Tag: Government

Justice Deferred: Why Prosecutions Under Trump’s Second Term Remain Slow—and What Global Parallels Reveal

Donald Trump’s second term reignited expectations of sweeping accountability for political corruption. Yet, despite strong rhetoric and high-profile promises, major prosecutions remain elusive.  One year into Trump’s second term, the question persists: Why haven’t the big names gone to jail? Hillary Clinton remains free, despite years of allegations. The Clintons’ ties to corruption, Epstein’s network, and the weaponization of law enforcement against Trump allies have fueled public frustration. From Rudy Giuliani to Peter Navarro, loyalists have faced bankruptcy and imprisonment for defending election integrity. Meanwhile, figures like Letitia James and James Comey—central to prosecutorial misconduct—walk free after cases were dismissed due to procedural irregularities, not innocence.

This paradox underscores a deeper truth: prosecutions are not merely legal acts—they are political acts requiring stability, mandate, and timing. In a polarized nation, aggressive prosecutions without securing legislative dominance risk triggering retaliatory cycles, undermining the very agenda they aim to protect.

The dismissal of cases against Letitia James and James Comey illustrates the fragility of prosecutorial authority. A federal judge recently threw out charges citing the unlawful appointment of Lindsey Halligan as interim U.S. attorney, despite clear evidence of misconduct. The crime was procedural, not substantive—a loophole exploited to shield political elites from accountability1.

This is not unique. DOJ statistics reveal that high-profile political cases often span 3–7 years from indictment to resolution, with declination rates exceeding 39% when political volatility threatens institutional legitimacy2. Prosecutors, like any actors, weigh personal risk: firebomb threats, reputational ruin, and career destruction loom large when partisan control can flip overnight.

Trump’s own experience reinforces this caution. His first term saw relentless lawfare—Mueller investigations, impeachment trials, and civil suits—weaponized to cripple his agenda. The lesson? Without a stable mandate, prosecutions become pyrrhic victories, inviting reciprocal vengeance when power shifts.

The human toll of this legal warfare is staggering. Rudy Giuliani, once America’s Mayor, now faces $1.36 million in unpaid legal fees, with bankruptcy looming3. Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO, has liquidated assets to fund election integrity lawsuits, burning through millions4. Tina Peters, a Colorado clerk, sits in jail for investigating election fraud—a chilling precedent for dissent5.

These cases illustrate the asymmetry of lawfare: defending truth costs fortunes, while weaponizing law costs taxpayers. The financial attrition of Trump allies serves as a deterrent, signaling to future operatives that loyalty carries existential risk.

Enter the Epstein files—a political gambit disguised as transparency. Democrats, desperate to derail Trump ahead of midterms, embraced Epstein disclosures as a “gotcha” strategy, betting on salacious ties to tarnish MAGA credibility6. What they miscalculated was Trump’s counterplay: full release of the files, exposing a Democratic nexus of sexual trafficking, influence peddling, and elite corruption7.

This maneuver exemplifies asymmetric warfare: bait the opposition into overreach, then detonate the trap. As Trump played it, “rat poison in the nest”—a tactic to implode the colony from within. The fallout promises to be seismic, not for Trump, but for the progressive aristocracy entangled in Epstein’s web.

Brazil offers a cautionary mirror. Jair Bolsonaro, ousted after contesting election fraud, now faces 27 years in prison for an alleged coup attempt8. His successor, Lula da Silva—himself a convict released to reclaim power—embodies the cyclical weaponization of law. The message is clear: in politicized systems, justice is not blind; it is partisan.

For MAGA strategists, Bolsonaro’s fate underscores the imperative of institutional entrenchment. Without securing Congress and insulating the judiciary, Trump’s prosecutions risk reversal under a Democratic resurgence.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. attorneys prosecuted 61% of suspects in matters concluded in FY 2023, with political cases often delayed beyond five years due to appeals and procedural challenges2. The median time from investigation to decision: 61 days, but high-profile cases involving political figures skew far longer, often requiring special counsel oversight.

