Tag: education

The 100K Club in Public Education: Good reporting by Channel 5 in Cincinnati

It’s was good to see that Channel 5 did a hard-hitting story on the extreme abuse that is going on in the Cincinnati Public Schools.  They revealed that 45 employees at CPS were making over 100K per year, which is appalling, especially considering the poor performance of CPS as an institution.  Further they went on to report that there are over 100 employees who make more than 90K a year.  While this may be shocking, and an inconvenient statistic for those who do not want to believe that their local public school is raking tax payers over the coals using the innocence of children as the extortion mechanism, the reality is quite evident.

I reported two years ago that there were over 625 employees at Lakota who made more than 65K per year which I thought was extraordinarily high compared to the salaries of the majority of the community of West Chester—which is an affluent community.  It doesn’t take much investigation to determine that the cause of many of the tax increase requests that go on in every community every couple of years in Ohio is due exclusively to this glaring statistic.  Public school employees make too much money, and some of them have been down-right outrageous in their wage expectations.

Most of the employees who are members of the 100K club in public schools are administrators, not teachers.  But in public education most administrators come from the ranks of the teaching profession and are deeply loyal to the teachers unions of which they were at one point members.  As members of management they do not have any desire to ruffle the feathers of political order and instead seek to increase their own salaries so that the teachers in the union can justifiably see pay increases as well.  As members of management the more administrators who make close to six figures the better for a teacher with a Master’s Degrees because all boats rise in the public education system under union rules.  If an administrator makes a lot of money, the wage limit for teachers goes up proportionally. This is how management gives the illusion that they fight the union while at the same time helping them with expectations that have already been set high by members of the 100K club.  Any half intelligent analysis will quickly determine that the whole system is a giant financial scam that uses children to hide the crime—and a crime it is.  You can read more about the Channel 5 report at the link below.

http://www.wlwt.com/news/local-news/cincinnati/45-CPS-employees-members-of-100K-Club/-/13549970/18400362/-/w49rfi/-/index.html

At best the whole public education system is a massive scam and I personally get angry about it when it seeks to exploit children the way they all do, which is why I call the activity a crime.  To use children for the personal gain of a comfortable salary and retirement pension is just as exploitive as any other crime that hurts children for the personal pleasure of an individual.  When asked why a teacher is worth 60K to 90K and an administrator is worth 90K to 150K they will all say that they have many years of service in the teaching profession and that their “quality” is exceptional and the district is paying for that quality.  They will also say that they do what they do because they “love children.”  Bull————-shit.  I would believe that coming from an employee who works for 45K per year and stays late into the night and volunteers their time to children off the clock—as a few do—just so they can help mentor kids.  I don’t mind people, who fight for their right to make a dollar or two more, but I can’t stand a liar, and these public education employees who inflate the value of their wages on the backs of children are liars.

As an example of what is really behind the motive of public school employees have a look at the contract that Keith Kline just signed to be superintendent of West Clermont Schools.  I recently told the story of Keith Kline who had left the Lakota System, which is why I have been keeping an eye on him.  Upon looking at his contract, I dare anyone to logically explain to me that he gets paid $138K per year for a 218 day work year and is doing all this work for “The kids.”  The last time I checked there was 365 days in a year.  By the way this contract reads Kline is NOT required to work 147 days per year.  Plus, he gets paid back a quarter of all sick days not used during the 218 day period.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW MY PREVIOUS ARTICLE.

Below are the specifics of the superintendent contract for Keith Kline at West Clermont Schools

  • -$138,000 salary which can never be reduced
    (Brook’s–previous superintendent–first salary $118,000/last salary $145,000)
  • -2013/14 year there are 3 goals to meet, and each one
    met will kick in a 1% salary increase
  • -After that the board will provide goals and guidance on raises
  • -Pension is picked up 100% (so an additional $13,800 in compensation on top of the $19320 (14%) that has to be paid by statute)
    and if the pickup is ever legally taken away (legislation/board changes)
    then the pickup amount is added to the base salary to cover it.
  • -Same health care as WCEA
  • -$500000 life insurance policy, beneficiaries are 50% family/50% board of education
  • -An annuity (additional retirement benefit) of 6.5% of salary for every contract year (pro-rated this year, but annual rate would be no less than $8970).
  • -Medicare tax paid up to $2000 per year
  • -Board pays all professional membership dues
  • -218 day work year
  • -Board president may allow 15 additional days worked above 218 at a per diem rate (for this year that would be $633 per day).
  • -Allowed same sick leave as WCEA
  • -Severance of 1/4 unused sick leave up to 65 days to be paid at retirement
  • -Mileage reimbursement at IRS rates

Knowing a bit about Kline since he worked at Lakota and had the arrogance to stand out in the parking lot of Lakota East and deride parents who were upset that they had to bring their kids to school because of the busing cuts—that they “should have passed the levy” there is a history that provides material for judgment.  I’m sure he would declare that he’s put in his years of service and that his compensation isn’t any more extraordinary than the package of Karen Mantia, the superintendent of Lakota or any other public school.  He believes that he’s in it for the “good” of the community because he WON’T face the truth to himself that he’s in a money racket that hides behind the collective façade of public education.  The culture in government schools is that there is safety in numbers and nobody passes judgment because they all believe that if they put in the years of silence and time, that they have a payday coming to them before their retirement age of 55.  Keith I’m sure believes he is owed a contract like the one above no matter how ridiculous the rest of us thinks it is compared to private sector market driven benefits.

No teacher is worth six figures.  And I would say that very, very few administrators should be in any kind of 100K club.  Their jobs are not that important or difficult.  I have told school officials to their faces during the Lakota Levy days that I would not only teach their classes but I would volunteer to teach 4 at the same time.  I said as much to the Spark Magazine at Lakota East during an interview in 2011, which of course never found its way into print. The trick public schools use against the tax payers is that they have a monopoly on the education system and severely attack ANY form of competition that would exploit their money racket with reality of a market driven system.  They have control of the social presence of their product and of the value of that market by artificially setting the value high because nobody can ever challenge their statistics.  Public school employees can maintain the extortion racket so long as they have a monopoly on the education system.  They are well aware of what they are doing.  Fortunately for them few people call them out on it, so give Channel 5 some credit for doing this recent story.  Not too many news organizations are willing to go against the grain and expose the exploitation of children like Channel 5 did most recently, and Brendan Keefe at Channel 9 has done in the past.  (CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW)  There’s a lot of politics that goes on behind the scenes, so it’s tough business to expose these education manipulators, but sometimes there are members of the press who boldly do the job of reporting as it is supposed to be done, and on this particular story, Channel 5 did the tax payers an incredible service that is crucial to the protection of a thriving society.

For anyone who thinks I’m being too hard on these education employees, or who think that Channel 5 did an “unfair” reporting job of exposing these extraordinary salaries, then advocate letting those same officials prove their market value in head to head competition with other schools by supporting School Choice in Ohio.  CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO.  The true value of these employees in public education will quickly be exploited, and they would learn quickly what life in the real world is really like—the world that the rest of us who don’t work for government function under.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Paul Havey’s “God Made A Farmer” Speech: The yearning that America has for something real

I stopped my work in its tracks back in 1995 when I first heard Paul Harvey’s “God Made A Farmer” radio skit on 700 WLW at 3:30 in the morning during the Truckin’ Bozo show.  I was working 16 hour shifts back then starting at 4 PM and lasting till 8 AM 7 days a week and every single night I looked forward to the home stretch break when Paul Harvey would come on and give the news of the day.  I remember vividly when I heard that dedication to the farmers of America, and it gave me pause in positive reflection.  It didn’t take me but two words to remember the passage word for word when Dodge used the old Paul Harvey speech during their Superbowl commercial for Ram Pick-up Trucks as those memories from old came rushing back in a fury.

