Tag: education

Cancellation of Union Contracts: The self-entitlement of public workers

A regular citizen shown in the video below pulled over a police officer—a government worker who believes that they are exempt from the law. The officer was driving an unmarked police car and using it for traffic citations—which in Washington state is illegal. The private citizen knew as much and pulled over the bewildered officer. Notice the arrogance of the officer in believing that because he was a police officer, that he was held to a different standard than the rest of society.   Wisely, he realized that the citizen knew more about the law than he did, so he shut his mouth rather quickly—but his irritation at being called out for illegal action was classic.

This is what you get when you have unionized employees in charge of society. Unionized behavior doesn’t work in private industry and it certainly doesn’t work in the public sector. It is because of the lack of competition in promotions, raises, and benefits acquisition that there is so much incompetence in the public sector centering around union contracts paid for with tax payer funds. As predicted at this site four years ago, time is running out for this kind of behavior as city managers and councils are beginning to understand that the only way they can manage tax funded resources is to introduce competition to the equations so that they can get better value for the consumed dollar.

Two remarkable stories happened over the last week resulting in the cancelling of union contracts by public officials. One is the dissolving of the Lincoln Heights police department in Ohio due to excessive insurance costs triggered by union driven law suits so to move the bar of progressive activism far to the left—which has cost Lincoln Heights a lot of money. They decided to just drop their police department to stop the bleeding—which was an excellent decision. The other is the Philadelphia school system cancelling their teacher’s contract because of the excessive cost of health care contributions. The union over the years refused to budge on their golden plans with little contributions from themselves which has broken the bank leaving the only responsible thing to do is to just drop the contract. I have reprinted each story with the original links below. The Lincoln Heights story was the result of a WCPO I-Team investigation and is what journalism is supposed to be about. The Philadelphia schools system story is a Fox News feature. Both have their roots in the same crises located in different parts of the country to show that this is not a regional problem. One is in a relatively conservative area, the other a very liberal one. In the coming months and years this will become a much more common occurrence as it is the only way to properly manage tax payer resources from the greedy hands of public sector unions who just don’t know when to stop asking for more, and more, and more.

CINCINNATI – Lincoln Heights police and fire departments were shut down Thursday after a “lapse in insurance coverage,” but at least one service returned Friday morning.

Hamilton County dispatchers said the fire department reopened, but the police department will remain closed.

Public Entities Pool of Ohio (PEP) – an insurance group that provides property and liability coverage to public entities – terminated the village’s insurance at 12 a.m. Thursday, forcing the departments to shut down.

“It was a yearly renewal,” Lincoln Heights Village Manager Stephanie Summerow-Dumas said. “It was time for a renewal and (PEP) made the decision (to cut coverage) because of certain variables.”

Those variables are lawsuits, according to PEP Executive Vice President JT. Babish.

Babish said coverage was pulled due to the “substantial negative financial impact” of wage disputes, employment harassment, wrongful terminations, allegations of wrongful arrest and violations of civil rights within the departments.

Twenty-three of those claims have resulted in lawsuits – nine of which are still being defended, he said.

PEP officials said the village could not keep up with the costs of those suits.

“Any company would look at that and see if they want to be vulnerable to offer insurance,” Summerow-Dumas said. “I’m sure that came into play and they looked at some of that.”

Lincoln Heights emergency dispatchers were advised to tell callers to contact the Lockland Police Department and Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office, which have taken over emergency duties.

RELATED: I-Team: Lincoln Heights police department struggles with ‘corruption’

The closure of Lincoln Heights’ safety services comes on the heels of an I-Team investigation looking into allegations of corruption inside the police department.

The I-Team uncovered several officers within the department have been cited with violations and charged with crimes .

Lincoln Heights Mayor Laverne Mitchell called Ohio Rep. Alicia Reese Thursday after the insurance coverage was revoked.

Reese said she is working to find a solution.

“I contacted the governor to ask for help,” Reece said. “Safety has to be the top priority for the residents, both in the short and long term.”

Reece said she also held an emergency meeting with cabinet members and representatives from the Department of Insurance and Public Safety.

She said the state agreed to work with Lincoln Heights officials over the next several weeks.

 

 

http://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/lincoln-heights/lincoln-heights-fire-police-department-shut-down

 

 

Philadelphia schools cancel teachers’ union contract

PHILADELPHIA – The troubled Philadelphia school district abruptly canceled its teachers’ contract Monday, a surprise move designed to force health care contributions after two years of stalled labor talks.

The announcement came at a hastily-called meeting of the state-run School Reform Commission.

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District officials said they have no plans to cut wages of the 15,000 teachers, nurses and other members of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. They would pay about $55 to $140 per month for health care premiums, and face other benefit cuts, starting in December, unless the move is challenged in court.

The American Federation of Teachers called the vote Monday “a well-planned Hail Mary ambush” by Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, who faces a tough re-election fight next month.

“Corbett’s School Reform Commission has amped up a war on teachers and support staff,” AFT President Randi Weingarten said in a statement. “The commission would rather attempt to impose a contract than work with teachers to figure out what is best for Philadelphia’s kids.”

The district, one of the nation’s largest, has 135,000 students. Officials have eliminated 5,000 jobs and closed more than 30 schools as they cut nearly $1 billion in expenses in the past few years. The district perennially struggles with a structural deficit caused by rising pension and health care costs and payments to charter schools, which serve an additional 65,000 students.

Officials said the benefit concessions were on a par with those made by administrators and other workers in recent years.

“Requiring teachers and other employees to contribute to their health care costs is a change and a sacrifice, but contributing to health care benefits is the reality of today’s workplace,” Superintendent William Hite said in a letter to parents. “Limited resources require difficult decisions.”

He expected the teacher health care contributions to yield more than $50 million in savings and new funding per school year. At the same time, Hite urged parents to keep pushing state lawmakers for what he called a fair funding formula.

“Philadelphia families have made extraordinary sacrifices: students come to school every day in buildings that lack critical resources necessary for teaching and learning,” said SRC Chairman William J. Green, a longtime Philadelphia councilman appointed to the post by Corbett earlier this year.

Corbett just two weeks ago signed off on a $2-a-pack cigarette tax in Philadelphia, which city leaders had sought to raise $83 million a year for the school district.

One Democratic lawmaker, Rep. Mike O’Brien of Philadelphia, called the SRC’s unanimous vote to break the contract Monday “an exercise in union busting.”

“It’s certainly a violation of all laws dealing with collective bargaining,” he said. “I think it winds its way into the federal courts.”

Union officials planned an afternoon news conference.

City schools have been under state control since 2001, but have always worked under a negotiated contract. Under the takeover law, teachers do not have the right to strike.

Only a few dozen people attended the surprise session Monday morning, according to parent activist Helen Gym, who said she only learned of the meeting at midnight.

“It’s a disgrace in terms of public governance and democracy,” said Gym, the co-founder of Parents United for Public Education.

“As parents, we’re obviously concerned, because the only thing that is really holding our schools together right now is the teachers and staff,” she said. “I just don’t know how we’re going to sustain and keep a talented teaching force without a contract.”

 

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/10/06/philadelphia-schools-cancel-teachers-union-contract/

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Todd Hall’s John Kasich Rally: A warning and some help to a divided party

I once had the rare privilege of being called an “elitist” by Carlos Todd while speaking at a Liberty Township zoning hearing. So my comments about an event his grandson Todd Hall organized to rally Governor John Kasich at the Ronald Reagan building on Monday October 13th to a second term should be understood with clarity. I like Todd, he’s a nice fellow, but he’s running the Republican Party the way his grandfather did two decades ago, and it’s not working. The political tides are moving in a different direction and he doesn’t have the sail to those winds and this is a warning to him and those who are working with him so to save themselves before it’s too late. Todd and I have worked together before and when he listened, he had success. When he hasn’t, well things fell apart. So take this as a warning.image001

Early on Tuesday morning Hall sent out an email about the event citing that there was much excitement during the evening, that Cindy Carpenter, Sheriff Jones, and Bill Coley were speaking and that it was a packed house. Well, as the pictures here show, it was far from a crowded room that came out on a Monday evening to see the Governor of Ohio. I’ve seen more people show up in that building to rent boats for the lake on a Saturday afternoon. The amount of people who showed up to see the current governor was disgraceful. Just a few years ago—three to be exact—we packed the barn at Carriage Hill to welcome the Governor to Southern Ohio in support of the SB5 fight against public sector unions. But that night ended in a loss and the GOP reorganized to rally behind the moderates and push out the “right-wingers.” That was a stupid move.

