Tag: GOP

The Indictment of Roger Reynolds: Is it the pursuit of justice, or a political hit

I brag all the time about how great the Republican Party is in Butler County, and with the corruption indictment of Roger Reynolds that is the hot story this week, I still feel that way. Yet, I’ve known Roger for more than a decade, and I know him to be an excellent auditor for the people who elected him. As I said before, I view the land story that Channel 19 covered back in September of 2021 as a hit piece by Jennifer Edwards, who looks to target Republicans often in stories pitting people against each other to make news, not just reporting it. Her hit piece against Roger and other members of the Liberty Township trustees was obviously political, to attack the Republican brand ahead of the November election. Essentially as I see it, the Roger Reynolds story is one where old family entanglements can get mushy with the duties of an elected office. I find much of it hard to believe, and I think the story is mainly about emotions than logic. But for me, it doesn’t erase all the good work Roger has done over the years. And as I always say, the law is the same at 9 AM as it is at 9 PM or any other day of the week or year. If Roger broke the law, then the law should apply. However, watching Sheriff Jones’ face glow with glee during the indictment announcement made me think of some hypotheticals. Jones was too happy about the indictment, and some of the ways he said words in his presentation triggered questions that are worth consideration since what we are all talking about here are the ethics of an elected office and whether or not Roger Reynolds actually broke any laws, or that the case is a legal dispute between two parties over land. Did Roger abuse his office? Well, if we conclude that he did, doesn’t it open up a whole lot of questions about Sheriff Jones?

I’ve often thought of Sheriff Jones as a great asset to Butler County. But, since Trump left office and Joe Biden has been in the presidency, Jones has turned more into a Democrat than the guy who plays a Republican on TV and at public speeches. The way that Jones went after Congressman Thomas Hall over a voting record, with name-calling and sheer intimidation in public, comes to mind as an abuse of power of an elected office. Voters picked Thomas, yet the Sheriff made quite a public spectacle out of destroying his credibility on WLW radio to many thousands of people. I thought Thomas defended himself well, but the question remains about Sheriff Jones, what was he thinking in doing so? Was he trying to intimidate an officeholder, to exert power over the Republican Party of Butler County in ways that didn’t represent the voters? Surely not. But based on the kinds of things that Jones said in his press conference about the indictment of Roger Reynolds, doubt was indeed cast on the situation. Why would Sheriff Jones be so happy to bring about an indictment of a fellow Republican? His glee sounded as if he were a Democrat about to put a Republican in jail over some bogus charge, an allegation anybody could make against anybody. Given how the Sheriff treated Thomas Hall, might it not be logical to conclude that the Sheriff took a particular interest in the Reynolds case for some strategic move? For a local land dispute to make it to the Attorney General of Ohio directly, some political investment would have to be involved, raising eyebrows. 

Then there was the strange action on Sheriff Jones’ mask politics, where he had been leading the country against mandates. Suddenly, a few weeks ago, as the new school board at Lakota was getting set to vote to remove mask mandates, and the teacher’s union was all upset about it, Sheriff Jones flipped his position. It was an extraordinary move for him. What was going on? Well, I know more than I’m letting on here. But for the sake of the hypotheticals of this evolving case, questions are good to ask, especially in public figures who are declaring injustice among long-time Republicans in the team-building of party politics. I remember years ago when I published the pay rates of the local police departments, and I was shocked by how many family members Sheriff Jones had in many townships. It brought a question to my mind about Sheriff Jones himself and his relationship with members of Congress, senators, and area trustees. What was he really saying when he bragged about beating down some politician like Thomas Hall on city-wide radio? “Don’t get on my bad side. Or the same thing will happen to you.”  Whether or not that was the intention, I can say that I know many politicians who feel that way. Was that feeling created on purpose by the Sheriff? Is that part of his brand within the party? And is he really a Democrat trying to infiltrate the Republican Party with liberalism disguised as good ol’ fashion police work? 

Watching Jones stumble over the word “start” in his press conference, I couldn’t help but wonder if he was getting stuck trying to justify to himself how the investigation into Reynolds even started. By the way, I watched his body language. He acted like a guy who knew he was doing something wrong yet was trying to hide it behind justice. Thinking of all these things, I couldn’t help but wonder if some family member of Jones had worked in the office of Roger Reynolds and maybe had a falling out like many employees do with their bosses. With so much family on the government payroll, it would certainly be a conflict of interest if Jones was out in the county intimidating public officials into behaving the way he wanted them to, to protect his family members employed by some of those politicians. And if that were the case, which it may or may not be, how would it be different from what Jones was accusing Reynolds of doing, based on a Channel 19 report, meant to smear area Republicans and refer the investigation up the food chain to the Attorney General’s office, and smear the headlines all over the national news? It comes out looking like a lot of “unlawful use of authority” to me and many spoonfuls of “conflict of interest.”

If the law was broken, everyone should pay for their incursions. If Roger is guilty, then he is guilty. I would be surprised if he were, but I’ve seen plenty of railroad cases before, and this whole issue has the smell of a political hit. It looks like some kind of revenge scheme that is being hidden behind some token law and order façade. I hope that’s not the case. But if Roger is guilty, then where do we draw the line between public life and protecting family concerns? Roger might have made mistakes with his case because of family entanglements, things that he wouldn’t usually find himself involved in. But couldn’t the same be said when an officeholder, such as a sheriff, intimidates officeholders who employ family members? And what happens if there is some termination of employment? Would the Sheriff get personally involved? Would he retaliate? Well, he has shown the signs of that behavior. I’m sure we’ll find out. For now, I feel I need to defend my political party in my hometown from this embarrassment that the Sheriff has communicated to the world. Should we be mad at Roger? Or should we be angry at the Sheriff? Well, I want to see all wrongdoers get punished for their crimes. But are we talking about crime here, or are we talking about revenge? Time will tell, but politics is a blood sport, and to my way of thinking, I think these kinds of debates are necessary to make the best party possible under the most divisive circumstances that may emerge. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Matt Dolan is a Great Guy: Sadly, we don’t have a political system that can appreciate him

I had a chance to have a personal meeting with Matt Dolan, who is running for Senate in Ohio, Rob Portman’s seat. He is one of many running for that seat; it’s a very tight field. He’s from Northern Ohio; his family is owners of the Cleveland Indians, who have just changed their name to the Guardians under a lot of pressure from the woke politics that are entangled in our sports these days, so going into the meeting with him, I wasn’t too excited. He wasn’t a particularly Trump type of candidate either, so to my mind, there wasn’t much to get excited about. The meeting was with a small group, Warren Davidson was part of it, so I went into it with the most open mind possible. Ultimately, I’m glad I did because it turned out that Matt Dolan was a really ethical guy. After meeting him, my impression was that it was a shame that we didn’t have a political system that could appreciate him. A vote for Matt Dolan was undoubtedly a good one, an honest one. After talking with him for a while, I came away thinking that he was one of the most honest and least corrupt people I had ever met in politics. He is currently working well with George Lang, whom I respect greatly as a Senator in Ohio, and has a proven track record of doing good, hard things in legislative practice. He’s a guy who will get down to work and pound out what is needed with always an eye to the constitutions of Ohio and the Federal Government in all the ways people hope politicians would. He is putting over 10 million dollars of his own money into the race and doesn’t need to do the job for power and finance. He already has access to both. Yet he wants to be a senator for all the right reasons, which left me liking him quite a lot. I wish we had a republic filled with people like Matt Dolan.

