Tag: education

The Brilliance of Junkie XL: A review of ‘Fury Road’s’ soundtrack

I was just a bit stunned by the wonderful music I heard while watching the latest Mad Max film.  You can see a bit of why in the video clip below dedicated to the composer Junkie XL—who used to be a DJ in a previous life.  The music to me sounded remarkably like Hans Zimmer’s score on Man of Steel.  So I wondered if Zimmer knew that Junkie used some of his Man of Steel music in Fury Road.  After a quick check I discovered that the two composers have studios next to each other in Santa Monica and that they have become close friends.  So that explained why the music was so jaw dropping phenomenal.  The use of drums in Man of Steel for me was a major milestone in soundtrack design and I have been looking forward to other scores utilizing the same creative use.  Fury Road was that next film and the music is so heart pounding excellent that the moment the movie was over, my wife and I went on an incredible journey to find the soundtrack.

On May 15th I had long-planned to take the afternoon off my normal obligations and see Mad Max with my wife.  When we were dating I showed her all the Mad Max films along with Dirty Harry so we could see if we’d like each other enough to continue our relationship.  She of course loved them, so we got married.  For me, if a woman didn’t understand Mad Max and Dirty Harry, she wouldn’t be capable of sharing a life with me, so liking those films was a deal breaker.   For me it’s almost a religious experience to see a Mad Max film, so I blocked off the afternoon to see the move.  Before the film I was able to have lunch with my wife, one of my daughters and my grandson.  It put me in an exceptionally good mood for actually seeing the movie.  I knew I would like the film—I wasn’t sure how much—but it was overall leading up to the movie a very positive, long-planned experience.

After the movie my wife and I looked at each other knowing we had just watched a masterpiece for the first time and professed our love for the film until the last credit cleared the screen.  READ MY REVIEW BY CLICKING HERE.  But that soundtrack for Junkie XL was stuck in my head and I wanted the music.  I didn’t want to wait to receive it from Amazon.com.  I wanted it in the car for my ride home.  So we went on a journey all over Cincinnati to find it.  We checked Barnes and Nobel on Fields Ertle Road first—they didn’t have it.  Then we went to Target and Best Buy in that same area.  They didn’t have it.  We then hit the highway and headed to the Streets of West Chester to the Barnes and Nobel there.  They surprisingly didn’t have it either.  I was really getting frustrated.  So we were about to give up and go home.  But not wanting to surrender we hit one last spot, the Best Buy at Bridgewater Falls.

I love the Best Buy at that location because it’s full of new technology all the time.  It’s a big store relative to some of the others and always has a nice ambiance to it.  I’ve bought a lot of computer equipment, video games and appliances there, so I generally love my visits to the Best Buy at Bridgewater Falls.  After some frantic looking I found two copies of Fury Road stuck behind soundtracks to Pitch Perfect 2—and I beheld them as if they were treasures from the Sierra Madre.  We bought one of them and headed to our car where we spent the next hour listening to the music from our sound system.  It was a brilliant score well worth the purchase.  I didn’t stop the music over the whole duration of the following weekend.

The key to the success of the music is the inventiveness of the ambition behind the score that obviously is inspired by Hans Zimmer.  But Junkie XL brought a kind of rock and roll ambition to it that is strangely evocative of the dystopian world of George Miller.  Unlike the old Blade Runner soundtrack which is a favorite of mine, Fury Road is full of hope and energy.  I found it strangely compelling which is something I didn’t expect.

It didn’t take much time for me to get the soundtrack on my iPod where I proceeded to listen to it on a loop for several days.  By the time I wrote this little piece on it, I have heard it upwards of 25 complete times and I like it more each time I hear it.  It is another wonderful and often unappreciated journey into musical mayhem by some of the most creative people in the movie business.  I have included some videos on this article about Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL to provide some context as to why I love soundtracks so much—often more than the movies themselves.  As I’ve said before there isn’t one work of music on my iPod out of 8 gigs of storage ability that is not a soundtrack to some movie.  I love mythology, movies are modern mythology, and the music of movies is what holds those stories together.  Without a good soundtrack, a movie isn’t much.  But with a good soundtrack, a movie can tell its story on a scale that lasts.  For me one of those benchmarks was the Man of Steel soundtrack.  So it came to me as a surprise to learn that Hans Zimmer and his friend Junkie XL were working on the soundtrack to Dawn of Justice together, with Junkie handling the Batman tracks while Zimmer works the Superman needs.  Now that I’ve heard Junkie XL named more formally Tom Holkenborg, create such a masterpiece with Fury Road I am eagerly looking forward to the next Superman film by Zach Snyder.

Music is one of those things that stays with you long after the lights come up in a darkened theater.  If the story was a good one, the music of the movie can go with you anywhere you wish by the soundtrack of the film.  After Fury Road I couldn’t wait to keep my mind in that mythology because there were thoughts there that were pertinent to my observations—and the music helped usher those thoughts along.  So the journey was hard-fought and worth the effort, because the work that Junkie XL brought forth is indicative of a treasure that will continue giving for many years.  And for me, that means many more Friday afternoons with my wife and the treasures of cinema that come from blocked off mythology given to minds that love the stories they tell on the backs of really good music.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Matt Clark and Rich Hoffman on WAAM: Understanding why the media is biased and the Clinton Foundation evil

You might have wondered what the cause of all the media bias is and how it came to be.  Well for answers to such questions there is one sure source, Matt Clark’s show on WAAM.  Over the weekend we covered an unusual number of topics in the broadcast that can be heard below.  It was also the first time that I was able to use the equipment that has essentially turned a room in my house into a radio studio.  The sound was clear which was just about as good as if I were in studio with Matt from several hundred miles south.  Obviously the equipment is primarily for when I stand in for Matt while he goes on his honeymoon for a few weekends in June.  But, it works so well, I’m sure we’ll conger up some other means for getting into some trouble with it. But that kind of trouble is different from the type that George Stephanopoulos is in as an undisclosed media donor to the Clinton Foundation.  Well, the Foundation reported the $75,000, but Stephanopoulos as a chief anchor didn’t—which is why he found himself in the specified hot water.

Even though we covered a lot of topics on that show—whether it be the conviction of the Boston Bomber, or the lunacy of Congressman Hank Johnson all the stories share in them the desire of one organization to rule over another using consensus to perform the task.  For instance, obviously with the Clinton Foundation the goal of the Clintons is to build relationships with people they can later use for some tactical advantage.  A fine example might be a sex party where everyone present is expected to get naked and do something embarrassing in front everyone else.  The immediate gratification might be interesting and enough to endure the apprehension, but the net result would end up being something you wouldn’t want to discuss at a fine dining occasion.  Then if one of the people—especially the host were at that fine dining opportunity with you, the trend would be to keep your opinions to yourself and to go along to get along because the other person is now in the power position over you.  They have dirt on you which prevent you from acting according to your own code of ethics.  Again, you might not agree with the host of the sex party on what they are trying to do, but they’ve seen you naked and compromised, so you don’t want to embarrass yourself by pissing them off.  So you go along with their plans even if they are maniacal and against your better judgment.

This is essentially why college fraternities have hazing rituals.  Groups want to see individuals assimilate themselves to the glob of the group by checking their values at the door and offering themselves uninhibited to the collective desires of the organization—even if that organization is just a handful of others.  Traveling road buddies want to know about that affair, or that over-night cheating opportunity.  They want to know you get intoxicated after four or five beers so that they can get emotional leverage on you’re at some future time.   They want you to be sure that you are not so high and mighty that you might think of stepping out on your own with your own line of thinking.  The group offers short-term rewards for long-term control.  With the Clintons it’s always about control whether it’s the sex orgies on Epsein’s private island of mischief or the donations given to the Clinton Foundation under the ruse of helping children. As a former president who has a wife next to the ear of the current president the Clintons used their name to sell influence.  A donation to them and their foundation under the auspices of goodness might feel good in the short run, but down the road the money is dirty and every contributor knows it.  They gave the money hoping to get a picture or an interview opportunity to build their own fame—but what they give up is the ability to hold the Clintons feet to the fire when they deserve to get burnt.

Even Fox News has given money to the Clinton Foundation and what the Clintons get out of the relationship is a dog with a soft bite because of the complicity. Fox News could rake the Clintons over the coals for any number of issues—especially the Epstein story.  But when the money you’ve given helps create an evil, it is far easier to put on the rose-colored glasses and go along to get along.  This is why the Clintons feel they only need to wait out the Benghazi storm, or the Epstein orgy island story—because most of the media is involved in the Clinton Foundation in some respect, and everyone knows that you have to pay to play.  If George Stephanopoulos is giving money at ABC News to maintain his relationship with his former pals, then he’ll get scoop interviews with the Clintons when a new book comes out, or get premier announcements of any political happenings as an exclusive.  But if other organizations like Fox News wants a shot at perhaps not an interview with the Clintons directly, but with at least James Carvel or John Podesta—then you better bring your donation to the next Clinton Foundation event.  If you don’t pay, you won’t be on the inside and thus won’t have the media credentials to cover any potential story. What would the mighty Fox News be without the ability to at least interview John Podesta from time to time?  Not very relevant when the other networks can get him on at will.  So everyone pays the money, commits some sin in front of everyone else to show that they can be trusted later and big stories get suppressed as a direct result.

