Gay Rights Protesting Chick-fil-A: Are they out of their minds? Actually, yes they are.

On Friday, the day the sex scandal broke out in Mason, my wife and I were meeting a couple from England for dinner. Now this is a couple that has been to our house many times and spent a lot of time in the United States. We’ve taken them to most of the restaurants in town at some point in time. Well, this particular Friday night was a special night for the wife and there was only one place she wanted to dine out of all the options available and that was Chick-fil-A.

I have been a fan of Chick-fil-A all my life. As a kid, my mom used to take my brother and me there in between video games at the arcade. The Middletown Mall had a Chick-fil-A inside the mall right next to the arcade and was a source of many, many childhood memories. I have watched Chick-fil-A become one of the most respected franchises in the United States, and that respect starts with the philosophy established by Truett Cathy, one of the few people in this whole world currently living that I truly admire. I admire Cathy because in a world that bends to the will of “pop” culture and all the ridiculous “progressive” arguments of the modern age, he has always run Chick-fil-A with integrity. That is why it is not a mystery that whenever you go to a mall food court, Chick-fil-A is almost always the busiest vender. When you visit a standing facility, the restaurant is constantly busy. And they manage all this business without ever working Sunday.

In a world driven by the market forces of McDonalds that has expanded food service to 24 hours a day 7 days a week, Chick-fil-A has always stayed to their philosophy and centered their food service experience around quality. That is why Chick-fil-A is one of the greatest American companies, and an example of what the United States should be aspiring to.

It’s not an accident, but a family formula that rests on the foundations of faith and firm belief in the power of a family that makes the company so successful.

Chick-fil-A has built one of the most successful companies in America keeping it clean when the trends have been to become steamier and flashier. Chick-fil-A does everything with class, and they are very active in mentoring programs sponsoring leadership.

Here is another of my favorite people, Tony Dungy. Anything he is involved in is successful and he has a great relationship with Chick-fil-A.

So what on earth could possibly be wrong with Chick-fil-A? It is in all respects of the word, successful.

I overheard my daughter’s boyfriend talking about chicken in our kitchen and Chick-fil-A came up. “They’re against gays” he said, as if somehow that term defined the company as a whole. That perked my interest. Chick-fil-A is such a clean company that they don’t have public relations issues. So why would the kid say what he did? He’s a twenty year old, so I thought about the sources he gets his information from, music, TV, certain internet sites that are appealing to young people, so I checked into the allegation and sure enough I found it.

Gay’s were boycotting Chick-fil-A because the company donated food to an organization that supports strong traditional family values, and by a strong family, it means between a man and a woman. But Chick-fil-A wasn’t trying to make a political statement, they were just trying to do something nice, yet, as is the progressive strategy which my daughter’s boyfriend reflected with youthful naivety, the goal is to tear down every organization so nobody wants to do anything nice for anybody in an effort at some utopian equality.

Here is Truett’s son, the current president addressing the accusations.

Now I’m not a turn-the-other-cheek-kind-of-guy like Tony is or like Truett and his son are. Chick-fil-A has never thrown a gay couple out of their restaurant or refused to serve them. In fact, Chick-fil-A has a long history of being excessively fair and good to all people of all races and color, so an apology is completely unnecessary. What this whole business from the gay community is, is an attempt to trash a GREAT company in the same manor that these progressive oriented people have for decades with other companies and I think it’s telling to see their behavior against the purity of the Chick-fil-A company. Because if there is a company in America that is completely guilt free or as much as is possible in modern society, it is Chick-fil-A.

So who are these accusers of impropriety and what kind of people are they? Well, let’s meet a couple of them so we can see who these people are that are trying to shape public policy with their complaints.

What the hell was that? Who are these people?

Listen, I don’t care what people do to achieve a sexual organism. Girl-guy, girl-girl, a knot-hole in the fence, it doesn’t matter, because such things only consist of less than 5% of the human experience. People that think marriage and sex is somehow the same thing are out of their minds. It’s no wonder the divorce rate is so high in this country because people have forgotten what it’s all about. Same sex marriage is a non-issue. It’s a progressive strategy to undermine American Culture and rebuild it with something……………..progressive. Don’t believe me, go read Colonel Roosevelt. It’s out at book stores right now and is a great book. It’s all about the rise of the progressive experiment, which 100 years later is a dismal failure. An absolute, unmitigated failure, how do I know that? Look at the idiot in the gay video above! Is that what we are offering the future of this nation? Is that who we hand the reigns of this nation to? That dude just wants to suck a sausage. He’s not going to be reading the Federalist Papers any time soon.

Progressivism has produced people like this in the video below.

Dude, everybody does have a right. You have a right to eat there or not. But you don’t have a right to disrupt their business practice. If you want to boycott them, go ahead. Because you people are in the minority. That’s why Chick-fil-A is a tremendous success, straight up buddy, the law does not support such foolish claims. Progressives through these types of minorities that make so much noise seek to manipulate legislation to recreate law in their vision, and shackle the hands of good companies all across this country. Because of people like these last two jokers, American civilization has suffered greatly with this over sensitivity while our competitors continue to cut off the heads of political dissidents, cut off the noses of women who don’t completely cover their faces and thousands of unreported incidents every single day. What do you think they do with gays in places like Nigeria, and Iran?

Have a look!

Now compare that to this kid, a young, naive fellow warped with progressive ideas.

He has no idea what he’s saying. No perspective to what’s going on outside his little community. He believes it’s OK to criticize Chick-fil-A for supporting an organization the company personally wanted to support. These gay activist desires to control the behavior of the company, and that’s why the activists are hypocrites, and completely wrong. If they truly believed in rights for all, they’d support Chick-fil-A’s right to support traditional marriage while the rest of us are expected to support marriages centered around anal, and oral sex.

Chick-fil-A is one of the greatest examples of righteousness and equal rights anywhere on this planet. My friends from England knew that, which is why out of every dinning option available to us, they wanted to go to Chick-fil-A, because the food looks like what’s on the menu board, the employees are nice to the customers, the stores are always clean, and even though the company could make millions and millions and millions of dollars more if they were open on Sunday, the company closes to give that day to their employees families. All that care comes out in the final product and it makes the consumer feel good to spend their hard-earned money on a company that is truly good at what it does and is a reflection of what we all wish we could have as part of the American experience everywhere else.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

The Real Crime in Egypt: History lost to ideology and quests for power

Egypt is not the first and it won’t be the last to suffer the type of insurrection witnessed upon the final weekend of January 2011. The crime in that civil disobedience that has already claimed lives is not whether or not the radical’s clamoring to over-throw a ruthless dictator, only to inject a radical Muslim government which believes in killing all whom do not practice their religious ideology. It’s not that the United States has yet been caught again supporting such a dictator in order to maintain stability in a world still behaving with an infants mentality. You’d think the CIA and “other” forces would have learned from Saddam Hussein, and Osama Bin Laden and a long list of others that had support of the United States, to not attempt to manipulate governments with subversive tactics, because they almost always come back to haunt us later.