However, that wish is a wish for a reason because we don’t have that kind of political system. At least, not at this point of history. I am encouraged that we may have at some point in the future. But currently, the values of honest work alone are not conducive to our political environment, which is a shame. It would be great indeed if there were more places for people like Matt Dolan to work in politics, people who have done well for themselves and want to move into the public sector to give something back in making the world better. Too often, political people get into the business for all the wrong reasons, yet here was Matt Dolan, who wanted to be involved for all the right ones. But those right reasons are not sexy enough for the political world we are in these days. As a senator, one of the essential requirements would be to go on Fox News and other entertainment outlets and talk up legislation and convince people that what he was doing was good and beneficial. As a federal senator, there are only 100 of them, so every seat counts, and in Ohio, Rob Portman has wasted his seat for quite a while now. Portman had turned much more liberal over the years valuing team building more than getting things done, which many politicians fall into. And with the environment we are in now, where Democrats actually have shown they want to sell out our country and destroy our sovereignty to the United Nations under a Great Reset, we just aren’t in the kind of world where good legislation is valued. We are essentially at war, an undeclared war, but it’s war nevertheless. If we don’t meet that ruthlessness in congress, in the senate, on television, radio, and in the streets, then we can’t hope to have a chance to win that war, and that is unfortunate.

As I said, Warren Davidson was there too, and there were some excellent discussions within the small group about ethics in politics and actually getting things done. Warren Davidson, I would say, is a highly ethical and intelligent member of the House. He is by far one of the good guys in congress. But as he will report, even when Republicans had the House and Senate for some time when Trump was in the White House, conservatives were still weak on border security. There were still many Lindsey Graham types who were war hawks worldwide and wanted to stir up trouble wherever they could, much as the Bush administrations had been. There wasn’t a lot of interest in doing the right things in government, even if Warren Davidson wanted to do them. Not getting more people to join him was a constant problem. And the way to build those alliances was through the theatrics of television, where boring topics could be made sexy and build support from people who might not otherwise pay attention. But with all the victimization that is going on now, where Democrats have stolen the House, the Senate, and the White House through Covid rules on elections, with only a bit of a whimper from Republicans on the matter, at the level of Mitch McConnell, Republicans had shown that they couldn’t do much better when they had the power to do so. That leaves good people like Matt Dolan and Warren Davidson trying to do good in a cesspit of scandal where good values are turned on their heads and distorted every which way that can be imagined. 

When Trump was running, and throughout his term, I often said that the most qualifying aspect of the celebrity billionaire was not his experience on television with the popular show, The Apprentice. He was in the Hall of Fame for the Worldwide Wrestling Federation. Trump understood the theatrics of television, and he knew how to sell usually boring ideas to a public with the attention span of a nat. And it was that skill that allowed him to do so much in such a short time. It is also why people in the business hated him so much because he simply made the money machines that center in politics worthless. Because try as they might, nobody could out brand Trump on anything. Trump’s ability to build a brand was simply better than anybody else in politics, and people could see that and vote for him. And when they needed to go to war for him, as they are doing now, they do and will. Theatrics in politics is absolutely necessary; it’s not optional. And unfortunately, Matt Dolan presents himself as a person who hates that system. Probably as much or more than the rest of us. But it is the system we have in a culture that progressive politics have shaped for over a century. We might deep down inside want other options and a more stable republic. But we are not socially there now, nor will we be in the immediate future. Theatrics and sexy selling legislation are very much necessary for any politician who wants to do good in the world. Being a good person just isn’t enough. With all that said, I couldn’t blame anybody who wants a good person to vote for Matt Dolan in the upcoming primary. He’s undoubtedly a good person, and I do wish we had a whole lot more like him. But the reality remains, we don’t.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Trick or Treat in February at Lakota: Darbi Boddy wants to remove masks and give parents freedom of choice, the LEA wants to impeach her over it

The Union Wants to Impeach the School Board over Mask Freedom

I watched the school board videos from January’s Lakota meetings several times, and I still think they are very good. But apparently, the mask police at Lakota is so insulted by Darbi Boddy’s proposal to remove mask mandates from the Lakota school culture and give parents the right to choose has caused the LEA union to begin proposing talk of impeaching the young school board member. During the last meeting, you would think it was trick or treat at Lakota as the mask lovers got up and left while Darbi was talking, obviously meaning to show her disrespect. But none of that is a surprise. This has been a problem for a long time at Lakota, where the inmates run the asylum. Actually, that’s how it is in most public schools, the unions run everything, and the school boards get sucked into believing their goal in life is to show uniformity. I would argue that the point of having five members on a board is to fight it out and debate to convince two other voters to either approve or deny a resolution. The goal of a school board is not to get along but to run the business of a local school the way our “republic” was designed. And to me, that’s what I see happening. This was Darbi’s second meeting, and she’s very passionate. There are a lot of high expectations behind those who went door to door for her to win, and she feels the need to get there and get something done instead of just being another bobblehead on a school board. She ran on getting rid of masks in the schools, as other schools have done around the state of Ohio. So short of getting more comfortable with the rules of school board business and not feeling like a sell-out for doing so, I am more than happy with how the Lakota school board is functioning for the first time in three decades. 

I know people are wondering, especially the sweat bees from the teacher’s union, what my relationship is with all this. Just remember what some of those same people who are all stirred up over Darbi, what they did to me about ten years ago in the parking lot of Kroger by Lakota East. Julie Shaffer played her role in that along with Joan Powell and many other tax increase supporters back then. So now is not the time to play innocent. I’ll stay mad over that forever; I will never forget. But that isn’t the fault of the current crop of kids moving through Lakota or many of the characters who are now involved that want to make the public school work for the benefit of the area’s parents. It took Lynda O’Conner more than a decade to win me over to believing that she was a Republican. I know her to be a very good one now. But I used to be so angry at the Lakota school board that everyone on it was what I thought were scum bag liberals. It took seeing Lynda at many GOP events over the last several years that I learned that Lynda was one of the good people. We have very different ideas about the worth of public education. She really believes in Lakota and is hopeful about public schools’ role in all our lives. I personally want to blow it all up, metaphorically, as a concept given to us by the significant progressive loser, John Dewey. I had been asked to run for school board many times, but that just wouldn’t be fair. We all pay taxes to the school, right or wrong; I’m happy to not get in the way if people like Lynda who want to fix it to the best of their ability. I’m also happy to offer solutions or help people who want to be part of the solution find their way to the school board by helping connect all the right dots. But for me personally, I’m all about getting rid of the Dewey system completely. 

Lynda and I usually agree to disagree on education, and when we see each other, we talk about other things besides school board business. Usually, we have a shared interest in GOP-related topics locally and nationally. If we talk about school board items for too long, I quickly blow it all up intellectually, while she desperately wants to save it. I tell that little story to those who are wondering, which are quite a few people these days. And I can also relate to the problems that new school board members like Darbi and Isaac Adi are feeling now that they are inside. It’s empowering to help be a part of the solution. The rules of the game are there to make it something of a functioning republic, and most of the time, no single person gets it their way all the way.

