Tag: education funding

For a Stupid “B”: The solution to Lakota’s budget problems

I’d like to take the high road and not do a series of stories about school board members who go to hotel conferences and drink so much that they pass out face down in the bathroom with their underwear nowhere to be found. That might be embarrassing to the whole district and damaging during a political campaign. Rather, I’d like to discuss the facts and that it is clear to me that in the very large Lakota school district with over 16,000 students that the spending by the liberal school board is out of control and needs some common sense applied. Due to their reckless handling of the radical teacher’s union throwing most of the money from the 2013 tax increase toward teacher salaries, they are poised to do it again. Lucky for the Lakota school district, we have an election coming up, and we have a potential third vote solution to the spending problem, James Hahn.

Listening to the many problems uttered at the Lakota school board, if we were doing a business analysis of their problem it’s that they are overspending on their budget. We are paying extraordinary six figure salaries to too many employees and they simply aren’t worth the money. From the measure of the state, Lakota received a report card of a “B” which simply isn’t acceptable. For all the cheerleading that Julie Shaffer and Brad Lovell, who has a wife working as an administrator, have illustrated, that if only we gave teachers a raise, that we could maintain our A+ excellent ratings–people buying homes in the area and investing in businesses would have nothing to worry about. But they have failed and failed miserably. As elected officials they have enjoyed too much the drinks at those seminars more than doing the business of the district and now the failing grades are starting to show, even as declining enrollment if managed properly could have kept more tax increases off the ballot.

When they ask as a school board for a tax levy they are essentially saying that they have no desire to manage their employees. They would of course say that their collective bargaining agreements are what drive up the costs. They would then say that the reason they want to overpay teachers and yield to their threats for strikes if they don’t get even more ridiculous raises is that Lakota wants to retain their employees so they can get the good grades from the state. But guess what, that isn’t happening. A grade of a “B” isn’t good enough for our district especially for what we are paying.

To have average salaries of $70K to $80K per employee one might argue that its worth it to give kids the best opportunity for success. The trouble is, in comparison, other schools that are competing with Lakota who also have high rates of teacher salary, supposedly the best in the business are getting As on their report card. Lakota is paying for mediocrity. What obviously needs to happen is that Lakota needs to cut away their overpriced teachers who care more about gender neutrality and other leftist causes and bring in new talent that can flip the pay scale. What is there to lose if Lakota is already getting a “B” in its grade rating? Why wouldn’t we dump half of the teaching staff and start over with fresh young talent to balance the books?

Well, that is called management and currently three of the two school board members just aren’t willing to do that hard work. Currently Lynda O’Connor and Todd Parnell are functioning as conservatives trying to implement some management controls, and they are feeling the heat from it. What they need is a third vote on the Board, in this case James Hahn. I had the opportunity to meet James recently and he is a sharp, business guy. He understands how things should work and functioning in a three-vote majority, he could do some good, especially partnered with Lynda. I have known Lynda for a long time and at first, I was skeptical of her. But over time she has proven herself to be a solid conservative who wants to do the right thing. What she has needed and continues to need is that critical third vote.

Before we burn down the district with another levy vote and do all the television, radio and newspaper coverage that could be very hard on our district regarding its reputation, we have a chance to vote for James Hahn to actually manage the district at the Board of Education for the first real time in my lifetime, and I’ve been around Lakota for decades. This is a rare opportunity and the Republican Party is backing Jim and Lynda for this very important race during the upcoming election. But it won’t be easy. The levy activists and unionized radicals who hide behind children and declare that great harm will come to their minds if we don’t just throw endless amounts of money at them forever will do whatever they can to prop up Julie. She will get a lot of votes just because she is perceived as a lay down candidate for the teacher’s union who want their money at the expense of the rest of us.

This particular election is one of the most important in Butler County because it’s a chance not only to put fiscal responsibility in charge of one of the largest public budgets in the state, but that the failure to do so could easily cost most of us many more thousands and thousands of dollars a year for nothing. And by nothing, I mean a report card of a “B.” An average at best rating for a top level pay level that is detrimental to our future development. The big scam was to pay the teachers so we could keep our school system at a high grade so that people would continue to move in and buy homes and invest in businesses. But what we are seeing is the opposite, businesses are concerned about the high taxation and who wants to invest in a home in Lakota for a “B” when they can go to Mason with the same dollars and get an “A?”

Of course, Julie and her liberals on the school board want to keep things as they are, they are for big union contracts and the same old teacher problems, like wasting time and money on entertaining transgender bathrooms. And when their treasurer says that they are operating at a budget surplus they don’t think that’s a sign for them to tighten up their budget and spend better. For them it only means they must seek a tax increase and that their energy goes into how to make voters pass it rather than doing their jobs of managing the budget they do have, drive away the expensive teachers and bring in the new. For the grade of a “B,” why not? I personally am happy that finally we have a candidate in James Hahn who thinks correctly about these matters. And if only we could get him elected, we may finally solve many of the problems at Lakota. Hopefully we can, before the politics of the matter get truly nasty. I’d rather talk about budgets and not about the stories of bad conduct that easily could be justified.

Rich Hoffman

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An old picture, its much worse now. 

Seeing What’s Really There: Why Iran attacked Saudi oil fields and why we shouldn’t give a damn

One thing is very clear about liberal intellectual circles, and even conservative ones, they rely on the rules of society to disguise what they cannot see about life. They are blind as bats without the sonar to navigate a dark cave on a black, moonless night. So, it should not be surprising that they have no idea what to make out of the sudden Iranian attack on Saudi Arabian crude oil facilities launched from within Iran sending cruise missiles into their targets knocking out 5% of the oil production for the world. Obviously, Iran is struggling under the U.S. sanctions and they hope by taking their competitor down a notch or two that they might survive on the world marketplace just a bit longer. Having friends like Russia, North Korea and even China doesn’t mean much these days so all the old Marxist regimes are struggling to find their way in the world of capitalist markets. All they can do is lash out as Iran did.

For those who can’t see clearly what the situation is, the Iranian revolution during the 70s was a Marxist incursion meant to spread socialism and communism all over the Middle East to control the oil fields. Communist policy makers in the United States trained at our best colleges and sent forth to do the bidding of evil over regulated the oil industry in America so that Iran and the Middle East in general could leverage the world and its capitalism through high prices on barrels of oil which is essentially an attack on every one of us and our cars. This game went on all through the past decades as America was pulled into war after war to protect those interests and even when Iran was losing, they were winning because of their Marxist intentions, which was why the Obama administration was trying to help Iran along, to keep that machine running for the cause.