The reaction to the Dodge ad was extremely positive in the days after the big Superbowl event.  It was so effective that long after people forgot the events of the game itself, the blackout, the near comeback by the San Francisco 49ers, the goal line stand by the Ravens to secure the win, people were talking about this commercial.  I would conclude that Americans detected in that speech by Paul Harvey an America they see slipping away, and they are in the depths of their heart trying to recapture it before its gone forever.  It is the elements of that speech that the Tea Party is dedicated into preserving.  It is not a mindless yearning for the ignorance of the past, but the stability of knowing the roles we all require not just from ourselves, but of our youth.

When I was growing up both my grandparents were farmers and several other family members also.  When I went to Christmas dinners and our family gathered for Thanksgiving I went to real farmhouses where the unmistakable smell of manure greeted you on a gravel driveway while the bite of cold northern winds froze your cheeks upon stepping out of the family car.  The kitchens would be blazing hot with wood burning stoves and fireplaces warmed the entire house, hot downstairs, cold upstairs in a traditional farmhouse guarding Ohio farmland.  Bails of coiled hey could be seen out every window covered thinly with snow.  Cows where in the barn where I would play hide and seek with my siblings and cousins swinging from high beam rafters like Zorro and landing on the hood of a tractor bought at an auction in the 1920s that had a flat tire for over twenty years.  I remember seeing slaughtered pigs with the heads hung on the porch for ease of display when I first learned that it was their meat that made bacon and I learned many more such things from my grandparent’s farms over the emerging decades.

I feel terribly sorry for most people now who will never know a farmer in their lives.  I feel sorry for the people who saw that Superbowl commercial and found that they couldn’t relate to it at all, as they have become too urbanized.  When I was a kid most everyone knew at least one farmer in their lives, but now, almost nobody does. A lot of children don’t even know a home where both their biological parents are still married let alone know a family that has been married for 50 years and earned their living off the land like the American Farmer.  I was benefited with knowing not just one or two, but I knew many, and for me, they set the social parameters that I hold to this day of strong families, and strong figures within those families who are the glue that hold society together.

When I am criticized for my rejection of progressive feminism and my belief that women should stay home to be the center point of their families, those latte sipping critics never saw my grandmother cut the head off a chicken, pluck it clean and present it for dinner within a few hours while washing the blood off her hands in a washbowl of water brought in from a well.  To me, those were strong women and they forced their men to adhere to a code of honor.  I can’t report accurately how many times I saw strong men hiding in their barns behind loads of work because they feared giving their farmwives bad news and how scared they were at the wrath of such women.  These same men were the kind who changed tractor wheels with broken off tree branches as a jack and a crescent wrench, and little else.  And to see them terrified to confront their wives with disappointment speaks volumes of what America has lost, not gained through progressive feminism.

Kids today visit their grandparents in condominiums and they have Christmas dinners in quarter million dollar homes with high-efficiency heating systems which is a testimonial to technological advancement, but in the process, America has lost its traditional roots and surrendered its honor to the convenience of progressive philosophy.  Our entire society has lost touch with the source of their milk, as they’ve never seen a farmer milk a cow at 5:30 AM or deliver a calf at 12:30 PM.  When I was a kid my grandpa called my dad late one night and we rushed to his farm to deliver a baby calf by tying a rope to its feet and pulling it out of the mother with a tractor.

My anger at progressives and the source of my outrage that is displayed with millions of words upon these pages stems from the intentional destruction of this purely American way of life that Paul Harvey so accurately captured with his creative monologue.  Few people have ever done it as good as Paul Harvey did but thankfully at least one did.  Because without Paul Harvey’s monologue it may have been possible that progressives in America might have erased all memory of this exclusively American life from the minds of the world forever.

Paul Harvey is no longer with us, and neither are my grandparents and many of the people I knew at the time who had farms.  My connection to such people these days are through people like my friend Gery Deer who manages the Annie Oakley Wild West Showcase each year in Darke County.  (CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW)  Gery’s father still operates one of these farms in Jamestown, Ohio and Gery and his family gather there every Saturday night in the traditional way.  They sing campfire songs like old cowboys and dine together in a way that has become lost in America and I cherish knowing them for it.  I look forward to that event every July because it gives me a good reason to travel through the farm country of Western Ohio and buy fresh produce from roadside venders who still have dirt under their fingernails.

The America I am fighting for is the one in Paul Harvey’s words.  I think its fair to ridicule those who have advanced the destruction of those traditional values because I have seen once too many the people I cherish ridiculed by a progressive teacher who teachers that women in the workplace have more value over my grandmother who could cut the head off that chicken and prepare it for her family which she loved with every cell in her body.  I am tired of hearing the progressive politician urge urban dwelling by smearing the good name of the rural farmer and their desire for personal liberty.  And I am tired of attorneys who desire divorce at every turn just so they can make money off the misery.  I prefer the terrified farmer cowering in his barn afraid to deliver bad news to the woman of the family instead of taking the easy way out by serving divorce papers through the mail.  I do not like, condone, or believe in the America that progressives have been attempting to advance.  I believe in the America that Paul Harvey so accurately captured with his “God Made A Farmer” monologue.  That is why I paused over a decade ago to pay silent tribute to those ancient words, and why I personally loved the Superbowl experience of 2013, because Dodge had the foresight to release a commercial that pays tribute to the American Farmer.  I’m glad they did it, but I am sad that so many people found the experience foreign.  That is a trend that must be reversed if America is to survive, and it is that reversal of which I am fully dedicated.  The silent yearning that the commercial evoked in the American consciousness is but a compass that our society needs to observe so to find our direction in a wilderness of confusion, and find our way back to greatness that has it’s backbone in the American Farmer.

It is because of Paul Harvey that I write here every day.  I listened to him for years and I miss the guy.  It is because nobody else has the guts to be him, or pour words into the tapestry of our day the way he did that I write so much about the world around us.  I believe in the hearts of all Americans that there is a Paul Harvey in each of them, even if they have been taught to think otherwise.  The video above featuring Paul  Harvey in the Dodge Ram commercial had over 6 million hits on YouTube in just three days.  Ratings say everything.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The Financial Health of America: How to adapt to the coming crises

This is the day of the Superbowl and as I watched the festivities of the day and thought about the countless parties going on all over America I had some thoughts about economics in The United States that I wanted to share.  I have covered so many radio broadcasts here at the OW over the years that I have moved on to new ways of communicating just to avoid redundancy.  For instance, when Darryl Parks covered two years ago the coming financial crises in America, he was talking about the time we are currently in.  CLICK HERE to revisit that broadcast and compare that broadcast to this new one done on 700 WLW during the first day of February 2013.  A lot of ground has been covered between the Darryl Parks broadcast of a couple of years ago and this recent one, but the scope of the problem is very accurately displayed for even economically naive listeners to understand.  Have a listen:

This financial crisis is the paramount topic of our day.  The state of our economy is changing rapidly and soon many of those who thought that finance in America was an impregnable fortress will soon learn what epic failure and a commitment to socialism has done to us all.  With student debt collapsing our economy as we speak, the old idea of retiring at 65 years old off a nice pension and other government driven revenue is gone forever.  Instead Americans in their mid-40’s on down will have to face a new reality for financing their lives and the luxury of one income to handle all their affairs just won’t do.

In my own life I have begun writing books to help fuel my own later years with additional sources of personal income, because the old traditional model will become obsolete in the coming years.  With the collapse of the American economy so to will the idea of working one job for eight hours every day go away.  In the future it may take 3 or 4 jobs requiring 10 to 30 hours each week to commit to, and that is the result of the massive plundering that has went on in our nation’s government.

College will not help fix this problem; it has only made it worse, because our education system has saturated the marketplace with too many employees trained in skills that do not have revenue generating potential.  The best jobs for college graduates are government jobs, because the private sector has not been able to sustain government intrusion and preserve profitability while maintaining the financial promises of a university degree.  Unions also won’t help, because like colleges, they have improperly skewed the profitability of their enterprises with redistributive wealth reforms that have had the opposite effect of their intentions.  Just a quick glance at the economic viability of Detroit, and the state of California provides all the proof one needs to predict the future of economies driven by these forces.