In Darbi’s case over this mask resolution issue, it’s her job to get two other votes on the board to support her. Many people backing her might think it’s a sell-out to work with people on the board. But they aren’t on the board. It’s tough, at best, to represent so many people and still do what you think is right. I have a policy that I do not pick up the phone, or text anybody ever, like Sheriff Jones might do, to never put my hand on the scales and threaten people to vote a certain way. I would never call up Lynda and tell her that I wouldn’t like her anymore if she didn’t vote the way I wanted her to. I believe firmly in finding people who want to do a job correctly and putting them in power to do that job. I may not always like what they do, but they should know more than me about it in a republic, which is why they are my representative there. You must trust the people you vote for to do the ultimate right thing and always keep the big picture in mind. If they don’t, then you vote them out. That’s the way the game works. 

But for the teacher’s union at Lakota, they already don’t like Darbi because they can’t imagine how they might get her under control and intimidated by their presence. That is something they have been doing for years, threatening school board candidates first with the offerings of friendship but then taking away that civility if they step out of line. That was what was implied by them walking out on Darbi in the second meeting of the year while she was speaking. I can understand not liking what Darbi was saying. It may not be their politics. But if they really wanted to understand what’s going on in the district, they would know that Darbi represents people in Lakota who think worse of public education than I do. I’m a moderate on the issue, believe me, there are lots of people who hate it far worse, and to them, Lynda might as well be Satan incarnate because she doesn’t put everyone on trial and burn them at the stake. Nobody will ever make everyone happy, but what we want is for good people to do good work on behalf of the kids and taxpayers who are stuck paying many thousands of dollars a year for this ridiculous product. And there isn’t a lot of tolerance for these teachers’ union shenanigans. As Issac and Darbi get more acquainted with the conduct of these school board meetings and the agreed rules of the game, they will get better. But so far, these meetings are what I think all school boards should look like. They may be a little bumpy. But I’ve never liked a lot of hand-holding, especially when millions of dollars are at stake and many lives are impacted. And for those who are used to bullying their way into a one-sided argument, well, those days are over.  

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Sheriff Jones Endorses the Governor of the Most Corrupt State in America: A solution to the stupidity of Mike DeWine

Another Reason Corruption is Good to See

This is precisely why I value the measurement of corruption, which I talk about extensively in my book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. For the last several weeks, people around me have been asking, “what is going on with our great Sheriff Jones” the Butler County figure that is internationally known for his support of President Trump. Suddenly he has thrown his support to Governor Mike DeWine and made a whole lot of other flip flop decisions that seem ultimately at odds with the MAGA movement. So there is a bit of a panic on the matter, which I have explained as a form of corruption that must be accounted for to understand the decision-making process of Sheriff Jones. Corruption isn’t always just about money, but in the case of Jones and DeWine, without a Trump in the White House, many in the Republican Party are drifting back into the cave of power for the sake of it, and that is why we are seeing rifts forming ahead of the Ohio primary coming up in May of 2022. Unless we have a way of understanding the nature of corruption, we would otherwise have no other means of comprehending these strange behaviors. Trump has at least three more years before he’ll have a chance to be back in the White House. Naturally, Jones must align himself to the world between now and then. Yes, he is perfectly willing to adjust his beliefs to the power void that has formed in Trump’s wake, and from his point of view, the smart money points at the current governor of Ohio, the most corrupt state in all of the United States, Mike DeWine. 

As all this is going on, the challenging governor and my pick for the upcoming primary, Jim Renacci, is up 8 points over the incumbent DeWine. I had the opportunity to listen to Mike DeWine on many conference calls during the Covid mishap that his administration unleashed on Ohio. I have seen behind the veil just what an idiot DeWine was. I voted for him in the last election because he called himself a Republican. What I heard during the government-imposed shutdowns was a complete fool out of touch with reality. One moment in particular that impacted me was when I had to listen to Cedar Fair Amusements in May of 2020 try to explain their problem to DeWine about the trouble with not knowing when they could open their amusement parks because they had to hire, prepare their parks, and take all kinds of measures to get ready for a summer season that government had destroyed, and couldn’t give any guidance going forward. As a right-to-life governor, DeWine had put the pro-abortion Obama activist Amy Acton as head of his Health Department. She was running the state the way a stringy-haired pot-smoking hippie would run it, which was costing the business community billions of dollars during a lockdown over Covid that nobody could see the end of, especially Cedar Fair Amusements who ran a seasonal operation in two Ohio locations. It was worth hundreds of millions of dollars to them, and DeWine wouldn’t commit to anything to help them out. That was pretty much what DeWine said to everyone on those many teleconferences concerned over their businesses. His message was, we’re the government, and we’ll tell you when and what you can do and how long you can do it, and you’ll like it. Mike DeWine showed himself to be just as bad as the worst of Democrats during his first three years in office, and what he has done to Ohio will take decades to fix. So for me, it’s easy; Jim Renacci is the answer to the Mike DeWine debacles of the first term in office as governor.  DeWine has been a disaster.

Sheriff Jones has been something of a thorn in DeWine’s side while Trump was in office. DeWine was one of the first in the country to attempt mask mandates leading all other governors to the mandate first, just as he did with lockdowns. Without DeWine, many other governors only fantasized about it. DeWine was the first to do it. He was also the first to unconstitutionally alter election laws which would then pave the way for massive cheating that the Democrats would perform later that year with mail-in voting to remove Trump from office before the courts could even process the assault. Sheriff Jones, who advertised himself as a “pro Trump” member of law enforcement, suddenly endorsed DeWine for governor after all that DeWine had done to Ohio. Why? Well, the first thing is that the DeWine money machine is kicking in. Corruption and DeWine are never far from each other, and Sheriff Jones is always attracted to a kind of power. I’ve known Sheriff Jones for several years and what’s most valuable to him is his brand. For instance, when his brand is aligned with the Trump White House, it’s a wonderful thing. But I’ve seen it negatively align with big government union business, especially in 2013 when he backed the Lakota school tax increase, which he put his name behind to get it to pass by the most narrow of margins. So the Sheriff isn’t always a hard conservative; he just plays one on TV and in public appearances. And with Biden in the White House for the foreseeable future and Jones up in years himself, he needs to protect his brand while the political world sets itself in a new reality. 

What does Sheriff Jones like to do with his brand? Well, we have seen what he did to Thomas Hall, an Ohio Representative from Middletown who didn’t vote the way that the Sheriff wanted him to vote in Columbus, so the Sheriff used his name to berate the young man on WLW radio to thousands of people, personally attacking Thomas. Nobody elected Sheriff Jones to control other members of congress that we have elected to vote on our behalf. The Sheriff is supposed to take care of law enforcement concerns, not to dictate the terms of how other Republicans vote in our community by bullying them to his will. As a reaction to Thomas, the Sheriff went out of his way to put a primary candidate up against the Ohio Rep by dragging Matt King into the race, which naturally was pitting Republicans against Republicans on purpose for the intention of getting his way and making his point as being the “king maker” of the party, which put all kinds of people into a difficult position. Sheriff Jones didn’t care. He just wanted to show who had the power and what they had to do to kiss the ring to appease him, to hell what the voters of Butler County thought about the matter. That is why Jones had to align with Mike DeWine. Even though the governor is known to be attached to corruption, that power overflow gives Sheriff Jones the power to his brand that feeds his need to stay relevant as a man coming to the end of his career. Jones doesn’t have time to wait for Trump to be back in the White House. The need for power is always present, and DeWine is the quickest way to keep it. 

