Tag: GOP

The World Economic Forum Stepped Over the Line: Trust is hard to win and easy to lose, and they have lost it

Something significant is happening that is very obvious, but little has been made of it; people are generally waking up to the malicious intentions of Bill Gates and his friends in the World Economic Forum.  People are now looking for the sideshow games where crimes against humanity have been committed, and Klaus Schwab and the economic Marxist terrorists of the world are not prepared for the wrath that is coming their way, which was most evident in the wake of the Maui wildfires.  Well, at this point, we should call it the Maui arson that destroyed a town that had been discussed as a satellite city for the World Economic Forum’s 15-minute cities.  The best way to build one is to destroy the old one, which looks to be the case here.  A few years ago, nobody would have asked any questions.  Conspiracy theorists would have voiced their opinions, but the mainstream media would have poured cold water on them, and the public would have accepted the controlled narrative.  But not any longer, not since Covid ruined the trust of public officials, and now three years of Biden have shocked people into observing the obvious.  The World Economic Forum has gone too far, and the shock to the world has been a degraded impression.  I noticed something similar when Microsoft, run by Bill Gates, released Windows 95, which was not as well received as Windows 3.1.  And ever since, Microsoft has been further scrutinized to the point it is today.  A necessary evil that people generally don’t trust.  Just as they no longer trust Bill Gates.  That is the case with everyone connected to the World Economic Forum.  People are onto the games and now see them being played everywhere, not conspiratorial, but in the logical way the bad guys have always tried to hide from the public. 

I said that the truth about the Maui fires would emerge in the aftermath as we watched what people did.  As it turns out, the power company had been trying to maintain its infrastructure, but the emphasis was on woke policies for renewables, straight from the World Economic Forum’s radical agenda.  And the power company had turned off the power hours before the fire started, so how could a spark from them set off the blaze?  There are a lot of unanswered questions that only point to terrorist activity, not a natural occurrence or an accident from the power company due to infrastructure failure.  I have seen that same radicalism in my state of Ohio regarding FirstEnergy.  On the one hand, they have adopted all these woke rules to appease the climate terrorists, making them the target of a hostile public upset at the changes.  But then the climate terrorists are trying to set up the power companies for complete failure and are looking to drive them out of business.  It’s the classic gun-to-the-head robber who forces someone they are holding up to do what they are told, only to be shot dead after they’ve handed over all their money.  These climate terrorists doing their deeds for the World Economic Forum behind the efforts of the United Nations are playing for keeps, which looks to be the kind of set-up job in Maui.  But the public is aware of the game, and they instantly rejected the official narratives for the fire and went straight for the developers who have promised to rebuild as a “city of tomorrow” as the instigators of so much death and destruction.  If it can happen in Maui, then it could happen everywhere. 

The bad guys in the world have been doing these things for a long time, destroying the planet and rebuilding it in their version of “Build Back Better.”  That kind of terminology was already being stamped on liberal t-shirts before there was a Joe Biden in the White House, but after Covid was a major overstep by Bill Gates and the gang, they didn’t seem to realize that it was a step too far.  And now people have lost trust in the officials that the World Economic Forum has worked so hard to capture.  But now that they have the power, they have lost the public’s faith and don’t seem to understand why.  Their entire plan, just like every version of Windows ever released that was supposed to be better than the first, has consistently failed in some way because they could never quite get it right.  Power is hard; it’s easy to make a misstep, and that is what we are dealing with now.  Climate terrorists were just caught starting fires in Greece to attempt to evoke an environmental message, and now that fires are breaking out all over the world frequently, it’s not a natural occurrence that people expect.  The first thought is climate terrorism by these radical Marxists inspired by the members of the World Economic Forum who plan to profit off the carnage and then build what they want.  There’s one sure way to overcome the kind of city opposition that building a 15-minute city would typically involve.  Just burn it down and kill all the people who would oppose it.  Then blame the power company you are also trying to put out of business because they use fossil fuels in capitalist markets.  That game has been going on for too long, and many people have suffered.

The public outrage is very energetic on social media.  How much of it gets outside the algorithms tightly controlled by the Deep State is an issue for debate.  Typically, discussions against the administrators of the Deep State and the members of the World Economic Forum who have a lot of money that they think buys their governments don’t get outside of the circular firing squad of specific groups that are easily monitored by the powerful forces who think they are in charge.  But the word is getting out anyway, and ordinary people now see the obvious.  They are asking the right questions that are no longer conspiracies but honest observations that have lingered in the background.  People might have been shy about expressing those opinions, but now they are open.  And regarding the Maui fires, there is actual hostility that is well-founded.  People don’t like to be suckered, and they feel suckered.  Bill Gates has shown the same kind of stupidity with his climate change activism that he did with Windows releases.  Everything worked for him as long as he had a monopoly on opinion.  But once people could think for themselves, which started happening with Windows 95, the value of their Microsoft products began to diminish.  People would put up with it to get along, but they weren’t suddenly yearning for the product.  And that same thing has happened to the losers in the World Economic Forum.  They thought people would want what they were selling: globalism, climate change, a godless, overly sexualized heathen society of sweaty losers looking to them as gods.  But, what they have been caught doing was acting as the latest terrorists, no different from the old hippie Weather Underground radicals.  Instead of operating out of the back of a pot-filled, rusting van playing Beatles eight-track tapes, they are billionaires like Bill Gates who have lost their minds, if they ever really had them.

Rich Hoffman

The Busing Strike at Lakota Schools: Hiding the real problems behind drivers who don’t deserve it

I love the new busing strike at Lakota schools. Nothing infuriates me more than slow-moving vehicles clogging up the roadways, and since school has started back for the fall, all the buses hauling kids around to a communist government school in my district that eats money insatiably has been a sore subject for me. I’ve dealt with this busing issue for years; I remember when Lakota cut busing as an extortion method to push parents to pass a tax increase back when we had to fight those levies every few months. And I certainly remember how it was during Covid. Parents learned not to have busing, and as far as I’m concerned, parents can take their kids to school. They’ve done it before; they can do it again. They already get a free babysitting service in the school paid for by the taxpayers, so the least they can do is drive their kids to school. But my favorite school board member, the only one who has been really good on busing issues to make things better for parents, Darbi Boddy, is supportive of busing services and has wanted to expand coverage. See, we don’t agree on everything, just most things. Darbi ultimately is not a professional politician, but she’s in politics the way it’s supposed to be. She’s a mom, and she thinks like a parent. So, she is undoubtedly sympathetic toward school bus drivers as they voted to strike just before Labor Day 2023. And what’s unusual about this strike isn’t about money or benefits. The busing services are contracted out to a company called Petermann, which handles the needs of the drivers, who are well compensated. Instead, the problem is over surveillance, a similar tech issue as is at the core of the Hollywood strike of actors and writers. Technology has turned into a tyrant, and the drivers aren’t happy about it, so they have walked off the job.