If you want to hear a great scenario of what’s going on in Egypt listen to Doc Thompson’s guest here:

The real crime here is in the destruction of history. The vandalism of the Egyptian Museum is a modern example of such destruction, and insight into the catastrophic devastation of our own world history.

Of course the official report is that just a couple of mummies had their heads ripped off, and there was some broken glass. I’m including here a number of pictures supplied by hyperallergic.com that show the extent of that damage. You can see the source article by clicking this link. The damage to this very fine museum is extremely alarming to me in this modern age.

I have been thoroughly enraged most of my life that the Romans burned the Library in Alexandria. Depending on what story you believe, Caesar set fire to the Egyptian Fleet when trapped and outnumbered and the fire spread to the city and destroyed the Library there. The information lost in that act of destruction most likely cost mankind a firm understanding of our past.

The constant trouble in Iraq and the Middle East in general has deprived many researchers from proper archeology of the region. Most of what has been done up to this point is just speculation supported with some artifacts. Because of the violence, research can’t take place openly. The loss of the Library of Baghdad was a tremendous failure.

Hitler participated in book burning, the Spanish conquistadors destroyed the Mayan codices, and the Qin Dynasty of China burned numerous books and buried scholars to suppress the past.

Here in the United States Anthony Comstock founded the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, founded in 1873 to prevent the spread of “lewd, objectionable” books. Under this Society was the destruction of around 15 tons of books, 284,000 pounds of plates for printing books, and nearly 4 million pictures. I first ran into the work of Comstock when I was a kid of about 10 or 11 years old. I used to subscribe to a Rare Books and Prints company in New York that would send me a quarterly catalog of rare books under their collection. Many of these books were several thousand dollars each, and were one or two of a kind, and Comstock had helped make those books so rare.

These days, the places I most enjoy are places like Barnes and Noble. I love the book store down on Newport on the Levy. And I love Books a Million. My wife and I often spend hours and hours in these stores every couple of weeks. I also adore Amazon.com because they sell, or can connect you with many rare books. One of my great treasures is a simi “rare” book by Claire Chennault called Way of the Fighter written in 1947 and published in 1949. I looked for that book for over ten years and my daughter had found it on Amazon and given it to me on Christmas one year. It’s in good condition and costs well over $100, so it wasn’t easy for her to get. That book isn’t as rare as others, but the point is, it shouldn’t be rare, because it was printed in the modern age. The story with that book is that Chennault was very; very critical of the United States policy in China which eventually allowed communism to take over the country after he’d spent 6 or 7 years defending China from Japan, and the rise of communism with just a rag-tag group of fighters called the Flying Tigers. Chennault, a brilliant general and tactician, predicted the rise of the conflict in Korea, and in Vietnam, but nobody listened. Instead, there was pressure from the government to the publisher to not print many of those books from that aging general, and to just let him fade away into obscurity, which is pretty much what happened to Chennault and his predictions.

What can be learned from this is that Chennault’s book is only 60 years old, and it is evidence of why a book had restricted printing, and gradually it will be completely wiped out as people die off, and sell books like that in garage sales and they end up molding away in a basement someplace. In a hundred years, they’ll all be gone. That brings us back to the Library of Alexandria founded sometime around 323–283 BC and may have had tablets and papyrus thousands of years old.

Here is the description from Wikipedia: The first known library of its kind to gather a serious collection of books from beyond its country’s borders, the Library at Alexandria was charged with collecting the entire world’s knowledge. It did so through an aggressive and well-funded royal mandate involving trips to the book fairs of Rhodes and Athens[8] and a policy of pulling the books off every ship that came into port. They kept the original texts and made copies to send back to their owners. [9] This detail is informed by the fact that Alexandria, because of its man-made bidirectional port between the mainland and the Pharos island, welcomed trade from the East and West, and soon found itself the international hub for trade, as well as the leading producer of papyrus and, soon enough, books. Talk about rare books.

And when there was a conflict even out in the harbor, and the fire accidently spread and destroyed the library, those rare books are now lost forever, and the history with it.There are more than a few modern educators, or people that make their money off education, such as union leaders, that think some of my articles on “cryptic” anthropological issues, such as the Giants of Ohio, and the Real Origins of the Human Race are hokey. These are the same type of idiots that ridiculed Isaac Newton, or Christopher Columbus for their beliefs. People who are “really” educated, not just making money off it, know that there is a lot that we don’t know and can’t know unless we do the research.

And we can’t do the research if we’re always at war, or if religious ideology prevents proper scientific investigation.

So when you see thugs, radicals, socialist, creeps, revolutionaries, soldiers of fortune, and other opportunists hiding in the crowds of protesters in Egypt, know that there is a serious risk of losing valuable aspects of our past that is already swallow at best. Seeing tanks parked outside the Pyramids of Egypt is a sad and pathetic site.

It is inconceivable how many archeological sites were destroyed in the Middle East because Woodrow Wilson and his conspirators after World War l created through the Treaty of Versailles countries like Iraq and Iran and other territories that were intended to be run by British and French interests, finally breaking up the Ottoman Empire. And for those that don’t understand anything about the Ottoman Empire, it looks as though these various factions are looking to recreate it with radical Muslim fundamentalism. Through these conflicts, we are going to lose countless artifacts that connect us with the past, which will prevent us from fixing our future. So while the news broadcasts talk about the increase in oil prices, and the struggle of Israel, the real strategy will go unreported and therefore is the real cost to society.

I wish George Bush had leveled with the American People about why defending the faults of Wilson and the gang was important to the United States now. Because we committed ourselves to defending the region whether or not we have a right to or whether the land should return to strictly Muslim rule. The real evil lays in the hands of the progressive view of the world everywhere and their soft little minds of sympathy that can’t see one foot in front of themselves. To back out from the region now would only invite more violence and create a united and dangerous enemy that would lead to a much larger scale war. It’s far easier to defeat small factions of tribes or political groups. But several countries united under a common cause, like what’s happening, can lead to a much more bloody conflict. The “oil” buzz word just makes a complicated situation easy for people to relate to. But when you get caught in that over simplification, like Bush did, it makes you look dishonest and incompetent. That’s what the revolutionaries in Egypt right now are saying about America and our support of their hated dictator.

It’s the progressives in our own country that keep Presidents like Bush from giving it to us straight, because those same progressives in the media will need a story they can get their teeth in, because their own understand of history is so shallow, that’s why they’re attracted to progressive ideology in the first place. That’s why we’ve lost millions of potential artifacts in the Mesopotamian Valley and countless other locations, because of such short-sightedness. That’s why all human kind is doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

The damage to the Egyptian Museum is a travesty to us all.