I actually went through this on a smaller scale in my hometown of Liberty Township involving the Lakota levy, which I spoke about in brief during the radio discussion.  My guys in No Lakota Levy were largely developers who didn’t want to see their taxes go up on their investment properties, especially their holdings prior construction that weren’t making any money—but just sitting there waiting for a zoning hearing, or financing to line up.  They went to charity events usually hosted by school levy supporters so were largely handicapped into what they would say publicly about tax increases.  I always felt sorry for them because it was obvious their livelihood was in jeopardy based on their social connections within the community.  Without those connections, life would become much more difficult for them.  I was invited to these events, but I never went—because I didn’t want to break bread with the enemy—and those asking for higher taxes were the enemy.  The enemy was mystified as one by one they called in favors against my No Lakota Levy people starting with who they had primarily targeted, Mark Sennet who had been a previous public leader against tax increases and had a lot of properties to defend.  I never liked Mark even when we’d meet in person largely because of an animosity that occurred years ago when Trustee Bob Shelly was running things and rolled over to let Sennet scratch his belly over the United Dairy Farmers deal at the corner of Princeton and 747.  The last thing I was going to do was associate with him in a social setting.  It might affect my aim when it came time to make him a target—so I kept business in the proper categories until things got personal, which is when the relationship ended.  In this case the story came to a conclusion with the famous latté sipping prostitute utterance which formed the foundation of the Curse of Fort Seven Mile Cliffhanger stories.  I was able to keep things rolling longer than usual because I stayed out of the social circles involving the Chamber of Commerce, progressive tax increase professionals, and the business community all seeking a consensus on “helping the kids” by raising taxes on property values.  It was a scam.  The Clinton Foundation is the same, only on a global scale.

The goal of the Clinton Foundation is not to help children or impoverished nations lift their economies out of the gutter—it is to silence critics and to buy influence.  The best way to help poor areas of the world is to promote capitalism—but that’s not what this game is about.  It’s about control, not freedom and the Clintons are paving the way for all future ex-presidents.  Soon the President of the United States will no longer be the top job in the world; it will only be a stepping stone to United Nations influence by gigantic charity foundations like the Clinton Foundation.  If you give money to it, you get a picture with Bill, maybe Hillary and maybe a hug from their daughter.  If you don’t give money and you report negatively on them, they will call up your boss and shake you down for everything your worth.  You’ll lose your home, you’ll lose your mortgage, and you’ll lose any hope you have of a career within their social circles.  Once people like the Clintons make themselves the hub of the wheel, the direction of things will go where they decide—which we all know is toward the Scandinavian socialist model of northern Europe.

The same could be said for the other topics Matt and I discussed.  Even the Islamic story is functioning with the same overall strategy as the Clinton Foundation.  Play the game their way; you get to be on the inside.  Deviate from the path they establish and you will find yourself attacked, ridiculed and ostracized in negative ways.   To them the collective is much more important than individual rights.  That is what the Clinton Foundation and Islamic radicals have in common and why they are both dangerous.  They both are collective organizations, one political the other religious who desire to achieve the same objective, the conquest of individual will in support of collective assimilation.  The best way to achieve that is to get individuals to surrender their integrity in public which is equitable to a gag.  It is then that the secrets of the society from within are kept and why George Stephanopoulos paid $75,000 to his old friends to stay in their good graces.  As a head at ABC he does after all have a responsibility to the collective network to use his past influence to nab up all the hot interviews—after all, that’s why they hired him in the first place.  But to the Clintons, nobody is really their friend—unless you throw money at them to assist with the illusion of their charitable organization.  The real objective is global consensus as they seek to control their donors with all the mad zeal of the most tyrannical kings of historical memory.  And there’s nothing good about it.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

‘Fury Road’: Why the film is a work of George Miller genius

For all the reasons that Mad Max: Fury Road is a modern masterpiece on par with films like Citizen Kane, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and Ben Hur is to look at the film itself.  In 1981 if anyone would have predicted that the maker of the Road Warrior would 30 years in the future create such a scathing representation of human culture nobody would have believed it.  Yet our current society has devolved to such a degree that the evidence of such a future nightmare is fast upon us which brings a sort of exasperation at the end of the film.  Fury Road is many things all at the same time; it’s a modern morality western on wheels and can be enjoyed as popcorn entertainment.  This part of it was clear already in the previous Mad Max films.  But, there was always a hint at something deeper, which a younger director in George Miller probably wanted to utter, but didn’t yet have the whole package ready to wrap.  Fury Road dives deeper into the well of the human condition seamlessly like all great works of art.  It gives the viewer more of what they already know, and dares them to step beyond their comfort zone in a way that Picasso’s cubic paintings did.  But then again, Fury Road is deeper than even that—it jumps headlong into the vast depths of James Joyce’s literary masterpiece Finnegan’s Wake to play at Giambattista Vico’s four cycles of civilization.   When it is said that Fury Road is the work of genius, this would be the reason, it is modern art evoked in some of the most provocative ways ever put to film, and it is done so in a way that at the end viewers will wonder what the just saw.  Was the movie just another summer blockbuster in superhero clothing, or was it the genius of a new religion after mankind has fallen back to its beginnings as it has so many times before?

If George Miller was not a fan of Finnegan’s Wake, and had a firm understanding of the Vico cycle, I would be surprised—because that is clearly the theme of Fury Road.  Human beings have devolved from a race that once put satellites into the sky to a society clamoring over water.  Anarchy has given way to a new theocracy and at the end of the move, the last line shown on the screen before the end credits read like the first sentence in a new book of Genesis.  I can’t say that I have ever seen a critic rating of 98% on Rottentomatos.com for a movie, yet Fury Road had virtually everyone who had seen it eating out of its hand—something that certainly would not have been the case in 1982 when the Road Warrior came out.  Some radio movie reviewers on the Friday of the film’s release were actually giving the movie 5 out of 5 stars—which is something else I can’t ever recall happening.  Even great films typically get a 4 or a 4.5, but many critics were giving Fury Road a full unfettered five stars essentially calling it a perfect movie.  I don’t think Fury Road is a perfect movie.  It was on par to me to all the great western’s I have seen over the years—but it has the added dimension of hidden sophistication that all viewers sense which hangs in the air at the end of the movie.  It touches something very primal in us all and hints at long suppressed beliefs touched for the first time perhaps in some people’s lives.  Yes, the Vico cycle is well at hand.   In a time where nearly every movie is a retread from the past society has forgotten that all these retreads came from a period when our culture produced these kinds of stories every couple of months.  Just like the mixed up cars in Fury Road are representatives of a previous society which mass manufactured them, they are assembled on the screen hodgepodged together in bizarre and imaginative ways that still evoke a lesser society that inherited something great from the past yet didn’t quite know how to sustain them.  Fury Road is a metaphor of itself in a very tongue in cheek way.  There seems to be a very firm knowledge from George Miller of what he’s doing as he is clearly an artist at the top of his game.

Other progressive reviewers saw in Immortan Joe a greedy capitalist regulating vast resources to enslave people.  To their minds Immortan Joe was the Bilderberg bankers and Illuminati currency manipulators of the current times and the revolution of the people to overtake such a greedy bastard is communism so everyone can have equal share in the wonders of water stored in his magical pumps within his fortress Citadel.  Yet again, Fury Road is a deeper movie than that—it cuts to a primal rage contained within every human being—the desire to be free.  Immortan Joe might have been slain, and a new government might rule in his place—but the results would be the same.  So long as mankind follows the trends of the Vico cycle whoever is in power will always seek to suppress those under their control.  The reason the film has such high critical ratings is because of things like this, where the kinds of topics that are really important to people are expressed.  But like all great works of art, those people are limited by what they can see.  They may not have the ability to see too far, so they only see representations of feminism, or communism as factors for redemption—but there is clearly more going on.

I thought the most powerful part of the movie was a quiet scene where the characters named brilliantly, Toast the Knowing, Cheedo the Fragile, and the Capable were watching a star filled night sky as they saw a satellite flying across their view from horizon to horizon.  They contemplated the previous culture that actually made such things that could talk to people across the whole of the world.  They wondered who killed the world.  It’s not global warming which has done the destruction.  It was the Vico cycle—mankind’s innate desire to advance and regress along its formulated parameters.

