Tag: Free Will

School Choice is a New Choice: Education Funding for the Future

Doc Thompson had on Chad from School Choice Ohio on 700WLW. If you don’t know what School Choice is, listen to the conversation with Chad below. Not only do they talk about School Choice, but there is some great discussion of several incidents of gross waste from districts surrounding Cincinnati.

I’m a tremendous supporter of School Choice, because people are thinking and it is working where it’s being used. So why isn’t it being implemented? Well, organized labor is very much against it, because they have to maintain the current structure in order to support the collective bargaining agreements they’ve negotiated for themselves.

School Choice is being tossed around by a new group of several representatives from districts all over Ohio that have been meeting to implement educational changes, called Educate Ohio, which I’m a proud part of.

There are options out there. We don’t have to just do the same old thing time and time again, which are just to put funding issues on a ballot for a school levy against our property taxes.

I spoke recently on WLW about how both my kids took online classes during their senior years and finished their entire senior year before Christmas. Now my kids are smart kids. They had been on the honor roll a number of times all through their education and tested well above average on their SAT tests. They attended Mason for about half their youth, were home schooled by their mother for about a year, and then spent their high school years at Lakota. During their entire education lives they excelled. But once they got past their junior years, they wanted to move on, which they get from their father, not having the patience to just cruise through life held back by the shackles of people happy with a mundane existence. Both my children spent their remaining years of their senior years traveling Europe, camping at Stonehenge and exploring places like the British Museum, and I’m eternally proud of them, while the other kids their age were spending their Friday and Saturday nights drunk and puking at mindless parties and wasting away while they waited for college classes to start in the fall of the following year.

The system we’ve had in my opinion is broken. I’m happy to go along with things as long as all those mediocre enablers called school officials don’t ask for more money than we already pay in property tax.

But they are asking for more money, and asking for us to pay for their communist leaning tendencies, and yes, they do have a communist leaning. If you don’t know that, or can’t understand that, or don’t want to call it that, go do some reading, then get back to me. I’m not going to waste my time giving you an education that you should already have.

Meanwhile, it’s time to explore other options that bring out the best in our individuality, and we reject the collectivism that has emerged with the current, “expensive” system, because we can’t afford it, financially, or intellectually.

Check out the below article from Indiana.  This is the way things will be done in the future.  The sooner we get started, the better. 

New Poll: Indiana Voters Support Choice in Education, Substantially Underestimate Public Education Spending
INDIANAPOLIS, IN – Voters in Indiana decidedly favor school vouchers and charter schools, and desire a balanced variety of options when it comes to educating their children, according to a poll released today by the Indianapolis-based Foundation for Educational Choice.

The poll-“Indiana K-12 & School Choice Survey”-also reveals that Indiana voters are unaware of how much is spent in public schools; most respondents substantially underestimated per-student spending.

“Hoosiers see the tremendous value in giving families options,” said Robert Enlow, President and CEO of The Foundation for Educational Choice. “If a school voucher, charter school, private, or home school can give a child an effective, personalized education, that child has a right to receive it. This poll shows Indiana voters agree.”

Braun Research Inc. conducted phone interviews with more than 3,400 Hoosier registered voters November 12-17, 2010.That firm’s president, Paul Braun, expressed confidence in the accuracy of the study’s results, due to “thorough briefings stressing objectivity, heavy monitoring, sample performance reviews, verifications and post-data-collection checks on each survey by interviewer and phone center.”

The following are the poll’s key findings:

Indiana voters are unsatisfied with the current public education system. On average, registered voters in Indiana are more likely to think K-12 education is on the “wrong track” (51 percent) compared to the “right direction” (31 percent). Indiana voters describe the state’s public school system more often as “fair” or “poor” (55 percent) versus “good” or “excellent” (42 percent).

Indiana voters lack awareness and information about how much is spent in public schools. Nearly two out of three respondents (64 percent) underestimated per-student spending in the public schools.

Hoosiers support charter schools. Indiana voters are far more likely to favor charter schools (66 percent) than to oppose such schools (16 percent). Respondents who said they “strongly favor” charter schools outnumber those who say they “strongly oppose” by a four-to-one ratio.

Hoosiers support school vouchers. Indiana voters are far more likely to favor school vouchers (66 percent) than to oppose them (24 percent).

Indiana voters indicate they should have a variety of schooling options. If they had the option to select any type of school to obtain the best education for their child, 41 percent said they would choose a private school, 10 percent a charter school, and 7 percent a home school.

“This poll shows most Indiana voters do not realize how many of their tax dollars are being spent on an education system they do not even consider effective,” said Enlow. “Giving families the freedom to choose the education that’s best for their children would ensure funds were spent more effectively, and it would give every child access to the education they deserve.”

To see a summary of survey results, a series of PowerPoint slides highlighting key findings, and description of the methodology, visit http://www.EdChoice.org/IN-Survey.
Braun Research callers interviewed 1,017 registered voters in Indiana to produce an initial statewide sample. Braun Research then made additional phone calls to achieve at least 350 total completed interviews in each of eight counties. The margin of sampling error for the statewide survey is ±3.1 percentage points and approximately ± 5.4 percentage points for each of the eight countywide samples.

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.

Please visit our website to read the full study at http://www.EdChoice.org/IN-Survey.

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

Thanks For Reading: Over 10,000 Views in December!

Since I began this web log, a lot has changed. The intent was to provide some conservative views to combat the numerous liberal sites that are out there. One thing the left is good at is selling their position. Conservatives tend to trust the law and keep themselves out of some of the crazy rhetoric that one must engage in to combat the radicalism of the left’s strategy. Conservatives have great ideas, and often have history on their side. They just need to become better at selling it, and have lost over the last two decades terribly to the radical left at communicating ideas.