Now, of course, Jones would never admit to any of this. I’ve spoken to dozens and dozens of people affected by this situation, and they don’t know what to think about it. They feel betrayed and don’t have the words to put to the matter. That is why I like corruption so much, because if we didn’t have some way to measure corruption, no matter what form it exists, we wouldn’t have a way to explain this behavior. From his big labor union perspective, everyone thinks they are doing right; Jones thinks he’s doing what’s right for the Republican Party. He’s a moderate at best, and Thomas Hall has turned out to be way too Trump for his taste, so he is taking action. DeWine loved the way Amy Acton’s hair smelled after she took a shower, so he gave her the keys to Ohio and let her destroy it. As a long-married guy who is a closet Democrat, DeWine thought Acton knew what she was doing, so he defended her against all those evil business leaders who were outraged that DeWine and Acton had closed them down over Covid. DeWine showed himself to be an idiot who thought he was doing right. That’s why we have elections so that when we learn these things about people, we can get rid of them with an option, in this case, Jim Renacci. But honestly, there is only one right, not the right that Sheriff Jones comes up with, or his new buddy, Mike DeWine. But in our Republic, for it ever to really stand, it takes the taxpayers and respect for their vote. If they pick Thomas Hall, it’s not for Sheriff Jones to decide otherwise. Or for DeWine to attempt to hide four years of horrible management of Ohio behind one deal from Intel worth 20 billion dollars and to ride it like a bucking bronco at a rodeo. Corruption seeks to hide its misdeeds behind a façade that, if you know what you are looking at, can tell you the truth about the matter and allow voters to understand who they are getting involved with. And that is why corruption is a lot better to understand than to pretend like it doesn’t exist at all.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Show Business of Sheriff Jones: When it comes to H.B. 99, Thomas Hall offers a solution

Allowing Teachers to Carry Guns

At the heart of the problem, Sheriff Jones illustrated on his WLW November 18th diatribe against Representative Thomas Hall’s H.B. 99 was this long-established problem of whether or not more public sector employees are a solution to gun violence in schools or a hindrance. There are a lot of guns in Butler County, Ohio, so school shootings are pretty rare, and there is undoubtedly a direct correlation that liberal politics doesn’t want to admit to. Even Sheriff Jones himself is a supporter generally of concealed carry. He has told me that it’s great to have many first responders in the community to stop criminals at the point of a crime. But, Jones is also the head of a police union and symbolizes strength among all the public sector unions. And it is there that he politically turns left every time. He comes from a generation where they wanted to believe in the system of government that we have seen now has let us down time and time again. Yet, he is still a stubborn defender of labor unions even when they show themselves to be trouble. Saying all that, there haven’t been many school shootings in Butler County. There was one in Madison, Twp., not that long ago, and it was Thomas Hall’s father who was a school resource officer who ran the shooter off the scene only wounding four people, not getting a chance to kill them when the attacker fired into a cafeteria one day seemingly unprovoked. To say that Thomas Hall cares about school safety is an understatement. His bill H.B. 99 was meant to set basic training requirements for school boards to plan to so that they could allow teachers to be armed in the classroom, to be those critical first responders when and if a school shooter presented themselves as a menace to the public. For many mysterious reasons, Sheriff Jones was against the bill and made an absolute embarrassment on WLW attacking Thomas Hall for many reasons that no conservative would understand. But Jones has done that before. 

I was pretty disheartened to learn firsthand that Bill Cunningham was not a real conservative. My history with Cunningham goes back for several years, all the way back to 1996 when I had paid Cunningham to be the spokesman for our “Take An Axe to Our Tax” t-shirts that we were using to promote tax cuts during the Bob Dole campaign that year. I was supposed to come on WLW to talk about the promotion, but my segment got bumped because Willie decided to do a strip show that night, where he brought in live strippers to dance nude during the show. The producer offered me to do my segment during that mess, and I had to decline because it just wasn’t something I could be a part of. Later I learned that Bill Cunningham plays a conservative on his radio show, but he wasn’t very conservative. He was the Stephen Cobert of radio, playing a conservative in media, without really being one. I learned around this time that Sheriff Jones, who was frequently on with Cunningham, was much the same way. He played a conservative in public, but he has many big government ideas in private. He’s great if we are talking about law enforcement. But when it comes to social issues, he shows himself to be very liberal, which is why he and Bill Cunningham have always gotten along so well. I understood the show business aspect of the radio work, but I thought of these people as the real deal until I learned firsthand that they weren’t. 

Sheriff Jones Attacks Thomas Hall For Petty Reasons

In 2013 Sheriff Jones and Cunningham came out in favor of the Lakota Levy, which raised our taxes in monstrous ways. It caused so much trouble in our community that we haven’t had a levy since because we never needed it. We didn’t need it then, but Jones worked with the Democrat Kathy Wyenandt to pass the tax increase. We didn’t speak for about five years when finally we broke a little bread together in the middle of the Trump administration. I thought he had been doing an excellent job for Butler County and representing us to the Trump administration. But I wasn’t too shocked to hear him revert to the kind of liberalism that he uttered again with Bill Cunningham using Lakota as a kind of launching point for his resistance to arming teachers in the classroom and for disparaging the very conservative Thomas Hall personally for his position of empowering teachers to add another layer of protection. For Jones, he wants school resource officers or prohibitive training that would make it so difficult for anybody who wishes to even to carry a gun in a classroom that it might as well not even be a law. But Thomas’ bill empowered school boards to set the maximum limits themselves, depending on their need, and Jones felt he needed to sabotage the bill through the public airwaves and the political career of the young representative himself. 

My argument in favor of a more private-sector solution, as opposed to a unionized employee, is due to people like Jones himself. When it comes to the cosmetic stuff, Jones is a great Republican. But when it comes to legislation, he’s a big government guy that’s always talking about compromise with the other side that wants to bury us all. I think it’s an age thing, he and Cunningham are from the same generation, and they thought the big Democrat politics from the early 60s were going to work, and they never really changed their point of view. We have seen times where school resource officers like Thomas’ dad run off shooters while under fire. But we have also seen some who panic, as the resource officer in Florida did, never engaging the shooter and allowing lots of carnage in the meantime. People panic, and cops, even with their many hours of training, panic too. Sometimes they get so much training that they can’t adapt to a unique situation. Sometimes they lock up. They passed the test on paper but can’t apply it to reality. I like the idea of cops in schools. But I want a teacher armed with a gun to be the first responder. And I like the idea of a teacher being so comfortable with a gun that they accept it as part of their lifestyle, practicing every week for the rest of their lives. Not just some bureaucratic training period that may or may not be enough. 

