Tag: education

35deg 39’17.80″N 83deg 26’27.77″W—-My Little Secret: The Obama Budget Plan

There is so much wrong with President Obama’s speech on April 13, 2011 that I couldn’t possibly comment on them all without writing another book. The bottom line is that he’s a fundamental socialist. He used two examples of success, China and Brazil which are countries not tied down with much regulation, that was instrumental to those success stories.

Obama is a progressive. His mistake is that he believes like other progressives do, that money equals value, and it does not. He is completely lost, like the others of his kind. His America is not my America. My America is described below.

Speaking of progressives, they are all upset with the upcoming release of Atlas Shrugged. What is with all the Weiners that are part of the progressive movement? When I saw the sad little article from The Huffington Post about Atlas Shrugged, and the terrified attempts from a “Weiner” named Ellis Weiner to paint Atlas Shrugged as something bad and unsophisticated for mankind, I had mistaken him for the Congressman Weiner, thinking they were both the same Weiner. Read that article for yourself

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellis-weiner/on-atlas-shrugged-as-a-gu_b_157295.html

Both Weiner’s are extreme progressives that are characters straight out of the pages of Atlas Shrugged. In that book, those characters are villains, so I would conclude that those Wieners would not like the book.

But Weiner crosses the line when he puts down the aim of the film, which will not be discovered in the part one portion of the film released. He reveals as anyone who is a fan of the book knows, that the “Men of the Mind” that have went on strike, have moved to the high mountains of Colorado to create a society of their own while the rest of the world perishes. It is obvious that Mr. Weiner just as in Congressman Weiner are a couple of people who have a limited intellectual capacity so they missed many of the deep subjects of the film. But Ellis Weiner seems to not understand that such places as mountaintop retreats of this kind exist, same as the mountain refuge mentioned in Atlas Shrugged.

Well……I’m going to give you a secret dear reader, so that you can know for yourself that fools like these Weiners live their whole lives seeing the world from the perspective of their city streets or their congressional districts. Their perspective is so warped and limited that they cannot see what is right in front of them and therefore cannot even conceive of the kind of world or ideas of a John Galt. I personally know of a place very similar to the mountain retreat from Atlas Shrugged. I will provide you with the coordinates, but shhhhhhhhh. It’s a secret. 35deg 39’17.80”N 83deg 26’27.77”W

I have spent some wonderful moments at that location. Here are some of the pictures from that place. It is one of the best kept secrets in the United States, but it is a real honest to god place and it exists for all the same reasons as in the book Atlas Shrugged.

If the world ended tomorrow, as we know it, if there were an economic collapse, that appears unavoidable at this point, and our political structure crumbles to the ground, the people who live and visit this spot on the earth will continue living and will not miss a beat. The people who know this place I’m speaking about will never miss President Obama. They’ll never care whether congress or the senate ever shows up for work again. Everything in the United States could end tomorrow and this place would still continue on.

From that place, the world is placed into its perspective. All the things that the “looters” like the aforementioned Weiner’s proclaim to be important will quickly be seen for what they truly are, just the cries of small-minded children.

When you are at that retreat it is evident, especially if you do like I do, where I download video, and radio programs onto my Ipod to watch and listen to in that remote location where power is not available, the voices of politicians sound meager in such a place. But literature, where a good book doesn’t require power, so I’ll never give them up for a Kindle, holds true from such a place. And Atlas Shrugged is meant to be read from a mountaintop and understood by the people who go to such places. It’s not intended for people like the Weiner’s.

The Huffington Post must spend hundreds of thousands of words to attempt to counter the truth which everyone knows deep down inside.

When Nietzsche proclaimed in “Beyond Good and Evil,” that GOD IS DEAD, he didn’t mean it literally so much as metaphorically. Nietzsche believed, as Ayn Rand did, and as I do that religion is used to hold mankind down. That doesn’t mean that one should not go to church or to find solace in religion on a Sunday morning. Religion is a personal thing that takes one to the thresholds of eternity. However, it was religion that ushered in progressive thought even though now progressives seek to move toward atheism and other non traditional religions. This is why the founders sought to separate church and state. They didn’t write it down that way, but it was warned against, so religion couldn’t be used to manipulate the masses through collectivism. We see that the Muslim faith is suffering from this very kind of social movement. Most of the intolerance and conflict in the middle-east is over religious topics, over who is correct and who is not. So it is concluded by thinking people that religion should be free to be practiced, but not related to government action.

The reason is that we don’t want a return to the type of foolishness that led the United States to our current position, where religious zealots of the left and right plagued our nation with progressivism, which led directly to prohibition, Social Security, Welfare, Medicare and all the other “cares,” all in the name righteousness.

In the either-or world of the small-minded, they cannot understand such a spiritual division. It is in human weakness that they feel they must impose upon others the merits of their home religion in order to eliminate from their own minds temptations which may lure them off a spiritual path. And the government do-gooder, who wishes to be the modern Robin Hood, who takes from the Rich and gives to the Poor, my allegiance is the same as the pirate from Atlas Shrugged, Ragnar Danneskjold who proclaimed in that book that his aim in life was to KILL Robin Hood! Of course this is figurative in its assessment, but the metaphor is one that intends to change the focus of value on those that take and loot, to one that creates and employees.

Such thoughts are preposterous to progressives like the Weiner’s of the world. They do not have the intellectual capacity to even understand the basics of self-reliance, and the merit of individualism. Because that is the salvation of mankind, it’s in an evolution to a man of self-reliance that pushes away all forms of collectivism and takes care of their own sector of existence. By becoming good at a trade, that individual has something to trade with others and that is the limit of the collectivism. But the Weiner’s and their kind are part of the old plague driven world of medieval Europe. Shakespeare knew that the old world of Europe was full of deception and corruption. I’ve read Titus Andronicus from a mountaintop and it reads differently there than from a library or classroom.

So now you know a secret of mine. I fear no breakdown of society because of that place. I know what the world could look like if you took away all government, because there isn’t a government at that place. It is beyond the reach of people like President Obama, George Soros and his silly Huffington Post and all the Weiner’s he likes so much. Those people are the representatives of the lead-foot travelers that are either too scared or too unhealthy to move on their own. And they do not represent the direction of the human race.

All things should evolve into improvements, not in decline, and Atlas Shrugged besides the book Thus Spoke Zarathustra is the first serious work that explores that evolution. And it is understandable that those who are close to that transition themselves would be attracted to the message. That message will be missed by the Weiner’s and those like them. Because of their limited perspective, they will cleave like fools to the world of their understanding, and will always fear the perspective of a mountaintop hideaway. The revelations that would fall upon them will shatter their reality in ways that they aren’t prepared to deal with.

I heard the Tea Party movement identified by people like those Weiner’s as being of the “extreme” hard right. They are mistaken. The Tea Party is of those types that are reaching for that next step. It has nothing to do with the current order of things. It has nothing to do with right or left. It’s about right and wrong, and passing between those dualistic principles to a place of human evolution. And that is what critics of Atlas Shrugged fear with all the essence of their being.

The world of President Obama is based on old technology of an emerging third world county, such as where the United States is headed under the Obama types.

As I’ve seen from the mountaintop the future of America can and should be this:

The future of medicine, forget Social Security and Medicare. Invest in this.

The future of transportation will be this sooner or later. Sooner if we have the guts, later if we allow another country to beat us to it.

The future of food. There is no reason to  under use our land, as we currently are.

And the future of education is not the traditional way.

This is an age of two America’s. The progressive one that will take us toward Europe. And the innovative one that accomplished those railroads across the nation like Obama took credit for, back in a day when the government hadn’t let learned to suck the life out of industry with regulation. It’s up to us all which America will win, because they both can’t co-exist any longer.