So it should be no surprise that the only people at the rally, which should have filled the room with thousands—were political office holders and direct financial backers. It was an inbred event aimed at reconciliation of the party instead of addressing the differences. The first mistake was that it featured Sheriff Jones who spoke so poorly against John Kasich during the SB5 fight—but now was speaking at his rally. People see that kind of two faced opportunist as lecherous and very unattractive—and not worth the gas to put in their car to see, let alone donate money to the party. And Cindy Carpenter who is technically a liberal was there speaking as a representative of conservativism, that’s like inviting Bill Clinton to a morality conference. Most people who stand to make money off their political alliances—who were at that rally might have short memories because their livelihoods demand it. But for other people—the real conservatives who reside in Butler County, they have long memories—and they are looking for winners, not hand-shaking moderates.Kasich1

For context there was much dispersion over the recent Cincinnati Bengal game which ended in a tie with the Carolina Panthers that took place just the day before the Kasich rally. Sure the Bengals didn’t lose the game, but they didn’t win it either. It is that kind of blasé political approach that guided the sparse few at the Kasich rally on Monday. People don’t get excited to see Kasich shake hands with his political Judas Sheriff Jones—they want to see Kasich body slam the union spokesman. If Kasich did that—more people would show up—not just the insiders who make money off the political process, as either office holders or business people seeking government contracts—but real people with real passions

When Carlos Todd called me an elitist it was in the context that I suggested that Liberty Township should strive to mold itself after Indian Hill—a successful and affluent community in the Cincinnati region—as opposed to a conglomeration of mixed development township with United Dairy Farmer stores every mile across the region. As much as I enjoy development and the creativity of capitalism, sometimes more is less. And when it comes to maintaining real estate values for the long haul, homes don’t need to be located near trendy endeavors. Today’s shiny new development is tomorrow’s slum—so I encouraged those leaders within the Republic Party over a decade ago to be mindful of the future and not the short-sighted development that puts money in their pockets tomorrow. Ethically, Todd’s interest in politics was not philosophically driven, but profit driven which makes him one of those crony capitalists unlike the laissez-faire capitalists that I advocate with much celebration. People are aware that there is a problem with such people and that their intentions are less than sincere. So their passions toward the cause of conservative philosophy is quelled and they are left without a spokesmen.

Political advocates and the money that comes from them want action, passion, and an adherence to a philosophy. The split in the Republican Party which took place in Butler County recently was reflected at this rally for Kasich and is the deliberate isolation that these moderate conservatives—bordering on out-right liberalism have created for themselves and the more traditional branches of the party. And unbeknownst to them they have played right into the strategy liberals have conducted against them allowing for this gradual erosion of value within the Republican Party. They listened to their critics and distanced themselves from the “radical right-wing” just as the liberal masses hoped they would. As a result, nobody of any passion showed up at the Kasich rally leaving Todd Hall to attempt to put a good spin on the event—which was embarrassing at best for a sitting governor who actually did straighten out some of the finances in Ohio

I’ll vote for Kasich but not with pleasure and pride. It will be a painful process not unlike scheduling surgery. Kasich is not what could be called a strong conservative—he is a moderate at best. For instance, he often states that he has a friendship with former Governor Strickland. I could not have such a friendship. To say such a thing indicates common values and beliefs that go beyond professional respect. Respect and friendship are not the same things. Kasich deep down inside believes some of the things that Strickland does leaving a small string of commonality that leads to friendship. In this way current Butler County Commissioner Don Dixon used to be a Democrat but converted because the politics of Butler County under Carlos Todd meant that Democrats would never get elected in such a conservative county. So he changed political parties to survive in that environment. Another Butler County Commissioner Cindy Carpenter if she lived in San Francisco or even New England would be a Democrat. Her behavior is undeniably liberal and she is Sheriff Jones’ right-hand woman in Butler County. There is nothing coming from Sheriff Jones and Cindy Carpenter that is going to excite the conservative base who lives in Butler County. They see through the haze at the reality that they have very weak representation in elected office as conservatives.Kasich 2

Kasich himself has spent the last couple of years seeking votes for Medicaid expansion essentially endorsing Obamacare. So there is nothing exciting there for real conservatives to invest their passions into—they will likely hold their noses and vote for Kasich, but they won’t waste their time on a Monday night to hang out with a sell-out and rally him to a victory. Sell-outs are easy to see, unique people with real passions are not—so this is why nobody showed up to the Kasich rally

It is easy to call people like me a radical elitist because the real concern is that moderate politicians like those at the Kasich rally can’t suddenly become ethical. It is easier to just isolate themselves from the competition of thought. It is more comforting for Todd Hall’s Republicans to compare themselves to their liberal rivals as opposed to their actual conservative base. Without that conservative base—and in Butler County it is the David Kern Republicans—there will continue to be eroding support for political events and the money that needs to be generated by them. The situation is quite serious as the evidence is in the event organized by Hall for the sitting Governor. In this part of the state he finds his strongest support. Just imagine the reaction in places like Toledo and Cleveland just days before the election. That is the cost of sitting in office and behaving like a liberal.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

The Ebola Conspiracies: Warnings from ‘The Hot Zone’

I first learned about the Ebola virus from the 1994 thriller The Hot Zone. The disease has been around for a while and was contained successfully for over 20 years to the African continent. For reasons that seem to be pulled straight off the pages of that best-selling book, the level of stupidity regarding the containment of the disease over the last couple of months have only fueled the conspiracy theories that a massive desire to depopulate the world with a deadly virus are true. The failure to contain travelers from the hot zone of Africa is the first give-away. Then the failures to stop contact with infected victims in the United States has been the other indicator. There seems to be more to the story than just lackadaisical stupidity on behalf of the government workers at play. Conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones and musical artist Chris Brown have justifiable concerns to their active imaginations. It doesn’t take much to draw conclusions that something is array.

 

The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story is a best-selling[1] 1994 non-fiction thriller by Richard Preston about the origins and incidents involving viral hemorrhagic fevers, particularly ebola viruses and marburgviruses. The basis of the book was Preston’s 1992 New Yorker article “Crisis in the Hot Zone“.[2]

 

The filoviruses Ebola virus (EBOV), Sudan virus (SUDV), Marburg virus (MARV), and Ravn virus (RAVV) are Biosafety Level 4 agents. Biosafety Level 4 agents are extremely dangerous to humans because they are very infectious, have a high case-fatality rate, and there are no known prophylactics, treatments, or cures. Along with describing the history of the diseases caused by these two Central African diseases, Ebola virus disease (EVD) and Marburg virus disease (MVD), Preston describes a 1989 incident in which a relative of Ebola virus named Reston virus (RESTV), was discovered at a primate quarantine facility in Reston, Virginia, less than fifteen miles (24 km) away from Washington, DC. The virus found at the facility was a mutated form of the original Ebola virus, and was initially mistaken for Simian Hemorrhagic Fever (SHV). The original Reston facility involved in the incident, located at 1946 Isaac Newton Square, was subsequently torn down sometime between 1995 and 1998.[3]

 

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

With the sudden rash of cases dominating the news cycle—eclipsing all other stories including the ISIS debacles, IRS crises, the continued failures of the Obama administration at virtually everything—a bit of panic has ensued into the mainstream leaving MTV to actually discuss the issue. Below is a small article from MTV actually castigating a black artist for reckless comments about an Ebola conspiracy theory. Ironically, this is one of the few times a major progressive network has come out against the type of rhetoric that is coming out from people in the African-American communities like Louis Farrakhan.

 

“When it comes to updates on his new music, videos or graffiti, Chris Brown is a great source of information. But … if you’re looking for reliable, timely news on the Ebola epidemic, Breezy is not really your guy. See, on Monday (October 13), amid news that a second person in the U.S. had tested positive for the deadly virus after coming into contact with the nation’s first patient, who is now deceased, CB took to Twitter to spout his conspiracy theory on the spread of the disease that has killed thousands in Africa.”

http://www.mtv.com/news/1961927/chris-brown-ebola-tweet/

If Chris Brown had sent out a Tweet about the Ferguson riots, MTV would have been all over themselves in support of the celebrity—but on this case, they are oddly critical. This of course points to the kind of conspiracy that is a product of Alex Jones who is often bombastic in his predilections, but often makes some interesting observations that deserve investigation. His belief reflected on the Info Wars website seen below is that this recent outbreak of Ebola is part of a Globalist process conspiracy—meaning that the disease is being deliberately spread through bureaucratic means to depopulate the earth before medicine can possibly react to the danger—as shown in the quotes below.