As I bought my ticket for Fury Road the attendant whispered to himself, “Max, great choice.”  He locked knowing eyes with mine.  “I loved it.”  And that was the general feeling of everyone I bumped into who saw the movie.  They realized that they were seeing something that was strangely important, yet they didn’t really know why.  It is our present story played out in a way that they can easily see no matter what vantage point of political reality they approach the subject—because the road all leads to the same place.  It doesn’t matter if the vantage point is conservative, liberal, deeply socialist, fascist, or manically religious it all ends up in the same place, the cycle of Giambattista Vico, theocracy, aristocracy, democracy, followed by anarchy which has persisted in human lives for as long as we have had breath.  Most of us want to be Max or Furiosa, but know that they will always ever be at best like the old lady in Fury Road, the Keeper of the Seeds.  Worse yet, most people will spend their whole lives begging for water, or allowing themselves to be harvested for their bodies–their motherly milk, or their blind devotion to a male patriarchy more concerned with their place in a masculine peaking order than in inventing satellites to go to space.  Even though the world has gone mad Max at least has not surrendered himself to its cycle.  In the end he is the hero who carries those who want to back to a hope of advancing their cause instead of just retreating from it. It was a brilliant film by a brilliant director at the absolute top of his game.  The above and below line talent in the picture are all at the peak of film making genius and if there is any justice Fury Road will win many Oscars in 2016.  But that in and of itself will prove just how valid Fury Road truly is.  In a free culture capable of making all the stories it can deem possible, it is a retread from the past that is evoking so much of a response in a culture that subconsciously seems to realize it is slipping back into the abyss of anarchy and theocracy.   They don’t understand why or how—but know that it’s happening.  And the only way they can measure that slide is with a good ol’ Mad Max movie which shows them the map of how it’s happening, even if they are powerless to stop it.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Obama’s Re-Education Camps: Why to be thankful for The Blaze

Shockingly, Obama essentially reiterated everything I have said about him for the last five years during a recent press conference. He amazingly revealed that he and his party intend to change the minds of their rivals by controlling the media. He pointed to John Boehner and Mitch McConnell as potential targets without considering that in conservative circles those names are considered as liberal as Obama is. But regardless, his statement was very revelatory in its suggestion. It fundamentally declared what the object of public education is, how the media has become so left-leaning, and why big government types are so adamant about putting children in pre-school as soon as possible and extending their educations well into their twenties—it is to re-educate the population into the brand of thinking represented by President Obama complete with a left-leaning communist utopia sprinkled with Marxist camps hidden behind the façade of public schools.

The whole exchange left me once again thankful that the Blaze Radio Network exists. Much of the modern media has been trained in those re-education camps called public school and colleges led by extreme liberals—so they can’t be trusted to accurately report the news. I have come to love The Blaze Radio as I listen to it every day that I can—particularly in the early morning. Doc Thompson’s Police Blotters are hilarious and are the highlight of my morning exercise. They defiantly set the day off in the correct fashion. Then there is Pat and Stu in the evenings, which is deceptively good. They have a unique opportunity to reiterate the talk show they do with Glenn Beck from nine to noon with updated information that is not only funny, but extremely informative.

What makes them so good is that they are very disconnected from the established press, which I trust as much as a puff of smoke. The Blaze Radio is everything opposite that Obama suggested the media should become, and I treasure it for that reason. There is a very fine line that exists between the stated goal of communists during the 1950s to infiltrate the United States media and political parties, and the very nature of a free press like The Blaze. They are always refreshingly disconnected to an established media credential. You won’t find The Blaze Radio with a press pass to the White House, or conducting an interview with the President before the Superbowl, so they are free to spell out the truth however it presents itself. That makes them great in my book.

Clearly the intention all along was just as the conspiracy theorists declared—public education was being used by government as a type of re-education camp as declared by Obama about a means to change the minds of conservatives into having values that are more progressive. The Blaze is about changing minds too, but in the opposite direction of the current progressive tendencies. Obama’s plan can only work so long as there is no other option. The complaint that Obama had about Fox News was that they are not committed enough into the fold of progressive politics—so the party line cannot control the message the way communists from the fifties must to maintain their illusions.   That was the source of his complaint.

Yet Fox News isn’t so conservative. They aren’t all that concerned about the big issues involving America, as they should be. They have been covering the 2016 presidential election for the last two years, which is as of this writing still two years away. They are not conservative enough for me leaving The Blaze alone to cover the topics that are remarkably free of modern political control. The Blaze doesn’t slide into the ocean of conspiracy radio either keeping a nice balance of hometown style that were more at home at the start of radio than the modern takeover which has occurred among mainstream FCC controlled stations.

That’s why it was so remarkable that Obama in a moment of frustration revealed the game plan that has always been present. But we should be thankful that he did, because it’s the media’s job to press public officials, not to fall in line with the party position. Obama would never admit that The Blaze exists—so instead he directed his anger at Fox News. But what keeps Fox News in line is the competition from outlets like The Blaze. Fox News know that if they aren’t conservative enough, they’ll lose their viewers to news outlets like The Blaze. Just the existence of The Blaze keeps the Obama plan of re-education camps stifled. So long as there is a Blaze Radio, there is a chance that at least some media source will still be honest and put the feet to the fire of politicians like Barack Obama. In a world where so much of the government has successfully taken over media operations, The Blaze is not one of them. And for that, we should all be grateful.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Progressives Against Good Families: Not reading to kids, Miley Cyrus Happy Hippies, and Genie in a Bikini

For the rest of the world who have allowed themselves to be deliberately naïve to the actions of those who want to control it, the ABC report out of Australia and carried by United Kingdom media might be surprising. Essentially progressive philosophers using Plato as an example are unveiling their desire to destroy families in favor of centralized control by the state—all in the name of equality. For instance, some kids are fortunate enough to be born into good families giving them an unfair advantage in life over those not born into good families. It is well documented that children who have loving parents who read to them and care for them in a mentoring way produce decent minded children and those relationships usually last a lifetime. Kids who are born into chaos and unloving, selfish parents take those static patterns into their adulthoods to become emotional wrecks. Well, for my wife and me we know all too well that there is great truth to the ABC article out of the UK seen below. We have always strived to work very hard at being good parents to our children and we have seen firsthand the wrath of progressive society that wanted desperately to move in this parentless direction—starting in public schools. Still, it is shocking when you hear progressives talk about this insurrection against logic so openly. Rush Limbaugh covered the issue on his May 5th radio show which can be heard below as well.

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/philosopherszone/new-family-values/6437058

You really can’t make this stuff up. If you want to have a traditional family in this country of America or anywhere else, you are under assault and withering under the strain will not save your children. As I write this Miley Cyrus is launching a foundation for homeless, and LGBT youth called the Happy Hippie Foundation. Millions of young people who like Cyrus are prone to listening to the openly political musings of that particular musical artist where the obvious objective is the destruction of family structure. The obvious strategic goal is to directly transfer the raising of children to control by the state. It is an obvious attempt, and fulfillment of the old Plato notion outlined in his Republic to centralize the youth behind common bonds, and before that can occur, individual family influence has to be destroyed. For the youth culture, that is being achieved through entertainment influences. If there wasn’t politics behind artists like Cyrus and Ariana Grande they would not make the kind of money they do within the music industry. The message behind their “art” is overtly a progressive message designed to destroy family bonds. Their “art” is a tactical objective in favor of progressivism.

Coming on Memorial Day 2015 on the Nickelodeon network is a show called Genie in a Bikini. It features a cross dressing guy who is a magical genie granting kids wishes. Clearly this is an attempt to normalize LGBT behavior on a network intended for children. So this is a very widespread assault on family oriented behavior. The executives at Nickelodeon and the producers of the various shows on that network are simply putting their finger to the wind and measuring what they think the public wants, and that is largely shaped by pop culture—artists like Cyrus, or before her, Madonna, Cher and many others who routinely pushed the limits of acceptability selling sex as a way to deface family structure as a foundation for individual development. But once a show like Genie in a Bikini hits the airwaves, the path to normalization is upon us.

I’m not one to declare that there needs to be censorship. I hate drugs, but I’m not crazy about the police either, so more laws are not the way I prefer to go. And in the case of censoring shows like Genie in a Bikini, I wouldn’t advocate that. But those types of people are imposing their beliefs on the rest of us—they are a minority and expect the rest of the world that enjoys family life to bend to their desires. This march toward equality for all essentially means that those of high quality need to reduce themselves to meet the inability of a majority to live up to a high example and that is not acceptable. I don’t accept these progressive ideas and I am more than willing to vocalize my dislike of their intentions to cram their beliefs down my throat. Anger is a nice way to put the emotions I feel toward the enemies of family—because family is very important to me. Those who are against it, I consider to be against me, so there are ramifications to that strategy.

The family haters who migrate to government like herding animals stuck on the Serengeti during a drought suddenly finding water are implementing a strategy that is several decades old. The American family funded by capitalist endeavors is their ultimate target and is the reason for much of this anti-family behavior. The target has always been capitalism—from the very beginning. The best way to advance socialism is to take away the ideal of a parent/child relationship—so I view this strategy as an open attack on my way of life. Its one thing to be tolerant of a couple of girls kissing in front of me in line at Kings Island, it’s quite another for them to expect me to put up with it in every aspect of my life and to bend my values to theirs. That’s simply not going to happen no matter how much Miley Cyrus sings about it.