Rich Hoffman

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

Put Back a Few Cookies: Lakota Teachers took too many and didn’t leave enough for others

When you were a kid did your mother ever make cookies and put them in a cookie jar, only to have her catch you taking too many? “Now don’t eat all those cookies,” she would have said. “I made those for you, your brothers and sisters and all your friends. If you eat them all there won’t be any for the rest of them.” Well, at Lakota that’s what the teachers have done, they’ve taken too many cookies for themselves, and they’ve told the community through the teachers union that if you want to make us all happy, then you’ll just make more cookies. Problem solved. But the problem isn’t solved, because while we’re making all these cookies, we’re not being productive in other ways, when the reality is that all we need to do is exercise some common sense and fairness.

It is encouraging, yet there is still plenty of room to be skeptical, that the Lakota School Board appears to be looking for some room to gain much ground by voiding the second year of their contract with the teachers union.

The contract was voided because of the following clause: This contract shall become effective on the 1st day of July, 2010 and shall expire on the 30th day of June 2012. Contingent upon the District’s legal ability for the Board President, Treasurer, and Superintendent to sign the R.C. 5705.412 certificate. In the event that the Board Representatives are unable to sign the R.C. 5704.412 certificate the second year of this Agreement then agreed to between the parties related to the second year shall be considered null and void.”

The 412 certificate (see link: http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/5705.412 ) basically says that the District has to declare that it has sufficient revenues to meet its planned expenditures. This is Lakota’s press release: http://www.lakotaonline.com/news.cfm?story=2754

According to the Pulse Journal the move allows the board to void its contract with its teachers’ union, while at the same time, giving it flexibility to create a more sustainable long-term plan for the district, board President Joan Powell said.
“In the past three weeks as this information started coming to us from Columbus, it has become apparent that to maintain the future viability of this district, we need to look deeper than just the proposed budget reductions,” she said.
“Some fundamental changes to the contract are needed, and we have a window of opportunity to do so,” Powell said. “In light of the negative impact of this proposed state budget, we must take that opportunity. Our financial reality today is different than it was last November or last August when we executed this contract.”

Lakota Education Association President Sharon Mays said the union will continue to work cooperatively with the board to find the best solution for students and teachers, but the process now will take longer.

“I’m anxious to see the forecast, because we have not been able to look at it,” she said. “We feel as though we’ve been cooperating and collaborating, and have given up a lot of things in those memorandums of understanding. And to change direction this late in the game — now everything is slowed down.”

Treasurer Jenni Logan said deficit spending next year is expected to be $22 million, up from $13.9 million in 2011.
A $28 million negative cash balance is expected in 2013.

The stress to the budget, Logan said, is coming from three areas: the state is reducing tangible personal property taxes starting next year, Lakota is expecting less money locally, and federal stimulus dollars have gone away.

The $22 million deficit is something that has been a concern for a long time, and it is driven by one primary factor, wages. If you haven’t seen it yet, click here to see the type of wages we’re talking about. It is my sincere hope that the Lakota School Board will take this opportunity to drive those wages down. No other measure will be acceptable because no other budget cutting device will bring costs in line properly taking into account that federal money will not be there and the reductions in the personal property taxes. The days are gone where the teachers union could just blindly demand the incredibly high wages that put us in this trouble to start with.

During this next round of negotiations I proclaim that I will stand behind the school board fully if they’ll not allow the union to dictate terms to our community. I don’t want to hear any threats of any strikes from the teachers union. I don’t want to hear any threats at all. If the teachers of that union truly want to be a part of this community, they’ll dig deep and consider themselves lucky to work in such a nice district. We’re not asking teachers to work for free. But an average wage of over $62K per year is not acceptable. They asked for too much, broke the back of the community in the process, and now it’s time for them to come to the table and give back enough for Lakota to balance its budget. No other measure is acceptable.

For those that just want money, go to another district. Because soon that district will be going through the same problems Lakota is going through. So run from district to district like a thief in the night and collect your money. But for those teachers that want to work for Lakota, and want to be a part of our great community, work with us and we’ll work with you. But don’t even think of a strike or any other public relations stunt. There are people this time that will be there to expose you for what you truly are.

With all this encouragement, I hope that there isn’t some phantom intention to place another levy on the ballot in August or November, because the money isn’t there and such a thing would be incredibly arrogant. Higher taxes in our community in any capacity would be economically devastating in light of the increase in fuel costs, rise and in food costs which is directly influenced from increases in transportation costs. The amount of income that is required to purchase a $250,000 dollar home, which is what most homes cost in the Lakota School District along with the dollar shrinking in value and facing tax increases on their property is prohibitive. The only room for meeting the budget needs comes in reducing the impact of the wage costs of the employees.

The teachers took too many cookies and the community is done making cookies. The teachers need to put some of those cookies back so there’s some left for all the other teachers. Our budget is just under 160 million dollars, not a small amount. So there should be plenty of cookies for everyone. The only reason there’s not is because some teachers took too many cookies, which is robbing others from having a cookie. So do the responsible thing and put the extra cookies back in the cookie jar and play nice teachers union. Don’t be greedy. Don’t be vain. And don’t throw a fit of rage like some child that didn’t get their way. Help our school board balance their budget and do your part to make sure everyone gets along. But more (cookies) taxes, are not the solution.

Rich Hoffman

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

The Cannibals of the United States: Sacrifice the RICH!!!! Save the needy!!

On my way home today I was riding my motorcycle in the pouring rain and listening to the soundtrack to the film Apocalypto on my Ipod. It was a surreal kind of experience that I enjoy a great deal, and the simplicity of a complicated problem made itself known to me through that cryptic music as the rain tried desperately to penetrate the confines of my helmet.

If you’ve studied other cultures, their rise and fall, there are common themes. Visit any ruin of an ancient civilization and you will see that all those societies bankrupted themselves. They either ran out of water, food, or their currency. Visit Ankor Watt, Chitzen Itza, or any city in Egypt and you’ll see it. Study the past to see your future.

In Mel Gibson’s brilliant film, Apocalypto Gibson showed wonderfully the height of the Mayan Empire and displayed the problems they were having. The Mayans built huge cities, depleted their food supply and built a corrupt hierarchy of politics that sought human sacrifice to appease the mob, and to keep the masses believing that the ruling class held some sort of power with the “gods,” so that society could continue for just a bit longer hoping by some miracle that if they cut off just one more head, or paint their faces just a few more colors so the gods would take mercy on their lives and save them all. In this case the god is Kukulcan. For those of you that don’t know much about history, the main street in Cancun that all the nightclubs are on, is named after that god.

The civilization of Cahokia, just outside of St. Louis, did much the same thing. They had sacrifices which were buried in Mound 72. It is highly likely that this culture along the Mississippi River was trading with the Mayans across the Gulf of Mexico and they had cultural influences on one another. The cultures were remarkably similar resembling the type of societies found in Mesopotamia during the pre-Christian era.
During excavation of Mound 72, a ridge-top burial mound south of Monk’s Mound, archaeologists found the remains of a man in his 40s who was probably an important Cahokian ruler. The man was buried on a bed of more than 20,000 marine-shell disc beads arranged in the shape of a falcon,[16] with the bird’s head appearing beneath and beside the man’s head, and its wings and tail beneath his arms and legs. The falcon warrior or “birdman” is a common motif in Mississippian culture. This burial clearly had powerful iconographic significance. In addition, a cache of sophisticated, finely worked arrowheads in a variety of different styles and materials was found near the grave of this important man. Separated into four types, each from a different geographical region, the arrowheads demonstrated Cahokia’s extensive trade links in North America.
Archeologists recovered more than 250 other skeletons from Mound 72. Scholars believe almost 62 percent of these were sacrificial victims, based on signs of ritual execution, method of burial, and other factors. The skeletons include:
• Four young males, missing their hands and skulls.
• A mass grave of more than 50 women around 21 years old, with the bodies arranged in two layers separated by matting.