“The specific object of the Globalist Ebola process conspiracy is here theorized to involve diminishing the linkage, in public consciousness, of Ebola with nationality status. Globalists have huge immigration plans for the U.S., and they do not want Ebola (or any other infectious disease, for that matter) getting in the way of those plans. That is why their Ebola policy protocols—as absurd as they are (discussed shortly)— read the way they do, that is why we have been exposed to a cloud of lies emanating from Dallas and dispersed through the MSM, and that is why Duncan was discharged with antibiotics soon after his first visit to the Emergency Room of Texas Presbyterian.

Because the theory is a process conspiracy theory and therefore rooted in subverted policy, it has application not just to Duncan, but to future Duncan’s as well. The argument proceeds as follows. First, a brief observation concerning risk is offered which, even though obvious, is necessary because without it the argument will make little sense. Second, the CDC’s Ebola Screening and Isolation polices are examined, and, on the basis of the risk observation, shown to be not only wholly inadequate to the task they were allegedly crafted to meet, but quite likely to make the Ebola contagion problem even worse. Third, evidence is provided in support of the idea that the Ebola process conspiracy theory offers a simple, and very plausible explanation, of certain important assertions of fact, and inconsistencies, emanating from Dallas that are otherwise rather difficult to explain. Throughout, the connection to the issue of nationality status will be obvious.”

http://www.infowars.com/the-dallas-ebola-case-an-immigration-related-process-conspiracy/

 

There are aspects to both conspiracy theories, whether it is a fear that there are forces who want to kill black people with the disease, or a global conspiracy by the elite banks to depopulate the earth so to save it from the thriving masses leaving mankind to begin again under the care and guidance of a rich elite—the stupidity in controlling the disease has supported those fears. But what is not a conspiracy is the reaction that Americans have had toward the disease, a shallow cowering fear that has emitted short of panic as the news coverage has intensified over the last couple of weeks. Any Jihadist terrorist who might desire to kill themselves and many others for Allah is likely already thinking of ways that they can contract the disease and catch a flight to the resort towns of Mexico where incoming customs are lax that detainment is nearly impossible. Mexican tourist towns think of only one primary objective, vacation dollars spent on their economy. They are too short-sighted in those cities to think of the implication of a world-wide Ebola outbreak. From there it is easy to walk across the American border to attend a college party or dance club at a nearby city. Two weeks infected and dripping with a feverish sweat, the terrorist could contaminant thousands of people in a single evening that would then infect many thousands more in the ensuing weeks. If someone wanted to create terror against the most successful capitalist country in the world, Ebola would be the way to do it, especially given the reaction to the few incidents already popping up in North America. Given the ease for which it was spread and the incompetence of the government to contain it the only logical conclusion would be conspiracy.

The reason that the 1994 book The Hot Zone was such a terrifying best seller is due to the theoretical proximity it has to reality through either incompetence or conspiracy. Either way, we are vulnerable to the grim realities of a devastating disease and must take caution. Part of that caution is in knowing how to avoid it. The second part is in taking action to replace the type of people who have shown such gross incompetence at their government positions to allow for Ebola to migrate from Africa to America either by purposeful design or sheer stupidity. Those responsible need to be removed from positions of decision-making so that proper managers can take their place with a level of competence that necessitates the performance expectations that Americans have in living free of such deadly diseases as those spawned in West Africa.

 

The conspiracies spawned off of this latest Ebola scare are rooted in incompetency—they are born when people suspect that they aren’t being given all the facts of the matter leaving their imaginations to fill the gaps. It is not they who are at fault—it is not Chris Brown or Alex Jones who are the nut cases in advocating conspiracies when it comes to Ebola. It is the idiots who let it leave West Africa for destinations on the continent of North America. The warnings were there from the start, but obviously those in charge had forgotten the warnings given in The Hot Zone. Now—it’s too late. Ebola has gone from a scare to a grim reality that is now non-fiction and beyond speculation.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean and why justice comes from a bullwhip

A recent comment about my site here, Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom contemplated my use of bullwhips and attempted to associate it with slavery in the typical progressive fashion. Of course I’ve heard all this before and each time I hear it only inspires me more to expose progressivism for the destructive force that it is more intensely. One of the reasons that bullwhip work is degraded as sadomasochism and instruments of slavery is due to this progressive marketing campaign that wants to divide up everything into just a few categories, fairness for women, fairness for people of color, fairness for the poor, and fairness for other countries. Of course that fairness is always defined by a political class of elites hungry for power and inspired by the communist movement of the 20th century. But that is always ignored. Instead this is the kind of intelligence we are to contend with:

‘Justice comes with the crack of the whip,” is the tag line. And he wields bullwhips as a hobby. Naw, he’s no overseer. What connotations could I even imply?

 

The implication there of course is that as an “overman” I want to be a slave owner ruling over a flock of black slaves. The bullwhip is part of the slave master tradition to the thinking of these political marionettes. But they would be wrong, in fact, they are part of a massive cover-up which seeks to highlight the effects of slavery in America—inherited from Europe—and the type of slavery that Thomas Jefferson himself attacked when he could—which was the start of the United States Marines. That slavery started it all in the modern world and involved Muslims in North Africa. The information and statistics are staggering of how many white people were enslaved by Muslims of color and were articulated in the 2004 book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean. Read about the study conducted in that book below:

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new study suggests that a million or more European Christians were enslaved by Muslims in North Africa between 1530 and 1780 – a far greater number than had ever been estimated before.

 

Robert Davis, professor of history at Ohio State University, developed a unique methodology to calculate the number of white Christians who were enslaved along Africa’s Barbary Coast, arriving at much higher slave population estimates than any previous studies had found.

 

Most other accounts of slavery along the Barbary Coast didn’t try to estimate the number of slaves, or only looked at the number of slaves in particular cities, Davis said. Most previously estimated slave counts have thus tended to be in the thousands, or at most in the tens of thousands. Davis, by contrast, has calculated that between 1 million and 1.25 million European Christians were captured and forced to work in North Africa from the 16th to 18th centuries.

 

Davis’s new estimates appear in the book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800 (Palgrave Macmillan).

“Much of what has been written gives the impression that there were not many slaves and minimizes the impact that slavery had on Europe,” Davis said. “Most accounts only look at slavery in one place, or only for a short period of time. But when you take a broader, longer view, the massive scope of this slavery and its powerful impact become clear.”

Davis said it is useful to compare this Mediterranean slavery to the Atlantic slave trade that brought black Africans to the Americas. Over the course of four centuries, the Atlantic slave trade was much larger – about 10 to 12 million black Africans were brought to the Americas. But from 1500 to 1650, when trans-Atlantic slaving was still in its infancy, more white Christian slaves were probably taken to Barbary than black African slaves to the Americas, according to Davis.

“One of the things that both the public and many scholars have tended to take as given is that slavery was always racial in nature – that only blacks have been slaves. But that is not true,” Davis said. “We cannot think of slavery as something that only white people did to black people.”

During the time period Davis studied, it was religion and ethnicity, as much as race, that determined who became slaves.

“Enslavement was a very real possibility for anyone who traveled in the Mediterranean, or who lived along the shores in places like Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, and even as far north as England and Iceland,” he said.

Pirates (called corsairs) from cities along the Barbary Coast in north Africa – cities such as Tunis and Algiers – would raid ships in the Mediterranean and Atlantic, as well as seaside villages to capture men, women and children. The impact of these attacks were devastating – France, England, and Spain each lost thousands of ships, and long stretches of the Spanish and Italian coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants. At its peak, the destruction and depopulation of some areas probably exceeded what European slavers would later inflict on the African interior.

Although hundreds of thousands of Christian slaves were taken from Mediterranean countries, Davis noted, the effects of Muslim slave raids was felt much further away: it appears, for example, that through most of the 17th century the English lost at least 400 sailors a year to the slavers.

Even Americans were not immune. For example, one American slave reported that 130 other American seamen had been enslaved by the Algerians in the Mediterranean and Atlantic just between 1785 and 1793.

Davis said the vast scope of slavery in North Africa has been ignored and minimized, in large part because it is on no one’s agenda to discuss what happened.

The enslavement of Europeans doesn’t fit the general theme of European world conquest and colonialism that is central to scholarship on the early modern era, he said. Many of the countries that were victims of slavery, such as France and Spain, would later conquer and colonize the areas of North Africa where their citizens were once held as slaves. Maybe because of this history, Western scholars have thought of the Europeans primarily as “evil colonialists” and not as the victims they sometimes were, Davis said.