What this means is that a massive exodus of tax contributions is about to hit The United States government and they are not prepared to deal with that grim reality peacefully.  I recently spoke about the cost of high taxes pushing people out of their homes.  An empty home does not contribute taxes to a school district, or a police department, or those beloved firefighters embedded into our minds as heroes from the Fisher Price toys we played with as children.  When citizens can no longer make money off their jobs or own property, there is nothing for government to tax—there is no way to steal the money away from the citizens—and the government will go bankrupt once people lose the will to participate.  That will is quickly disappearing.

A failure to address these issues back when Darryl Parks first did his broadcast with Porter Standsberry has caused this current crisis to impact the lives of millions of families, and that is just the tip of the iceberg.  I put this recent broadcast up today so that a trend can be seen by the intelligent reader/viewer.  These broadcasts are more than doomsday entertainment, they are more than skeptical speculation; they are quite real in their announcements of economic disaster.  I believe that the downward economic trend is unavoidable and those who will survive are those who adjust their lives to these changing conditions.  The keys to this new survival are to keep student debt down.  Keep credit card debt low to non-existent.  And do many things for a living—not just one specialized thing.  Avoid high looting taxes because with every tax dollar you throw away to government, you will have to work a part-time job or two here and there to cover the cost of those taxes.  Keep it simple and stay out-of-the-way, because things will get ugly before they get better.  And most importantly, think like a “producer” not a “consumer.”  Conditions will get ugly because too many people are in denial of the present state of affairs, and refuse to acknowledge the true economic status of The United States.  Take broadcasts like the one done on 700 WLW and cherish the information, because failure to act will lead your family down a dark path that will most likely end very poorly for all involved.

Enjoy the Superbowl.  Hope your team won.  Depending on how you answer that will determine your ability to avoid trouble in the coming days.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The Bullies of Public Education: A cry out for help while few listen

When it is wondered what I have against public education and government in general, I can understand that unless people have seen what I have up close and personal that they may not have context to relate with.  Few people look too deeply at any problem, and it requires a cavernous look to understand why public education and their employees are bad for society at large–why they are detrimental to the human condition.  Most people are happy to accept out of convenience the opposite–that public education is the savor of society’s children and their parents because government schools offer a glorified babysitting service that has a subtle social engineering objective driven by progressive politics.  My problem with public education and the government, of which they are an important part, is that they are filled with participants who are bullies seeking to impose evil with a thug-like imposition of submission against individuals to a collective sum.

Since I stepped into the public education debate in the spring and fall of 2010 with a logical argument against excessive spending I have had many bullies attempt to conform me into some type of collective submission.  Those bullies have learned, what over 40 years of a blood soaked past filled with similar bullies have learned about me—that it only gets them more name-calling and violence, not less.  In my entire 45 years on this earth I have never backed down from a bully no matter how big or powerful they thought themselves to be and I won’t start now.  And there have been a lot of them.  Anyone who does some checking into my past has come to that conclusion on their own by now.  I never look for these fights, but they happen because I refuse to be moved by any collective force whether it is the federal government, or an entire city’s police force who is taking money off the top of drug sales using kids to sell marijuana to high schools.  For me the individual will of every American citizen is the most sacred element of existence and I do not like to see individuals twisted and manipulated into the will of any collective organization no matter what it is.  This is why I hate governments, I hate mobsters, I don’t like authority when it seeks to break the back of individuals for some “greater good,” and this is what I have discovered public education to be completely about—breaking down the individual will in children and forcing their parents to pay for it with public extortion.

I would not care so much about the activity of public education evils if I were not “forced” to pay for it, but because of the collective extortion practice called “taxation” I have no choice, so my only recourse is to confront the bullies—which I have done.  However, when you get involved and start fighting these bullies, and others see you doing it, you learn about all the individual cases of institutional bullying that are going on around you.  I have met since 2010 many victims of public education bullying where the institutions and its servants impose themselves upon the free-will of many individuals.  Often I have taken up the banner and offered to fight on behalf of those individuals making some of the fights very public which of course attracts more people from all over Ohio who send me their stories and want help fighting their individual circumstances.  The posting I provided yesterday is one of those stories.  A family was a victim of institutional manipulation and cover-ups designed to protect the careers of the participants at the expense of a little girl whom I became quite found of in my dealings with the family.  The family eventually left the state to start a new life elsewhere, and I can’t blame them.  I helped them the best I could, but the institutional imposition of public education is an ominous beast that doesn’t give a damn about the little girl or the family—it only wants to fill its belly with the lives of individuals.

I continue to get these pleas for help, and they have only increased over the years.  I would hope that they would trend down, not up, but in the case of a letter I received the other day shown below, they are getting worse.  When I read this letter I immediately felt for this family.  I hate to hear that a family is about to lose their home, that their children won’t have a place to lay their head at night and study in comfort.  I hate to hear that the Social Security tax increases that went into effect at the start of 2013 are putting a family like the one below under financially—that they are only able to buy groceries by charging them on their credit card.  I hate to hear that they are trying to fight their school levy just so they can keep their house because an extra $20 a week will crush them, because they’ve already given up their cable TV, and their home phone as needless expenses.  And I hate that the only place a family like the one shown below feels they can turn to is my email box. Read the letter for yourself.  They are from a school district in central Ohio.  I removed their name and district for their own protection.

From: ********** **************
Date: Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 9:38 PM
Subject: Re: School levy
To: Rich Hoffman

Hi Mr, Hoffman, I would really love for you to contact me. I am currently fighting my school against our levy; I am currently tied up in a law suit because I made a political website for voting no on this levy in November. I am speaking for all the poor families that cannot afford anymore money being taken from us. Our so-called American dream is becoming a nightmare, my family can no longer afford our home due to the over spending and taxing of others on my husband’s paycheck and the schools using our home as their personal ATM.  I feel like I am fighting a losing battle, the school board wont listen to anything my family has to say. Can you please contact me with some advice because the school is putting up the next levy for May voting. My family needs your help!!! I am in the ****** school district, I am being sued by the campaign manager for the schools vote yes party, I was banned along with two other woman for asking questions, nothing out of line just general questions, so I made a Vote No Facebook page, the law suit is not my concern so much as I do have an amazing attorney, but more my concern is with them trying to pull this levy off again after it was voted down in November by an 11% margin. I am treated poorly by the board anytime I ask questions when the only thing I am trying to do is keep the quality of life at home for families like mine, you see we no longer even have the money to go to see a simple movie with our children, we have already eliminated cable TV, home phone service, the only thing we still have is the internet, it is required as I do have one home schooled child due to the levy in November, I felt scared and did not want my son to be under the conditions at school so I pulled him out. I don’t feel like I can defeat these people, they do not care about families like mine. I know that the first week of 2013 our first paycheck was again short another $63.00 when we currently did not have extra money and the school just wont quit they say they are short revenue, but my house hold is also short revenue so how do they expect to get blood from a turnip, we are wiped out financially and our home is already on the chopping block, if it does not sell by April we may be forced to give it back to the bank. I am so frustrated as a parent I feel so sorry for my children and others children in our situation, while the school admin drives around in their fancy cars and living it up in those fancy houses when so many in our district are losing their homes.  I know all of 2012 we had to use credit cards to buy groceries with to feed the kids. Something’s gotta’ give! Please help the families in this district!

