Area 51. But do employees go Vegas to produce, or to sell themselves?

That requires a different definition of employment. Does the employee get paid to make something, or do they simply entertain for the sake of amusement. For instance, a grill cook at Wendy’s makes a burger so he exchanges his time and contributions to the construction of a hamburger. But what about a casino owner, what are they producing? They are producing jobs, but what kind of jobs? The product a casino produces is hope. The cocktail waitresses do deliver the drinks from the bar, where the bartender makes the drink. But the function of both is to diminish the senses of the customer so they spend more money on hope. And those are the types of jobs casinos bring to a community. Yes, they do create jobs, but they do so by being a parasite to the community they serve. Casinos are like sex to what production oriented business is to romance. Sex is quick and easy. Romance can take a whole evening or even a weekend. Sex is tearing off the cloths of your mate on a beach in some exotic location after four or five drinks at the bar. Romance is having your mate go out to dinner without her underwear, and letting her know through the evening that you know it, but you don’t touch her. You go to dinner, you go to your movie, you behave respectfully showing restraint, then when it comes time to do the deed, you make it last for a couple of hours. However in the minds of some, sex and romance is the same thing and these are the same people who think casino business and regular business is the same thing. They are not.

Most business owners I know would prefer not to have strip clubs and casinos near their businesses because they provide temptations to employees to take too long at lunch, and to waste their money. An employee with empty pockets and a desperate heart is an unreliable employee. They cost an employer in thousands of uncalculated ways. It’s one thing when a casino is in some out-of-the-way place, because it takes effort and planning to get there, because casinos are subconsciously looked upon as places of low quality. The casino in Davenport Iowa when I visited that city years ago cheapened in my eyes the entire state, because it said to me that the state was desperate for money, that the political leaders took the cheap sex route no different than porn as a way to solve their financial problems. I thought the same thing in Kalamazoo Michigan when I saw casinos there. It said to me, “I’m desperate for money, so desperate that we seek to drain every last dime out of our local economy and the people that support it.” And we all feel the same way about Vegas. It’s cheap, sleazy, and speaks of raw sex. That’s why it’s so popular for bachelor parties to go to Vegas. Men don’t go there to be good. They go there to be bad.

So why would we want casinos in Cincinnati or anywhere in Ohio? Why would casinos attract big business to Ohio? Have casinos attracted large firms to Las Vegas? Is Microsoft and Silicone Valley seeking to relocate to Vegas? How about all the big car companies of the world? Are they flocking to such regions?

No. People who like casinos like to go to them, but they don’t want the sins of their illicit behavior to be a constant reminder to the thousands of dollars they lost, or the girl they bought to give them a “hand job” in some dark corner of a strip joint. They want to go back to their homes at the end of the night, far away from their sins and sleep with there nice wife, while their children sleep safely in the next room, far away from their improprieties.

So casino planners that speak of urban development being solved by casinos are extremely short-sighted. If anything, downtown Cincinnati would become even more of a temporary tourist destination. Why would residents want to move next to a casino in a multi-million dollar real-estate development? They won’t. People who can afford such things will still fly to Vegas, so they don’t have to stare their sins in the face every day from the balcony of their homes.

So if I were the Governor and I knew that the constitution of Ohio had been beat into submission by thousands of weak souls what didn’t put it on the ballot just once, but three times since 2006 and I knew that the casino deal is a very progressive plan to implement on the state, I’d drag my feet too, or I would at least not make it easy for them. I wouldn’t want those businesses desiring to bring casinos to Ohio to feel comfortable with using Ohio and its people to just rob and loot the wealth of our communities, without making them jump through hoops to test their sincerity. But that’s the problem with fairness. The right thing is to show equal opportunity to all business no matter if you like it or not. The marketplace needs to decide what succeeds or fails, and government has no place in the regulation of such things even if the business is evil and vile.

So whatever Kasich’s motives are, he shouldn’t be using regulation to discourage casinos from setting up shop in Ohio. But I cannot be angry with him, because the casinos themselves, and how they came to be are progressive institutions that I find repulsive and they should have went away when voters said in 2006 that they didn’t want casinos in Ohio. Instead, they did as all government does when they don’t get their way, just as in school levies, they just kept putting it on the ballot until resistance to them gave up, and the amendment passed. That’s how we obtained casinos in Ohio, under the strong-armed tactics of thugs, corrupt politicians looking for a financial bail-out from all the votes they’ve purchased with tax money and out-right-thieves that are licking their lips to take all the money they can from the weak, like my friend Fuzz, and Sonny till there is nothing left but a corpse.

So with all that said, I’m still a fan of John Kasich. It’s not an excuse to abuse a government position even if in his mind it is to right an evil. But in the face of all the evil present in the situation, I’ll give him a reassuring pat on the shoulder for only being human.