Davis said another reason that Mediterranean slavery has been ignored or minimized has been that there have not been good estimates of the total number of people enslaved. People of the time – both Europeans and the Barbary Coast slave owners – did not keep detailed, trustworthy records of the number of slaves. In contrast, there are extensive records that document the number of Africans brought to the Americas as slaves.

So Davis developed a new methodology to come up with reasonable estimates of the number of slaves along the Barbary Coast. Davis found the best records available indicating how many slaves were at a particular location at a single time. He then estimated how many new slaves it would take to replace slaves as they died, escaped or were ransomed.

“The only way I could come up with hard numbers is to turn the whole problem upside down – figure out how many slaves they would have to capture to maintain a certain level,” he said. “It is not the best way to make population estimates, but it is the only way with the limited records available.”

Putting together such sources of attrition as deaths, escapes, ransoming, and conversions, Davis calculated that about one-fourth of slaves had to be replaced each year to keep the slave population stable, as it apparently was between 1580 and 1680. That meant about 8,500 new slaves had to be captured each year. Overall, this suggests nearly a million slaves would have been taken captive during this period. Using the same methodology, Davis has estimated as many as 475,000 additional slaves were taken in the previous and following centuries.

The result is that between 1530 AD and 1780 AD there were almost certainly 1 million and quite possibly as many as 1.25 million white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast.

 

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/whtslav.htm

Of course nobody ever hears about this because under the re-education so fashionable under progressive interpretation, the slavery of whites doesn’t fit the communist motivated, anti-American imperialism that is the real target of the attack by those who want to destroy America and the capitalism that drives its economic power. So the slavery argument has been captured to only discuss the practice in America. What is ignored is that once America had freed itself during the Revolution it immediately went to work to free all men which started the Civil War. After the Civil War was a period of westward expansion which highlights the era typically rendered by the cinematic western. It is from this time that the bullwhip came into play not as a plantation guardian, but of individuals facing down the vast open spaces of the American West.

 

The tag line I use at this site is a quote from my own 2004 novel The Symposium of Justice where the main character Cliffhanger fights off modern slavery by destroying a mind control device designed to interfere with the thinking of a town’s citizens and guide them in the proper political direction. The use of bullwhips in the story has nothing to do with slavery or standing over other people—it is about freeing people so that they can think. The use of the bullwhip is to use force to punish bad guys for attempting to enslave civilization. My use of the bullwhip in that story context is to free people, not to enslave them.

Those who chose to revise history are far more dangerous than the perceived slave master who uses a bullwhip to control the black slaves at their southern plantation. The minds of these critics shown at the beginning of this article are made by modern progressives who make movies like Dajango Unchained and the ignorant masses believe wholeheartedly that the filmmaker Tarentino is a scholar who knows much about the slavery argument. But he doesn’t. For those who do know, slavery wasn’t a black or white condition, it was a product of the times, and white people were just as vulnerable to enslavement as blacks were—yet this is never discussed even though the evidence is quite extensive.

 

For my own lessons in history it is my proposal that it takes an “overman” to see past the limitations imposed on mankind through thousands of years motivated exclusively by ignorance. It takes such a position to understand why a 2004 book written about white slavery in North Africa by a professor of history at Ohio State was ignored—because it didn’t fit the progressive definitions meant to attack American imperialism. It is also meant to ignore the role that Muslims played in that slavery—as Islam is a religion that progressives are advocating as a volatile assailant against the bourgeoisie of world power, the North American continent. Those progressive definitions come straight out of the books of Karl Marx and have no other grounding in reality. To see such contradictions not only takes a student of history, but someone willing to step outside of the current human limitations of personal sensitivity and political concern to see the truth. And the truth is, America freed their slaves, but the rest of the world didn’t. Of those other places in the world that promoted slavery so intensely, it was the Muslims who then as they do now, seek to rule over mankind with an iron fist. For me, the bullwhip is a symbol of the American West and the only time in world history that a nation freed itself from a tyrannical past. That symbol needs to be propped up for the world to see so that they too can rise up against their slave masters with a projection of strength that can metaphorically come only from a bullwhip.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Up for Whatever Happens: Tampa Bay Beats the Steelers in an improbable win

There hasn’t been much to cheer about the last couple of years, and first part of this new season as I’m a diehard fan of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers football team.  It has been a transition period for them as they have sought after their correct player/coach combinations.  With the addition of Lovie Smith as the new head coach, I have been optimistic until the thrashing that took place in Atlanta.  I am also a fan of the Bud Light commercials, “Up for Whatever Happens” which I featured during the last Super Bowl.  So even after a terrible start to the new season, it was wonderful to see Warren Sapp grant a Tampa Bay resident with a dream “happening” by converting his living room into a pirate themed amusement park at the beginning of the game against the Pittsburg Steelers.  This is usually how it looks at my house on each Sunday that the Bucs play.

Football is a celebration of capitalism and the type of people who have assembled on the outskirts of society to attack the NFL are the same idiots who believe in global warming, the income disparity between men and women, and that it is better to have a president in the White House because of skin color rather than content of character.  These intrusive big-government, anti-capitalists want to step into the private affairs of Ray Rice, and Adrian Peterson along with coming after the Washington Redskin franchise name—as they do every “citizen” of the world for reasons that have nothing to do with justice.    These characters are not so interested in protecting women from domestic violence or children from abusive punishment—or honoring the name of a conquered people—but rather in moving the progressive bar further to the political left by attacking a mainstay of American capitalism—the NFL.  So I tend to support American football as a leisure activity in spite of their altruistic obsession of appeasing those same radicals with the pink ribbon campaigns and 60 minutes of exercise per day for children.  I believe that the Madden Football on Xbox and Playstation does more for children than an entire year of public school as far as teaching them how to think—so I love and support the NFL.

I also love Lovie Smith who has always been and continues to be a stand up guy who coaches in a unique way as a mentor first, and a leader desiring to win second.  This could be said of the Glazer ownership as well which I have spoken about in great detail over the years.  The Tampa Bay Buccaneer organization from the top to the bottom is a class act and a great enhancement to the Tampa Bay region.  Lovie Smith is the perfect kind of fit for the type of coach the Glazers had been looking for.  But after a terrible, embarrassing loss to the Atlanta Falcons—a division rival, I had no hope that the Bucs could bounce back and beat the Steelers playing in Pittsburg—where the home team almost never loses.  The mountain of improbability was just too high.  I didn’t even put my flags out for the first time in about 8 years.  I watched the game out of loyalty but I didn’t want to put too much emotional investment into a team that was obviously struggling with Lovie’s team philosophy. I didn’t even get excited much when the Bucs came out and sacked Big Ben in the opening moments jumping up to a 10-0 first quarter score.  The Steelers made some adjustments and came back to get the lead and held it until the closing moments of the game—but with 7 seconds left on the clock, the Bucs mounted a valiant comeback—held their poise and won the game.  It was very impressive, and if I had my cannons out, I would have shot them as seen in that Bud Light commercial.

I don’t care if the Bucs win another game this season—that win was one that I’ll never forget.  Hopefully the organization will build on that victory and step will into the future.  For all the talk about the recent Hall-of-Fame inclusions of Warren Sapp, Derrick Brooks, and soon John Lynch, Ronde Barber, and probably Mike Alstott, Tony Dungy, along with many others—the Bucs have been living in the past—happy to have their one Super Bowl win in 2002.  The ownership has tried to recapture that magic, but the results have been average.  There have been some great wins, and some fun Sundays, but the Bucs have not been able to rekindle the magic of their Hall-of-Fame players.  The Steelers on the other hand have a whole hallway of Super Bowl wins and a legacy of success that is unmatched.  Their current head coach is a former Buccaneer coach and has had great accomplishments in Pittsburg.  The reason it is so hard to win in Pittsburg is because the fans expect success from their team—and nothing less.  That is obvious when Pittsburg comes to Cincinnati to play which is four hours away to the south—there are nearly as many Steeler fans in the stands of a home game with the Bengals who follow the team to away games with great enthusiasm.  They do the same in Cleveland, and Baltimore creating a very intimidating fan base that rattles visiting teams during every Steeler home game.

It would have been very hard for Lovie Smith to prepare his team after such a daunting loss to get back on the horse and prepare for the Steelers—where the odds were against them in every category.  The NFL world was shocked to see the Bucs steal a win against the valiant Steelers—yet it happened in a convincing way.  Even when I thought the game was over with only a minute left—Pittsburg had the ball forcing Tampa to use all their timeouts—the defense put the screws to a very good Steeler offense.  The big difference in the game was that Gerald McCoy was back in the middle forcing the Steelers to attempt to run the ball to the outside where speedy linebackers were there to pick up the attempt.  The defense held, and the Bucs got the ball back with 30 seconds left to march down the field and score a touchdown.  Mike Glennon—the back-up quarterback throwing to a guy who was signed only the week before—who was cut after the pre-season, caught the ball on a slot reception and nearly made it into the in-zone.  Two plays later Vincent Jackson caught a touchdown stunning the football world.