There have been great strides at the top-level of communication, to sell logic and traditional principles. Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and many others have emerged to fill the market void that exists due to many Americans that lean-to the right. Only a small percentage lean left, yet it is the left, because they are more aggressive that is shaping the world in a way the majority of Americans don’t want. But those top names can’t due it on their own. The left has managed to be very successful at having their own big names at the top, people like Michael Moore, Sean Penn, George Clooney, Keith Obermann, and James Carvel do their work, but they also have active grass-roots to carry the baton MoveOn.org and the Huffington Post along with many, many others to lead an active online campaign that occurs daily and fills millions of email boxes with a leftist spin that partially inquiring minds have difficulty combating.

There is a radical left that has an agenda and wants to reshape the world. They showed themselves quickly when the terrible tragedy in Arizona took place. That is why I decided to take steps over the summer of 2010 to begin my own site that could grow over time and capture great radio, and commentary from the conservative side in an attempt to off-set the aggression of the radical left and the direction they want to take the country.

Radio like what Doc Thompson does locally on WLW is particularly powerful, and while those sounds broadcast over 50,000 watts to hundreds of thousands of ears, people often forget what they heard just a few hours later. It is my intent to capture some of those moments so people can return to them later and listen at their convenience. Stations like WLW makes it available for complete podcasts of these programs, but I seek to make it easier for people to filter out the important moments, so I am going to the trouble to provide some professional editorial help for the convenience of the curious listener. One such example is the below section of Doc’s show from January 10, 2011, the first time he was on the air after the Arizona Shooting.

There are other conservative blog sites out there. I particularly like American Thinker, and The Blaze.com. But, I have found that I have some abilities that are particularly beneficial to the blog medium, experience in video, editorial training, and the ability to write thousands of fresh words each day that is pertinent to current events and complimentary to the other work within the conservative movement. I also understand the value of entertainment, and live a colorful life that people find inspiring. It is a pleasure to share that with people to use in their own lives. In other words, not all conservatives are suit-and-tie men and work in the law profession. So I have a unique position to speak from and I’ve found that people enjoy it because it loosens up the seriousness of some of the topics.

Currently I’m drooling over my copy of Colonel Roosevelt, the new book just released by Edmund Morris and given to me by my youngest daughter for Christmas. I had some things to finish up before being able to jump into that book. Roosevelt back then read a voracious amount, and I share with him a childlike curiosity for everything. I adored the previous two books on Roosevelt by Morris called The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore Rex so I understand his ravenous appetite for fun and knowledge that only children seem able to combine. I have often wondered what a man like that would be like in today’s culture where a person can read on a digital pad, write on a keyboard as fast as his mind can produce the information, and be exposed to thousands of various media in television, radio, and the internet.

I can imagine because in my own life I often write while walking, read whenever I’m sitting, and if I get pinned down in my living room I watch two televisions at the same time while scanning the internet on a lap top, and playing Xbox. My wife has gotten used to my multimedia abilities even though she is accustomed to reading 12 to 16 hours per day in the same spot without any noise, which is how she prefers it. She often cringes when I come home and “power up” plugging myself into the world. She prefers to turn off the world so she can see it clearly. But as for personalities I can relate to, Roosevelt is one of them. He was a Republican. He was a lot more power-hungry than I am, but his adventurous nature and insatiable appetite for knowledge I share with him. I was very disappointed to hear Glenn Beck proclaim that Roosevelt was the creator of the Progressive Movement, which anyone who has read my stuff here knows I despise. But those events had not yet been explored in Theodore Rex, and would not be revealed until this Colonel Roosevelt volume. I am hungry to see how those events transpired.

Glenn Beck I think feels the same as me about Roosevelt, because Beck himself appears to be a similar personality, always plugged in and learning and doing it with a childlike curiosity. And he knows that the creation of the Progressive Party, which Roosevelt ran against the Republican Party, ushered in Woodrow Wilson.

I don’t personally know Beck. I’ve only been around him, so I can only make assessments about him based on the work he does, which is the volumes of books he reads, he is writing about three books a year, does three hours of radio, one hour of television and still values time with his family. Roosevelt did much the same, while President he wrote books, read many more, and still had time for all his interests. And I’ve been getting the same type of comments, “how do you have time to write all this.” And, “how do you scan all those videos, and listen to all that radio content, and read too. Is your wife lonely? What do you do for a living?”

All I can really say is that it has something to do with never really growing up. If more people took into their adulthood the energy of their childhoods, they’d find they can do a lot more with their lives. And they’d be less prone to chemical abuse such as smoking, over-eating, and drinking. An active mind is a happy mind, and that is what will be finding its way to this web log.

What makes me happy is sharing with people who things can be different. WordPress sent me the December numbers and seemed shocked that there were over 10,000 readers of my articles, which WordPress seemed to be very impressed with. And in just one business quarter I can see that many, many people want to help with the Lakota School Levy next time, which will make it a lot easier on me and the other people who worked hard on that campaign. Back in August you couldn’t find anyone wanting to even stick their name next to a controversial idea like saying no to the levy. And people are reading the stuff that is more libertarian and those articles are getting passed from email to email and is having an effect, even if it is only encouraging people to get involved in their local Tea Party, or the 9/12 Project and any of the movements emerging. It is a useful service to offer, which is to provide a place for people to meditate on some of these ideas at their leisure.

After putting topics on this web log, such as the pay rate of the teachers at Lakota, and the governor pay rates, and the amount of people that did not go to college, but are successful anyway, it has allowed people to openly question sacred cows that have simply been glazed over in the past, and I feel very privileged to have been able to provide that.

