Tag: GOP

Isaac Adi Gets Violent Again: An Interview with Darbi Boddy

It has been interesting to watch the trajectory of two school board officeholders who essentially started at the same place but took two different paths upon being elected to satisfy the parameters of accomplishment. Obviously, there is more to the conflict this past week between Isaac Adi and Darbi Boddy on the Lakota school board, where the police investigated a condition of assault, where Isaac, yet again under pressure, lashed out at someone trying to record his public behavior. Darbi is a tough young lady who can handle conflicts just fine. But what’s interesting is how RINOs are created because once elected, Isaac went into an appeasement mode of the very kind of people he was supposed to be engaging with, whereas Darbi has stayed faithful to her campaign promises. I talked to Darbi about all this while we were both at a March for Children rally in downtown Hamilton, Ohio. Darbi never advertised herself as anything but a fighter for children’s rights, whereas the same was expected from Isaac. But once elected, what was witnessed was an instant barrage of influencers who often inject themselves into the newly elected person’s life, and the temptation to appease these new faces is powerful, and most people never develop resistance to it. When I see these clips of Isaac Adi acting violently toward people who put cameras on him to record aggressive behavior, I see that conflict in his actions. Isaac is not alone in this problem. Being authentic has a freedom of its own which was quite apparent when I was able to talk to Darbi on camera about her first few years as a school board member at Lakota. You can see freedom of conscience in her because she has stayed true to herself. But others have not, and that often leads to the kind of obvious frustrations on the face of Isaac Adi in the footage of him lashing out at Darbi.

I worked with both Isaac and Darbi during their campaigns because many of us wanted to help Lynda O’Conner have conservative votes to work with on the Lakota school board. We felt sorry for Lynda and tried to help her. Isaac and Darbi essentially ran together as a package during the campaign, and they won their elections easily. But as soon as the election was over, Lynda started talking about controlling the school board members in ways that didn’t sound very Republican. And immediately, the OSBA (Ohio School Board Association) started to do its work; it’s like a club. They invite new school board members into the warm embrace of friendship, and it doesn’t take much for that type of romance to entice lonely people or people with a natural personality to want to please others. Admittingly, that was a concern I had about Isaac during the campaign; he was so friendly and so outgoing that I was concerned that he would find the desire to appease the other school board members too lucrative when conflict was the best approach. One thing that we did talk about that didn’t make it on camera was Darbi’s support network, with Kelly Kohls at the National Leadership Council (NSBLC), which offers an alternative to the support of the more labor-union-controlled OSBA. Lynda O’Conner and I have talked specifically about the OSBA; she thinks it’s a good organization. I think along the lines of Darbi and Kelly on the matter. But the obvious results are in the influences that led to Darbi doing what voters expected on the Lakota school board and Isaac looking to appease all these new friends, which is the game of politics that happens at every level.

As I explained to Darbi, I am proud of her, as many are. I’ve been doing this kind of thing, supporting candidates in many ways, for many years, and most of the time, it results in a dud. It’s like going to the fireworks store for the Fourth of July and buying a bunch of fireworks that never blow up. You have great expectations, but they just fizzle out when you light the fuse. Whereas with Darbi, she has exploded in all the right ways that were very satisfying and surprising. Every now and then, your hopes and expectations are met, which is the case with Darbi. She was not seduced by all the forces that have taken public education in the wrong direction, and that has been great to see. The ratio for me is about 10 to 1. Of every ten candidates I have worked with over the years, you occasionally get one Darbi. Of course, I knew when such an honest person like Darbi, who simply wanted to do an excellent job as a school board member, confronted a system with so much bad behavior in it, and that bad behavior was hidden from the public through friendships that were designed to conceal it; then there would be conflict. I get emails from people all over the country from people who are political moderates who are jealous that they don’t have someone like Darbi Boddy on their school board. I am very proud of her and would love to have three or four more like her, people who could resist the temptations of group consensus at the expense of voter responsibility.

I brought this up during our talk, how one player for the Reds inspired many others to get better. In many ways, Darbi has been that person for Lakota

We don’t elect people into politics to get along, which is becoming more evident in national politics. We don’t expect physical altercations either, but one of the problems that lead to so much corruption is the appeasement of peers, which is at the heart of the problem at every level. At Lakota, at the fundamental community level, we can see two people who started in the same place and quickly went in entirely different directions. From both perspectives, they had good intentions, yet during our talk, Darbi hit the nail on the head; much of the evil that starts in the world of politics doesn’t come from some pitch-forked devil; it’s often the friendly face who wants to buy you dinner and treat you like a king or princess. Of course, they expect something in return. But it’s often hard to see because it feels good to be liked. Some people will do anything to be liked; once others know that about you, they own you. And at that point, elected representatives often go bad when they fall in love with being loved because, just like a manipulative spouse, once they start jerking around your feelings, you lose the authenticity of why people voted for you in the first place. And at the heart of the conflict between Darbi and Isaac, two people who ran for office together and had been friends, is this villain of appeasement. The lucrative nature of being accepted in the warm embrace of friendship within institutional confinement is a nector all its own. And thankfully, in our community, Darbi didn’t fall for it, much to the frustration of those who wanted to seduce her into it. That’s why people tell me they are jealous of us in Lakota because they see the clear value in elected representatives like Darbi Boddy. The controversy only comes from those who want to steer her in a different direction. But she has stayed with the voters authentically, and people appreciate that, as they do with all people who do so. And with Isaac, it’s frustrating when you can’t please everyone, and that comes out in these outbursts caught on camera twice now. As Darbi said to me, she gets tired of how people talk behind closed doors and speak in public. That duality is the source of the problem because an honest person would be the same in any format. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

No, Trump Will Not Be Going To Jail: People won’t put up with it

At this point, it’s pretty much a joke; anybody with half a brain sees what’s going on with the election of 2024. Jack Smith and the corrupt DOJ, the Democrat asset FBI, and the mechanisms Beltway politics have weaponized the law to keep Trump from being able to even run for president because they know what they did. They cheated in the 2020 election, Biden never had 81 million votes, and they hoped everyone would forget about it and move on by now. But the Republican Party did not return to a controlled asset of Democrats, it has stayed the party of Trump, and now there is a lot of panic among those who have been committing all these crimes using the power of government to do so. Now that they are desperate beyond anything that public relations firms can manage, they are showing just how bad they really are. We are dealing with a corrupt criminal government that is struggling to hold power, and they are using that acquired power to destroy their political opponents. And the hope is that Republicans will play along like they always do and get punched in the face and won’t punch back like Democrats and their radical communist advocates do. And those big government types are hoping that Trump will go to jail over this classified document situation, which isn’t going to happen. Trump isn’t going to be in trouble over anything for a lot of reasons. There is no possible path for putting Trump in jail. No power of a corrupt government that can do it. No, Trump will not be in handcuffs and be led to jail by the Biden administration or their minion, Jack Smith, and the DOJ. It simply can’t happen.