Of course, there is more to the story, which is why this is a compelling analysis. Lakota schools want to micromanage the bus drivers in ways they would never dare do with their employees, and because of Petermann handling the union responsibilities, it has given Lakota schools a chance to try and fix their social perception problem with parents during an election year, without having to take responsibility for anything and making members of their radical leftist union upset. Lakota has been very soft on pedophilia over the last several years, following some genuinely detrimental behavior with several past employees that have damaged the public school brand. Followed by some very disappointing report cards from the state and a financial situation where the lawyers are essentially running the school, the current school board, except for Darbi Boddy, has been a complete disaster. So they need a public relations push, and this school bus driver issue has been, for them, a golden opportunity. Suddenly, they want to use technology to monitor if the bus drivers are putting both hands on the steering wheel while turning and if they are staying within the speed limit. The same policy is not present to ensure that Lakota teachers behave themselves. If a kid shoots a spitball at the back of a bus driver’s head, and the driver yells at the kid. The act will be caught on video. But if it happens in a classroom, nobody will ever know. So based on that premise, Lakota management, starting at the school board, is talking out of both sides of its mouth, which is a standard from them, not an exception.

Without question, there are school bus drivers who are cheating slugs. They don’t fill their logbooks out correctly; monitoring will help correct that problem. But the number is likely under 25%. There is no precise justification for abusing the other 75% with overmanagement while the rest of the school culture gets away with horrendous acts of defilement and social degradation. Sure, bus drivers park in places they shouldn’t be to associate with other drivers who shouldn’t be there between pickup tasks. There are many reasons to justify the increased monitoring of the bus-driving staff. But the question is, “Should they do it?” Given the government school culture, the least of the problems are the bus drivers, yet the school board and superintendent want to be harsh with them in just another phony plea to convince parents that management cares about the kids. Parents interact with school bus drivers as representatives of the school more than they do the school itself, as the bus usually comes to their homes personally, where the school is someplace the kids disappear to. This has allowed the school board to appear tough on discipline over employees they don’t even have responsibility for while Lakota’s teacher’s union members get away with everything. If Lakota wanted to be tough on employees, it would have reacted much differently to the many abuses of kids that get reported but are slowly dealt with at the school board to protect the school’s image rather than to make kids a priority. But if a school bus driver goes over the speed limit by driving 40 MPH on a road that’s only 35, even though the rest of the traffic is going 45 MPH, then the push will be to write that driver up for a safety violation. Technology has allowed for this kind of oppressive micromanagement, which is not good.

It’s hard enough to get drivers for a school bus; it’s a part-time job at best that you have to spend your whole day doing, first early in the morning, to pick the kids up. Then, mid-day pre-rush hour traffic takes them home. It’s an idea I don’t think society should have ever started. It should be the responsibility of the parents to take their kids to get an education, wherever it is. Bussing has made it way too easy for parents. In this case, it has been an all too easy target for a school board that has mismanaged its affairs to appear more diligent than they are because the introduction of expanded technology has allowed tyrants to have power over others they should never have. Mainly when the utilization is not applied evenly to all parties involved. The bus drivers are being punished for disciplines that the school board would never apply to the teachers and administrators under their management. The third-party Petermann drivers are an easy target with expendable employees. And if nobody goes to school, the teachers get a more leisurely day, which we saw they were too willing to exploit during COVID-19. Technology isn’t used to improve everything, only to control it for power over innocent people while the real trouble persists elsewhere. The hope is that parents will think Lakota is doing an excellent job with the safety of their children by monitoring speed limits and hand placement during driving while the teachers are trying to convince boys that they are girls and that everyone can use whatever bathroom they want. Meanwhile, the lawyers are using taxpayer money to settle every legal challenge that comes their way, and they are trying to do to Darbi Boddy what the school board is trying to do to the bus drivers: blame them for all the lousy mismanagement of the district, when the real trouble is in their back yard, which many parents will never otherwise see.

Rich Hoffman

Future Debates are Over: Trump is redefining the expectations of politics for the better

It’s an exciting trend, not a surprising one, but certainly telling, and that is debates no longer matter in presidential politics, and as a byproduct of that, money is much less of a factor.  One thing that was grossly obvious in the last Fox News debate was how much things have changed in just a very short period, and if you watched it, or at least some of it as I did, you can see a desperation from the cable news networks to assert a power that they used to have over the process, which they are desperate to hang on to.  Among those under 10% types, there was a consistency to bend allegiance to the media moguls who wanted to set the presidential agenda around consultants and Beltway priorities to keep a globalist narrative on track.  And Trump wisely stepped beyond those controls, leaving essentially the old-world Republicans to battle it out for the bottom in an utterly meaningless debate.  While the discussion was occurring, Trump, of course, did his now famous Tucker Carlson interview, which very quickly gathered up a quarter of a billion views, so the differences in future state politics and the past that have been primarily controlled by consulting firms and media tycoons couldn’t be more obvious.  It’s all about the horse race and the coverage leading up to it for all the parasites who have injected themselves into the process and, over time, taken complete control of the narrative.  But that’s changing now, as it should have long ago.  All presidential politics should be about managing the republic and nothing else.  However, just like in sports, we have turned a game into it, and many people have figured out how to make a living off the coverage of that game. Some have even toyed with the idea that they can run the country if only they force the candidates to stay within the debate framework established by the media. 

One of the big arguments that were made toward Trump joining the Fox News debate was that if the President started a trend of not participating in discussions, then Joe Biden would likely skip doing any arguments in 2024.  Well, I have news for everyone: Joe Biden will never do any more debates.  His handlers will not put him on a stage to talk outside a controlled format.  It’s just not going to happen.  There will be no presidential debates in 2024, which, of course, all the people who make their living covering the horse race of politics find devastating.  But that’s a good thing because all those tag-alongs were useless anyway.  The debates in elections were meant to show people who the candidates were.  But they have evolved into setting the presidential agenda.  Everyone knows who Trump is; he’s the most famous person on Earth.  Nobody is going to learn anything new about Trump after a debate.  The only people who would benefit would be the people hosting the discussion and trying to sell airtime while covering the horse race of politics.  That is essentially all Fox News is and has been for a long time.  They cover the horse race but don’t care much for what horse wins.  They make their money off the event’s coverage, not the actual results in the aftermath.  This kind of culture has led to all the wrong priorities, leading blank-minded candidates to dance to the strings of media owners who then take the business of the republic and form fit it into their business needs. 