After the game the Bud Light commercial featuring Warren Sapp and the Buccaneer themed living room came on again and it was just more revered the second time—because of the win.  There are a lot of metaphors in football that can be applied to life and it is games like the one between the Bucs and Steelers that serve as testimony to all of them.  Even when the odds are terribly stacked against you and you appear to be out-classed in every category—if you believe you can win, it’s the first step in marching down the field to get a victory—against all odds.  And in such times it takes a coach who is willing to spit in the wind of convention and not surrender to the temptation to lose his cool that can convince his team of young saplings that they can achieve the most audacious feat only a week after receiving the most embarrassing loss of their lives.  Lovie Smith is a great coach if for no other reason than the way he handled himself before and after the Pittsburg Steelers game of 2014.  It was a game that belonged featured in the Bud Light commercial “Up for Whatever Happens” because in the closing seconds on a brilliant autumn afternoon in the Midwest—it did.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Corrupt Politics Behind Lakota’s Boys and Girls Club West Chester: The exploitation of children to fulfill fantasies of vanity

The essence of the Boys and Girls Clubs across America is really an excuse for altruistic latté sipping prostitutes to bath themselves in perfume and take selfies at award dinners to celebrate their bailout of failed parenting and offerings of all day babysitting services to families too busy and ignorant to perform the task of mentoring for their own children.   In spite of the hoards of celebrities which participate in commercials for the Boys and Girls Clubs, the basic message of the organization is that parents fail at raising children and that there is a social safety net out there to catch all those lost children who would otherwise fall through the cracks of civilization.  The idiocy of the message is that an alliance with government schools will somehow miraculously overcome bad parenting and make children complete citizens who will then grow up and “serve” their communities.  Needless to say, I think the whole premise is a bad idea.  So it should come as no surprise that I’m against the one that is being built in West Chester, Ohio in partnership with Lakota schools, which can be seen at the two articles below, one from the Journal News, the other from me where I break down the essence and politics of the deal telling the behind the scenes story of how that ridiculous endeavor came to be and who the personalities involved are.

http://www.journal-news.com/news/news/lakota-looking-to-lease-land-to-new-boys-girls-clu/nhSHs/

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2014/06/26/the-emperor-of-aldersonville-lakota-becomes-the-new-clothes/

However, the focus of this present article should be on the strategy of the Lakota superintendent Karen Mantia—as I am in a unique position to tell the story—which of course she will deny when pressed—but actions always do speak louder than words.  Karen when she was hired and overpaid by Lynda O’Conner, current Vice President of the Lakota school board, came to Lakota to pass school levies.  Up until that point Lakota residents had a strong resistance against tax increases proposed by the school.  So she set to do as she had in Pickerington, Ohio, to unite the business community and get their buy-in to her school system—as school superintendents like to see themselves as CEO’s who run vast corporations.  Coming to Lakota she sought to convert members of the opposition from No Lakota Levy—my group—into her way of thinking but first she had to know the political lay of the land.  She met with us and she and I had a nice conversation about my motorcycle and recent trip to Key West.  She was smooth and unassuming and made my partners believe that she had a head on her shoulders and that she just might approach school business with a mind to savings.

However, what Karen knew and discovered during that meeting, and through subsequent dinners through Lynda O’Conner with members of my No Lakota Levy group was that the builders and developers who were a part of the tax resistance were scorned by the school and not getting any work.  After all, Lakota schools is one of the largest employers in Butler County so it is hard to be in the business of developing things when you are on the shit list of local government employment group, so some of those members of the No Lakota Levy group wanted to repair their relationship with the school because they needed the work and felt vulnerable being on the wrong side of politics.  Mark Sennett was the first to defect out of pressure applied to him, which was revealed during the summer of 2011 when he misspoke to the media that No Lakota Levy would support a 2012 levy under certain conditions.  Of course I corrected that to the media and Mark was pushed out of the No Lakota Levy group.  Other developer types joined Mark, while others stayed with me.  Mark being a former government employee himself didn’t have strong convictions about things and was a member of No Lakota Levy because his affiliation with me saved him a lot of money in taxes—so we agreed on that much.  But on other matters, his reasons for being a part of the group were not as strong as mine.

During her meeting with No Lakota Levy Karen learned who the leaders of the group where and who the moderates were and quickly went back to the drawing board to figure out how to divide and conquer our group.  I warned our guys that this was her intentions and that she wasn’t such a nice old lady as she seemed.  For that particular election, they listened to me, but after the third levy defeat for which we orchestrated again saving local business owners millions of dollars—they began to feel the heat of being on the political out within the community and wanted desperately to repair their inside relationships for the exclusive purpose of gaining work from Lakota.  As developers, they couldn’t afford a sustained resistance to Lakota’s constant tax requests and Karen knew it.  So she attacked them where they all shared common ground—through the local socialite Patti Alderson.

Karen nurtured a friendship with the West Chester version of Lovey Howell from the Gilligan’s Island television show which cut directly to my No Lakota Levy members, because many were involved in the Community Foundation with her.  After discovering that Karen seemed like a reasonable women—a titan of industry much like herself–Alderson formed an alliance that would continue well into the next two years.  The purpose of this alliance was to pull the business oriented support of No Lakota Levy away from the ideological elements—represented by me.  I warned our members that this was what was going on, and told them that Karen planned to ignore the voters by going for another levy attempt in 2012 during a meeting right before Christmas in 2011.  They held tight for as long as they could, but really could not stand up to Alderson who put a lot of social pressure on them to buckle, because in essence they needed her more than she needed them.

On cue, Karen made her moves and positioned Lakota for an early 2012 levy push for either May or August when everyone was thinking about summer break—a tactic she tried in Pickerington.  Patti put pressure on my No Lakota Levy guys to separate from my radicalism and join the political moderates who were under the thumb of Karen Mantia joined together through the Community Foundation. Sensing the separation, Karen then worked the radical elements of her levy supporters to come after me personally and smear my name leading to the now famous Kroger Survey incident.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.   Reports of the survey came to me from No Lakota Levy supporters who directed me to the website “Yappi Sports,” which naturally infuriated me.  I agreed to a plan by the other No Lakota Levy members who were direct friends with Alderson to help them with a charity type organization called Yes To Lakota Kids.  Originally, we were planning to join Alderson’s group—but since her real objective was not to help kids, but build alliances against No Lakota Levy in favor of Karen Mantia’s efforts—she couldn’t work with me.  So we started our own group which touched off a firestorm of panic.   Immediately school board member Julie Shafer whom I debated on 700 WLW scoured through my articles and pieced together some of the worst things they could find that I had written to smear me publically—because the Yes To Lakota Kids foundation strategically cut too far into Lakota’s turf—which I knew it would all along.  So they had to take action.  I stood by my comments and felt good about it until the No Lakota Levy guys in direct alliance with Alderson left me stranded at the altar.  I knew the temptation was strong from them to end the levy fight, but I didn’t think they would side with her against me—but in the end, the politics of the deal was stronger than friendships and the rest is history.  Because of the damage on both sides—as I was intensely furious about the incident even more so than what caused me to say the things I had said in the first place—a short cease-fire was agreed upon.  Karen took that time to lick her wounds and try a different approach using a strategy of friendliness to counter all the vile things I had said about them.  Lakota spent many thousands of dollars on publicity to re-invent their image, and tried again for a levy in the fall of 2013 which they won by the slightest of margins.  Karen knew she had to try to get the money during a low year of voter turnout, as there weren’t any big state or national races on the ticket—otherwise she might not get another chance until 2015.  At the rate of spending Lakota already needs to try for another levy in 2017—so her time to take her one and only shot was in the fall of 2013.  My old friends and I joined together once again to resist the levy, but without me in the formal role of spokesmen—the effort failed.  I was better working in front of the scenes than behind and among them they couldn’t find anybody else to do the job the way I had.