The first reason it won’t happen is that Trump was president, and unlike the classified documents cases of Pence, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden, none of them were ever president.  Trump was, and he had a right to classify or declassify anything he wanted to. Don’t listen to a word that goofy Bill Barr has to say on the matter; several problems with the Presidential Act presents major issues for the Biden case. First of all, notice how the Attorney Generals for Trump were both anti-Trump and were not activists in the way that Merrick Garland has been for Biden. Jeff Sessions talked tough but was far more interested in appeasing Democrats than in doing the work of the Trump administration. Then to show the Swamp creatures in the Beltway that Trump wasn’t going to put someone loyal to him in the Attorney General spot, he appointed Bill Barr to appease the RINOs, which obviously was a mistake because, like many of the bootlickers in the Trump administration, Bill Barr was working against Trump as much as the Democrats were, and he doesn’t see the law the way rationality expresses it. The obvious abuse of the law is there for all to see; with Republicans, they are supposed to be fair, but Democrats can do anything they want with their Departments of Justice. No, if they make a big deal about this records act, then there aren’t many Democrats who can live up to the case law, and suddenly the can of worms will be fully opened, which is a standard nobody can live with. Sure, Democrats and Rino Republicans like Barr are more than willing to go there for the short-term goal of stopping Trump. But in doing so, they’ll destroy themselves because they won’t be able to live up to the standard they will have created for themselves. 

Then there is the other issue that nobody wants to discuss. Who in their right mind thinks that roughly 30% of the population is going to allow such an obvious injustice of the law to go on without violence? For the people who believed that January 6th was the worst thing that ever happened in America, they need a history lesson. There is no instance in a free nation where an authority-driven government got away with such a blatant coup without violence checking the action. This China model that these globalists are using think that the same methods used in Asia will work in America. Not even close. Asians are a collective-based culture where people tend to follow orders from centralized authority, the way a village chief used to.

In America, there has been an assumption of freedom, and now that reality has shown people otherwise, many hotheads are ready to boil. They have remained peaceful because they assumed that elections were open and honest. But now it’s obvious that they have been rigged and that many of our federal politicians have sold us out and think they are going to get away with continuing to support that kind of system. And people are mad. Trump gives them a peaceful option to return our country to a representative nation. But if it’s not, which is clearly the assumption of the Biden White House, well then plenty of people are ready for a fight in the street. And there aren’t enough radical leftists to perform that task of fearful enforcement. We’re talking about a government that can’t even install a water fountain. How are they going to bring over 300 million people under their rule without manipulating them from the shadows? They have a slight problem; people used to give them the benefit of doubt. But not anymore. The assumption of good deeds and that we are all on the same team as Americans is no longer a motivating tagline for peace and justice. If this government tries to put Trump in jail to keep him from being elected, then people are going to lose their cool really fast. 

It’s actually pretty funny how stupid some of these globalists and big government types are. They obviously don’t understand how regular people think. There was no way to pull off this tyrannical, Chinese-style coup without having complete control of the media and of guns. And this government has done neither, nor will they ever. They have shown their intentions to do so and to copy the Chinese in every way. But America is not China. People in America are a lot more hot-tempered, and the only thing that has maintained the balance is the assumption that people could pick their own representatives in government. On January 6th, 2021, a very small percentage of the population became angry when they felt their government slipping away from them, so they protested at the Capitol Building. But that was nothing, and I said so after the event. I heard what the political left was saying about it and had to shake my head. What did they think would happen if people really got upset and Trump wasn’t even on a ticket to vote for? Or that their vote didn’t matter at all. That’s where a lot of people are now, and before they just put up and shut up, a large percentage of the population will look for other options. And it wouldn’t be their fault.

America’s founding documents clearly establish that tyrannical governments must be dismantled from time to time, and this is one of those times. Trump is the peaceful means to do so. Throwing him in jail will only unleash a level of anger that has never been seen domestically in America. Other places in the world, perhaps. But radical communists are not the only ones who can play hardball. And before people in America become mind numb compliant, there will be expressions of anger, to say the least, toward these perpetrators of corruption, in a method that history will certainly take note of. When people can no longer fly their Trump flags to protest a corrupt government, what does anybody think will be the next thing? It won’t be rainbows and smiley faces, that’s for sure.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

People Want a Winner in Trump: We have a right and obligation to change our government, and elections are the most peaceful way to do it

There seems to be a lot of mystery as to why so many people support President Trump, even with over 70 criminal counts against him, multiple indictments from several states, and is facing almost 600 years in jail. Yet he’s the choice pick for president in 2024 because people get it. They understand what’s going on even if the details are too complicated or evil for them to grasp fully. We have suffered for all too long under the kind of sell-off that Speaker McCarthy just tossed America’s way with that ridiculous debt ceiling deal, an obvious loss to a feeble old man in Biden. McCarthy just signed up, without much pushback in negotiations, to 50 trillion dollars in debt by 2030. Republicans, even with a majority, never do anything when they have power, they are controlled opposition at best, and America ends up losing time and time again to radical leftist Marxists and open warfare communists. The perks are too good in government, and the temptation to become corrupt far too great, and we lose most of who we send to those positions. That is, until President Trump. He’s independently wealthy and can afford to be truly independent. So, he is free from corruption in the way it typically occurs. And people see in him an opportunity to have a real representative in the Executive Branch. They know the government is corrupt, and they have tried again over the years to find solutions to these problems, and nothing has worked except for voting for President Trump. So they are standing behind him no matter what these criminal government conspirators throw at him because they are tired of losing. People want Trump because he is a winner, he expects to win, and they understand that all these criminal indictments are simply a government that wants to take out their rival before they must compete with them in an election that will be harder to steal this time around. 

We are dealing with people who have no respect for American sovereignty and have rigged global politics to their mobster-style governing practices. When people like Jim Comey, the former FBI Director, say that Trump does not follow the Constitution, they mean in the way that they have interpreted it for their benefit. I have read the Constitution many times; I always have a copy near me within a few feet. Two of my favorite books are The Federalist Papers and The Anti-Federalist Papers, so I have an excellent grasp on what the Constitution says, and it doesn’t point to the reality that Comey and this Jack Smith loser think it says, where the government makes up rules on the back of a napkin and then expects society to enforce the laws, they create to hold power. No, the Constitution is all about limiting government and its tempting abusees from doing precisely what this Biden government has been doing. If we were not a country with over 300 million guns in it, growing daily, this government would go door to door as they wanted to during Covid and impose power on people in abusive ways. Just over the weekend of June 10th, 2023, the White House, seeing how they are getting killed with information leaks that directly tie Biden to bribery deals to Ukraine, and China are hoping to resurrect Covid protocols at the White House for no other reason than to exert power because the proof from a lot of investigations is closing in. And the government is doing the only thing it knows how to do; they are exerting power to warn people off coming after them. Because they fight, lie, cheat, and steal power so they can abuse it. Yet the Constitution is designed to protect people from that power, and ultimately, that’s why they are struggling now, to maintain the illusion of power, because they can’t go door to door and harass people, and that elections are supposed to be free, and they have been caught tampering with them. 