Now, for those out there that question the intention of Islamic extremists, read their strategy in a PDF file. Just click on the link below. The first half is in Arabic, but the second half is in English. Just scroll through till you see the English words.

http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/20.pdf

Keep in mind that there are already sleeper agents in the United States, just as the Communist Sleeper Agents were put in place under the guise of “progressivism.” That means members of the media are playing a part as “sleeper agents.” And if you think that’s too conspiratorial, stop watching Sex in the City for a little bit and read the PDF file and educate yourself.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

The Little Miami School District: Standing at the gates of Change

The threats of dissolving the Little Miami School District are interesting. After all, what is a community supposed to do with a district that has refused to pass a tax increase eight consecutive times? Who in their right mind could afford to absorb the students of the district, because all school districts around Little Miami are in budget trouble too?

Lebanon, one of the closest districts, is facing another levy attempt of their own. Mason, also close by doesn’t have the money. They just made major cuts, and are flirting with another levy attempt also. Loveland has already said they can’t afford the students from Little Miami. So the threat is an empty one at the end of the day. It comes from clueless state officials that haven’t had to deal with this issue before. Nobody taught them what to do if a community refuses after all the extortion tactics of pay-for-play sports, busing cuts, and token lay-offs occur. After the perceived manipulation of disastrous property values are dealt with, and a community still says, “NO!” what is the next step?

I was at a School Choice event, which I’ll cover in greater detail, when the Little Miami issue came up with School Choice Representative, Jeff Reed, State Congressional Representative Pete Beck, State Congressional Representative Bill Coley, along with State Senator Gates who all engaged in a lively debate with the audience about the issue of dissolution. Watch it here:

What is the real crisis? Its wages and collective bargaining agreements that have shackled the school district and made the financial situation unreasonable to the tax payers and the residents have had enough. The voters have endured the beat downs and manipulation and held tight against the extortion. This last threat of dissolution is just what it is, a threat. There is no place for those kids to go without collapsing the neighboring districts.

And the fault is in the expectations negotiated behind the back of communities enduring monstrous wages and benefits, along with the power of collective bargaining making the legislative process a nightmare for state representatives. The fault of this situation is clearly on the backs of all who participated in the reckless spending of the district’s money. And when that money ran out, which nobody was prepared to deal with, the clueless minds behind the heist must take responsibility for their pillage of the community’s assets. And a school belongs to the community, not the unions.

The first step to fixing this whole problem is what was discussed in the above video, the State of Ohio needs collective bargaining reform, and it needs it now.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Epcot’s The Land and the Celebrity Farmer: A Look at the wonderful and important world of horticulture

The primary reason I started this site back in August was because I caught a group of union members working a local message forum in order to apply “peer” pressure on potential Anti-Lakota Levy advocates to keep their opinions to themselves. I thought the comments I was reading were “thuggish” and inexcusable toward good people who were just trying to voice their opinion.

In March of 2010 the Pulse Journal published in a special edition the wages of all the teachers and administrators of all the local schools. And it amazed me how quickly people forgot, and how shallow the waters of our collective memories really were. Local TV news, newspapers and other media were doing the stories but people forget. 6 months later when that information was needed it was lost when those decisions were needed, such as during an election.

So I saw a need to create a site that would make it easy for people to remember where we were, and watch over time how we got where we’re going. I have a conservative opinion and a literature background and enough business training to break down issues as well as any reporter. I also have a background in video editing and visualization technique, so I set out to use all the assets of a web-based site, video, sound, and literature to create a unique web-based news service that does not have any commercial ties, political affiliation, or otherwise special interest that might taint the content of my posts. They would simply be my opinions that I have found many, many other people share.

That’s why this site has been successful, because it utilizes all the benefits of what a web site can offer. And it would be noted by now that I have a lot of radio clips up here, mostly from Doc Thompson. Well, there’s a reason for that. Since Doc came to town, I have found that I like the man. He has similar views as I do, so I enjoy his program. I’ve met him and I like him personally too. He has a deep sincerity in what he is doing, and I respect that. There are parts of his shows that I think deserve to live on in a sense of permanence instead of reaching people’s ears over the 50,000 Watts of the Big One, and then becoming lost among the millions of radio waves that emanate around the globe. I have found that many people miss a lot of the good stuff he broadcasts because they have busy lives themselves, and could benefit from listening to his show at their convenience. And the things he talks about are very similar to the things I’m writing about, and as I mentioned in my About Me section, I like to write these blogs in two ways, with the typical literary style, then again with the assistance of video and audio. I have put thousands of videos on this site to help bring depth to the discussions expressed here. So it is only natural to use Doc’s show to assist my topics and let the reader get more from these articles than just text.

That’s why when Doc had on the Celebrity Gardner it had coincided with many thoughts I had been dealing with, and that’s how the progressive and liberal movements have captured the environmental movement. If you’re a conservative, you hate trees, you hate rivers and streams, you hate green space, and you hate animals. That’s how the left has painted the right, and it has always bothered me.

A few years ago when I was touring The Land Exhibit at the Epcot Center, I was intrigued by their horticultural activity and thought the work at Epcot was way out ahead of the rest of the nation. It brought to my mind, “why is it that the farmers in our country aren’t producing with the techniques at the Epcot Center?”

The Celebrity Gardner had sent Doc some great vegetables grown from a farm in Northern Ohio using innovative techniques that led to a great discussion from a man on the fore-front of innovative horticulture. Listen to that interview here:

As usual, progressive government with its farm subsidies and other intrusions have created a status quo environment that is actually preventing the beneficial evolution of horticulture evolution. It is a shame now that many of today’s youth won’t have a grandma or grandpa that run a farm. Growing up, both of my grandparents ran farms. Farm life was a fact of life, and was part of the community experience. Many kids today have to go out of their way to see a farm, let alone know somebody that runs one. Heck, most kids are lucky to have contact with two biological sets of grandparents, or even parents, another wonderful legacy of progressivism.

That’s a sad fact, and another sign of weakness in our American Society. Everyone wants to be lawyers, and doctors, and politicians, but nobody wants to be a farmer. Just some of the comments leveled at me, because I love my background, and the backgrounds of my family, that I’m some kind of “hillbilly” or country “hick” of “low intelligence” because I wear a cowboy hat yet live in a “professional” community. Those opinions come from women with rear ends the size of busses and men that surrendered their manhood to dominating women long ago, so I weigh them properly in perspective. Those types of people are shallow in their understanding of how things work, and it’s because of people like that which allow politicians to think we’re all stupid, because those people behave foolishly. They are the first ones to put down a hunter for skinning a deer, because they buy their meat in a grocery store, and they are the first to call a farmer a “hick.”