For the third No Lakota Campaign, there is now a line of people that want to be a part of the campaign. People heard me on the radio, and read what I wrote, and they saw that the levy failed, and now they are drooling to be a part of the next victory campaign, and not just at Lakota. There are districts all over Ohio that feel empowered to act. And that is much to my delight. A group called Educate Ohio is emerging from some of those curious minds, and that is something which brings me great delight.

I feel I can inspire more people to action the way I have been doing, which ultimately puts more troops on the battlefield. I avoid long drawn out meetings like the School Board Meetings at Lakota because they are very inefficient meetings. I tend to rely on “eyes and ears” for the important stuff. I attend when absolutely needed, which is something I’ve learned to do in management work. What’s coming is something that people who see clearly need to be free to articulate. So I will keep myself free of peril with tenacious equanimity. I welcome those who want to help and ad their names to the great fight to jump on board and help anyway possible. For it is the dream of all artists that their work inspires some didactic reaction to move beyond ones previous limits, and it gives me great pleasure to see that happening as a result of the work done at this site. Such a reaction is more important to me than money, fame, or any form of orthodox social acceptance. There is room for everyone that wants to cast an arrow on behalf of truth, justice, and the American Way!

So enjoy the ride! Much, much, much more to come.

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

Why All the Anger? More of the Left Playing Dumb as to their Actions

As more and more facts come in about the Arizona shooting, and the left oriented continue to complain about the vitriol coming from talk shows and radio I think the honest question deserves to be asked. Why is there anger?

Did it ever occur to any of those left oriented people when Nancy Pelosi marched with her gavel up the Capital steps locked arm and arm forcing Americans to a Health Care Bill that they didn’t want, and subverted many legislative steps in the process to accomplish the task, that there wouldn’t be anger?

Are the American people supposed to just be happy about Constitutional subversion, or by-passing congress all together to pass Net Neutrality? Did they really think there wouldn’t be anger?

Are we supposed to be happy with a government that spent us into seeming oblivion and left us essentially broke, while congress continued to give themselves raises and fly all over the country on tax payer funds?

Can those leftist identify a period in history where so much was crammed down the throat of the American people right out in the open, and not have people get angry?

Or congressional members that have been openly corrupt, and when caught, treated the American people like they were fools.

I could go on, and on, and on. But how could anybody on the left expect that all these things would be imposed on the American public, and American’s wouldn’t get mad about it?

Statements like even questioning the level of anger of the American People say that the left has absolutely no respect for them. It’s as foolish as stealing from the company you work for, then wondering why they want to fire you.

What the left is really mad about is that there are people on talk radio and TV that are pointing out the things that are being done. Those voices are supposed to be suppressed. That’s what they are really saying.  Here’s the difference, the left cannot argue any points.  They use radical methods to hide the emptiness of their ideas.  On the other hand, those in the conservative movement rely on the rules to allow the validity of their arguments to emerge.  The Tea Party or any other group that is focusing on traditional values doesn’t need to use guns, or violence to make a point.  Because the truth is all that is needed.   

As far as hate, here’s an example of what Glenn Beck talks about.  Anyone that thinks Beck preaches hate doesn’t know what hate means.  Beck is all about overcoming that kind of stuff. 

And here is a clip from his show talking about how the left uses hate to motivate people.

The only ones talking about peaceful, and logical solutions are the members of the Conservative Movement.

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

Arizona Shooter Wanted to “be a Woman Someday”

It is terribly sad that Clarence Dupnik and Keith Obermann quickly seized the shooting tragedy in Arizona to attempt to erode the progress of the conservative movement.

Hey…………….guys, the kid was a screwball. One of his favorite books was the Communist Manifesto! That’s as far from the Tea Party movement as you get. Look at his Facebook page. He worked for “Children Protective Services, and wanted to be a woman someday.” Does that sound like a conservative leaning, tea partier?

Yet while the poor victims were still on the operating table, these two irresponsible people chose to seize the opportunity to take a shot at those who want to see the county return to traditional American values.

Here is the Sheriff in Tucson, Clarence Dupnik.

And here is Keith Obermann jumping quickly to capitalize on the progressive position well before the facts were in, hoping to erode away the effects of the recent conservative gains in popularity.

Who confuses who? Listen to this Socialist in Ohio spewing confusing rhetoric that is intended for young people.

 This guy openly speaks of moving away from the American Constitution.

If the kid was confused, it’s because of the effect people like Bernadine Dorn, Bill Ayers, Francis Pivan and many, many others that have infected our schools like termites with leftist ideology that doesn’t hold much water when someone does some investigation into the truth of the matter. The kid was reading all the wrong stuff at a tender age where leftist rhetoric had obviously manipulated his reason. Not to mention the Daily Show. That could be equally to blame. It targets kids in his age group. Click here to see for yourself how young people are being manipulated by the left.

And in tragedy those same leftists try to assign blame away from them, quickly, onto a faction of society that is trying to help young people like this kid desire to do something more important with their lives than trying to become a woman. Don’t let the facts get in the way of your opinion.  I’ve been to a lot of Tea Party events and ALL of them are like this.  CLICK HERE!

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

Defend Ohio Rally in Columbus was Organized by Socialists

The shooting in Arizona is tragic. But at this time, the facts are still coming in, and there is other news going on at the same time that needs attention. One of those news stories is the impact of the man who structured the Defend Ohio rally up in Columbus to protest John Kasich’s position on organized labor is a Socialist!