I did what I had to do shortly after the levy passage to reduce my tax burden to absorb the cost of the levy, because I simply wasn’t going to spend the extra dollars out of my pocket to pay Lakota.  But for the rest of the members, who sided with Patti, they now have a substantially higher rate of tax to pay because of their wishy-washy behavior and failure to stand for their convictions—which leads us to this whole Boys and Girls Club at the old Union Elementary school.  What’s in the deal for Alderson—she gets to attend more dinners that worship her wealth as spotlights will douse her with attention—which she desperately seeks.  Karen gets a partner to support her in the next levy attempt as Patti pulls a lot of the local Republicans off their small government positions and into her fold just because of the wealth and political influence she commands. The local levy supporters get a free babysitting service so that they can feel the lack of guilt from being such sucky disconnected parents and my best friend from the No Lakota Levy days gets to build the whole thing.  He stood up to them for a while, Lynda, Karen, and of course Patti, but in the end he was locked arm and arm with West Chester’s Lovey Howell after the school board meeting finalizing the deal several months ago.  He was finally, conquered by Karen Mantia’s strategy implemented carefully and patiently.

So when people say about the Boys and Girls Club deal that there is corruption involved, now you know dear reader what they are talking about.  The inside deals are voluminous and run to the deepest cores of politics in Butler County.  Karen came to Lakota paid by O’Conner to do just this kind of divide and conquer tactic—but what all these elements have in common is their exploitation of children to commit the deeds.  Lakota routinely does this to gain money and leverage for their collective bargaining contracts, but in essence the Boys and Girls Club is no different.  They use children and the unfortunate victims of bad parenting to bath themselves in vanity for self recognition that has its roots in their personal religious outlooks.  Children and their misfortunes by all these parties are continuously exploited for the gains of adults who deep down inside want to be adored and loved by the masses for reasons that trace back to their own childhoods and the failures associated there.  That is why when the next levy is attempted by Lakota it won’t be the old cast of characters from No Lakota Levy this time—it will be a much more ideologically driven base that stands in defiance.  I knew what Karen was up to all along, because it takes one to know one, and I am well at work on the next campaign against them and will not again be vulnerable to wavering souls driven only by tax savings and not rooted in firm convictions.

Rich Hoffman   www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

“Fat Han” in X-wing Miniatures: “I’m in it for the money”

When I participated in my first tournament for X-wing Miniatures I was still learning all the rules—but knew enough to build a squad of ships that would be competitive against even the most seasoned players. However, when I revealed my squad to my opponents, they immediately assumed that my use of Han Solo on the Millennium Falcon which encompassed a point build of 55 points out of 100 meant that I was a rookie player who did not trust my piloting ability. The Falcon fires in a 360 degree arc as most of the other ships fire in a 90 degree arc coming off the front of their ship. Most seasoned tournament players at the time if they did use the YT-1300 were using Chewie or Lando and using two B-wings or some other assortment of support ship to save points. Nobody was using Han, which made no sense to me. He was after all one of the highest pilot rating cards in the game and he has a wonderful re-roll ability that makes him very powerful. His card on the Millennium Falcon looked to my eyes to be one of the most powerful combinations in the game, and I thought it would be crazy not to use him in a tournament.

Well, about three months later some of the best X-wing players in the world used almost the same build at the Nationals played at Gen-Con 2014. In reaction to the new TIE Phantoms released at the end of June 2014 a new type of Rebel build called “Fat Han” emerged in the meta game to deal with the incredible maneuverability and fire power of the new Empire faction ships. In fact Paul Heaver who is the current world champion used nearly the same build as I had to climb into the top four at the nationals.

I never published my build anywhere and Paul and I never spoke—yet to his experienced eyes he picked that particular build to deal with the new elements coming into the X-wing game. And he wasn’t alone at the nationals; there were many other top players who were flying “Fat Hans” in competitive play which changed the game for the better. It is doubtful that Paul Heaver received the same sideways glances that I did when I placed my YT-1300 on the board. I was a newbie, Paul was a seasoned champion. But it made me feel good to see that even in a game where I am not comfortable with all the rules and certainly lack the experience of that kind of competitive play, that I’m able to fairly quickly jump in and identify trends that are out on the edge and not yet fashionable.

This was an important observation as I spend a great deal of time pointing out trends that are coming as opposed to the ones that currently exist. If the ability is gained, it can be applied to virtually everything in life even in areas where others are much more proficient. The “Fat Han” builds are now the complaint of the X-wing Miniatures world because of their extreme effectiveness and they will continue for some time until something else knocks them off in the months to come. But for me the experiment was very telling, and useful.

I left my tournament feeling like I could have done better and that I was close to something big as far as a strategy. The other players were so polished and knew their stuff—citing the rules from top to bottom quickly and were certainly at the top of their game. So I thought there might have been something to their complaints about using Han Solo and the Falcon in such a way as I was. But as it turned out, the best X-wing players in the game soon after turned to the very same strategy because the meta game pointed tactics in that direction. What I’m proud of is in seeing the trend before it occurred. Part of it is that I have a personal preference toward the Millennium Falcon, but when all the cards are looked at, it is beyond refute that the YT-1300 is by far one of the best tactical pieces in the game and that it should be included in any Rebel build.

I know much more about X-wing Miniatures now than I did during my first tournament, and I will know a lot more in a year than I do now. But the trend of seeing strategies and cycles beyond the curve of orthodox thinking is something I have been able to maintain even when others knew a great deal more about something than I did. It’s not some magic act, but simply a confirmation that Robert Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality strategies are employable on every level of endeavor, even in gaming. I do pretty well in life staying in front of the curve of social trends in most everything I do—even leisure. So it was fun to feel the scorn of the X-wing community—even though it was friendly jousting at the time—then find just a few months later that the entire meta game is moving in that direction.

I remember what it was like when I was a kid and I was the one who loved Star Wars above all the other social trends that were occurring at the time. It was considered very “uncool” to like the science fiction epic publicly. But I knew at the time—even as a very young kid, that there was something unusual about the stories and that the values conveyed in them had meaning beyond the social trends of the time. Now, 30 plus years later Star Wars fever is everywhere even to the extent that drones have been flying over the filming locations looking for a hint at the storyline. The only people now who think Star Wars is “uncool” are the backwards thinking lost in time souls who can’t identify with the values of the stories. They are people stuck in the past—in the policies of the New Deal, and progressive utterances inspired from the pages of Karl Marx.

I have a shirt that I like to wear when playing X-wing Miniatures with Han Solo on the front of it—not unlike the kind of shirts I used to wear as a 9-year-old kid that says, “I’m in it for the money.” It is a very capitalist message and I first saw it in Hollywood Studios, Florida while coming off the Star Tours ride. I was surprised that Disney did not filter that pro capitalist message as there are many progressive executives who work for the large entertainment company. But, Han Solo is an unequivocal capitalist—an Ayn Rand type of capitalist in the Star Wars saga and he is one of the most popular characters there is. In fact, while downloading the new Star Wars game Commander onto my iPad I noticed that the characters on their load screen featured Han Solo, not Luke Skywalker because Disney knows where the money comes from in the series. It’s not the altruistic Luke Skywalker that people want to emulate; it is the capitalist Han Solo. This is a trend which will increase now that Star Wars is socially cool—altruism is out, capitalism is in.

That capitalist philosophy has spilled over into the X-wing game as the designers were careful not to weaken the message when designing the Han Solo game card. If played right, a “Fat Han” build can take being shot by opponents while dealing consistent damage during an entire match. It’s a very capitalist build and I think that the hatred for the build early in the game meta can be traced back to the fact that so many people are trained from their educations to hate capitalism. But—the meta of the game has moved by need of competition to utilize “Fat Han” builds just as the new Star Wars films and television shows soon will do the same on an epic level under Disney’s care. They know there in the hallowed halls of “Mouse Town” that capitalism is the key to social order and I could see that emergence as far back as the release of that Han Solo shirt featured at Hollywood Studios. We’re all in it to win, we’re all in it for the money—and that is why “Fat Han” builds have risen to popularity and why capitalism will emerge triumphant from 2020 to 2030 in ways that have never been seen before.image

I’m so sure of it that I’d bet everything I have. With the same assurance that I built a “Fat Han” build in X-wing Miniatures during a time when it was considered too novice-like to even think of bringing it to a tournament—I can see that capitalism will crush socialism under the care of the Disney handling of the Star Wars franchise. Some people may bellyache and complain, but the trend is already emerging. I can see it as plain as a sun in the noon day sky on a cloudless day around the equator. It’s so bright that it burns. Meanwhile, I have to change my tactics to stay competitive. “Fat Han” will no longer work because everyone is using it. So my new build is something I’m called “Dashing Han” which is more akin to how the Falcon actually flew with Han Solo at the controls. It is very difficult to fly, but should provide an advantage that will last a while. Because the name of the game is to always stay out in front of the meta.