Who doubts now that President Trump was removed from office with a government-organized coup in 2020? With all these indictments by a corrupt government, its evident that what we are seeing is an attempted Marxist coup in America by dedicated lefties who work in the FBI, the CIA, and the entire Democratic Party, RINOs who come along for the fun of it, similar to what we witnessed in China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, and Brazil recently. Only in America do we have an expectation of Constitutionally guaranteed free speech and the rights of guns to defend ourselves from such ostentatious exhibitions of power. The Marxist enemy that wants global communism through corporate capture and finance expects people just to take it. But Trump is their peaceful resolution to the matter, their attempt to recapture their government Constitutionally from insurgent forces that have now shown their hand. Kevin McCarthy and the House Republicans continue to lose to these globalists losers? People are tired of losing to such people and will vote for President Trump because they are tired of it. And I’ll go on to say that if this election does not represent the people’s will, there will be a lot of trouble. If people don’t have Trump to vote for and that hope for a peaceful resolution is taken away from them, then there will be serious trouble for this government, and the people will have a right to do it. 

It says clearly in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence signed by Congress on July 4th, 1776, that “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, (toward personal freedoms of the people involved) it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government.” With all this talk about the National Archives and presidential acts, and who can have classified information and that kind of thing, you can read that for yourself on the documents kept there. It’s the fundamental right of all Americans. If they don’t like their government, they can get rid of it and make a new one. And that’s the plan with Trump. People would prefer a peaceful end to all this mess, but we are not supportive of 50 trillion dollars and a government that tries to destroy former presidents just because they don’t like them. What we are dealing with in America is a government not accountable to the people it’s supposed to represent, so of course, Trump is at the top of the charts for another term. And people don’t care a bit about the charges a corrupt group of Marxists come up with to attempt to stop Trump. For most people, Trump is better than an armed removal of this corrupt government, and if anybody wants to refer to the National Archives, they are welcome to. It’s the law in America to limit the powers of government. Not to give them a blank check as Kevin McCarthy just did, and the other soft-shelled RINOs in Congress that thought playing nice with communist radicals was more important than representing the interests of the people and losing to them over and over again like a bunch of fools is not it. People want winners, and in Trump, they have one. And they want that kind of person running their government, even the independents. The Biden people and their malicious attachments know how bad they are and what they have been doing, and they are hoping to control the wrath of the people they have screwed over. But not this time. Punishment is coming for them, one way or another.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Way to Have Honest Elections: Just call Frank LaRose in Ohio, and he can show you how

How could anybody not think that election fraud is a real problem? After all, look at the amount of money that is at stake, the enemy countries out there who want to put people sympathetic to their cause in our government for leverage. Likely, election fraud has been a significant problem the entire time that mass media has been involved in the conduct of our election cycles. We should be looking for cheating everywhere, all the time. And to maintain secure elections, we must take the process seriously, and that just hasn’t been happening. The election fraud of 2020 goes way beyond hurt feelings that Donald Trump didn’t win and that Republicans didn’t maintain control of the White House. The fraud was so ostentatious that it was no longer speculation of election fraud but a grim reality and to what extent it was occurring. Obviously, there were political class members on both sides who wanted to see election fraud happen to maintain their control over the government institutions themselves. Mitch McConnell comes to mind, as do people like Bill Barr: the FBI, the corporate boards of major media companies. What we had once suspected was now a confirmed reality, and now in the wake of all that a few years ago now, there are still those who want to deny that it did happen so that they can continue to benefit from the rigged system and allow global influences to manipulate American interests for the goals of insurgents hostile to the American idea.

Yet the solution is relatively simple now that we know what we know, and rather than argue with people about election fraud and deal with all the many court cases that are required to fix it, there is no hope of such a thing happening by the time of the 2024 election. So what is anybody supposed to do? With such a massive election fraud machine that literally has millions and millions of greedy hands in it to manipulate toward controlled advantage, what options can a government that is supposed to be ruled by the people utter to save its election system from the barbarous pirates of finance and political discourse? Well, I happen to know Frank LaRose, the Ohio Secretary of State, a bit, and I would gladly put you in touch with him to learn what he has done in Ohio to secure elections. I would say that what Frank has done in Ohio toward the goal of election integrity should be the standard for the rest of the nation to follow, and it’s all very simple. Of course, the bad guys are suing him left and right because they know how good his policies are for secure elections, and they are hoping to see his methods overturned in court by the 2024 presidential election because, in the game of “lawfare” the way liberals like to fight, they have no chance of winning any Democrat seats in Ohio without election fraud. So they are in a bit of a panic. The two best things that Frank LaRose has done to secure elections is to mandate a photo ID that is government issued. That can be a driver’s license or just a card issued for free by the BMV. Very easy to get and is the basic way to ensure that the person voting is who they are. The second thing that is done in Ohio is probably the most important, which is a real problem in this modern age of early voting, is that vote counts need to be counted by election day, not many days after. 

The way the game works, and it’s a well-thought-out scam that Democrats and some Republicans have fully endorsed over the years under the banner of “fairness,” is that mail-in ballots were ripe for fraud because they could be added or subtracted depending on what the final vote count margin actually was. In Ohio, there is early voting, but the general rule is that everyone must put their pencils down by election night, and the vote counts are due. Ohio achieves this by inputting those votes into the system as they come in so that by election night, they can be part of the vote. States like Pennsylvania don’t start counting those votes until election day, which is how this mess of counting votes days after the election began, and election results were not known on election day but days later. States that continue counting after the election, which was the case in several state races involving congressional seats, already know the margin they need to put their favorite person over the top, so they keep counting mail-in ballots until they reach their target. And if they don’t have enough actual mail-in ballots, they make them up until they do. That’s simply no way to manage any accurate election, and it has purposely opened the door to rampant election fraud. Remember when Pennsylvania, over the weeks after the election came up with a million extra votes to put Joe Biden over President Trump? And the courts didn’t want to touch the case because it would open up the entire system to a complete lashing, and nobody had the stomach for it. Frank LaRose was brought in to testify how Ohio managed, and many in the process know this little trade secret. But admitting to it would essentially commit thousands of well-respected people to a guilty plea of sedition against our country. Election fraud is serious, and many people went way too far and got caught doing it. The most recent example is the monstrosity in Arizona with Katie Hobbs, who essentially managed her own election. Good election security essentially comes down to having a good secretary of state. If you don’t have one, you can forget about it. It’s that serious.

