office1698 7:38 PM on March 28, 2011 Can’t wait for the referendum to begin! Gov Kasich and his Tea Party supporters have yet to see the power of unions.
ucfcltymbr 7:41 PM on March 28, 2011
Enjoy your Tea Bag Party reign. It will not take long for the public to come to their sense and run you and your pals out of Columbus and DC.
What we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks is that the unions and administrators have been most certainly in bed with each other. In casual talk we all make jokes about it to ease the tension, but in the back of our minds we want to believe that the administrators, whether it is a school board, or a city council, that they are acting in our best interests. With the rush lately to pass all these contracts before S.B.5 becomes law, the villains reveal themselves.
Villains? Is that the right word? Is that too harsh?
What are the definitions of treason? treason n 1. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) violation or betrayal of the allegiance that a person owes his sovereign or his country, esp by attempting to overthrow the government; high treason 2. any treachery or betrayal
In the Pulse Journal report of the Lakota meeting of Monday, March 28, 2011 Lakota Education Association President Sharon Mays proclaimed that teachers have “stepped up” in these times of financial crises. She said, “We’re taking on more teaching responsibility-more class preps-in order to give students more opportunities. Delaying a decision is not fair to teachers or students.”
What does any of that mean? How have the teachers “stepped up?” Everything she stated is undefined, actually it’s expected. As employees of the district, everything she said is expected. Sharon makes $81,156 per year and at that pay rate, everything she stated is expected from someone in that pay scale. Everything and more! Yet she phrases it as though she were actually doing the district a favor of some kind that teachers are working longer than 7.75 hours per day.
Everyone I know that makes over 50K per year, including executives, company presidents, plant managers, sales managers etc, put in approximately 10.5 hours per day. They may spend 7 to 8 hours at the office and another 2 to 3 hours at home. Teachers take home papers to grade and do some class prep work as would be expected. And for Sharon to make $81K per year, I’d expect her to be on call 24 hours a day and do at least 4 to 5 hours of work per day at home. That is the value of that type of salary.
This is a fight that is just starting. We’ll see how much courage each side has when the smoke clears. One thing is for sure, I will be reporting every detail of it, because only one side is right. There is no left or right here. There is only right or wrong.
This is what happened in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which I’ve proclaimed openly, is my favorite book. Zarathustra came down out of the mountains to help “mankind” understand that they can become “better” than just human beings. That’s where the Ubermensch idea comes from translated loosely into English as “the overman.” I learned about Nietzsche reading a lot of Joseph Campbell and was drawn to Nietzsche’s anti-institutional ideas in quotes that littered the massive body of work known as The Masks of God, which is a four volume set that Campbell spent many years writing based on the course he taught at Sara Lawrence College. One thing that Campbell was doing in his comparative mythology work was breaking down the differences between collective societies, such as you find in the east, and individual oriented societies that you find in the Occident, otherwise the west.
Two bodies of literature jump out at me exhibiting these collectivism warnings. One is A Brave New World, the other is Atlas Shrugged.
I wrote my own book, The Symposium of Justice in 2004, many years before I eventually read Atlas Shrugged myself. I was surprised that Ayn Rand had created similar characters and themes as I did, and she did it over 50 years ago. It might have something to do with the fact that we both studied Nietzsche at some length. I’m thinking particularly of the diner scene, which seemed awfully close to something I did without knowledge of Ayn’s work. The reason? Because truth is truth. There aren’t these degrees of negotiation along some political lines where there are extreme right-winged views or extreme left-winged views and somehow in government these views must be compromised into some stew of thought representing everyone as best as possible. People who seek the truth and find it, come to similar conclusions that cannot be escaped.
Because of my kids, I get to meet a lot of young people, and I must say they are a very disappointing group, bent and distorted around years of progressive thought. I blame progressivism for their foolish behavior, the desire to get “trashed” as they put it, where their right of passage to adulthood is the ability to drink and lose consciousness. That is a pathetic goal. These young people are a soft species robbed of honor because they have been taught to be entirely too sensitive for their own good, indecisive, insecure, raised in broken homes where step parents are a major factor, the whole situation is a mess, and progressive thought is to blame. The most recent catastrophe cast upon the fragile psyche of today’s youth is a thing called Facebook Depression. Listen to Doc Thompson of 700 WLW talk about this mysterious new progressive illness here.
One young boy that my youngest daughter knows lost his job for sleeping and playing on Facebook during his work hours. The kid is a video game wiz so I know there is intelligence there. But he can’t handle basics of reality. For him, it is acceptable to fall off the horse and let the horse keep on running down the path leaving him behind. I feel sorry for the kid because his fundamental belief system will prevent him from seeing the truth of the reasons he continues to fail. You could sit the kid down and scream at him and it would be no different from yelling at a dog that wants to please you, but can only wag its tail or drop its ears, completely unable to understand what you’re trying to tell it.
This kid is just a product of progressivism. I don’t blame him as much as I feel pity, much like I feel pity of an insect that falls into a swimming pool and struggles to free itself, hoping a kind hand lifts it from the water before it drowns. There are millions upon millions of these kids functioning in the world today, most of them completely lost by adults that are just as lost. This is the result of progressivism. Progressives seek a level of fairness that is not earned, but is perceived as a right, which it’s not.