During his last term, Trump showed how easy it is to fix many of these issues that consultants have been getting in the way of for a long time, which has hidden itself behind the debate culture of the past.  That’s another reason the media hates Trump; he has exposed this game.  He doesn’t need the money that donors can give, and he doesn’t need the media to make him into a star.  He’s his own person, which infuriates the consultant class.  They can’t make him who he is; he doesn’t need them, which is one of the scariest realities they could have for a lot of people who are parasites in the world–not to be needed, and Trump doesn’t.  It also points out the political change where money is used to buy influence.  Money doesn’t have so much power these days because the game used to be that the media would make a star out of a candidate, and that star would then use that success to raise money, so the money could then be used to buy airtime on the media that created the star, to begin with.  Trump has stepped over that entire process altogether.  It’s all been a shell game that has benefited the wrong people.  The voters have been used to generate the money, but they never get what they want out of politics, leaving everyone perpetually hungry for the next horse race, which Fox News starts covering three years before an election.  It’s been a big scam that does nothing to help solve problems; it only makes money for those who cause all the trouble in the first place, and people are no longer interested.  That may be terrifying to the people who make money off politics, but it’s a changing business, and they’ll have to adapt. 

The Biden people ripped off the scab when they tried to put him in office with a campaign in his basement during Covid.  Trump and Biden had a debate that year, 2020, but they fell short of completing the traditional three that had preceded their terms.  Biden is a primarily handled media caricature kept in power by stolen elections, just as most communist countries stay in control.  Only in America people know better because we do have a free media culture.  And if traditional media doesn’t serve the people, then they will find alternatives, and they have.  And Trump’s campaign in 2024 will completely embrace that new media.  The old media isn’t doing anything useful anyway, so Trump doesn’t need them.  Biden has shown that he doesn’t need them either.  So, there won’t be any presidential debates in 2024.  Fox News hosting these debates is over; nobody cares.  And there will be no return to that type of shell game, rightfully, because money has essentially been taken out of politics.  Money can’t buy support the way it has been sold in the past.  People form opinions about political candidates much differently now, and consultants are finding themselves out of a job they never should have had in the first place.  The future of Trump is to move much faster than the Beltway consultants ever could, and the news will occur at a speed only fast-moving social media can cover.  Newsrooms with editors picking the top three stories of the day are a thing of the past.  The need to know, and quickly, is the wave of tomorrow, and people will form their opinions on their own, not to be shaped by the glitz of media machines and slick ad campaigns.  No, for a change, candidates will be judged by what they do, not what they say, and the future of politics is all about achievement, not manipulation, which is a needed change that we’ve needed for a long time. 

Rich Hoffman

I Don’t Like “Rich Men North of Richmond”: Crying about how unfair the world is won’t fix it

At first, I thought the Oliver Anthony song, “Rich Men North of Richmond,” was interesting.  I watched people rally to him in private concerts with great enthusiasm and was impressed that the song communicated to them in ways that good art does.  Great!  But the looters have climbed on over the last few weeks, especially at Fox News, where they thought they had found that populist connection with their audience again when they played it at their 2nd Place Debate for the under 10% presidential candidates.  And Oliver Anthony was featured on Disney-owned Good Morning America, the Joe Rogan Podcast, and many other outlets.  The world is in shock over this song, which I could call the kind of song that might have been featured on The Dukes of Hazzard years ago.  I liked it, but what was all this shock, and what did I think about it?  I like the young man, Oliver Anthony; it was wise for him to turn down several record labels and do his best to keep his music small and private—authentic.  That is, after all, what people like about it, and the moment he loses that, it’s all over.  Authentic is better than financially successful, I would say in most cases.  But as I heard the song a few times, I felt more like Oliver Anthony was just another slack-jawed hippie singing about how unfair the world is, as is typical in any bar on a Friday night as people ten beers into the evening throw darts and shoot pool drowning in cigarette smoke and cheap cologne laced with sweat, complaining about how corrupt Washington D.C. politicians are.  Complaining about how unfair life is does not solve the problem, and Anthony Oliver has made no claims to being a conservative.  He’s much more of a liberal, so, interestingly, many are accusing him of being an icon of the political right.  I would say, far from it. 

I’m a big tent Republican Party kind of guy, and if people who like Anthony Oliver’s music want to join the fun of a President Trump Republican Party, that’s fine with me.  I might look at their politics while we’re all in that big tent and shake my head.  Very few people are alive on earth as conservative as I am, so I am usually disappointed with people’s politics.  There is nothing new there.  But I am also one of the most tolerant of other people’s opinions.  The key to a future Republican Party is that many people are coming to it.  After the Trump mug shot, many from the “hood” are now converting from Democrats to Republicans, and I’ll happily hold the door open for them as they walk by with marijuana smoke streaming from their mouths, which I find objectionable.  But this is about winning, not so much converting everyone to my version of conservative politics.  There are union members who love Trump, and suddenly, we are all rooting for the same political figure, which is weird.  But it comes with a big tent.  If everyone wants to go camping and talk over the weekend, likely at the end of it, I will convert people over to my way of thinking, so I’m not worried about values.  But first, the right people must be elected to have the debate.  The Republic must survive as something we can all agree on.  So, I welcome all the drunks from the Friday night beer binge as they play Oliver Anthony turned up on their car stereos while driving around with the windows down. 

I’m not with Glenn on this. Don’t be weak in the first place. Life works much better.

The problem with Democrats, or people heading in that direction, is that they are typically victims in life, and victimization is dripping off that “Rich Men North of Richmond” song.  Republicans are can-doers, typically, Democrats are can’t be dones, so they seek the power of government to do what they can’t do for themselves.  So, from the outset, the two sides aren’t even functioning from the same planet, and if we want peace, everyone must at least want to achieve the same things.  And what’s going on with the Oliver Anthony song and the people drawn to it is that it correctly identifies why people feel like victims.  But I would say they don’t need to be victims because they have everything in their power not to be.  The American Constitution limits government power so people don’t have to be victims.  The Rich Men North of Richmond became that way because there were too many people at the bar on Friday drinking too much when they should have been paying attention to what was happening in the world.  The rich, powerful men in Washington became that way, not because they were the best or brightest.  But because, they were the most unethical and willing to take advantage of people who were too lazy to manage their own lives.  So, singing about it or drinking about it doesn’t solve a thing.  And the sad thing about that song is that so many people can identify with it.  They can relate because the music does speak to them.  But in a healthy society, it shouldn’t.  The song’s existence as a work of art is great because it gives us some measure of culture.  But the reality of that culture is pretty pathetic and passive.  It’s not the kind of stuff that inspires greatness. 