Meet him here:

Doc Thompson had a great banter with a spokesman from Defend Ohio, a group I had never heard of because it was apparently formed just last weekend to attack John Kasich’s Administration before it could even get started. But the fellow came on WLW to discuss his position, and for that I give him credit. Listen to that conversation here:

If these people weren’t so dangerous, in trying to compete legitimately in the battlefield of ideas, I might just pat them on the head and encourage them to keep learning and trying. But, as I’ve discussed on this forum many times and in many ways, socialism, communism, progressivism, imperialism, and on and on, are infantile mutterings of the lazy, collective oriented that lack true courage, because they seek to hide their ambition behind a government entity that they wish to use as a bargaining chip.

I have news for those childish minds. The country was built on capitalist principles. Not socialist principles and unions. In fact, the growth of our nation has stopped since socialist started penetrating our political culture and used the aspects of American Culture we collectively feel guilty about, like slavery, like our treatment of women, and the handling of the poor, to manipulate the political spectrum in a way that has made the United States less competitive. For people who believe such things, their minds are like shallow streams and their recollections of American History are just as deep. American History may only be as deep as a mighty river, but there is much more under the surface that makes up the contents of the river. America is not just simple poor against rich, working man against the white-collar man, black against white, men against women, its swirls of all those things and a lot more to add. Such duality in thinking is only useful to small-minded souls that can’t see beyond their individual cages.

When I heard the interview above on Doc Thompson’s show, I thought the man from Defend Ohio was naive, but well-intentioned, and I had figured he just needed to think things through a lot deeper. But now I know after a little research, that the people behind this rally are socialists! No wonder they don’t like Kasich!

Before 2010, I thought communists and socialists in our American society was something that was attempted during the McCarthy era, and even then, I actually thought that McCarthy was far-reaching in his pursuit to weed out communists. I thought that because I believed what the media told me, that Joseph McCarthy was a right-winged-paranoid-do-gooder. I started to question the media when I saw that they used the same approach to attack Kenneth Star, when he investigated Bill Clinton. Star was just doing his job. Clinton had flat-out lied in federal court. It happened right in front of our faces, so that made me question the reporting of the socialists in the McCarthy hearings.

Now, the evidence is everywhere. Socialists have their own party. They try to put up candidates, they have infiltrated unions, newspapers, television, Hollywood, publishing. They are a legitimate competitor for political ideas and they have done it under the radar.

So now they have met at the capital of Ohio on January 8, 2011 to protest a Governor that is trying to bring capitalism oriented ideas back to a state to attempt to save that great state from the damage done by socialist that have infiltrated the political culture for decades. The difference between now, and when they originally started, is it’s out in the open who and what they are. And America has to make the decision about what they want to do about it.

It’s ok to be wrong. And socialist are out-of-their-minds wrong. But it’s not OK to wreck American Culture to pursue the infant diatribes of half-baked minds.

Now, to understand what is behind Defend Ohio, read this article. I put it up here so it doesn’t disappear after this rally turns out embarrassing for the organizers.

U.S. | Labor & Workers
SOCIALIST CANDIDATE’S BACKERS FOUND NEW ORGANIZATION TO FIGHT TO DEFEND OHIO JOBS AND SER
by Dan La Botz
Tuesday Dec 7th, 2010 8:33 AM
Ohio leftists create Defend Ohio campaign and launch Stop Kasich movement against new government’s radically anti-worker program

Supporters of the Dan La Botz, Socialist for Senate campaign of 2010 met in Columbus, Ohio over the weekend to found a new organization and launch a campaign to fight for jobs and public services in Ohio—and they pledged to resist the policies of Republic Governor-elect John Kasich. Dan La Botz was the Socialist Party candidate for the U.S. Senate in Ohio in November 2010 and received 25,000 votes.

The labor and movement activists from cities throughout Ohio created the Buckeye Socialist Network (there will soon be a BuckeyeSocialist.org website). The Network’s first campaign is called DEFEND OHIO and will focus on defending public employees’ jobs and public services.

“Governor Kasich has unleashed a class war in Ohio,” said Dan La Botz. “And we intend to fight back. Kasich’s inauguration is the ideal occasion for Ohio’s working people to protest in at the Capital in Columbus and to show the governor that he is going to face four years of fierce resistance by unions and social movements.

“Kasich,” said La Botz, “pledged to revoke the union organizing rights of home care and child care workers in Ohio. This is a vicious and despicable attack on the some of the state’s hardest working and lowest paid workers. And it is not so different from President Obama’s recent promise to freeze the wages of Federal employees. These attacks on public employees parallel the private employers drive for two-tier labor contracts intended to lower wages and they parallel attacks on social programs for low-income people in our society.

“We will be organizing working people to fight to defend public employees’ jobs, their wages, and their right to unionize. We will be fighting to defend all of the many services that these workers—teachers, social workers, water workers, garbage collectors, and so many others—provide. In doing so, we will be beginning the fight to rebuild the power of unions in Ohio.”

Union members from the Teamsters, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, American Federation of Government Employees, Communication Workers of America, and United Food and Commercial Workers were among those in attendance at the founding meeting of the Buckeye Socialist Network. Representatives from Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton/Yellow Springs, Canton, and New Philadelphia attended the half-day meeting.

…………………………………………….

Hey, you can’t make this stuff up. Progress Ohio has their name all over this. These “types” of people are in the minority, but because they are motivated radicals, they must be dealt with equal passion from those of us that think correctly. And yes, there is a correct way to think and an incorrect way to think. Individuality and the power of the individual are correct. Collectivism is wrong. It allows the worst of people to live in a state of mediocrity. This popular video of the New York Public worker wrecking a car on a snowy street is a perfect example of what you get when you allow people to live in that state of mediocrity. This is your typical union employee. And I say that from lots of experience.