One element in that book that haunts me is the discovery of a new type of engine built by a genius that turns his back on the world in a way because he knows that the world as it is designed through progressive thought will reject new ideas because all new ideas threaten the security of people. This engine runs off strictly static electricity. It would never need fuel, oil or any other element. It would run along the same premise that lightning is generated in the atmosphere. The sickening thing about that bit of science fiction is that it is rooted in fact.
It is true that there will be suffering. Those that are feeders off society will have a difficult time adapting, but this process must happen. It is not a matter of right or left. It is literally right or wrong.
The key is that if you want to be a feeder, or a “looter,” then find yourself a creator that is a fair-minded person that appreciates your labor, because through competition, the creator in order to get a competitive edge over other creators will adapt to necessity, just as a stream will always run downhill and find the path of least resistance. If you want the benefit of that flow, put yourself in that path of least resistance and you’ll always be employed and of a benefit to a creator. And if you are a creator, create. Don’t attempt to be a feeder if you are a creator. You will only frustrate the hell out of yourself.
Every single politician in existence is a feeder. They are almost completely worthless. Yet they believe that they have some kind of dominion over everything that is created. And that is what needs to change. This is a belief given to us from Europe, which is a corrupt notion. It hasn’t worked for them, and it won’t work for us.
If you want to know how to do that, understand what needs to be done or how to fix what’s wrong with America and you want the truth go to your local book store and read Atlas Shrugged. The movie will be out soon also. But if you really want to soak up something that won’t lie to you, go get that book! Today! Then watch the news armed with the truth and see what you think about comments over the federal budget and what we can cut or should cut.
America is proof that multiculturalism can work in the world as mankind moves toward an identity more akin to Earthlings as opposed to the national identities and religions known today.
The answer is that the civil rights movement is a power grab. Americans have always been good people that loved freedom and is a place where religious tolerance and slavery could actually be discussed. We had our Salam Witch trials which we’ve as a culture rejected. As an American culture we’ve rejected slavery. America did those things on their own, nobody else. So the time to feel guilty about it is over.
It is time to stop putting oil on those wheels and proclaiming them broken, beyond repair. We must not bend the greatness of our nation to these mindless radicals. It is the great responsibility of our age and it must be met with more than thought.
America may not be perfect, and it may take several decades to work out all the details of multicultural evolution, but no country has made as much ground as the United States have in the history of the world. The ones that point out those small imperfections are the same that wish to use imperfection for their own climb to power so that they can illusion their minds with authority.
1. What was your involvement with the Lakota Levy?
a. I am currently the spokesman for No Lakota Levy.com which is a group of residents and businessmen living within the Lakota district opposed to further property tax increases. For many years we all worked separately from our various positions, but when it comes to the business of defeating a Lakota Levy we pull our resources together to finance the campaign portion of such an endeavor and run a unified campaign. I handle the media contacts and campaign strategy in conjunction with a core group of approximately 22 motivated members at the front of the effort, each handles specific obligations from data collection, legal needs, financing, and content design. My specific obligations were to collect all that information and project it through the website of nolakotalevy.com and other media outlets.
2. What is your main reason for not supporting the levy?
b. The only way to sustain the education budget at Lakota is to stop the inflating costs. Education is going to have to get leaner, not larger. School Choice is going to force competition, so Lakota must adapt if it hopes to continue to be a choice school for students moving to the district. Online classes are proving to be more efficient for some forms of education, such as foreign language and mathematics. Blind obedience to older forms of education are proving to be devastating to our national culture, so throwing more money at an average, or outdated system is not wise, and the teacher contracts that we are currently obliged to at Lakota are inflating the budget in an uncontrollable way, the average teacher makes over $62,000 per year and the step increase obligations are increasing that budget each year. Real estate movement has frozen as a result of the Housing Bubble crash of 2008 and taxes need to actually go down to attract business and residential growth to the area, not up. Passing a levy would only make this problem worse and far less attractive. Potential business development and residential expansion will move to Franklin, Trenton and Monroe if taxes continue to increase which is not the direction we want to go to in Liberty Twp and West Chester.
3. You say that to pass the levy it would just be putting a band-aid on a much larger problem. Is this problem the mismanagement of state funds in your opinion?
c. My opinion is that education has grown to expect too much funding. It has become used to a large bureaucratic system that funnels money without question under the umbrella of education and those dollars are not getting children the education they need. The band-aid is a term to that describes the levy increase is only to pay for an inflated budget driven by step increases from a teachers union that told the press they took a pay freeze, yet the budget needs continue to expand because of those step increases, so the statements to the press and community were very deceptive. Throwing more money at the situation will not improve the educational lives of the children in the community. In fact there is no evidence that more money will solve anything. What we need is competition introduced to all school districts, through programs like School Choice. This will force school systems like Lakota, and Mason, and all others to bring down their per-pupil costs which are currently hovering around 10K per student. That’s a ridiculous sum that as a society we cannot allow that cost per student to increase to 11K or 12K in the coming years. Those costs need to go in the other direction so we can sustain education far into the future. Not just till many of the district employees currently in the system reach retirement. Our concerns are for the health of the district. Not the current employees.