I’ve expressed my comments about this song to several people who have instantly taken offense to my opinions, something about me not having compassion for the “down and out,” whatever that means.  For people who have known me for a long time, they know what I’ve been through in life.  It was never an easy road, and I have lost everything many times over.  But there has never been one day where I have not woken up to make that day better than the day before.  I know pain, deep pain.  It’s much worse pain than Oliver Anthony is singing about—life-crushing pain.  But I’ve never felt the way about it as he does, to cry about how unfair it is.  I’ve always been a turn-lemons-to-lemonade person, a positive thinker who can turn even the fires of hell into drinkable ice water.  I’d love more songs like that.  If there were, then we could say those are the ballads of the Republican Party.  But this “Rich Man North of Richmond” is just more people complaining about how unfair the world is without having the courage to do anything about it themselves.  And that’s what makes a great nation.  Not a bunch of crybabies.  But people who can deal with the pain and make something good happen.  I can’t identify with what Oliver Anthony is singing about because I’ve never felt that way.  Not because it’s been an easy life but because I’m not wired that way.  And rather than yield to those emotions, I would say not to cry, don’t drink your problems away on a Friday night listening to that song.  Instead of being sad, read a book, do something constructive, and continually work to improve yourself and the world around you.  And I think the result will be impressive and something you can feel good about.  Complaining does not help.  And Oliver Anthony’s song is all about complaining when everyone should be getting to work to make the world a better place, starting with themselves. 

Rich Hoffman

Decoupling from China: Global communism was always only a drug-induced teenage fantasy

It wasn’t that long ago that I told the story about my LinkedIn account, which I no longer have because of an interview about decoupling from China once I released my book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business.  LinkedIn is a bunch of communist China-supporting advocates on the wrong side of history, so I don’t miss them at all, and that’s a topic all its own.  However, the fear of China taking over America is on many people’s minds, and I have assured people that such a possibility is unrealistic.  Even as much as the set-up goes back for many decades by domestic enemies in America who propped up China to become that device for a one-world government run by communism.  Now that people realize that was always the strategy, there is a lot of talk about decoupling the American economy from China.  And now that the cat is out of the bag, there are a lot of lost globalists out there who have no idea what to do next because their entire lives have been planned around this China model taking over the world and collapsing the American market.  People like Larry Fink and Ray Dalio have been moving a lot of money in that direction, and Wall Street has been betting on it for decades, significantly impacting people’s private 401K plans.  But I cover in my book how easy it is for America to defeat any enemy, or any individual can defeat global thugs like gunfighters defeated lots of nasty bad guys in a dusty street for personal preservation and the perpetuation of law and order for a thriving civilization to flourish.  As we speak, the China model is dying, propped up by phony economic numbers and corporations terrified the public will figure out what a lousy bet China has been for them.  So far, the media culture has prevented that knowledge from getting out, but reality is spectacularly showing itself. 

It all goes back to that dumb John Lenin song, “Imagine,” and the high school days of many of the characters causing so much communist trouble today.  It’s not hard to reflect on the young antics of Larry Fink way before BlackRock was created for him by the Federal Reserve looking to dump a bunch of phony money in the market to start a chain reaction toward a collapse and to prop up the China model of global communism.  These current billionaires, like Ray Dalio, smoke dope in the backseat of a car and listen to classic rock and roll songs in favor of communism and how dead America was, such as America Pie.  “They drove their Chevy to the levy, but the levy was dry.”  Once they got out of college, many drunken binges later, they were ready to cheerlead America’s destruction while at the same time calling it “smart investments.”  But their minds were never right and always filled with ill intent from their ideological teenage days where their lifelong philosophies of destruction and American hating sentiment solidified as they learned to take off the bra of the next pimple-faced girl in their back seats masked by marijuana smoke.  I could even go back even further as to how those songs, teenage customs of rebellion, and what those young people learned in school were given to them directly by the KGB as their parents watched old westerns on television at home and couldn’t see the bad guys riding into town.  They were looking for people on a black horse in a black hat.  Not a bunch of communists hidden behind popular culture dressed like the Beatles. 

None of this happened quickly, but it is coming apart very fast.  Now that the globalists are in prime time and have been caught on COVID-19 and many other horrendous enterprises, the world economy has been turning away from tyranny for several years, and that decoupling effort is well underway.  And I would offer that trust in China as a global partner is never coming back.  All the corporations that have invested in this merger with globalism are left at the altar as the timid Chinese are losing power by the day.  Their entire strategy depended on secrecy and intimidation, and that has not been the American public’s reaction, suddenly all too aware of the threat.  President Trump certainly wasn’t the cause; he was the effect of this awareness.  And after his previous term, the mask of China has been ripped off, and all those previous business efforts are failing.  Doing business with China has a stigma that was never there previously, and they will never be able to repair that impression now that people have it.  China and the global communists who have infiltrated American politics never had a plan B.  And as scary as it is to hear that China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil are all moving away from a dollar-controlled currency, the sentiment in America, where most of the world’s productivity is centered, is to pull back and internalize, not to partner with hostile communist countries leaving them very vulnerable as a result.  That is why decoupling from China is something most Americans now want to do, meaning all those investments toward China becoming the next dominating centralized government are disintegrating in front of their faces.  So many American billionaires have spent money in that direction, yet the scam is coming apart rapidly.

It won’t happen overnight, but the trend will be anti-China for many future decades until the communist government there, and in other places, is defeated.  Not just cosmetically but economically.  China has difficulty concealing that information from the world, and their state-controlled media has helped them.  But the writing is literally on the wall, so all these corporate alliances where globalism controlled by China was utilized are already considered busted investments.   And if you lose a lot of money because of it, don’t say you weren’t warned.  I warned everyone for several decades now, and just because the Chinese-loving LinkedIn people have essentially employed a strategy of “keep away,” the reality was eventually going to catch up to them.  The teenage fantasies that many of these modern-day losers have been trying to fulfill were never originally ideas built on the hopes and dreams of human ambition but on the backs of the compromised, drunken fools and overly sexed counter-culture druggies who bought the KGB message hook line and sinker only to find themselves dinner of the globalist communist effort.  And they have been slow cooking for several decades now, thinking they were the ones doing the cooking.  But actually, they were the ones being cooked, and now it’s time to eat.  And Americans, those who haven’t become domestic enemies in support of global communism, are the ones at the table with hungry stomachs.   And corporate America, which has fallen for this scam, is on the wrong side of history.  None of what happens next is what anybody thought would happen.  Of course, I’ve been saying it, and those who listened will prosper greatly.  But most didn’t, and the tough times will be their own.  They were warned but didn’t listen because they thought all that rebellious music and drug use they did as teenagers was the wave of the future, instead of the communist propaganda that it was all along. 