I always wanted to believe in Bill Cunningham as a conservative, just as I always wanted to believe in Sheriff Jones. But with them, most of their public persona is a show. And that is the same with police in general. Having a cop in the hallways of our schools may look nice. It might scare away some potential shooters. But if a shooting actually happens, I don’t believe any public employees are full proof and will behave appropriately under pressure. I prefer mitigation to their service if they get scared or misstep themselves when danger presents itself. Sheriff Jones, the big government guy from Butler County, believes absolutely in public service. He has been a public servant all his life and always will be. I still think he’s generally good for our community so long as it’s mostly a show we are putting on, and things aren’t getting too real. Yet, after the way he treated Thomas Hall on WLW, where he turned to the show to attempt to destroy a person he endorsed just a year earlier, I would never trust an employee like him in a school without some extra measure of mitigation, a teacher comfortable with a gun, to protect kids when they are under an assault from bad people. That is, If we ever fully get back to school because all these lazy union employees don’t want to go to work using Covid as a cover for staying home.   And what will we do in the future when the school resource officer, unionized and terrified of Covid, calls off work the day there is a school shooting? If we rely too heavily on them, we are bound to get burnt by the general laziness of all government employees. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Old Yeller: The fight between Thomas Hall and Sheriff Jones

Why Is Sheriff Jones Going After Thomas Hall

Sheriff Jones decided to go on 700 WLW and speak disparagingly about Thomas Hall, the current House Representative of the 53rd District. I like Sheriff Jones, I hope he runs and wins a few more terms, but nobody in their right mind could support the way he attacked Thomas Hall on those radio waves to hundreds of thousands of people. Long-time readers here know that I used to be a frequent contributor on WLW, like Jones. Over time, many of my people who used to work there moved away, were fired, or otherwise changed their point of view. We separated like some kind of divorce, and I have not had much of an idea of reconciliation. I have more freedom in media with this site, so I have not returned in several years. But Jones does go on WLW quite a lot, so because I don’t pay much attention to what goes on there these days, I did not hear the original airing where Sheriff Jones disparaged Thomas Hall in many negative ways calling him a 12-year old “goof,” not just once, but many times. Still, I have often heard from many Republicans who want to defend Hall but are scared of retaliation from Jones, and I think that’s a shame. Hall certainly isn’t 12-years old. I said in the video that he was in his early thirties, but actually, he’s in his mid-twenties and is the youngest member of the current Ohio House. However, the young man is an overachiever by all measures, and his age certainly isn’t a hindrance. He has had two terms as a Madison Trustee, and now he’s in his first term as a congressman seeking a second term. 

Sheriff Jones Goes After Thomas Hall over H.B. 99

Another thing I said about Thomas is a couple of times in the video, I referred to him as Thomas More, because for a lot of reasons, I think of the writer of Utopia whenever I think of Thomas Hall. It’s been that way for a while just because of my own reading habits. There are a lot of Thomas’ in English literature; another is the character of Thomas Becket from The Canterbury Tales, who was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by his friend Henry the II. It’s one of my favorite books, and this story keeps coming to my mind when I think of Thomas Hall and his friend and mentor, Sheriff Jones. Jones had endorsed Thomas and was mentoring him until a few things happened. Apparently, Jones didn’t like Hall’s voting record. The Sheriff had a confirmed case of heartburn over H.B. 99, Hall’s bill in congress, which set definitions for minimal teacher training to carry firearms in public schools. Jones uncharacteristically turned on Thomas Hall and made quite an exhibition about it on WLW right before Thanksgiving in 2021. I hadn’t heard it until I did an endorsement video for Thomas Hall, and he mentioned it. I had heard from several very prominent Republicans, some very close to the Sheriff, that something had gone on really bad. As I said in the video, one of them was not Senator Lang. I never put people in positions where they get caught in crossfires with each other and given the mean streak that many fear in crossing Jones, many don’t want to be a part of it. Yet many more than ten contacted me to let me know what was going on between Hall and Jones, and they weren’t happy about it.

Thomas Hall Responds to Sheriff Jones

I listened to the Jones interview with Willie, included here; then I listened to the response from Thomas Hall the next day. I played them for my wife, who loves Sheriff Jones. We talked about the interviews and thought Thomas Hall did a fantastic job. He certainly won the argument. But Jones came across as petty and even childish. My wife offered that maybe he was hurting about something else, totally unrelated. Perhaps that’s true. Whatever it is, I would suggest a few thoughts regarding the excellent Sheriff. I’ve been sideways with him a few times over things, particularly school things and union business. I still blame him for the Lakota levy passing in 2013. He has a liberal streak in him that I can’t stand, but we have buried the hatchet since then. What he did for Butler County during the Trump years has been great. A person’s body of work can’t be defined by just a few years here and there or by the grumpy old dog that starts biting people who step on a porch to sell Girl Scout cookies. I hope that Jones runs and wins more terms for as long as possible. But perhaps my wife was right about him, that something else is bothering him. 

In my book The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, I deal with this very issue of an older generation coping with the young people biting their heels. The chapter is called “The Skill of Developed Intuition” on pg. 181. You spend your whole life getting somewhere, making yourself into the person people put on T.V. Getting invited to the White House. Where you can’t go into public without people wanting to get a picture taken with you. And suddenly, here is some 25-year-old whiz kid who suddenly does more in one year than most state reps do in a lifetime. And he’s confident and won’t kiss the ring. Deep down inside, nobody would want to see such a young person broken, but consciously, the older person wants respect because he gave it when he was younger. The aging process isn’t fair. When you can start to see the end of the tunnel, and you know it’s going to be over soon, it is painful to see intelligent young people with their whole lives in front of them getting the attention it took you a lifetime to build. Sometimes, you might be tempted to crush the young competition, show them all they don’t know yet and teach them obedience. But I would caution you not to do that. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is encourage the young people, not tear them down, but build them up. 

Old Yeller

Listening to Thomas talk about the WLW incident, I was amazed he wasn’t more upset. I would be. I carry grudges for a long time, for decades. I would not have been able to say all the nice things that Thomas said about Sheriff Jones when I did my endorsement video with him. I would have been plotting revenge and embarrassment. But obviously, Thomas Hall has had a lot of good mentors in his life, his father being one. But several other politicians for another, including Sheriff Jones. So, there are a lot of lessons here that should be observed. I would hope that Sheriff Jones wouldn’t spend all the years of his excellent branding on petty nonsense that will overshadow all the good things he has done. There are people concerned about just that very thing by many of the calls I received. But Thomas isn’t that way; he understands that politics is a blood sport, and he plays to win without getting hung up on stupid stuff. And in his mind, he already defended himself on WLW the next day. But people were confused as to why the Sheriff went after Thomas, and I would suggest that it shouldn’t ruin the reputation of the Sheriff. I don’t think we are dealing with an Old Yeller situation here. Maybe just an old dog that would love to run around like the youth do but can’t anymore. There is still good to do, and from the point of view of Thomas, he’s willing to do good wherever possible.    