4. With the levies not passing, what effect do you think this has on the West Chester community?
d. Unfortunately in the short run busing has been cut, electives cut, lay-offs of some of the newer teachers, who probably shouldn’t have been cut because they were new and full of energy. Sports have been cut, but all these cuts are really cents on the dollar. They are intended to impact the community negatively in order to secure future funding, and that is an unfortunate game to play. The healthy aspect of not passing the levies is that it has helped create the need for a bill such as S.B.5 which will give our school board the ability to control its costs. One of the primary complaints I’ve heard from the school board is that there is very little they can actually do, because the union contract is so restrictive. That kind of restriction costs an enormous amount of money in compliance. So because of the failures of these levies, we have been able to get advancements of programs like School Choice, and S.B.5 which will allow our school board to continue to manage Lakota as a highly sought after school district. The most devastating event that could have happened in recent history is when the teachers union threatened to strike in 2008, which immediately drove up the labor costs within the Lakota School district, and this has had a very negative effect on real estate that is cautious of such high taxes and the ability of the school system to remain solvent. I have been asked, as many in the No Lakota Group have, why I don’t run for school board to help solve these problems. Well, when S.B.5 becomes law I can think of about 50 people right off the top of my head that would then be ready to help run the school district properly, businessmen that are successful in the West Chester area. They won’t do it now because the unions are a radical group showing no flexibility or understanding of fiscal responsibility. I personally would not deal with such people, and many of the people I know won’t either. What we can do at this phase is deny more money to a broken system. That forces them to live within a budget. The district really should look at lowering their 160 million dollar budget to something below 120 million. We’re not asking them to do that. We’re asking them to work with what they have without increased costs. Just under 100 students were added to the Lakota School System after 2009 because the housing market froze. That lack of growth occurred well before Lakota failed a levy. It is a direct result of a poor housing market, and extremely high taxes. More tax increases is an insane and treacherous path that will force a decline in what we’ve all worked hard to build in West Chester and Liberty Twp. We need to drive our costs down instead of up and by voting no we are forcing that discussion to take place. We’re not taking away their money. They are choosing to respond to the small cuts instead of getting their payroll under control. The same amount of money is still flowing in their direction. And that figure will go down if they continue to make Lakota appear to be a bad district for sports, busing cuts and electives, driving residents away which will further lower the taxable income the district receives. The district must be responsible, work with the budget they currently have while keeping Lakota a desirable district attractive to parents while using S.B.5 to get their costs in line the moment it is passed.
5, Do you think the education or school system reflects on a community?
e. No, that is a popular myth. The school system is a reflection of the community not the other way around. The kids that go to Lakota are good or above average because the parents that send those kids to school care about their kids. Whenever parents take an active role in their kids those kids will perform higher. The school system will be good because the people in the community are good. Money has nothing to do with it. Things are good or great because of the people involved. Paying people well does not make something good. It only says you appreciate the work they do and you pay them more money so that they won’t leave and go someplace else. Lakota was a good district when there were cows next to the school buildings and there was not air-conditioning, because the residents that were attracted to live in the district are good people, and they still are. Because of that long-standing success Lakota has attracted people from other places within the city. But these are the first type of people who will leave and turn their backs on the district in the crises we currently face, because they falsely believe that money is the key to success. It is not. Success is a state of mind. And because Lakota has good people it will remain a good district.
6. Do you think with the school levies not passing people will be discouraged from moving into the West Chester community?
f. I think some of the parents that are looking for a great school system with a foot half in half out will be, and those types of people are the first to leave when something goes wrong anyway. They cost our community more with their short-term investment hoping to get excellent schools for their kids on the backs of the tax payer while not making a long-term commitment to the community. They usually move away when their kids grow up and downsize. I don’t have much sympathy for those types of residents. As a community we need to build a strong community with residents that are willing to invest in our district and maintain that investment, and not sell at the first sign of trouble. To do that we need to lower taxes. We need to lower our overall operating budget and still provide the services that other districts have cut to maintain their costs. We need to think outside the box and not allow ourselves to sink in obligation to union contracts that are outdated and forced upon the community through coercion. Coercion is exactly what the strike threat in 2008 was and that behavior has no place in our district. There are a lot of great teachers out there and we want them in our schools. We’ll offer them good pay, a nice community to teach in, and pleasant students with parents that care. Those are all benefits. But we cannot afford over 400 personnel that make over 65K per year. That’s way too expensive. The teachers union should have recognized this and renegotiated their contracts to bring their costs in line with the community at large that is considered statewide to be affluent, yet average just around 50K per year per working professional.
7. What are some positive aspects for the community with the levy not passing?
g. It is forcing the discussing of how we can cut costs and still maintain the high level of service that Lakota has built a reputation around. If successful, Lakota will be one of the first school districts of its kind to remain excellent while reducing their budget, which is a process that must happen. It’s not an option. Once we bring costs down for education then West Chester can explore the possibility of lowering tax rates and attracting growth back to the region from the imposing tax rates that we are currently experiencing. This should be the first desire of the school board, to provide a quality education and to do so within the allocated budget. Not passing the levy has stopped the blind obedience to union step increases by exposing them for what they truly are.