When people wonder why I get so angry at the arrogance that is seen in public education it is because I’ve seen one too many letters like the one above.  I am tired of a media that refuses to look at what high taxes do to families like the one who wrote me the letter.  I am tired of putting school employees who work for progressive labor unions on a pedestal and listening to newspapers and television broadcasts advocate on their behalf when the taxes raised for these public schools are destroying the lives of the tax base and nobody does the hard reporting, because nobody wants to face down the bullies in public education.  These bullies think the court system is in their back pocket and nobody will have the guts to call them out into the light.  When I came unglued last year in the Cincinnati Enquirer it was because the bullies were making their move at a cost to many families like the one shown above.  The levy supporters don’t give one bit of a damn if 100 families lose their homes to the tax increases, so long as they get their way.  In my life it was people like Laura Sanders at Lakota who sent me letters advocating for higher taxes that infuriated me with their unfathomable selfishness and narrow-minded perspective.  CLICK HERE FOR A REVIEW.  I can pick on Laura because she had the nerve to send me personal emails attempting to belittle the value of my own home compared to her own as if to apply pressure on me into believing my tax contribution was less than hers.  She also gave an interview in the Cincinnati Enquirer attempting to smear my name because I stood between her and a YES vote for a tax increase by playing the “women hater card” that worked so well against Mitt Romney—only I’m not Mitt Romney.  Her position was that she was willing to pay more taxes, so why wasn’t I?  It’s the same progressive argument that Barack Obama made against the rich, “if a wealthy guy like me is willing to pay more taxes, then why aren’t you?”  That is how these people work, and this is why parents are afraid of the public castigation from people like Laura at church on Sunday finding themselves charging their food for their families on a credit card so that they aren’t called “cheap” by the collective masses who advocate more money thrown into the black hole of public education.

With every letter I get like the one above I increasingly hate the system that advocates more and more of that behavior. I used to be able to maintain enough distance to coolly lay out the argument of why public education has a spending problem, but when they responded to my suggestions with thuggish resistance—well, it only pissed me off.  Once it was realized that logic was not welcome in the public education debate, and that the institutional commitment toward collectivism sought to stamp out the lives of couples like the one above, that was the end for me.

I am not impressed with Governor Kasich’s new public education funding model.  I see that he has given in to the bullies of Columbus and my respect for him is much less than it was.  I commend him for trying to do something, and I think he thinks he’s being clever about his education reforms.  But in the end, he will lose because he is afraid to punch those bullies square in the mouth like they deserve.  Bullies are bullies when they attempt to impose upon individuals a collective goal, and I have absolutely no tolerance for it—at all.  I never have, and I never will—the more I see of it, the worse it gets.  With that said if you are a member of the media reading this and you side against the kind of people who sent me the letter above by giving a free media pass to the thugs who cause the trouble, you are as bad as the bullies—because you participate in the destruction of families everywhere one dollar at a time till they are going bankrupt because of a $63 dollar tax increase out of their personal income in 2013.  Nobody is looking out for them, and that is truly a sad, and a terrible story in modern America.

I’m sure that people who support school levies from the teachers and administrators to the PTA moms that I have had so much fun with don’t know about families like the one above. They don’t want to know, until tragedy strikes their families with a major lay-off, or another form of income loss.  Instead of trying to act as individuals they hedge their bets by befriending the bosses of the collective—who fuel their lives off tax dollars funneled by government.  The real motive of collectivism is to hedge against the danger of being an individual, so they have no care for those who have decided to live on their own merit—who fall on hard times.  Secretly, they desire to see families like this crushed leaving them no place to turn but a stranger who has a tendency to stand up to bullies hoping that they can do something on their behalf.  The collective seeks to make an example of individuals who try to go it alone—like the family above has.  To the collective, resistance is futile, and they love to see families suffer who are not part of their public education clique.

I have been shocked as my daughter and her husband have been house hunting to learn how many $170K to $250K homes are empty of their former residents.  10 years ago so many homes in foreclosure were a rare sight that had behind them a social stigma that was negative.  It absolutely breaks my heart to walk through these homes and see that the residents left in haste with televisions, refrigerators and toys left behind.  In some cases pictures are still on the walls, and these are not isolated homes.  Most of the homes are in this condition and it is a sign of bad times that aren’t just coming—but already here.  Those homes are proof that there are many who are in the exact same situation as the couple above.  The only difference is that the woman who wrote me had the courage to face public scrutiny by admitting that her family is struggling while the others were reluctant to admit such things publicly.  Most of them probably kept their financial situation a secret till the very end, till they had to leave their home so fast that they couldn’t even take their pictures down off the walls.  For everyone who participates in such an erosion of freedom, they are bullies who deserve their asses kicked, and not tomorrow, but today!  I despise such people.  The root of my anger is in the knowledge that they are willing to see individual lives crushed so long as the collective good can be maintained and I find that absolutely evil.  So I do not care what those on the “other” side think of me.  I do not care if they want an interview from me, or if they even want to be cordial with me.  I only want to see collectivism crushed under the boot of individualism and the first step in that is to stand up to the bullies of collectivism in glorious fashion—something I’m prepared to do and have spent a lifetime nurturing.  For those who hope that I will run out of gas—sorry to say—my engine just warmed up.  The fuel I run on is letters like the one above.  Families like that deserve justice, and if there is any good in the world, they will eventually have it.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Government Will Always be Bad so Long as Bad People Join: The mystery of the social do-gooder

It is not enough to just point at the government and say that it’s bad.  Government is bad because it attracts the wrong kind of people to serve it.  Yet in order to fix government the understanding of what “good” people are, what they look like, and how they should behave must be understood.  Without that understanding, there is no hope for government to ever be reformed for the better no matter what the political affiliation is or under what flag it resides under.  The roots of people come out when they are pressed, as seen in the article link below from the West Chester Buzz regarding John Boehner and the comments about John’s current political predicament, from some of the same people who have intersected my life at times.  This posting is directed at some of those people, and the ornaments that hang from their lives to this day who are equally as baffled to the changes in political climate as Boehner is currently.

http://westchesterbuzz.com/2013/01/28/enquirer-whats-changed-for-john-boehner/

(Well written article by Deidre Shesgreen of The Cincinnati Enquirer by the way.)

I have known entirely too many people who do not understand what I mean when I speak of the word “honesty.”  Government is filled with many individuals who believe that the collectivism of government can shield them from scrutiny while their true intentions are to gain much wealth for themselves through collectivism.  I ran into this constantly from family and friends who wondered why I was so adamantly against the Lakota School Levy.  They believed that in some distorted way that Mark Sennet had hired me to be a spokesman for No Lakota Levy, and that my activity in local politics was somehow inspired by a climb for power into the Republican Party.  To answer one of the people mentioned in the West Chester Buzz article, it is OK to make a “buck,” I fully support free enterprise.  But it is not OK to enter politics so that the process of regulation can be controlled by the presence of a politician who is in the zipper of a builder or developer.  I say that even though I know many that I call friends, yet I know they do not understand what motivates me, which has always bothered me, and prevents friendship beyond polite formalities.  When many learned the truth—that I am as against people like Sennet for his blind and naive avocation of Agenda 21 style “community development” as I am the labor unions—and that the true rift with No Lakota Levy has its roots in these philosophical reasons than anything else—they are as unable to understand what I tell them as a dog can read a book.  CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW.  The language and cognition are just not available to them.

I know many Republicans who only have conservative beliefs so that they can advance their careers.  And I know many, many Democrats who do the same.  Statistics prove that many of the teachers, fire fighters and cops who voted the “union” ticket in the last elections do not care what the politicians on their tickets believed politically, but simply voted in the fashion that they did to secure their livelihoods.  In my own family there are superintendents, teachers, school bus drivers, professional students—kids who are school age children whose parents need their schools to watch their kids while they pursue careers.  They all wonder what I am after in my political arguments even though many of them have known me my entire life.  They assume that I will announce to the family that I have a big lobby job with Washington or a public relations position for a local school system because I must have some personal agenda for my political campaigns, otherwise, why else would I do them?

Lately I have went further down the rabbit hole of personal life management because the solutions to America’s problems reside in individual lives—and it does no good to point out the deficiencies and failures of government without addressing the reasons.  And those reasons are some of the most obvious yet obscure traits available to the minds of the masses on a daily bases.  Too many people arrive too late in their lives with a yearning to be “good.”  They fall in love for all the wrong reasons; buy the wrong kind of cars, clothing, and even dishwashers for motivations that defy practicality.  They pursue occupations that allow these movements not for their inward calls to adventure but out of a desire to find meaning in their meaningless lives.  They have pushed God from their lives, they have accepted collectivism as a social blanket to hide their inner demons from themselves, and they arrive into their adulthoods fractions of their true potential—wastes of human beings that are navigating T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland in their grim realities.

