Tag: Free Will

Orlando Gets a New Treasure: Getting to the finish line in spite of the looters

A friend of mine just opened a new restaurant in Orlando, Florida. Every time I hear about one of these success stories, where an entrepreneur is able to leap all the hurdles placed in front of such an endeavor to open a new establishment I find myself enjoying the announcements more than I should. To me, these types of things should be common place in America. Ideas should be allowed to flourish, and actually encouraged. But the way things are it’s a minor miracle when something like a new restaurant opens because there are so many regulations and looters involved in the process of innovation. By the time all the regulations are satisfied, the permit issues are written, the taxes are paid in addition to all the requirements involved in funding the enterprise; it is only the strongest projects with the most money behind them that survive.

The reason is that America has allowed socialism to permeate every single government position in our country so the amount of government employees that are involved in any entrepreneurial activity directly impacts the chance that a project will survive to actually open. The situation is so bad that John Stossel of the Fox Business Network and Glenn Beck discuss John’s attempt to open a lemonade stand in downtown New York. Watch this video so you can see how difficult it is to even start a business, let alone defend yourself from all the looters who attempt to rob you with law suits and excessive taxes once the business is established.

This is why I get so infuriated by government organizations, primarily schools that push for tax increases. Every business you see is a minor phenomenon. The fact that you see many businesses in your neighborhoods is evidence of 5 to 6 failures for every success. So when a new restaurant is seen opening in your neighborhood or a shopping complex, you are seeing the lucky ones who made it. If an entrepreneur is politically active and gives money to a lot of charities, they find that their chances of success increase dramatically, because paying off officials with political support and getting the crazy emotional mothers of a community appeased with charity work calls off the looting dogs as long as the money flows, but it takes money to pay off such fools. So only the luckiest of the lucky gain the ability to use their money to pay off the trolls who set up shop in our political system.

It is not the “permit” department at your local government office who creates jobs and new ideas. It’s not the regulator of any agency. It’s not the bureaucrat in any capacity who does anything, but creates a barrier for the dreamers, for the entrepreneur. These barriers push up the cost of playing the game so that only those who have been lucky enough to squeeze through the cracks before the looters realize that there is money to be made, make it, because that’s the only way one can achieve success these days. The business needs to either be established or have large financial reserves to combat the looters in court and in politics, or the business must fly under the radar of convention and arrive before the looters realize that the new business is going to be profitable.

I know this tragedy first hand. I’ve been involved in many business start-ups and all of them were made unnecessarily hard by excessive regulation. I once had a building code permit issuer tell me I had to prove to him that the HAVAC unit he was demanding I buy was not required under the Cincinnati Building Code. I spent an entire weekend reading a boring book to prove that the HAVAC unit was not necessary for my change of use submission. In a book of over 750 pages I found one sentence that disqualified my project from the imposition. Once I found it, the administrator gave me a rubber stamp with a smile on his face, as though it was an office joke whether or not I’d find the one sentence out of the thousands that would exclude me. It was literally like finding a needle in a hay stack.

But that wasn’t the end of the road. That was just one issue out of 32 similar complaints by the CBC office, and that was just one organization that had their teeth into my project. There were as many as 7 such agencies that my project had to comply with just to open and my choice was to do the work myself, or hire out a small army of lawyers, engineers, architects and other professionals to do the work of arguing each item for me. By the time all those employees are hired just to meet the cost of compliance the project budget increased by nearly a half a million dollars.

So these days I just write books, and study philosophy. I hire out my expertise because it’s unattractive to argue with all the fools in any endeavor that catapults the idea generators into the quick sand of the social looters. I determined a long time ago that since I refused to play the pay-off game because I find it ethically questionable, and too expensive on the front end, that I have no chance of getting anything off the ground in this modern environment. But I have friends who aren’t so restricted by such limits and they have managed to do the nearly impossible and open new shopping complexes, and restaurants. And for that I admire them.

That is why I get very angry when I hear people proclaim that my friends, are “rich” and they owe their school system more, or they “owe” the township more in taxes, or they “owe” Barry Obama more! They owe their state government more when it is proven that there are too many government workers to pay whose only purpose is to create more bureaucracy, which in turn drives up the cost of compliance as shown above. Anyone who says or thinks such things are correct thinking are fools—and socialist sympathizers. They are parasites to everything America has stood for and are destroyers of its future.

So I do salute with utmost respect my friend and the opening of his new restaurant. The small-minded and looter mentality will look jealousy at him and proclaim that he should do more for his community. They will say that he is wealthy, and if he has enough money to buy a restaurant then he has enough money to pay more in taxes. What those same fools don’t comprehend is that it will take years to return to my friend the money he invested, not just in opening the building, but the cost of fighting the looters along the way. And they don’t know that my friend has plans that will fuel his own retirement in the future and that these restaurants are part of that plan. He has no plans to draw a government pension or a check of any kind. He plans to take care of his own business the way every American should. And every time there is a new cost to him, a new looter who attempts to rob some of his money from him because they are too lazy to do for themselves, it pushes my friend’s retirement further into the future. The ultimate cost is to my friend who has worked hard, created jobs, and fought his way through every kind of red tape imaginable. The cost to the looter is nothing. They simply show up and demand money for doing nothing. It is my friend who must make more money to pay for more looters who have attached themselves to those who create, like my friend.

So congratulations are in order to my friend and those like him who have survived well enough to open a restaurant in the golden land of Orlando, where imagination still counts for something, and making money is expected, and not chastised as criminal behavior by the lazy looters of the government employee. The next time I’m in Orlando, I will stop by for a visit and pay homage to the great ordeal that has become of starting a business in modern-day America as controlled by the looters, the moochers, the derelicts, the welfare recipients, and the mentally deficient who occupy the jobs that make opening a restaurant such a pain in the ass.

Rich Hoffman

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

Check out Rich Hoffman’s favorite website, (besides this one):

http://thepeoplescube.com/

Location Scouting for Middle Earth: The Hobbit Blog part 2

I’ve been covering the production of The Hobbit filmed by Peter Jackson as an example of something that is of quality observed before its actual creation, the evidence of that quality can be seen clearly in the web blog below. For a review of the previous posting (CLICK HERE). In this episode Jackson has finished his first block of shooting and the cast is being allowed to break while the crew continues on with their tasks. What is particularly interesting in this episode is again the relaxed manner of the production and extreme efficiency. Many people do not realize how much effort goes into location scouting. After the crew leaves on their respective vacations Jackson and the rest of the crew grab some helicopters and head off to scout out the second block of shooting. This is an ominous task in a remote location such as New Zealand because as Jackson states, they will have to supply trailers, restrooms, catering tents and other none shooting items that will fill two football fields with crew and other personnel.

This is a wonderful video that once again shows why Peter Jackson is currently the best in the business. All this behind the scenes stuff will do nothing to harm the final impression of the film, because the goal of the production is to shoot scenes that hide everything shown in these video clips with the content of the story. It is hard to see an endless supply of mountain ranges and pick the proper shots that fit perfectly into the context of a story created by J.R.R. Tolkien many years ago, yet the crew is doing just that with great attention to detail.

I cover extensively at this site films that are literary adaptations, and they are hard to translate. I have openly supported the film version of Atlas Shrugged which can be seen by CLICKING HERE.

Also we have covered A Brave New World which can be seen by CLICKING HERE. (The whole movie can actually be seen at this link)

Both of those film adaptations suffer greatly by the weight of the mighty books. Great works of literature such as those are very, very difficult to translate into film. The film versions leave something to be desired because in the mind of the reader, it is very difficult to capture the essence of what images are painted across the mind conjured up by the words. Even the Harry Potter films suffered from this to some extent even with the big budget attempt. Brave New World and Atlas Shrugged have so many characters and the scope of the work is so vast that the production value comes across almost like a television show. The essence of the story still gets conveyed, but the theater experience as a separate entity does suffer.