But Americans aren’t stupid, they voted for Trump, he deregulated the industry and that has made America for the first time in our history oil independent and has driven down through competition the prices on a barrel of oil. That has also given us leverage to sanction Iran for bad behavior because we don’t need their oil. In pain, economically since most of the vision of the typical Iranian is regional, they blame Saudi Arabia for that leverage, because they haven’t yet accepted that America can produce its own oil. So they attacked the crude oil facilities to get themselves at a seat at the negotiating table.

It has been a complete myth for intelligentsia to assume that America went around the world controlling territories out of imperialism, or simply so that we could have cheap oil for our cars. Every person who says such a thing is lost as to the real cause of what makes what and who the good guys are in the world. America stands for the creative potential of capitalism and freeing oppressed people who have been living under tyrannical leadership for all of their history. Socialism is all about centralized authority which limits human creativity and freedom, which is why China must steal intellectual information from their competitors just to stay relevant in the marketplace, because imagination and development do not happen when human minds are constrained to regulation.

America had an obligation to stand behind capitalism in the East and in the Middle East as well as Central America because it was an attack on the progress that could be made under that political philosophy. There are of course nuances between Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Karl Marx’ Communist Manifesto but our human development has brought us to a place where we can’t have both. The problem is most people can’t tell the difference. They have been taught in their public educations and their government that socialism is the path of the future, but logic and business say that capitalism is the only means of real advancement. The two aren’t compatible. For many years the United States did go around the world trying to put out every little Marxist revolution to keep markets open and as free as possible, not just for ourselves, but for the benefit of the world that didn’t always appreciate it. But the real villains were within the American government where they set policies to push America beyond its borders and into that imperialist accusation that the liberal pinheads like to talk about all the time.

As a wealthy guy who knows how the game is played President Trump didn’t need a fancy room of advisors to tell him that the way to beat everyone at the oil table was to make ourselves independent. He just did it and now even if nobody sells oil to the United States, we can make our own. That has put all these tyrants at a severe disadvantage and taken away all their leverage—particularly Iran. Even by knocking out Saudi Arabian oil fields, the American economy will not be stifled and that is the big picture as to what happened as a result of this attack by Iran.

Should the United States get involved in the conflict and protect Saudi Arabia, well, no. Its true, we have been selling arms to Saudi Arabia to defend itself. They can defend themselves. The people who don’t see so well, the television pundits and cable news producers will want to tell dramatic stories about how barrels of oil will go up as a result, but the truth is, America doesn’t need their oil. We have our own. And that is a pretty good place to be. There is no reason to attack Iran. They are already on the brink of annihilation due to their commitment to Marxist ideology for which they needed to have domination over the oil market for it to work. The moment that America took that leverage away, Iran as a powerhouse of world affairs ended. It’s just taking a while for the rest of the world, the blind people, to catch up.

There is nothing for America to do about Iran, or Saudi Arabia. We can sell more weapons to the Saudi’s to help them defend themselves, but there is no reason to put boots on the ground in any fashion. The Iranians are lashing out with everything they have left trying hard to excerpt force to bring people to the negotiating table. But there is nothing for them to barter with. The problem that leftists used against America was the anti-imperialist angle that always put capitalism in a bad light, because American leaders just didn’t know how to defend it. They’d provoke America into action then blame them for overreaching in corners of the world over indigenous people who were quietly being recruited into socialism and communism. But you can’t call America an imperialist if they get their own oil out of Texas and Ohio and stay out of wars in the Middle East. We can just make our own. They can fight it out all they want. And that is why this new game is so much better than the old one. And why finally America can win, because the villains are all now exposed and standing behind barrels of oil that nobody really needs or cares about.

Rich Hoffman

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Should People of Value Express their Political Opinions: What good is freedom if we don’t live to support it?

Everyone must come to these things in their own way, but the question continues to be asked among people in the community who are “valuable,” whether or not they should get involved in politics beyond the occasional donation or remain in obscurity. My answer to that must be defined by the understanding of social value. It’s not politically correct to make such a judgement, but that is also why as a society we have trouble, because under political correctness, value is a loose term defined by government efforts, not reality. People of value are those who move mankind forward. It might be the owner of your local Taco Bell or the industrialist who is running five or six manufacturing plants. The workers who are employed by those establishments can come and go as they’d like, so their impact to that future growth, for which all economic measures are leveraged against is minimal. Meanwhile, it is the risktakers and investors in our society who have more value over those who don’t do such things. So the question is, should such people, such as President Trump who could be living a good life in his retirement years watching the world go by, should they get involved and letting it be known that their business is ran by a liberal or a conservative—or should they show themselves as middle of the road political supporters?

Well for the political left, they have already answered that question. They are not shy about their political beliefs. And for establishments like Chick-Fil-A, they lean toward the religious conservative side and we’ve seen how the political left has treated them—bullying them at every opportunity. Most people who invest in businesses don’t want the extra headache of a teacher’s union protest outside a place they’ve poured a huge amount of their time into at great risk to give jobs to people, so they are shy about such conflict, which unfortunately is the way the political left has established things will be. They are not peace lovers, they are bullies, pure and simple.

I can’t say that I’ve ever been shy about my political affiliation, but for a time while I was contemplating a career as a film director and movie writer, I didn’t run down the street screaming about it. I have always been able to get along with people of all types and never had a problem with people of color, the opposite sex or people from entirely different political beliefs. Even though I have very firm beliefs; I never have felt that my roots were so insecure that I had to yell and scream at people who didn’t think the way I did. So in spite of the Hollywood bias against people with my political affiliation, I found myself at one of those dinners in Glendale, California with around nine people all of whom were at a minimum, millionaires and were looking for ways to make more money, which is why I was at that table.

I remember it vividly; I was at a very nice restaurant at the Americana shopping complex eating at a big round table overlooking a courtyard set in the middle of the complex on a Friday night in early summer. It was literally a seat at the table of some big-time movers and shakers in Hollywood, producer types and money people. I was brought in because of my firewhip demonstrations that I had done at a film festival representing my membership in the World Stunt Association and because I had a hot script that had won some awards there were buyers for it. The talk was to change that script a bit from an anti-progressive horror adventure film to something more mainstream and less violent. This was before the days of Kill Bill, so producers were concerned that would hurt the potential box office. But essentially the people at that table didn’t care about the script or my bullwhip skills, they wanted to know if I would play along with the rest of the industry or would a be a pain in the ass. And that question was asked of me point blank, I was expected to talk down about George W. Bush who was president at the time. I of course didn’t, even though he wasn’t my favorite guy, he was the best that Republicans had at that time. And I thought about the consequences. I had literally worked 20 years to get to that point and the offer was on the table.