For the worst of the human being they seek to hide their personal wastelands from public view by joining government in a quest to save society because they cannot save themselves.  They do not have the courage to face life daily, they buy into collectivism and hope to have success in mass.  This is how it all starts, this is how government goes bad, because bad people join it with the good intention of saving themselves with redemptive escapades—but they only end up bringing the same kind of destruction to government and the people government serves as a result and they seek to use stolen money through taxation to cover their multiple personal evils.  If only one or two people did such a thing, society might be able to absorb the impact, but tragically, there is only one or two per thousand who are good.  The vast majority in government are broken souls trying desperately to fill their personal voids with public office under the guise of doing public good.  The reality is that they are trying to conceal from public view their many inner evils of which they spend most of their lives fleeing from only to arrive at retirement age broken relics of their once hopeful lives.

There is a real fear when it is realized that a few here and there involve themselves in politics not to redeem their past sins, or to curry favor to build alliances with others to advance their careers, but out of a desire to do “good.”  When objectives of personal gain cannot be found, the panic begins to set in and a new layer of anger emerges.  For those who are truly dedicated to being good and understanding the higher meanings of things, political theater is a trivial pursuit and I personally don’t have much tolerance for it.  When I make my comments about politics and the participants it is out of a personal disdain that I have for the quality of the people attracted to politics.  If their desire is to hide their personal faults from society by joining public office then spending my money to redeem their activity through collectivism, then I have a right to expose them for what they are attempting to conceal from public view.  It would be less of my business what their personal faults were if they did not consume my tax money, but because they do, they deserve the wrath of critical analysis.

My objective is to sort the good from the bad.  In my personal life, I only have room for those who want to do good.  I don’t enjoy the company of social climbers and political manipulators so it’s no skin off my back if I piss them off.  If they don’t wake up in the morning committed to being good people then I don’t have value for them.  In that regard, when I have been invited to meet Governor John Kasich, I have dodged those meetings not out of disrespect, but because my personal time is valuable and there is nothing in such a meeting for me.  Kasich is a public servant and to me that is equal to the kind of person I might hire to clean my house.  When I was invited to have breakfast with John Boehner fairly recently, I ducted the invitation not out of disrespect to Boehner, but out of a preference for having a private breakfast with my wife doing what we enjoy doing on Saturday mornings.  And there is no circumstance that Barack Obama could invite me to the White House for any kind of meeting that I would go to without having something better to do.  Many people would say that my comments in this regard are crazy–yet that is why our government is so screwed up, and what I fight against.  For those who don’t understand, I work to make them understand by forcing them to look at their actions in the context of goodness, and measure for themselves if they wish to continue down that path.

Such action may not be popular but that’s alright with me.  My view is on the long view, not the short.  There is nothing in the short view that interests me, and no amount of money in the world that could lure me into such a short-sighted view.  Along those guidelines, there is no tolerance that I have for those who are so short-sighted, and my respect for people who are, is non-existent.  So for those who wonder, I hope this explanation frames the situation correctly.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The Power of Myth: Going East with Joseph Campbell

My often lengthy discussions about the importance of Star Wars in the future of our world is not rooted in escapism fandom or a simple love for fantasy fiction—but in the understanding of what eludes many about the power of mythology.  Many years ago I read what has been one of the most important books I have ever read titled The Hero With A Thousand Faces.  It is a book that is filled to the brim with truths hidden to civilization over thousands of years.  The book is the explosive result of Joseph Campbell’s foundation study of comparative mythology and religion.  Anyone who has come to know anything knows that all things about human culture begin with those two issues.  Politics, economics, art, science—virtually everything begins with religion and a culture’s mythology.  When an enemy of any people wish to destroy another culture they most effectively do it not with bombs and chemical weapons of mass death—they do it by destroying the culture of those people.  As I look around America, I see clearly that the culture of America is under attack, so I look toward mythology to make the repairs and that is when Star Wars comes into play for me.  The video below is about an hour and a half long and is well worth watching if it has not yet been seen.  It explains much about Star Wars and Joseph Campbell’s influence on the creation of that modern mythology and shows how important a simple story can be to the unification, and strength of a mature culture.

In that video it should be noted that popular personalities and government officials ranging from Newt Gingrich to Nancy Pelosi weighed in on the importance of Star Wars to human culture so it cannot be minimized how important mythology is to American culture.  There is a love and understanding for myth that goes well beyond the reach of political theory even though Newt Gingrich is a conservative and Nancy Pelosi is a bra burning progressive.  The differences in their opinions on social matters are in faulty interpretations ultimately of world mythology and the lessons they have to tell society at large.

I spent a good number of years in the Joseph Campbell Foundation during the 1990’s and to this day I treasure it as an organization.  Without them, many of Joseph Campbell’s literary works would not have received the kind of attention they have under the Foundation’s leadership, and they owe a lot to the work that George Lucas has done behind the scenes in his pursuits of Lucas Learning and Edutopia to give them the fuel to start the organization as it appears today.  When George Lucas brought in Bill Moyers to Skywalker Ranch to sit down with Joseph Campbell in the last year of Joe’s life and talk about The Power of Myth, Lucas once again changed mankind for the better.  (Please do yourself a favor and watch this whole clip)  The rest of the series is available at The Joseph Campbell Foundation website.  They are fantastic videos.

When I gush over the cultural impact of a new MMO like Star Wars: The Old Republic it is because of conversations that I was involved in during the 90’s that intended to carry mythological studies into education using new technology, and I am excited about the results so far—which look to only improve in the years to come.  The ability to participate in an interactive mythology is very powerful, and is a fantastic education tool.  Without question, and I can report this accurately now that my wife and I have been playing The Old Republic for over a month now, that there are people on that game that know more about the fictional galactic history of Star Wars than they do their own history—which is both good and bad.  Bad because the history is not real, but good because it proves how effective Star Wars has been in unlocking the human brain to higher possibilities through the power of myth.  CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW.

The difficulty is when the various translations of Joseph Campbell’s work come into play—and why I am no longer an active member—even though I support their endeavors enthusiastically.  Progressive minded people in the entertainment industry have misread Joseph Campbell’s studies of India, of the various Asian cultures and have denigrated them into various forms of collectivism.  Joseph Campbell during his time in the 1930’s to the 1980’s was going against the grain of communism and was able to pinpoint the key to all successful mythology—the pursuit of individual bliss.  Sprinkled throughout Joseph Campbell’s intensive intellectual works is the struggle to marry the social collectivism that permeates all the world’s societies from the very first Neanderthal with the very intense desire of individuals to follow their own path through life.  Political progressives find themselves unable to completely understand the messages of individualism that Campbell uncovered through his studies and instead fixate on the studies of collectivism themselves missing the value of the myths in the exchange.

For me even though I saw tremendous value in the individuals who carried on the name of The Joseph Campbell Foundation, I had a falling out with them at a conference in Washington D.C. that I have spoke about elsewhere in greater detail.  The short part of the story was that I realized that the key people had missed the message of Joseph Campbell and where instructing others incorrectly.  This included Joe’s wife Jean whom was a lovely little old lady my wife, kids and I meant in a downtown D.C. hotel suite.  When I attended the big meeting at the weekend long event and met several of the people from all over the country who worked in entertainment, politics, upper education, publishing, and literature, I quickly learned that collectivism had hidden the most important aspects of Joseph Campbell’s teachings from them.  People like Susan Sarandon understood on an intellectual level what Campbell was teaching, but her social application of that teaching was lost to her innate static patterns of learned behavior.  Many of these people are good people who have a limited ability to translate what they learn from comparative mythology because the very fabric of their lives are built around either progressive or conservative politics.  So when they act as heroes of action in their own existences, they end up being the kind of people who was warned about in the old Navaho story about the Twin War Gods.  They are the village soothsayers who warned the Twin War Gods not to go East to search for their father and help them defeat the monster that were attacking them because nobody knew what laid to the East.  West, North and South had been adequately explored and was also seen to be the direction that the attacking monsters came from, so the village told the Twin Gods to search for their father in those known locations.  But the Twin Gods go North anyway because it is society that is in trouble, and they are not equipped mentally to provide advice, so the answers must come from those areas most unknown.