• A mass burial containing 40 men and women who appear to have been violently killed. The suggestion has been made that some of these were buried alive: “From the vertical position of some of the fingers, which appear to have been digging in the sand, it is apparent that not all of the victims were dead when they were interred – that some had been trying to pull themselves out of the mass of bodies.”
The relationship of these burials to the central burial is unclear. It is unlikely that they were all deposited at the same time. Wood in several parts of the mound has been radiocarbon-dated to between 950 and 1000 CE. Check out more about this from this article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahokia

Many people don’t even know that Cahokia is even there in the middle of the United States. It’s the giant hill alongside the highway on the way into St. Louis. You can see the arch of St. Louis easily from the ruins of Cahokia, yet people don’t know much about the ancient city. In fact, Cahokia wasn’t even discovered until developers tried to build a neighborhood over it. I wrote a screenplay about the place for some financial people a few years ago and we had an actress and a director, but the whole thing fell apart in pre-production. But here was the conception teaser for it. The history that I speak about is real. The modern aspect of it is fiction.

So why am I talking about cultures declining and human sacrifice? Well, listen to Porter Stansberry talk to Doc Thompson on 700 WLW. We’re doing the same thing now as those collapsing civilizations did then. We are in a state of decline. The mob you saw in the Apocalypto clip is the poor, the welfare recipients, the union workers in the modern-day. The chants are the same. If you go back and watch the clip from Apocalypto you’ll see their union ancestors chanting at the bottom of the pyramid where the high priest is basically saying the same thing that President Obama is saying now. And who is being sacrificed…..who are getting their heads cut off. The people who produce.

In a culture like the United States it is the producers that are being sacrificed through regulation, taxes, Federal red tape. New inventions are being restricted out of fairness. New medical technology is being held back so government can pursue Obama Care.

Education reform is being held back by the corrupt unions that are only trying to protect the jobs of the teachers, forget about the effectiveness on the children. It is new ideas and the producers who create them that are lined up on the great pyramid steps waiting to have their heads cut off to appease a mob of fools.

We are told that the dollar is fine, because Obama and his gang of union thugs are running Washington. Who believes that? Our government can’t even agree on what to cut out of our federal budget, because we as a civilization are paying for everything, Planned Parenthood, which should be for profit, NPR, which should have always been for profit, Social Security which should work more like a 401K and be privatized, Medicare that has more corruption than most countries can endure just on that issue alone, and needs a major overhaul.

All cultures that failed went through these steps. In fact, at Cahokia they had a thing called Woodhenge, which was a bunch of logs stuck in the ground in a circle just to the west of Monks Mound, on the East St. Louis side of the ruin. The only function of that artifact was to convince the mob that the high priests could predict the sun rise, the spring and winter equinox, and other astrological observations. The intent was to prove that they “the ruling class” had mastery over the “heavens.” All they really did was make observations, and that’s all our current ruling class of fools is doing, making observations that they sell to us as mastery over economics.

On the other hand there are people like Porter Standsberry out there that are “really” looking at the real problems coming to our culture, and people like Porter are the kind of people our government wants to cut their head off in human sacrifice, figuratively speaking of course.

All cultures that believe in sacrifice, and most agriculturally based societies do to some extent or another is limited in their vision, and leaders of those cultures should be removed immediately. Because in the world of productivity, there is no limit, only in the capacity of machinery, or manpower, but demand can be infinite. Sacrifice to the “gods” whether literal or to economic gods is foolish and short-sighted.

I saw a sign over the weekend from a woman protesting the government cuts saying “don’t cut down the economic recovery.” It is amazing that people like that are out there, that they believe there is enough money, that the recovery we are having is somehow created by government and not business owners that have decided that now that there are Republicans running a branch of government, they are investing back in business again. The woman holding that sign is no different from that mob of Mayans chanting for more blood at the foot of a giant pyramid. And the high priest will be all too happy to appease the mob so long as there are sacrificial bodies. The same type of signs are being held by people protesting S.B.5. “Keep collective bargaining.” There’s that word……collective. That is one of the most evil words in the English language, disguised as an angel, but doing the work of the devil.

For society to thrive, the rich should be encouraged and not penalized. Those less fortunate should be pushed to work not just given a check.

A few years ago I walked the streets of Washington D.C. and was about to head into a McDonalds to get a bite to eat. A beggar asked me for some change. He was sitting outside of McDonalds right next to a “Help Wanted” sign. I asked him if he had applied for a job. He ignored me and asked a woman who walked by, which she gave freely with a polite smile. The man had lost his pride and allowed himself to be a beggar. There was a job opportunity right behind him, but he’d rather plead to the high priest for the blood of another, which the priest will always be willing to oblige. There’s no shortage of those types of people, power-hungry and craving to stand on the top of a pyramid and cut off the head of sacrificial victims.

Taxes are a form of sacrifice, property taken from those that have, and given to those that have not. It’s not the head of the sacrificial victim, but it is still their property. Estate Taxes are along the same lines, when a person dies, their property, “part of their living essence and history on earth” is taken by government and handed out to the vicious mob.

Sacrifice is the kind of behavior that will only take us in one direction. And it won’t be the way of success. Clinging to old, sacrificial activity, like high taxation, cumbersome education methods, and a stifling environment that fears competition from new technology will destroy our civilization and leave us all as just one more ruin in the history of the world. That is, unless we can take our civilization back from the looters, the high priests, and other derelicts that act as a cancer upon it.

What a bunch of idiots………..

Oh, and while some may say that Mel Gibson is crazy, hey, Mel has done crazy things with women for years. He cheated on his wife, drank heavily, and was generally a wreck of a person for many years, and the media covered it up just like they do George Clooney and Robert Downey Jr. But, Mel’s a great artist and a great director. It was after he made The Passion of Christ, then Apocalypto that Hollywood turned against him. If he hadn’t made The Passion, Hollywood and the press that feeds it would still be making excuses for his behavior. That’s the world we’re living in people. The high priests with all their fancy headdresses want the mob to believe they are gods! God forbid someone like Gibson comes along and shows the truth of something. Is that acceptable to you?

It’s not to me.

Rich Hoffman

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

The War Already Started: Unions took the first shot!

The OEA (Ohio Education Association) is pushing to have portions of their members checks deducted so they can raise money to fight Senate Bill 5! One of the reasons the unions wish to make sure their members are so well compensated, at our expense, is so those members won’t blink when it comes time for payroll deductions to fight political battles against taxpayers.

It was not people like me that drew the line in the sand and started this war of larger government versus smaller government. Public worker against private worker. Freedom lover against the progressive. People like me were just living our lives, working hard, and acquiring property which is the staple of American life. There is no shame in that. Owning something is commitment to it. And without commitment, it is only human to witness neglect, because without ownership, neglect is the result. It is not people like me that decided that violence, coercion and political manipulation were acceptable practices. It was them.

Yet this is what unions have brought to our nation. I know firsthand the fights that happened in parking lots and bathrooms of manufacturing facilities. I have been guilty of spilling blood from attackers in labor only to have the police turn their backs to the violence because they secretly endorsed it. The cause of that violence, because I wanted to work at 100% efficiency when the union wanted to keep the rate at 50% unless more pay or overtime were given. I have seen firsthand the violence given to “scabs” that cross a picket line, only to be beaten beyond recognition and hospitalized for weeks. I have seen anti-union people in management attacked at their homes or employees friendly to management terrorized in ways that if the same happened to the black population, racism would be screamed collectively from the entire nation. The battle lines of organized labor have been one of violence with the intent of forcing more money to their pockets. It is simple extortion.