Rich Hoffman

The Vivek Ramaswamy I Know: He’s a good guy who wants to help save America for all the right reasons

It’s tough to be a front-runner, which is where Vivek Ramaswamy finds himself among the second-place contenders for President of the United States. As much as I like Vivek, I’m a Trump guy, and from the beginning, it has always been for me Trump, Trump, and more Trump when it comes to the White House. It’s Trump, or something much harsher, that does not consider civility. Trump was treated wrong during his first four years and has been treated wrong since he left office. And to set things right in America, Trump must be back in the White House. So, I have not covered Vivek Ramaswamy’s presidential campaign because he has been running against Trump. However, now that the smoke is starting to clear, and Vivek has shown that he’s never betrayed Trump and has adopted a very MAGA platform in the running for president, there are some things that we can talk about that have come up regarding his character. Now that the world has come to know Vivek Ramaswamy, there are concerns that he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing, the picked insurgent from Wall Street. After all, he is worth nearly a billion dollars, so he doesn’t exactly fit the profile of “one of us.” But then again, Trump is a billionaire, and as I’ve said many times, the Trump of the 80s and 90s is not the kind of person I would have voted for President. And Vivek is still a very young person, not yet 40. But now that he has overcome DeSantis in most polling, and everyone else, all the presidential candidates likely running to be vice president, Vivek is getting more negative media attention, which requires some clarity.

Before there was a book there was a bright young man who wanted to do something good.

I don’t think Vivek Ramaswamy is anything but sincere in his efforts to run for president and have a political future to continue something good that Trump has started. I know Vivek to a degree and have met him several times. He’s from my area of Cincinnati, so our paths have crossed a lot. I remember very well when he launched his political career at the Middletown Republican Party headquarters, talking about a book he was about to release called Woke Inc, which has gone on to bring great awareness to the dangers of corporate Marxism run by people like Larry Fink from the World Economic Forum. Vivek is a person of magnificent intelligence, and I would look to him as the next great economic advisor in the Trump administration. Vivek Ramaswamy has started Strive Management as an offering to take on the prominent money managers in BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard, operating out of Columbus, Ohio, instead of Wall Street, New York. Strive Management, I think, is the solution to the monster that the Federal Reserve has created. So, Vivek Ramaswamy isn’t just some dreamy Republican looking for attention. His heart is undoubtedly in the right place, and I can say that because of my interactions with him. Vivek came to an event that I was a part of organizing, and as he explained to me, it was there at that point in his life that he began to see the other side of things, and it inspired him to step away from being a CEO of biotech companies and instead do his part to save America. So, just because people are wealthy and successful, it doesn’t mean they have sold their souls away and are useless for the rest of their lives. People are always on a journey; they seldom stay the same throughout their lives. They evolve as they learn, and Vivek is still a young man and learning who he is.

I like Vivek quite a lot

Vivek Ramaswamy is a great talent, and I am not surprised he’s getting much serious attention as a presidential candidate.  I hope he is in that kind of position for many years.  As much as I support President Trump, it is time to start thinking about 2028 and beyond.  And I believe Vivek Ramaswamy is there to continue a MAGA platform that can help correct America’s severe problem with international finance, where America’s real problems start.  It’s not some faraway country that is the next military threat to American interests; it’s the local bank and the money manager of our 401K plans, and few people in the world understand that better than Vivek Ramaswamy.  And that will be just as much of a problem four years from now as it is currently.  So, I am very supportive of Vivek Ramaswamy, and I want him to succeed in this presidential venture so that he continues to offer his talents to politics to carry a MAGA platform well into the future.  And I have enough personal information about him by knowing him and talking to him to give my opinion on his motives in all this.  I think he’s a young person who has had great success and realized it wasn’t enough.  He has a gift for communication and wants to use it to save a country he loves.  I know the event that he told me about helped shape that moment for him in stepping away from being a wealthy CEO and becoming a political figure that could extend the Trump platform for the Republican Party well into the future.  With a wink and a nod, I would say to everyone, that’s why we have events like the one I’m alluding to.  Because you never know how many Vivek Ramaswamys are out there asking questions about their lives and looking for something meaningful to do next. 

I think Kari Lake is the leading vice-presidential candidate. But for many reasons, I believe Vivek Ramaswamy would be better. The more he talks, the better things get, and as a political party of Republicans, we want Vivek to speak as much as possible. I would love to have four years of Vivek as a vice president, getting on-the-job training for eight solid years as a president. The Vivek I know is a guy who made it big, and it wasn’t enough. Like Trump, he has independent wealth and wants to use his skills to help his country. His political activity has nothing to do with a desire to be near corruption and be recognized as necessary. He already is. But due to his financial independence, like Trump, he is turning to politics to give something back that few people in the world ever get. So, I think Vivek is running for president, not as a controlled asset of Wall Street. But as a person who has stepped over from the dark side of finance and can help fix a very broken problem with his unique skills. I don’t think Vivek ever meant to be on the dark side; he left college and stepped into the world to be successful for all the right reasons, the way society measures it. But these days, he’s more than that; he has grown. And that is why he’s running for office, and he should be a positive contributor to positive political efforts for many years. There are good guys out there, even in the world of politics. Trump came to this good guy desire late in life. And when it comes to Vivek Ramaswamy, it has come early, and perhaps just in time to help save the world.

Warriors and sell-outs, they are not the same.

Rich Hoffman

How to Make a Good Team in Sports and Politics: The point of everything is to give voters options

It will continue to be one of the universe’s great mysteries why people can look at sports teams and have opinions about what they should be doing, but they can’t apply those same methods to their lives.  This is a prominent issue every year in pre-season football with the mini camps as teams figure out which players they will cut and which will make their final roster.  Good teams figure out the right players and get them all pointed in the right direction for the success or failure of a season.  If the players are allowed to pick their fellow players, teams tend not to do so well.  It takes good leadership to figure it out and put people together who likely wouldn’t figure it out for themselves.  Good teams tend to have players playing together who wouldn’t otherwise be friends.  One of the mysterious qualities of leadership is to see things of value beyond the choice of friendships, and when it comes to sports, most people get it.  They understand what makes success and have many opinions about it.  But they can’t do it when it comes time to utilize those same skills in their lives.  That is certainly the situation in business.  And it is undoubtedly the case in politics.  The goal of all these endeavors is to figure out what success looks like, whether it be winning a Super Bowl, having a great business quarter, or providing a great political party to the voting public; once success is understood, then leadership needs to do what it must to give that result.  It’s not complicated.  Yet, it remains one of the least utilized factors in human interaction. 