This is where America finds itself in 2013.  Progressives advocate searching for life’s answers in the South, Conservatives in the West, Libertarians in the North, but the answer is in the East–in the undiscovered country of which America’s Founding Fathers began to knock on the door and map out.  The answer must come to individuals, not collectivists.  It is only in the bliss of every individual that the collective society most prospers, and that is the heart of everything that Joseph Campbell taught.  It is a most elusive trait to understand even for people who spend their entire lives reading and dedicating their lives to publishing the work of Joseph Campbell.  During the span of all of human history mythology has searched for this elusive truth and it has not been until the mythology of Star Wars that any story has been so successful in reaching not just regional audiences around a campfire in Kenya, or the Plains Indians of South Dakota, but all cultures at the same time.  Star Wars is the first of its kind to look for the answers in the North and take the minds of mankind into the undiscovered plain of reality where individualism for the first time in human history is shown to be the savor for the collective whole—not the other way around.

This is why Star Wars is so important and why the study of mythology is more important than even the study of physics, medicine, or mathematics.  Without a proper mythology a society degrades quickly into a formless blob.  This is also why Star Wars is about to hit a critical mass that will transform society in ways that nobody can yet see coming—except the very, very few who understand the work of Joseph Campbell and the first comprehensive study of 100,000 years of human evolution done in the history of mankind.  It all starts with the very great book, The Hero With A Thousand Faces published in 1949.

As for the people at the Joseph Campbell Foundation, I love those people.  They may have found my interpretations of Joseph Campbell destructive to their personal philosophies, but they’ll get over it once they learn for themselves the truth on their own blissful journeys through their individual lives.  The members as they were in the 90’s I’m sure are not the same as the people who run it now.  They are some of the closest people on earth to being enlightened individuals who actually are beginning to understand some of these difficult concepts, so I forgive a lot to those who actively try.  You can learn more about them at their website seen below:

http://www.jcf.org/

And now, another video. Please do watch all these fully. They are important.

If you’d like to participate in one of the Round Tables as seen in the video above, then visit JCF’s Mythological RoundTable® Home Pages to find a group near you; contact the organizer and find out when the next meeting will be.

Washington D.C./VA
Philosophy of Religion
January 29, 2013		 New York, NY
Tranformational Rituals
February 20, 2013
Berlin (2), Germany
Die Kraft der Mythen (III)
January 30		 Clarkesville, GA
The Seven Basic Plots
February 21, 2013
Dublin (at Mythic Links), Ireland
Power of Myth & Hero’s Journey
January 31, 2013		 Berlin (1) Germany
Myth & Meaning
February 22, 2013
Pocatello, ID
“Love & the Goddess” (from Power of Myth)
February 5, 2013		 Essen, Germany
Lernen durch Mythen
February 27, 2013
San Clemente, CA
TBA
February 8, 2013		 Laguna Beach/Dana Point, CA
TBA
February 27, 2013
Sacramento, CA
Flower Sun: The New Mesoamerican Era (with Francisco X. Alarcon)
February 9, 2013		 Berlin (2), Gerrmany
Missbrauchte Mythen und ihre Folgen
February 27, 2013
Granja Viana, Brazil
The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology
“The Goddess Age”
February 16, 2013		 Dublin (at Mythic Links), Ireland
The Heroine’s Journey in Irish Mythology
February 28, 2013

Click here to Support the Joseph Campbell Foundation.

The Joseph Campbell Foundation relies on donations to help fulfill its mission of perpetuating Campbell’s ground-breaking work. The Joseph Campbell Foundation is a US registered 501 c(3) not-for-profit corporation (Federal Tax I.D. #99-0285097); contributions should be fully tax-deductible. Please consult your tax professional regarding deductibility.

 

Rich Hoffman

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Obama Found Unconstitutional: Do I have to say “I told you so?”

In case you may have missed it due to the fact that 90% of the media both national and local are in the zipper of Barack Obama—because they were all taught in the same progressive institutions under the same progressive guidelines–some of Obama’s appointments made one year ago were recently found to be unconstitutional.  Well, this is no surprise to me as I covered the issue here at the OW with a direct letter to the office of John Boehner, which of course he ignored.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  Boehner if he had listened to me, and about a dozen other people from his district might have led the GOP to properly reel in the power grabbing Obama under the authority given to the House Speaker, and would most likely be working with a Republican White House by this time instead left-wing Weather Underground radicals.  The courts would have sided with Boehner if he had made a bold move one year ago, but instead he decided to play it safe–to play golf and take polite little jabs at his good buddy, Barack Obama publicly, while back slapping with him privately.  What was it that Biden said to Boehner not that long ago——“We’re at the gate, man.  We’re at the gate.”  Hmmmm, what do you suppose Vice President Biden meant by that?  Boehner ignored my message—because I’m not “at the gate………………” and dismissed my suggestions and warnings as those of a radical “right winger” from his home district who likes to hang out with those Constitutional purists in the Tea Party.

When Boehner’s office workers spoke to me they had that look of amusement on their faces that is so common with politicians these days.  After all, they had a plan.  Boehner and Ohio Republicans from John Kasich all the way down to the local trustees and commissioners were going to play it cool, take the high ground, let the Supreme Court overturn Obamacare during the summer of 2012, then run Mitt Romney against Obama in the fall where they would attack the President’s economic record.  Boehner’s office had “big plans” and they didn’t want to listen to crazy Rich Hoffman standing in their office dripping wet from a rare January thunderstorm where I rode to his office on my motorcycle and was asking Boehner to uphold the Constitution against Obama and his friends of American reformers.

Now here we are in 2013, Republicans lost to the White House due to the emotional pleas of the mentally unfortunate, they lost Obamacare to the bizarre ruling by Justice Roberts.  Now Republicans have to worry about Obama appointing more liberals to the Supreme Court—forget the 5-4 rulings in their favor in the future, because as Roberts proved, all it takes is one or two Supreme Court Justices to turn the whole world upside down.  And because of the Roberts opinion there is no doubt drool running from the mouths of Obama’s legal team who will challenge the unconstitutional rulings cited against The White House—after all, history cannot be allowed to remember such things, because in lawyer circles it is case-law that matters, not the original laws.

But as for now at least someone had the courage to defend the Constitution, and not snicker at the naiveté of a constituent who expected justice to be upheld on a rainy January day in 2012.   As the law stands today, President Obama has been found to have acted unconstitutionally, and my comments about Obama in my letter to John were not out-of-line in the least.  They were what all Americans should expect, if they intended to live within the letters of the law, and not be afraid to piss off the President and miss the next golf outing so they can all pretend they are masters of the universe when the actual money they are spending came from the American treasury.  Boehner had his shot, and he didn’t take it…………………..and I’m not talking about golf swings.  His personal loss was a tremendous loss to the Republican Party.  But more than anything, America loses when people like the pretentious “political class” look down their noses at Constitutional purists with a disdain more fitting in Nottingham England than West Chester, Ohio on the eve of the second Civil War.  Next time I won’t write a letter and hope for the legal system to listen.  I’ll just exercise my Constitutional rights on my own—before I lose them in a golf bet between John Boehner and Barack Obama.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Party at The White House: Why being “uncool” is a compliment to me………….give me “Coolidge”

I am not the kind of person that any president would ever invite to a White House party.  I do not play a subservient role well; I don’t give a rat’s ass about autographs or taking pictures next to celebrities.  I don’t drink, smoke, or even enjoy small talk of any kind.  But more than any other factor I do not dance…………period.