I know of stories from the early days of Warner Brothers, where members of the filmmaking community established the parameters still felt to this day, where cars were overturned outside of the Warner Brothers gate by cameramen, set designers and other production support personnel all in the quest for obtaining “property,” in the form of money. They seek to take it from someone else with the threat of violence, which is no different from a bully taking lunch money from some poor kid on a school playground. The intent is the same.

And things have not changed. A 26-year-old woman named Katherine R. Windels was charged with two felony counts and two misdemeanor counts for allegedly making email threats against Wisconsin lawmakers during the height of the battle over Gov. Scott Walker’s budget-repair bill.

She thought it was perfectly acceptable to send a letter to GOP lawmakers threatening to kill them and their families. For every person like her that does such an unspeakable thing, there are thousands, if not millions that are thinking about it. It’s part of the union culture. They are a threatening species intent on taking property from some and giving it to themselves.

In 2008 the LEA, the Lakota Education Association threatened to walk out on the kids they taught on a chilly October evening, for one reason, to obtain higher wages. The school board gave them what they wanted to keep the school open. Two years later in March of 2010, the LEA again initiated the threat of a strike, which forced the school board to quietly attempt to sign a contract over health insurance benefits while passing an operating levy to deal with the step increases forced from the last strike attempt. In August, the union announced they were taking a pay freeze to work with the district while attempting to pass another school levy. But the whole thing was smoke and mirrors. From 2010 to 2011 the top wage earners at Lakota, those making over 65K per year increased payroll to those employees by 15 million dollars all the while pretending to be on the “pay freeze.” Last year there were 434 employees making over 65K per year. This year there’s 625. That’s an increase of 191 employees that broke that barrier. Why, the threat of a strike. The union leadership would argue with the school board over every little thing so to frighten them from even considering arguing about a large issue, like wages. The intent is to take property and give to the union membership and to prevent anyone from questioning the motive.  (Notice in the chart below, the bottom line is what everyone else felt by way of CPI.  The top number is the amount that the LEA increased their own wages.  Notice the level off period in 2005.  That was during the levy attempt that year that took four times to pass.  Once it finally passed, look how the wages took off)

In Lebanon Schools we’ve seen the superintendent there make deals with the union openly violating Ohio’s sunshine law which states that interest of such a magnitude should be discussed in the open with the taxpayers that fund the whole business. Instead he along with the entire school board went into executive session to pass the union contracts. Why, because they fear the union more than the taxpayer, because it’s not the tax payer that threatens their comfort level. It’s not the tax payer that is turning over cars, vandalizing homes, and cars, or threatening physical violence to people who stand in their way. It’s not the tax payer that is threatening to strike and leave the entire school a lifeless entity full of kids but no teachers. It’s not the taxpayers that are sending death threats to law makers, so the tax payer gets screwed while the unions take all the money.

That’s what we’re dealing with here, violent thugs that have driven up their wages through pure extortion. And now they want to repeal S.B.5 so they can continue this game against the tax payer. Of course they are upset. They make good money that was earned with blood and violence, most of it they shed from others, and some of it they shed themselves. They like that government fears them. They like that the public avoids them so that the sham can continue. They want things to continue as they have. They have so far dictated everything and conceded nothing and it shows in their wages. It’s not inflammatory to say such a thing. It is a fact, the records are public, all one has to do is look at them. Well, look at them!   The chart below is an example of Lakota’s LEA and how they pushed up their salaries as opposed to the actual growth and consumer price index.  Notice they are way above the CPI. 

My purpose with these articles is to share with others what I have done all my life, so that they can take from it what they will and possibly adapt their own methods for dealing with the parasites that feed off all of us. I have no desire to avoid labels of “radical” or “brutal” in reference to my personality. I don’t care if I’m liked, or if I’m popular. I have no desire for public office. I have no desire for social acceptance. I care not to be a leader of the Tea Party. The leader of the Lakota School Levy. I care not who is leading the fight against the Lebanon Levy, the Mason Levy, S.B.5. I lend my help to all those groups because I lead myself and am firm in my own convictions and at the end of the day I have my books and I only care what they think of me. So I will not give unions and other government thugs what they ask for, and that’s the silent endorsement of complacency which gives them to power to rob us in the light of day. I will not make excuses for the conditions that allow the unions to think they have a right to exist, because I don’t support their right to any legal justification. They can have a club meeting in their back yard just like masons, or the Boy Scouts of America, because their value is just as important to me. They are just a bunch of silly people locked arm and arm advocating a “collective” society.

Now, I know what you’re thinking union thug. You’re thinking, “this guy needs his ass kicked, that’ll teach him.” Well, to you I say, join the long list of those that have tried. See there is a mathematical formula that dictates that a guy like me will always beat thousands of you and there is nothing in the laws of physics that falls in your favor. You only have power in a collective group shouting and screaming, and you have that power because you lack personal courage.

As I mentioned I used to be vice-president of a motorcycle club in Ohio. I know many hard-core bikers and gang leaders. I understand their thinking, and I like many of them, up to a point. That point ends when they call me “brother.” “I’m not your brother,” I’ll tell them. “I’ll wave to you as we pass each other on the open road, but I am not your brother. Just because we share a love of motorcycles, that doesn’t make us bothers.” I always get an odd look, but I don’t care. The reason is that saying the word brother affirms some sort of fraternity, which I find disgusting. It’s a collective identification, and that collective identification leads to a weakness of the heart.

One year I spent several months filming a documentary for an independent film company about motorcycle riders when I came to the realization that many of the bikers I liked so much belonged to a union of some kind and that collective mentality merged with the independence of riding motorcycles. They had this desire to ride in packs, and this drove me crazy, because it seems to me anti-American. So I dropped the project, because I could not truly show that motorcycle riders were the embodiment of a true American spirit, which I wanted to believe. Too many of them subjected themselves to collectivism. The group rides and motorcycle gangs were simply too similar to the kind of behavior seen in unions, which is not a pillar for which the United States is built. The country is not built by such fools. It is used by them. It is built by the individual and the individual’s ability to employ those people to some sense of direction.

Collectivism is weakness, and that is why the man, or woman who can stand on their own principles, are kings of their own internal kingdoms, and look in the mirror each day and like what looks back. Those types of people will beat those in collective societies one hundred percent of the time. The reason for the defeat of those in the collective as opposed to the individual is the individual that is secure in themselves find they are free of guilt. Guilt is what the collective uses to gain footing in people’s lives. And when you consider the strategy of unions they start with guilt. “Don’t you want the kids to succeed?” “Don’t you want your community to be safe?” “Don’t you want to pay the firefighter, because they run into danger when you run away?” They use the guilt that they calculate is sure to be there because we are all trained to feel guilt, and guilt is the pathway to the collective mind.

If guilt doesn’t work, then it’s violence, and the intention behind the violence is to make someone internally feel guilt for not standing up to the thugs, to hide from the disgrace and push it from their minds. That is why the public has thrown money for years at these people, to hide the guilt of their cowardly acts from themselves.

So it was not the tax payer that started this battle. It is a battle for all the reasons listed. The violence was started by the unions a century ago, and they’ve done to the tax payer what the progressive proclaims the United States did to the Native American, they encroached and broke treaty after treaty and pushed the Indian off their land inch by inch because they could. Because the Indian naively believed in honor and respect and they found themselves defeated repeatedly. Just as the tax payer does. The unions do not care for honor. They do not care for respect. They use collective might as their weapon of force to strike fear in the hearts of the human population seeking to expose the guilt they are sure to reside deep in our consciousness. And to cover that guilt with more money.