There is only one correct measure to winning in politics; it is in a political party providing the voting public with good people they can vote for.  Any other action is missing the point.  If a political party is not focused on those attributes, then they aren’t trying to be a good political party.  I would say this is a problem all over America, in every aspect of county politics, no matter where we talk about it.  And that is certainly the case with the Butler County Republican Party in Ohio, where I live.  I can say that I know many people at that party, and I personally liked them all in some way or another.  If you sit down and talk to people, I can usually find something I like about just about anybody.  But the problem is, do they make an excellent political party just because you want them?  And in most cases, that is not the reality.  Politics should only aim to provide voters and taxpayers with good people to represent them best.  When political parties lose sight of that strategy, things go wrong.  And that is how RINOs in the Republican Party come to be.  Most people get into politics for ideological reasons.  However, the concessions they make to get along with other people become detrimental to their representation of the voter base, which is the value of the party brand.  If people have good representation in politics, then the brand of the party could be said to be good.  If voters don’t, they start to lose faith in the system, voter engagement lowers, and the direction of victory in politics changes dramatically.  When voters feel that the people they elect don’t represent them, we could say that politics has failed.

It’s just like the comparison with the sports team that desires to put a winning team on the field so people come to the games and feel good about the chances for a victory, so they buy beer and overpriced hot dogs at the concessions, which is really how the team makes their money, how they measure their value to the customer base.  If the team isn’t winning, there are fewer fans to buy hot dogs, to put it simply.  The same holds in politics.  I know many people who want to run for office within the Butler County Republican Party.  But, they do not feel they can remain people of integrity because of the restrictions of party politics.  So, we end up with the wrong people running for office while much better candidates that the public would love to have representing them are sitting on the sidelines.  This is a case where the players on the field pick people they like and are comfortable with, not the leadership of the voting public deciding how that team would shape out.  Too often, and this year of 2023 is undoubtedly a good example, many good people are not participating in the political process because they have learned that they aren’t in the cool kids club and will never be invited.  Because the party is picking the members, not the voters.  And instead of letting the voters shape the party, the players are forming the team; then they wonder why many fans are not supporting their losing effort.

Not everyone gets into politics for the same reasons.  I understand that some feel that getting into politics protects their business interests from a corrosive government and provides a barrier to their efforts to keep their businesses healthy.  These are not ideological people but practical ones who see government as dangerous to their interests in business, so they get involved in politics to protect their efforts.  And those people are trying to play nice in the sandbox with ideologically based people who enter politics for reasons of genuine philosophy.  And those kinds of people are scary to those looking for political stability.  I get it.  Just like a wide receiver on a football team being upset that a new tight end is playing the slot receiver role, the wide receiver might feel like the coaching staff is trampling on their turf.  But so what? Maybe that is the best way to become a winning team.  That doesn’t mean that the tight end should be run off the team to make the wide receiver feel like they have job security and aren’t threatened by challengers.  Challenges make the team better.  But then better for whom?  For the players or the fans?  That is what must be decided, and what I have seen from the GOP in general, especially since Trump has been out of office, is a party for the players, not for the voters.  It’s the players making the teams they want to play with.  They are not trying to give the voting public the best representatives they can get.  And if a political party isn’t doing that, they aren’t trying to be the best they can be for their communities.  While such a concept may not be complicated, it remains the biggest stumbling block to any successful venture within human endeavor.   And that is certainly the case in politics.  Some great people want to participate, but they have been told in so many words or less that politics is about maintaining friendships and that everyone needs to stay in their lane and behave.  But that is not what voters want, and until political parties listen, the public will continue to be let down by the result.

Rich Hoffman

Of Course, There Will Be Revenge: The Government crossed the line and justice must be utilized

What did they think was going to happen? Did they feel a criminal government of thugs would take over America as communists did in Russia, China, Cuba, and many other places without a fight?  Apparently, they aren’t brilliant in government, which was evident by the actions of Jack Smith and the Biden Department of Justice hit team.  Just because Trump said in a statement that if they came after him, he would go after them.  That’s a fair statement.  They won’t be able to hold power forever, especially illegally acquired power.  People still trust elections, and if elections don’t work, they will turn to something more brutal.  But accepting the dominance of some centralized government power isn’t part of the discussion.  It’s not going to happen.  And no, to answer many people’s daily questions, “Don’t you worry about being assassinated?”  No, I don’t worry about that kind of thing.  I see those types of events as opportunities for that kind of behavior to flow the other way.  Much the way Trump views it.  And that’s fair.  Intentions don’t equal results, and these loser leftists have many ideas about how the world should work.  But they cannot perform those intentions.  Their only success has been hiding their true strategies, which more people can now see for what they always were.  I’ve warned about them for many decades, and now people realize what I have been saying is more accurate than they wanted to believe.  But that’s OK.  I’m good; however, they all want to play in the sandbox.  But accepting tyranny and communism is not one of the outcomes.  And they should have done their homework and realized that before they went down this very dark path.  If they wanted a fight, which they do, they have one now. 

Of course, there is going to be revenge.  It can come from a second Trump term where the Democrats and their minions in the FBI take their long-deserved licks, or it will come in another form.  But punishment is coming, and it must.  Otherwise, there is no country.  There is no more significant threat to national security than the Democrat Party, filled with communists who want to take over America.  There is no threat in China from any world power that is more a threat to America than these insurgents in the American government who openly support communism.  Think of all the poor young people who have fought in wars in Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan.  Any of them, wars where people have died and had their arms and legs blown off for some fight for freedom only to find out that the Biden administration represents a global insurrection toward communism that was planned all along, under the disguise of fighting for freedom.  Ukraine was finally the war that revealed the plan and the international money laundering operation it is.  Meanwhile, there are members of the House and Senate who are still cheerleading more war for all the same dumb reasons when everyone knows it’s not freedom we are fighting for.  It’s tyranny.  Then we peacefully elected President Trump to fix this government disconnect and see what they are doing to him now, using court cases to keep him from being on the campaign trail during the primary season starting on January 2nd, 2024.  That is a bit too obvious, but that’s what we are dealing with.  And they think they will get away with these massive abuses of power.  No way.  They have crossed the line with some truly nasty stuff. 

Hey, conservatives didn’t start it.  For way too long, we have been playing nice, getting pushed around by these losers in the Democrat party, getting suckered by the stupid Saul Alinsky book, apply mobster tactics to politics in genuinely destructive ways.  Communists have been backdooring our American government unchecked for many decades now, really over 100 years, and now it’s time to put a stop to it.  We weren’t the ones who started any of this.  But it is our task to finish it and to send a message to future generations.  When Mitch McConnell said that he didn’t think it was good for the country to impeach Biden, where was that sentiment when Congress was impeaching Trump twice?  But when it’s his partner in the Swamp from the senate, they’ve all taken money, much of it from the enemy itself, China.  It’s a kind of Senate club, so suddenly McConnell thinks it’s terrible to impeach a president because he would be exposed as a crook.  Many of them would be.  Likely, most of the Beltway culture is all in on the bad stuff, and they all have it coming.  They must be punished for their terrible actions, and they hope desperately to kick the can down the road just a bit longer.  They forget that the government is not in charge in America.  They are representatives.  They represent us.  They don’t rule over us.  And they certainly don’t get to come to our homes and assassinate people who disagree with them or arrest them in violation of the Bill of Rights.  No, no, no, the government is not in charge, and they aren’t going to be.  They have overplayed their hand, and Trump is the result.  And that is as good as it will ever get for them.