Dancing is a collective undertaking and I find the practice repulsive.  I always have—as far back as when I grew up in the 80’s when movies like Flashdance and Footloose were popular, there has always been something “eerie” about dancing.  When I was younger I did it a little, because girls liked it.  I even became pretty good at it.  But over time thankfully because I was able to be married early—and gain perspective, I was able to eliminate dancing as an inferior practice that I could cast away from my life completely.  And I don’t miss it in even the slightest degree.  I see dancing as surrendering individual thought to the impulses of music—which means that it is the music that is in control, not the mind.  So I NEVER dance.  I do not surrender my mind to the impulses of music.  I do not surrender my mind to intoxication.  I do not surrender my mind to anything for that matter.  In short I never, ever, ever—ever participate in activity that could be considered mental “evasion.”

So it is only natural that I would find the Inauguration Party hosted by The Obama White House to be a despicable affair.  The celebrities who attended like Katy Perry and Lady Gaga would not like my company, especially since their definition of “coolness” is in the First Lady leading the festivities with dance offs and proclamations of “let’s party” throughout the night.  I find the excesses consumed at such parties to be deplorable, and even under a Republican administration, I would not have attended.  If Ronald Reagan had invited me to the White House for a similar party, I would have turned it down.  But Reagan did not have parties at the White House like Obama has, and the excesses on display by the politicians involved during this latest inauguration event are in my view disgusting.

It is no wonder all the people present were progressives, because like the music they dance to, they allow their thoughts to be moved by the rhythms of political current instead of the logic of their minds.  The White House party goers are not in command of their thoughts but rather the collective consciousness of the party itself becomes the “thinking entity.”  This is why people—especially celebrities think the Obamas’ are so cool.  Katy Perry and her other young party hounds find the knowledge that the highest office in America enjoys surrendering logic to musical rhythm refreshing–because they all have that tendency in common.  “Partiers” find such yielding to be of the highest possible human endeavors.  This basic understanding of social gatherings is the basic premise behind all forms of collectivism.

To me, “partying” especially at The White House, is a low-level activity intended for collectivists.  Individuals with firm beliefs in their personal freedom, and dedication to the fruits of their minds do not feel compelled to “lose” themselves to music.  While it is true that those who don’t participate in such public displays of collectivism are called, “stiffs,” “corny,” “old-fashioned,” “narcs,” “overly conservative,” and so on—(believe me, I’ve heard it all)—the fact remains the same.  Collectivism is a weak form or human endeavor that cannot overtake the mental product of a single strong-willed individual no matter what the mental mass behind the effort dictates.  In a democracy, 1 million fools cannot invalidate the truth of one hard-core rugged individualist with firm beliefs.  It was a roomful of such strong-willed individuals who founded America.  But such minds are nearly extinct these days.  We don’t make them anymore, and when they are discovered, they are exiled socially as “narcs.” This is often good for the individualist, because they don’t need the masses.  But the masses need the individualist and their unbending leadership to hold their lives together.  The current political looters dancing the night away in The White House are not even mentally on the same aptitude level as the Founding Fathers and that is what disgusts me over every single White House party I have ever heard of, especially this most recent one in January of 2013.

I’m not mad that Obama didn’t invite me to the White House to party away the night with all his celebrity friends, because I would not have gone even if I liked him.  But what I am mad at is that with nearly $17 trillion dollars in debt, he took my tax money to help pay for his little shin dig, and he expects me to pay more in taxes so he can have more of the same kind of parties, which I don’t agree with in the first place.  It’s one thing to argue that taxes should be paid to fund roads, schools, police, or firefighters—but it is way over crossing the line to expect me to pay for the party antics of a bunch of slack-jawed collectivists who further wish to deface the image of the once noble White House.  I personally prefer the company of Presidents like Calvin Coolidge who would have most likely spent such inauguration nights reading in an upstairs bedroom instead of staring at the missile tits of Katy Perry or machine gun ta-ta’s of Lady Gaga.  When I consider the kinds of things that collectivists see as valuable the only term that comes to mind is that I was born sane in a crazy world, a world that thinks its “cool” to be a drooling despot “high on life” instead of a studious scholar with a hawk-eye on fiscal responsibility.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2013/01/inauguration_2013_how_much_did_it_cost_and_who_paid_for_it.html

It’s hard to believe that we actually had presidents like Calvin Coolidge who occupied the same White House as Barack Obama.

Coolidge said in 1914: Do the day’s work. If it be to protect the rights of the weak, whoever objects, do it. If it be to help a powerful corporation better to serve the people, whatever the opposition, do that. Expect to be called a stand-patter, but don’t be a stand-patter. Expect to be called a demagogue, but don’t be a demagogue. Don’t hesitate to be as revolutionary as science. Don’t hesitate to be as reactionary as the multiplication table. Don’t expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong. Don’t hurry to legislate. Give administration a chance to catch up with legislation.

Michelle Obama said in 2013:  “It is now my pleasure to introduce the fabulous Katy Perry!”

Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/entertainment/Katy+Perry+Usher+Glee+cast+join+Michelle+Obama+daughters+kids+inaugural+bash+video/7851100/story.html#ixzz2IvVAe2Gp

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Happy Birthday to the Dick Act of 1902: One of the best arguments for military style weapons in civilian hands

Happy Birthday to The Dick Act of 1902, the controversial law that just turned 100 years old and is in essence one of the greatest arguments for the rights of military style firearms for a civilian population.

The Militia Act of 1903 (32 Stat. 775), also known as the Dick Act, was initiated by United States Secretary of War Elihu Root following the Spanish–American War of 1898, after the war demonstrated weaknesses in the militia, and in the entire U.S. military. The act formulated the concept of the National Guard and also ensured that all state military forces were simultaneously dual reservists under the authority of the Army Reserve. This last measure was to prevent state governors from using National Guard forces as “private armies”, in many ways as had been done in the American Civil War and to ensure that the President could, at any time, mobilize state military forces into the federal armed forces.

U.S. Senator Charles W. F. Dick, a Major General in the Ohio National Guard and the chair of the Committee on the Militia,[1] sponsored the 1903 Act towards the end of the 57th U.S. Congress. Under this legislation, passed January 21, 1903, the organized militia of the States were given federal status to the militia, and required to conform to Regular Army organization within five years. The act also required National Guard units to attend 24 drills and five days annual training a year, and, for the first time, provided for pay for annual training. In return for the increased Federal funding which the act made available, militia units were subject to inspection by Regular Army officers, and had to meet certain standards.

The Dick Act of 1902 has been extensively quoted of late as gun grabbing politicians like Chuck Schumer, Diane Feinstein, and Mayor Bloomberg have attempted to use the tragedy of mass shootings to advance their private anti-gun positions.  However, contrary to the belief of many Second Amendment defenders, The Dick Act of 1902 is subject to repeal or being ignored altogether.  After all, many laws that are on the books currently are openly ignored by government for its own convenience.  For instance, the Tenth Amendment is especially ignored and manipulated by politicians under the “commerce clause.”  Thieves do not care about laws, so it should go without saying that criminals who run government don’t give much notion to The Dick Act of 1902.  They will find a way to circumvent it at any turn, because they are functioning as “enemies of the state” as it as the state “should be.”

The definition of how the “state” should be is outlined in The Federalist Papers, and Anti-Federalist Papers, both books among my greatest personal literary treasures.  When I speak of how America should be, I take those arguments as the original text and source of my foundation beliefs.  Modern politicians are of less quality than those who participated in those arguments, and are less valid as a result.  Their modern opinions hold no value for me.  They routinely ignore the Constitution, or seek to manipulate the wording at every turn.  So I do the same toward them—I seek to rid myself of their manipulative influence—and corrosive nature.  As an American I have no intention of being pulled collectively into their degraded philosophy of centralized power.