But rather than cry about it, just fix it. If everyone wants to prove they have honest elections, then at least ensure that early ballots are counted by election day, like in Ohio. And that will stop this trend of counting votes after election day, as we have seen becoming a major problem over the last two elections. Democrats knew what they were planning to do to cheat the 2020 election; they warned us ahead of time that Trump would appear to win in a landslide and that over the following weeks, Joe Biden would pull out the win. Well, they did that because they knew what the voting margin was that they had to come up with regarding fake votes. And that was their strategy all along, and why they allow their candidates to run their campaigns in their basement because they really think people are so stupid that they won’t see what they are up to. The best thing is to remove the temptation to cheat by ensuring that results are counted by election day and not after the results are known. The gap was so significant in Pennsylvania that this problem became apparent. So in the future, for those who want honest elections, just let me know, and I can put you in contact with Frank LaRose, and he can help your state run a fair election. And you better do it before 2024 because Democrats are planning to cheat again wherever they can. It’s part of their campaign strategy disguised as some “get out the vote” effort. But in reality, it’s just planned fraud, and the way to keep them from doing it is with some simple ground rules. And by doing as Ohio has, voter integrity will become much better. And the election results will be noticeably improved. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Getting Away into Natural Bridge, Kentucky: The ultimate kind of Rebellion, Kindness, and Defiance

April is my birthday month and is always a positive benchmark for me. It’s always been my favorite month with all the life that returns from a long winter, and I always use the month as my own gauge into successes that need to be celebrated and things that need to be improved. But as a treat to myself, I wanted to go on a camping trip to Natural Bridge with as many of my family who could go and get off the grid for a few days in a place I grew up enjoying. My grandparents were from that region of Slade, Kentucky; during prohibition, my grandpa and his family ran moonshine, which I respect. I view moonshine differently than drug dealing for several reasons, even though I dislike intoxication of any kind all the time. I like to see independent and free people pushing back against a tyrannical government, and during prohibition, the government was out of control and deserved to have pushback, and that my grandfather and his father certainly did. Currently, we have a very dangerous government that is way beyond acceptable tyrannical tolerance, so for my birthday, I wanted to revisit a state park from my youth nicely nestled in the foothill mountains of the Appalachians and recharge. Over the last few years, my favorite mode of travel has been RV camping, so I wanted to take ours and live out of it for a few days, which is precisely what we did, and it was a wonderful experience. One of my sons-in-law brought their own camper, so we had a nice little family get-together down in the hills of Natural Bridge, Kentucky, and get away from the government for a bit.

Slade, Kentucky, where the Natural Bridge State Park and the world-famous Red River Gorge are located, is unusual because they have a particular hostility toward big government. Many census takers have found it impossible to do their job because the local residents simply don’t like government. So when you want to get away from big government and deal with people in a traditional Christian background setting in the Bible Belt, there aren’t many places in the world better. I’ve been to Natural Bridge a lot over my life, especially as a little kid. It’s been about ten years since my last visit. It’s not that it’s hard to get to; it’s very close to Cincinnati, Ohio, where I live. But my schedule has been busy; since my last visit, I have traveled around the world a few times, been to many countries, and experienced unique cultures. My opinion about the Slade, Kentucky region isn’t for lack of knowing anything else. But instead, it’s because I’ve seen a lot of other places that I appreciate that one of the best travel destinations there is, in my opinion, one that I knew well from my youth, was literally in my own backyard. It was a lucky experience to have, out of all the places in the world I could have gone, to have such a relationship with literally one of the best places there is. Our camping trip was wonderful, we had a nice campsite nestled in the hills, and we lived off the bare minimums and were able to let the world go for a bit, which was the present I wanted to give myself this year for a well-deserved birthday.

My wife and I started RV camping during Covid, and we will likely never do anything else again. I like hauling around my hotel room, bathroom, and refrigerator. It makes traveling so much better to step away from the grid as much as possible. I have a TV in my RV that we can stop and have a snack to take a break from driving and relax. Camper traveling with an RV has been a great experience, so doing that kind of camping at Natural Bridge brought together parts of the world that are favorites. It was all a gratifying experience. A lot of my family was able to come along, so it was nice to be around them and celebrate life while stepping away from the world of problems that traditionally come from government interference in our lives. Living out of a camper for a week in April of 2023 was enormously rewarding and recharged my spirit considerably. As a family, we had a good trip, and we were all grateful to have it. 

My wife and I had an interesting experience, a few actually, but one that reminded us just how good the world is without government in it. And people still live and get along without the stupid government imposing themselves into our lives. People left alone by government tend to do the right things without having a parental authoritarian in the form of government looming over our shoulders. For example, we went into town for some ingredients for smores and other snacks. And one of the items we needed was more firewood. So we were going to pick some up from a gas station down by the Mountain Parkway with a nice store. But the nice clerk there was a mountain woman from Appalachia, of course, and she told us that the wood that the gas station was selling was too expensive and you didn’t get very much. So she told us to go down the road around 400 yards to a tire mechanic with a little shed behind a Subway restaurant. He was selling a whole-wheel barrel of firewood for ten bucks. So we went down there to see him, and he loaded us up with firewood for our campsite. He had a rough mountain man accent; I would have needed subtitles to understand what he said. But we paid him the ten dollars, and he gave me a very large wheel barrel of wood to load into the back of our hatchback.

We couldn’t understand each other, but we quickly became good friends. That region is famous for many campfires, so he has many customers for his little enterprise due to the many campers who come to climb the world-famous Red River Gorge. It’s kind of a hippie culture, the rock climbers. More libertarian than anything. We probably wouldn’t agree on presidential picks or even drug usage. But we all do share a love of independence. Many of them come and camp with four people in a one-person dome tent with hundreds of others who can barely rub two dimes together in their pockets. And I find them refreshing, especially at Miguel’s Pizza, where they hang out. I’ve had pizza from everywhere, and the pizza they have at Miguel’s is a real treat. It was wonderful to pick some of it up and take it back to our campsite, where I had my reading chair set up next to the fire as all the kids played and enjoyed each other, and I had a stack of books to read well into the night as the sun set outlining the mountain tops and the dark sky stars made themselves obvious. It was a nice place to be, and it was certainly a great birthday present for me. No matter how much money you throw at recreation, it never gets better than that. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Trump’s Greatness in Waco: Ego is great for politics, it makes the perfect representative

I couldn’t help but think while watching President Trump at his Waco, Texas rally how lucky we were. Nobody else in the world, especially no other political figure, could have drawn over 15,000 people to an airport to hear a speech for an hour and a half. Only a guy like Trump, where the perfect relationship between representative government and a people in need of it existed, met at these rallies. Trump has been out of office for over three years, and he still could draw a crowd like the one in Waco, which isn’t a bustling metropolis. To have that many people willing to spend an entire day at a remote airport to hear the same speech repeatedly was simply remarkable. But then I considered my wife and me; here we were, as thousands of others were doing exactly the same thing, popping popcorn and getting our snacks ready for the big event, something we had been looking forward to all Saturday. We had literally millions of other options we could have been doing on a Saturday night in late March. The weather was nice. We have over 1000 entertainment options through our television through the many streaming services we subscribe to. Yet there we were, looking forward to the Trump speech like so many others, which is like watching the Super Bowl. It was an all-day event that we enjoyed tremendously. So what does that say about politics and a character like Trump who, after so many attempts to take him out socially, he is stronger than ever? With all the mainstream aggression shown to support Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor has gone down in polling, and Trump has only gained more support. 