So remember that the violence inflicted is not just an attack on our personal sovereignty, but an attack on our very beings, because the attempt to is to inflict upon us guilt that if not felt in our compassion for children, or the safety of mankind, it will be the guilt of our own fear to act against the violence committed upon us. And that is the battle that they initiated and it is our task to defeat it in the greater war.

The first battle of that war was fought long ago, and many of us didn’t even know it was going on. We went to dinner with our families, to the movies with our significant others and followed the latest sports scores while these thieves robbed us under the cover of legality. Now that we know it’s a war that requires our attention, the first battle we’ve won was the S.B.5 Bill, and we must work hard to keep that ground, because there is much more of that ground that must be taken in order to return our nation to the healthy state that is required for the times we live in on planet earth.

So what do you think the unions will spend that money deducted from union member paychecks on? Manipulating the voting public and convincing people to tax themselves so the unions can protect the stranglehold they have on our political system. That is a fight that must be taken back to those that initiated it, and defeat must be in their horizon and retribution for years of looting against us all must be rectified.

Rich Hoffman

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

SALARIES ARE TOO DAMN HIGH: The public sector is out of control; the legacy of collective bargaining

A crime has been committed among all tax payers. We have been told by unions that we must support our firefighters and police without question as to the actual costs, because of safety, and a sense of righteous duty. We must support our teachers because we want to save our children’s future without actually looking at why the budgets are so expensive, and what they are actually learning. We have been played by our own guilt into a scam of epic proportions, a shell game that is the direct result of “collective bargaining.”

Doc Thompson discusses this vile evil on 700 WLW. It’s an evil topic because the perpetrators having knowingly committed the crime, no different from selling someone a car knowing the transmission would go out on the buyer 1 mile down the road. Is that a crime, to knowingly commit deceptive practices against someone else? Yes, because the taking of taxes is a theft no different from a robber that held you at gunpoint and said, “give me your money or I’ll shoot.” “Pass this levy to protect our kids.” Pass this levy police levy for ‘protection.’” The ethical standard is the same, because my question is, “or else what?” Why does the implication that more money means better service even come into play? My experience is that money does not always get you the best employees, so why do people think that more money gives us anything of value? The reason is that public employees have knowingly lied to the tax payers, manipulated them using emotion, in order to secure outrageous salaries for themselves without any care for the sustainability of the tax revenue system. It is greed at its absolute worst.

I’ll use the Lakota School District as an example because it’s my school district that I pay direct taxes to, but it is beyond reason that Lakota has over 625 employees that make over 65K per year.  No private business could be so irresponsible with their payroll and expect to survive, yet government workers just expect taxes to increase to pay for their unrealistic expectations. I pay a reasonable sum of taxes to them, and like everything I spend my money on, I expect performance. When I spend more than $50 on anything I inquire about the value of the task. When I spend thousands, the same kind of money I might spend on a new car, a new television, a high-end computer, or a trip to Europe, I will look closely at the situation, and when people waste my money I get angry. When they lie to me I become furious, and even vindictive. Because lying to me is not acceptable. Manipulating me is not acceptable. Attempting to ruin my community is not acceptable.

It’s not inflammatory to say such things. It’s calling the situation for what it is. What has to happen is America has to shrink its government, and you start that shrinking government in our local communities. The list that Doc is talking about needs to be reduced by about 2/3rds of what it is. Management control must be given back to “management.” It is abysmal that Bill Cunningham, Bill Seitz, and Sheriff Jones and these types of people even endorse collective bargaining. The Sheriff I understand because he’s a “cop.” But other conservatives that support such things are out of their mind, and have largely contributed to the debacle we are looking at. It’s corrupt…….it’s corrupt because we’re paying people too much for a government that is too big and inefficient. We’ve made our management systems in government to be inbred, inefficient and completely useless, especially with the presence of public sector unions. And it won’t get any better just leaving things as they have been.

We can expect a major fight this fall over repealing S.B.5. Every one of the government people making these extraordinary salaries will show up to vote. The rest of us won’t be so motivated, unless they understand what’s at stake. If we keep S.B.5 we’ll be on the march to drive these terrible government costs down, and we’ll be able to get control of the situation. If the unions and public workers get the bill repealed, then we’ll go bankrupt within a few years. That is a certainty. The people running things are not smart enough to regulate themselves. So it will take people with real management control to step into local government on a “volunteer” basis and actually lead. But the power-hungry people who want a big desk and a name plate need to go. Those people who have achieved nothing in their lives but an elected office by using fancy, manipulative words and must be removed, because those employees are ineffective and way too expensive.

This is a fight. Don’t kid yourself that it’s not. We are in a different kind of war, not one with guns, that is counted in casualties. But one of laws, one of money, and one counted in submission to new controls. One of those controls is high taxes and high taxes will kill American society, and there are MANY that want that. Some of those insurgents lead these unions. Many that serve in office and fund those campaigns, are at war with us. Call it that! I no longer have the patience for the enormous smallness of these self-inflated ego driven fools such as senator Schumer at the federal level, and big time progressives like what we had in Governor Strickland at the state level. They have created the system we are seeing clearly for the first time, that big government costs big money, and leads to incremental losses of freedom with every new law passed to give that big government some reason to exist.

The incredibly high wages in the public sector are a power grab which lures complacent soldiers with comfortable wages who gladly look the other way while the taxpayers are spent into oblivion. It has nothing to do with fairness, or actual rights. It is all about money, and using that money to purchase the souls of the complacent public worker to the demise of everything we trust.

The salaries of public workers are TOO DAMN HIGH. And it’s time we put an end to it before it’s too late.

Rich Hoffman

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

Pay Rate for the top 625 Teachers at Lakota Schools: Yes, the number grew!

Below is the 2011 Lakota Salary list, an update from the famous list exposed on 700 WLW just 6 months ago where everyone that heard the information was disgusted, upset, and compelled to take their anger to the voting booth. If you want to look at that list again and compare it with the one below click here. And remember, Lakota has not hired another superintendent as of this writing. So there is no superintendent on the new list.

What you will see will anger you much more than that. In fact, I have been paying close attention to this issue for over a year now and when I realized the severity of the issue I became furious.

A brief synopsis of the information is this. Last year I listed the top income recipients who made over 65K per year, which came out to 434 employees, which I thought was a lot. This year, even taking off the superintendent, who resigned one week after the original list came out, the amount of employees escalated 625 employees! That means that in just one year, when supposedly teachers took a pay freeze in August of 2010, 191 more employees broke past the 65K per year barrier and became a top wage earner just because of the step increases demanded by the union contract. Last year 120 million of Lakota’s operating budget of 160 million went to just salaries and wages. Of that 120 million $31,900,416.00 went to these wonderful employees making over 65K per year. I thought that was a lot. This year, that number exploded to $47,548,105.00! An increase in salary wages of $15,647,689.00. That does not include all increases in wages, just the wages for employees making more than 65K per year! The total amount of money saved in the emergency budget reductions for 2011 which is causing layoffs, busing cuts, elective elimination, pay for play sports, etc is $13 million. Lakota spent more money on the step increases on just the employees making over 65K per year than it will save cutting all the services mentioned to save a measly $13 million. If Lakota could have stopped the step increases they could have kept all the services, teachers would have still been paid well, and nobody would have lost their jobs. But that’s not what happened is it?