My wife and I went to Amish Acers up in Indiana one day just for the fun of it. Amish Acers is a really cool community located just on the fringe of the Chicago Skyline, which you can just barely see over the horizon of the Earth. Amish Acres is like the amusement park of everything Amish.

Think what you want about the Amish. They have their religious beliefs, but they have a culture that decided not to follow down a progressive path, and people flock in large herds to Amish Acres to buy “authentic” Amish goods, watch “Amish” plays, and in general experience a much simpler life where things make sense.

What does that say about the American consciousness? American’s deep down inside love quality. We love independence. And we love the simplicity of a straight approach to religion, life, and family. And American’s see in the Amish what they used to be. That’s why they drive to Amish communities to buy items of “quality.”

Horticulture is yet another victim of Progressive ideology, and it is the progressive oriented government that is hindering the wonderful technology that is currently available.

What a shame, because like everything else in our lives, we could have better food and a higher quality of life, if only we had the courage to have it.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Progressive Politics 100 Years Later: Report Card gets and “F” “Epic Fail”

I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the start of “progressivism” as it emerged in the early 1900’s. I was shocked to learn that the first “socialist” congressman was elected during the election of 1910, that gives you an idea of the kinds of discussions that were taking place during that time. I can understand to some point the hunger to bust up the monopolies that business had over the working population. I admire Teddy Roosevelt for sticking up to the court decision by Simeon E. Baldwin for the ruling of Hoxie v. the New Haven Railroad of 1909 which denied liberty of labor compensation for the loss of a leg of an employee in a collision of two trains. Such stories ushered on its back progressive ideas that sought to regulate “big business” abuse.

Now, after 100 years of asking questions, we know what went wrong, and why it went wrong, and the experiments of “fairness” have caused trouble on the radical opposite end of the political spectrum. And that trouble has literally bankrupted our nation.

Listen to Doc Thompson discuss the State of the Union the way President Obama should have done during his State of the Union Address on Tuesday January 25th, 2011.

Obama should not have said that the state of our nation was “good.” While I understand not wanting to scare people, saying such things is like a football coach telling his team at half time, when his team is down three touchdowns, “hey, you guys are playing good. Keep it up.” What the coach should say if he’s a good coach is, “hey, you guys are down three touchdowns. You still have a chance. Toughen up and win this game!” No, instead the President said America is strong, because he doesn’t want to admit to anybody that changes are coming.

But who can blame him. All politicians at all levels are doing the same kind of put-off game. They behave like children that didn’t study for a big test, and hope by some miracle even up to the moment they have to take the test that somehow they will just wing through it. City council members fail to level with the people on a regular basis. School Boards do the same leaning to preserve the structure of education monopolies instead of looking out for the residents of their communities, like they’re supposed to. Everywhere virtually everyone in elected positions is weak to make the announcements that need to be stated to the voters. Why, because the money is good. The benefits are too good, and the wrong kinds of people are attractive to public service. And the situation was exacerbated with “progressive” thought at the turn of the century over a hundred years ago. Politicians get into public service because of what they will get out of it, not out of a feeling of service. I’ve met a few politicians here and there that are the exception, but mostly the rule of corruption applies to the minds of the elected representative because the quality of their minds is weak to start with. The strong minds make their livings in the private sector. The weak seek the public.

How screwed up is it? Listen to this radio bit about the Death Tax. Here Doc has on an expert about the Death Tax as it applies to Ohio, but the examples could be applied nation wide.

We have a lot of problems dear reader. A lot! But they can all be solved as long as you are willing to do for yourself, and keep the government out of your life. They can help with the big issues, but the reason for the Constitution was to keep government at bay. The central argument in 1787 was between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists and that argument created the Constitution that we have today, and it is the most unique document of its kind the world has ever seen. We should cherish it, because it worked! History proves it!

The hinge-pin of American society is self-reliance however, and people like Teddy Roosevelt knew that. The Progressive Party wasn’t supposed to become the monstrosity of naïveté that it currently is. It was supposed to free people to live good lives. But weak, power-hungry politicians quickly distorted the policies to create jobs for themselves by expanding government to an extraordinary size that it was never intended to become. And now government is collapsing on itself.

America will survive because the people that made up the country are still out there. But the government in the size it is now will not. It would be advisable that everyone unhook themselves from as many Federal shackles they can handle, and to do it rapidly. It will be less painful now than later when you won’t have a choice.

I spent a year reading the Federalist Papers, the Anti-Federalist Papers, and the work of John Locke. It was not easy, because it can be a dull read, and is sometimes repetitive. The volume of that work however is deeply innovative and provable, and far more philosophical and intellectually sound than anything produced in any nation in the history of the world. And if you want to see this nation succeed in the future, America will stick with the blueprint that works. The other social experiments that have been attempted need to stop, now.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Mason School District Gives Community the “Finger”

The Mason School Board in a meeting on Tuesday, January 25, 2011 more or less gave the people of Mason the finger; (figuratively speaking of course) The people of Mason were told that because they didn’t pass a levy in November that painful cuts were headed their way. Basically, they’re going to “extend” the busing routes, along with some “pay to play” initiatives that are designed to cut nearly $6 million out of their budget.

What they didn’t do was what Lakota has done, and that is see what the actual budget requirements are going to be once Governor Kasich eliminates many of the unfunded mandates he’s promised to cut, to give districts the chance to take their fates in their own control. That information comes out in March. What Mason did was decided to point their finger at the community and play the extortion game.

The following clip is from the day after, and on the eve of Jeff Reeds visit to promote School Choice, ironically in Mason on Thursday. Jeff and Sharon Poe, the woman behind defeating the levy in Mason went on the Big One with Doc Thompson to cover the various issues percolating in the shadows of the Big One’s radio transmitter.

Everywhere that monopolies exist, extortion of the consumer of the products monopolies produce can take place. If you’ll remember, the Federal Government during the Clinton Administration went after Microsoft, to bust up the market monopoly Microsoft had over other companies. And at the turn of the last century, Teddy Roosevelt, the Progressive Hero, went after the Railroads. But where are the demands from these same progressives to go after the monopolies of “public education?”

That’s what it is. Mason has no right to play the guilt game with the citizens of its district. However, Kevin Bright is one of the highest paid superintendents for a reason. He’s has been one of the instructors of Levy University, taught at the annual OSBA event in November of each year at Columbus. So he’s the master of getting levies passed, so in his district, they are “choosing to play the game.”

And the game is a thuggish exchange of protecting the top paid administrators and teachers at the sacrifice of the teachers and personnel of lower stature, and the goal is to secure their wages and pensions so as to maintain their monopoly on education far into the future, to protect the livelihoods they’ve manipulated for themselves.