I keep hearing from the kind of Republicans who want to support Ron DeSantis over Trump that the Republican Party could get all the good stuff without all the drama, and that was why supporting DeSantis was a great thing. But then I explain to people that we are not dealing with regular politics here. This is a war, not a policy discussion, and Trump is the perfect candidate for this particular time in our history. Even better than in 2020. Having Trump on the political scene has forced everyone to deal with reality, a reality that often gets lost in the horse races of politics. Trump’s massive ego was a perfect weapon against this political climate. It certainly wasn’t a detriment, as those DeSantis types suggested. Trump loves to be loved and has become the perfect kind of representative in our government that needs such people. He loves his supporters and would do just about anything for them. And then we have a public who very much wants someone out there in politics who represents them authentically. We’ve all seen this bag of tricks before, where someone like DeSantis does a good job and wins over the Rinos, then they change because the donor class gets a hold of them. Then when they win office, they become something we all despise. Trump is independent of all that. Because Trump loves to be loved so much, he listens to what people actually want out of their government and puts his traditional ideology aside. It’s a pretty remarkable relationship, especially in the context of history, and Trump is precisely what America needs if it wants to stay a great country. Trump is a product of a capitalist system that only America could have produced, and here he was at the later part of his life when he could be doing anything else in the world, and he’s running for president for the third time to do a job that pays nothing, only because he loves to be loved by the kind of people who attend rallies like that one in Waco. 

The people out there want a fighter. No celebrity from pop culture could do what Trump is doing. Who has the personal wealth and independence to bring such a rock-star quality to politics, where some of the biggest thieves and destitute criminals have set up shop? There will be hundreds of future political figures like Ron DeSantis who spawn off the Trump years that will improve our representative government for the better over the next decade. I remember how unusual Trump was in 2016 when many of the things we are discussing now weren’t even a remote consideration. There was always a kind of evil lurking in the background that was hidden behind polite society. And because of Trump and his ability to communicate, because of his massive ego that refuses to submit to the established order of things, a lot of that evil has been flushed out to the surface. It’s very ugly to see, but for all those corrupt forces hidden behind the veil of politics, only Trump could have exposed it due to his brash nature. Without Trump, violence from a Civil War likely would have already occurred. The hope that comes with Trump is that people might get peace and strength through their country yet, and that hope is very powerful. Watching a Trump rally is more like a church service where people renew their spirit than a policy-making speech about things that we all know the politician could never accomplish unless the Deep State allows them to.  

It’s Trump’s ego that makes him as great as he is. It’s funny to listen to a liberal world talk about how bad ego is for society. You could talk to a million people who practice Yoga, and they’ll talk about how it’s good to meditate and become “one with nature.” To drop the ego and embrace collectivism  where the currents of the universe where our personal identities no longer have meaning. People repeat that kind of nonsense all the time, and it does spill over into our political culture. And it’s all hogwash. Ego is the definition of a person who has lived a life and has a story to tell based on that experience. All that Indian talk about destroying ego and individuality, in general, is garbage from eastern cultures like China, India, and the Middle East.

No thanks, bad advice. And at their core, that is why there are people who hate Trump. Our political system has too many people who falsely believe that ego has no place in politics, and those people have no answer for Trump, who is entirely ego-driven. I would say that ego is Trump’s greatest weapon because it takes a sense of self to stand up to evil. It takes ego to drive a capitalist economy and to defend it. Because a person with a large ego has values, they think they are worthy to defend because they have a sense of self. And ultimately, that is what people show up to see at these rallies. They want to see the ego of Trump unleashed because he represents them and their egos of self who want to see their country be great. They do not want the collectivist crap that politics gives them in general, and the popular culture who wants politics not to rock the boat for their ideologies of collectivism that otherwise taints politics into something people find otherwise disgusting. Ego is good, and Trump has plenty of it. And we are very lucky to have him representing us. Because of Trump and his massive ego, people have hope that there might yet be a peaceful defense of our country from the forces that have been plotting its destruction for many decades. And that hope is obvious at all Trump rallies, especially the one in Waco, Texas, in March of 2023. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

What Happened to Bill Mitchell: Ron DeSantis is the pick of the Deep State

Bill Mitchell is a pretty good political commentator and election statistician who had a large platform on Twitter and was very pro-MAGA before the purge in 2020. Over the years, I have found him to be pretty good at identifying election trends, especially on game day during actual elections. He struggled to find his footing in the years after the Twitter purge on both Gettr and Truth Social, but it was never the same. Yet after Elon Musk purchased Twitter and turned pro-free speech for his own needs, Bill has restored his account and has returned to Twitter much as he did before. Only this time, he is mysteriously anti-Trump, much like Drudge did during the last election. It’s bizarre to watch from these guys; they were for all things Trump, then suddenly they switch to an anti-Trump position. The first conclusion is that they had someone get to them. But I don’t think that goes far enough. It’s like many of the Never Trumpers that are out there; it comes down to what they believe politics to be and that Trump violates that unwritten rule, and once they conclude that in their minds, they switch sentiments. Whatever it is, Bill Mitchell has gone entirely over to Ron DeSantis for all kinds of reasons, none of them good, and has been pouring it on heavily against Trump as if he thinks he is going to move the MAGA needle, which brings up a very interesting consideration. I would consider Bill Mitchell to be one of the best political strategists out there, much better than Karl Rove and even Newt Gingrich. So why, if that is so, then how could he suddenly be so wrong about Trump? Trump hasn’t changed, Bill Mitchell, Mr. MAGA himself, did. So why, and is he right? 

The RINO position for Ron DeSantis is that he’s Trump-lite. You can have the taste of the beer without all the calories. And Bill has suddenly been preaching the RINO mantra that Ron DeSantis is everything that Trump is; he even legislates to the right of Trump on most things. And I think that’s true. I think Ron DeSantis is more of a conservative than President Trump. And yes, Trump got suckered with Covid and Dr. Fauci. At some point, he will have to explain all that away and stop talking about Operation Warp Speed because everything related to Covid was a mistake. But Ron DeSantis was just as suckered. Everyone was suckered (except for me) regarding Covid. I’ve said it many times, if I had been advising Trump then, I would have told him to throw Dr. Fauci and Bill Gates out of his office. But at that time, I was the only one saying such things. It was an election year, and the media was all over the story. And Dr. Fauci was the most famous person in America during the summer of 2020. If Trump had fired him, that would have killed his election chances at that time. Knowing what we do now, I was right, the rest of the world was wrong, and Trump got caught in the crossfire. My view of it was that Trump had managed the country very well until Covid. Covid was a bioweapon meant to steal an election and destroy the American economy that was threatening the world’s Liberal World Order. So the bad guys pulled the grenade, dropped it into the punch bowl, and blew up everyone hoping to create a Great Reset for the World Economic Forum, which had long been planned for. Trump is the best option to returning to our pre-Covid America, and better. With the right Federal Reserve Chairman, more than 4% GDP growth is still possible, so that is the battle plan for 2024. 