In Tolkien’s work, which I find particularly attractive, the characters are smart. The wizards are wise, they read big ancient books, and the hobbits are cultured. So the detail to capture on film requires literally thousands upon thousands of craftsman to supply that added texture which Jackson effortlessly incorporates into his film version. The ability to juggle all these tasks while flying in a helicopter and finding just the right shots to reflect what Tolkien intended in literature, which will be ridiculed by a loving public all of whom interpreted the information independently, and is a truly laborious task. But as seen in that clip, Jackson is on top of every aspect of the production like a man who has already been there and done it. Yet he is doing it in the present.

It’s the mind of Jackson that makes this adaption of The Hobbit head and shoulders above similar attempts. I enjoy the effort that goes into just about any film, but one of such quality like The Hobbit begin and end on the set with the smallest detail and being at the front of the train in thinking.

Another interesting fragment to be taken from this short clip is the crew who left for vacation. One of the reasons that those who work in the film business tend to not be much grounded in a political philosophy is because they do travel the world so much and touch so many cultures while shooting on location. They are not particularly in love with capitalism or socialism or any variation in between. They just want to know when they get paid, and if they can get in and out of an airport. Political philosophy is up to “other people.” It works well for their nomadic lifestyles but caution should be used when listening to these actors when they give interviews and they are asked political questions. Chances are they don’t know much about politics. They might know something about Obama because they were invited to a fund raiser and had the opportunity to meet him, so in relation to other politicians, they probably don’t know much about what’s going on and will support Obama—because they shook his hand. Actors tend to become absorbed in whatever project they are working on, so the outside world gets lost to them.

Personally, I find these little breaks into the world of Peter Jackson’s production of The Hobbit to be welcome voyages into a land I wish so much the rest of the world could conceive. In films the cast and crew work so hard to make an idea come to life. The idea might be a fantasy about Hobbits, Wizards and dragons, but the reality is a group of individuals who make those ideas into a story that reflects the vision. Films—particularly ones adapted from classic literature are about big ideas that must be turned from a fantasy into a reality by minds that have so much vision that they can spot the elements in the randomness of the living world. And that is a talent worth celebrating as the quest for revisiting the wonders of Middle-Earth presses upon us in the months to come.

Rich Hoffman

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

Check out Rich Hoffman’s favorite website, (besides this one):

http://thepeoplescube.com/

Butler County Workplace Freedom Coordinator Rich Hoffman: Apply now, make money and save the world

There are two primary reasons I accepted the position of Butler County Coordinator for Workplace Freedom. First, with my work at No Lakota Levy, and realization that the union labor in our public schools–specifically Lakota–do not have the will to balance their budget, and will seek perpetual tax increases to meet the demands of their labor force, the public education monopoly must be eliminated to stop the madness of tax increases every 3 to 4 years. That monopoly must end if education costs are ever to be brought down. So I plan to help get the signatures for an amendment to the Ohio Constitution that will allow a state-wide vote in 2013 to make union membership a freedom of choice rather than a requirement under force as the system currently entails under teaching contracts. At Lakota the current contract is up in 2014, so that would allow teachers under that contract to opt out of their union involvement and help Lakota balance their budget. My work as Butler County Coordinator is a natural extension to my mission at No Lakota Levy. The second reason is that during my work on the Issue 2 campaign in 2012, I learned that there were a lot of teachers and other public employees who wished to be removed from union membership requirements and forced due payments. Since Issue 2 was repealed, these employees need to have the ability to at least have the freedom of choice, and this amendment will give it to them. It will not end unions, but it will give freedom of choice to a system that does not currently have it.

The wording of this amendment change with a target date of 2013 is as follows;

Title: To guarantee the freedom of Ohioans to choose whether to participate in a labor organization as a condition of employment

SUMMARY

To add Section 22 to Article I of the Constitution of the State of Ohio

The proposed amendment would provide that, in Ohio:

1. No law, rule, agreement, or arrangement shall require any person or employer to become or remain a member of a labor organization.

2. No law, rule, agreement, or arrangement shall require, directly or indirectly, as a condition of employment, any person or employer, to pay or transfer any dues, fees, assessments, other charges of any kind, or anything else of value, to a labor organization, or third party in lieu of the labor organization.

3. Any person, directly or indirectly affected or threatened with any harm by a violation of this section, may bring a civil or equitable action to enforce this section, and upon prevailing, shall be entitled to injunctive relief, reasonable attorney fees, costs, and other damages.

The proposed law would not:

1. Prevent any person from voluntarily belonging to or providing support to a labor organization.
2. Apply to agreements entered into or renewed prior to the enactment of this section.
3. Conflict with federal law or apply to federal employees.

To implement this public vote, which appears even at this early stage to have major support from all Ohioans of all demographic groups and party affiliation we will of course need to collect thousands upon thousands of signatures which could take us the rest of the year. Many of us who watched how the unions repealed Issue 2 gawked at the way the union machine was able to twist the arm of their members to gather so many signatures and put the repeal effort on the ballot. So we learned from them, and implementing our own signature collecting push have decided to pay employees to gather up these signatures. We are a tired group and we must get back on the horse and start now if we want to meet the timeline discussed. So as Butler County Coordinator I will be paying employees for those signatures. And the pay is quite good.

Working for me in collecting signatures, it would be a great opportunity to make extra money as a second job. It would be wonderful for young people who want the political experience and relatively easy money since this issue is one that most people agree with. This issue is not as contentious as Issue 2 or other political initiatives were, this one is all about freedom, which is something all Americans can get their minds around. So collecting the signatures won’t be very difficult, it’s just a matter of doing the footwork.

I am taking applications at the link below. If you want to work for me, fill out that application, I only need the primary information. I’m not particularly interested in a detailed work history. I just need the basics.

Apply here:
http://www.conservativejobsohio.com/

I would especially encourage those who are fighting tax hikes in your schools, principally Fairfield, Talawanda, Ross, Edgewood, Monroe, and especially Lakota to help out with this. This is your end game; this is the light at the end of the tunnel. If you can end the union monopoly in these public schools, you can bring an end to the levy requests every couple of years. If you were already willing to distribute information to fight a tax, and have went door to door in those campaigns, this is a lot easier, and I’ll pay you! Instead of trying to stop a tax initiative by the unions only to have them come back with a new tax hike six months after a defeat; this amendment is the step in the direction of ending that maddening process once and for all.

To learn more about the group I’m working with you can visit them at the link below. You can still help and do everything I spoke about above no matter where you live. We have coordinators in most counties across Ohio and you can find them at this link, so this isn’t just for Butler County. But if you want to work for me directly, you’ll need to be able to collect signatures for Butler County.

http://ohioansforworkerfreedom.com/

For those who are interested, you can contact me here, or at the contact info at my home site of www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com where I can get into more detail, talk about the lucrative pay structure and answer any questions that I couldn’t cover here. If you’d like me to come and speak to your group, your Tea Party, your gun clubs, your YMCA organizations, whatever the gathering, just give me a buzz. I don’t want to fight tax increases in my schools for the rest of my life, and I’m sure you don’t either. This is the ultimate solution of freedom and fairness that is lacking in the current system and it needs to happen by 2014, so we need to start now.

Below are a couple of training videos to make things easier that were used to collect signatures for The Health Care Freedom Amendment that was successful in 2011. We are approaching this signature gathering in the same manner. So the information is still valid for this endeavor.

Rich Hoffman

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

Check out Rich Hoffman’s favorite website, (besides this one):

http://thepeoplescube.com/

The Orgy-Porgy of Norma: A Brave New World in the eyes of a loving parent

It’s almost funny how predictable the pro tax levy crowd is. Always shortly after a major school announcement they leave me comments and emails about how bad I am for not blindly approving infinite pay increases to those sacred teachers of public education, and that if I did not support public education with blind obedience I would drive down the property values of my community and ruin the lives of children. They also say that my resistance to infinitely high taxes makes me some kind of money grubbing cohort—serious—they really think these things. There are people like that in the world. You can meet one below. I’m serious, and they are the ones who have ruined America and the idea of “free education.” Read one such note that I received this morning.