8. With the levy not passing, do you think Lakota schools are cutting appropriate aspects to fit with their budget?
H. Absolutely not. They should not have cut busing. That is less than 3% of the total budget. They should not have cut sports. Sports are less than busing as far as budget significance. They should not have laid-off any teachers. They should not have cancelled electives before they explored reducing their inflated labor costs. All teachers with tenure are not worth 65K per year. If we reduced overall payroll by 30% Lakota could have saved nearly 30 million dollars which more than solves the budget problems. But making such decisions requires true management understanding and making tough decisions, which are unpleasant, especially with a teachers union that is very contentious. After all, it was just 2008 that they flooded the school board meeting in October and threatened to strike. Once S.B.5 is passed, teachers will not be able to extort more money with such manipulative methods that are destructive to the community at large. If those employees seeking unreasonable sums of money wish to teach someplace else, they are free to leave. But they will not be able to strike and stop work hurting our children in the process. The problem starts when we have superintendents like Mike Taylor that feed the teachers union with comments saying “I don’t think teachers make enough money,” this coming from a former teacher himself that has obviously lost touch with the cost value of services in the private sector. The superintendent, reports to the school board. The school board reports to the community. All the teachers report to all above and what has been forgotten is who the manager of funds is. It is not the teachers unions that threaten a community with striking in order to drive up their labor costs. It is the community itself that has had to deny funds in order to stop the excessive bleeding of tax payer dollars that has been corrosive to further development of our area out of sheer greed. No, the cuts have not been made in the proper place. A real manager understands that the excessively expensive employees are better off to go someplace else while the hungry, appreciative employees that are in the business for all the right reasons come out of college every year and are there for us to hire. Labor is not in shortage so the advantage goes to the manager, the community. Our school board will need to begin thinking like managers of the community’s money instead of trying to hold back a wall of threats by a teacher’s union that wants more than any community should ever be expected to pay.
9. Is there anything else you would like to add?
I. It is unfortunate that the perception that passing a school levy is actually good for kids. This was created by union marketing and has no basis in reality, absolutely zero. What is good for our children and our communities is competition and options. The current level of school funding at 10K per student is too much and relies on broken models of tax collection from unconstitutional property tax acquisition. It is my conclusion after watching the behavior of education costs for over a decade closely and fighting 6 school levies that the union influence has been detrimental to community management of school district costs. The trend in the future will be less funding from the state so more finance dependency will have to come from the local communities all over Ohio. That means that the teachers unions will have to either become much more accommodating and realistic or must be eliminated completely in favor of a system dictated strictly off competition. For myself, I simply don’t want a single dollar of my tax money going to union activity; because I do not, or have ever support them. I think they are bad and devastating to the American economy and I think it’s the wrong kind of thing for any children to be exposed to. I’d personally like to see children striving to be much more self-reliant and competitive, which I don’t see happening in public education. But that aside, it is the costs that everyone in the community must consider, personal issues aside. And it is labor costs that are the most extraordinary part of the budget that must be handled. This should not be a difficult concept for tax payers to understand. This is exactly why sports teams have salary caps, so a team cannot spend above a maximum set budget. School systems need to have a funding cap that the community establishes and the school board must figure out how to live within that cap. For Lakota that number is somewhere between 150 million and 160 million, which is a lot of money to spend on educating 18,500 students. If that means Lakota has to drive the costs down to 7K per pupil or even 6K per pupil, then that’s what the district must do, and still meet the excellent rating of the community. If they refuse to provide this service, then School Choice will be implemented and parents can send their kids to Mason, or Little Miami, or Fairfield in order to get the services they want as parents. This is the reality that is arriving, and it is expected that Lakota will embrace this challenge and emerge as a leader, because failure is not an option. And neither is higher taxes. If they can’t think out of the box to drive down their costs, then they need to step aside so people who do think this way can take control and get the budget under control.
Now, to support some of what I put down here I point you dear reader into the direction of two articles. These two articles describe the problem of public school from two angles, but centering on a common theme. Public school has a monopoly over education, where it shouldn’t, and that monopoly exists to protect the financial structure of its employees and nothing else. If we ever hope to truly educate our children properly we will eliminate this monopoly in favor of real, competitive education that has genuine value and a benefit for the communities that support it.
New Report Shows Vouchers Benefit Public and Private School Students
INDIANAPOLIS — A new report by the Foundation for Educational Choice finds that out of the 10 “gold standard” studies examining school voucher programs throughout the nation, nine showed that vouchers contributed to the academic improvements for students who use them.
The report also reviewed all 19 empirical studies on how vouchers affect academic performance in the public school system, finding that 18 of these studies show vouchers improved public schools.
“A Win-Win Solution: The Empirical Evidence on School Vouchers” reviews the studies spanning 20 years, including some recent ones. The empirical research consistently finds school voucher programs have improved the academic achievement of both the students who transferred to private schools and those who remained in public schools.
The research, by Greg Forster, a senior fellow with The Foundation, examines randomized experimental studies and other high-quality empirical studies evaluating school voucher programs conducted by researchers at Harvard University, Stanford University, Cornell University, Princeton University and the Federal Reserve Bank among other respected research institutions.
Forster, a senior fellow with The Foundation, says that test scores and graduation rates would have improved more dramatically if the voucher programs were offered to all students and not restricted based on income and other demographic factors, or capped to a certain number of participants.