After that project I wasn’t invited to do any more, it really does come down to peer pressure and who you know in that business, unless you put up the money for your own movie. I had decided that I’d rather be honest about my opinions than to have a show business career making a lot of money, but not having the freedom to express myself. And that should not have been a decision I had to make. Long time readers here probably will notice that I took a year off after all that to travel the world and do many things with my wife that I had long planned. Then thereafter, I started this blog and became politically active because if I had to choose, I was at least going to be free to have my own opinion about things.

Growing up I loved the Disney version of Zorro and I watched every episode countless times. But I had always promised myself that I could never be like Don Diego and pretend to be foppish. I’d want to be Zorro all hours of the day seven days of the week. When I created the Cliffhanger character in my book The Symposium of Justice which was one of the projects that had landed me at that table in Glendale, California I wanted to answer my opinion about the Don Diego complex. So pushed in reality I had to pick my Cliffhanger character which was unyielding to the pressures of society as opposed to Zorro who played hero at night, but rich fop during the day so that he could have the approval of his peers and not lose his land to corruption.

Yet all conservatives are expected to be like Don Diego. Even if they do give to a political campaign of their choosing, if it isn’t the liberal candidate there will be consequences, and the political left is quite adamant about that. However, I wasn’t about to write about something and not live it in my real life, so that is the paradox we all face these days and that is my opinion on it. You can’t make peace with the political left. And if you go against them, they will come after you. But my experience is that they aren’t that powerful. They don’t have much in their bag of tricks. When pressed, they come up short most of the time, so why be afraid of them. People of value shouldn’t. I understand making decisions to avoid that conflict. But if you run from it, then you empower them even greater in the future, because they know their pressure worked. And we can’t have that. Everyone must make their own decisions about things, but one of the greatest things we have in life is our opinions and the freedom to have them. To squander that away is a crime in and of itself, not worth the money you might make otherwise. And that is the grim reality when such a choice is made, and it’s never easy.

Rich Hoffman

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Of Course Dan Bishop Won: It’s not that close

No matter how much they tried, when the votes were counted the conservative Dan Bishop won the special election for the North Carolina House seat that the mainstream media had been indicating was up for grabs. Supposedly Bishop was down 17 points to his rival Dan McCready just three weeks ago, but everything tightened up by the time the election was held to a squeaker—by 2 points. Well, it wasn’t that close after all, and it never was. It was a special election, the Democrats pulled out all the stops to get their guy in position and the guy still lost. That is the story. Even with the “fake news” meaning the favorable polling samples, and the massive media backing of McCready, the Democrat still lost. It has nothing to do that Trump won that same district by 12. It has everything to do with turnout. A lot of people were home watching Netflix, not out voting which is the key to understanding who will win in 2020. Even when advantages are given to Democrats, they still lose because most of their real power is only in manipulation and help by government and media. Not by the actual sentiment of real voters.

As President Trump pointed out on Twitter, Greg Murphy won by 62% to 37% not even a close race, also in North Carolina, and more of an indicator of actual national sentiment, especially through the core of the country. Yet almost nobody covered the North Carolina 3rd District race in any measurable way. It was mostly ignored, and that tells you everything, I of course was, I had on all the outlets I could get from my war room complete with popcorn and Mello Yello. I was in heaven listening to all the breaking results which for my ears never leaned toward the Democrats. The compelling story for the media with Bishop was that he was attached to the anti-transgender bathroom movement, so he was a target for the liberal press. For Greg Murphy, he is likely going to become part of the House Freedom Caucus. His views are very solid conservative.

Personally, I love the Xs and Os of politics, and in business—in everything really, because it is there where the truth always resides. You can know how good a sports team is not always by the little victories they get when the other team plays worse than the eventual winner, but in the tape where real performance is measured. The same holds true in business. A clock is right by default twice a day, but all other measures, anything goes. And that is how it is in politics. A few stumbles here and there by Republicans figuring out how to live under a Trump lead party where people like John Bolton are fired, who would have been put on a pedestal in the Bush administration as the party “experts.” The party is different, its better. Its much less global and much more hometown than it used to be and that has taken some adjustments, and during that transition, the country has been split. There are many moderate people out there that just want to live their life and they don’t really know what they feel about things, and they vote for the middle of the road, which is why things have been so close in so many elections.

But the real Xs and Os of politics shows a trend that is obvious to me. It doesn’t mean that Republicans should take anything for granted, because they shouldn’t. Even where Bishop should have blown the doors off McCready if the election had been during a presidential ballot, where turnout would have been much higher, there is always the risk of underperforming due to lack of enthusiasm. But the Democrats know the same Xs and Os that I’m seeing, and so do all the smart people out there. Even with the massive retirements from congress, Democrats are not poised to hold the House. And they don’t have anybody who is going to come out of the primaries to face Trump in 2020. Trump is going to butcher any Democrat who tries to face him in a one on one debate. And everyone can see that writing on the wall even though currently they are trying to position the election the way it was between Bishop and McCready—with Trump at a deficit so that they can inspire Democrats into action.

But the action just isn’t there. The Democrats have turned so hard left that its forcing many of those moderates to choose, which they don’t like to do. And being part of human nature, when people are forced to do something, they usually show antagonism toward the side forcing them to make a decision and will go in the opposite direction. In that regard the election season is not even close. The media wants to portray it that way for their ratings needs but in reality, the boots on the ground, the money in the bank and the voter enthusiasm just isn’t there for Democrats. That is what is obvious in the North Carolina elections. Even when Democrats cheat and hedge things to their advantage with the cooperation of the media, they can’t win.

Democrats completely rely on the victim status of their voters to carry them to the wins they can get and most of America just doesn’t see themselves as victims, below the line thinkers. Enough do to give Democrats the hope to play a game against Republicans but more and more, that game is leaning toward lopsided victories. And for Republicans they should not let their foot off the gas but should blow out the Democrats to the point where they are destroyed as a party. Because in all actuality, what they represent needs to change anyway. Socialism has no place in American politics. The Democrats are not the optimists of JFK, they are the socialists of Karl Marx and that is what we are fighting. They do not have a seat at the table thinking in that way and voters are voicing their opinions wherever the media actually covers the situation honestly, which is very hard to get, even for me.