I had a teacher send me an email, “you’re not going to stop until we’re all making minimum wage are you? We’d all have to take a 30% cut to meet the budget at Lakota.”

All I can do is shrug my shoulders to that comment. Nobody said anything about teachers making minimum wage, but a 30% cut to meet the budget is something I suggested almost 6 months ago. If Lakota, Mason, and the rest of the districts that are in trouble, which is everyone, had taken such a step, they would have taken the steps to make themselves competitive for the future. A teacher that makes a $105,000 and takes a reduction of 30% would pay that teacher $73,500, which if they have tenure, and a master’s degree, is much more in line with a proper salary. Does anyone believe that making $73,500 a year with great benefits, summers off, and every federal holiday through the school year is asking teachers to work for minimum wage? On the other hand, I would argue that new teachers should be paid in line with what they are currently making. It’s the top end that is wrecking these school budgets, not the new teachers that are only making $35 to $45K per year.

Yet there is only silence to that obvious problem, and all districts are willing to deal with is the extreme low hanging fruit. And they do that because they are effective monopolies that feel empowered to punish its consumers because they lack competition. A district like Mason knows that parents are forced to use their product, and because of the property taxes residence are forced to pay, are literally pushed into accepting realities that would otherwise be completely deplorable.

In the end it’s more about ego and PR relations than doing what’s right for the community. What would happen if the man who teaches Levy University in Columbus couldn’t even get a levy passed in his own district? What message would that send to the surrounding districts?

Find out soon? The power is in the voters hands.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Lakota is Blind to the Coming Change: No Levy in May, but soon.

At first I was ready to praise the Lakota School Board when they made the announcement that they were going to wait and look at the numbers from the state budget before placing the next levy attempt on a ballot. Until Mike Taylor commented, “Lakota needs new revenue, there’s no question about it. That need has not diminished, but no matter when a levy is passed, May, August, or November, funds would not be collected until 2012.”

What??????

What is the plan if Lakota doesn’t get another revenue stream, because the community hasn’t shown that it wants to add to their tax burden of $11 dollars per $1000 evaluation. Any more than that would actually be detrimental to home values of the community because people won’t move here in droves for a good school if they can’t afford the property tax. The school system needs to look hard at itself and figure out how it can survive on a $155 million dollar budget.

What will happen to the revenue stream if people decide they can’t live in the district because the taxes are too high, and they leave, collapsing the housing market? It’s happened in cities, it could happen to West Chester, and Liberty Twp. If the tax base left, where would the revenue stream come from? Another levy on top of the one they intend to pass sometime in 2011?

These are questions the arrogant school administrators just aren’t willing to look at. And I say arrogant because there are still comments to the effect that schools going well into the future will still be Zip Code oriented. Such a position is a refusal to look at the facts of what’s to come. In fact, the whole concept of public education has become less about reading, writing and arithmetic, but more of “social justice.”

That guy is out of his mind, but if you talk to most people who head up public education, especially union leaders, they think the same way. They just want to give children a good life. But they do so at the expense of individuality, and that costs money. A lot of money. What happens if parents don’t want their children’s individuality educated out of them into some collective ant colony that is perpetuated by public education? It’s a question that comes up by many parents that are deeply religious, or parents that take an active interest in their children’s lives.

Many moons ago, my wife and I home-schooled our children for about a year, I had to pay for the cost of educating them, and I still had to pay the property tax to the local school district, which I shouldn’t have had to do. Now it was important to us that the kids were home-schooled, because I felt the school system was holding them back, and we didn’t want our kids to feel that wall in front of them. I wanted my kids to want an exceptional life. Not just some silly life tossed into a big pot with everybody else like discussed in the above video. So we took the wall away, much to the opposition of friends and family. They just didn’t understand why we’d do such a thing. After all, wasn’t the school experience going to football games on a Friday night? Wasn’t it having a school jacket, a sense of belonging to a group identity? (check out what Bill Ayers says at that link, 4th video down) Wasn’t part of the school experience graduating with your class mates and tossing your hat into the air? Isn’t it all about school year books and other social aspects of the education process, because that’s what people told my wife and I when we were home-schooling our kids. They really didn’t understand our whole reluctance to the “social justice” concern.

I accomplished pretty much what I wanted after a year, and we re-enrolled our kids into Lakota. My kids had friends in school, but many of them have since fallen away now that they are all grown. Anymore, if they don’t speak to people on Facebook, they don’t care to maintain friendships with the kids they went to school with. Out of all the members of our family, only I graduated with my class-mates, and to be honest, I thought the whole experience was a waste of time. My wife graduated early, even though she was an honor roll student. And both my kids did the same, graduating a whole year early, finishing their senior years with online courses. To this day, my wife expresses no regrets about missing her graduation ceremonies; she and I went to dinner at The Golden Chain Restaurant as a married couple while her classmates were running around like idiots on their graduation night. We had fun in a way many of those people couldn’t even imagine at the time. Both of my children had similar experiences exploring Europe while the kids they went to school with were opening graduation presents and trying to figure out what party to go to that night. My kids find school pride sentiments to be trivial, and rather childish.

The reason I support alternative education methods is because I’ve seen the benefit. And obviously I have no sentimental value to those other social aspects of the school experience. Because of that, I don’t see why anyone would value any of those things. If you want to have friends, talk to them on Facebook, or Xbox. Why do you have to have relationships established in the halls of a school building? In the age we live in, it really doesn’t make any sense any more.

So why is there so much focus on a “revenue stream?” And why does Lakota have to increase it?

What happens to Lakota’s revenue stream if the money they get from the state doesn’t just go to the district but to the student, for the parents to use any way they see fit. Because a group I’m involved with, School Choice is about just that very issue. That’s the article I wrote that had all the giant sand castles only to have them wash away in the ocean. That’s really an appropriate metaphor for the situation. Most school systems are just elaborate sand castles that communities have grown attached to out of sentiment, and they are willing to spend infinite amounts of money to fight back the encroaching waves.

What’s going to happen as more and more people move into the country working from their home computers and aren’t needed in a centralized building as is currently required. Or because of the efficiency of cars and other transportation devices that are emerging, people move further away out of the districts. What’s going to happen to the revenue at schools like Lakota when that happens?

If we look at the sentimental avenue of education being all about the “experience” of school, so it’s football games, class-rings, and school jackets, then paying extraordinary amounts of money to educating children is something to entertain. But increasingly, the world we live in is becoming less centralized, and people will want the options of that freedom. Sentimentality has a terrible cost, and these days, fewer people are willing to pay it. I’m certainly not alone in my lack of sentiment.