Rich Hoffman   www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Cabela’s and Bass Pro Shops of West Chester: Thank George Lang and Mark Welch

Capitalism is creativity—the ability of entrepreneurs to bring ideas to market for people to enjoy.  So I often find great enjoyment in regions of the country where capitalism is on grand display and these days the corridor along I-75 just north of Cincinnati, Ohio has all the trappings of one of the finest developments in the world.  I personally enjoy the stores of the Cincinnati Outlets in Monroe, the Comic book/gaming store Nostalgic Ink at the very next exit to the south, and the book stores and restaurants at Union Center Blvd—of which Aladdin’s and Jags are my favorites.  There are of course plenty of government workers in this region that loot off the efforts of entrepreneurs, particularly the local government school, but generally, it is the conservative hands-off government of Butler County that has allowed these developments to emerge so robustly.  But there are few developments which excite me as much as the announcements from West Chester that two giant superstores of outdoor apparel, Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s are both opening over the next couple of years.  For most communities these types of giant outdoor stores are destination shopping experiences, meaning they are worthy of vacations just to visit one of the stores.  People do purchase plane tickets to visit these types of retail outlets wherever they might luckily be in the nation.  But in West Chester—because of the demographic population which has excellent per capita income, and the type of very pro capitalist government running the show—both giant retailers are dumping significant investments into the area which I will enjoy immensely.

I’m not crazy about the public funding portion of the Liberty Way project, but I am ecstatic about the development and simply cannot wait to see those buildings erected.  I want to attend the movie theater that they are putting there in the worst way.  I simply am excited to see the results.  I was fortunate enough to see the early prints of that development at the beginning phases and have been a fan ever since.  But even better is the 82,000 square foot Cabela’s store which is being built right across from Liberty Center.  That will be one of the most exciting locations of destination shopping in the country—and that includes the Disney World complex off I-4 in south Orlando.  The Voice of America shopping district is already fantastic, but within a few years of this writing, it will be the most exciting place in America to shop and spend suburban leisure time.  The Cabela’s store will just be icing on the cake—a very glorious cake at that!

But…………….that’s not all.  Just down the road to the south is the Streets of West Chester which is at the Union Central Blvd exit.  I spend a lot of time at the Streets.  If you have to take someone to lunch or dinner visiting for business, you simply cannot go wrong at Mitchell’s, Bravo! Cucina Italiana, P.F. Changs, Red Robin or after a late night movie, Steak & Shake which I find myself at a lot more than you’d think.  Barnes and Noble is like a second home to me—especially since Books A Million left Bridgewater Falls just to the west.  I have felt often that the Streets were too small however—and the plan has been for years to expand it to the south in a Phase 2 development.  Well, this is now happening with Bass Pro Shops serving as the anchor located a football throw away from the giant IKEA store located on Allen Road, directly across from the Mercedes Benz dealership.  Can you say it with me?   …………………………aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. The Plan 2 development will be just the needed ingredient missing from the current Streets location which will make that too a destination shopping experience worthy of an out-of-town visit.  The trustees of West Chester George Lang and Mark Welch along with Bruce Jones have created a climate in West Chester conducive to business investment and the area is just exploding with creativity.  I was not a fan of Judith Boyko when she was working for the former trustee president Catherine Stoker—a vile Democrat who greatly limited the kind of creativity currently going on in West Chester with her big heavy-handed government presence.  Now Boyko under new president George Lang is on board with what makes West Chester special saying, “The development of these two new retail locations represents the largest concentration of boutique-like retail amenities in the West Chester area.  These are the type of retail destinations our diverse and sophisticated residents demand, and we expect both to be very successful footholds in our retail fabric.”  YES…….I agree with Boyko!  Jiminy Christmas—it’s about time that somebody gets it—and in West Chester—they do.  Capitalism is the foundation of America and there just aren’t many places where it’s more alive anywhere than in West Chester and other developments along the I-75 corridor.

But Cabela’s and Bass Pro will be a whole new level of excitement and coolness.  My family used to shop at the Bass Pro Shop at its current location in Forest Park, but the area has been mismanaged by local government and it has killed business investment.  The mall there has died and the retail establishments have fallen into a slumber—the local demographic population just cannot support such capitalist creativity—so business moves to where it can grow.  It cannot be managed the way many trustees attempt—but local government must create a climate of capitalism so to attract investment and thus creativity in diverse product offerings.  This will certainly be on full display at Liberty Center, but the Streets of West Chester will emerge as one of the most fabulous examples of such a thing anywhere in the country. Only Downtown Disney in Orlando may rival it in the years to come as for interesting destination shopping and things to do once you get there.  Bass Pro was already set to move into the area before the Cabela’s announcement, but now that they know a competitor is moving in down the road—they are revamping their original plans from something not just great—but ecstatically stupendous.  They are further revising their plans to include more activity based attractions at their new superstore to have a competitive advantage over Cabela’s.

For capitalism, these are exciting times.  The creativity of entrepreneurs is on full display specifically in West Chester but to a larger extent along a 6 mile span of I-75 stretching from Monroe to I-275.  There are not more exciting things happening anywhere than along that span of highway and capitalism is the reason why.  The key is that local political management has embraced free market capitalism as their guiding light, and this is the result.  Overly managed economies have pushed out these types of investments leaving them to retreat to this capitalist zone which is unique in the country.  When capitalism is allowed to grow it can do wonderful things—and in West Chester—it is.  I can’t wait to shop at Cabela’s and the new Pro Bass Shop at The Streets of West Chester.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

A Plane Crash in Liberty Township, Ohio: The pathetic display of the Butler County police

A couple of pilots in a stunt biplane crashed practically into the back yard of one of my children over the weekend killing both aviators in a raging inferno.  I thought most of the people interviewed in the media circus afterward were well-mannered, and even intelligent about the whole issue describing that the plane had been performing stunts and had been engaged in a backward stall never pulling out of the dive that followed.  The plane could have crashed into any of the densely packed homes in the neighborhood behind Wyandot Elementary but somehow the pilot managed to thread a needle flying between two houses before smashing into the ground in a backyard space only clipping away part of a garage.  The pilot had to know that he was going to die at such a speed but had the courage and wherewithal to maintain his cool saving the lives of the people inside.  Given that my kids were in the proximity I’d have every excuse to panic about such a thing—but I never do.  I enjoy those kinds of pilots and love watching them practicing stunts.  I want to see them continue.  If something goes wrong—like it did in this case the pilot did the responsible thing and minimized the damage.  The two pilots ended up burning up beyond recognition but turned a situation that could have been a lot worse into a minimal amount of damage that was pretty easily cleaned up.

However, the display of the police was pathetic.  It looked like every police officer in Butler County was at the scene and they stood around most of the day following the tragedy.  It looked like a beauty pageant of fat-gutted middle-aged men parading around on a catwalk trying to impress the audience with their authority.  The family in the house that was most in danger was eating breakfast and managed to get out of the house after the crash without any help from any authorities.  The fire department showed up within about 5 minutes to put out the fire—which is expected given that Liberty Township has a fire department every couple of miles holding a bunch of public servants always sitting around waiting for something to happen.  In this case they were needed and the danger was averted within 15 minutes of the crash.  But then came the police who showed up on the scene and brought with them a level of panic that was totally uncalled for.

Of course they started putting up blankets so that people surrounding the area couldn’t see the carnage and they quarantined a section of the neighborhood limiting the freedom of the homes not involved in the plane crash.  The entire escapade was entirely self-serving for the police.  It gave them something to do on a Saturday morning in Liberty Township and they seemed to enjoy the heightened drama too much.  Essentially, a plane crashed, the pilot steered away from the danger as best he could.  The fire department put out the fire, and the coroner pronounced the deaths using dental records to identify the victims.  All that was left after was for the FAA to do their investigation and clean up the mess letting the insurance companies cover the damage to the homes so that the residents could get back to their lives.  End of story.  But no, the police had to make the whole scene appear that a new virus had been unleashed upon the earth and that the crash site had become a quarantine zone that aliens might emerge from at any minute.

It was a rather disgusting displaying showing the gross over-employment of police in Butler County.  There were too many at the site leaving the question to be asked—what do they all do when there isn’t a plane crash in the normally quiet community of Liberty Township?  Because at the crash site there wasn’t much to do and they pretty much stood around all day trying to look important.  On a normal Saturday where have all these police been hiding because they certainly aren’t necessary?