When a school district complains that it does not have enough money to operate the answer is not a tax increase to close the gap. In most cases, it is not the revenue that is declining, because the community is not taking its money away from a school system, unless they move out of the district and take their tax dollars with them. When the state, or federal government takes away their contributions, as they should, it should not be expected that a local district increase their taxes to cover the cost.

The expectation that such a thought is even a possibility is a serious flaw in the thinking of school districts that have turned education into their own “cash cow” business.

Any businessman looking at the budget of Lakota Schools would look at the operating budget of 155 million to 160 million dollars, see that the expenses are projecting higher than supplied revenue and would make the needed cuts to bring costs in line. And the very first thing that would be looked at is wages, because most often that is the greatest expense in a budget, especially in a service oriented business like education.

As I look at that list there are a few teachers that I think are worth 70K to 80k per year. But only a few. I would argue that a school district should be able to pay a few of their very best and most prestigious teachers a wage of this kind. But to pay EVERYONE with tenure that amount is ridiculously prohibitive, ignorant, reckless, selfish, and misguided.

Before any district asks for a levy from the community, they should reduce their wage costs. This does not allow those districts to perform at a lower level. A district must reflect the community it’s in, and in the land of Lakota, it is expected to be as excellent as the community that the school resides in. Unfortunately for the union personnel that have managed to extort these outrageous wage levels for their members, the community of Lakota, many of them run their own businesses, or manage businesses, and must make decisions as the school board is required to make.

The top wage earners shown here are what should be looked at before there is a levy of any kind. These positions should be consolidated eliminating personnel wherever possible. If it is decided that those personnel are absolutely essential to education operations, then these are the people who should take a 30% wage cut, because they are well above the average wage of residence of the affluent Lakota School District, and these amounts are just plain malicious.

Now, is there any question as to why we need Senate Bill 5? And is it not obvious what the unions are protecting?

Rich Hoffman

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

The Betrayal of Rock Ribbed Republicans: The faces behind the mask.

If Rock Ribbed Republicans such as what has been said about Senators like Bill Seitz are truly conservatives, then it is no wonder that our budgets are so out of control in government. If Seitz represents the best and most responsible of our state representatives then we’re in a lot of trouble.

I listened in disbelief to Bill Seitz on the Bill Cunningham show while the two of them spoke about how unfair S.B.5 is to the public worker. Cunningham has declared himself a supporter of the Tea Party and takes pride in the fact that he has spoken at rallies for the Tea Party. Yet his views, and policies are bewilderingly in support of big government, this coming from a man who has declared for over 20 years that Clinton is a fool, made a lot of fame calling John McCain and Bob Taft too liberal, big government politicians and is one of the first to call President Obama by his full name, Barrack Hussein Obama, so to remind Americans of Obama’s Muslim pride. Between these two men I heard two firm, establishment Republicans that love the old way of politics and can’t see the hard things that must be done to bring our government under control.

I was suspicious of Willie when he came out in support of the Lakota School Levy. Part of me understood that he was making a sound business decision, because it was well-known that Lakota administrators and teachers were threatening to boycott any business that didn’t support a school levy. Willie owning a sports bar in West Chester wouldn’t want bad things to happen to his business, and I understand. But I was disappointed when he came out openly on the air in favor of the levy right before the election. It seems that people like him are so in love with public education sports and all the ornaments of education that he is willing to overlook all the obvious problems surrounding education funding. At 10K per child who in their right mind wouldn’t understand that if you spend that much money on education, yet don’t see the results in the children, that something must be done and tax increases are not acceptable. Anyone that owns a business, and Willie does, knows that he could not afford to pay dishwashers, waitresses, cooks and hostesses $20 dollars an hour, because it would destroy his labor costs. He’d have to increase the price of his meals to pay for the wages. Yet from him, it seems acceptable to allow teachers, police and firefighters to make infinite amounts of money, because all you have to do to pay for it is to raise taxes. I can understand that people like Willie are in need of lots of police services and firefighters. I mean Willie is a guy that got stuck on his roof a few years ago, and could not get down on his own. So people like that represent a certain helplessness among people who will always vote for more and more safety personnel to save them from themselves, so their views are corrupted with their weaknesses.

But worst of all is Bill Seitz. Here is a guy that I watched stand on the steps of the capital building and demand Governor Strickland show leadership. He has over a decade in the state house and is considered a hard-core Republican. Yet, he believes that management should not be in charge of their costs. What is the purpose of management if not to regulate costs? The unions and management in the public sector are not equal, as he insists it should be!

This is troubling because people like me don’t even recognize the right of the unions to exist. If public money is involved, no union should be in place. If a private company wants one, and can afford one, they can have them. I can vote by buying a product from those businesses or not. But with pubic sector unions, I don’t have a choice. I don’t have a choice but to support a teachers union, which asks for too much. I don’t have a choice but to support a FOP organization, which will lobby to put more cops on the street than we need, and they’ll seek to justify themselves by setting up DUI checkpoints and speed traps. It’s a corrupt, bad system and I don’t want ANY of my money to go to a public union! PERIOD!!! End of the story! If those employees don’t want to work under those conditions, don’t take a public job. Now, people like the Senator and many media outlets that just accept blindly this whole idea that unions and management should coexist in some way, will call my views radical, or extreme right-winged. Those people are naive fools and have helped perpetuate this whole system of costly formalities that only serve to drive up costs to communities.

I listened to Seitz and Willie, both men seem intelligent, work in law, yet can’t grasp the basic principle that unions are a creation of people who occurred well after the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of Ohio. Those Constitutions were also the creation of people which we have all sworn to live by. Unions were not agreed by all. They just grew like weeds in a garden that nobody picked which rob the fruit of our labor from proper nourishment. They are an accident that should have never happened and were born of bribes and complacency, by people like Seitz that gave them credibility and lawyers like Willie that defended their right to exist. Such crimes as these are obviously difficult for them to admit in these late years of their life, because such an admission is simply too introspective. An admission would mean that everything they had built their lives around for over 50 years would be rooted in some small little corruption where deals were made at the expense of the public, and they played their part to a deep inner shame.

It must be terrible to view the world with such warped glasses so as to distort the true vision that is before us all. I can only speak for myself, I am glad that I am not corrupted with such distortions. It may be considered extreme by those that wish to see the warped fantasy of their lives and believe they have behaved ethically, but I am happy to have seen such weeds of thought for what they are, a corruption created from ineptitude and justified by the weak which chose to disguise their cowardly behavior with a shroud of conservatism when at their core they are no better than the collectivist oriented liberal.

That is why they don’t understand the intent behind S.B.5 and wherever they look they see “unfairness” because they are the types that find themselves stuck on the roofs of their homes needing help to climb down. It’s easy to talk tough and proclaim that one is a lover of freedom and propionate of self-reliance. It is easy to stand in front of a crowd and say we need a smaller government. But it is hard when you take money yourself or find yourself defending something that is inheritably wrong, because you have a past that benefited from that wrong, and chose to hide those evils behind patriotism. Those are the worst kind of people because they are never what they seem. Out one side of their mouth comes one thing, but out the other comes the despicable.

Rich Hoffman

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

All I Want For My Birthday!

When S.B.5 was signed by Governor Kasich on Thursday March 31st I received one of the two gifts that I wanted more than anything for my birthday this year. S.B.5 because it showed me that there are people able to have courage and a backbone functioning at a political level committed to putting power back to the communities, to “decentralize” government. That’s what S.B.5 does. Darryl Parks of 700 WLW interviewed Mike Wilson of the Cincinnati Tea Party and Ohio Liberty Council about the multiple benefits of the S.B.5 Bill and the strategy of the referendum attempt. There are a lot of wonderful facts here that are worth listening to even after the Wilson interview.