“We are seeing some benefits thanks to vouchers, but we would see much more improvement with much more choice,” Forster said. “The more competition, the more pressure there would be to improve public education. With a lot more choice you will likely get improvements on a much broader scale.”
There are 26 school choice programs in 16 states and Washington, D.C. The first limited voucher program launched in Milwaukee in 1990. More than 190,000 students nationwide use public funds to attend the private school of their choice.
“Choice works,” said Robert Enlow, President and CEO of The Foundation. “We have known that for a while now. This review of all the research underscores it. What we need now is more choice for more kids to achieve more success.”
About the Foundation for Educational Choice
The Foundation for Educational Choice is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and nonpartisan organization, solely dedicated to advancing Milton and Rose Friedman’s vision of school choice for all children. First established as the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation in 1996, the foundation continues to promote school choice as the most effective and equitable way to improve the quality of K-12 education in America. The foundation is dedicated to research, education, and outreach on the vital issues and implications related to choice and competition in K-12 education
NH Supreme Court: homeschooled girl must go to public school against mom’s wishes
BY JOHN-HENRY WESTEN
•
CONCORD, NH, March 17, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The New Hampshire Supreme Court upheld a lower court order Wednesday that sided with the father of a homeschooled student and forced her into a government-run school against her Christian mother’s wishes.
The court made clear that it was not addressing larger religious liberty and homeschooling concerns and was basing its ruling only on the narrow and specific facts of the case.
“While [the case] involves home schooling, it is not about the merits of home verses public schooling,” stated the justices in their opinion.
“We affirm the decision on the narrow basis that it represents a sustainable exercise of the trial court’s discretion to determine the educational placement that is in daughter’s best interests.”
The court heard oral argument in the case on Jan. 6.
Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) attorney John Anthony Simmons, who represented the mother, who is divorced from the father, argued that the burden of proof was on the father to prove harm in order to change the schooling arrangement. Because no harm was demonstrated and the girl was acknowledged to be academically superior and socially interactive, even by the court, Simmons argued that the homeschooling arrangement should not have been changed.
However, in the original order issued in July 2009, Judge Lucinda V. Sadler reasoned that the girl’s “vigorous defense of her religious beliefs to [her] counselor suggests strongly that she has not had the opportunity to seriously consider any other point of view.”
“Parents have a fundamental right to make educational choices for their children,” responded Simmons. “Courts can settle disputes, but they cannot legitimately order a child into a government-run school on the basis that her religious views need to be mixed with other views. That’s precisely what the lower court admitted it was doing.”
“The lower court held the Christian faith of this mother and daughter against them,” Simmons said. “Unfortunately, the Supreme Court bypassed this issue and wrote this off as a ‘parent versus parent’ issue without recognizing the very real underlying threat to religious liberty.”
Nevertheless, ADF Senior Counsel Joseph Infranco said that the law firm appreciates the Supreme Court’s choice to limit “its decision to the facts of this case,” which should ensure that the decision “cannot be used as a battering-ram against religious liberty or homeschooling.”
The “ADF will be vigilant to make sure that it’s not,” he concluded.
“We are disappointed that this young girl is being forced to attend a public school over her mother’s, and reportedly her own, wishes,” said Michael Donnelly, the attorney for the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). HSLDA had submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in the case.
“However, the NH Supreme Court confined its ruling to this case and these facts avoiding any collateral impact on the rights of other parents in New Hampshire who homeschool their children,” he continued. “While the lower court’s decision could have been read to create a presumption in favor of public education over homeschooling, the court emphatically rejected this notion.”
With all that in mind I thought about what President Obama said about Gaddafi over the weekend by saying that “Gaddafi needs to step down. He has lost the confidence of his people who means he should turn over power.” Well, Obama has lost the confidence of his people, at least a majority of them. Doesn’t that mean he should step down too?
I used to be ashamed of Bill Clinton and couldn’t imagine a worse president, but at least he had been a governor and knew some basic management skills.
I’m not crazy about either of the Bush’s. I think they wanted to be president for too many of the wrong reasons. The first clue that you have a bad president is that if a man gets a surge of power just by sitting in a chair, he’s the wrong guy. A president should not be enamored by power of any kind. In fact, the office of the president should be a step down to what they’ve accomplished in their private lives. The popular myth is that it’s the most powerful position in the world, but it’s really not. Ronald Reagan breezed through his presidency just on his ability to act and a single-minded ability to believe he was right and on the side of God. There are many, many, many more people in our nation more qualified for the presidency than Reagan was, but he could speak well. So he goes down in history as one of the greatest presidents in American history. His greatest gift was that he didn’t listen to everyone around him. He knew what he wanted to do and he did it, which makes him distinctly American. American’s are not naturally collaborative. I know that might bust the bubble of many that think very highly of Ronald Reagan, but those are the facts.
My favorite president in recent history is Calvin Collage. That’s my idea of a manager president. Everyone else has fallen short, and that covers the entire span of the 20th century. Teddy Roosevelt was my next pick for a great president, but he became too much of a monarch lover by the end of his presidency and had the fatal flaw of craving power. He could not turn away from the power, so much so that he became a progressive in order to run against his friend President Taft. Many of the presidents have done their share of good things, but not enough. Not what we should expect out of an American president.