But we have in the way a Deep State that thinks it runs the world and that our constitution is useless to their sentiments. They have no reverence for it and intend to destroy America and enslave all of us into a debt-driven world where a few from Davos literally control the world with a collapse of the dollar and a transfer of the power alliance to China, so they can literally rule the planet as a propped up communist power of the Desecrators of Davos. And these guys aren’t playing patty cake. They are playing to kill literally, and they have been showing that power with their control of America’s legal system and the control of politicians who have taken money from them, like Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden. In that world, Ron DeSantis has no chance. Without a Trump around to draw cover fire, there would be no Ron DeSantis. And there is only Rino support for DeSantis now because the Deep State thinks it can do better in controlling him than it could ever hope in controlling Trump. But it’s the control of our elected representatives that they are after. They aren’t looking for a “democracy.” They are after collapsed economies, world domination, and enslavement through their Great Reset. Their support of DeSantis is to give the public all the talk of MAGA without the policy of the movement, to appease the public enough to prevent any real reform from wrecking their plans. Trump is a wrecking ball to all that, so we are voting for him and continuing to support him. We aren’t looking for someone who “gets along” with the Deep State.

If you read his comments on the matter, Bill Mitchell essentially indicates that he is tired of all the drama with Trump and that DeSantis can do the same thing without all the drama. And my position is that, no, he can’t. The drama comes from those who stand in the way of American sovereignty and our Constitutional rights, and they want Trump, MAGA, and everything about populism destroyed viciously. These are essentially communists who intend the China model for America, and without Trump around, Ron DeSantis won’t exist, nor would any other MAGA representative in Congress or the Senate. I would expect Bill Mitchell to know all that, but he’s had some health problems, and maybe it rattled him, and he’s gone soft. But whatever it is, DeSantis doesn’t have a chance. He has destroyed his good brand. He should have aligned with Trump, not worked against him, and now that he has spoken out against Trump in the way he has, he has ruined his ability to win an election where MAGA will determine the outcome. Trump is the only politician in the modern world who could hope to get voter engagement with over 70 million voters. Ron DeSantis won’t get that, which, indeed, the Never-Trumpers understand. But they can’t get out of their own way as the controlled opposition. The only way Democrats hold power is if the Never Trumpers keep Trump from running. And Bill Mitchell and others are smart enough to see that. The question is, are they strong enough to follow through? In the case of Bill Mitchell, maybe he’s just been beaten up enough to say uncle and to look toward DeSantis with all the promises of the Never Trump RINOs of conservative legislation without the drama. But that’s not the fight. We are fighting for the very foundation of our country, the Deep State attack on our very lives. And when that is understood, Trump might not be vicious enough, as we saw with Covid. But if not him, then who? We know he did well before, and he’s out for revenge because of what they have done to him, which is what most of us feel as well, Republicans and Democrats. And that is what the 2024 election really comes down to, revenge and rebuilding. Not another RINO-controlled asset that helps the Deep State, which is all Ron DeSantis would be to the election process. 

Rich Hoffman

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I Don’t Want Any Part of “The Club”: If Butler County Republicans aren’t serving the taxpayers, then they are serving corruption

Since the very corrupt prosecution of Roger Reynolds in Butler County, I have had more than a few people trying to rationalize it to me, “that the club likes musical chairs,” meaning they want a change in blood. And the sleight of hand that is going on with assigning Joe Statzer to the auditor role as a “temporary” assignment with a wink and a nod indication that after a short time, the Butler County Commissioners will just make that appointment permanent, is the kind of behavior that people have grown sick of. The media reporting on the matter made it quite obvious what was going on. The establishment types, I would go as far as to call them RINOs, lost now that Trump isn’t in the White House, are fighting for power and control. They don’t want people like Roger Reynolds looking through their books, and they have old scores to settle that go back to the David Kern days. It’s the kind of disgusting power people are afraid of in Congress presently, with the debate to not vote for Kevin McCarthy for Speaker of the House. People don’t trust these establishment politicians; in this case, I know most of them personally. They don’t see themselves as dangerous; they think of themselves as good people. But like the kind of horrible things we have seen come from abuse of power on the national level, we have certainly seen it applied to Roger Reynolds and to prevent Nancy Nix from being appointed that job by the Butler County Republican Party to keep the continuity of some very good work done at the auditor level, and rearranging the chairs that fit the party, not the voters who are supposed to be in charge. And people keep talking to me about this “club” idea as if it should matter to me. So let me just say I don’t work with politics to be part of the Club, to be invited to all the VIP events. I do it because I want to see good government in my town and for people to get what they expect for their taxpayer dollars. I personally like Joe, and I like the people around Joe, but he’s Sheriff Jones’ direct guy. It was Jones who wanted to push Roger Reynolds from his auditor’s office for all kinds of reasons, so this notion that two commissioners voted to appoint Joe Statzer as auditor of Butler County with a wink and a nod of making it a permanent position is not a good thing. 

Out of the three Butler County Commissioners who voted for Joe to step into that auditor role, two of them are what I’d consider hard Democrats, just as I consider Sheriff Jones a Democrat, a big union slug that is too expensive, and love to use power and force to intimidate political rivals into submission. And that kind of stuff works for people who want to be in the Republican Party “Club.” I am aware that people are only nice to me at social events because they’d like to invite me into the Club to have some control over my behavior. They certainly aren’t nice to me because they like me. I’ve been in business for many decades now and have dealt with a lot sharper tacks in the box than local politicians. Even national politicians. There are smart people out in the world, and these guys are not among them. I have sometimes played along because that’s what you do in all business meetings. You look for common ground and focus on that to build relationships. It’s my hope that those relationships end up working out well for the taxpayers, so it’s worth doing. But sucking up just to be in some stupid club, no thanks. I don’t need or want more friends, and I certainly would never put myself in a position to get a call late at night telling me how to think or feel so I could remain a member of a “club.” And it’s the “club” mentality that the commissioners were clearly protecting with the appointment of Joe Statzer to the auditor job. Only TC Rogers voted against Joe’s appointment; he understands what’s happening. The other two, Cindy Carpenter, might as well be the belt holding up Sheriff Jones’ pants, voted to protect the “club.” Take that belt away, and the Sheriff’s pants fall right off. And Don Dixon was the other one. Everyone keeps telling me what a great guy Don is as if I didn’t know him. As I say all the time, I love all Republicans until they aren’t. And for those who decide they are Republican all of a sudden, I welcome them. But it must be remembered that Democrats who become Republicans always have some Democrat still in them, and that is certainly the case with Don Dixon, who was a Democrat until 2000 when he switched parties during a time when it was obvious how things were going in Butler County, Ohio politically. 

I’ve known the Dixon family for a very long time. I see Don here and there, and I think he’s a pretty good guy. I don’t rush over to shake his hand for many reasons. I’ll always think of him as the guy who cost me the championship in the Soap Box Derby race in Hamilton, Ohio, in 1979, when I was around 10 or 11 years old. I was racing for the championship against Brent Dixon, Don’s son and the races were so close over three tries to determine a winner that the event judges just gave the win to the Dixons because of their political influence. That was told to my parents and me unofficially because that’s how the “club” works. That’s why many of these people want political power, so they can tilt the table in their favor when needed. In that Soap Box Derby race, we should have continued racing until a winner could be determined. But the judges were tired in the June sun and wanted to go home. So instead of another race, they just decided that the Dixon kid won. And I developed a hatred for “club” politics that would last the rest of my life. That next year Ronald Reagan ran for president, and I was the campaign spokesman in the 7th grade for our school and have been involved in politics ever since. My hatred for “club” politics likely started that day and still persists over 40 years later and will likely continue for another 40 years. (CLICK HERE to read more of this story.)