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

How To Make a Two-Party System Work: We are a Republic, not a flea-bitten “democracy”

We are a Republic

Every time I hear some political ignoramus say that we need to “save our democracy,” it is like someone scratching a chalkboard. All this “dagger into democracy” talk is as stupid as stupid gets. We are not a “democracy” in America; we are a “republic.” We are a government “of” the people, not “by” the people. But we are taught in every way of life imaginable that everything is a popularity contest, especially in our public schools. That majority rule, and if you are not in the majority, then you will never rule. Well, when we talk about the majority, we are talking about every drug addict, every sex-starved lunatic, every illiterate fool, ever degenerate imaginable. If we only consider popular elections by a majority, then always the dumbest will rule the smartest, and our society will indeed be equal, equally deficient. So it is no wonder that people get frustrated with politics when they see the system not working. They show up once every four years and vote for some people, and ultimately, those people let them down, then they get discouraged with the two-party system. At the same time, the media drives home the point they learned in their public educations, that democracy is all about the popular rule and that the only way to achieve fairness is to punt everything to a much more centralized government to sort out. This is especially true now where people can see that the party system isn’t working for them, Democrats are off doing the work of outright communism, and Republicans seem to be fighting Trump, a natural outgrowth of the Tea Party movement. People who don’t pay much attention to politics are obviously frustrated because, for some reason or another, they thought they could show up and vote every so often, and that would be the end of it. The world would just carry on and work.

But what I say to all those who want to disparage the two-party system, or who get upset when parts of their chosen party look bad and don’t represent a majority of the people associated with that party, is that the time to work out those elements is always in the off-year elections. For instance, right now, in the early months of a New Year, 2022 is the time for the philosophy of the Republican Party to be worked out in the trenches. The primary season is upon us, and that is when candidates battle each other for the general philosophy of the party. I would say that the system works great as a two-party system so long as people participate. You may not get everything you want in the candidates. I’m hardly ever happy with where things are, but if you don’t participate, then your point of view will never get a seat at the table.   After all, this is what’s going on in the Republican Party right now and what Democrats have continued to fail to match. The news analysts think that Trump is an extreme version of the Republican Party when he is a natural outgrowth of the Tea Party movement that has become more involved in party politics starting at the central committee levels, voting in primaries, and other off-year activities. The establishment types aren’t happy about it, but that representation grew over time from the Tea Party into MAGA and the American First Policy Institute. Democrats have incorrectly assumed that Trump was just an extreme right-winged version of the establishment, so they have tried to counter with their own version, where the Biden administration is now, representing the radical progressives, giving them a voice they have never had before. The progressives took this admission as a mandate, and as a result, they have over-extended themselves.    

To a political outsider not participating in these processes, and looking at presidential elections as the only ones that matter, they will see disfunction because the system is not working the way they were taught, through popular vote, only every so often. But in a republic, we are a nation of laws, not the mob. And those laws are created during off-year elections, not presidential elections every four years. Right now is the prime time to work out the general philosophy of a political party, and if you are not engaged in that debate, you should never be surprised when you are not represented in the final product. But even if you do participate, there are other people involved, and their minds have their inputs, so what you end up with will ultimately not be 100% you.   But at that point, you can’t just pick up all your game pieces and cry like a baby and leave. You have to continue to fight it out, to push for your ideas, and let come what may. That is what a republic looks like. Politics is not supposed to be nice. It is supposed to be contentious so that only the best ideas survive into law and policy. The whims of mankind are meant to be tempered with time and a lack of tenacity. If you want a friend, get a dog. If you’re going to be the master of your own universe, stay at home and never go outside. But if you want your republic to function, participate. When people disagree with you, strengthen your argument to win them over or have your ideas crushed under the weight of analysis. But don’t think for a second that your vote is a one-and-done kind of relationship at the ballot box. There is a lot more to it, and our republic requires people to participate all the time. Not just when it comes time to vote. 

China keeps talking about how efficient they are, and of course, big bureaucrats in Washington D.C. culture want to have the same kind of control that communism gives to those countries. They want to rule by administrative state, so they throw gas on the fires all the time about the follies of our current political process.   Of course, when the government can just tell people what to do, it’s a lot less messy for them. China’s present argument is that “American Democracy” is too messy, too slow, and does not serve the “people’s” needs. They would love to see an end to the two-party system. They love to say things like, “we’re putting daggers into our democracy.” They want to plant that seed and watch it grow into a change state from a capitalist nation into a communist one. If they can convince voters that the system doesn’t work, they may be willing to throw it all away for something that does. But it’s not our republic that is failing; it’s the people participating. Because of their lack of effort, the strength of the two-party system doesn’t get fulfilled the way it should, and the people who end up in charge are the worst because they were the only ones who showed up.   That is clearly the problem with Democrats. Republicans had the Tea Party, and the establishment is very unhappy about their continued presence, but Republicans have a much better party as a result. But punting to default and saying that none of it works is just a falsehood. The only thing not working are people who have been taught wrong from the beginning what their proper role in government always was. And how much influence they really have for the future of our “republic.”

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

We’re Not Anti-Government, We’re Anti-Stupid: Government needs to be the refs, not the players in the game

We’re not Anti-Government, Just Anti-Stupid

I’ve heard what Steve Bannon has said about Elon Musk on the War Room podcast, and I understand it to a point. Yes, Elon Musk has made deals with China, and knowing what we do now, in hindsight, it was a terrible idea. It’s the same situation with other billionaires like Ray Dalio. He has invested heavily in the prospect of an expanding middle class in China, where corporations think all the new money in the world will come from. I would not say Steve is wrong. But he’s only partly correct. People evolve their beliefs over time depending on good and bad ideas that transpire through the course of events, and they do change their minds; and I see in Elon Musk a mind that is evolving in the correct direction. Our job as change agents is to allow changing minds into our tent for tactical reasons, but without losing ourselves in the process. For instance, during the ESPN2 Manning podcast of the Monday Night Football game, Aaron Rogers abruptly started talking about Ayn Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged. Here we have a sports jock speaking in popular culture about Ayn Rand, one of the most controversial writers in American history and world history. Many of the ideas discussed on the War Room and here on the Gunfighter’s Guide are percolating into popular culture, which is a great thing. But with new interest from people who may not have been thinking about such things in the past come all their past mistakes. So, I think it’s a good idea to bring them into the camp, allow them to get warm by the fire, and keep our eye on them as to misdeeds. But in the case of Elon Musk, he said something recently that is irrelevant to his patriotic status and is entirely accurate and worth talking about as a critical strategic need within the freedom movement.

I heard it in a couple of different interviews; one was with Musk and the satire website The Babylon Bee. I can understand the skepticism of Bannon in what Musk’s intentions are since he has been so profitable in relations with communist China. But I see other things going on with Elon Musk. He is a problem solver, and he’s looking at the potential for a Mars colony and thinking about what kind of government will allow it to thrive, based on what we all know now from history and what is working up-close here in the present. He has been told no on several permits to fly Starship into space on test flights due to environmental concerns, so he is seeing the negatives of a communist type of government up close and personal. He may have profited from those relationships, but he has also learned some valuable lessons that are worth listening to. These days Musk is saying that governments should be more like referees in society than players in the game. That, in essence, has been the goal of the Tea Party movement for years, and it is undoubtedly the intention of the MAGA movement. Musk said it nicely in a way that many have struggled to put words to for a long time when talking about limited government.   What is it, and why does it work better? 