This is thanks to you and your other money-grubbing cohorts. We’ll be moving to Mason. Enjoy losing more property values.

Norma Stits
February 25, 2012 at 4:35 AM

That poor woman actually believes what she says. She believes that I am greedy for not wanting to pay more money than we already do in taxes. She also believes that there is no end what current residents of the Lakota School District will pay in higher taxes, therefore ruining their property values forever and making the taxes so high that nobody will ever be able to afford to buy a home in the Lakota District because of the taxes. People like Norma actually believe there is no end. She would pay forever whatever was asked by those extortionists of public education.

Well, sorry to break it to you Norma, but you are wrong. Taxes don’t just affect you in your tiny little world of your tiny little home around your tiny little family. It affects commercial interest too, and commercial business has been dried up for 5 years because of the current tax rates which need to come down, not go up. You know who those “money grubbers” are? Those evil people who build and run the shopping complexes and restaurants you visit. In Norma’s world those people should give away their services for free. They should not seek to make a profit. They should donate any earnings they make to the “youth,” so that people like Norma can have a free education for her little children whom she’s too lazy or insecure to teach herself.

Well, I have two grown daughters who are quite attractive, and because of that I’ve met many young people, particularly males that have come out of the Lakota, Fairfield and Mason school system, and I’ve seen what the schools are teaching first-hand, and I see how stupid many of these kids are when basic things are explained to them. They are future products of stupid parents like Norma, ill prepared to even pay rent, hold a job, let alone—vote. I’ve met kids who show up and attempt to impress me with big words only to see they can’t hardly pull their pants up because they are trying to copy the black culture of their favorite R&B artists, (and I say R&B in an attempt to be respectful and not come loose on a diatribe about the degradation of music). I’ve seen kids who think a fun night out is to get plastered in drunkenness and that somehow I’d be happy to let my daughter wake up passed out in a room full of guys stoned on marijuana. My kids wouldn’t do such a thing, but the boys look at me strangely and roll their eyes when they think I can’t see while I speak about why those kinds of activities are wrong. They really don’t understand! These boys don’t understand either why I expect them to have jobs instead of playing X-Box when there are bills to be paid. Or why I’d be upset that they’d rather take a welfare check so they’d have more “time for themselves.” I’m not talking about poor kids in the ghetto; I’m talking about nice middle-class kids from Lakota and Fairfield.

Through my daughters I’ve had to learn the terrible truth that there are thousands of girls who are on Care Source, which is a form of Medicare that bails out these kids when they have sex, and get pregnant because their schools and stupid parents like Norma tell them it’s alright, that there are no consequences to actions. A boy can get a girl pregnant and it’s alright, the government is there to bail them out.  The boys often claim that the act of sex just happened, that it was beyond their control.  Yet it was.  A boy had to stick a penis into a girl and inject semen into her like some parasitic animal in the wild, without thought or care. Without any thought about the next step, because the schools have taught these kids that the government will pick up the slack and pay for everything. Thousands upon thousands of kids think this way. Twenty years ago it would have been shameful to see a girl in her freshman years pregnant in school. It was scandalous. Today the teacher holds a baby shower for the girl in her classroom. The kids and their welfare mentality are victims of their environment and parents like Norma.

Norma may put her kids on Blue Cross and Blue Shield, but her behavior supports a system that endorses everything and more mentioned above. Ladies and gentlemen—and Norma, we are in serious trouble—culturally. Our youth is broken in ways that no amount of money can fix. They are truly victims of this age of broken homes, divorce, and intrusive public education establishments.

People who tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about are only mad at me because they don’t want to hear what I’m saying. They want to blindly adopt destructive policies of living that will eventually destroy them with the same intensity that a moth attempts to fly into a flame—because they like the bright light. People like Norma are in love with the idea of socialism and they do not want to see the results of their error. Well, I’ve seen it. I’ve been up close to it through my kids because I stayed involved with them even now that they are grown up, because there’s always something to learn. And I have many friends in the business community who are struggling. It’s not for Norma to say that these friends of mine should not be able to buy another restaurant, or a new second home, because people who build and make things are who move the world, and they don’t owe people like Norma an explanation as to their actions. The money they earn by creating things that people want is not Norma’s money, it’s not the money of public education, and it’s not the GOD DAMN governments! It’s their money!!!!! They earned it!!! Money made and generated is not for some group collective.

There are many problems that must be fixed in this year of 2012 that took nearly a century to arrive at. And those problems were perpetuated by people like Norma who voted in politicians like FDR. These same voters also fantasized about sleeping with JFK, and LBJ and like a porn actress swallowing semen from a stranger, these voters accept the policies of THE NEW DEAL and THE GREAT SOCEITY.

I don’t want The New Deal or The Great Society of which this Medicaid culture of welfare has sprung up and created a whole generation of weak-minded youth who have reckless sex and expect society to pay for it. Doesn’t Orgy-porgy from A Brave New World ring a bell with people like Norma, or let me guess—they haven’t read that book!

“Orgy-porgy, Ford and fun,
Kiss the girls and make them One.
Boys at 0ne with girls at peace;
Orgy-porgy gives release.”

That’s a ritual from that classic book where everyone gets in a circle and has group sex so that all sense of possession and individually is erased from their consciousness. “Kiss the girls, and make them One.” Notice the capital letter on the word “One.” That is because the word ONE is an indicator of an entity onto itself. This is the goal of The Great Society created by the womanizing presidents of the sixties. This is the aim of public education; this is the aim of government insurance, Medicare and Social Security! And these are the pathetic creatures that my kids have to associate with as friends in their peer groups, these children of this distorted government experiment. To see what this Great Society is taking us to just read A Brave New World. That book seemed like a fantasy when I read it over twenty years ago. Now it’s a pending reality.

So call me names you orgy-porgy well wishers, you welfare recipients, you apologists for The Great Society. Your opinions mean nothing to me because your path is clear for anyone with eyes to see. Your story ends only one way, in cultural demise leading to complete social destruction. The end game is as easy to add up 2+2+2+2. One thing leads to the next, which leads to the next in a very predictable manner. Only people who add all that up and give any number beyond the answer of “8” are the ones being fooled. And people like Norma will add up all these conditions and declare that the answer is whatever she decides. If she wants the answer to be 10 then it’s ten. If she wants it to be 20, then it’s twenty. She will say these things because she is not giving opinions based on reality. She is ruled by emotion, the orgy-porgy of our day. The collective orgy of thought and action where there are no consequences with the giant safety net cast by mother government.

So with that, have fun moving to Mason, and don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out. And until your house sells, and since you obviously lack culture, here’s the movie version of that book since you obviously can’t read.  Maybe you’ll learn something. 

For those who do know better than orgy-porgy Norma, please pass this to a friend to share the classic work of The Brave New World.   If they won’t read the book, maybe they’ll watch the movie. 

Rich Hoffman

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

Check out Rich Hoffman’s favorite website, (besides this one):

http://thepeoplescube.com/

The Ghosts of Lakota: Fear, and illusion from Superintendent Mantia

I woke up on the morning of February 24, 2012 with the note you can see below. It’s from a parent in the Pickerington School district who has been watching the actions of Superintendent Mantia here in Southern Ohio. This parent is uniquely positioned to give a statement about Mantia because Pickerington is the school district that the current Lakota superintendent came from in August of 2011. It read as follows:

I’m a parent of students from Pickerington and let me tell you that Dr. Mantia will ruin your schools. She removed almost all music, art, phys ed teachers and librarians. Our libraries used the most current media material and the students loved library where they learned to use podcasts, they wrote book reviews and they had the greatest book clubs. The students loved to read because of the fantastic librarians. They are gone. She has combined music, art and gym together. They currently meet as a group at a school every 6-9 weeks. That means that they only receive physical activity for one week and it isn’t intense activity either.