I’m strictly a performance based individual. I expect an education that continues throughout life, and doesn’t just end at grade 12, or even college. My experience with college is that people are putting their lives on hold to fulfill the dreams and market sentiment of the baby boomer generation that swallowed whole the pill of a college degree will be a cure-all and is a life-time of security. We’re learning now that’s not the case. I’ve had to give job interviews to grown adults with 4 to 6 year degrees trying to get a job paying ten to twelve dollars an hour, and wanting the job badly. The world that was promised to those recipients of degrees isn’t there. It is for some, but more and more, people are discovering that they are terribly in debt after their college experience, because the tuition is just too expensive for what you get, and the jobs available in the marketplace are not paying the type of wages that will allow those people to pay off their debts.

According though to the Lakota School Board, they seem to think everything will always be as it has been, and that’s not very forward-looking. To survive, they need to look hard at their expenses and not only consider a loss of revenue because of the next failed levy, but also the loss of revenue from parents that take their money from the state and use it on a program like School Choice. The only real hindrance to School Choice has been the union lobby in Columbus, and given the inefficiency in schools and the continuing increase per pupil of the cost of education, and the continuing problem of our state funding structure being unconstitutional, the new Governor could go a long way to solving all those problems by using School Choice to create competition and using that competition to drive down the cost of education per pupil. Think about it, $10K per kid is out of control. The state funding issue can never be addressed when the cost per pupil is that high. Changes to that perception have to be implemented now.

That’s what’s coming, and why comments like the Lakota School System will need further revenue streams, are arrogant. Lakota needs to prepare for less revenue streams, not more. To assume that education is so central to the community, not just the parents that enjoy watching their kids play sports, but the entire community, is audacious, and short-sighted.

Innovation and the embrace of technology will bring down the cost of education in the future. It will start first with parents that take an active role in their children’s education, which will put pressure on parents that are basically using the schools as a day care facility, or possible scholarship generator, clinging to the education methods that have been in place since frontiersman settled the North American Continent is expensive, archaic, and will be phased out soon. The schools that survive will be the ones that adapt to those changing circumstances. The ones that stand in the way will find themselves on the outside looking in.

If I ran the LEA, I’d renegotiate that expensive contract quickly, before I became irrelevant. Just some friendly advice.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Bulldog and the Streetcar

Streetcar of no desire update:

Bulldog Nation did a very nice bit of reporting into the streetcar issues surrounding the planned project due for construction in downtown Cincinnati. It’s well worth watching.

For those of you that don’t know who the “Bulldog” is, he’s Eric Deters, local attorney and part-time WLW host. He’s a passionate guy that I enjoy quite a bit. If the world had more people like Eric, we wouldn’t have too many problems in the country.

American’s don’t always have to agree. But American’s do need to care in order for our republic to work, and no one can accuse The Bulldog of not caring.

Now, because he is passionate, and I can relate, he has plenty of enemies. So for those of you that are putting together the name Eric Deters to the recent Enquirer controversy, you have to understand the nature of politics. Bulldog has recently produced a fantastic video dealing with the U.S. Border issues in Arizona, and now he’s done this thing on the streetcar. So special interests are coming after him.

One of the great things about Eric is he’s not afraid to speak up though, and I’ll put up his defense of those allocations here, so any doubts that might come up which might detract from the great video on the streetcar issue, can be settled right now.

If Cincinnati doesn’t watch Eric’s video about the streetcar and step in to stop the whole thing before it’s too late, the city will pay dearly for years into the future.

Many of the same people who spoke out about the stadium deals in the 90’s are the same people warning about the streetcar now. How are the financial situations surrounding those stadiums today?

And 5 to 10 years down the road, the streetcar will be another drain on our local economy. But it won’t be because the information wasn’t given to the public beforehand. It’ll be because people sat on their hands and did nothing.

Besides, who wants to ride a trolley when better technology is on the way.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Fly A SkyCar Today: The Future of Transportation

So how does America become a primary manufacturer again, where we are exporting something the rest of the world wants, instead of being a primary importer? It seems like a daunting task, after all, we’ve lost the car market to the East, the computer age was born here, but now is developing in the East, and we are no longer pushing the space race in America. In order to recapture the technological lead on the world stage, America would have to invent something dramatically, and radically new, that every person on the face of the planet would want.

Let me introduce the M400 Skycar. It’s a personal Skycar with a top speed of 350 MPH and has a range of 750 miles and a flight ceiling of 30,000 feet. It is the future. Now, there are a lot of videos here. This is one of the rare times that I’ll say the videos are more important than the text I provide. So take your time and watch the videos, all of them. And pass this link on to a friend so the word can get out. I believe this is extremely important to the United States in 2011 and on.

I’ve followed the work of Paul Moller for most of my life and am a tremendous fan of his. So much so, that I dedicated a large part of my book The Symposium of Justice to the M400 Skycar in hopes that the military would see the potential for applications, and get the ball rolling.

Paul Moller is the equivalent to the modern-day Henry Ford, or Bill Gates. His idea could be just as explosive if only politics would embrace the concept and accept that highways, manufacturing unions, and current aerospace manufacturers and their government contracts, are becoming obsolete. Can you imagine the changes that would have to take place in the airline industry? Can you imagine the airline industry lobby against the Skycar concept? Do you think GE would want this technology to emerge unless they had their feet already in the game, which they don’t? If the TSA employees join a union, can you imagine the protests trying to protect their jobs that would be leaving as people gained the independence of personal transport and wouldn’t need TSA Security any longer; all the vehicles would be controlled by GPS Systems? Nobody would be running into buildings with these things because they’d just be riding around like a passenger while computers do all the flying. Of the large aerospace companies, only Boeing has entertained the construction of Skycars so far, so the protective interests are actively in place.

I gave a Powerpoint, to John Boehner so he could possibly do something to help with the lobbyist politics that exist on K-Street and other places so the M400 Skycar could enter the marketplace. I also sent the same Powerpoint to the current President and to the head of General Motors, giving them the idea to “re-invent” themselves. They of course are committed to building electric cars, which will soon be irrelevant.

Does it work? Yes! Now that these tests are completed and on the record, even if Moller never gets this M400 into production, the steps have been taken, and a vertical takeoff personal vehicle will emerge for personal use. The sky is the future because it costs less to maintain and eliminates costly infrastructure need. There will always be need for highways for shipping reasons, but personal transportation of 50 miles or more needs to go to the air. That might seem like science fiction, but it’s currently science fact. All that fact needs is for public consciousness to catch up and accept the technology, and that will happen when people understand how they’ll benefit.

Here is the testing of stability in flight, hovering controls. Pretty important so the vehicle can land in a parking lot with reliability. This is one of the most difficult technical feats the vehicle had to overcome, and it has been successful.