The truth in the cases where they try to hide it is often in what is not said, not what is. And learning to read those signs shows the real Xs and Ox of politics and what we can expect next. The two wins in North Carolina indicate that after all that’s been said by the media and Democrats in general, even when they can focus their efforts on just a few Republicans, that they can’t even move the needle. What do they think is going to happen when Trump is on the ballot with all these incoming Republicans? Voter turnout will be high and if it is, Republicans will take back the House and all three branches of government will rightfully go back to Republicans. And Democrats are generally terrified of that, and they should be. A second term Trump presidency with no Mueller investigation, the FBI on its heels from the previous corruptions and everyone in the Beltway running to hide in the nearest bar hoping they don’t get a summons by the Department of Justice will be dangerous for them. But good for the country. And future elections won’t be so close, not by a longshot.

Rich Hoffman

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The 25/25 Rule: Get better, don’t yield to weaknesses

A lot of the methods of business have been on my mind lately due to the work I’m putting into a new book I’m working on called the Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. In it there is a chapter on the International Journal of Production Research’s 25/25 rule and it is just another example of how the private sector is always trying to improve themselves so that they can make more money and stay relevant longer in a business environment. Yet government at any level never does and it shows in what their final products are. We joke about how inefficient government is, and people do desire jobs in the government sectors because performance standards are not part of the vocabulary, but it doesn’t take an accountant to realize that for every hour worked in a to heavy government environment that it is costing the taxpayer a tremendous amount of money because something like the 25/25 rule is not being utilized, and its very disingenuous to everyone forced to contribute to the madness through the tyranny of the IRS.

The 25/25 rule essentially states that you take the 25% of your business portfolio and not focus on it so that you can give attention to all your top customers. The effort was created to attempt to give more focus on organizational support for the best of your customers and requires a judgement call. The rule also assumes that there is always another 25% of your company portfolio that can be improved with cutting out non-value-added tasks. Can you imagine a school board meeting where such a conversation would take place? The teacher’s union which really runs all public schools would be up in arms and protesting in seconds, since the goal of any employee run management is to be as inefficient as possible so that the bar of expectations cannot be lowered, just ever inflated so that the “collective” is not pressured too much in any task. That is problem number one.

Yet even in relation to the private sector I think the 25/25 rule doesn’t go nearly far enough and is a very disrespectful way to treat customers if they don’t happen to be in that upper tier of a company’s portfolio. It’s not their fault that you as a business have focus problems and need to find ways to internally prioritize effort. While I do agree that there is always 25% of an organization that could almost always be eliminated in unnecessary process flow and streamlined operations, I also think that the task of every organization is that they need to get 25% better on their portfolios, not to ignore 25% of their current load so they can focus on their best and most important customers. A top-level organization is always doing that and getting better so that they can show off their capacity to handle pressure for future state growth opportunities.

What I find happening in organizations using the 25/25 rule is that its giving bad management another tier of excuses to use until they are forced to look in the mirror and admit what a bunch of losers they are. The intent of the 25% portfolio reduction is to manage overbooked businesses with a steadier workflow, with the notion that its better late than never getting it at all. To me this is reprehensible thinking and is the nature of that particular chapter in my book. The difference between the East and the West is that winning matters and some of the parameters of western thinking that determine victory is speed and accuracy—the drive thru window with everything in the bag that you ordered—the first time through. We want it fast and we want it accurate. This whole 25/25 rule had me thinking of the bullwhip competitions that I’ve been in over the years where you are supposed to be 7’ from the five targets in the Speed and Accuracy competitions. You are timed how quickly you can use a 6’ bullwhip to crack out the ten targets. For every miss, there is a 5 second penalty. Learning to do that competitive event is a good way to step beyond the 25/25 rule and instead to focus on improving yourself by 25% not passing along your inability to some down the line customer.

We see it all the time, we’re picking up some food at a drive thru, the restaurant is obviously understaffed for the level of business they have and lines are wrapped around the building with everyone waiting on their food. Additionally, the people who don’t want to wait in that long line go inside to order at the counter, hoping to step around the mess. But standard practice in every fast food restaurant is to use that 25/25 rule to deal with such carnage, and the first thing that goes is worrying about the dining room because it is the drive thru windows that have the timers on them and is how they are measured as a successful business. Such a place could be said to have a capacity problem and the managers will blame their high call-off rates and blame the weak condition of their employees as the reason for their victimized status.

I would argue that the capacity constraints are not in the machinery, since most fast food restaurants are built to do the business, its in the high turnover and generally unreliable nature of the employees they hire that causes all the problems. I find the fault in the managers who have such a bad staff that calls off too much, or the kind of people they hired to begin with, in not determining at the interview that their employees might turn in to unreliable employees, and that the management culture allowed the employees to call off often without consequences which is why restaurants sometimes are slammed and unprepared to deal with their customer bases. Hiring the right kind of people through the interview process then developing those people through proper management practices is the key to successful staffing which then solves the capacity challenges that are not related to the equipment itself.

The 25/25 rule tends to give bad management the excuse to hide behind this measurement system and give them a victimized status to explain away their failure. “My employees called off, so I couldn’t successfully handle the customer demands.” Yet it was the reason all their employees called off that the management system didn’t deal with, which is why there is a problem in the first place. The company should focus instead on having a 25% increase in hiring efficiency where their new employees have better attendance. Or the drive thru window workers get 25% faster than the less experienced newbs. Or that you can run the whole operation with 25% less people. Those should be the targets and people who do things like that bullwhip competition that I mentioned understand that process because it simply wouldn’t be permissible to complain that the competition was too hard and that they didn’t have the speed and accuracy to compete. That is the nature of my new book, is to change the thinking about these kinds of things from a victimized status to a proactive one. If you want to do something, don’t blame the conditions. Get better, and acquire the skills needed for success.

Of course, the obvious hatred for President Trump by protectors of the status quo, the government employees who have been sucking off the system hiding behind a lack of standards reviews, or the government labor unions who have their own rules, such as a 99/99 rule. Unions are only willing to give 1% toward performance review, or a process improvement. They aren’t willing to sign up for any performance expectations because they don’t want the bar set where their lazy employees have to live up to. While that makes for a nice job for them where they get paid whether or not they actually do anything, the benefit to the end use customer is us, in that they cost too much money. At least with President Trump a part of our government is starting to think more like the private sector, and that’s the way it should always have been.