She took a pay raise one month before she left after resigning. Please watch her and her agenda for the sake of your students, teachers, support staff and your wallet.

As my readers here know, I declared the Lakota School District officially dead after the February 13, 2012 meeting, so I saw no point in going to this latest meeting. It was as predicted more of the same strategy of protecting the wages of the school employees with the smoke and mirrors of fancy terminology that essentially meant nothing. The concession by the Lakota School System to retreat backward as a district with these three public school board meetings instead of restructuring their very expensive labor contracts is deplorable. With this third budget cutting school board meeting, the No Lakota Levy has officially begun the campaign to end this fourth levy attempt which appears to already be underway on behalf of the school board decisions. No Lakota Levy will soon announce a major initiative in reaction to these decisions by the school board. I am done with Lakota as a governing body. I officially cast my vote of no confidence in their direction.

Lakota under the leadership of Superintendent Mantia from Pickerington elected to eliminate 36 more jobs centering on art, music, and physical education, which is consistent with the behavior indicated above by the note from the parent. This is in addition to the 69 positions cut from last weeks meeting that caused me to regulate my opinion as a nail in the coffin to the Lakota educational body as a whole.

During the meeting last night several people were texting me and asking what I was doing, and why I wasn’t there. I told them that I was watching the DVR backups of Ghost Hunters, and my TV show was more important. I said that I thought the ghosts walking around on that TV show were more real than the ghosts walking around at the Lakota School Board meeting on stage, because both were just as effective as managers. In the TV show the ghosts make noise by banging on doors and sending out cryptic EVP recordings. The Lakota School Board does the same; they make a lot of noise with a stupid program named S.T.E.A.M (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) while at the same time cutting those programs with staffing and as Jeff Kursman said at the meeting,

“These aren’t efficiencies, these are reductions. Efficiencies will include things that hopefully we’ll hear about in the next week or two. Things like outsourcing of technology when it comes with dealing with the central office, cutting back on central office administrators…centralizing purchasing or negotiating a better rate in health care. What I see you talking about here today is a degradation of liberal arts education.”

All that was occurring at the school board meeting was a bunch of ghosts making noise to a captive audience. Just like the ghosts in Ghost Hunters the ghosts are powerless to do anything in real life because they are in fact dead. The school board is powerless to do anything but scare people, just like the ghosts in Ghost Hunters. So I see no difference between the school board meeting and an episode of Ghost Hunters. With that in mind I stayed home in the comfort of my home and watched the ghosts on TV rather than waste my time at the school board meeting.

I’m happy to see the comments from Jeff Kursman and others who are now beginning to question the merit of this entire money scheming operation known as the Lakota School System. The key to meeting a balanced budget is to reduce the cost of the services, and that is to drive down the labor costs. Cutting a few teachers here and there is only a band-aid to the situation. Only by making across the board cuts to the 80% of the $160 million dollar budget can the Lakota School System meet its budget supplied generously by the community. Anything less than a contract restructuring with the Lakota labor force will be sufficient.

Karen Mantia has brought with her to the Lakota School System a strategy used at her last job of Pickerington to diminish the quality of the district in order to force parents to pass a tax increase to sustain their inflated union contracts. And to execute that objective she and the school board are willing to destroy everything that is good about Lakota to protect the wages of their union allies. That’s what these ghosts of Lakota were doing, and why I’m not interested in anything they have to say any longer. Instead, the No Lakota Levy will be shifting gears to approach our tax fighting methods without the assumption that Lakota will see the light and come to their senses by listing to our arguments. Now, we must assume that they are not even relevant, and we must find ways to remove their impact from destroying our community in an extortion ring that is evidently well underway. If this fight for more taxes were for the kids truly, then these ghosts of Lakota would not use the kids by stealing from the community’s $160 million dollar budget and take away programs while protecting employee incomes at the expense of the children.

So for now on, I will treat these employees like the ghosts they are, as irrelevant to the land of the living, and powerless to us all if they are robbed of their ability to invoke fear. Because as far as usefulness, they are lacking completely in any ability required in the real world, and are truly manifestations from the land of the dead.

Rich Hoffman

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

Check out Rich Hoffman’s favorite website, (besides this one):

http://thepeoplescube.com/

Attack of the Greenie Weenies: How to beat high gas prices

This is the kind of world that our current government wants us to have. Every time I see one of these stupid little cars I feel like running it over with my motorcycle.

I heard a fool the other day proclaim that they were willing to pay more Federal taxes because they use roads. Don’t they know that there is a separate tax built into the price of every gallon of gasoline? Well, of course they don’t. That’s why they’re stupid and why they don’t realize they are being looted in their pay checks. They are being looted when they buy and sell items. And they are being looted every time they buy a gallon of gasoline. When you go to the gas pump and pay almost $4 per gallon for gas, make yourself aware that you are openly being robbed, and not just in the very high taxes per gallon, as in Ohio where it’s 28 cents. The government led by Barack Obama and his imperialistic EPA is stealing from you each and every time you put gas in your car. The reason they are doing the robbing is to force you to buy one of their government-owned cars built at General Motors. The arrogant bureaucrats in Washington believe that if they force gas prices higher than you the consumer will be inclined to buy one of their electric cars or stupid little go-carts. They have artificially driven up the price of gas through their regulations in order to “nudge” Americans into giving up on their fossil fuel cars and buying “eco friendly” cars.

I’ve covered this issue before, and by reading the article below and the links attached to it, much perspective and more technical explanations about the increase in fuel costs can be ascertained.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/06/09/i-love-jimmy-mcmillian-gas-prices-are-too-damn-high/

But the essence of the scam is shown in this video which breaks down accurately the utmost thievery that is going on in the greenie weenie movement.

The same people who won’t allow the United States to drill for oil—so that there is an oil shortage can also add more regulations through the EPA to force oil refineries to drive up their prices. The government will have you believe that the oil companies are evil for wanting to make a profit, but what they don’t tell you is that they are ultimately the organization that is driving up the cost of gas not just in regulation, but also in helping maintain oil monopolies by stifling competition.

The decision to drive gas prices up to over $4 dollars per gallon or even $5 dollars per gallon is a direct push into forcing the American public into considering alternative forms of transportation. The government is more than happy to force Americans to decide between food and gas so that the stressed out citizens will give up their fossil fuel burning car for a greenie weenie mobile.

The American economy is built upon the premise that its people will have expendable income to spend on the economy.  Oil speculators will proclaim that the cost of oil is dictated by Middle East activity and world-wide demand.  They are liars, and are serving merely as emissaries to the greenie weenies.  So when fuel costs are driven upward to over $4 a gallon the Federal government is openly stealing from the American people, the money they might spend on eating out, on movies, on buying books, video games, or participating in a hobby.  When it costs over $50 to fill up a vehicle for a tank of gas as opposed to $35 a year or two prior, that $15 dollars is stolen money that the owner does not have to spend on an activity they might otherwise enjoy. 

The point is to frustrate the consumer of oil to the point that they will accept the dialogue of the greenie weenies.  The intention is to force Americans to stop protesting the times with their large cars and trucks and buy one of these punky cars that are simply glorified golf carts.  The price hike in gasoline is looted from the American people in order to achieve a social gain politically. 

But what are we to do about it?  How can we protest such a thing?  Well, I can tell you what I do.  I ride a motorcycle every day.  I can afford to drive a car.  I can afford to drive a big, fast car every day.  But I don’t, because I purposely have cut down my consumption so not to pay the extra taxes, and the inflated costs that are politically motivated.  My motorcycle gets nearly 45 miles per gallon and I ride it all year which saves me hundreds of dollars every month.  With that money I take my family out to eat, go to movies, or give my wife more money to go shopping with.  I do not give it to the government, or the greenie weenies.  That’s one of the primary reasons I ride a motorcycle all year. 