The essence of the ridiculous case against Trump on this latest Washington D.C. indictment involving January 6th, 2021, is that President Trump and everyone else has a legal obligation to accept what the government tells us about its election results and that we had a duty to get those results without question, or we run the risk of persecution.  The Marxist prosecutors intend for a liberal D.C. court to provide a caselaw as a continuation of the Alex Jones Sandy Hook case that went against the media personality last year, a clear violation of free speech.  And if it were to go against Trump, it would indeed be overturned in the Supreme Court.  But by then, the communists of the Biden administration hope to eradicate that court in the next rigged election of Joe Biden.  So these guys are playing for keeps, but our side has not matched their aggressiveness out of kindness.  But there certainly isn’t anything wrong with what Trump said about getting revenge.  Trump is the revenge candidate, and many Americans want it.  And if they can strike back against these corrupt government officials through a peaceful election, they certainly will.  But as I did say, after January 6th, I did not see what the rest of the world did, an insurrection.  To my eyes, the government got off lucky.  People were generally well-behaved.  What did they think people would do when a corrupt government stoked the fires of injustice?  And what do they think will happen in the future with continued abuse?  People have a right to be upset, and they are.  The miscalculation that people in America will fall into a docile state is another miscalculation by some dumb people who have mistaken kindness for complicity.  Revenge is on many American minds, and they will get it, one way or another.  The government needs to come clean if they want to sit at the table in the future.  It is a privilege for the government.  Not a divine right.  And understand the game, especially regarding the special counselor assigned to Hunter Biden.  They know they went too far and are looking for a slow walk to show fairness.  But they have no intention of doing anything about it.  They only intend to hide their activism through a mask of fairness because they know how angry people are. 

Rich Hoffman

It’s Not About Unity in the Community or the Power of a Vocal Minority: But entirely a standard of right and wrong

This will be a nice yard sign for Trump supporters who can’t wait for next year to vote for, or against some anti-American political enemy.

Because I, like many people involved, I must at least provide fair warning. Enjoying people is one thing; agreeing with them is an entirely different matter. This was grotesquely obvious while driving by Lakota West in West Chester, Ohio, on August 8th, 2023, where the special election was a significant focus. As far as the eye could see from the road were Vote No signs, a blatant reminder that the progressive government school there is a factory of liberal politics intent to convert confiscated wealth from property owners and to turn it into Democrat activism. And many Republican-leaning people have been suckered into the game, even to support it against conservative, traditional values. Even on issues like Issue 1, which would have made it more difficult to change the Ohio Constitution, Lakota schools are aggressive in favor of change. That’s the purpose of their existence, to change our traditional American culture into some monstrosity of liberalism. And that election day was just a reminder of that sentiment and the genuine catastrophe of the upcoming fall election in November. Lynda O’Conner is up for re-election, and many people close to the matter have been hoping that she wouldn’t run because the opposition against her is on a crusade that has not been seen at Lakota in all the years of its existence. Before things get too messy here, I would call to mind a few monumental memories of the past, such as when the Tea Party had to take a stand against John Kasich after he turned into a progressive after his loss with the state labor unions. They turned him into a progressive pretzel, and many of us worked hard to destroy him because we had to. In a few short years, you don’t see him around anymore. And many of the people who are now pushing for Lynda O’Conner to be re-elected this fall, after all that’s happened, went after Speaker of the House John Boehner and essentially knocked him out of the Republican Party because he was too much of a RINO.

The plan is for these to be everywhere

It’s an old game; we all get it. Friendships are made with people who are politically dangerous so that they can be controlled and perhaps worked against their original positions. And that certainly has been the case with the Butler County Republican Party. It’s always tempting to be invited to the cool kids’ table just so they can control you, not because they really like you. I just spoke about an excellent event with Nancy Nix where some of us have had some cantankerous hostilities toward each other. But at that event, we put a lot of that aside and had a nice evening together and enjoyed the comedians who were performing. It was a nice story. But all that is about to go sideways with Lynda O’Conner, which is fine. But the belief that friendships and private meetings would turn the resistance against her into captured assets of compliance with party sentiments was ill-advised and has only stirred up the hornet’s nest. The people involved with this next generation’s fight against the progressive objectives of Lakota schools will not be enamored with the shiny keys of friendship and gaining a seat at the table with the cool kids of power. The people I know standing against Lynda O’Conner for this upcoming election have a moral problem with her. It goes far beyond even calling her a RINO. They are not interested in Unity for the Community or coming together as a Republican party; this is all about right and wrong and standing up to the intrusions of a progressive political machine that works against conservative values in every way possible. And the passion is much greater than in those days of Governor Kasich and John Boehner. Many of the people involved in those old battles are now part of the cool kid’s club, and they like it, and they are supporting Lynda for the upcoming election and have been whispering in her ear and thinking that little secret meetings and emails of consensus building might work as it had on them in the past. I heard about some of these attempts while driving by Lakota West on that August election day, and I feel compelled to warn everyone that this is different, and there will be severe brand damage in the aftermath. This is unlike anything yet experienced in politics, which says a lot. And I don’t think many people understand.

There is a really graphic version of this one that will be used later

The advice that I have been giving to people is that this is a throw-away election. If a new school board will not work with a three to two majority to eliminate excessive administrators to save runaway cost losses at the government schools, then what’s the point of any of it? Cutting 20 or 30 equity and inclusion administrative hires could save many millions of dollars, which Lakota needs to do. But there are a lot of soft-shelled tacos out there, some in the GOP who would be running as Democrats if it wasn’t Butler County who want to feel good about themselves by supporting a big government school. The trans issue has been a challenge forcing people’s real politics to emerge along those lines. I would say that because of the way everyone has treated Darbi Boddy as a school board member to let them choke on it. Let the rope go and let Lakota destroy itself; let the liberals have their way. Let them do what Biden has done to the country because then and only then will people wake up. The campaign to fight them will become more apparent when people see what they are about and can’t focus their union efforts of progressivism against someone like Darbi. And for the soft-shelled types who want to support Lakota under Lynda’s leadership, the tax levy they have in mind will change their sentiments quickly. And we’ll be back to fighting tax increases instead of legitimately trying to control the costs.