Public impatience for “perp walks” is understandable. Yet, in the calculus of power, timing trumps theatrics. Immediate arrests may gratify the base but jeopardize the agenda if Democrats reclaim legislative control. Trump’s restraint is not weakness—it is war by other means.

The Epstein gambit, midterm positioning, and structural reforms signal a long game: secure the mandate, then strike decisively. Until then, justice remains deferred—not denied.  I would say to all who are seeking justice, defend Trump for the midterms, keep the Democrats running for the hills.  And sweep them up once the rat nest is poisoned and they can no longer do any harm.  But don’t play nice with them.  They would never give you the same benefit. 

References

NBC News. Judge dismisses cases against James Comey and Letitia James after finding prosecutor was unlawfully appointed. Nov. 24, 2025.1

Bureau of Justice Statistics. Federal Justice Statistics, 2023. March 2025.2

USA Today. Rudy Giuliani must pay his defense lawyers $1.36 million. Sept. 17, 2025.3

CBS News. Convicted Colorado election clerk Tina Peters transfer controversy. Nov. 23, 2025.4

PBS News. Trump signs bill to release Jeffrey Epstein case files. Nov. 20, 2025.7

CBS News. Jair Bolsonaro arrested before serving 27-year sentence for coup attempt. Nov. 22, 2025.8


To understand why prosecutions under Trump’s second term remain slow, we must situate this phenomenon within a broader historical and theoretical context. Lawfare—the strategic use of legal systems as instruments of political warfare—is not an American invention. It is a global sport, played with Machiavellian finesse and Foucauldian precision

Consider South Korea: former presidents Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak were imprisoned for corruption, only to be pardoned later in a theatrical display of political mercy. This oscillation between punishment and absolution mirrors Michel Foucault’s thesis on power as a dynamic, relational force rather than a static possession [1]. In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trials have dragged on for years, punctuated by coalition collapses and judicial reforms—a case study in how legal timing intersects with political survival [2].

Historical parallels abound. Watergate, often romanticized as a triumph of accountability, was in fact a slow burn. The scandal erupted in 1972, yet Nixon resigned only in 1974 after exhaustive hearings and strategic delays. Roman legal systems offer an even older template: prosecutions were frequently deferred until political winds shifted, illustrating Cicero’s dictum that law is the servant of politics, not its master [3].

Theoretical frameworks enrich this analysis. Machiavelli, in The Prince, counseled rulers to appear just while wielding power ruthlessly—a maxim evident in Trump’s calibrated restraint. Foucault’s Discipline and Punish reminds us that law is a technology of control, deployed to normalize behavior and consolidate authority [4]. When Trump delays prosecutions, he is not abdicating justice; he is performing sovereignty, signaling that timing—not immediacy—defines true dominion.

Global data corroborates this thesis. Transparency International reports that high-profile political prosecutions in democracies average 4–6 years from indictment to resolution, with delays often justified as procedural safeguards [5]. In Brazil, Lula da Silva’s conviction and subsequent resurgence exemplify lawfare’s cyclical nature: today’s convict is tomorrow’s kingmaker [6].

This expanded lens reframes Trump’s strategy as part of a transnational pattern: justice deferred is not justice denied—it is justice weaponized. The playful irony? While pundits clamor for perp walks, seasoned strategists know that the real game is chess, not checkers. Arrests gratify the mob; timing secures the throne.

Footnotes:
[1] Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Vintage Books.
[2] Peleg, I. (2023). Judicial Politics in Israel: Between Law and Power. Israel Studies Review.
[3] Cicero, M.T. (54 BCE). De Legibus.
[4] Machiavelli, N. (1532). The Prince.
[5] Transparency International. Global Corruption Report, 2024.
[6] Hunter, W. (2020). The Politics of Corruption in Brazil. Journal of Democracy.

Bibliography

Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Vintage Books.

Machiavelli, N. (1532). The Prince.

Cicero, M.T. (54 BCE). De Legibus.

Peleg, I. (2023). Judicial Politics in Israel: Between Law and Power. Israel Studies Review.

Transparency International. Global Corruption Report, 2024.