I don’t like Miley Cyrus—I didn’t like her before this Happy Hippie Foundation thing she’s doing now. She looks like she smells like spit and I’m not found of saliva in the form of a human being. She’s the latest tool of progressive advocates in the record industry to advance their family killing strategy by using the tender minds of youth as a weapon against traditional culture. But worse than my dislike of Cyrus personally, is the name of her group—I dispise hippies. Hippies are anti-family, anti-capitalist, and anti-good. They are against everything that I’m for so that leads immovable forces toward a collision course. The mistake that is made by the other side, the side of the anti-family types, is that they believe in democracy to the point that they assume that majority rules minorities—if they have a greater number of opinion who are against the family position. They believe their sheer numbers will out vote people in the minority like me. What they forget is that they are susceptible to the same tactics they have used to destroy the family. When they came onto the scene as young hippies driven by the communist movement, they were in the minority against traditional value. Their rebellion was against tradition who at the time held the majority opinion. People like me understand that, and will turn that strategy around against them. We will not yield to the pressure, the world will not wake up tomorrow and just accept the disgusting behavior of the typical progressive—the lifestyle of sickness that people like Miley Cyrus represents. To think otherwise is insane.

For many years, as strange as it sounds, I have considered it an act of rebellion to be in a classic traditional family. Having a traditional family is my rebel with a cause position. I am proud of it, and will continue to have pride in it. For my part in everything I do, I will represent traditional values, because they work, and I appreciate them. A free pass will never be given to slugs like the Miley Cyrus followers who are worshiping the latest progressive spokesman—which is all she is. There may be millions of them, but to me they are like the walking dead zombies of modern fiction—brain dead and half rotten—and worth as much as a penny mashed into hot pavement after it has been trampled underfoot from many careless patrons. Pennies like that are not even worth digging out to spend, because they aren’t even worth that much effort. It may not be their fault that they have grown into worthless human beings, but it is the result of having bad parents who in many cases didn’t read to them as innocent children. I may feel sorry for them, but I’m not about to change what I do for one half of a second—just to make family destroyers like Miley Cyrus feel better about the bad decisions they have made in life as justification for being vile human beings.

However, now you know dear reader what the progressive left has always been up to. The only difference is now they believe they have the numbers to drive the rest of us to the edge of insanity in silent outrage. They enjoy attacking our sensibilities with their outrageous behavior as agents of evil against the American family. And for that, they deserve all that they will get. One thing that I will promise if I am the only person in the world doing it—I will never give these idiots the relief on a measuring stick showing good against evil, or a good family against a bad one. I know the difference and will continue to advocate in favor of the good—in everything that I do. And that’s bad news for the Happy Hippies, because so long as just one person refuses to join their ranks, they will always look like the dirty, smelly, skanks that they are—who from day one sought to destroy the family structure of the human race in a vile revenge against crappy parents who simply didn’t read to them when they were kids. The concept of family is openly under attack and I will promise this much even if the rest of the world falls into the darkness of following after those attackers—I will always stand with the concept of family and will view anything that threatens that unity as a vile, and despicable endeavor. Even if I am completely alone, it will be my goal in life to make those happy hippies gradually—extremely miserable.

Looks like Miley Cyrus gave up, she dropped her belief in her purity ring and from there fell hard. She’ll never get back what she lost. She ruined her chances at having a good family because no child born of her could possibly look up to her because of the many mistakes she has made in just the last couple of years. And now that Cyrus has fallen she wants validation that others are just as bad as she is. So she started the Happy Hippie Foundation to bring like minds together in the misery of their insolence. Misery loves company and they hate good families.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Another Step Into Space: This time from Jeff Bezos

Surprise, yet another commercial space flight company has punched through the relentless imposition of earth’s jealous grasp and touched the face of space. This time it’s the Amazon.com innovator Jeff Bezos whose company Blue Origin has built a commercial, reusable rocket to blast into space carrying passengers in a way that is similar to Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. Here is a report from The Daily Mail about the historic flight:

The dawn of a new era of space travel may be upon us after Amazon’s Jeff Bezos successfully tested a vehicle that will take tourists into space.

Mr Bezos’ firm, called the Blue Origin company, has long spoken of its desire to take paying astronauts into the cosmos.

And now it has performed the first successful test of the vehicle they hope will make that dream a reality.

Called New Shepard, the vehicle consists of a main booster rocket and a six-seater capsule on top, standing 60ft (18 metres) tall.

HOW NEW SHEPARD WORKS 

The New Shepard system will take astronauts to space on suborbital journeys.

It includes a Crew Capsule carrying six astronauts atop a separate rocket-powered Propulsion Module, launched from the firm’s West Texas Launch Site.

Following liftoff, the combined vehicles accelerate for approximately two and a half minutes.

The Propulsion Module then shuts off its rocket engines and separates from the Crew Capsule. The Propulsion Module will finish its flight, descend to Earth, and autonomously perform a rocket-powered vertical landing.

The Crew Capsule will go on to coast to the edge of space, providing astronauts with a view to the curvature of the Earth and the beauty of our planet.

After descent and re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, the Crew Capsule will land under parachutes no more than a few miles from the launch site.

In addition, the New Shepard vehicle will provide opportunities for researchers to fly experiments into space and a microgravity environment. 

For this, the first test flight of the entire architecture, it was unmanned – but the company hopes to soon start taking customers into space.

The cost of a ticket has not yet been announced, but estimates suggest it will be around £130,000 $200,000 – similar to a flight on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic.

The difference, however, is that while Galactic relies on using a plane to slowly rise into the atmosphere, New Shepard takes off straight up and lands back on the ground. 

This is known as vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL).

And Blue Origin is also much more secretive – with this successful test flight taking many by surprise. 

In video released by Blue Origin, the booster – using liquid hydrogen and oxygen – lifts the New Shepard vehicle to an altitude of 58 miles (94km). 

This is four miles (six kilometres) short of the official boundary of space – the Karman Line – although there does not seem to be any problems with reaching this boundary in future. 

Once it reached its peak altitude, accelerating at 3Gs, the booster separated from the capsule.

‘The in-space separation of the crew capsule from the propulsion module was perfect,’ Mr Bezso said in a blog post.

‘Any astronauts on board would have had a very nice journey into space and a smooth return.’

The booster is designed to be able to land on the ground and be reusable, much like rival SpaceX’s own reusable rocket system.

On this occasion, however, the booster lost pressure in its hydraulic system and was not recovered.

Mr Bezos said the firm was already working on an improved system to make sure the error doesn’t happen again.

‘Assembly of propulsion module serial numbers 2 and 3 is already underway – we’ll be ready to fly again soon,’ he said.

The flight of the capsule, however, passed without a hitch and it successfully landed on the ground with the help of three parachutes.

The company is keen on VTVL because it is ‘scalable to a very large size,’ according to Mr Bezos.

And he noted that the company was already working on a larger vehicle, New Shepard’s ‘Very Big Brother. Following this successful flight, many will be expecting the company to go from strength to strength.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3062333/The-dawn-space-tourism-Amazon-s-Jeff-Bezos-successfully-tests-vehicle-turn-paying-customers-astronauts.html#ixzz3YoJbNSKI Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

It won’t be long now, there is a lot of competition for space and the world’s governments are well behind the curve. They cannot compete with minds like Bezos. For all the assumptions made about the construct of the Moon and all the hoopla about getting astronauts into space to a space station, the cost of such travel is coming down dramatically—significantly in just the next few years. This is a huge step forward.

I am very happy to see Bezos new test flight, and I wish him many successful returns. I want to see a fire lit under Virgin Galactic’s butt. Because we will all benefit from the competition.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Truth Behind ‘Latte Sipping Prostitutes’: Reflections from a hard life lived

The question I get asked most often is, “when are you going to write another book.”  Virtually everyone who knows me personally understands how much I like to write and spend time facing a blank page.  I have written enough free material to last some people a lifetime.  I have written enough on my Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom blog to fill many books—and I’ve offered it for free because I like doing it.  But what people ask about is my work for profit, the books I have written in the past that obviously go several steps beyond my free work.  I don’t overtly promote them; I just put them out for people to enjoy as they run across them in their own way.  My focus is always in creating new content and out of all the things I do in my life—or have done, it will be these books that people most behold as time moves on.  As an example, there are many late comers to the public education debate, especially regarding the recent Lakota teacher protests and have been coming to this site to understand what all the fuss is about.  Specifically for those types of people I wrote the Cliffhanger story Latté Sipping Prostitutes to show from personal experience the typical types of people who are involved in virtually every school levy attempt from the Chamber of Commerce types, the union leaders, the elected school board personnel, and the charity driven socialites—to everyone in between.  That story is special because it comes from a unique perspective which adversely affects everyone in American culture in some way or another. I offer a behind the scenes look at the type of people and the psychological motivations behind them that drive school levies in a way that only I could do.  That uniqueness is largely because I have actually done many of the things I write about whereas typical writers live in the realm of theory living through their characters.  In my case, if I put something down on a page, there is an experience that I have had which drives it—which is why people who do read my books find they want more.