But Obama, he’s an absolute joke. He does not represent me as an American. I mean look at his website. What are we supposed to be “fired up” about? What change? And what are we organizing? He’s the president. His message is one for children in school and people without wit to know better.
If he believes Gaddafi should step down in Libya because he’s lost the confidence of the majority of the people, which I agree with him on that point, then Obama should step down voluntarily and admit that the job of the presidency is too big for him. Maybe he could try again in a few years after he works as a manager of a McDonalds and gets some experience under his belt. Because he is an absolute embarrassment that makes me look at the decadent days of Bill Clinton with yearning. The only reason he wouldn’t do it is because he’s in love with his authority, no different from the cop that flunks his test and doesn’t belong on the force because he’s not smart enough to be a cop. This President isn’t qualified to be a president. And the people of America respect authority too much to admit it to themselves.
The superintendents are leaving the sinking ships because their true motives are revealed. They’ve always been about the money. They say it’s about the kids, but their actions speak otherwise. In Kevin Bright’s situation he still has the Stacy Schuler case that is coming his way and will be extremely embarrassing and he knows that once S.B.5 passes, the school board will be forced to make real cuts to the district, not cosmetic ones. There won’t be anymore levy increases, so he’s leaving to friendlier districts. What he doesn’t understand is that this movement that is occurring in Southern Ohio is growing north. He can hide from it, but he won’t escape.
It would be wise for these school officials to come clean now, and stop hiding behind children, and real estate values and reveal their true intentions before things become even more embarrassing. And for those teachers and administrators that are gaming the system thinking of leaving these districts for some friendly place like Kevin Bright is doing, good luck, because soon we’ll be there too. Enjoy it while you can.
I recently wrote an article criticizing the president on his trip listing all the troubles that are currently on the table and one of them was the NFL lockout. Well, of course this got a reaction, because how is the NFL lockout as important as the tsunami in Japan? Well, it’s not. But in the secret recesses of the human mind, it is. The NFL is the game of the American Economy. The “men of the mind” buy boxes and move and shake the world from those seats on Sunday afternoons while gladiators batter each other on the field of play yard by yard. Taking that game out of the public consciousness will have an impact on our national consciousness in a negative way.
Thinking of sports, each year there are stories of athletes that attempt a competitive edge by use of steroids, or some other method. Well, in business, the same holds true, or in any other endeavor.
Similar powers are explored often in the culture of voodoo, which you can find easily in the south. In fact, it’s not difficult to find a practicing voodoo priest if you go Hilton Head Island or Savannah Georgia. Many are working as dish washers in the back rooms of restaurants and they live in small trailers or even tents just outside of town, but they can certainly conger up a voodoo doll or reach into the spirit realm for you for a small fee, and bring bad luck on an enemy, or even cause an enemy to get seriously sick.
This is why I find the film Eyes Wide Shut particularly fascinating. Stanley Kubrick, creator of 2001 A Space Odyssey and The Shining jumped into the world of the rich and powerful that attempt to use sex drugs and violence to curry favor with the spirit world. Now, Kubrick was no kook. He was a serious and very talented filmmaker and he spent many, many hours researching the shocking video you will see below. He actually did what the character Tom Cruise did in the film; he snuck into these secret societies and studied what was going on and why. He depicted this action in his film, and he did not live to see it delivered to theaters. Tom Cruise violently protected the final cut of the film with his reputation, which he paid for. The film was delivered to the public as Kubrick intended, but the professional lives of Tom Cruise and Nichole Kidman were forever tarnished by the film, proving how deep the influence goes into even the very rich and powerful. In fact, Cruise and Kidman’s marriage didn’t last. They divorced shortly after the film was released. Cruise buried himself into scientology shortly thereafter and lost credibility with the public at large.
Here is an edited clip from the films ritual scene.
You can see the whole ritual scene at this link which I’ll avoid on this page because it contains graphic nudity. Now when you watch this remember that the women brought into this ceremony are common prostitutes bought though the sex trade industry and drugged with aphrodisiacs so they’d be prepared for the mass orgy.
So what’s in the chant? You’d think by watching that clip that it is a demonic chant, but it’s not. Here’s the translation.
Source: Leoslyrics.com Romanian Chant (In the movie, it is played backwards. Here are the normal version, backwards version and translation)
Normal Version
Zisa Domnului catre ucenicii sai…Porunca noua dau voua…Domnului sa ne rugam pentru mila, viata, pacea, sanatatea, mantuirea, cercetarea, lasarea si iertarea pacatelor robilor lui Dumnezeu. Inchinatori, miluitori si binefacatori ai sfantului lacasului acestuia.
Backwards Version
Auov uad auon acnurop ias iicinecu ertac iulunmod asiz… Aiutseca iulusacal iulutnafs ia irotacafenib is irotiulim irotanihcni. Uezenmud iul rolibor roletacap aeratrei is aerasal aeratecrec aeriutnam aetatanas aecap ataiv alim urtnep magur en as iulunmod. Auov uad auon acnurop ias iicinecu ertac iulunmod asiz…
Pray from India
Parithranaya Saadhunam Vinashaya cha dushkrithaam Dharmasamsthabanarth aya Sambhavami yuge yuge
Translation
And God told to his apprentices…I gave you a command…to pray to the Lord for the mercy, life, peace, health, salvation, the search, the leave and the forgiveness of the sins of God’s children. The ones that pray, they have mercy and they take good care of this holy place.