And that is what’s wrong with politics in general and why all the fuss over Kevin McCarthy. I live in a town where I have a lot of mutual friends who know John Boehner personally. I did not like John Boehner when he was the third most powerful person in the world, and I don’t like him now as a pot spokesman. It wasn’t personal, but I hated the “Club” as it was back then. And now, with Trump out of the White House, the bottom feeders have lost focus and are resuming their desire for corruption, to tilt the tables of power in their favor and with any means necessary, and they think that people will just put up with it. And I’d warn them otherwise. I have been watching this stuff for a long time, and people are much smarter about these things than they used to be. They don’t like corruption; this is why they voted for Trump because they want someone to stand up to this kind of behavior instead of just putting up with it. And on the local level, politics was never, and should never be, membership into a “club.” The only thing good about politics is what it can do for the people. The golf games, the fundraisers, and the “club” activity are all bad things in politics, and for my part, I have much better things to do with my life than to get my picture taken next to Sheriff Jones so that I can show people that I’m in “the club.” Butler County Republicans can keep their Club. They need to be worried about whether what they do serves the taxpayers. And if it doesn’t, such as this whole business of destroying lives just to protect “the club,” then they are doing the wrong things willingly.

And regarding that soap box derby race, even though I didn’t win the championship that day, I’d say because my family wasn’t in the “club,” I was very proud of what I did. I still have that car hanging in my garage, and I see it every day. My parents were proud of me; it was a fun day. My mom, who isn’t doing so well these days, brought it up as she was traveling down memory lane, and it was one of her good memories. And the lesson about the whole thing is that the Club might do everything to win. But people know who wins in life, and I’d rather live like that than be beholden to a bunch of corrupt people just to get the trophy. There are many kinds of winning in the world, and I view winning without the help of “the club” to be much more valuable than anything else in the world. Only weak losers need a “club” to help them along, which is precisely what we are seeing emerge in the Butler County Republican Party. And when those people are no longer with us, and the hearse goes by with their bodies headed to the graveyard, people won’t say, “look, there goes a great person who lived a great life.” They’ll say instead, “there goes a member of the “club” and one less corrupt person in the world who looked to politics to save their lazy selves from the scrutiny of public opinion.” Membership in the “club” disguises that reality from their minds, but when it is known what people really think, that is the reality that tyrants and the corrupt are hiding from with the illusion of social protocol. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Killing the Sacred Cow of Military in America: Republicans have been suckers in supporting just another big government scam that only the United Nations benefits from

This one might be a little controversial, but we must discuss it because a trick is being applied that brings conservatives to mass collectivism and partners Republicans with diabolical America-hating Democrats with common ground. This was never more obvious than the bone that was thrown into the last bill that was passed in Congress to commit trillions of dollars more in debt over the nation just to get some defense spending that Democrats pretend to protest against. But in truth, it’s a bone they always throw to the dogs of Republicans they appease time and time again out of a misplaced sentiment toward the military. I’ve never been one of those “thank you for your service” kind of people when I meet people who serve. Entry into the military for me is just another government job, and I am always weary of the power government has to command individual lives toward mass collectivism. The first thing ritually that is done in the military during boot camp is to strip people of their individual selves, the people their parents made them, shave them, give them a uniform and integrate them into the system of the military, the yes sirs, no sirs of process and the blind compliance to a culture that gives orders and soldiers are to follow them without a thought. I don’t see much of anything good about that system, and I never have. But over time, the people who hate the American way have turned such a process into a representation of morality, and I find the whole thing reprehensible. 

Of course, when people hear my thoughts on it, they are quick to say, “but they died or committed themselves to it for your freedom.” Well, that is not how our military works, as exposed during the Trump administration, specifically in North Korea. The American Constitution is what gives me freedom, and our military isn’t fighting for it; they are fighting against it. The scam is that by selling themselves as advocates of American independence, our military then gets used as the world’s police, the military that the United Nations never could legally hold, and we do all that they have no power to do themselves. We get involved in all kinds of wars dedicated to globalism and disguise it as “global security,” and while everyone is too busy following orders to question it, or Fox News is doing the latest color ceremonies dedicated to those who serve, the real villains are stirring up war all over the world and counting on American troops to advance the needs of the United Nations one world government and using our money and troops to perform the task. When we were told for years that North Korea was the biggest menace on planet earth, then within a short time of taking office, President Trump was crossing the line into North Korea and shaking hands with the basketball fan who happens to love America very much, much more was revealed than just The Art of the Deal by Trump to break down barriers to negotiation. Our military, once the League of Nations was started in Europe and the United Nations was created, was not to serve the interests of America; it was built, funded, and populated with soldiers to fulfill the needs of progressive intent and then to use the reputation of America to take the hit as imperialists. And in that way, the political left could complain about American involvement in fighting communists in Vietnam while also pushing for big government solutions like what create a big military in the first place.  By default, Republicans filled that gap, just as the plan called for. American troops were now the empire builders England used to be accused of. Meanwhile, it was just announced that Vietnam is one of the fast-growing economies in the world, on par with China, another propped-up country by the United Nations types. The wars clear out political opposition, whereas international sympathy follows in the wake, and the communist regimes then take over in running those parts of the world. 

To get Americans to support such a structure, patriotism has been used to sell it, that our children join, get a free education, learn to become supporters of woke culture, take orders, wear the uniform, and in that way, we never asked the dreadful questions as to who does the American military support? If our borders aren’t important, as the Biden administration has made clear it’s not, then who does the American military support? Well, the amount of money we have been sending to Ukraine answers that question. Our military as it is today exists to advance the needs of the United Nations and big centralized governments all over the world. And it’s not patriotic to blindly support them. We should be looking to shrink their influence into something Americans could easily control with the Second Amendment. Because under the kind of political regimes we have in America today, as we have seen from our own FBI and CIA, our military is more of a threat than something we should be celebrating blindly. 