Rich Hoffman
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The 25/25 Rule: Using Bullwhips to understand Overcapacity problems

I have enough for my book to include this small sample from the upcoming Gunfighter’s Guide to Business.  There is still a lot of editing to conduct and it will likely be a 2020 project at this point, but thought my audience here would enjoy it, since so many people have been asking how it is coming along.  So enjoy this short sample:

The 25/25 Rule

There are many rules of practice that businesses use to manage their capacity, such as Warren Buffett’s 25/5 rule, or the International Journal of Production Research’s 25/25 rule. With Buffett, he states that out of the top 25 things that you want to do in life, you should only focus on the top five, until you’ve completed them. And with the 25/25 rule the goal is to reduce focus on the bottom 25% of your workload and to squeeze improvements in process out of another 25%. Thinking like a gunfighter however, these measurements in business are only new ways to present targets to hit and have their own sets of problems that unless looked at correctly, are useless. As I have spoke about, there are many weapons that gunfighters can use to do their business, guns are just one of them. Another is the bullwhip which I find has many direct correlations that apply to conceptual business matrixes such at the 25/25 rule.

As I have said about the bullwhip and in fast draw shooting in general, the primary objective is to do the most work with the most power in the shortest and most accurate time span possible. With bullwhips, to get the maximum impact out of the end of the weapon with the minimum effort it requires the handler to project that effort toward a target at a proper moment where the crack will occur in space and time. It is really quite an effort in physics to be able to crack out the flame on a candle with a bullwhip which among those who can call themselves experts, is a common act. When hitting targets with a bullwhip the effort looks effortless when done correctly as most of the action happens within a second’s time of measure. But there are many small steps within that second that must occur correctly to make such a thing happen, especially under the burden of timed pressure. Yet even just cracking out a flame on a candle with all the time to do it in the world takes a very timed approach to inflict the minimal effort to get the maximum results of cracking the whip so near the candle that the sonic boom created blows out the flame.

When companies utilize the 25/25 rule essentially what they are saying is that they are over capacity due to their sales departments over booking the facility and that they are picking the bottom end of their 25% of business portfolio to ignore so that they can focus on their top percent of valuable customers. The problem with this approach is that it allows bad management to hide behind a method of measurement and to use the analysis to disguise bad approaches to solving the problem. In the Cowboy Fast Draw competitions and Wild West Arts work that is like saying that the weapon handler needs more time to do a good job. But as we know in gun fights, the fastest and most accurate were the ones who won the duels. There were no rules for taking time to deal with the incompetence of the duelists. If the gunfighters were incompetent, they were killed. And the same holds true in business.

The aim of the Western Arts isn’t just to enjoy the historical nature of traditional weapons used in war within American culture but is to represent the necessities of living within a western society. The needs of American business is one of those requirements, and not connecting those proper metaphors to the function of business can lead to detriment, which for too many companies is a common occurrence. Such as the case with the 25/25 rule the way it has been proposed to help companies with their problems of overcapacity. The solution to those problems are experienced in western competition where speed and accuracy are measured. There are many very good shooters in the world and very good bullwhip artists who have trouble with the fast draw competitions of Western Arts. They look great when performing for audiences until the pressure of time is added, then things get tough and people start reacting poorly under duress, which is the point.

Most consultants in the United States and Europe are following similar methods of reducing push systems and instead incorporating pull, where one element of a supply chain does not ship until the downstream source is needed. The 25/25 rule is an element of this thinking and it essentially dances around the true villain which is incompetence. If a manager either upstream or downstream just can’t handle the pressure and has a hard time recruiting and retaining good employees, they will obviously have trouble doing the required job. The 25/25 rule gives them some cover to then focus only on their valuable customers and letting the less valuable fall off the portfolio. This might look great for the internal measures of a production environment, but it doesn’t equal the task of the sales department that is trying to book work and help a company profile with new business. The incompetent managers within an organization might be angry toward sales for bringing in more work than they feel comfortable handling. And that is the core of the problem. Many of the Lean consultants do have good ideas but they try to use peer pressure to level load a facilities production output instead of focusing on making the individual contributors better.

I have seen many really good bullwhip artists struggle with the speed and accuracy competitions that are in the Western Arts events, because the rhythm and pressure of a timed competition throws off everything and they would argue that if the rules were not so rigorous, if only they had more time, they could do better. Well, who couldn’t? The point of timed pressure is to sort out the good from the bad and in business that is certainly the case. Thinking like a gunfighter, anything less than fast and accurate would mean death, and it does to businesses also.

It is up to the weapon handler, such as in the case of the bullwhip artist to get better and to acclimate themselves to the conditions of the battlefield. If doing a speed and accuracy competition with bullwhips between 15 to 12 seconds is the parameters needed to win, then that is up to the bullwhip artists to get better to compete in those parameters. In the case of businesses where sales provide jobs and the various program managers within the organization determine that the scope of work fits within the company portfolio it is not up to the weaknesses of production to decide that they can’t live up to the expectations. They must get better to meet the needs, not hide behind some bounty hunter rules created to make their business thrive while the businesses that hire them suffer under their own incompetence. Rather than try to force the industry to deal with the artificial constraints created by bad management, companies should strive to get 25% better to meet those market needs and to create value for their customers. What if a town sheriff stated to the population looking to them for protection that to be a good representative of the law that the criminals needed to be 25% slower in their threats and actions of aggression so that the sheriff could handle the danger? Instead, it is up to the sheriff to get faster, and to be better. And if more bandits come to town, and are smarter and faster yet, it is up to the law to get better to keep the peace. So, it is with any business. The customer needs what they need, it is up to the company to give it to them, or to figure out how to without going out of business in the practice. And that only happens when you force everyone to get better, not playing to the weaknesses of the workforce managed poorly by the incompetent.

Rich Hoffman

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The Democrat Fight to Continue Mass Murder: Bernie Sanders reveals what we’ve known all along

Even though it is considered radical to have an opinion that goes against the hippie notions of acting together and sharing ideas in modern America, it is good to call things as they are. Conservatives are not obligated to give liberals a seat at some table of discussion just out of fairness. A domestic enemy is a domestic enemy and it requires our values as a civilization to designate them as such, which of course is what I’m referring to as the Democrat party specifically, but more to the point, the socialists and communist who are using that platform to change America into something we all despise. Walmart turning against gun owners is just one step in that change, what they want is murder, mayhem, and the eradication of the human race—and that is in and of itself a clear revelation as to their evil intentions.

It must happen at some point, a general philosophy about what an American is must be agreed upon, just as any business must create something of a company philosophy in order to be productive. Everyone working for the company can function as an individual, but everyone must agree on what the company philosophy is and work toward it in order for the organization to have its own individual identity, which is then a value to its customers. For instance, Apple needs to have its own identity from Microsoft. They both make computers and software, but each has their own philosophy that consumers value to maintain their market sustainability. The same with nations, there must be some agreed upon philosophy that the nation functions from, you can’t have a bunch of mixed messages fighting it out under free speech. The results of conflict is that one side will win over the other and that then becomes the national philosophy.