Hunter, W. (2020). The Politics of Corruption in Brazil. Journal of Democracy.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

The Conditions that Make People Poor: Bill Gates as usual, is way off the mark

In the modern discourse surrounding climate change, healthcare, and economic disparity, we often find ourselves circling the same ideological drain without ever confronting the root of the issue: how we define and address poverty. Recently, Bill Gates made headlines by walking back some of his climate change positions, suggesting that economic development must be prioritized alongside environmental goals. This echoes a more profound truth—one that Donald Trump touched on when he proposed sending healthcare payments directly to individuals rather than filtering them through bureaucratic systems. These moments reveal a fundamental tension in our society: the battle between centralized control and individual empowerment. At the heart of this tension lies a philosophical divide between those who believe in micromanaging outcomes through administrative states and those who believe in unleashing human potential through economic liberty. The former seeks to engineer fairness through redistribution, while the latter aims to cultivate prosperity by removing barriers to opportunity.

This divide is best understood through the lens of The Oz Principle, published in 1994 by Roger Connors, Tom Smith, and Craig Hickman, a widely respected business philosophy that categorizes individuals and cultures as either “above the line” or “below the line.” I love the book and its sequel, The Oz Principle Journey, which was published in 2011, many years later, offering a wealth of new ideas that utilize Wizard of Oz metaphors to articulate effective business practices and the proper social conduct of society at large.  Above-the-line thinkers are proactive, solution-oriented, and driven by positive energy. They ask, “What else can I do?” and take ownership of outcomes. Below-the-line thinkers, by contrast, dwell in a state of victimhood, blaming others and avoiding accountability. In business, cultures dominated by above-the-line thinkers thrive—they innovate, adapt, and grow. Cultures saturated with below-the-line mentalities stagnate, collapse, or become toxic. The same applies to nations. When a country fosters a culture of victimization, entitlement, and dependency, it creates systemic poverty. It’s not merely about access to resources; it’s about the mindset with which people approach life. Suppose the dominant narrative teaches individuals that they are powerless, oppressed, or owed something by the state. In that case, the result is a population that waits for handouts rather than builds solutions.

This is the trap of the administrative state, particularly as envisioned by modern leftist ideologies. The Democrat Party, increasingly driven by collectivist impulses, seeks to centralize control over healthcare, education, and economic redistribution. Their vision of “fairness” is not about equal opportunity but about equal outcomes, regardless of effort or merit. They create systems that reward victimhood and penalize initiative. Public education, once a bastion of enlightenment and upward mobility, has become a breeding ground for thought patterns that are below the line. Teachers, often radicalized by personal grievances and ideological indoctrination, pass on a worldview that prioritizes identity politics, grievance culture, and dependency over personal responsibility, excellence, and ambition. Instead of teaching Shakespeare or the principles of economics, they teach children to see themselves as oppressed, marginalized, and incapable of success without government intervention. This is not education—it’s indoctrination into failure.

As of 2025, approximately 10.1% of the global population—roughly 839 million people—live in extreme poverty, defined by the World Bank as surviving on less than $3.00 per day (2021 PPP). The burden of poverty is not evenly distributed across all individuals. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the most affected region, with 46% of its population living in extreme poverty. Within this region, Eastern and Southern Africa report rates exceeding 53%, while Western and Central Africa hover around 35.7%. In stark contrast, high-income countries and territories, such as Europe, East Asia, and North America, report poverty rates below 1%, underscoring the profound impact of economic systems and governance on wealth distribution.

The disparity in GDP per capita between economically free and administratively controlled nations is staggering. In 2025, Luxembourg leads the world with a GDP per capita of $141,080, followed by Switzerland ($111,716), Ireland ($107,243), and Singapore ($93,956). These nations consistently rank among the highest in economic freedom indices, characterized by low regulatory burdens, strong property rights, and open markets. Meanwhile, countries with heavy administrative oversight and limited economic freedom—such as Burundi, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic—report GDP per capita figures below $1,000, reflecting the economic stagnation that results from centralized control and restricted market access.

The Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) report reveals a direct correlation between economic freedom and prosperity. Nations in the freest quartile enjoy an average income of $40,376, compared to just $5,649 in the least free quartile—a 7.1x difference. The poorest 10% in free economies earn 7.9x more than their counterparts in the least free nations. Moreover, life expectancy in free countries is 15 years longer, and infant mortality rates are 6.8x lower. The UN World Happiness Index also shows that citizens in economically free nations report life satisfaction scores two points higher on average than those in restrictive economies.  These metrics confirm that economic liberty is not just a path to wealth—it’s a foundation for human flourishing.  If you want to help people have access to wealth, teach them, and empower them to be “above the line people.”  Solution-based and to enjoy the result of that way of thinking with wealth creation, the ability to enjoy a full bank account, and the results of a task well done. 

The rise of the administrative state—defined by expansive government agencies that regulate economic activity—has been linked to sluggish growth and persistent poverty. While initially intended to address industrial complexity and social inequality, these bureaucracies often stifle innovation and delay wealth creation. The U.S. federal administrative apparatus now issues thousands of regulations annually, with the Code of Federal Regulations exceeding 185,000 pages, quadruple the size of the U.S. Code of Laws passed by Congress.  This regulatory overload disproportionately affects small businesses and low-income entrepreneurs, who face barriers to entry and limited access to capital. In contrast, countries that have adopted deregulation, sound monetary policies, and trade expansion have experienced significant reductions in poverty and increases in GDP.

The solution is not more government, more regulation, or more redistribution. The solution is to cultivate a culture of thinking above the line. This means empowering individuals to take control of their lives, make better decisions, and pursue success through effort and innovation. Capitalism, despite its imperfections, remains the most effective mechanism for lifting people out of poverty because it rewards productivity, creativity, and personal responsibility. When people have access to capital and the freedom to use it, they build wealth—not just for themselves, but for their communities and nations. The administrative state, by contrast, stifles this process. It throws up regulatory stop sticks, preventing people from even starting a lemonade stand. It confiscates wealth under the guise of fairness and redistributes it through inefficient bureaucracies that serve more to perpetuate their own existence than to solve problems. To reduce poverty, we must dismantle these barriers, reject the cult of victimization, and return to a model that celebrates personal agency, economic liberty, and the power of positive thinking. That’s how you build a society that thrives—not by managing poverty, but by eliminating the conditions that create it.  Too much “below the line thinking” creates depraved conditions that bring down all cultures.  And if you want to prevent that way of thinking, then you have to change where people are on that invisible line that we draw in the sand, above and below.  It’s not a political line, it’s one of personal responsibility.  And when you teach people to be victims, of course, you are then teaching them to be poor.  And no amount of money that you throw at them will help them if they don’t think right about how to use it. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

John Bolton, and Many Others Need to Go To Jail: I would argue their punishment should be much worse

Of course, John Bolton should go to jail.  Trump put people like him in important positions during his first term to appease the never-Trumpers, and it didn’t work out.  And Bolton was given a good job —and a really important one —as National Security Advisor of the United States.  And what he did was take that job and abuse it to make Trump look bad personally.  He always intended to write a tell-all book, and he sent classified documents home to his wife and daughter for it while he was on the job. For that irresponsible and deeply political act, he needs to go to jail.  And I would argue, worse.  I think it’s a firing squad offense.  But Trump tried to bring in people like Bolton to do these jobs where there were better people out there.  And if Trump didn’t, we would probably still be dancing around the bowl with some of these guys.  But Bolton, like Clapper, Comey, Pelosi, Bill Barr, Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, and a whole host of terrible people who played nice to his face but were detrimental backstabbers behind the scenes, openly plotted the destruction of our country.  What they did was far worse than Benedict Arnold’s betrayal of George Washington.  And Bolton committed his crime, thinking that there was no legal system on earth that would prosecute him.  It’s a little secret in the Beltway when you get out into the mansions of Fairfax, just a half hour or so outside the city on the other side of the Potomac.  They look at the executive that people put in the White House as something to wait out and overcome.  And laugh at them because of their lack of any real power.  This is where the idea of self-government, going back to the Bible’s Book of Judges, traces its roots.  How do you give someone the authority to run a society without denying the right to self-rule of the people who vote for people to represent them in high office?  In that ambiguity, people like John Bolton game the system for personal reasons, and they have been horrible for our country.