The people I have been talking to who are thinking of running and don’t think they have much of a chance, I have told them the same thing I’ve said to Lynda in the past. The union threshold is around 7000 voters. That is a baked-in number. If you want to beat them, you must get over 8000 voters, however possible. Lynda hopes to blend that a bit with GOP support, and enough RINO types are willing to cross that line because they don’t want more of a fight than what we have seen so far with Darbi on the board. Yet Lynda’s role against Darbi has woken up something new in the Lakota school district that goes far beyond typical political disagreements. Something that traditional politics has no way of dealing with. This is a battle over ethics and the essence of right and wrong, and the way Lynda handled the superintendent issue and the protection of children at Lakota is a deeply emotional issue that there is no compromise on. This isn’t like the days when the Tea Party wanted John Boehner out, and a more Tea Party type like Warren Davidson was put in, and everyone shook hands and ate a sandwich together. This is more of a civil war, casualties included. Many Lyin’ Lynda types have been waiting for this opportunity, and it’s only fair to warn everyone involved. Because I generally like everyone involved. But right and wrong are not negotiable. That’s certainly always been my position. If people wanted to be friends, okay, I’ve been willing. But I’ve never been willing to compromise right and wrong as determined by conservative, Republican politics. I’ve never been some dope-smoking libertarian. I’ve always been a traditional Republican party supporter. However, some of this new generation are perfectly willing to abandon any pretense of friendship to defend traditional, conservative values. And they are far more interested in doing what is suitable than compromising with what’s wrong to have unity in the community and an intact Republican party. And I provide that warning with sincerity for the good things in the past that have been done and the good memory of them.

These are the kind of teachers Lynda, Julie and Doug want teaching your kids at Lakota. Here is a recently hired teacher at Endeavor Elementary

Rich Hoffman

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It’s a Wonderful Life in Butler County, Ohio: Because Nancy Nix is in it

I don’t usually talk about the social life that goes on at fundraisers for the GOP, but there were so many interesting stories at the latest Nancy Nix event at the Elks Club in Hamilton, Ohio, in Liberty Township. But there was a moment of absolute truth that was worth recognition. At this event, some hilarious comedians told great jokes that made the audience laugh hard. But hidden in those exchanges was talk about the movie It’s a Wonderful Life that was applied to the life of Nancy Nix and was very accurate. Like all comedy, the truest things are often the funniest because of their roots in the things many people hope to remain secret. But in talking about them in a comic setting, the mass exposure to truth sets off the relief valve, and people bond due to the shared experience. And ironically, then, while people are sharing those unique moments of honesty, it opens the door to profound truths, and that was the comparison of Nancy Nix to the character from that excellent Christmas movie to George Baily, the honest banker from the fictional town of Bedford Falls. Nancy is now the auditor for Butler County, Ohio, as she has been the treasurer for many years. And the people in the room at her fundraiser were all influencers to a vast degree, and it was a moment where your life flashes in front of everyone, and a potent truth becomes apparent, what would the world be like without you and in the case of Nancy, how much better is Butler County, Ohio because she is in it. And the answer is cinematically evident in the ways that happy endings to movies are most hoped for. Only this was reality.

Things have been contentious in the Butler County Republican Party this past year. You can tell that without a Republican in the White House to set the temperature in the room of politics; people have drifted. When Trump was president, more Republicans were unified toward an America First agenda than they have been in the year of indictments, now that Covid has been over and another election year was coming up. Biden has been a massive but predictable failure, and Republicans, through federal, state, and local elections, were finding themselves lost a bit, and there have been some significant disagreements. There was nothing so wrong that they couldn’t shake hands at the next event, such as the Nancy Nix fundraiser. But some of them were very serious and contentious within local party politics. And in some cases, there were very emotional disagreements, politics as a blood sport was messy, and people were hurt in the process, which brings up the entire problem of whether or not people should even get along if they’ve done terrible things to each other. Is it even honest, moral, or proper to think such things? In many ways, the problems that George Baily had at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life, the entire premise of the movie was that he wanted to commit suicide because he was being crushed by the immense evil in the world, and his good sensibilities just couldn’t hold up to the pressure. For a dramatic comedy, that is a severe way to start or end the movie. And those same themes were undoubtedly in the air at Nancy’s fundraiser. What was the purpose of party politics if so many people disagreed with each other within their party? Was it more important to be authentic to your beliefs or to find a way to get along?

Ironically, the solution to George Baily’s condition was to see how the world would be without him, to be shown how much his impact on his community was better because he was in it.  And if he had committed suicide, so many lives would fall apart, and much evil would be unleashed.  But authentically, that was what happened at the fundraiser for Nancy Nix; through the comedy of some very talented people, the life of Nancy Nix was put into a sharp focus by how the room had united behind her, and people put aside their differences, if just for a few hours because she is a genuinely good person who makes Butler County so much better. After all, she is in it.  And the comedy of the evening was essentially a celebration of her life, even if moment to moment it doesn’t feel like it, or it doesn’t seem as though anybody ever cares to do the right thing.  When someone like Nancy Nix is being celebrated, it all comes into focus, and the best in people finds its way to the surface.  And the world is indeed a much better place.  It is a wonderful life, and when many talented people find focus through friendships, it makes life better for everyone else, especially Butler County. 

I enjoyed talking to some people I hadn’t seen in a while, primarily because of all the contentious issues.  I stay pretty busy anyway, and my wife and I have been traveling for most of the summer.  So it was good to see so many people again in one place and to see them generally happy and unified.  That is what politics is all about, managing community resources and nothing more.  All the personal needs don’t mean anything because the entire effort is about ensuring people get what they need out of government.  It gets complicated because politics is a popularity contest, and you have to raise money, work with other people, and find a way to work with others who are all doing the same things.  Maintaining authenticity can be difficult under the best circumstances, so I’m pretty forgiving of mistakes because there is often so much pressure, and things go wrong.  But often, good intent does improve the world positively for people in general.  And I couldn’t think of anybody in that room, which is most of the major players of Butler County, who weren’t doing what they did with the best of intent, from their perspective.  When we talk about the path to Hell being paved with good intentions, that is often how everyone arrives there.  But what prevents hell from happening is when those good intentions are focused behind the efforts of a genuinely good person, such as Nancy Nix.  And she is the real deal.  Whatever preferences other people have, like in the famous Jimmy Stewart movie, their efforts are made better when a good person is the glue that holds them all together.  And that is the role Nancy Nix has in Butler County politics.  It’s why Butler County is one of the best Republican Parties in the nation and continues to do great work for the people who vote.  Butler County has many talents, which is always apparent when they find themselves in one place together.  The difference in leadership is when it becomes evident that Nancy Nix, like the fictional character of George Baily, is not such a fantasy but a reality in Butler County after all.  And sometimes, we do get happy endings, and everyone is better for it, which was evident at the Nancy Nix fundraiser.  We have much to be proud of regarding the Butler County Republican Party and that life is worth living, rather than jumping off a bridge because it doesn’t always feel that way.  

Rich Hoffman

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