In America the political left lost the Civil War. They were the slave owners. They were the losers who tried to reinvent themselves with the progressive movement trying to rebrand themselves away from their past evils with feminism, and civil rights, but behind it all was this desire for abortion. Abortion to kill lots of babies from their undesired social circles all the while trying to promote rights for the same people they were trying to kill. Its similar to the liberal gun control arguments where every time a few people are killed, they scream for more legislation to erode away the Constitution, yet they will kill millions of babies every year, even right up to the moment, or immediately after, that the child is born and call it “rights for the mother.” Lets just call it what it is, pure evil, and un-American.

And now its mainstream, the Democrat presidential candidates have admitted what many of us have known about them for years, they wish to tell us all what to do, everywhere we go, at all hours of the day and they have Google and Amazon helping them. They want to manage our healthcare in such a way that we don’t live very long, and that they can kill away as many people as possible to save the planet from a made-up environmental catastrophe. But their real intention is murder, the murder of millions just as it always has been with abortion activists. The racism of the post war Democrats who despised blacks because the Union had won the war, were the Democrats of the progressive party that wanted to kill off those blacks by corralling them up in inner cities and addicting mothers on welfare, making alcoholics of the fathers, and killing the babies before they were ever born. To cover their tracks which was coming to light during the Vietnam War and they wanted communism to spread over Asia, then to America, they took to civil rights to hide their true intentions of mass murder and anti-capitalist carnage.

The situation was never clearer than in 1969 when man walked on the moon proving that our society could migrate into space and take a big step in evolution. Meanwhile a month later there was Woodstock where naked young people rolled in the mud in degradation and drugged themselves into a state of below the line thinking that yearned for the primitive, to get back to nature, and to let nature rule over us all. We were never going to be one America with such radically different philosophies, one side would have to win and push out the other, and that was the way it was always going to be. Ronald Reagan was the first answer. Donald Trump was the second. Conservatives listened and tried to play nice with the other side with both of the Bush presidents, and Clinton then Obama, but at the heart of America was a desire to be above the line in their thinking.

In business above the line thinking and below are ways to make an organization better. Above the line thinking is the can-do spirit that we all like to think about when it comes to contemplation about the American flag. Below the line thinking is essentially the victimization culture, the “I can’ts” which most of us despise at face value. We may have sympathy for such people and try to help them think above the line, but not at our own peril, and that is where we are as a nation presently. Both sides can’t have their own way. It doesn’t work in any business, it doesn’t work in families, and it certainly doesn’t work in nation building. Democrats need to think below the line to exist because nothing about them is about stepping up and becoming better. They are about abortion, banning plastic straws, worship of nature which sounds good at face value until you consider that the four seasons of our earthly year are precisely the same as the Vico Cycle, spring, summer, fall and winter, theocracy, aristocracy, democracy, anarchy, and that is how things have been for tens of thousands of human years. Democrats want to keep mankind on that path even if they must kill millions of potential lifeforms to do it.

Sure it was a little strange to hear Bernie Sanders admit to the reason he supports abortion is to save the planet from human habitation. But let’s face it, mass murder is mainstream in the Democrat party because of the reasons I have provided. They want to remain below the line in spite of how much the rest of us want to think above the line. And we will never agree. One side is going to win, and the other side is going to lose. We can’t co-exist. To say otherwise is to become a contributor to death, to human destruction and to step backwards not forward in the plight of mankind toward a perfection that is embedded. Democrats are not about compassion; they only use that to lure us to sleep so they can have their murder. They want abortion not for women’s rights, but to kill off undesirables and to rid the world of what they consider human filth and future capitalists. They want to worship the earth the way the primitive tribes of yesteryear did, and they would rather be as a political party the village chiefs than to walk on the moon, or Mars. And that is what we are all up against. The only question is which will we choose, because we can’t have it both ways.

Rich Hoffman

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I’ll Take The Art of the Deal over The Art of War: China has already lost the trade war

You can go back a long ways, even to the time where Doc Thompson and I talked about the China problem on WLW radio frequently. You can Google me or him on the topic of China and discover that this issue is not a new one. Long before there was a President Trump, people like us were trying to wake people up to the fact that modern warfare was not in tanks, guns and troops, it was economies and China was seeking to knock America off the ladder and to become the dominate player in the world as a communist country of everything financial. And they almost got away with it. I would vote for Donald Trump again, and again, and again if only to get out of his entire presidency this one thing, taking on China and halting the incursion into our lives that was well at play before his election. What people don’t seem to realize is that China was sucking out of the American economy over $500 billion per year in trade deficits. When we talk about the United States operating at a trillion dollars per year deficit, that is where half the money is going. If Trump hadn’t come along when he did, we’d all be in big trouble right now, Obama and Bush were all in on the deal. China was going to rule the world as a communist power, and even members of our own government were seeking to make it happen.

I was pretty furious that the public school in my home district of Lakota was sending teachers to China in exchange programs intent to learn how we could be more like them, because as an education institution, it should have been the other way around. I was even more furious when visiting the Children’s Museum in Indianapolis that they had an entire exhibit dedicated to learning about the Chinese way of doing things, as if preparing American students for the inevitable takeover. The United States was poised by a lot of dumb politicians prior to President Trump to give away American wealth to the Chinese and they were going to be handed the keys to the world just for showing up as a global communist power that leftist economists wanted to breathe to being since the same experiment in Russia, and Vietnam had failed.

China was never as powerful as authorities told us. As a communist tyranny their society naturally lacks imagination and deep philosophic thinking, and that is clear in their culture, as it is in every communist society. That is not a political statement, it’s a human one. It doesn’t matter if the subject is the sad housewife who spent her entire life serving her family only to see them all grow up and away giving her little back in return or the business professional that has poured their entire life into their company serving their bosses then dying one year after retirement, people are happiest when they are free to act and think what they want when they want to. Capitalism allows for more of this behavior than centralized controlled societies. That society may be the contents of a marriage between two people where one clearly dominates the other, and the other is a miserable wreck of a person, or a company and its employees, where top down authority is more important than horizontal harmony. China as a power is too centralized for their billion plus people to think for themselves. They have the workers, but they don’t think freely which is a huge impediment to an expanding economy built off wealth production.