But if a person does not want to go to such extremes, I would suggest that you stop giving the government money that they can then use to take more money from you.  For instance, do not agree to pay more federal taxes because that money will end up finding its way to further funding of the EPA.  If you want to defeat an enemy, you must take away the money that feeds them.  In military activity we call this cutting off their supply lines.  In the Civil War the tactic was to destroy the railroads that fed southern forces with food and ammunition to the front.  In World War II the D Day invasion was to sever Berlin from coastal access and step between Berlin and France.  And in our modern war against government and specifically the greenie weenies we must cut off the money that feeds them so that they may whither away under their own opulence.

Do not approve a single new tax on yourselves.  If you don’t wish to have a police state, take away the money you give to the police.  If you don’t wish to have national insurance, take away the money that fuels those agencies.  And if you don’t want government controlled schools that help propel the entire machine of greenie weenie philosophy, cut the money that fuels those schools.  It is in the public schools that the greenie weenies teach our kids about the lie that is the climate concern movement of false science.  Such a science is only designed to rob the public of its wealth and lifestyle and is purely evil. 

I say to you do not turn the other cheek and just take it from these fools.  But take an eye for an eye.  If they rob from you, rob from them back.  Take from them the needed funding for their government expansion.  Take from them the funding for their “pet projects.”  Deny them of their future ability to rob loot and steal from the American people by taking away their money.

But inaction is not acceptable and if you just blindly pay the extra money for gas without complaint then you are assisting evil and are just as guilty as they are, because you helped them bring America to it’s knees with lack of action or protest.  For confirmation to what I’ve said notice that fuel costs right around the Christmas holidays dropped down to just under $3 per gallon, so that the economy would show positive growth during the holiday season.  The American people would have the extra money to buy Christmas presents because of the saving in fuel costs.  Such a drop in the cost of gas is not because the Middle East wanted to cut the American people a break, so they could go Christmas shopping, and it wasn’t the big evil oil companies who decided to cut their profits as a present to The United States.  The manipulation is exclusively the design of the EPA and the influence of the Federal government and it’s speculators of deceit.  The market is controlled by the government monopoly and the goal of global interdependence that is purposely driven to advance the agenda of the world greenie weenies, the old hippies of the 60’s and the children raised on the green initiatives of public education programmed into believing they will save the earth if they listen to the recommendations of the EPA. 

The increase in fuel costs are an assault on the American lifestyle and until citizens’ stand up for themselves, the looting will continue.  It will not be solved through pacifism, or through silent protests around the kitchen table.  It will only be solved by taking back the money that is looted in ways that hurt the greenie weenies themselves.  Cut the supply line of the enemy, and thus you will defeat the greenie weenies, and they deserve to be defeated because they attacked first.  We didn’t ask for it, but because of the greenie weenie actions we must defend ourselves by striking back and taking away the money that feeds them so that we can expel them from further intrusions into our lives and quest for freedom.  Once we defend ourselves we can then send the plans of the greenie weenies into a ball of flame, which is where they belong.

Rich Hoffman

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

Check out Rich Hoffman’s favorite website, (besides this one):

http://thepeoplescube.com/

Peter Jackson Takes a Stand: Saving Jobs in New Zealand from labor union looting

Sometimes the best way to see something clearly is to back up so you can put it in focus. It also helps to not view the world exclusively through one particular specialization of which one makes a living. Living life should be a constant adventure of always learning and expanding ones viewpoint, and not relegating a perception to just those within the field of one’s occupation. This is the role of philosophy and story tellers, people I enjoy spending time around more than any other, because they often see the bigger picture of things, excel in this skill and do society great justice when they share the fruits of their labor.

This is also why I have been spending some time talking about the new film The Hobbit by Peter Jackson, because stories like this are much bigger than the small issues that surround us on a daily basis, so in placing our energy onto such projects metaphors of our own reality can be analyzed. So let me share with you dear reader a clip from the video blog of The Hobbit hosted by Peter Jackson before we plunge into a bit of darkness in our discussion today. When watching this clip it reminded me of two things—first I am happy to see that Jackson is filming The Hobbit, for the first time in 48 frames a second and in 3D. I had the privilege of working with Real D 3D a few years ago on the development of a new camera system they were testing for the 3D market which is very similar to the version seen in this clip, so it excites me greatly to see this kind of technology being utilized to the furthest extent of artistic interpretation. Second—for the reasons that have held up The Hobbit as a production and almost prevented it from being filmed in New Zealand are the same that I will probably never get the chance to do work in Hollywood again, because of my stances against unions in my written work.

The dark story of making The Hobbit is one that has held the project up for years and is yet another story about how labor unions are corrosive organizations. And its statements like that which have blacklisted me from any future work within the Hollywood community. I made this choice consciously knowing that I will instead shift my attention in these middle years of my life to writing novels instead. So I am happy to let my whip work and other entertainment talents drift into the nature of that independent task of authorship. Because there is no going back now, I’ve said too much.

But what I said needed to be said. It’s the things that Peter Jackson doesn’t want, or need to say. It’s the things that the distributors at Warner Brothers can’t talk about even if their opinions are harsh on the matter privately. This is because a subtle harness is placed upon the entertainment industry and that harness is the exact same gag that exists on public education, and is preventing the open learning and creativity of millions of children from realizing their full potential. It is that of the labor unions.

During Lord of the Rings, the production could be said to be very successful because Peter Jackson as a director is extremely personable, grounded, and fantastic at multitasking. He kept his set fun which allowed for a bonding to occur between his technical staff and his actors which showed up on-screen in a tremendous way. It is unlikely that Lord of the Rings would have been such a great production if Jackson had not been the director, or if the entire film had not been shot in New Zealand.

My wife and I made serious plans to move to New Zealand in the early years of our marriage and live on a sailboat. So I understand the appeal of a country that as of now prides itself on rugged individuality. When one thinks of New Zealand government of any kind does not come to mind, just big open fields, mountains, horses and–sheep. But the one great thing that I’ll say about New Zealand that the film industry can’t say is that one of the reasons Lord of the Rings went together so impressively, and all members of the crew got along unusually well, and communication worked at all levels was the absence of a labor union in New Zealand involving the actors and technical unions. Before Lord of the Rings came out there were only a few major films to come out of New Zealand, The Man from Snowy River films, and the George Lucas spectacle Willow. So the labor unions didn’t protest too intensely when New Line Cinema aligned with Wingnut films to produce a massive three film adaptation to the Tolkien classic, the unions didn’t pay much attention. Jackson wisely shot the films back-to-back while Fellowship of the Ring was still in post production and had not yet hit theaters. The Lord of the Rings films were able to be made outside of the chaos of the usual Hollywood production without a lot of union influence in an almost campfire style production where everyone bonded on the set.

However, success breeds the looters, and after multiple Academy Awards the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance union from Australia decided it wanted to move over into the New Zealand market because they feared that such high-profile big budget films in the future would go to New Zealand instead of Australia where the Star Wars films were shot over similar concerns. These big productions could not be done in the United States, because there is too much hassle these days over labor disputes, so film companies run from unions out of necessity, and in this case New Zealand is the last far-flung corner of the globe without one of these labor unions controlling the industry, so The Hobbit will be the last of its kind. The unions took action against The Hobbit production joining with the Screen Actors Guild and four other international unions to boycott the production.

You can read an article about this mess here:

http://news.sky.com/home/showbiz-news/article/15772110

Peter Jackson in an effort to save his home country of New Zealand the thousands upon thousands of jobs The Hobbit would bring to craftsman and film personnel refused to buckle under the union pressure and called the union what it was, a bully looking for money, membership and power. He threatened to take the production of The Hobbit and its $300 million budget to Europe in order to make the film. You can read that article here:

http://news.sky.com/home/showbiz-news/article/15745443

Thankfully the whole situation settled as thousands of New Zealanders protested to keep The Hobbit production in New Zealand, so the unions backed off socially, and Jackson was able to go and make the film the way he likes to make them. For me personally it is very nice to see Peter walking around on his sets casually without all the egotistical authority that so many of his predecessors displayed. It’s Jackson’s directorial style to be very open, fair and forthcoming in his dealings with his cast and crew. Jackson is certainly a director who would suffer from too much outside control on his projects which is what the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance union was trying to do. They saw Jackson’s success and they wanted to loot off his back, off his creations, and his relationships so they could get a piece of the pie for themselves.