People have always associated me with an anti-government movement. That is how they often see the freedom movement in general, whether we are talking about the Tea Party, MAGA, or the current America First Policy Institute. The people who make up the name-calling are usually significant government types who love Karl Marx so that less government would be detrimental from their point of view. And by default, whether it’s a sports jock like Aaron Rogers, a political strategist like Steve Bannon, or an eclectic engineer with vast financial resources to make what he wants, the name-calling by the left usually defines the political reality because all the names mentioned are too busy being productive to work together on a counter-punch. But Musk and his need to solve the problems of interplanetary sustainability must figure out the puzzle of good government, and it has taken him more toward the freedom movement than toward communism. For that, many should be grateful. Because once thought like that enters popular culture, to the point where Aaron Rogers is talking about Atlas Shrugged on a football broadcast, there are significant cultural shifts on the horizon that few are really prepared for. Arbitrary definitions of people are not as crucial as proper utilization of the sentiments.

I would never have called myself “anti-government.” Instead, I have always been “anti-stupid.” There are many stupid people in the world, and the bigger the government is, the more of a chance that stupid people will end up in government, causing all of us a headache. So, it’s quite natural not to want stupid people to be in charge of our lives, so in that way, we want the small government to weaken the impact that stupid people will have on our lives. But what Elon Musk said was more on target. Government is there to make sure that the rules of the games we play in managing our society occur to bring about the best outcomes.   As I say in the video above, we can look at an empty field and consider it without value until we decide to play a soccer game or football game on it with all the rules that have been created to allow the drama of such an event to transpire. Government should referee those games; they should not be the players themselves. Because many of them are stupid and valueless types of people, our current government wants to use the protection of the referee position to rig the games for wins instead of letting the games play out and evoking a winner and loser based on skill and persistence. 

And that is the real goal; we aren’t trying to get rid of the government; we need the government to make sure that things work right in society. But we must distinguish that government is not a player on the field but are just there to make sure the game is fair. In essence, the heart of all our problems is that too many in government presently want to be the players, not the referees, and they got into politics for all the wrong reasons. From Elon Musk’s point of view or Aaron Rogers, they have previously functioned quite well in the world with the political rules bent slightly toward corruption. Still, nobody cared as long as they got what they wanted out of the deal. But upon success, and continued frustration in dealing with the government, whether it’s over a permit to fly into space or Covid restrictions and vaccine mandates, the bug of awful play-calling has affected just about everyone these days, and they are looking for solutions. Our task within that movement is to find them a place around the campfire and expand the reach of our shared objectives, which is to see that our games in life are fair so that we can then concentrate on being the best we can be within those rules. And in any healthy society, whether on earth or Mars, that needs to be what we spend our time on, and not trying to fend off referees who want to be the players of the game, without the risk of being exposed as unskilled and stupid.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Best Thing I Received for Christmas: Todd Minniear in Liberty Township

I Got Todd Minniear for Christmas

Another question that comes up always after Christmas, mainly out of obligations of small talk, is what did you get for Christmas?  Was it all worth it?  Did you have a good Holiday?  Well, for me, this year, I did have a great Holiday.  But it wasn’t just family gift exchanges that I enjoyed.  Just a few days before Christmas, at the Liberty Township Building just down the road from my house, Todd Minniear was sworn in as my next trustee, one of three.  He is the product of a series of off-year elections where constitutional conservatives were targeted for election to either replace liberals or offer a more conservative candidate aside from the ones traditionally provided.  For me, it was quite a nice Christmas present to have Todd give me a call and invite me to his swearing-in, which I went to and was greeted there with a kind of class reunion from the various campaigns of 2021, and it was nice to see all that hard work come to some positive culmination.  I say it all the time, if you want a good government, then put good people in it. Don’t just sit on the couch and hope things work out alright.  Either run yourself for an office locally or support someone who wants to.  After the Trump presidency, that was certainly my story where obvious political shenanigans to remove him from office took place.   The audacious behavior of the national establishment is something I’ve seen plenty of times locally, over thirty years.  And the election of Todd Minniear, a constitutional and freedom-minded purist, was a significant achievement in my community and was a sign of things to come nationally. 

Another thing I say all the time to just about everyone I speak with is, “don’t be a victim.” Never allow yourself to be a victim in the story of your own life.  Those people we put into elected positions in our republic are never supposed to be our “betters” or some useless member of an aristocracy.  They are there to represent us.  But that’s not the way the political class views that relationship.  Often, they get into public office for the attention of it and the power that follows by having their hands on the levers of rules and regulations that govern our lives.  In the case of a local trustee, the question is often, “can I build a new pole barn on my property to hold my classic car.” The politicians usually will reply, “but think about the lowered property values of the community.  They don’t need to be penalized because you want to protect some gas-guzzling old car that should be on the junk heap, according to the United Nations.” They don’t say that they often work to protect the interests of those who give them campaign donations to keep them in power instead of representing all the community’s people all the time. I’ve been involved in politics in some way or another all of my adult life, and I have seen all the kinds of corruption that can come out of it, all the ugly stuff.  And I understand entirely how that corruption comes about and how to fix it.  The solution is to follow the Constitution of the nation and our state.  If everyone did that, things would work pretty well.  When politicians get away from the constitutions and bring their personal desires or biases to an issue, that’s where corruption starts.  

I don’t think any politician gets into a public office with the idea of becoming corrupt.  They get that way because they lose their way while solving problems.  Corruption starts to eat away from them once they get off the constitutional script.  For instance, I have several very close personal friends who are politicians.  People like George Lang. I’ve known George for a long time since he was a trustee in West Chester, well over a decade ago.  We bonded over Tea Party ideas of small government and the novel by Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged.  George has a habit of giving that novel out as a Christmas present at Christmas time.  He believes in the ideas in every aspect of his life.  Even though now he is an establishment figure, he is still the same person.

Because he is a big-time senator within the state, many people assume that politics has made him corrupt.  But I know personally, it hasn’t changed him at all. He’s still the same Atlas Shrugged-giving guy.  We might remember when Paul Ryan was also an Atlas Shrugged fan, but when Mitt Romney wanted him to be his VP, all that Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand stuff was tossed away so that they could become the next power player in congress, eventually becoming Speaker of the House.  Some people can handle the pressure of public scrutiny, and some can’t.  George can; Paul Ryan couldn’t.  Power has a way of altering people into the most profound things in their hearts.  George, for instance, at this Todd Minniear event, was pressed about several projects that involved tax money distribution.  His answer was a classic George Lang line, and he didn’t just say it because I was there.  It’s what he says all the time to everyone, “don’t give the government or me any more tax money. We’ll just spend it.  Keep your money. Our job is to take the barriers out of your way to living a good life.” 