The whole trick worked so long as America could be coaxed into giving away their wealth so that China could have it. So long as America followed green agenda points with over regulation while China could do anything to the environment and nobody would say anything—especially the climate science activists who secretly knew the name of the game was and will always be for them, global communism. They want a welfare state so they can sit around collecting a government check while their lazy asses play video games all day, and they vote accordingly. But they do not represent the intellect of America, that’s why we voted for Trump. To avoid this downward spiral.

Its time to say all this because this issue as I said has been around a long time. My friend Doc Thompson was recently killed by an Amtrack train, which I still find uncharacteristically odd, but whatever. He’s not around any more, but this China problem is exactly as he and I said it would be nearly ten years ago. And I for one am extremely happy with how President Trump is playing the situation for American advantage. The Chinese are exposed. The American economy will start to see plus revenue as the money flows out of China and back into the United States. That isn’t to say that we don’t have to solve our spending problem in America, but Trump isn’t president to do that. He’s there to put money back in the jar. We’ll fight later about how to spend it. His job is to stop the bleeding and he is certainly doing that.

There are a few YouTube videos confirming what I’m saying, and a few business analysist types on cable news who agree with me, but I have found it shocking that with all the great intellect that we have in America that more people just don’t understand the problem with China and what they have been up to. However, I did spend about ten years of my life reading The Art of War not just in the words that were printed on the page, but in soaking up their meaning in the way that the Chinese think. The book itself dates back to around 500 BC to the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu and clearly that has been the way that the Chinese not only came to power after World War II where America did all the fighting for them only to lose the entire East to communism, in Korea and Vietnam. Was it on purpose, I think so. Our government wanted communism in the East and it looks now that FDR and his partners in government wanted communism, not to hinder it. One of the people I most admire in the world was Claire Lee Chennault, the leader of the Flying Tigers who was tasked with defending China from the Japanese. After reading his book, the Way of the Fighter its clear to me that the United States military only wanted him to preserve China for the obvious communist invasion coming out of the Soviet Union. People disliked Ronald Reagan for standing up to Russia in the same way that they hate Trump for standing up to China, because they wanted communism to rule the world, and that has always been the fight. Its not new, but is to those who don’t read books, and haven’t been screaming about this issue from the rooftops on national radio shows for years, or writing about it as extensively, and solitarily, as I have.

For a change America has its own book on strategy, The Art of the Deal and the author of that book is the guy in the White House. The Chinese wish they had back Sun Tzu but all they can do is read his words. For America, the sequel to The Art of the Deal is applying those tactics to real life as we speak, and the result will be an end to Chinese communism. Trump knows that the financial status of China is all paper tigers and shadows on the wall made to look bigger than they really are. The reality is that they are going to collapse the longer they fight, and that is why these protests in Hong Kong are happening now. The people there know that this is their best shot at freedom so they are taking it. And I am so proud to have Trump in the White House fighting this fight even though many of the people around him in Washington D.C. are cheering on the Chinese. Their betrayal tells us who they were all along.

Rich Hoffman

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Its all about Branding: Trump Doesn’t Need Fox News

Of course, the rules are the same for every local candidate as it is in presidential elections, a public official like Donald Trump has a right to protect their brand, for it was their brand that we voted for and continue to support. When that brand is attacked, a public official has a right to protect it. Like most businesspeople, President Trump understands his brand and has done a great job over the years of building it, so it is with no small concern that he would seek to lash out at those trying to destroy his brand. Yes, he has a right to allow his supporters in the White House to dig up dirt from The New York Times reporters who have been activists against him and to seek to destroy them. Why not? And in the great relationship between Trump and Fox News, if the cable news station wavers, as it has under new leadership post Roger Ailes, then yes, Trump has a right to go after them. This nonsense about “journalistic integrity” is a lot of garbage. There is no integrity in the news business, especially in corporate media. It’s all entertainment based and designed toward ratings and for that, they should be very grateful toward the Trump brand.

It was embarrassing to listen to Brit Hume sound off about how Fox News does not work for the president, especially after Trump has given unfettered access to Fox News over the last four years or so. He’s been around long enough to know the game and he comes across sounding like an idiot. To consider that Fox News or anybody in journalism is “protecting” the public with a free and open press is foolish, and for people not to be upset about attacking Trump’s brand when that is what they voted for is disingenuous. I’ve never liked the part of Fox News that has Brit Hume in it, or Juan Williams, the disgraced NPR personality who was brought to Fox by people like Bill O’Reilly out of fairness and friendship. With Ailes out and O’Reilly out and the hiring of Donna Brazile there are obvious signs that the network is turning to the left because they think that’s where the future audience is. But it isn’t.

I never enjoyed the commentary of Charles Krauthammer for that matter when he would appear on Bret Baier. I have watched Fox News because they cover more that concerns me than other stations, but they aren’t nearly conservative enough for me. I would sit through the Krauthammer segments cringing at his institutional diatribes and do something else until he was done. Fox would claim itself to be fair and balanced, and I think that is generally true, but what they have been doing lately under the guidance of their new CEO Suzanne Scott is a sharp turn toward progressivism. And that isn’t much different from before, during the O’Reilly days where Fox News started the horse race with Hillary Clinton two years before the election. They wanted to tell the story of the Democrats and they have been soft on them even when crimes were committed. I would never say that Fox was a hard-hitting news organization. They just didn’t do as bad as the rest of them.

Where was the coverage of the Epstein molestations ten years ago when it mattered, when news outlets like Alex Jones were reporting what was going on and who was involved. Today Jones is de-platformed, you can’t watch his shows except on his website while outlets like Fox and CNN continue to be the dominate forces in news. But look at what they’ve gotten wrong, or rather, what they haven’t covered that has contributed to so much evil. If they really wanted to be fair and balanced, and unafraid, they would have not covered the Epstein rapes and connections to Bill Clinton conspiracy theories but would have followed the evidence to the real villains.

The same could be said of the FBI scandal where the attempt to overturn the Trump election was pushed to small segments and very little activism. We’re talking about a story bigger than Watergate, but nobody wants to touch it, essentially because most of the corporate news world is in on the action in some form or another, either from ties to government leakers or the Washington parties that are hard to get invites to. Fox News lets Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson do their rants on television, and they turn loose a few reporters to dig up the stories because it does feed the Trump base which is a huge part of the Fox News audience, but they never drive the story to a conclusion that would otherwise force resignations or public outcry. They do enough reporting to get people to have an emotional response, but not enough to cause change, so Brit Hume isn’t checking the powerful and holding them accountable. Fox News is just pointing things out and letting them drift into history the next day.