The other thing I want for my birthday is for the government to shut down on April 8th, the day before my actual birthday. The reason? Because I want people to see how little the government actually does? I don’t want to see people’s lives be interrupted, but I do want to show that American life will continue without the government functioning. For those of us that want a smaller government, people need to see that the government is not essential to American life. In fact, it is a hindrance. And only a government shut-down will show that.

I want to see the Republicans hold a hard line to the budget, much like Kasich did in Ohio. The budget cuts proposed by the house, senate, and the president aren’t even in the ballpark as to what’s required. For the Democrats to only propose 8 or 10 billion isn’t even in the realm of reality. They are clueless parasites with that type of thinking. It’s not even worth discussion. One has to wonder if they didn’t land here from some other planet, because they are so out of touch. Again, listen to Darryl Parks of 700 WLW talk about just how much in debt the government truly is and how utterly ridiculous the cuts the current government is proposing.

I want to see Republicans do the right thing. To hell with the public relations, the public opinion, the traditional politics all together, those are the very things that have nearly ruined our society and they need to end.

I want the media to proclaim that the world will come to an end. I want Democrats to cry for all the dead and sick that will fill the streets, for the apocalypse that is sure to ensue. Then I want the American people to see what a lie the whole thing was. I want for my birthday to show the world that America doesn’t need a large government and that it can shut down, go on vacation, actually set up shop on the moon, and life will go on in America.

I already received one present. Now if I could just have the second.

Surprise me!

Rich Hoffman

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

S.B.5 Passes: The “GOOD” of Money! What’s missing in our culture.

Congratulations to all those who passed Senate Bill 5 late in the night on Wednesday March 30, 2011. Your good work will always be remembered.


To the foolish looter’s……………there is only one passage I know from all of literature to describe my anger at your short-sighted rhetoric and I will quote it after these two statements I read in the paper. Among that rhetoric, is the belief that money is somehow free and easy to get, and that only the greedy rich are sitting on piles of money, that if removed could be taken by all and shared. People who believe such things have no idea what the “good of money” even means. So I will draw from literature to provide a definition that every American should be required to read in high school. That quote is listed below.


But first, meet a couple of looters, as described in the literature quote.

• Rep. Connie Pillich, D-Montgomery, said: “I am disappointed that my colleagues across the aisle voted against having the bill read in its entirety…. It undercuts veterans and attacks the middle class. It is unconstitutional and is public policy at its worst.”

• Rep. Denise Driehaus, D-West Price Hill, said, “As a Catholic, I strongly believe we have an obligation to respect the dignity of all workers. We also have a duty to protect their right to organize so they are able to collectively work to ensure justice and dignity in their workplace.’’

The reality of what S.B.5 is can be seen here in this video. This is what the “education establishment,” and that includes politicians, union leaders as well as teachers and superintendents, are afraid of.

Those two representatives truly represent a portion of our society that has become everything warned about in the passage below from Ayn Rand on the good of money.

More and more, Rand’s work comes to my mind as I see what is going on in the world around us. When you ask the obvious question, “Why are people so foolish,” only literature provides an explanation. Not TV. Not music or any popular form of entertainment. No Hollywood actor or politician, nobody has any real answers. Only Literature, because in literature, the proper amount of time is given to an idea, and the blank page is there to hear it. And in Ayn Rand’s case, time has proven her 100% correct in all aspects over half a century.

To quote the passage, the following comes from a character in Atlas Shrugged who is at a wedding party attended by very powerful people. The speech is given when questioned about the evil of money, and those that make it.

“So you think that money is the root of all evil?” Said Francisco d” Anconia. “Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

“When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor—your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?

“Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions—and you’ll learn that man’s mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

“But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made—before it can be looted or mooched—made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced.

“To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss—the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery—that you must offer them values, not wounds—that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade—with reason, not force, as their final arbiter—it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability—and the degree of man’s productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

“But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality—the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

“Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he’s evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with purpose, if he’s evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with the money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats of the frauds come flocking to him drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

“Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth—the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

“Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men’s vices or men’s stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment’s or a penny’s worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you’ll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?

“Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

“Or did you say it’s the love of money that’s the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It’s the person who would well his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money—and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.

“Run for you life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another—their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

“But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich—will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt—and of his life, as he deserves.

“Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard—the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money—the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals and the statues are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law—men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims—then money becomes its creator’s avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob the defenseless men, once they’ve passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then the society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

“Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion—when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing—when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors—when you see that men get you against them, but protect them against you—when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice—you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as a half-property, half-loot.

“Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: ‘Account overdrawn.”

“When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, ‘Who is destroying the world?’ You are.

“You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it’s crumbling around you, while you’re damning its life-blood—money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men’s history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves—slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody’s mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers—as industrialists.

“To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money—and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man’s mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being—the self-made man—the American industrialist.

If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose—because it contains all the others—the fact that they were the people who created the phrase ‘to make money.’ No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity—seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words ‘to make money’ hold the essence of human morality.

“Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters’ continents. Now the looters’ credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialist, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide—as, I think, he will.

“Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns—or dollars. Take your choice—there is no other—and your time is running out.”

Ayn Rand 1957

Feel free to print that and read it again and again and again until it makes sense. It is the state of our nation, and it speaks about the very things we must fix immediately, or we’ll lose it forever. With all that said, S.B.5 will take these steps to begin the march back to a system of value, where looters and moochers no longer establish the precedents of financial flow.

What Senate Bill 5 will do:
• Makes public employee strikes illegal.

• Generally restricts the topics on which unions can bargain to wages. Police, firefighters, nurses and other public workers may still bargain for safety equipment.

• Eliminates step raises or automatic raises based on years of experience and years of training.

• Reduces seniority rights. For example, it would prohibit workers from being laid off solely because they are new.

• Bans “fair share’’ fee charged by unions for bargaining-unit members who don’t join the union or pay dues but receive negotiated pay and benefits.

• Eliminates automatic union deductions for political campaigns without employee’s written consent.

It will be up to us now to defend this bill from those same thieves that have now for decades eroded the value we have in virtually every aspect of American life, and return to the stage of concern the true assessment of how good money truly is and what role it has in the greatness of our nation.

Rich Hoffman

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

Creators and Feeders: The blueprint to save America is at your local book store

To those that want to know the answers to everything they are right in front of you. Literature, even though considered a harbor for the liberal arts degree, thus creating just another damn hippie to cast their unproductive concepts of love and peace in a world that is quite the opposite, literature is about truth ultimately. It is in the interpretation of that truth that everything gets distorted.

This is what happened in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which I’ve proclaimed openly, is my favorite book. Zarathustra came down out of the mountains to help “mankind” understand that they can become “better” than just human beings. That’s where the Ubermensch idea comes from translated loosely into English as “the overman.” I learned about Nietzsche reading a lot of Joseph Campbell and was drawn to Nietzsche’s anti-institutional ideas in quotes that littered the massive body of work known as The Masks of God, which is a four volume set that Campbell spent many years writing based on the course he taught at Sara Lawrence College. One thing that Campbell was doing in his comparative mythology work was breaking down the differences between collective societies, such as you find in the east, and individual oriented societies that you find in the Occident, otherwise the west.

Where the west fails, and I’m thinking of Europe in this case is when they attempt to copy the east with their own culture. Somewhere in that attempt progressivism was created, and has been and will always be a disease to the creative power of the individual which propels all society.

There is a reason that you don’t find development in Africa except what the American or European mind brought to it. There is a reason that China spent many years as a stagnate country. They had periods of renaissance, one such period during our European dark ages was quite explosive, but fizzled out only to be reawakened once England handed Hong Kong back to the Chinese in 1999 which they then decided to adopt their culture around which has helped create the renaissance they are currently experiencing. But ultimately collectivism, especially progressivism, is an idea killer that hinders society in terrible ways for the trade-off of social security.