So who is Paul Moller? Meet him here. He has testified before congress on this issue and has worked with NASA. This entire infrastructure is in place now. All it will take to bring it to a reality is for you to demand it. Paul will explain the whole concept, just listen, and enjoy.

I personally can’t wait to have one. For my life style, it will be perfect. I could be in New York within a morning, take care of my business, and be back that night for dinner without any difficulty. Same for Atlanta, Chicago and Washington D.C. since all those cities are within 500 miles from Cincinnati. In other places around the country, the trip from LA to Las Vegas would be minutes, and from San Fran to LA under an hour with most of the flight time being accent and descent. New Yorker’s could be out of the city and up into Connecticut, Vermont and Massachusetts within an hour. No traffic because the GPS system would stack all the destinations at different elevations. Weather conditions would be the only variable, but conditions would be favorable over 95% of the time. Only heavy wind and thunderstorms would prevent flight.

Image the trip from London to Paris, which currently takes a few hours by their high-speed rail system that goes under the English Channel from the time you buy your ticket, get on the train, and arrive at your destination. You could literally travel from the British Museum of Natural History and arrive at The Louver Museum in well under an hour including getting into the Skycar and exiting.

However, there is a lot of resistance to the Skycar out there, particularly from the existing infrastructure, and politics and I have a sincere concern that Paul Moller’s dream may be all too reminiscent of one of my personal hero’s, Preston Tucker. If you don’t know the story, Tucker was a GREAT car builder and was WAY ahead of his time. His car was so ahead of its time that the Big Three put pressure on the government to prosecute Tucker though Senator Ferguson, who was taking lobby money from the Big Three, before he could launch his car to the public. Listen to this clip from the film Tucker: A Man and His Dream as delivered by Jeff Bridges.

This is one of my favorite films. If you haven’t seen it you are missing a classic from Executive Producer George Lucas and Director Francis Ford Coppela.

I don’t want to see Paul Moller become a Preston Tucker. I see dramatic parallels between the two men. I think Moller is a lot more level-headed, and more classical engineering minded where Tucker was a salesman first and an engineer second, Moller has the great ability to stay out of trouble.

Eventually, the Big Three automakers would adapt to the innovations that Tucker introduced in 1948, by the 1970’s. If we were a smart society, we’d learn from history and listen to Paul Moller now, and not shove him into the corner to protect the status quo, and put off technology we need today. Because we may lose it to the East, or to a costly two or three decades only to have it emerge in the distant future anyway. It’s really up to the United States.

Tucker died shortly after his trial, which he was of course innocent, but the experience cost him market delivery of his vastly superior automobile. The Big Three grudgingly adopted many of Tucker’s features but not for another 20 years. The Big Three didn’t want to absorb the cost of competition, so they put him out of business. And that is the problem that Paul Moller will have to overcome. It’s not the technical obstacles that are the problem. It’s the political ones that hold back our country. Here is Tucker’s story.

You can have the world you want if you have the courage to put horse-sense ahead of politics. If that happens, then you could have a Skycar to drive and fly within a decade. You may have a job in the Skycar emerging field in the same time frame, and the United States could return to the world stage as a primary manufacturer of something the rest of the world wants, while China and Japan continue to make cars, which will decline in importance, and become a secondary market item similar in usefulness to a motorcycle or bicycle, and certainly high-speed rail which is next to useless compared to Skycar technology.

But I suspect that history will repeat itself and Paul Moller will go the way of Tucker obscurity, and our great nation the United States will too drift into the cloudy recesses of a foggy morning in history, which once lifted everyone, will wonder if the fog had ever been at all.

It’s up to you.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Yes Lakota is Misleading People: Painting over the dirt

Georgetta
voteyeslakota@aol.com
75.185.0.41
Submitted on 2011/01/20 at 11:14 pm
 Evil prevails when good people do nothing. I am a good person and I am about good education. I am doing something: speaking out. Rich Hoffman is misleading people. Teachers teach children so they DON’T end up working themselves into an early grave and barely making payments on a lot in a trailer park. The good teachers will go elsewhere in order to make a living wage. Rich Hoffman raised children and his wife didn’t work. Apparently he is making too much money. Yet, I hear no one attacking him. Some of us have to have both parents work in order to put food on the table.

Georgetta here reflects many of the comments that I get from people who think just like her. The premise is this, that education is a right, they hide the actual numbers in the scribble of government bureaucracy, and if you show that you don’t support it, or if you even question their reasoning, they use “peer pressure” to shape the community to their will, just like kids on a playground. That’s the mentality. They end up sounding like children with their minds wrapped up in extreme assertions to make their points seem to carry more weight.

The first thing they do is attack you “the tax payer” and your ability to pay the increase in tax. They’ll say, “Public education was there for your children, but now that you don’t have children in the school, you don’t want to pay.” They do the same with business leaders, “We built the good schools and you provided the homes, and now you don’t want to pay.” What doesn’t get said is that as all this growth was going on, the LEA, the teachers union at Lakota, negotiated an aggressive contract in October of 2008 that was focused on wages and that contract is bankrupting the community because at the same time, indications were that state funding was on a decreasing trend. So the contract was irresponsible, and what is happening now, is the community is establishing the parameters of future contract negotiations, because we can’t trust school officials to do the job, otherwise it wouldn’t have gotten this far out of control.

These pro levy people will attempt to proclaim that nobody but them can look at the numbers and understand the situation. They sadly put out apologist groups to plead the case like what you will hear in the below interview. What they don’t want to discuss is why there is a financial crises. They simply discuss finance as if it were beyond their control. When listening to this interview ask these questions, if cutting only a million here, or there isn’t much because the numbers are so large, then why is it such a large savings that cutting busing to 9000 students will only save $600,000, then why cut busing? And how has Lakota done everything it can do before cutting busing. Did the LEA come to the bargaining table to renegotiate their contract? And how does the tax dollars stay in the district when the union spends the union dues on political candidates. One of the reasons the LEA wants its teachers to make so much is so that the teachers will want to pay their union dues without hardship. But nobody talks about any of that here. The sum of this discussion is that there isn’t an answer. These are nice parents that just want the system to work long enough for their children to get an education. Nobody wants to play the hot potato game when the music stops, and the music is stopping. All they can really do in an interview like this is paint over the dirt.

All businesses whether they are service oriented or manufacturing oriented have a responsibility to keep their costs in line. One way that businesses do that is to use the 10-80-10 rule as it’s applied to labor. That rule states that 10% of your workforce will be your typical “top” performers, and they will get the most dramatic increases, 4% to 15% depending on the situation. 80% of your workers are average, and will typically get a standard 2% to 3% increase, otherwise considered a “cost of living” increase. And of course every place of business has approximately 10% that are poor performers and they won’t get an increase of any kind. Why? Because those bottom 10% you want to look for another job, and you want them to leave so you don’t have to pay them. It gives you a chance to hire somebody that might want to compete for the top 10% percentile. If you manage things correctly, your bottom 10% are the kind of people that your competition is hiring at the middle 80%, and you want that so you can maintain a competitive edge.