The whole crash could have been handled with a handful of government employees, a small investigation team and the coroner.  The rest of the neighborhood could have gotten back to their business of an early weekend morning in the fall within an hour, mowing their grass, cleaning their garages, and living their lives as normal.  The media could have taken their pictures and been done by noon.  Yet the police overdramatized the entire incident making the media even more dramatic standing between photographers and the crash like protective parents securing the serenity of small children not yet ready to see the gross realities of the world.  It was as if we were all small children going to the movies with a panicky parent afraid to let us see images on the screen that were too violent afraid that we’d have bad dreams after.  Their censorship was over dramatized and unnecessary illuminating their useless employment to a great extent.

The crash wasn’t that big of a deal.  Sure people lost their lives, but likely that is the way pilots like that want to leave the world and they did their best with the situation until their last breath.  Likely I have watched the stunts in the sky from that very same pilot many times and enjoyed it—and I’d like to continue to see them from other pilots who often practice flying over Liberty Township using the Butler County Regional Airport as a staging ground.  There is nothing about that crash that would cause me to feel otherwise.  Sometimes bad things happen, but most of the time they don’t—and those times are worth the danger.  But the display of public employees trying to look important at the crash site was grossly evident.  They had the same fake pretension that is seen at fashion shows where 19-year-old girls are dressed up for an evening on the town only to sell cloths to fat, overly stressed women who look nothing like the girls at the show.  The police were only selling an image of security as the danger had already come and gone—but because they had nothing else to do.  They knew the media would flock to the scene, it was a chance for them to look important for the cameras—and that is all they really did.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

“Winds of Change”: Some of the best, most relevant television ever produced

As I spoke yesterday about the importance that Joseph Campbell played in my personal education, one of the people who most helped the JCF get off the ground and become that resolute organization was George Lucas.   Of course he is  known for the Star Wars films and was the creator of Indiana Jones—but I think George’s best  work as a filmmaker was a little known television project that was shown on ABC by Bob Igor, today’s CEO of Disney way back in 1992 to 1996.  That project was called The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and was considered “edutainment.”  Just prior to the release of the last Indiana Jones feature film, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Lucasfilm released all of the Young Indy television shows on DVD, which of course I snagged up the moment they were released.  I literally pulled them off the delivery truck at Best Buy.  The DVD set was released in three gigantic collections and feature what I think is some of the best television ever done—not just because I enjoy the Indiana Jones character, but because the production quality, and content of each of the shows was impeccable.  Lucas used the character of Indiana Jones to essentially tell the history of the start of the 20th century and it was a remarkable undertaking.  For instance—one of my favorite episodes is the one shown below in several parts.  It is called “Winds of Change” and is about the Treaty of Versailles and covers nothing less than the modern troubles in the Middle East, the cause of the Vietnam War, and the reason for World War II all in a one hour episode.  It is really quite brilliant and if you want your child to know anything about history—or you want to fill the gaps of your own understanding, this is a great place to start.  Because of the modern pertinence to the trouble in the Middle East, watch the “Winds of Change” now through the clips below.  If you enjoy it, consider picking up the entire DVD set. They are tremendous treasures.

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles is an American television series that aired on ABC from March 4, 1992, to July 24, 1993. Filming took place in various locations around Wilmington, North Carolina and on the campus of UNCW. The series was an Amblin Entertainment/Lucasfilm production in association with Paramount Network Television.

The series explores the childhood and youth of the fictional character Indiana Jones and primarily stars Sean Patrick Flanery and Corey Carrier as the title character, with George Hall playing an elderly version of Jones for the bookends of most episodes, though Harrison Ford bookended one episode. The show was created and executively produced by George Lucas, who also created, co-wrote and executively produced the Indiana Jones feature films.

Most episodes of the series depicted famous and not-so-famous historical figures, for example T.E. Lawrence, Leo Tolstoy, Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway, Al Capone, Pablo Picasso, Frederick Selous and Mata Hari.

Notable guest stars (playing either fictional or historical characters) include: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Daniel Craig, Christopher Lee, Peter Firth, Vanessa Redgrave,Beata Pozniak, Jennifer Ehle, Elizabeth Hurley, Timothy Spall, Anne Heche, Jeffrey Wright, Jeroen Krabbé, Jason Flemyng, Michael Kitchen, Kevin McNally, Francisco Quinn, Ian McDiarmid, Max von Sydow, Douglas Henshall, Sean Pertwee, Terry Jones, Keith David, Lukas Haas, Jay Underwood, Michael Gough, Maria Charles, and Haluk Bilginer.

Due to its enormous budget, the series was canceled in 1993. However, following the series’ cancellation, four made-for-television films were produced from 1994 to 1996 in an attempt to continue the series. In 1999, the series was re-edited into 22 television films under the title The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones.

Between 1992 and 1997, the series was nominated for 27 Emmy Awards and won 12.[25] In 1993, Corey Carrier was nominated for the Young Artist Award in the category of “Best Young Actor Starring in a Television Series”. In 1994, David Tattersall was nominated for the ASC Award in the category of “Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Regular Series”. At the 1994 Golden Globes, the series was nominated for “Best TV-Series — Drama”.[26]

In 2002, series producer Rick McCallum confirmed in an interview with Variety that DVDs of the series were in development, but would not be released for “about three or four years”.[8] At the October 2005 press conference for the Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith DVD, McCallum explained that he expected the release to consist of 22 DVDs, which would include around 100 documentaries which would explore the real-life historical aspects that are fictionalized in the show. For the DVDs, Lucasfilm upgraded the picture quality of the original 16 mm prints and remastered the soundtracks. This, along with efforts to get best quality masters and bonus materials on the sets, delayed the release.[9] It was ultimately decided that the release would tie into the release of the fourth Indiana Jones feature film.

Two variations of Volume 1 were released by CBS DVD, one simply as “Volume One”, and the other as “Volume One — The Early Years” in order to match the subtitle of Volume 2.

The History Channel acquired television rights to all 94 of the DVD historical documentaries.[10][11] The airing of the documentaries was meant to bring in ratings for the History Channel and serve as marketing for the DVD release and the theatrical release ofIndiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.[12] The History Channel and History International began airing the series every Saturday morning at 7AM/6C on The History Channel, and every Sunday morning at 8AM ET/PT on History International. A new division of History.com was created devoted to the show. As Paramount and Lucasfilm had already reserved IndianaJones.com solely for news and updates related to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, StarWars.com temporarily served as the official site for the DVDs—providing regular updates, insider looks and promotions related to them.[13] However, Lucasfilm and Paramount soon set up an official website proper for the series—YoungIndy.com.[14] Paramount released a press kit for the media promoting the DVDs, which consists of a .pdf file[15] and several videos with interviews with Lucas and McCallum, and footage from the DVDs.[16] A trailer for the DVDs was also published on YoungIndy.com, with a shorter version being shown on The History Channel and History International.

Lucas and McCallum hoped that the DVDs would be helpful to schools, as they believed the series was a good way to aid in teaching history. Lucas explained that the series’ DVD release will be shopped as “films for a modern day high school history class.”[17] He believes the series is a good way to teach high school students 20th Century history.[18] The plan was always to tie the DVD release of the series to the theatrical release of the fourth Indiana Jones feature film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which was released on May 22, 2008.[8][19][20][21]

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

After watching the Lawrence of Arabia recently I had to go back and watch the Young Indy episode “Winds of Change.”   It was after all through Young Indy that I was introduced to T.E. Lawrence who was a personal friend to Indiana Jones on the show.  Jones met T.E. Lawrence in Cairo at the pyramids when he was a very young child being homeschooled by a private tutor.  The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles is an answer to the education void found today.  The work has been done by producers like Lucas and is available for a relatively cheap price.  The series is television at its absolute best—it was entertaining, fun, but best of all—educational.  After watching all those episodes so many years ago, then again with my family when the DVDs hit the market once again with their 90 one hour long documentaries produced exclusively by Lucasfilm what is found is a phenomenal effort not even surpassed by the National Geographic Society or the Smithsonian.

Often I would read more about the characters in the Young Indy episodes after seeing them for the first time during the broadcasts and would marvel at how accurate the writers for the show were at capturing their historical significance with precision.  In the cynical world that we see today in most entertainment formats, do yourself a favor that will help directly in understanding the modern world—watch the DVDs of the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles with your family and learn together about history.  Because I can’t think of a better way to tell about the events that have shaped our lives better than through the character of Indiana Jones as he become the kind of action hero so well known to motion pictures presently.  The character became the kind of person he was due to his vast education with the most significant figures of the past who shaped the world for good and bad—but none-the-less—shaped it all the same.

If you care about the education of your family, click the link below to start an unforgettable journey.

http://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Young-Indiana-Jones-Volume/dp/B000VDDDVE

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com