And notice how it goes, Bolton wrote a book about his classified information leaks, so it’s not like he can deny he did it.  There is plenty of evidence to indict him on.  I’ve been through that Grand Jury process, so I know what goes into prosecutors’ presentations of evidence to secure an indictment.  And for something like this, his book was the clear evidence.  But here’s the thing, and this is the trend of tomorrow: all this double-dipping and profiting off society’s scandals have to come to an end if we are going to lead the world as a capitalist nation.  And that is what is on the table.  It has been for years, but with Trump, we are talking about the first fundamental steps beyond a cosmetic effort at genuine self-governance.  How do you give through an election the power of an executive office to be effective while not trampling on people’s rights in the process?  John Bolton did not have the right to steal classified information for his book, then cry foul when he got caught, because he committed the crime with the “everybody does it defense.”  John Bolton must go to jail and pay for his crimes.  He needs his life destroyed.  But he’s not alone.  If you go to the Walmart out there at Tyson’s Corner in Fairfax, just down the road from the CIA, I would say 1 out of 4 people shopping there need to go to jail for their own abuses of the government for their personal profit.  The situation is that bad, and Trump and his team are just now beginning to clean it all up. 

Bolton lives about 10 miles from where I was talking about. I know how things go along that I-495 traffic pattern.  There are a lot of John Boltons out there, and when they are given opportunities to do good, they should.  If they choose to betray our country, then we must punish them to let others know what will happen to them under the same conditions.  And for clarity on this issue, it really helps people to have a good understanding of the Bible.  I really hate having conversations with people about the Bible where they immediately gravitate to the teachings of Jesus Christ.  That is usually because they haven’t read the Bible for themselves, but rather have just trusted some lazy pastor to translate it for them.  They might carry it around, but they never read it for what it is.  And in the stories of the Bible, there is the struggle for good government, whether on earth or in Heaven.  Even God has trouble with scandalous characters who betray him at every opportunity.  And the Bible struggles with this issue from cover to cover.  The tragedy of Jesus, and as some people say, the redemption is in the forgiveness of sin, as if to say, people will be people.  So let’s forgive them and move on.  Which is precisely why John Bolton thought he would get away with stealing classified documents and writing a book he hoped would make him rich, thanks to his access to the White House.  But in history, he is just one more Judas betraying someone trying to do something good.  It’s the exact nature as the Israelites worshiping Astaroth at the Temple with sex sacrifices until God punished them into worshipping only him, for their own good.  If not punished, they always strayed and betrayed, as many people do these days, because nobody ever wants the responsibility for punishing them. (1 Samual 7:4)

Bolton faces 18 felony counts related to the mishandling of classified information under the Espionage Act (18 U.S.C. 793), specifically, eight counts of unlawful transmission of national defense information, for allegedly sending highly sensitive materials via personal email and messaging apps to unauthorized individuals.  This was learned about because the Iranians hacked his email account.  And we know that because we hacked Iran’s.  Then there are 10 counts of unlawful retention of national defense information, the keeping of classified documents, notes, and writings at his home.   He then used this information to write the book The Room Where It Happened, which was released in 2020, and the only defense Bolton had was that the Biden administration didn’t prosecute him because his book was cleared by the FBI before it was released.  Everyone learned about the Iranians hacking his account in 2021.  But since the government was decidedly anti-Trump at the time under the Biden administration, the authorities appear to have wanted Bolton to write a tell-all book negative about Trump to impact the next election cycle and solidify Trump’s exile from public office.  They never thought Trump would be back, or that people would vote for him as popularly as they did.  So they broke a lot of laws, betrayed our country in the worst ways possible, and felt free to shop at Walmart at Tyson’s Corner and buy $400 televisions for their oversized mancaves without a care in the world about their crimes.  So yes, he needs to be punished, along with many thousands of others who are just as bad, and they all have it coming.  And this is where forgiveness is not the correct method of justice.  Because if we turn the other cheek, they’ll just keep doing these evil acts.  I think our wrath has to draw inspiration from the Old Testament.  God would approve.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Under New Management: Why companies fail and how leadership works