This brings us back to the intention of The Dick Act of 1902.  The intention behind the Act was to make all of America able to defend itself against all future armies, no matter what the economic conditions for the nation might be under any circumstance.  The assumption was that at some point in the future, as was evident during the Spanish-American War that America may not be able to properly support a military, and that may well be the case with a debt of $17 trillion and a collapsed dollar which appears unavoidable at this point in time.  As much as politicians deny the possibility, at the current spending and inflation rate, America is only about 5 years away from such a devastating fiscal collapse.  When and if that happens, America’s borders will be very vulnerable to invasion from hostile regimes, such as Venezuela, Central America, Mexico, the Russia, China, and North Korea—all have elements of their governments who are licking their chops at America’s evident decline.  The Dick Act of 1902 values a last layer of defense in America if the government is unable to support an organized military under federal dollars.  The citizens of our nation should be equally able to have arms that can fill the void of declined military support due to poor economic circumstances.  In 1902, the military had been gradually scaled back in the years after the Civil War to pay off the massive debts that had been incurred, and it is very possible that the future of America will go through the same ordeal.  A strong military is not always possible, but is only a direct result of a powerful country with a strong economy.  A strong economy is a fading light in present day America, so in the future, the defense of our country will fall on the citizen’s militia—which will have to function separately from a paid National Guard.   Military reliability may not be reliable in the future so everything that is available to military personnel needs to be available to the back yard patriot—and that includes rocket launchers and machine guns of all calibers—for the defense of our nation in the power void left by a bankrupt military.

Modern politicians are in denial that their policies will fail, and they wish to believe that their way of governance will always prevail.  They want to see that Americans have trust in their military, and the defense of the nation.  But reality says something else.  We can’t even trust our government schools to not abuse children, how can the government be trusted with every aspect of security for our nation?  After all, didn’t 9/11 happen because lots of people didn’t do their jobs?  People who believe such things are ridiculous, and impractical.  It is nice to have a military, and it is nice to have a National Guard, but it is the ability to assemble a militia on call, for neighbors to organize against a domestic threat, even if that threat is an internal collapse of government, which is the last best hope dedicated to preserving the Constitution under catastrophic social failure.  The private citizen army with the ability to assemble with arms purchased not by tax payers for government ends, but by their own desires for freedom with their own money is the key to real, “decentralized” freedom.  Those types of people are the last line of defense that keeps America free, and requires citizens to have the ability to purchase all arms of all types in all the quantities that they can afford for the preservation of the nation.

Diane Feinstein along with her gun grabbing friends assumes that life will always be just as it is right now.  They trust foolishly the premise set by the United Nations that the world’s tyrannical enemies can all be subdued by peaceful measures and words on paper.  Gun-grabbers believe, as naively as their idol Woodrow Wilson believed, that the world would be better off if only academics ran everything.  Yet they are as foolish as their fellow tyrants like Hitler who believed the world would be alright if only he eliminated all the Jews, or Stalin if all resisters to communism could be “purged” from politics, they all believe that centralized management is the key to a country’s success.  To the gun-grabbers everything would be peaceful if only the most violent in our society were contained away and separated from the rest of the society, and guns were kept from their hands.  All tyrants have the same childish notions.

Reality says otherwise–that those who are safest are those best able to defend themselves without large organizations of bureaucratic entities to act on their behalf.  What separates America from everyone else is the instantaneous ability to form a militia as the third line of defense, as outlined in The Dick Act of 1902.  The elements that make America different from every place else in the world are seen in the kinds of minds that shaped such laws in the first place.  The reliance is not on a government solution to safety, but on the local level to react quickly, and decisively, and to overcome any enemy with mass, because such an element cannot be strategically planned for by an invading army.  And foreign armies do plan an invasion of American soil, even if those plans are only a fantasy at present.  They just don’t act on it because in America invasion would be impossible to achieve because there is not centralization—which is the only way to secure an area and convert it over to the invader’s way of thinking.  In that spirit American enemies root for the gun-grabbers to succeed and hope to steal away the rights of Americans to arm themselves under a banner of peace. Only then can they hope to occupy America.  Strategically, they are already half way there.  If the military falls due to pour funding, and the politicians use every emotional crises to steal away Americans ability to purchase guns and ammunition then defeat of our continent is a forgone conclusion from all the European nations who have a bone to pick that started with the American Revolution.  For those who think such thoughts are too far in the past do not know the minds of most Europeans—especially those in academia who shape the thoughts of world society.  Yes, there is a plan, and the only thing that keeps it from happening is the spirit of America that is reflected in The Dick Act of 1902.  It may be only 100 years old, but it is more relevant today than it was then, and for much more sinister, global tactical maneuvers.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Belching, Farting, and Eating Chicken Wings: The greatest threat on Earth is stupid people

The reason I am so hard on public education and the college system in America is because they have let us down.  I mean educators are always talking about how important education is to our society, but look around.  Just a quick glance around the grocery store would seem to indicate massive failure of our education system that is unquestionable.  The greed, and politics involved in all of education has left our society dangerously dim-witted as a nation, and I do not care if it hurts the feelings of the people who I’m thinking of.  We are well beyond a point of no return and the quality of the people in America today is a direct result of our educational system.  The American people are the direct result of the kind of things they pour into their brains, and much of the garbage that we see today can be blamed on politics and the kind of education shaped by it.  Education does not get a free pass because of the children involved.  Quite the contrary, we should look hard at ourselves for our future generations and consider if this is the best that we can do, because if it is—we might as well fold up the tent and go home.

The situation is so bad in America that I am actually surprised when I meet someone with half a brain and that should not be the case.  We have allowed ourselves to believe that being “cool” is being stupid, and this is the heart of the problem.  This is also why I have so much anger at progressives, because it is they who have advocated such nonsense.  No civilization can aspire to new heights when stupidity is craved and intelligence is punished.  The math just does not add up, and anyone who supports such a structure is an enemy of the state.

Peter Griffin from Family Guy and Homer Simpson from the Simpsons do not represent life in my family.  I find Homer and Peter reprehensible.  I do laugh at the jokes because there is truth in them, but there is also sadness.  These days whenever an opinion is given, people feel they must add the small line—“I’m no expert but—“ before giving their opinion.  This is because our legal culture has turned everyone into an expert in a specialized field.  If one is not an expert, then they are not qualified to provide their opinion.   This has led our society to behave like a bunch of mindless drones ill-equipped to pass any kind of judgment or opinion, and under such eyes evil spreads, because there is nobody to check it.  Nobody feels “qualified” to cast an opinion so they don’t. Instead they just go with the flow as a brainless blob of energy whisks everyone through life aimlessly.  As a result, society is regressing at an astonishing rate and there may be no repair for it.  I am beginning to think that Armageddon won’t be a fabulously evil chapter of fire and brimstone emanating from devils as they roam the earth, but a bunch of brainless thugs chanting for their union rights as their minds refuse to instruct them how to walk to the end of their driveways.  These minds of the future may only be capable of stuffing their faces with food, while laughing endlessly at their ability to belch and fart.

Since I was a very small child, I have despised belching and farting—because there is something about those basic human tasks that point to un-sophistication.  When a baby craps in their diaper they smile because they are aware that they did something.  Their mind produced an action that they see, feel and smell manifesting in reality.  But when a 10-year-old does the same, it is an insult to the intelligence that the youth has achieved so far in their life.  Such things should no longer be funny to them at age ten.  They should be smarter, and striving for higher pleasures.  But the situation is even worse when a 40-year-old man does such a thing.  A man should be proud of the products of their minds, not their ability to shit their pants or pass digestive gases from their mouths.  That is the world we live in today, just visit a sports bar during a football playoff game.  Farting is more honorable than reading a book, and that is why our society is so damn stupid.

Many expect me to apologize for some of my insulting comments, but I won’t do it, because many people insult me just by their public exhibition of stupidity.  I place the blame on the backs of politicians and education squarely.  Both have failed miserably, and do not deserve money, pity, or a continuation of their destructive behavior.  If there was ever an enemy to the human race, it is the belching 40-year-old who is too stupid to pay attention to anything but a sports score.  But worse than that are the people who failed to teach that poor soul that he was more than just a biological entity that could eat, have sex, and exhaust bodily gases.  Our society is full of these Homer Simpson’s and it is one of the greatest tragedies the human race has ever suffered that so many of them exist at the same time.

Who else is there to blame but those who taught them to be that way?

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com