Don’t ever ask me to pay for people like this with tax dollars.

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

Oh Let’s Be Sensitive: The power of manipulated guilt

My wife and I were discussing over dinner the fact that in the times of Lincoln, Washington DC actually had liveries in town to tie up their slaves like horses. I thought about how far we’ve all come since then, and I thought about how instrumental Lincoln was in changing those opinions people had, on the “culture” of slavery. Lincoln was an uneducated white man, and he used the Constitutional rights of the great United States to put in front of people the fact that American society wanted slavery because they wanted to protect their pocket books. Lincoln wrote and spoke about that issue to a huge degree, and it made him very unpopular for a while, because it was affecting people’s comfort level. But history shows the result. Lincoln was openly hostile about slavery in his letters and over time he came to realize how terrible slavery was as an institution, and eventually, under his watch, slavery was abolished, and the United States has lead the way to religious and racial tolerance all over the world since then

But that’s not what you hear among our radical press that has an agenda for a political power grab. Civil rights, even though we all agree is the right thing to think about is big business, and power grabs for the party that rides the wave of emotion behind it.

Religion, like race relations is one of the longest forms of political power grabs known to mankind. Doc Thompson did a great bit of radio poking fun at Katie Couric’s suggestion of creating a television show based on the Muslim faith.

What a lot of people have a hard time understanding is how devious some political, and religious groups are in achieving their personal goals. We’ve studied how communism and other socialist principles have grown under our collective watchful, yet naive eyes. The same thing occurs under the umbrella of religious fervor.

A great example of this is the current Islamic possession of the Temple Mount while Jews resort to their practices at the Wailing Wall and the continuous tension that exists between those two religions at the Temple.

To a guy like me, I look at those religious icons and I see the artifacts of King Solomon’s Temple. It is a baffling concept that one particular religious entity or another would even consider “fighting” over rights to such things. But that is the state of our minds.

And that is why we can’t even joke about certain religious issues, such as the mosque in New York, because the debate is not one of life after death. It’s about control and power while here on earth. Our current debate on whether or not we should have a mosque in New York is really just a diversion to weaken an enemy, and to many in the world that crave power, the United States is an enemy to their goals.

It is difficult for many people to get their minds around devious concepts, even though many people unconsciously participate in devious behavior. So it is hard for people to see that there are still, in the 21st century, groups of people that want power, and they hide their desire for that power behind religion in order to unite the minds of their armies to help them achieve those goals. So I’m going to put this situation in a way that people can understand, because virtually everyone can relate.

Family is one of the most basic building blocks we all share with one another. Family problems are a great way to personalize some of these larger religious, and sensitivity issues, because we all have those problems. So let’s look at a hypothetical situation that occurs in many families and explore the hidden motives behind those actions so as to comprehend how religious leaders and civil rights advocates manipulate our emotions for the same basic end result.

Marriage is supposed to be a wonderful institution where typically a woman marries a man who is the son of someone. Usually, the mother of that man will look at the new woman as her “replacement” and because she has never in her mind made the correct breaking away from her son, still craves the love of her son over his wife. Now that new wife may actually like the brother of that husband, but that brother is already married to another woman. This “like” may not be sexually based, but just might be some deep seated psychological reaction because the brother is very similar to her husband, but benefits from having the traits the wife likes, but not the disadvantage that living with the husband has, so myths are allowed to form in the mind of the wife about the brother because she doesn’t live with him, and she sees the brother in a holier-than image.

Now this wife may actually be quite pretty, so the father who is married to the mother may be jealous of this son, the husband to the new wife. This might occur because the son is not his biological son, and is a bad memory of the man that came before him. Of course around the dinner table he is friendly, but his insecurities are great being the “second” man. Seeing his wife’s son marry a beautiful woman and having a fresh start in life with a fresh and unmolested “new” woman is enough to drive him to private madness, so he eats more, drinks more, and in general craves the attention of women half his age. The mother knowing that the husband feels this way deep down inside resents even more the new wife because she is a convenient target. This being her second marriage, she isn’t ready to admit to herself that her second husband is a creep. Because such a revelation may actually reveal to her extended family that she makes bad decisions, and the real problem may actually originate deep inside her and her desire to affiliate with bad people. So the mother befriends the brother’s wife to conspire against the new wife. Not openly mind you, but subtly.

Now our new husband and wife live well for a couple of years. The husband gets a few promotions and is making decent money which causes jealousy with his brother who hasn’t had such good luck. So he starts befriending the husband of his mother, who is just a step-father to him. And this step father uses this young man’s jealously to incite anger, and get the brother to do his bidding, so that his own wife doesn’t discover that he is trying to bring secret harm to her favorite son. A couple of kids are born to the son and his wife, and the wife has maintained her figure while the brother’s wife gets fat with boredom. The new wife dislikes the brother’s wife because she sees that the woman’s weight is embarrassing to the brother and she can see that the brother she likes so much isn’t enjoying sex because he has a fat wife, so she feels sorry for him and develops more anger at the brother’s wife.

The whole family has a get together to celebrate the 5th birthday of the oldest child of this marriage. The brother and his wife don’t really want to come, because they’ve been trying to have kids for a while, but can’t. The real reason they don’t have children yet is they don’t have sex enough because the brother isn’t interested in his own fat wife. The brother’s wife knows this, and resents her husband and her brother-in-law’s children more each time she sees them.