This is what teachers unions have done to our schools. It’s no different in any respect. A school cannot pick up and move like Jackson threatened to settle a union dispute. A community has a school and it’s fixed in place. So if a union infests it with their looting tendency, the community is forced to deal with the extortion measures they employ.

The Disney Company deals with the unions by tossing more money at the problem which is why the Pirate films are so expensive. Disney has the advantage of generating a tremendous amount of money through their subsidiary companies, so they can play that game. They are too big to fly under the radar like Jackson does today, or Spielberg and Lucas used to. Notice that as Spielberg became bigger and more successful over the years, that his films seemed to become more and more bogged down. He still makes pretty good films, but nothing like his final year as a master filmmaker in 1993 with the release of Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List. I know people get angry with Spielberg and Tim Burton (who I think is a fantastic director) for sucking up to the Obama administration now, and the Clinton administration’s back in the 90’s, but at the heart of that evil is a desire for creative people to make their movies as a wall of opposition known as the entertainment unions stand in the way. The union influence shows up in the final product and it does rob the production of some magic. The audience can tell the difference and it does affect Hollywood’s bottom line. They respond by making more comedies, and easy productions that aren’t overly complicated and can be shot around Los Angeles or Las Vegas–easy set ups. The creative minds behind the movies attempt to keep the protesting communists who run the labor unions at bay with appeasement. Disney throws money at unions to advance a project which works, but prevents smaller film makers from being able to compete on equal footing, because the unions hold all producers to the same standard as a company like Disney. Unless the filmmaker makes the film out of the country like Jackson has, they find themselves encumbered needlessly both creatively and financially.

As I see the previews and clips coming in from The Hobbit I am starting to get excited, because such films—stories of such depth are rare for all the reasons described, and are true treasures of our culture. I desire a world where people can speak and do business with each other without the looters standing in the way trying to make easy money for themselves. And yes, my comments here about the education unions have blacklisted me in entertainment which will go on forever. But I have other talents and I’ll use them to tell the story of how human beings get themselves into these fixes. It’s a difficult thing to balance out the need to make a living and then to make a living that is honest and true. Because the chances are, even if you are a wealthy film maker, if your love is to make movies you still need the industry system to make them, so you do your best to shut your mouth and put up with the parts you don’t like. You give money to the Obama administrations as a payoff to a mobster thug and hope they leave you alone politically. And the same holds true for the teaching profession. Or any profession that is controlled by labor unions, it’s hard to come out and speak against it, and to call it what it is, because the system is designed to exclude any voice of dissention. But I will do it, because I’ve already started the process, so I might as well see it through. And in the meantime, I will cheer with much vigor the upcoming film The Hobbit for all these reasons and more. Great stories are so few and far between, and I’m so excited about this one that I may just go get in line for it right now.

Click here to see the TAIL OF THE DRAGON press release for an update on my most recent project:

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

Check out Rich Hoffman’s favorite website, (besides this one):

http://thepeoplescube.com/

Slaying Dragons: Learning to be proud of becoming a DRAGONSLAYER

A long time ago I used to be the guy who fed the string of exploding fireworks from the top of a Chinese restaurant that I worked at while the owners of the establishment put on an epic dragon dance like the one seen below. The fireworks were coiled up in a box that had over 50,000 tied to it and I’d have to stand on the roof and feed the lit explosions just over the dancing dragon below as it performed for a massive audience. My task was to keep the fireworks about two feet above the action but to protect anything from igniting the feed box, which was very dangerous work on my end, that I loved.

As I witnessed many oriental dragon dances I contemplated the difference in how oriental cultures viewed dragons and how the Occident, (western cultures) viewed dragons. They are very different ways of looking at the same thing. In the orient, dragons are a symbol of life renewing aspects. The dragon sheds its skin, and is seen as a serpent and life-giver in many respects. In the west, the dragon’s breath fire, are meant to be feared and usually sit on top of huge piles of treasure and are sought after to be slain. But why was this?

It was that primary question that sent me on a ten-year study and provoked me to quit college three times because nobody had a satisfactory answer for me in the field of philosophy. That might not have been the case if I had been able to attend Sarah Lawrence College where Joseph Campbell taught comparative mythology, or Leonard Peikoff’s philosophy classes at Long Island University, had I known about them when I was 18 to 28. But the books of those men were available, and I scooped up the work of Joseph Campbell and devoured them for the next ten years trying to figure out what was wrong with this whole problem of dragons in human society.

I spent many late nights at Waffle Houses all over Cincinnati reading till 4 to 5 AM over breakfast omelets pouring through all of Campbell’s classics meticulously, and it was this action that catapulted me into a lifelong study of myth, philosophy, and human culture that extended beyond the realms of classic anthropological and archeological study. The study of dragons in our culture actually is the skeleton key to understanding the conflicts of our age and it all begins with the grace of that dragon dance from my youth and the hypnotic fireworks I was tasked to feed during the ceremony. And it ends with the reason why I am so excited about the new Peter Jackson film translation of The Hobbit, which I so enthusiastically support at my site here.

My wife’s birthday was last night and my daughter, son-in-law and I went to our favorite Chinese restaurant in Liberty Twp to get my wife the only food she truly likes, Chinese from Panda King. My entire family loves the oriental family who run that restaurant and we’ve known them for years. The man and woman who operate Panda King are two of the hardest working people I know and their son grew up much like the sons I knew in my teenage years, working with the family business, doing their homework between orders and displaying a fantastic work ethic. It is that work ethic that I admire so much in the people of the orient. They have no fear of hard work and cannot be stopped once set in motion. So my wife wanted food from The Panda King for her birthday dinner and nothing else.

As we placed the order I showed my daughter the new preview to The Hobbit on her cell phone which she hadn’t seen yet and we mauled over the idea of how cool Peter Jackson’s version of Smaug the Dragon would be from that literary classic. As we spoke about it I looked all over the walls of The Panda King at the dragon decorations and thought about the dragon dances again. The difference between the eastern view of dragons and the version from the west displayed so vividly by J.R.R. Tolkien in The Hobbit is quite astonishing. The only thing the two cultures share in their view of the animal is the category of dragon as a mysterious creature.

About that time a young man who I had fired from his job about 7 months ago came in to order food and appeared to recognize me. There was that tension where words cannot cross a void and nothing is said as a result. He didn’t know what to say to me, and there was nothing I could say to him to bring comfort. Asking how he was doing would have been inappropriate under the conditions of his termination, and asking for an appeal to me would have been degrading. So he avoided eye contact with me, ordered his food and left unceremoniously, as my daughter and I continued to talk about Smaug from The Hobbit.

Running into former employees that I’ve had to terminate happens a lot. It happens when I get gas, and at various shopping complexes as I am out and about, so I’ve learned to shift into the proper gear when those encounters happen. Firing an employee or letting them go as a reduction-in-force is difficult, but the situation is always in their control. It is a failure in job performance that does them in, and they either accept that fact or they don’t. So the choice to be angry is entirely in their control.

This guy in Panda King chose not to be angry and took responsibility for his actions, so his lack of desire to be confrontational to me earned some respect that he had won back just a little bit from how I felt about him upon termination.