But writing books the way I like to do them takes time—it takes time to accumulate the experiences needed to form a proper scenario based on direct observation.  As is the case with Latté Sipping Prostitutes the information and opinions collected to make that story happen took about two decades of hard living with all the personality types that make up that story.  As a writer you have to see every side of a story and understand the viewpoint of all the characters and are able to live in their skin.  Then you have to take all that information and make a protagonist and an antagonist deciding what the value assessment is from all that you’ve learned.  As many know I was involved in a very public campaign as I did research on Latté Sipping Prostitutes and by the time I had my falling out with the Cincinnati Enquirer I had the story already written in my mind.  I needed to switch gears and bring that story to life so a new generation could read that story and learn something from it in the ways that myths instruct.  I had the inside scoop on life in the media seeing the point of view that drives them in the education debate, I knew the other characters actively then I stewed on the whole pot for about 18 months before putting the story on paper thinking of everything from all sides.  Because of Latté Sipping Prostitutes and stories like them, people are always asking me what’s next—because those types of stories aren’t written by anybody else.  I write them because as an avid reader, it’s what I want to read.  For me, that’s often good enough.  I could care less about the New York Times or any social acceptance of my work, because once I’ve published the book, I accomplished what I wanted.  I can make money a hundred different ways—I tend not to solicit my writing material because it is precious to me.  It would probably reach more people if I felt differently, but it’s not often important enough to me to do so.  People who read those stories discover treasures that are unique in the marketplace—because like them—they are the stories I am hungry for.  Latté Sipping Prostitutes will teach most of what average people need to know about the modern school levy debate in story form—and I am proud of it.

Yet in the grand scheme of things, Latté Sipping Prostitutes is only one small story in the overall story arc of The Curse of Fort Seven Mile.  If the research I put into the Prostitute story was the same—which it is—for the other installments of the overall second book in the Cliffhanger series, it then becomes clear why I don’t write like Stephen King and put out a new novel every week—which I could probably do by the rate that I write.  To make my cut, I must have lived some aspect of the story first hand so I can have an objective understanding of the subject matter and that is where things get complicated.

For those who have been following the Cliffhanger series of The Curse of Fort Seven Mile has so far explored the violent potential and motivations behind police unions.  Actually for that story my direct involvement with the very popular media star and local hinge pin of politics Sheriff Jones was my basis.  I actually got to know how people like him tick meeting him personally and studying all the nervous quirks of their speech, body language and social motivations.  I have publicly debated Jones in an audience setting and been on the opposite side of him on the collective bargaining debate in Ohio.  That debate sometimes took place on the very popular 700 WLW radio broadcasting to 38 American states so that the first chapter of the Cliffhanger series was carved out with lots of personal blood as well.  Just a few days ago I had an invitation to meet with the Sheriff which I declined because unbeknownst to him, I had already received everything from him that he could provide.  I wrote my story leaving nothing else to be explored.  I had dissected all his motivations and decided where he fit and I applied that to the fictional circumstances in Fort Seven Mile.  Jones is not a direct character, but he did show me how the politics of police work plays out in talks over budget concerns and police union motivations.  I learned a lot of things he never intended to teach me and once I figured out that he was a Wyatt Earp kind of lawman as opposed to John Wayne, I was done with him forever.  A lot of people think of Wyatt Earp as a hero gunman from the Old West.  I’m not one of them.  He was an opportunist who would do just about anything for money.  I don’t respect people like that.

The third chapter involved drug cartels.  Obviously, I have a lot of experience with that as well.  My fights against drugs go way back and encompass two decades of fights at all levels of the drug trade—from the political circles who like to make money off drugs, to the thugs who deliver them.  In my early years I was actually on a drug delivery run with real life hit men so I’ve seen both sides of the issue.  The hit man knew my feelings about drugs so they conspired to put me in a situation where I would play a part in delivering drugs hoping that once I was in a social circumstance under dangerous conditions, I would concede.  That’s not what happened.  I really lost my temper.  I mean what was the hit man going to do—report me to the police?  Then how would the police react—how could they admit that they were friends with the guy?  See the dilemma?  Needless to say, my experiences with those types of people found their way directly into The Curse of Fort Seven Mile.

The next couple of chapters deal with paranormal evils that are actually quite real.  Needless to say, I have a lot of experience with those types of things as well—and I can’t give away too much in a description because I want my readers to enjoy discovering those elements through the story.  But be assured that what I write is based on experience—real life effort.  If I didn’t live it in some way, I typically don’t write about it.  And that is what makes this Curse of Fort Seven Mile series so unique.  It’s also why it takes me extra time to write my commercial material.  The free stuff I can pop out while eating a Big Mac at McDonald’s.  People think I write all day long, but in actuality I write an average 1500 word article in about 15 minutes because all the leg work is done in my mind ahead of time.  I simply have to put it down on paper, which isn’t difficult for me to do.  But the leg work for the Cliffhanger stories are much harder and require exploration into the deep wells of the rabbit hole where most people just refuse to go.  I like to take my readers to those places from the safety of a story, but before I can consciously do so, I have to have lived through it in some way—and that takes time.

For me, that time has come.  I have a lot to tell from a very hard life lived.  That hard life was by choice, because ultimately I wanted to write these books since I was a very little kid.  But I couldn’t just put words on paper, I had to see, feel, taste, smell and understand the antagonists against goodness fully.  And that is what is happening in The Curse of Fort Seven Mile series.  I am very proud of what has been published to date, and what is coming.  The next two stories I am particularly proud of.  But any one of them such as Latté Sipping Prostitutes contains enough information to settle the debate in the mind of a reader by showing the entire scope of a given problem—in this case it’s public school funding and the type of corrupt minds that are behind it and why.  But as to the question of why it takes me so long—well, the answer is that I have been living these characters—and life takes time.  But what ends up on the written page is much better because of it.  Needless to say, for fans of my commercial work, the future looks very bright.  There will be a lot of material coming which should appease even the most robust appetite.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

What Comments can Teach Us: The changing tide of public education sentimate

Since the Enquirer has picked through my material to help boost its readership at times, I’m sure they won’t mind if I use their comment section from a recent article about Lakota teachers to explore some of the back and forth that has been going on, which is important to capture for analysis.  Back in the day I’d sometimes participate in these comments like my friend Sharon Poe below does, but since the Enquirer has moved to requiring Facebook log ins, it excludes me.  I don’t do Facebook.  There are a couple of generic accounts that were created for my professional endeavors, which I don’t even log in to—so I have no Facebook account and I never will.  I do not agree with the terms of service at Facebook, so the Enquirer system doesn’t work for me.  But there is some use in watching what other people have to say which can be seen below.  In essence, the following comment stream is regarding the recent teacher protests before and after school activities over the merit pay issue.

Really there are two types of people who participate in these forums.  It used to be all union people until a few years ago when they began to be challenged out in the open by reformers.  Then the standard answers about how hard the teaching profession is, or how much money they make, or how much they sacrifice for the “children” was unchecked, but not anymore.  More than ever, everyday people participate in these forums to advance thought, and opinions have changed.  It should be noticed that one commenter castigated my friend Sharon who is from a neighboring district of Mason for sticking her nose into Lakota business, but nothing is said to the teacher from Sandusky schools which is about as far away in the state of Ohio that anyone could get.  That is just one example of the bi-polar relationship that public school teachers and their supporters have with the outside world.  What’s good for them is acceptable 100% of the time.  But if someone from the other side of opinion utilizes the same—they kick and scream like babies with a rash during a diaper change.   The rampant union supporter is one type of participant—and they have largely been neutered from what they used to be.  They are very careful about their comments compared to five years ago.  This is because of the other type, the reformer—who is growing in number year by year and has been present to debate the very premise of pubic education.  Have a look at the basis for their discussions.

Joe Shooner ·

Cincinnati, Ohio

I’m a Lakota parent, and I fully support the idea of paying our teachers well. My kids are relying on that education, I consider it money well spent to retain and attract good teachers. I know my kids teachers. I see the cars they drive, I learn where they live. On paper, some district employees are doing very well – especially since most cost estimates I’ve seen include ALL benefits. As a person in a small business, I can tell you that a 40K salary can EASILY have a total cost of $60K if you factor in taxes, healthcare, etc. The majority of teachers are not getting rich off of this job. If yo…See More

Like · Reply · 7 · Apr 24, 2015 9:44am

Joe Doerger

The whole merit pay issue is specious. Mainly because it’s unsustainable and will actually cost districts MORE in the long run which means MORE and HIGHER taxes MORE often.

Every merit pay scheme has been used to keep down some salaries by giving more to others. The pool of money has to grow larger to pay everymore teachers more merit pay. Without a reliable source of new money, merit pay will result in unfair discrepancies in teacher pay. You can’t give all the money to a math teacher when you also need English and Social Studies teachers.

Think about it, if EVERY teacher qualifies for “mer…See More

Like · Reply · 3 · Apr 24, 2015 10:14am

Emily Cottingham

This is very unfair for the teachers. How would you like to be judged on the performance of others? Some students do not have the capacity or the desire to learn, and why should a teacher be judged on that? Also, some of the worst teachers teach the smartest kids, who are self driven. Why should that teacher be rewarded because their students perform well? Basing a teacher’s pay off of a students work is unjust, and will just encourage teachers to only teach to the tests and nothing else. Learning in school is a made up of much more than learning how to pass stupid assessments designed by those not teaching the class.