So, what right do they have to attack Donald Trump’s brand, but not to have him and his people shoot back? Why would anybody in the media think such a thing was viable, or even acceptable? Then for others to warn Trump not to upset Fox News because they might not cover his rallies and other events giving him a platform to the public. To suggest such a thing is to propose that it was the media that made Trump. But what nobody is talking about is that it was Trump’s brand that made Fox. Does anybody know what happened to Megan Kelly? She locked horns with the Trump brand and where did that get her? Out.

I wouldn’t say that it is just Trump’s brand, it could be anybody who has worked hard to build their name. They may use media to get there, but it isn’t the media that makes them, they are simply the benefactors of good television drama. They don’t make or break people the way that media operators want to believe. They need the brand of the dynamic in order to put content on their stations and that is the secret they don’t want anybody to know. But Trump understands it, and so do his supporters.

These same rules apply to the local press, wherever in the country you may live dear reader. They are all pretty much the same. They need you more than you need them. In this day and age where there are so many more options to get your name out and to build up your brand, you don’t need Fox News, or even NBC News. You don’t need to suck up to the Disney network of ABC and whisper in the ear of the local newspaper reporters, because nobody reads them anymore, because the content is boring. But they do need you, and Fox needs Trump. Trump doesn’t need Fox. That is the way the game goes and its time everyone realizes it. Especially that media. They are not the makers of the world and those who keep it in check. Rather, it is the branding of politicians that do the most good, because they do have to protect their brand, and that keeps them honest. Not the reporter or their networks. Sorry Brit Hume, but you aren’t very relevant to the scheme of things. And more and more, you are just a boring addition to a network that has added more boring people, not gotten better over time.

Rich Hoffman
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I Think of Sean Hannity as a Long Haired Hippie: Republicans need to stick together and vote in the upcoming election

One thing is for sure. I think of Sean Hannity as kind of a middle of the road guy, he loves his police, he loves his military, and he loves teachers and like President Trump, is willing to continue to give those government workers infinite amounts of money and to call it patriotic. That’s not me. That is where the debate is, its not in the difference between Democrats and Republicans. The discussions in the form of management by elected officials is varying degrees of conservatism where big government types like Sean Hannity and Donald Trump have battles over resource management with people like me who think that every assumption should be challenged and squeezed for all its worth. And now that we are in election season its time that we have that hard discussion and put the best people in place to help manage our government with the least resources that we can find. It’s not that I don’t support people like Trump in the presidency or Hannity on his Fox News show, but there are things they say and do from time to time, largely because they both come out of a very progressive state and city in New York, that make me cringe with exposure to liberalism. If we really want to solve the problems of our age, there are going to be some fights, and to waste time on those fights, the right people need to be fighting, not some liberal losers who shouldn’t even be part of the discussion.

I’m talking about the various school board races that are up this year, and the various township and state races that ultimately shape the government of our states. We’ve had plenty of experiments with social causes and engineering by now to determine that our colleges, public schools and cities in general that are all run by Democrats have spiraled out of control and are placing those institutions on the brink of disaster. And in addressing those issues conservatives won’t go far enough in just taking up positions behind Trump and Sean Hannity, or Bill Cunningham in Cincinnati for that matter. They all talk a good game that is certainly better than any Democrat, but ultimately, they still want big government in the form of schoolteachers and police that inflate their community budgets and drive up taxes, without ever really asking whether or not those employees are worth it.

It’s not the teacher who teaches but it’s the state that decides what and how they teach that is the danger. If a teacher utters conservative values, they tend to be ridiculed by their unions and will find themselves out of step with the state. But if they preach abortion support, gay rights and otherwise calamitous despotism toward American ideas, then they are often rewarded as “teacher of the year” and paid to continue such activism which of course their students copy as one of their first worldly experiences. The system obviously hasn’t worked, the products of our modern times can show that clearly, so it should provoke us to act with each new election. There is no promise that our votes will give us 100% of a clone of our own values, but it is a lot better than nothing. And nothing is what happens when conservatives aren’t elected because liberals get their unchallenged activists into the city councils and school boards and spend our tax money as if there is no tomorrow, because often they don’t intend there to be.

I have lots of disagreements with conservatives, but I have yet to speak to them in person and find a person I don’t like. I have met President Trump and I love the guy. There are a lot of things that he has done in life and still does and thinks that I would never do, but overall, I can find more in common with him than not. I think we both love the American flag and can build a relationship off that as a foundation. The same with Sean Hannity. He comes across to me like some long-haired hippie who loves police way too much. I agree that our society is better off with cops than without them, but I don’t think we should trust them without question the way he advocates. Cops lie like any employee does and they need to be managed by exception not through collective bargaining, because they aren’t all equally valuable, just like schoolteachers. We need to have the discussion of their value and to do that we need the right kind of people to have those discussions. Democrats have proven that they just aren’t capable.

So it is up to us to have these various discussions and to sift out the good from the bad and sometimes that means that people’s feelings will get hurt a little bit when they find out that they aren’t valuable just for showing up for work, but are measured in how effective they do their jobs. Giving a blank check of approval to any sector of our economy is just foolish and some Republicans are foolish. Yet the discussion we have about value needs to happen with them, not the people who have screwed up everything for the last thirty to forty years. In every election we need to pick the best people we can get to help manage our political affairs. We may not like everything about them, we may even have some differences with them, especially regarding school boards. But we need to vote for them and help them get into a position to have a discussion at some point. Talking to a liberal on a school board is just a waste of time. They need to be replaced with every decent conservative that we can find so that we can have a debate. Currently no debate is possible, we get unfunded mandates from the state, nobody challenges them and due to their helplessness, they create liberal cultures within our schools where the next generation gets brainwashed into Democrat thinking. And that has turned out to be terrible for our children.

My advice to you dear reader is to treat this election with some seriousness. There is some sanity that is returning to the political system, largely for Trump to take the credit, but its time to raise the bar to a level that Democrats can’t live up to, and that needs to happen for the benefit of us all. We can no longer afford to keep that lowered bar down where they can participate just so we can call everything equal. We need to focus on actually doing something and electing good people to do good jobs in their elected positions. It is not bad to have disagreements with people, what is bad is that no common ground can be found because the political values are so extreme that basic conversation cannot even take place and the battlefields are yielded to Democrats just to avoid dealing with them because they are such a pain in the neck. Support Republicans and other conservatives even if they are to the left of where you are. Having a debate with them is better than a debate with someone who isn’t even from the same planet. And that is how you must look at these types of elections.

Rich Hoffman
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