To make matters worse for the sister-in-law, and the mother, is the son’s wife has managed to find a way to stay home with her children so she has time to make a cake for her child’s birthday. The cake is a really fancy and personal cake that you couldn’t get in a bakery, because it’s actually made with love. Now you’d think the mother would be proud of her son for finding a wife that could and would make a cake for their child on their 5th birthday, but that’s not the case. Unfulfilled dreams and the mother’s own past mistakes of having her first marriage fail permeates her thoughts when she sees the cake, so in private she decides to instigate the brother’s fat wife into talking about what a prissy little bitch her son’s wife has become. Feeling empowered, the fat brother’s wife makes fun of the color of the cake right in front of the son’s wife, which breaks the heart of the wife who truly wants the appreciation of her mother-in-law. But what she sees in that moment of grief is great joy on the mothers face at the pain the son’s wife experienced at the antagonism of the brothers wife.

And the two women have a vicious argument right in the kitchen.

Meanwhile the son comes to break it up, and he insults his brother’s wife by calling her a spiteful, fat bitch! That gives his brother the opportunity to seize his anger that had been built up by his step-father, and now brother and brother fight it out right there in the kitchen.

The children are horrified to see all this going on. And the child that is turning 5 never forgets the images of everyone fighting, and makes the personal proclamation to never marry.

20 years later the elderly mother is asking her favorite son why he doesn’t come around more often, and that she misses him. The son doesn’t want to hurt his mother’s feelings and explain how destructive her beliefs have been to the family. His brother had long since divorced his fat wife. His mother lost her second husband to a chubby woman that was 21 who worked at the Waffle House. And he just didn’t have the heart to explain to his mother that her only grand children did not want to have children of their own, because they believe all families are dysfunctional.

The kids move out and the son and the wife live on alone, because the family had never really bonded. They tried over the years to go through the motions, but in the end, nobody really liked each other, so everyone found themselves alone and unhappy in the later years, meeting only in weddings and funerals.

Now what’s the point of that story? Well, the mother created the original sin by wanting power over her son. She didn’t want to face her own mistakes, and she desired to shape the lives of those around her to hide her own deficiencies from herself. The result of her divine leadership is she basically ruined the lives of everyone attached to her.

The same thing happens politically for much the same reasons. Our inability to see through the intentions of our enemies or to even name an enemy to our nation often allows corruption to migrate and fester over a long period of time into something that could ruin our lives. And it happens because we won’t even allow ourselves to be critical of something.

The resistance to slavery was because so many people made money off slavery. Lincoln did the good work of making people look at themselves, and that’s where slavery ended, in people’s hearts. It wasn’t just legislated. It changed inside people and it happened in America by a Republican.

Religion is supposed to be a personal thing, so you always have to be cautious when a religious group desires to “impose” itself on society. Because when they do, they are looking for power not spiritual understanding. And when they get caught doing so, they deserve to be ridiculed for the potential corruption they could bring to our society.

Call it what it is, so you can avoid a lifetime of pain.

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

Meet Francis Fox Piven: another radical old hippie and current college professor

Let’s start off the New Year with yet another college professor, and former hippie radical that is helping to shape the world we live in today.

Meet Frances Fox Pivan, in her own words.


Here she talks about Glenn Beck. What’s interesting is that she admits that the progressive process was already a larger plan by the late 60’s.

Piven is all about subversion and undermining the power structure that exists in favor of a more level society. That’s called socialism. It’s easy for her to point at people who are calling her out on the issue and pretend surprise. But she has a long history of supporting that leveling of the playing field and revealing that the strategy of undoing America as a world power is the overall objective.

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

Dystopia of Public Union attachment to our Government.

I have spoken about groups like Progress Ohio that are progressive oriented groups in states built on advancing progressive ideas. Until 2010 I didn’t even know there were groups dedicated to such a cause. I was still wondering if the word “progressive” was something Glenn Beck made up to support some conspiracy. As it turned out, Beck probably didn’t say enough.

There has also been a lot of discussion about state budget shortfalls and how on earth our local, state and federal government is going to pay for the massive revenue problems that are occurring. Well, these budget problems are caused by public sector unions that have managed to negotiate an average salary of approximately $79,000 per year per employee. That is more than the average American tax payer makes by over $20K per year. The formula is all messed up; where the public servant makes more than the public it serves. And as government has grown larger and employed more and more people, adding more employees to that fantastically high pay scale and the wages in the private sector have been frozen to deal with the recession.

Now listen below to the suggestion from Progress Illinois of how to cover the budget problems. (LAUGH OUT LOUD)

Can you believe that? That’s how out of touch progressives are. That is their solution to the irresponsible spending problem we’ve allowed in government.

The high wages promised government employees create a government that is revenue hungry.

And this video is hilarious. Didn’t these people go to school? Why do they think the steel mills went overseas? Unions drove the costs too high, so those jobs left the country.


Now they have done the same cost increase of labor as they did in the American Car companies and steel industries. But now those costs are in government and government can’t pick up and move to another country. Government exists to serve the people, so the only thing to do is to cut the jobs or reduce dramatically the salary of those employees in order to justify their existence. The videos below are by Armand Thiebolt of the Cato Institute. This isn’t Fox News, but the Cato Institute. It’s an attempt to present the problem cleanly.


Now this is Fox Business, a piece done by Jon Stossel, but I think it explains things very clear.


This is serious business!

What needs to happen is public sector unions should return back to the legal status prior to the Kennedy Administration. That needs to happen in 2011 while a conservative congress can address the issue. Only by dealing with the issue directly can we hope to avert catastrophic budget failures.