Like · Reply · 3 · Apr 24, 2015 8:27am

Nicol Neate

sorry, too many are just glorified babysitters, and if they have a student who has no desire to learn, or is struggling it is THEIR JOB to get through some how.

Like · Reply · Apr 24, 2015 8:49am

Joe Doerger

Nicol Neate sorry, but you are a very uninformed citizen. They’re TEACHERS. 

Now if you suggest that some of their students (and their parents) are glorified babies, you might be on to something

Like · Reply · 6 · Apr 24, 2015 9:09am

Emily Cottingham

There’s only so much teachers can do. In the real world, if an employee does nothing, they get fired. In school, the most that can happen is the student can get a detention, and gets failed. But they are still supposed to learn the material, and the teacher gets evaluated based on that. The teacher can’t follow the student home and make them do the work. They can’t keep them after and force them to do it. And they can’t sacrifice class time to teach that student individually, and sacrifice the learning of the other students. Often, the parents aren’t making their kids accountable and don’t force their kids to do homework. But if the student isn’t learning, the teachers automatically get blamed.

Like · Reply · 3 · Apr 24, 2015 9:46am

Show 4 more replies in this thread

Jackie Conrad ·

Teacher at Sandusky City Schools

The Constitution. Read it. Those teachers are exercising their rights. Judge not.

Like · Reply · 2 · 17 hrs

Alex Daniel ·

Cincinnati, Ohio

Yes and using their positions to unduly influence their pupils into supporting their backwards political beliefs….I guess tax payers shouldn’t be allowed to preside in judgement over that right?

Like · Reply · 16 hrs

Michael Smith ·

Cincinnati, Ohio

What people do not seem to understand is that the evaluation system mandated by the Ohio State Legislature is horrifically flawed. The American Statistical Association has even stated that it has zero value in determining teacher merit.

The fundamental issue is that the state mandates the use of test scores but the calculation that translates these scores into merit is no more reliable than flipping a coin. They take each child’s score at the beginning of the year on their grade-level test, then project what the child would have to score at the “end” of the year (in reality a month or two b…See More

Like · Reply · 2 · Apr 24, 2015 11:41am

Sharon Constable Poe ·

Loveland High School

Until Ohio becomes a Right to Work state unions will control our schools! These people have no idea what it is like to have to sacrifice. Disgusting and shame on you Lakota teachers!

Like · Reply · 1 · Apr 24, 2015 8:18am

Joe Doerger

Yeah! Shame on you teachers for exercising your right to assemble peacefully according to the 1st Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America!

How DARE you?

Quick! Let’s pass some laws so they can’t do that. After all, LIBERTY, is only for someone else! And not teachers.

Like · Reply · 5 · Apr 24, 2015 9:03am

Don DeLotell ·

Miami University

Shame on you Sharon Poe for sticking your nose into Lakota Schools just like you did for so many of those years with Mason schools–you are from the Party of No and to think teachers haven’t sacrificed indicates how clueless of what a teacher actually does speaks volumes. If being a teacher is so good I would suggest you go get a college degree with a major in Education and after 4 years apply for the “dream job”.

Like · Reply · 3 · 23 hrs

Michael Croy

@Sharon- Can you share some examples of how teachers have no idea about what it is like to sacrifice?

Like · Reply · 1 hr

Ryan Pride ·

Front Ensemble Technician at Phantom Regiment

If you think basing pay off of merit (I.e. Test scores) holds teachers accountable, then you are ignorant on the subject. All tests do is measure how well a kid takes a test, not if they actually understood the information. Good teachers are being punished by standardized testing and are leaving the profession in droves. Would you trust someone to make a car seat for your child, but then argue that they’re paid too much to make a quality and safe product to protect your child? No? Well guess what, your child’s EDUCATOR (as in the person who provides information for them to use the rest of thei…See More

Like · Reply · 1 · 20 hrs

Alex Daniel ·

Cincinnati, Ohio

Let’s see:
-Irrationally equating the purchasing choice of a commercial commodity to the pay scale of a public sector worker….check. 

-blindly accusing parents of being absent from their child’s lives and pawning their education off on strangers…check.

-and presenting the boilerplate, ready-made response to the idea of actually having standards in performance evaluations for teachers….check. 

Seems you’ve hit all the bases of being a stooge for teacher’s unions. Congratulations.

Like · Reply · 16 hrs

Ryan Pride ·

Front Ensemble Technician at Phantom Regiment

Not being able to negate any of my points? Check. Mindlessly joining the ranks of critics who probably have zero teaching experience? Check. Attempting to belittle someone though intellectual masterbation? Double check. Being a “stooge” doesn’t make me wrong.

Like · Reply · 2 · 14 hrs

Kevin Lee Austin ·

System Administrator at Wright State University

Here is some interesting reading from 2011.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/…/pay-rate-for…/

Like · Reply · Apr 24, 2015 10:48am

Joe Shooner ·

Cincinnati, Ohio

I would guess, and this is truly a guess, that those numbers do not reflect their actual salary, but their cost to the disctrict. While they are related, it’s important to realize that any legitimate employer who pays taxes, medicare, and especially any type of health insurance, will incur a much higher “cost” for an employee than what that employee receives on their paycheck, even their gross wages. It varies, but an employer can easily have a cost of 25-40% haigher than the salary alone.

Like · Reply · Apr 24, 2015 11:08am

Joe Doerger

Sow what’s your point? Is it too much? Is it too little? Compared to what?

What do YOU make and why don’t YOU list it along with your name and other personal information? What are you afraid of?

Like · Reply · Apr 24, 2015 11:11am

Kevin Lee Austin ·

System Administrator at Wright State University

Joe Shooner Those are salaries, not salary plus benefits.

Like · Reply · Apr 24, 2015 11:12am

Show 2 more replies in this thread

Kevin Lee Austin ·

System Administrator at Wright State University

Must be a weekday. More grumbling from the Lakota teacher’s union.

Like · Reply · Apr 24, 2015 7:51am

Joe Doerger

I think it’s call “freedom of assembly.”

Like · Reply · 3 · Apr 24, 2015 10:16am

Alex Daniel ·

Cincinnati, Ohio

Joe Doerger; It’s called stealing tax payer dollars.

Like · Reply · 16 hrs

Nicol Neate

Golly, don’t the teachers use this in their own classes? You have to earn things in life, including raises. ~rolls eyes~ Our teachers are becoming priviledged group who think they dont have to answer to anyone. Well, our failing schools show they need to earn their check, like anyone else. Quit whining like you’d tell your students.

Like · Reply · Apr 24, 2015 8:22am

Joe Doerger

Oh those “privileged” teachers. With their desks and their tests. And their rooms with chairs. I guess that’s why EVERYONE is chucking their careers on Wall St. to get into classrooms as soon as possible. After all, THAT’S where the money is, right?

Like · Reply · 5 · Apr 24, 2015 9:07am

Michelle Langlois Wagner ·

West Chester Township, Butler County, Ohio

Even using your extremely flawed logic, Nicol, the schools in Lakota have repeatedly been identified as excellent with distinction-the very opposite of failing. You are simply demanding that teachers work hard for less pay, based on a system (merit pay) that has never been shown to work. Ever.

Like · Reply · 2 · Apr 24, 2015 11:53am

Maureen Basedow ·

10th grade science teacher at Cincinnati Public Schools

Michelle Langlois Wagner, I was a college professor before teaching high school. The absolute best local students at Miami and Xavier came from Lakota. Lakota was doing it right. The best local suburban high school by far, Nicol Neate. Now who should be paid for that?

Like · Reply · 17 hrs

 

 

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2015/04/24/lakota-teachers-demonstrate-front-schools/26293313/

Probably the most common argument in favor of the public education system and the infinite pay the employees demand was from the Shooner person: “I’m a Lakota parent, and I fully support the idea of paying our teachers well. My kids are relying on that education, I consider it money well spent to retain and attract good teachers. I know my kids teachers. I see the cars they drive, I learn where they live. On paper, some district employees are doing very well – especially since most cost estimates I’ve seen include ALL benefits. As a person in a small business, I can tell you that a 40K salary can EASILY have a total cost of $60K if you factor in taxes, healthcare, etc. The majority of teachers are not getting rich off of this job.”  That guy thinks he has all the bases covered, he identifies himself as a person who understands the economics of the situation—he asserts the value the public education service has to him, then attempts to justify the value without any real substantial equity being used to balance out that value.  On the surface these people sound reasonable until you consider the implication of what they are putting forth.  40K per year is above the average wage rate in the United States—let alone 60K—so how much is a teacher worth?  That depends on whether or not you have school aged kids.  Youthful parents tend to be more neurotic on the issue whereas older people have learned the value of money and are more stringent.