I’ve had to talk about our local Sheriff Jones a lot lately, and many people wonder why over time, I wasn’t closer to him within the Butler County Republican Party, just north of Cincinnati, Ohio. The truth is, we used to be until we found ourselves on opposite ends of a public union issue way back in 2012. At that point, our relationship had become very strained. Then we were at an event at the Ronald Reagan Center at the Voice of America in West Chester, and as he usually does, he led the ceremonies dedicated to the military, which he is very voraciously supportive of. As I usually do at these events, I shudder at the blind compliance that such people like him have to the saluting of the troops, the perfection of uniform compliance, and how quickly he was to accept that the individual is just a small part to a greater good, which in this case was the support of a military with the mask of the American flag on it. I have seen him perform such ceremonies at Republican events many times. Still, that particular time at the Ronald Reagan Center gave me the creeps, not just about him. Still, in how many people who call themselves Republicans are so quickly enticed like moths to the flame in supporting military service without a clear understanding of how that military service actually protects our Constitution when in fact, the people who most benefit from our military around the world want to see our Constitution destroyed. And there are plenty of Sheriff Jones types all over the nation, on Fox News, in every local parade, who sell the military to the public as something good. But I see it and always have as dangerous to the ideas of American values and the eventual erosion of Constitutional protections. Just as we saw during Covid, and forever supporters of the expansion of the NDAA, our military is the first body of government that often violates the Constitution they were sworn to protect. But in blindly supporting the orders of superiors, our own children are often used to shred that Constitution at every opportunity, especially when globalist forces like the United Nations declare something to be an emergency. Then, our military is turned on us, and we learn too late that it never served America. Our military serves the aims of globalism, and they have tricked us into supporting such a move by draping the flag over the effort and talking about sacrifice as if we were a civilization of bloodthirsty Aztecs. And we learn too late that our military never served us at all, but a sinister collection of globalism who fund the efforts of politics and have captured our elected officials in ways we could never have imagined. And because of blind patriotism, we never see the problem until it’s too late, and they are on our doorsteps kicking in our doors and violating our constitutional rights with a smile on their faces because they took us as suckers, and we proved them correct.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Lakota 5-Year Forecast: What do I think of it?

Since the most recent five-year forecast by the Lakota school system just before Thanksgiving 2022, I have been asked hundreds of times what I thought about it. I’m happy that the government school doesn’t plan to ask for more money until 2025. There are elements of the radical teacher’s union background who think that we haven’t had a tax increase since 2013, and before that, there were a lot of fights on three previous attempts to stop the school from taking more money from the public, so the push has been that its time to extract more money from the community. Before we elected three board members that are supposed to be conservative to the board, the previous school board was very liberal and wanted to take the surpluses that we had and spend that money on new facilities projects. There is this belief that is built into the progressive mentality, which believes that Lakota is the largest employer in our region of Butler County and that they deserve to be treated with respect and always have new things, like state-of-the-art school buildings, and nice amenities for the staff to work in, because if we want to recruit the best teachers to the area, that we have to do those things in order to stay competitive. In reality, the unionized teachers go where it’s good for them financially, and as we have learned, there are quite a few of them who are swingers and alternative sexual lifestyles participants, so access to other such people is as big of a decision for them as anything else. Access to bars to pick up 22-year-old kids and younger is a significant benefit for them and part of their decision-making process. Communities with block parties happening often and providing plenty of socializing are very attractive to new Lakota staff recruits. They really don’t care about a nice new building; they care about access to other people who are just as deranged as they are. This is why there hasn’t been a mass exodus after all the drama about the current Lakota school board superintendent. Instead of being a detriment, it has been a recruiting tool because it advertised to the world what Lakota is really about, which has been far more enticing than anything taxpayers could spend money on.

Yet, the Lakota school system has a large tax base; if anything, Lakota should be looking to lower taxes. There are a lot of residents who support 17,000 students with valuable property that is much higher than other school districts. And that’s before all the commercial real estate is taxed. That revenue is only increasing, especially by the Liberty Center part of the community where a new Costco and many new wonderful developments are emerging, so with Lakota operating at a surplus for much of the last decade, that is because student enrollment really hasn’t increased, but property value and commercial opportunities have increased dramatically. So we are talking about millions of dollars that Lakota has benefited from and wasted on employee raises for essentially a terrible product, a free babysitting service to the community. But even with all those benefits, we had a previous school board that wanted to spend, spend, spend into oblivion so that they could ask for more money with a tax levy. And that was the talk from 2020 until 2022. That the Lakota school board felt they hadn’t asked for money for a long time, and it was time to do so, regardless of whether anybody really needed it. And that assumption comes from a unionized workforce that wants all the benefits of employment without any downside of management control. They want facilities; they want fewer students in the classroom. They want unionized bus drivers who call off work for every sniffle they have and blame it on Covid. Lakota has mismanaged itself into a complete disaster of an organization, with poor report card showings happening since Matt Miller took over as superintendent. So on the performance side, Lakota has been a disaster, and they don’t deserve a dime in addition to the many hundreds of millions that their budget currently is. They get enough and should be giving back a lot of that money by lowering their current costs. 

When I heard the 5-year forecast and saw the PowerPoint they presented, it made me sick because of a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff that few people know about. While I’m happy that Lakota announced that they had enough money to stay solvent until the year 2025 and had to gag at the school board praising the treasurer for a presentation that should be expected, not praised, I could see clearly that a lot of Lakota’s assumptions on money is built into their lack of preparation for a professional world. Like all progressive institutions, they have a presumption of entitlement and don’t expect to be judged by performance, and that is clear in their 5-year forecast. Contained within it are all the assurances I wanted that there wouldn’t be further pushing for a tax levy from Lakota as the radical liberal types had been wanting. I know that Lynda O’Conner didn’t want to deal with a tax increase, and only a few months ago, she and Issac Adi met with me in a super-secret location in someone’s basement to talk about the problems at Lakota. At that time, we were working out their problems with Darbi Boddy, who I continue to think is the best school board member I have seen in decades. I want four more of her over the next few years because if we do have more like her, Lakota will be forced to live within its very generous budget and not ask for more money. They wanted to talk me away from Darbi; I wanted to find out why they didn’t like her suddenly. But at that meeting, I told them, as I tell everyone who asks, I generally don’t care about Lakota until they ask for more money. I think the product is garbage, too expensive, and that they teach radical leftist concepts to the next generation in my community is reprehensible. And in that 5-year forecast, they addressed all my concerns that we talked about in that private meeting. 

But why? What had changed over these last few months when it looked like a tax increase was the only thing the school board wanted to discuss? Well, they chained themselves to a sinking ship in their superintendent, who had gotten himself into a lot of trouble, and once he brought all that brand damage to Lakota, he threatened the public like some entitled, spoiled brat, all to hide his terrible performance since he was hired in 2017, and obviously the school system itself needs time to recover. Their former treasurer Jenni Logan, Matt Miller’s partner for a long time, suddenly left in August to become one of the seven indictments against Roger Reynolds in an upcoming trial. And that same month, all the crap literally hit the fan regarding the superintendent’s bizarre sexual lifestyle, which was revealed because he decided to pick a fight with school board member Darbi Boddy and her supporters. So there has been a bloody battle, and Lakota has brand damage because of it. If Lakota tried for a levy now, it would take more than three attempts to get it passed, and they know it. So they have to wait for a while for things to cool off and for the politics to change in a more favorable direction for them. They hope that if the people of Lakota just go back to sleep, they will be able to return to the good old days when nobody wanted to come to school board meetings, and they could have fantasies about tax increases for their progressive lifestyles. Jenni Logan didn’t leave a good job for a couple of bad ones at the commissioner’s office and at Ross schools for her health. There is a lot of bad behind the scenes, so when I see a report like this, it says Lakota needs time to recalibrate and repair its public perception. But it doesn’t change a thing about their internal management; they are a disaster with out-of-control employees who are too expensive and, most of the time, should not be around children. And no public relations firm in the world will be able to hide that pile of garbage by 2025. That’s what I think of the new 5-year forecast.

Rich Hoffman

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