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

The Delphi Technique: How it works

Have you ever been to a public meeting, like a school board meeting, or a city council meeting, or a trustee public hearing on a zoning change, only to find out that the decisions had been made before the meeting ever began? And on your way home from those meetings where you had stood up and voiced your opinion, but the group preceded anyway in spite of your protests and asked yourself why you even bothered. It’s because of The Delphi Technique or some variation of it which is designed to build group consensus for a desired idea while creating the illusion of community participation. The Delphi Technique is something that everyone needs to understand. Since intellectuals began to implement these types of manipulative studies, which require specialized training to use and understand, techniques like the Delphi have subverted our election process in a subtle way nationally by subverting common sense logic in favor of a socialist oriented group conscious founded on illusion, because the end results are most of the time pre-determined.

So enjoy the information below and use it in your communities to begin to take back your local government. Only when we can diffuse the effects of The Delphi Technique can we return the actions of government to the people it is supposed to serve.

Source article for below information: http://www.eagleforum.org/educate/1998/nov98/focus.html

The following information is written by Lynn Stuter.  Her home web site is linked at the end of this portion.   The photographs come from the PDF page also listed at the end of this article. 

Using the Delphi Technique to Achieve Consensus
How it is leading us away from representative government to an illusion of citizen participation

The Delphi Technique and consensus building are both founded in the same principle – the Hegelian dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, with synthesis becoming the new thesis. The goal is a continual evolution to “oneness of mind” (consensus means solidarity of belief) -the collective mind, the wholistic society, the wholistic earth, etc. In thesis and antithesis, opinions or views are presented on a subject to establish views and opposing views. In synthesis, opposites are brought together to form the new thesis. All participants in the process are then to accept ownership of the new thesis and support it, changing their views to align with the new thesis. Through a continual process of evolution, “oneness of mind” will supposedly occur.

In group settings, the Delphi Technique is an unethical method of achieving consensus on controversial topics. It requires well-trained professionals, known as “facilitators” or “change agents,” who deliberately escalate tension among group members, pitting one faction against another to make a preordained viewpoint appear “sensible,” while making opposing views appear ridiculous.

In her book Educating for the New World Order, author and educator Beverly Eakman makes numerous references to the need of those in power to preserve the illusion that there is “community participation in decision-making processes, while in fact lay citizens are being squeezed out.”

The setting or type of group is immaterial for the success of the technique. The point is that, when people are in groups that tend to share a particular knowledge base, they display certain identifiable characteristics, known as group dynamics, which allows the facilitator to apply the basic strategy.

The facilitators or change agents encourage each person in a group to express concerns about the programs, projects, or policies in question. They listen attentively, elicit input from group members, form “task forces,” urge participants to make lists, and in going through these motions, learn about each member of a group. They are trained to identify the “leaders,” the “loud mouths,” the “weak or non-committal members,” and those who are apt to change sides frequently during an argument.

Suddenly, the amiable facilitators become professional agitators and “devil’s advocates.” Using the “divide and conquer” principle, they manipulate one opinion against another, making those who are out of step appear “ridiculous, unknowledgeable, inarticulate, or dogmatic.” They attempt to anger certain participants, thereby accelerating tensions. The facilitators are well trained in psychological manipulation. They are able to predict the reactions of each member in a group. Individuals in opposition to the desired policy or program will be shut out.

The Delphi Technique works. It is very effective with parents, teachers, school children, and community groups. The “targets” rarely, if ever, realize that they are being manipulated. If they do suspect what is happening, they do not know how to end the process. The facilitator seeks to polarize the group in order to become an accepted member of the group and of the process. The desired idea is then placed on the table and individual opinions are sought during discussion. Soon, associates from the divided group begin to adopt the idea as if it were their own, and they pressure the entire group to accept their proposition.

How the Delphi Technique Works

Consistent use of this technique to control public participation in our political system is causing alarm among people who cherish the form of government established by our Founding Fathers. Efforts in education and other areas have brought the emerging picture into focus.

In the not-too-distant past, the city of Spokane, in Washington state, hired a consultant to the tune of $47,000 to facilitate the direction of city government. This development brought a hue and cry from the local population. The ensuing course of action holds an eerie similarity to what is happening in education reform. A newspaper editorial described how groups of disenfranchised citizens were brought together to “discuss” what they felt needed to be changed at the local government level. A compilation of the outcomes of those “discussions” influenced the writing of the city/county charter.

That sounds innocuous. But what actually happened in Spokane is happening in communities and school districts all across the country. Let’s review the process that occurs in these meetings.

First, a facilitator is hired. While his job is supposedly neutral and non-judgmental, the opposite is actually true. The facilitator is there to direct the meeting to a preset conclusion.

The facilitator begins by working the crowd to establish a good-guy-bad-guy scenario. Anyone disagreeing with the facilitator must be made to appear as the bad guy, with the facilitator appearing as the good guy. To accomplish this, the facilitator seeks out those who disagree and makes them look foolish, inept, or aggressive, which sends a clear message to the rest of the audience that, if they don’t want the same treatment, they must keep quiet. When the opposition has been identified and alienated, the facilitator becomes the good guy – a friend – and the agenda and direction of the meeting are established without the audience ever realizing what has happened.

Next, the attendees are broken up into smaller groups of seven or eight people. Each group has its own facilitator. The group facilitators steer participants to discuss preset issues, employing the same tactics as the lead facilitator.

Participants are encouraged to put their ideas and disagreements on paper, with the results to be compiled later. Who does the compiling? If you ask participants, you typically hear: “Those running the meeting compiled the results.” Oh-h! The next question is: “How do you know that what you wrote on your sheet of paper was incorporated into the final outcome?” The typical answer is: “Well, I’ve wondered about that, because what I wrote doesn’t seem to be reflected. I guess my views were in the minority.”