All over my town of West Chester, Ohio, there are signs everywhere indicating that new management is running a business.  Most of them are restaurants and bars, but they have been unusually placed in front of all kinds of companies, even manufacturing facilities.  Which was another thing I said would happen as a result of the catastrophic stupidity of COVID, where a global Marxist strategy of micromanaging how people were going to do work was imposed on all of us through the ridiculous means of a doctor’s office.  White coat losers in the form of health professionals were trying to scare us into open socialism, and it was always going to be a disaster.  And now, five years later, the world has turned to populism, specifically to capitalism.  If you really want to get philosophical about the Trump administration at this particular time, it’s because the human race knows what’s good for it, and all forms of Marxism have not been it.  There was never a plan for Trump to be in any authority position.  The plan was to take over mass society and make people afraid of a virus that was made in a Chinese lab, by people who wanted to make a bioweapon to use against the world, to steal elections, and take over economies.  People saw this happening, and they put Trump in office as the rest of the world has been supporting their own version of pro-capitalist populism.  Its not because they were that great of a candidate, but because people didn’t like the direction the world was turning, which brought about out of desperation, the Covid year of 2020 and the complete collapse of the global economy that was so tragic that most people didn’t even want to discuss what happened because they wanted so badly to put it out of their minds. 

So the mindset of the economic shutdowns has taken a few years to recover from, and it has taken a while for people to get their feet under them again.  And what we’re talking about are all the DEI hires and the work-from-home mentality that has been socially disastrous—social policy cooked up in a lab, with everyone’s books open to Karl Marx’s literature.  Even Microsoft was in on the gag, trying to push everyone into Teams meetings from home in their pajamas.  Nobody was betting on a complete economic recovery in those dark months of 2021, as Biden took office, Trump was forced into exile, and Covid protocols were imposing themselves on every one of us.  People should have been more intelligent to see the obvious.  We were under attack by an extensively laid plan of a complete Marxist takeover of the world.  And I said it at the time, and said all this was going to happen.  Nobody listened until it was too late.  And I would go around town and talk about all the businesses that were working from home, and how they were going to fail, and all the fast food places that closed their dining rooms because they didn’t have enough staff to stay open.  I told everyone what was going to happen, and now it is.  And I saw it clearly because of the way I live my life, in front of the train. At the same time, most of the world lives in the back, where it’s safe.  We’re talking about Robert Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality as he talked about it in the great book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  It’s a very popular book, though largely misunderstood.  Its sequel, Lila, has not been read by millions, but by a very select few in the world who are audacious rarities. 

The metaphysics of quality, as I explained in my video with a train roaring by, is essentially a perspective on leadership and decision-making. Outstanding leadership is done at the front of a metaphorical train, where you can see what’s coming as it approaches.  You can turn the train, slow it down, tell people what you see coming.  But most people don’t dare to lead from the front.  So they have built an administrative bureaucracy in the back of the train to provide analysis, which is useful.  But it’s not leadership because by the time the moving train reaches the point of decision, the caboose has passed it entirely too late.  Decisions have to be made at the front to ensure the quality people expect.  That is why great generals who lead from the front are great.   Great business leaders are so rare.  And why political efforts succeed or fail.  If leadership is at the back of the train, a management effort will likely fail every time.  If, under scarce circumstances, an organizational leader is at the front of the train —where few people dare to be —then great success is possible.  Success that is often beyond people’s wildest dreams.  So when a business is failing and wants the public to know they are making changes, they put up signs saying they are under new management, hoping people will give them a second chance in the economy, implying that their leadership change will be different.  After COVID, a lot of companies got suckered and put their leaders all in the back of the train, where it was safe, and it was a disaster for the world’s economy under a hostile takeover. 