My point in bringing this up is that it is obvious that there is more to the story of what is behind the obvious neglect by our elected officials to follow the laws of the Constitution. There are some, although in the minority, that are corrupt and evil to the absolute core of their being, and do believe that they will personally prosper by bringing decadence to the world. And that if anything is to be fixed, it will not be enough to fix only our understanding of the law as established in the Constitution, but we will have to have a spiritual awaking as well, one that does not subscribe to warped religious practices and a hunger for things done in secret in an attempt to get a spiritual advantage.
It is not farfetched to consider such things. Daily, millions of people read their horoscopes, which is a gateway acceptance to this type of ritualistic indulgence.
Not only are drugs encouraged to continue to pour into our country to feed the weak among our fellow Americans with more mind numbing devices but the sex slavery is also endorsed.
Yet this is how it’s sold to the public. Remember where the UN meets.
To make real and permanent repairs to the human condition, and the laws we live under, it is important to make the distinction into what it is we are actually trying to achieve. We can say with certainty that we want the nation restored, but there are those in the world that are first sexually promiscuous and crave power to have access to sexual deviancy, and those that believe that organizing sex practices are appealing to “the gods” and those gods will give them power and dominion over others.
So in our quests these accounts must be considered for what they’re worth, and if justice is sought, it must be sought for all, sex slaves and child trafficking included.
Consider just in the United States the porn industry generates billions and billions of dollars every year, 97 billion worldwide and that’s the money that is traceable that file SEC statements. That’s more money than Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Netflix, Apple, combined. Just in the United States porn makes more money than Major League Baseball, the NHL and the NFL combined with revenues of NBC, CBS, and ABC.
The question you have to ask is………………………….why?
Now I know why President Obama is going to Rio. He’s going to save all the children from sex tourism that is so rampant there.
Oh……..sorry to get your hopes up. Everyone knows this is going on, just like the people in the room in Eyes Wide Shut, (hence the title) Obama won’t even bring it up because his bosses would chastise him for it. And we all know what happens to people who try to expose this terrible industry rooted in corrupt human sacrifice. Ask Stanley Kubrick, and Tom Cruise, when the name Cruise used to mean something, and Kubrick was still alive.
I’ve mentioned in many words on these pages why some leaders are better than others, and exactly what makes a leader, “good.” For a clear definition of what makes something of quality, and why some people are “better” than others I refer your inquisitive mind to the great book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. That book is one of the best, most thorough works of philosophy on quality and leadership done since the pre-Greek age. The capacity to be, “the best” is within all of us. But certain traits certainly jump out as contributory factors.
Now, before anyone says that I don’t know what I’m talking I know quite a few school board members all over the state, and this is how I learned about this story. It’s not a secret. Such ceremonies are no different from the “hazing” rituals in college fraternities. The intent is to unify everyone into a “collective team.”
At a minimum, no school board member elected by the public should ever wear a pin or carry a sign lobbying the community for increases in taxes. Because in doing so they are publicly admitting that they do not have management control over the school system and are not able to do the job.
And a warning to Mr. North and all those like him. Be careful what you say to people. The difference now is that when a whistleblower says something to the paper, and it falls on deaf ears, there are now groups like this one and others that are emerging, that will carry the story. So hiding behavior under a rock or behind closed doors will no longer be a valid way to hide improprieties to the taxpayer. And there are plenty of leaks. Believe me.
Butler County commission signs off on FOP contract Butler County Sheriff’s Office deputies have new agreement. By Michael D. Pitman, Staff Writer March 18, 2011
HAMILTON — Butler County Sheriff’s deputies and supervisors will get a raise, but they’ll have to wait until next year. The Butler County Commission agreed Thursday to ratify the collective bargaining agreements for members of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 101.
The contract, which expires Feb. 9, 2013, had to go to a conciliator in November for the six items on which the union and administration could not come to terms.
“This is how the process is supposed to work,” said Sheriff Richard K. Jones, an opponent of Ohio Senate Bill 5 that passed the Senate and is in the House for debate. “We couldn’t agree, so we went to arbitration.”
Sgt. Jeff Gebhart, a spokesman for the FOP, could not be reached for comment Thursday.
According to the new contract, union members will get a 2 percent raise next year; $1,000 cash payment in lieu of a uniform allowance; and new top step effective in February 2012 to be set 2 percent higher than the current top step while deleting the lowest step.
The union also wanted similar pay scales for court services deputies and road deputies; the ability for supervisors to bid on positions; and a uniform allowance in 2010. The conciliator did not grant these requests.
“We want our people to have the best they can negotiate for; it’s not a battle,” Maj. Norman Lewis said. “But in these economic times, with the way the budget has been slashed, it’s a process that had to take place.”
Lewis said the collective bargaining process started in February 2010, but the six items of disagreement needed a conciliation hearing.
The contracts with corrections officers, corrections supervisors, clerical and dispatch unions are being finalized and likely will go before the county commissioners in ensuing weeks, he said.
Jones said the collective bargaining process works for the administration and the unions, and has worked well for the 34 years he’s been involved in the negotiations.