For the rest, those small little minds that are so enticed with bright lights, cheap 19 year old women and their bare breasts, and the fantasy that wasting your night in a casino constitutes nightlife, nothing can help you. You are the same people that believe in collective bargaining as a right given to you by FDR. You are children of LBJ’s Great Society and seek to cover the sins of not only your deepest desires, but your political subscription to that mythical society paid for by the future. You’re guilt causes you to endorse policies you know are wrong because the guilt of your poorly lived lives is too great for you to carry alone. So you seek easy money through casinos to lessen your burden.

You are the same people who seek to repeal S.B.5, because should the curtain be taken away from the shell game you and your generation have used for years to hide your deeds described above, there will be no place else for your guilt to reside, but in the mirror. So keep signing those petitions and try and erase S.B.5 from the books, and continue to solve your big government ideas with casinos and higher taxes, because you will not leave this earth with less of a burden, but with the knowledge that you have not only bankrupted us all financially, but morally as well. Keep signing those petitions! I will make sure everyone remembers who the villains are.

Rich Hoffman

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Shoudn’t Superintendents Go To Jail for the Crimes Against the Tax Payer: Yes, according to George W. Bush

With all the discussion about corruption in public education there are options that the tax payer can participate in. One of those options Representative Bill Coley talked about with Doc Thompson on 700 WLW. Click this link to listen to that broadcast. It’s the ability to expand education opportunities for both students and teachers in the future, and to emerge from the scandalous behavior that we are seeing more and more in public education. It’s not that these corruption problems weren’t always there, they have been for years, but now there are people who are willing to look at them. After Representative Coley came on to speak to Doc, I provided further testimony to the benefits of Coley’s congressional bill. But, it is obvious that something must be done to protect our schools from the kind of social reform that is being imposed on our kids, such as what was revealed at this Tuscan School Board meeting on Tuesday May 10, 2011

As parents learn that they have options, it is by using those options that they can be most instrumental in bringing about change. By voting down school levies, by using other forms of education to teach your kids, by taking advantage of every opportunity available, the parent of a child will go a long way to ending these massive public education debacles that are making a joke of education in the United States.

Keynesian economists like Barrack Obama believe that the more money you pour into a program, the better it is. Well, that’s not true, and Barrack reveals his inexperience at life by subscribing to a popular theory that circulates around universities all across the county. It circulates through academia because that’s the only place it works, because in academia tax payers and tuition increases cover the cost of such foolishness. In reality the more money you throw into a situation, the more corrupt it becomes. As shown in Brendan Keefe’s I-Team report, (click here to view) when a lot of money is supplied by the tax payers, there is no shortage of thieves that will line up to take that money for everything they can. We live in a culture that has learned to “game” the system, and our educators are teaching our children by example, and we are teaching our children its ok, because we continue to pass levies and feeding the corruption with our apathy. People like this woman are perfect examples of Keynesian economics. They just don’t understand how things work. They are a lost group of people who have been lied to by the kind of people who taught them in public education. She obviously learned from the same kind of people who put together the text-book in Tuscan.

I have to credit West Clermont that put their levy down in a spectacular way last week. The residents there are demanding change, yet their superintendent is defiant and toeing the line. (You can see that story by clicking here.) What’s happening is that Governor Kasich is trying to give districts like West Clermont the tools they need to manage their costs, but S.B.5 will have to withstand the repeal attempt by the type of people in the protest speech, well-intentioned people who have simply been taught incorrectly virtually everything the foundations of their lives are built on.

The solution to this kind of nonsense is in programs like what Bill Coley spoke about. When people start using them, the thugs that are embedded in public education can begin to be filtered out of the process. So take charge of your child’s education. Don’t just drop them off for baby-sitting convenience while you’re at work. The tools are available to you right now that give your children options to avoid the kind of bottom-feeders that are attracted to the lucrative business of public education. All people need to do is use them.

But doing nothing will only make the situation worse.

If you’re a CEO and you think you can fudge the books in order to make yourself look better, we’re going to find you, we’re going to arrest you, and we’re going to hold you to account.
–President George W. Bush, 2002

That’s tough talk for a president, but it’s only talk. Under his watch, corruption in public education exploded because he threw money at it. It looks like every superintendent in Ohio is guilty of doing exactly what President Bush declared CEO’s are doing. If superintendents want to be considered as CEO’s shouldn’t they go to jail when they get caught “cooking the books” commit “fraud” or participate in out-right “cover-ups?” Because it looks like the jails in Ohio would fill beyond capacity with those committing the crimes.

So why send children to such places, where criminals reside and pretend to be authority figures? Why do it when there are options such as the Online Options Bill Coley speaks about, or School Choice which is coming along under Governor Kasich’s reforms. By endorsing these criminals with your tax money, you are making the situation worse and are partially guilty of crimes against our society. By participating in competition you will force the best to survive and the crooked to be cast out, and that needs to happen quickly.

Rich Hoffman

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