The other argument that didn’t come up much in these comments, but ultimately are the last resort in such exchanges is that public schools should be appeased because our property values magically go up every year and that we should be willing to donate some of that value back into the schools so that these unionized employees can have the jackpot.  There are two problems with that situation, realtors—who are always some of the most vocal school levy advocates—use public schools to attract those lily pad hoppers who move to a district for the schools, then move away when the next fad hits—or they move in their career wanting to cash in on the increased value of their homes.  So using schools as a way to increase the value of a district’s real estate value is like taking a drug—the fix might be immediate and benefit the people who stay in a home for 5 to 7 years—but it penalizes investors who stick around for a decade or two—because the cycle of growth doesn’t sustain itself over time.  The other problem is that home values do not really increase—it is only through inflation that they appear to grow.  In the short run that money can be taxed, and loans can be taken out against that value, but it will not sustain itself for a decade or two.  Homes only increase in value if there are more people who want to buy that house in the future then the market will allow.  If everyone who wants a house can get one in the area of their choice, values won’t hold.  For instance, values hold in Indian Hill because there are limited homes per re-sale opportunity.  For every home that goes up for sale, there may be four buyers—hypothetically speaking.  However, in Lakota there are plenty of homes.  Builders have placed them under every tree, stream and school cross walk.  Currently there are a reasonable number of people who want to live in the Lakota district and it helps that there is commercial growth—but within the decade that will change.  There will be so many homes priced at the upper end of the market value that there might only be one or two buyers per home—putting the sales leverage on the buyer—not the seller.   Even though a home may be valued and taxed by the Lakota school system at $280,000 a buyer may only be willing to pay $210,000 for it.  If you don’t come down on that price the buyer will walk.  How does that cover a perceived investment?

I had a couple of sets of friends who lived in Four Bridges.  Their kids grew up; graduated from Lakota—then they moved away.  Their $300,000 to $500,000 homes sat on the market for over a year each and when they did sell; it was about 15% less than they wanted.  They had hoped to make money on those homes, but instead took a loss to move the units.  There just aren’t that many buyers out there who can buy a quarter million dollar home in the first place—let alone one in an area with a lot of competition.  If a potential buyer wants to move to an area to send their kids to Lakota schools—or Mason for that matter and a seller doesn’t come down on their price—there is a cookie cutter home down the road from a seller who will—so the leverage is gone from the homeowner leaving them to support every school levy that comes along hoping that more potential buyers in the future will maintain their increases in property value.  But most of the time it won’t.

Most parents who blindly support public school levies and the teachers who baby sit their kids fall in this category—only they never admit to it.  They hope and pray to make 20K to 30K on their home so they can downsize into a condo at some point in the future once their kids are grown, and live off the gains.  But it doesn’t work that way for most people.  If there are gains made, they are either absorbed by inflation, or taxes.  Or they are lost due to other circumstances leaving these current school levy supporters angry with themselves for supporting a levy a decade ago.

And that’s the situation that is coming to Lakota and Mason schools—and is why there are fewer people commenting these days on behalf of the greedy out-of-touch teachers.  Even with the growth of commercial enterprises—such as the new Liberty Center—there will be declining enrollment at Lakota as kids grow up and move away, but their parents stick around burnt by that same school plaguing them with buyer’s remorse.  Since the gains in property value will not be what those former supporters had hoped for, they will stay at Lakota and hold their properties and won’t want to support the schools because they won’t have kids in the school any longer.  That is the situation that the Lakota teachers are protesting as they expect to receive a higher than average wage in a community where the children are leaving, the parents are staying—and are bitter that their investment yield wasn’t what they had dreamed of.  And they will vote with their wallets—like people always do.  School supporters know they can get cheaper babysitting through the public school, so to them it’s a bargain.  But for those who don’t have kids in school, they want nothing to do with Lakota, or the taxes that spawn from it.

Those are just some things to consider.  I have watched this issue for a long time and its course is set and certain.  Yet in the comment section of the Enquirer are the same old tired diatribes that sound silly and out-dated now that there is more information to consider.  And that trend will only increase in subsequent years.  These are not the times of old where the teacher unions controlled the boards of newspapers and captured public opinion through guilt.  People are sick of these spoiled brats and the difference now from then is that they are willing to say it, just as Dan Varney did in the Enquirer article.  Nobody used to talk like that—but they do now—and that does not add up to success for the labor union position.  They are losing ground—quickly.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Fire Lakota’s Teachers: Protest over merit pay bad example to kids

I have written and said so much on this topic you’d think that the ridiculously arrogant teachers in the Lakota school system would have learned by now.  However, they apparently have the memory span of Dory from the Finding Nemo movie, and about the same politics—and they can’t remember anything from five minutes ago, let alone five years.  Like a bunch of children they protested in front of various Lakota schools over the implementation of merit pay—which is something that’s happening all over the nation, not just in Ohio—and is certainly not limited to Lakota.  I’ve said it before, I don’t mind paying a teacher $200,000 a year if they are really good, but I don’t want to pay a slug $65K per year just because they showed up and fulfilled a step schedule established by the labor union.  I want to see management deciding who gets paid what for an expected criterion.  I do not want to pay for collective bargaining which favors the lazy at the expense of the hard-working.

Of course the impact of these entire teacher antics in attempting to wreck the budget at Lakota will provoke another levy attempt, which I have been saying all along will happen right around the 2017 mark—if not sooner—since the school board knows it will likely meet resistance and may take a few years to pass.  What they are asking us to pay for is the same ridiculousness they have in the past—out-of-control employee costs that are directly linked to this kind of teacher behavior.  Because the union is protected by state and federal law management often caves under the collective pressure of protests like this recent one at Lakota and the tax payers are stuck with the bill—which means an increase in property taxes.  People new to the district don’t mind paying a bit more on taxes until they live in the area for a few years and are stuck with excessively high taxes.  It is then that they get buyer’s remorse—meanwhile all these radical union employees retire and move away leaving the mess to the rest of us to clean up.  I let the Pulse Journal know my thoughts about the Lakota protests with the following Letter to the Editor.

In a fair world every teacher who took part in the Friday April 24th demonstrations in front of the students at twenty of Lakota’s schools protesting merit pay, should have been terminated immediately.  However, we don’t live in a fair world and are currently stuck with an out-of-touch teacher’s union culture in these schools that feel they are entitled to district resources without the judgment of their job performance being established through a merit pay system. 

Defenders of the action will declare that their gathering was a “peaceful demonstration” and they (the teachers) have the right under the First Amendment to “assemble.”  Yet the protesters in this case are district employees who consciously made a decision to impose their viewpoints in front of the same children they are supposed to be teaching which should be considered a breach of contract by attempting to radicalize students against value assessment—merit pay.  It is insulting that they’d even contemplate the protest at Lakota after that district spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to repair their image after the last few years.  Talk about short memories—and a lack of gratitude.  The school board went to great measure to improve Lakota’s image and the teachers decided “collectively” to perform this task—in front of their students–amazingly short-sighted.

I’m looking forward to the further antics of the Lakota teachers over the coming summer.  Since we can’t fire them, they will make fighting the next levy attempt that much easier. 

Thanks,

Rich Hoffman

The judgment was so bad that all those employees should have been relieved of their duties and sent home on the spot.  But we don’t live in a fair world—but one where public employees like these people are used to getting what they want, when they want it.  They are spoiled brats—and that is putting it mildly.  The Lakota teachers participating in this demonstration are easily replaceable, and should have been treated justly.  They expect too much money for doing entirely too little—then they have the arrogance to be a disruptive force within the school.

It should be quite clear by now why I still think it was a teacher who left the note in the bathroom just days before the last election in Lakota threatening a shooting spree if voters didn’t pass a levy.  Even though the levy was to throw money at these same teachers as appeasement for maintaining a wage freeze at the time, the levy was sold as a way to keep our “kids” safe in school.  Conveniently, just days before the election a threatening note was left behind promising a shooting spree.  The FBI and Butler County Sheriff’s office offered no leads, no hand writing analysis, no arrests in their “investigation” because they knew what I did—that the investigation would have taken them to the classroom of one of these radical teachers instead of some disgruntled kid.  Heck, Sheriff Jones even put his name behind the passage of the levy.  But if it was a kid, where could we place the blame for learning the behavior—look at their teachers?

Much is said about the millennial generation and how bad they are regarding work ethic—how pretentious they are relative to generations from the past.  Granted, the parents are largely to blame for these screwed up kids.  But the public schools have sold themselves as an option to parenting—as a viable substitute.  Well, here is the proof of what kind of things those mentors are teaching kids.  No wonder kids grow up expecting the world to be handed to them on a silver platter; they learn it from their teachers.