What you don’t do is uniformly advance everyone in your place of business with some socialist “everybody is equal” policy like what we have in school systems, and unions advocate. That’s a disastrous concept and gives employees like Ryan Fahrenkemp time and the luxury of job security to participate in an evil deed like child pornography. I would argue from experience that if Ryan had to fear for his job, and didn’t feel comfortable hiding in the muddy 80%, he probably would have not indulged in his warped perversion while at school. He might have done it in hiding, or in his mother’s basement, but not with his students, and not with school equipment. And he certainly wouldn’t have been making 70K at only age 42 no matter how much experience he had with the amount of tenure he’d accumulated in a relatively short time.

I used Fahrenkemp as an example because he belonged in the bottom 10% and somebody didn’t do their job in the review process of weeding him out. And that didn’t happen because he was protected by the complicated process created by the OEA which the president of the LEA had been a big part of, and knew how to manipulate the system to the advantage of her members.

So I’d say to you Yes Lakota people, who say that I am misleading people. Who is doing the misleading?

I’d say you are, by telling the tax payers that the budget just “grows” on its own. That the school system had no way to deal with people like Fahrenkemp, and that all teachers are worth over 62K, and if the community doesn’t pay it, those beloved teachers will leave the district for another one.

I would say any teacher that would leave Lakota is only in it for the money, and those are personalities that I would rate low on a review, and may be tempted to put them on the bottom 10% anyway, so for them to leave would be desirable.

All the Yes Lakota people have to argue with is emotion,
• “The money is for the kids.” No it’s not, if it was, the LEA wouldn’t have threatened to strike in 2008 to get more money, and again in the spring of 2010.
• “We have to offer top pay for top teachers or they will leave.” No they won’t because the other districts are broke too and are getting ready to go through the same process Lakota is.
• “We have to protect property values by voting for the schools.” No you don’t. If taxes keep increasing that will kill real estate values anyway, tax payers in the district already pay $11 per $1000 assessment on their property.
• “I’m for education.” No you’re not. If you were, you’d keep the budget under $160 million. Throwing money at something doesn’t mean you’re for education. It means you don’t value the source of the money but want what the money can buy.
• “We have had explosive growth and must adjust to it.” Growth, like budgets can be controlled. If the cost is too high, growth will slow down, and growth will slow down because of the economy. Growth will also slow down from parents wanting to go to Lakota who aren’t willing to pay for the extra things they want, too. One of the reasons Yes People want sports and extracurricular activities is so enrollment will increase, so parents looking for those items can move to the district and participate cheaply. It’s all about job creating and getting parents used to programs that the district tax payers fund collectively. No different from colleges with NCAA programs that are nationally known for their sports, will see increases in enrollment. It’s always about increased enrollment so money can be justified.
• “The state is forcing us to all-day kindergarten.” No, the OEA lobbied to get all-day kindergarten passed, and the Republicans in the state house are getting ready to eliminate that unfunded mandate along with many other mandates lacking funding. So that anticipated requirement will be taken away from district budgets.
• “We have to spend $50,000 dollars to get the best superintendent we can get.” No, you are throwing money at the situation like you do everything else. It’s that kind of mentality that locked us into the contract with the LEA that is causing the current financial crises. Money does not equal quality. It seldom does. Money can be used to create competition, but it is useless without competition. If money is not getting you dramatic results, it is simply killing your budget.
• “Paying for a school levy keeps your money in the community.” No it doesn’t. The union dues collected by school unions are directly applied to liberal politicians that further perpetuate the bureaucratic mess creating expensive economic necessity. The OEA had revenue of over $62 million dollars in 2008. Where did that money come from? They don’t make any products that they can sell? Check the info for yourself here. http://teachersunionexposed.com/state.cfm?state=OH All that money comes from union dues, paid from the salaries of teachers that are paid exceptionally well by the local tax payers. The average pay at Lakota for teachers is 62K per year. So the money doesn’t stay in the community.

Those are just some examples of how the Yes Lakota people are misleading the good people of the Lakota District. And they will continue to treat the voters like the fools they believe they are as long as it works.

Get ready for the next levy announcement for May. They’ll do it because they don’t know how to do anything else but ask for more money.

And you Yes Lakota people go ahead and leave your comments. I’ll post them, and I’ll use them. People need to see your thoughts. For those of you wanting to see some of them, read the comments here. I am quite aware that there are many people at many levels reading all the posts I’ve put up here and you’re looking for a way to spin it to your advantage. For an example, have a look at the work David Little from Progress Ohio attempted. I’m happy to fight your sloppy facts with the truth and if you want to spin the community around and make them so dizzy they can’t tell which way is up or down, I’ll continue to prevent it, as I have. And I’ll do it because I love my community, and I want to see education continue to be an option for families in the future. But it won’t be in a form controlled by organized labor. Those days are over.

Don’t believe me; read this from your parent union the OEA, this is how bad the financial situation is. Even the union staff is threatening to strike and the union itself is participating in union busting strategies.

The Ohio Education Association and Its Goose

The executives of the Ohio Education Association sent a memo informing local presidents that if the union gave in to striking staffers’ demands, it would require an $80 to $90 dues increase per member. Such an increase would raise roughly $10 million. That sounded familiar to me, so I checked the archives and found this, in the May 8, 2000 EIA Communiqué:
Ohio Education Association in Severe Financial Straits. The last time the Ohio Education Association negotiated a staff contract, in September 1997, it resulted in a two-week strike, restraining orders against picketers, and a lot of bad publicity. That contract expires this year and it’s bad financial news all around for OEA, its members, and the staff. OEA recently informed its local presidents that the union is facing a projected deficit of $6.3 million for next year. The union is asking staff to accept benefit cuts totaling $4 million. The rest of the deficit would be eliminated through a dues increase of up to $25 per member.

“Specifically, and regrettably, we can no longer afford to sustain the current number of OEA employees at their current level of compensation and benefits and continue to provide the expected level of services and programs without significantly raising OEA dues for you and every other member,” reads a memo from OEA President Mike Billirakis and Executive Director Robert Barkley.

Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.eiaonline.com/intercepts/2010/09/03/the-ohio-education-association-and-its-goose/

If our community is going to continue to be a “great” and “excellent” district, we have to get in front of this problem. Not avoid it by tossing more money at the problem. And the Yes Lakota people need to listen to the No Lakota People, because the solution is in good business strategy. The same tired old bullet points won’t be valid any longer. I’ll make sure of it.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

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