Two bodies of literature jump out at me exhibiting these collectivism warnings. One is A Brave New World, the other is Atlas Shrugged.

I wrote my own book, The Symposium of Justice in 2004, many years before I eventually read Atlas Shrugged myself. I was surprised that Ayn Rand had created similar characters and themes as I did, and she did it over 50 years ago. It might have something to do with the fact that we both studied Nietzsche at some length. I’m thinking particularly of the diner scene, which seemed awfully close to something I did without knowledge of Ayn’s work. The reason? Because truth is truth. There aren’t these degrees of negotiation along some political lines where there are extreme right-winged views or extreme left-winged views and somehow in government these views must be compromised into some stew of thought representing everyone as best as possible. People who seek the truth and find it, come to similar conclusions that cannot be escaped.

Because of my kids, I get to meet a lot of young people, and I must say they are a very disappointing group, bent and distorted around years of progressive thought. I blame progressivism for their foolish behavior, the desire to get “trashed” as they put it, where their right of passage to adulthood is the ability to drink and lose consciousness. That is a pathetic goal. These young people are a soft species robbed of honor because they have been taught to be entirely too sensitive for their own good, indecisive, insecure, raised in broken homes where step parents are a major factor, the whole situation is a mess, and progressive thought is to blame. The most recent catastrophe cast upon the fragile psyche of today’s youth is a thing called Facebook Depression. Listen to Doc Thompson of 700 WLW talk about this mysterious new progressive illness here.

One young boy that my youngest daughter knows lost his job for sleeping and playing on Facebook during his work hours. The kid is a video game wiz so I know there is intelligence there. But he can’t handle basics of reality. For him, it is acceptable to fall off the horse and let the horse keep on running down the path leaving him behind. I feel sorry for the kid because his fundamental belief system will prevent him from seeing the truth of the reasons he continues to fail. You could sit the kid down and scream at him and it would be no different from yelling at a dog that wants to please you, but can only wag its tail or drop its ears, completely unable to understand what you’re trying to tell it.

This kid is just a product of progressivism. I don’t blame him as much as I feel pity, much like I feel pity of an insect that falls into a swimming pool and struggles to free itself, hoping a kind hand lifts it from the water before it drowns. There are millions upon millions of these kids functioning in the world today, most of them completely lost by adults that are just as lost. This is the result of progressivism. Progressives seek a level of fairness that is not earned, but is perceived as a right, which it’s not.

The world is built by people who produce. It is very simple. There is no room for interpretation or negotiation on that simple fact. There are those who create. Then there are those that feed off that creation. The trouble always occurs when those that feed off creation take too much, or stand in the way of that creation. And the problem with modern society is that we don’t create enough, and those that do create keep it to themselves so they can avoid the problems with progressive thought.

Ayn Rand’s book has been out there for everyone to read for a great number of years. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel here. When a congressman or senator says to the Speaker of the House, “you need to abandon the tea party,” they just don’t get it. They are as foolish as the young person I told you about that think something is going to fall out of the sky and somehow fix his life if only he drinks one more drink, or goes to school and gets a degree for a job that doesn’t exist. It is only by getting down in the mud and fighting, and creating a new job that anything happens. The tea party knows what Ayn Rand knew 50 years ago, that progressive thought will kill your country.

She wrote Atlas Shrugged at a time that socialism hadn’t failed yet. In fact, there was a real threat that the Soviet Union might overtake the United States and its capitalist ways. When Ronald Reagan took the gloves off for a bit in the 80’s, we saw how rapidly capitalism could work, and how quickly socialism failed. Reagan’s strategy worked and proved Ayn Rand correct. Now, in hind-sight we have the benefit to go back to her work and admire how she arrived at truthful conclusions that are truly American in their context. The critics talk about the 80’s as a selfish age, which ironically is explored in great detail in Atlas Shrugged from all angles. Selfish or terms like it are cast from those in the progressive camp, from their distorted perspective corrupted by a sense of entitled fairness which does not exist anywhere in the universe because the laws of physics prohibit such a preposterous notion.

One element in that book that haunts me is the discovery of a new type of engine built by a genius that turns his back on the world in a way because he knows that the world as it is designed through progressive thought will reject new ideas because all new ideas threaten the security of people. This engine runs off strictly static electricity. It would never need fuel, oil or any other element. It would run along the same premise that lightning is generated in the atmosphere. The sickening thing about that bit of science fiction is that it is rooted in fact.

I’ve told you on these pages about regenerative medicine. I’ve told you about the Skycar. There are many, many inventions sitting on the shelf right now, that are being held back from society for all the reasons that progressivism fails, and that failure is outlined beautifully in the book Atlas Shrugged.

If you haven’t read it and you want to know the truth of what is going on in the world. If you want to understand why the welfare system fails, why government regulation is bad, and how the feeders in life, called “the looters” in the book are destructive read that book. Forget the mindless politicians. They are looters, every one of them. We must have some level of government in this country, but we don’t need it to be nearly as large as it is now.

It is true that there will be suffering. Those that are feeders off society will have a difficult time adapting, but this process must happen. It is not a matter of right or left. It is literally right or wrong.

Nature does not lie. The reason progressives believe that the earth is so vulnerable is because at their true nature, their mentality, they believe that they can change the world. They can engineer thought. They can engineer control of the whole world. But with nature, it is survival of the fittest. Progressives seek to change that. The reason, well not everyone can be the fittest, so in the pursuit of fairness the strong are attacked, and the strong are what everyone feeds off of. If you bring down the strong, there is nothing for anybody to feed off of. And government, especially a large, progressive government that is extremely expensive is that there are too many people feeding off the strong and society will crumble.

The key is that if you want to be a feeder, or a “looter,” then find yourself a creator that is a fair-minded person that appreciates your labor, because through competition, the creator in order to get a competitive edge over other creators will adapt to necessity, just as a stream will always run downhill and find the path of least resistance. If you want the benefit of that flow, put yourself in that path of least resistance and you’ll always be employed and of a benefit to a creator. And if you are a creator, create. Don’t attempt to be a feeder if you are a creator. You will only frustrate the hell out of yourself.

Every single politician in existence is a feeder. They are almost completely worthless. Yet they believe that they have some kind of dominion over everything that is created. And that is what needs to change. This is a belief given to us from Europe, which is a corrupt notion. It hasn’t worked for them, and it won’t work for us.

If you want to know how to do that, understand what needs to be done or how to fix what’s wrong with America and you want the truth go to your local book store and read Atlas Shrugged. The movie will be out soon also. But if you really want to soak up something that won’t lie to you, go get that book! Today! Then watch the news armed with the truth and see what you think about comments over the federal budget and what we can cut or should cut.

The cost if you don’t take a step to understand the truth, as a taxpayer, is that we will find ourselves in the situation that London found itself over the weekend, which is ridiculous and pathetic, headed up by people like the kid I described above, someone who thinks they are entitled to a good life and everything will magically fall in their lap without them doing anything to create that reality. Because they believe the great lie of progressive thought, which is an audacious naïveté of human influence seeking to alter the behavior of nature itself.

Literature, especially literature that has stood the test of time, will cast light where the darkness of progressivism resides like termites deep in the foundations of our existence. Figure out who you are and be it. That’s the first step because we’re not all equal in the world of Mother Nature and never will be.

If there is a book that can give America a blueprint on how to rebuild the country, it’s Atlas Shrugged. Read it word for word and understand it sentence by sentence.

Rich Hoffman

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