When the food was done cooking the owners put it all in a giant box that it took to carry it all home. I joked to them about coming home with us to eat it all. The couple gave me an odd look not comprehending what I was saying as the thought of leaving their work in the middle of the evening was not even a consideration, even joking. And there-in-lies the fundamental difference between the east and the west, as much as I admire the oriental work ethic and their very dedicated preservation of strong families in their culture, they do not function very independently. Independence is not important to them culturally. The people of the orient think in terms of collectivism, as a complete organism of which they are but a single cell. They are naturally altruistic by their cultural heritage and as much as I admire them as a social organism, they think very different from the way I do. This is why their dragons are revered as life-sustaining, because the dragon to them is the state. This is why oriental cultures tend to fall toward communism. This is the case certainly in China, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, and if the politics is not literal communism, then it might be monarchy, feudalism such as what is found in Japanese cultures or an out-right dictatorship. The people of the orient are prone to sacrifice their individual lives for the benefit of the collective whole.

When J.R.R. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings he set out to bring Great Britain a proper mythology for their culture, which England did not have. England through their reign of empire had a hodgepodge of many cultures as they imported the King Author legends from France, which had its roots in the troubadours of romanticism. But England lacked an authentic myth to unify its people, so Tolkien set out to give it one with his characters in the literary classics of Middle Earth. As a professor at Oxford he saw firsthand the spread of socialism throughout London society and as a veteran of World War I he had some very unique perspectives into the progressive conditions that spread after the Treaty of Versailles. Tolkien the intellectual kept his mind free from politics like many creative people and instead delved into creating his own world mythology which reflected the concepts of our actual life. Walt Disney and George Lucas have done that in the United States and in England Tolkien was taking his observations of human behavior and painting them against stories such as The Hobbit in 1936.

Tolkien was so prone to withdrawal from contemporary politics that he lashed out in anger at those who declared his Lord of the Rings as an anti-communist parable comparing Joseph Stalin to the Dark Lord. Tolkien saw his work as reaching beyond the politics of the day even though he was clearly reacting to the events through the mechanism of myth.

The Hobbit is in essence a treasure hunt, not too unlike that of Disney’s beloved pirates from Pirates of the Caribbean. Bilbo Baggins was conscripted from a group of treasure hunters led by Gandalf seeking to take back their kingdom and the treasure guarded there by the dragon Smaug. This takes the home-loving Hobbit Bilbo on an adventure of the lifetime and lead directly into the events that become Lord of the Rings, which is a much more sinister story about evil and the nature of its influence. In The Hobbit, Smaug is the perfect embodiment of the classic occidental dragon motif as seen in this clip from the 1977 cartoon adaption of The Hobbit.

Notice Smaug is a pompous, arrogant creature who uses brute force to guard his treasure taken from the surrounding kingdoms. And he sleeps atop it guarding each and every item. Bilbo the Thief, the (pirate) has been tasked to steal an item from the dragon’s lair. The dragon in these stories represents The State, the institutional control of an organization that takes and steals by force the wealth of the people who have their rights to their creations. So the dragon is the villain in occidental mythology where the creature represents a destruction of individual liberty, and the right to their personal wealth. The dragon does not have a right to hoard the looted wealth of the people in its lair. This makes the dragon slayer, the thief of Bilbo Baggins a hero in this case.

However, if the same story were told in China, Bilbo would be the villain and it would be the dragon who would be the hero. Because in that culture the dragon is the revered creature, the state and the survival of the culture is the paramount concern. But in European post renaissance mythology, before Karl Marx spread his disease across Europe, it was the individual desire for conquering one’s personal dragons that become the concern.

I put the quality of J.R.R. Tolkien’s thinking in line with the Founding Fathers by way of intellectual capacity in what he was trying to achieve. Tolkien had the ability to behold very large ideas much the way Ben Franklin did, and was able to see beyond the political trends of his day to tell very powerful myths in an attempt to hold his culture together. Tolkien was creating a mythology which directly leads to philosophy, two ingredients that are paramount to holding a culture together.

Political science and other feeble attempts to bypass the process of myth always lead to social decay. Mythology is needed in order to form complicated social concepts which give context to large ideas. This is why the new documentary called Finding Joe, which is about the power of Joseph Campbell’s scholarship in creating a new field of endeavor called comparative mythology which will soon become a major field of study like anthropology, sociology, and even physics is now, because there is power in myths and the words that form them. So much so that societies will rise and fall based on the strength of their mythological messages.

But that is the difference between the east and the west and these ideas are in open conflict with each other. The hippie movement of the 60’s and into the modern-day sought to study the east as the premier mode of thinking using examples of India, Tibetan Buddhism, and Japanese Zen to challenge the thinking of western thought. It was even Jane Fonda who basically made love publicly with communist North Vietnam using her sex appeal to win over millions of American’s into communism.

But it cannot be disguised what lingers in the heart of mankind. And all the open conflicts of our day could be seen in Panda King where my daughter and I were buying my wife dinner for her birthday. My friends who run the place genuinely enjoy seeing me when I come to place an order and our friendship exists completely in respect. But they do not understand my motorcycle riding, my cowboy hats or my outlandish dress on occasion. They do not understand my strong desire for individual liberty. And I do not understand their blind obedience to collectivism, or their selfless natures. I admire it in some respects, but I do not, nor do I wish to understand it. When I see a dragon I wish to slay it and mount it’s head on my wall so I can hang my bullwhips from its teeth. When they see a dragon they want to do a dance and celebrate its nature.

And the fellow who I fired was a young fellow who was confused by all this stuff. He thought that work was optional, that he could show up when he wanted. He often wore symbols of the Yen and Yang on his jewelry and had a fascination with the Peace symbol. He thought that he could make up his own hours and that if he lost his job he’d just collect unemployment. So I gave him directions to the unemployment office and told him to get in line because he was now on it. He huffed and puffed and bragged on Facebook about how was going to stick it to me and what a bad guy I was, but in the end he had lost his job because he did not perform the tasks he was hired to do. He was functioning from a faulty philosophy. He wanted the collectivism of the east without the hard work, yet he still wanted the individuality of the west, again without the work. That young man is a victim of no mythology, but rather a grouping of broken symbols that had lost their meaning leaving his mind vacant of resolution. This gives him little social value in that he cannot even be hired like Bilbo Baggins to steal treasure from a dragon resting atop a pile of gold.

If you want a long sustaining society that will always hold itself together, the orient has the problem licked. They are a stable people who can have a continuous society that lasts for generations, but they are willing to give up individual liberty to have it. The Occident, (the west) tends to burn itself out quickly in the absence of strong family values since the innovations of one generation to the next die out as the great minds of one age find the descendents of the next one much like that guy I had to fire. Without the work ethic to sustain an idea, they quickly die out and the culture disintegrates. But, it is in individual endeavor that innovation thrives, and it is in the Occident that we developed aviation, computers, the internet, electricity, and virtually all technological marvels. Because the keys to a good life, the treasures of mankind are underneath the dragons of society and those dragons must be killed to gain those treasures. You cannot dance around them and throw sacrifices at those dragons and expect the dragon to give you treasure. Instead the dragon will only ask for more. So the dragons must be killed, so that society can prosper and advance with each slain monster.

American society will thrive once it stops feeling guilty for the dragons it kills, because we are not like those in the orient. We are unique, and it is our task to kill dragons and steal their treasure for our use. That is the mythology of the west, and one that at a subconscious level, we all understand.

Rich Hoffman

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

Check out Rich Hoffman’s favorite website, (besides this one):

http://thepeoplescube.com/

The Crows Test: How the human race gets screwed over

A person of considerable intelligence might ask why our current society with all the technological innovation available to us, behave in such a foolish fashion. Why do people not see what Barack Obama and the government in general are all about? How have labor unions and politicians built an organized crime style empire on the backs of tax payer money in plan sight right without punishment? Why is it that with all the news stories happening at such a feverish pace on the nightly news that all news channels seem obsessed with the Republican nomination for president? Well, the answer is one of science, and is proven beyond refute, and the thieves of our society use this science to openly rob society in legalized theft.

This science is similar to what makes a human being see “magic” during a magic show. It’s used heavily in such demonstrations and can be tracked with the increase in media devices such as radio and television, and now the computer to happen in day-to-day life. One would think that with the advent of these technological breakthroughs that society would become collectively more intelligent, but this has not been the case.