That is the crux of the situation. If 50 people write down their ideas individually, to be compiled later into a final outcome, no one knows what anyone else has written. That the final outcome of such a meeting reflects anyone’s input at all is highly questionable, and the same holds true when the facilitator records the group’s comments on paper. But participants in these types of meetings usually don’t question the process.

Why hold such meetings at all if the outcomes are already established? The answer is because it is imperative for the acceptance of the School-to-Work agenda, or the environmental agenda, or whatever the agenda, that ordinary people assume ownership of the preset outcomes. If people believe an idea is theirs, they’ll support it. If they believe an idea is being forced on them, they’ll resist.

The Delphi Technique is being used very effectively to change our government from a representative form in which elected individuals represent the people, to a “participatory democracy” in which citizens selected at large are facilitated into ownership of preset outcomes. These citizens believe that their input is important to the result, whereas the reality is that the outcome was already established by people not apparent to the participants.

How to Diffuse the Delphi Technique
Three steps can diffuse the Delphi Technique as facilitators attempt to steer a meeting in a specific direction.
1. Always be charming, courteous, and pleasant. Smile. Moderate your voice so as not to come across as belligerent or aggressive.

2. Stay focused. If possible, jot down your thoughts or questions. When facilitators are asked questions they don’t want to answer, they often digress from the issue that was raised and try instead to put the questioner on the defensive. Do not fall for this tactic. Courteously bring the facilitator back to your original question. If he rephrases it so that it becomes an accusatory statement (a popular tactic), simply say, “That is not what I asked. What I asked was . . .” and repeat your question.

3. Be persistent. If putting you on the defensive doesn’t work, facilitators often resort to long monologues that drag on for several minutes. During that time, the group usually forgets the question that was asked, which is the intent. Let the facilitator finish. Then with polite persistence state: “But you didn’t answer my question. My question was . . .” and repeat your question.

Never become angry under any circumstances. Anger directed at the facilitator will immediately make the facilitator the victim. This defeats the purpose. The goal of facilitators is to make the majority of the group members like them, and to alienate anyone who might pose a threat to the realization of their agenda. People with firm, fixed beliefs, who are not afraid to stand up for what they believe in, are obvious threats. If a participant becomes a victim, the facilitator loses face and favor with the crowd. This is why crowds are broken up into groups of seven or eight, and why objections are written on paper rather than voiced aloud where they can be open to public discussion and debate. It’s called crowd control.

At a meeting, have two or three people who know the Delphi Technique dispersed through the crowd so that, when the facilitator digresses from a question, they can stand up and politely say: “But you didn’t answer that lady/gentleman’s question.” Even if the facilitator suspects certain group members are working together, he will not want to alienate the crowd by making accusations. Occasionally, it takes only one incident of this type for the crowd to figure out what’s going on.

Establish a plan of action before a meeting. Everyone on your team should know his part. Later, analyze what went right, what went wrong and why, and what needs to happen the next time. Never strategize during a meeting.

A popular tactic of facilitators, if a session is meeting with resistance, is to call a recess. During the recess, the facilitator and his spotters (people who observe the crowd during the course of a meeting) watch the crowd to see who congregates where, especially those who have offered resistance. If the resistors congregate in one place, a spotter will gravitate to that group and join in the conversation, reporting what was said to the facilitator. When the meeting resumes, the facilitator will steer clear of the resistors. Do not congregate. Instead gravitate to where the facilitators or spotters are. Stay away from your team members.

This strategy also works in a face-to-face, one-on-one meeting with anyone trained to use the Delphi Technique.

Lynn Stuter is an education researcher in Washington state. Her web site address is www.learn-usa.com/.

For a much more detailed paper on the Delphi Technique, one wrote by academics very much enchanted by the process, check out their paper here: That PDF file represents much of what my experience with the Delphi Technique consists of, primarily in business applications. However, to my experience as well, such consensus building almost always fails to some degree making the Delphi Technique good for public manipulation but not in true process improvement as Six Sigma would evolve into. The reason is explained in this article written by me.

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

Opinions of the Blind

Progressives can’t argue facts because all their positions are based on emotion. So when commentators and writers point out the facts of progressive ideas, those people are attacked in an attempt to lower their credibility.

Jon Stewart is a comedian, yet he currently has the type of credibility in the media that professional politicians usually have, to the effect that President Obama endorse the Stewart Rally in October. This is because these personalities serve the progressive agenda, and they are encouraged to attack anyone that threatens that agenda.


Listen to this dude. He’s as clueless as a frat boy looking for a six-pack. It is impossible for a guy like this to understand why Glenn Beck is so upset on the phone call. Beck is an emotional guy that believes in what he says, and sometimes he can’t hold those emotions back, especially when the people on the other end of the phone are as blind as the woman he’s talking to. Yet this dude thinks he has a right to criticize Beck. Having a belief in something real is a foreign idea to the guy, so he can’t understand why an issue would case so much passion.


Listen to these kids. Why is it that young kids either still in school, or just out of school are so liberal? Because they are taught to be. Later in life, most of them grow up and become more conservative. But in the meantime they do an enormous amount of damage to our country with their ignorance.

The primary problem here is that many people functioning in our society are effectively blind.  They can’t see the obvious.  Yet they are given the ability to help shape public opinion, which increases the failures of our government.  It was Clare Boothe Luce that said “Politics is the refuge of second-class minds.”  True as that is, it’s the first-rate minds that end up defending themselves from the foolish second-rate minds.  And the masses accept it because in their hearts they are lazy, and enjoy with secret jealousy watching the first-rate minds get their chips knocked off their shoulders.  It’s far easier to be stupid and to maintain a second-rate mind. 

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