I’ve watched several good politicians like George Lang get elected into more and more positions over the years.  And at that Todd Minniear swearing-in, several of our Lakota school board members newly elected were there as well, more parts of a future solution.  Locally, I’ve always looked to West Chester to ensure more small-government ideas found their way to the trustees.  My friend Mark Welch and others there have done a great job of keeping the government’s small and business engagement very high.  It is the model of what should be happening all over Ohio.  And if we can primary Mike DeWine as governor of Ohio and replace him with Jim Renacci, we’ll be able to do great things in Ohio.  But Liberty Township is where I live, and the trustees there have always been Republican, but more of the Paul Ryan type, and not so much that of George Lang.  At the start of the election in 2021, I didn’t think a freedom candidate like Todd Minniear could find his way on a Republican Party that was still much more like the Republican Party nationally of 2012 and not so much like the Trump Republican Party of 2020.  But Todd won with a solid majority, and he had a tremendous amount of people show up to support him, which is unusual at these kinds of events.  And as I stood there watching Jennifer Gross, our member of the Ohio House, swear in Todd, I could see where our country was headed.  And it made me very happy to see.  All the hard work that goes into these kinds of things was certainly worth it.  For those wondering about it, I would say that doing such things is some of the best Christmas presents you could give yourself.  Often there isn’t much personal satisfaction in politics but putting the right people in the correct positions at the right time through a vote is one of the most rewarding things anybody can do in a healthy republic.  And in Liberty Township for Christmas of 2021, I can say that seeing Todd Minniear sworn in for public office was the highlight of my Holiday season. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Bill Gates and his Army of Prostitutes: What $319 Million can buy with the media

What Bill Gates is Buying

Obviously, we are dealing with it; it’s a global drug dealing operation where pharmaceutical companies are tied to government to maintain a market.  For instance, it was no coincidence that the day after Thanksgiving in America, on Black Friday no less, a new variant of Covid announced from the World Health Organization was unleashed upon the world, the Omicron (Sounds like a Transformer), which shut down travel to and from the country of origin, South Africa.  But pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, or in this case, the many members of the administrative state who want to advance their drug dealing agenda as they have received millions of dollars from people like Bill Gates to do so, who pull the levers of the media and politics to advance their agenda.  On November 24th, South Africa asked the pharma companies J&J and Pfizer to stop sending vaccines.  They only had 35% of their adults inoculated, and now they were going to stop asking for more vaccines.  So what was the retaliation? Well, Big Pharma, Big Tech, and the world’s governments did the deed and came up with a new virus to scare everyone so that South Africa could feel the financial sting of a travel ban.  Thus, you have the new war on the world, and Bill Gates and other billionaires like him are the new Hitlers and Stalins.  The fight this time isn’t with military equipment on the other side of the world; no, this time it was in our own homes and businesses as this new interconnected world was run not by our governments, but by the people who fund it with dark money, soft money, and the allocation of grants from charitable foundations.  And Covid is their creation to change the world to their image. 

I think the new Robert F. Kennedy book The Real Dr. Fauci is the damning testimony to this long ordeal, and Bill Gates has been caught once and for all. It’s the hot new book that is hard to get.  Millions of people are going to read this book. For me, it’s similar to the Judy Mikovits books that came out before and during Covid, which I had read and kept me ahead of the inside track on what the coronavirus was really about.  Kennedy, in this new book, whenever you can manage to get your hands on one is the court case that all of society needs to have on this matter.  Every media company involved in shadow banning the Kennedy book, every act of censorship of any kind regarding Covid-19 and the perpetuation of its continued terror are guilty of crimes such as sedition and treason to America, and the advocates should be hung for their actions.  Bill Gates by himself has committed gross terrorism against America and the world in general purely on his rationale to use his money as a weapon to steer the world toward zero emissions. From his perspective, we can save the earth from human beings.  Personally, I think Bill Gates lost his mind a long time ago, back when Windows 95 came out.  I don’t begrudge anybody from making a good living and making all the money they want to make.  But they never have a right to use that money to alter my life in any way or to rule over me or any people for that matter.  And that is what Bill Gates has done with his money.  He has decided, and George Soros falls in the same category, that he has more money than all government and should use it to take over our republic forms of government and become our dictators in the process. 

It was reported recently that Bill Gates had poured $319 million into the various media outlets to promote Covid over the last few years essentially.  That is money well beyond the millions he has given to China, the WHO, and various foundations promoting vaccine research and tying it to pharma companies.  If all the money is considered, he has spent in the billions advancing his agenda, bringing up an interesting problem that we all must deal with.  What does $319 million buy in media influence?  Well, I think of these kinds of things like prostitution; what would a prostitute do for $100 or $1000?  $319 million isn’t much money by itself, but if you are an influential leader in the media and you get checks in that amount, or free vacations to some exotic place because you do favorable stories for Bill Gates, then why wouldn’t the media go out of their way to show him and his intentions in a good light?  We are not talking about philosophical geniuses here; we are talking about parrots who repeat what they are told and often take the path of least resistance to a story.  I read over the holidays another great book, The Nixon Conspiracy, by Geoff Shepard, and I will forever have a different opinion about the media, which is still going on.  Essentially the Deep State that we have apparently just discovered has been operating in the background for a long time.  They obviously were involved in the killings of the Kennedys, and they certainly set up Richard Nixon in the same way that Trump was set up.  The FBI was caught with Trump, so all this is much clearer in hindsight than it was at the time, but there is no question we have people in our government, and in these billionaire classes who do not respect the concept of “rule by the people” or any form of “self-government.” And Bill Gates is one of those people.  They use their money like Hitler used tanks and airplanes to invoke influence.  The fear of death is just a method of delivery.  But make no mistake, that’s what we are dealing with, these kinds of authoritarian minds. 

The evidence is abundant, and I would point you, dear reader, to those books.  But the bottom line here is that we must stop the influence that people like Bill Gates and George Soros have over our government or companies and our media so to keep them out of our lives.  We can’t have the money of Bill Gates tainting the prostitutes in the media into retaliating against a country of the world just because they aren’t complying with the vaccine mandates that Gates wants.  And the people enforcing his desire want his money like sluts in a strip club on a Friday night in Vegas.  We don’t have journalistic integrity to police corruption.  We have people in these jobs who will do anything for the money, and it’s been like that from the beginning.  Watergate was all about the media being used by a Deep State to shape governments not by elections but by sentiment.  Anybody who doesn’t think that the election of 2020 was stolen because Trump was a threat to the plans that Gates had, George Soros had, and many other billionaire insurgents who are looking to rule the world with their money, not elections, isn’t being honest with themselves.  Why do the world’s governments think it’s OK to attack South Africa over their vaccine policies?  Well, they’ve gotten away with it in the United States.  They stole a popularly elected president.  They shut down the entire economy.  They created the virus in Wuhan with American money and a partnership with communist China.  So why wouldn’t they attack South Africa with travel restrictions because they aren’t complying with vaccine mandates?  For people like Gates they own the media and everything they broadcast.  Just ask Disney-owned ABC News why they still put Dr. Fauci on as the expert when he should be in jail for lying to Congress over funding gain of function research in China.  Because the message is clear to us all, Bill Gates is in charge of an army of prostitutes, and they’ll do anything for him to get some of it. Including destroying our nation and everyone in it.

Rich Hoffman

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