Until Ohio becomes a Right-to-Work state these radical nutcases will have all the leverage against tax payers—because management of them is simply not possible—if teachers will protest merit pay—where good teachers get paid based on how good they are—they’ll protest a turtle crossing the street.  Their argument becomes so ridiculous that it’s almost science fiction.  What’s encouraging is that these Lakota teachers have shown so early in the game that they are willing to behave like a bunch of Saul Alinskey radicals just as they did in 2008 with a strike threat, which I brought up continuously in 2010 through the first three levy attempts, caused the budget problems at Lakota.  These latest actions by them will just give those of us willing to fight these idiots cannon fodder—so I welcome more of these antics.  But there is a bit of me that feels sorry for the management of the Lakota school system—which is an entity I have been very critical of—because of their willingness to stay away from the hard decisions like this merit pay issue.  They tried so hard and spent so much money extracting money from the community and this is how the teachers show their thanks.  It has to hurt.  But nobody can say they weren’t warned.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Whiskey Scam of Robert Reich: Students he taught should ask for their money back–because he doesn’t understand economics

If you really want to know what is behind the global push for $15 an hour wage increases at fast food restaurants and other entry-level jobs look no further than Robert Reich–the Clinton economist and academic liberal who has set the pace of the modern socialist movement using MoveOn.org as a platform for insurrection. MoveOn.org is the Soros funded enterprise and has in mind the fulfillment of the same brand of communism that was promised during the Red Decade only introduced with incremental bits of socialism over a long period of time. Professors like Reich are the reason that colleges are failing our young people because it is his nonsense that they have been taught. People like Reich funded by Soros are at war with American capitalism and seek to end it—and have from the very beginning. To understand why and how read the following article shown below from Reich where he introduced his economic theory in favor of a minimum wage increase. Because Reich is so “respected” and accredited, most people take his opinions hook line and sinker without considering the root implications, or source definitions. But to anybody who really understands money and how it’s made and measured, Reich is a functioning communist. He may not name himself that, but his actions define themselves. His major error in the following suggestion which apparently everyone misses is in properly defining productivity. I’ll explain more after the article and a bit of history about Reich.

WHY THE MINIMUM WAGE SHOULD REALLY BE RAISED TO $15 AN HOUR

Momentum is building to raise the minimum wage. Several states have already taken action  – Connecticut has boosted it to $10.10 by 2017, the Maryland legislature just approved a similar measure, Minnesota lawmakers just reached a deal to hike it to $9.50. A few cities have been more ambitious – Washington, D.C. and its surrounding counties raised it to $11.50, Seattle is considering $15.00

Senate Democrats will soon introduce legislation raising it nationally to $10.10, from the current $7.25 an hour.

All this is fine as far as it goes. But we need to be more ambitious. We should be raising the federal minimum to $15 an hour.

Here are seven reasons why:

  1. Had the minimum wage of 1968 simply stayed even with inflation, it would be more than $10 an hour today. But the typical worker is also about twice as productive as then. Some of those productivity gains should go to workers at the bottom.
  2. $10.10 isn’t enough to lift all workers and their families out of poverty. Most low-wage workers aren’t young teenagers; they’re major breadwinners for their families, and many are women. And they and their families need a higher minimum.
  3.  For this reason, a $10.10 minimum would also still require the rest of us to pay Medicaid, food-stamps, and other programs necessary to get poor families out of poverty – thereby indirectly subsidizing employers who refuse to pay more. Bloomberg View describes McDonalds and Walmart as “America’s biggest welfare queens” because their employees receive so much public assistance. (Some, like McDonalds, even advise their employees to use public programs because their pay is so low.)
  4. A $15/hour minimum won’t result in major job losses because it would put money in the pockets of millions of low-wage workers who will spend it – thereby giving working families and the overall economy a boost, and creating jobs. (When I was Labor Secretary in 1996 and we raised the minimum wage, business predicted millions of job losses; in fact, we had more job gains over the next four years than in any comparable period in American history.)
  5. A $15/hour minimum is unlikely to result in higher prices because most businesses directly affected by it are in intense competition for consumers, and will take the raise out of profits rather than raise their prices. But because the higher minimum will also attract more workers into the job market, employers will have more choice of whom to hire, and thereby have more reliable employees – resulting in lower turnover costs and higher productivity.
  6. Since Republicans will push Democrats to go even lower than $10.10, it’s doubly important to be clear about what’s right in the first place. Democrats should be going for a higher minimum rather than listening to Republican demands for a smaller one.
  7. At a time in our history when 95 percent of all economic gains are going to the top 1 percent, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour isn’t just smart economics and good politics. It’s also the morally right thing to do.

 

 

http://front.moveon.org/robert-reich-explains-why-we-should-raise-the-minimum-wage-to-15-per-hour/

 

http://robertreich.org/post/82134788482

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/opinion/03reich.html?pagewanted=2&ref=general&src=me&_r=0

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Reich

 

Robert Bernard Reich (/ˈraɪʃ/;[1] born June 24, 1946) is an American political economist, professor, author, and political commentator. He served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997.

Reich is currently Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He was formerly a professor at Harvard University‘s John F. Kennedy School of Government[2] and professor of social and economic policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management of Brandeis University. He has also been a contributing editor of The New Republic, The American Prospect (also chairman and founding editor), Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

In an interview with The New York Times, he explained that “I don’t believe in redistribution of wealth for the sake of redistributing wealth. But I am concerned about how we can afford to pay for what we as a nation need to do…[Taxes should pay] for what we need in order to be safe and productive. As Oliver Wendell Holmes once wrote, “taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.”[25]

In response to a question as to what to recommend to the incoming president regarding a fair and sustainable income and wealth distribution, Reich said, “Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit — a wage supplement for lower-income people, and finance it with a higher marginal income tax on the top five percent. For the longer term, invest in education for lower-income communities, starting with early-childhood education and extending all the way up to better access to post-secondary education.”[25]

Reich is pro-union, saying “Unionization is not just good for workers in unions, unionization is very, very important for the economy overall, and would create broad benefits for the United States.”[26][27] He also favors raising the federal minimum wage to $15/hour over three years, believing that it will not adversely impact big business and will enhance the availability of higher value workers for companies.[28]

Reich is only a modern snake oil salesman trying to palm off whisky as a cure-all medicine. His economic product is Karl Marx communism and socialism implemented through twists and turns of Keynesian economics shaped by the philosophies of Immanuel Kant. And guess what—they are all wrong in their premise. Reich goes wrong in his very first assumption when he states above that “the typical worker is about twice as productive now as they were in 1968.” The worker isn’t more efficient or better, their productive output did not increase—their actual work, and the energy output to produce that work is statistically much less than it was in 1968. For instance, at a typical McDonald’s founded first in 1940 the amount of work a worker had to exert in 1968 meant that all the hamburgers had to be grilled by hand, the buns individually toasted, most of the labor had to be implemented with the touch time of a human hand. But by 2015 most of the food making operation was automated. The average McDonald’s today is very much more productive than the 1968 version, but it isn’t because the worker is better. Arguably, ethically, morally, and in all categories of make-up it should be easy to prove by some academic like Reich that the quality of people available to work is much lower today than they were in 1968. So his comment about the average worker being twice as productive is complete nonsense—it’s a statement made up in the halls of academia for the sole purpose of eating money out of George Soros’ hand and his aims for global communism.

The Reich formula for determining productive output ignores completely the value of individuals, whether those individuals are the CEOs of companies, or are hard-working employees who carry the rest of their workforce on their backs on a daily basis. The socialist utopia that Reich preaches about in his economic efforts is a theoretical fantasy that falls apart the moment that theory is applied to real people. And Reich has ignored these failures for years.

When Reich was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997 the economic success that Clinton and Reich enjoyed were not because of their socialist policies, it was because Clinton was forced to compromise with a Republican congress to get their fiscal house in order. Ross Perot was challenging both parties in 1996 so both wanted to squeeze him out of the debate and after the Lewinsky scandal “Bubba” played ball with House and Senate Republicans and things actually improved a bit economically. However the biggest contributors were the invention of the personal PC market and the spread of the Internet which was still a very new thing back then. The market expansion that occurred under tech sector economies happened on Clinton’s watch, and he got the credit. Most of that tech work was done in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan where the stage was set for such Silicone Valley creations—it didn’t have anything to do with Robert Reich.

Yet Reich stood in front of his Harvard and Berkley economic classes all this time teaching socialism to thousands of young students taking credit for that period of time without telling anybody the whole truth. The guy has lied and taken credit for the work of others for years, and now the communist utopia that George Soros wants to create needs the snake oil salesmanship of the con artist Reich. And that is how the minimum wage debate emerged and how the stage was set for the outrageous sum of $15 an hour fast food jobs. These are ideals proposed by shells of actual people who espouse anti-capitalist sentiments with the purposeful destruction of America’s economic power. They should be seen for what they are, and geniuses they are not. Reich can use a lot of big word and charts to explain his theories but in essence he is just a snake oil salesman proclaiming that whiskey has magical properties to a largely uninformed population. What’s worse is that he seeks to keep people in such a state so that not only he can resume gaining attention and accolades, but that he can advance a progressive agenda that seeks an end to our country as a capitalist power house. His failure is specifically in defining value in productivity assuming that all gains belong to human workers. Rather, the real truth in increases in productivity is from the minority of minds who invented the tools to increase productivity in spite of a declining social intellect. That trick is a masterpiece, and it has nothing to do with the American worker, or the gains made toward justification for a minimum wage hike first started in 1968 under deceitful measures.

If you are one of the many poor fools who have taken an economic class by Robert Reich, then you should ask for your money back. Because he sold you whiskey as medicine that only a drunk would accept as legitimate.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com