To understand why society is functioning at a low-level of intelligence I will use an example discussed in the book Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand to exhibit the condition that is currently enslaving the human race. To understand the science of this enslavement we must look at how crows process cognitive information. Crows have been studied because they have shown to be comparatively intelligent for a grouping of animals, specifically birds. So they serve as an excellent example of displaying a complex problem.

A hunter goes into the woods to shoot a whole flock of crows that have gathered there, but upon seeing the hunter the crows flock to the tops of the trees to hide. The hunter frustrated that the crows won’t show themselves leaves the woods. After the hunter leaves, the crows come out of hiding from the top of the tree and resume their activity.

The hunter returns to the wood now with three hunters hoping to confuse the crows. The crows seeing the hunters flock to the top of the trees and hide as they did before. But this time the hunter tells his two buddies to leave the woods while he remains hoping to convince the crows that the danger is gone. The two hunters leave and the first hunter remains. However, much to the hunter’s frustration, the crows remain hidden. This is because the crows have the cognitive ability to count and recognize the threat of three hunters as individual threats and not just a group threat of unidentified challenges to their static pattern existence. So the frustrated hunter leaves the woods not getting a clear target at any crows.

The hunter thinks about the problem and decides to try one more time. He grabs four other hunters and returns back to the woods. The crows see five hunters and flee back to the tops of the trees. The hunters have no clear targets. But the original hunter tells his four friends to now leave the woods which they do. The first hunter remains still. The crows see four hunters leave and they assume the threat has now left the woods. This is because the crows do not have the cognitive ability to see more than three threats at a given time, anything more than three sort of blends in to the surrounding environment. So the hunter has discovered the weakness of the crows. He has figured out a way to trick them into thinking the threat to their lives is gone. Once the crows believe this they leave the tree tops to resume their activity. At that time the hunter can then open fire and kill as many crows as his gun can destroy.

For human beings, we are considerably more intelligent than crows, but how much cognitive material can we process at any given time? Is it 7 items, 9 items, 20 items, how many issues can we deal with in our daily lives until everything becomes a blur to us.

Well to my knowledge developing cognitive ability is a skill built much like one builds a muscle. By doing the work of cognition often, the ability is improved. So I would probably be able to count more hunters than someone else, because I work the ability more than most people do. But at some point, we reach a saturation point in how much information we can absorb.

This is the strategy of the modern crook, the politician who seeks to swamp the human mind with so much detail that the average person cannot retain the information presented. This is why legal contracts tend to be too long, and sales people speak too fast, and the wording for products sold on TV for $19.99 are often too small to see, because the intent is to scam the public by presenting so many facts that no single person can understand the information. Just like the hunter sending the other four shooters out of the woods to trick the crows into coming out of hiding, the salesmen of the world wish very much to overwhelm their customers with too much detail.

The looters of our society do seek to overwhelm the voters, consumers, and demographic groups into behavior they know they can control. Obama has been very active with executive orders while the media focuses on the Republican debates. Looters know that most people arrive home at the end of their day with their minds filled with their business, their associates, their pleasures, their pains, and the essence of their survival—such as food, water and clothing. The human mind after being concerned with those primary things in their life have perhaps room for one or two major news stories before all the other information coming at them turns into a blur of data.

A person who has developed the ability to grapple more subjects at the same time might be able to pay attention to the needs of their family, make a living, pay their bills, read a newspaper, listen to the radio, then send texts to their friends while still maintaining the ability to read part of a book, watch the evening news, check their email and browse the internet for interesting topics pleasant to their minds. But somewhere in all that the modern human must develop some interest in the laws of their state and community, and pay attention to what the federal government is doing.

The looters know that most of the human beings they are dealing with do not have room for those other topics, let alone the notions of world economics and the spread of communism as a global political philosophy. Human beings have the tools available to them, in computers, the internet, and more books published per day than in any time in human history. There are numerous television programs that can teach everything from advanced physics to the history of particular battles. Yet society seems to not have the ability to handle very many topics at the same time and find themselves easy prey for the hunters in our civilization.

I watched this hunting of the human population just the other night at a school board meeting in my home district. The administrators wanting a tax increase from the public used all the key words to trick the large audience into believing that the hunters, (the administrators) were looking out for the residence of the district. The hunters know that the parents supporting the school had very full lives, and there wasn’t any room for these parents to learn much detail about why the school needed money. So the parents just wanted someone to tell them what to do, to vote yes on a levy or no. They don’t have the cognitive room to think, so they let the looters do it for them which was the plan all along as the meeting drug on for over two hours discussing so many little details that meant nothing, that the real intent of the meeting existed outside the cognitive ability of most of the audience.

The same thing goes on in our state and federal governments. This is why more people know the contestants to American Idol over who their representatives in government are. It’s because the American Idol knowledge is more pleasurable to know, and if the typical human must pick between the cognitive retention of one item or the other, they will almost always pick the one that is most pleasurable. That’s why sex sells. But since human beings do not have unlimited cognitive ability they cannot behold everything, just as the crows could not determine that all the hunters had left the forest if the number was greater than three. The human being, like the crow is vulnerable to an attacker if the predator attacks while the mind is being asked to function outside of its cognitive ability.

Much crime happens under these conditions, and the roots to evil seen in the human race can be traced back to this notion of limited cognitive ability in the human being as they find themselves continued victims of hunters who reside like the forest hunter, outside the human perception of cognition.

So be cautious of any being, governing body, or media outlet that attempts to overwhelm your mind with too many details too quickly. Chances are its being done on purpose. When you feel it happening, even if you can’t see the threat, duck your head, because there is a hunter in your midst’s ready to take a shot at you. Chaos is the camouflage of the predator, and camouflage does not always have to be cosmetic. Sometimes the camouflage can be within the mind as too many details flood the brain’s ability to reason through all the options and cognitive ability falters under the load. That’s when the attacks happen and the hunter’s show themselves. That’s when we wonder how it happened even though we couldn’t see it coming, but should have because the enemy was right under our noses.

Rich Hoffman

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

Check out Rich Hoffman’s favorite website, (besides this one):

http://thepeoplescube.com/

The Hobbit: An epic story for epic minds comes December 14th to theaters everywhere!

Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
The pines were roaring on the height,
The winds were moaning in the night,
The fire was red, it flaming spread;
The trees like torches blazed with light.

And this is the song from the book, The Hobbit, which much to my delight will finally be released as a film on December 14th 2012. After much debate and legal maneuverings, Peter Jackson has finally been able to bring this epic tale to life on the silver screen. Here’s the preview:

A long time ago I spent several weeks reading Lord of the Rings, of which The Hobbit is a prequel by candle light for the effect of climbing into the mind of J.R.R Tolkien and his world of Gandalf. It is Gandalf of whom I most notably identify with. And it was Tolkien and his world of The Hobbit, and Lord of the Rings that left me hungry for more of that type of material which naturally carried over into the work of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series.

But there is something soothing in the beginnings of things, and The Hobbit is one of those stories that contain a special treasure within the heart of imagination. “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” follows title character Bilbo Baggins, who is swept into an epic quest to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor, which was long ago conquered by the dragon Smaug. Approached out of the blue by the wizard Gandalf the Grey, Bilbo finds himself joining a company of thirteen dwarves led by the legendary warrior, Thorin Oakensheild. Their journey will take them into the Wild; through treacherous lands swarming with Goblins and Orcs, deadly Wargs and Giant Spiders, Shapeshifters and Sorcerers. Sounds like a trip into our own world outside of our homes, and is metaphorically similar in many ways. But this is a fantasy rooted in deep philosophy that is a story for eternity.  And I can’t wait to see it!

But until then, here is the cartoon from 1977. I adore it. It will be wonderful to see this turned into a live action film!

Click here to see the TAIL OF THE DRAGON press release for an update on my most recent project:

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

Check out Rich Hoffman’s favorite website, (besides this one):

http://thepeoplescube.com/