The protests on Fountain Square the day Governor Kasich released his budget were amazingly short-sighted considering many of the participants were educators. “We need to tax the rich, and save the middle-class,” were the chants. Really? I mean, really???????? These people really believe that there are other options that are less painful than the budget cuts Kasich placed on the table. They really believe that the wage levels are somehow separate from collapsing community budgets.
Few of these public workers understand that Medicaid is almost a third of the state budget and only 4% of the people occupy 70% of the cost. That’s a major problem and one of the largest contributors of the budget deficit Ohio is experiencing. It’s certainly not that the rich aren’t paying enough taxes, or that industry is getting tax breaks. The people who say such things are incredibly selfish and not very wise on world affairs. They only look at their little piece of the world and could care less if everyone else suffer, which is what’s happening in Lakota and every other school district.
The protestors were already prepared to protest Kasich no matter what he said in his budget. He could have said he was giving everyone a thousand dollars in the state of Ohio, and they would have still complained about what an evil guy he is.
I look at the things Kasich wants to do and it all sounds good to me. The protestors clearly just don’t want change because they benefit tremendously by keeping everything broken. They are ultimately a very selfish lot that lack the intellectual capacity to educate anyone in my opinion. To know that there were teachers from Lakota at this rally disgusts me. They represent the community very poorly.
Here is what they are protesting from Kasich’s budget plan.
• More oversight over Medicaid, although spending on the federal program will continue to grow by $1 billion annually. Medicaid comprises 30 percent of Ohio’s $60 billion budget in fiscal year 2013, including all federal matching dollars.
• Better coordination of mental health services.
• To offer the state’s health-care coverage to local governments to save money and ask union workers to pay more toward premiums.
• To sell liquor distribution rights to raise money for job-development programs,
• To honor pay increases contained in the third year of a union contract that ends next February. The extra pay offsets lost personal days and unpaid furloughs by state workers – concessions to balance Gov. Ted Strickland’s last budget.
• To double vouchers for school choice, eliminating a waiting list for parents who want to transfer their children from public to privately operated charter schools.
• Bonuses for teachers – $50 for each student who shows marked improvement.
• A closer look at adding slot machines to Ohio’s horse tracks or legalizing casinos operated by Native American tribes.
• Study the concept of semi-private “charter” universities to give now-public colleges more flexibility. That would eliminate the requirement that they hire multiple prime contractors and pay prevailing wage on construction projects, to keep tuition down. It also caps annual tuition growth at 3.5 percent.
Recently I needed a part from a large manufacturer in Dallas, Texas, and the person on the other end of the phone said they could see the part through the window from where they were sitting. But they couldn’t send it to me. Why? Because the department on the other side of the window was controlled by the union and the guy in charge of moving that part was out on sick leave, and he was the only one able under the contract to move the part. So because of union rules the person I was speaking to could not simply open a door and pick up the part to ship back to me. It cost thousands of dollars in delivery penalties and seriously set back our manufacturing process. I was so mad at that process that I put my fist through my phone in frustration.
The same mentality is at play with these public sector unions. They are out of touch and protecting the serious imposition they have imposed on us all. And they could care less of some kids suffer because of their inflated opinions of themselves.
The proof is in what they say and do. Not in their very controlled bullet points designed to manipulate a busy voting population.
I’m actually amazed that Kasich’s approval rating is as high as 40 percent considering how bold he has been on many of his policies. There is no question that Kasich’s budget is going to be painful for many people. I would have to say that if I were governor, I probably wouldn’t do things much different from Kasich is doing. I personally wouldn’t think too much on the pain of the moment, because what’s right is right. It’s not Kasich’s fault that so many people have become addicted to public money. It’s like taking the bottle away from an alcoholic while they are trying to get drunk. Of course the drunk will be upset, and they usually protest that they are not alcoholics. I’d probably hire people to serve under me at good business wages so I could get the best people and not the typical “kiss ass” political climbers, I’d probably want to control the video of my presentations so they couldn’t be used against me in the future, and I’d probably be caught numerous times calling police that pulled me over, “idiots” because it would make me angry. I’m a very aggressive guy and I keep my eyes on the end result, and I see in Kasich the same traits.
I would say that Kasich understands like many people who are in leadership positions that a vast majority of any given group will be lost no matter how much you try to explain it. And those types of people don’t like to waste time explaining their vision to people who won’t get it anyway.
It was reported that Kasich’s approval rating is below the levels enjoyed by the last three governors when they were in their start of their administrations. The Ohio Poll registered 68 percent approval for Democrat Ted Strickland in May 2007, 49 percent approval for Republican Bob Taft in March 1999 and 61 percent approval for Republican George Voinovich in February 1991. The reason for this is because those governors spent much of their time pandering to the 47% and therefore accomplished very little as leaders. They mistakenly assume that the 53% will always be there for them, which is unfair because the 53% get overlooked as they are the good citizens that work hard to support the nation. Unfortunately the squeaky wheel does get the grease, and those squeaky wheels are that 47%.
People aren’t used to a governor that has a reversed position and targets his governorship at the 53% that understand, even if they don’t agree. It appears that Kasich isn’t the only governor showing these tendencies. Scott Walker certainly appears to be the same way.