Karl Marx was always an idiot and a coward.  He died broke because he was a back-of-the-train theorist.  The world is full of them.  But because there were a lot of cowards in the world who ended up in government, health care, and were second-generation titans of industry who didn’t have the same guts their previous generation had, they adopted Marxism to hide what losers they were.  But in a marketplace where free will is expected, that kind of back-of-the-train micromanagement was never going to work.  And I said so all along.  And now that the money is flowing again and Trump is back in the White House, leading from the front, it has exposed this plan for the fraud it was.  And now everyone is scrambling to find people at the front of the train, and their “under new management” signs are hopes that people will assume that there is leadership at the front of the train instead of everyone functioning from the back, where all the wimps hang out.  And that’s why there are suddenly so many signs.  At least the owners of these businesses are trying.  But it shows clearly the danger that arises when we micromanage society, with back-of-the-train personalities who are not equipped to lead.  Even in a bar or nightclub, where leadership isn’t even considered.  People expect the lights to work and the beer to be cold.  And when everyone is hiding in the back of the train, they often order those things too late to arrive for a Friday night gathering that nobody thought would happen because of COVID social distancing rules.  Only people in the front of the train were ready, because they saw well in advance what a dumb idea everything was.  And most businesses that lacked those unique personalities failed, are now trying to recover, and want the world to know they are looking for front-of-the-train management.  And even if they haven’t yet found them, they are at least looking.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Under New Management: The difference between the back of the train and the front

It was a good accident while I was shooting the video for this article, when a train came by.  I tried to wait for a previous, huge train to go by, but about 10 minutes later, another came, almost as if the trains wanted to help me make my point.  Because I was discussing the Metaphysics of Quality, a favorite topic of mine from Robert Persig’s famous book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I think it’s one of the most important books that the human race has ever produced because it puts its finger on a very allusive idea, which is why some people are better than others, especially in the field of business management.  And these days, now several years out of Covid, and a world obviously not prepared for Trump to be in the White House, a lot of companies are flat-footed on this current economy.  There was an assumption during the COVID pandemic, and all the way up to last week, that different rules would govern the world, a kind of socialist administrative state where work was bent to the preferences of the workers instead of the needs of the business.  And people are shocked by these very capitalist rules.  All over my town, signs are going up to let the public know that their companies are under new management.  Most of them are restaurants that have been too slow and understaffed for too long. Many people thought they would be able to work from home to stop the spread of COVID, which, in retrospect, was a laughable endeavor.   Yet the entire world tried to think it and actually put it into practice, which was one of the dumbest things ever.  To my point, which is why I can say that our COVID response, even as it was artificial, was really dumb. That train helped me make the point right on time, leaving a perfect demonstration of what the heart of the problem is with all these restructurings. 

What the world needs, especially from every company and every family, is a leader who leads from the front, where all the action happens.  Using a train metaphor, the front of the train, at the cutting edge, is where all the critical decisions are made. For instance, how fast should the train be going? Does it need to turn onto a different track in case something falls across it, posing a danger to the entire train?  Operating the train needs to happen from the front, where all the controls are, and the leader can see what’s coming before anybody else.  However, most leadership cultures, and I can say this after dealing with many tens of thousands of people, most of whom have advanced degrees and extensive experience in high-tech sectors, are behind-the-scenes people.  People who sit in the caboose collect data and report the contents of the train as it moves along.  The information they process can be helpful, but by the time they see it, the front of the train, especially on a very long one, has already passed the point where something was observed.  For exemplary leadership, by the time the people in the back of the train see it, it’s too late to do anything different.  Most management in the world, whether it’s a small company like a private restaurant, or a large company, or a government, functions from the back of the train because that’s where it’s safest, and people generally don’t like danger.  That is why good leadership, let alone outstanding leadership, is so rare in any industry.  It takes a lot of guts to run things from the front of the train. 

When people say they are under new management, they are trying to tell their customers that things are different and that they’ll get more responsive service from the organization, and they allude to this leadership quality.  As if to say that their management is new, and therefore the opportunity to be better is in the future.  But to be honest, the ownership is usually just throwing darts in the dark, and they don’t know the difference between good leadership and bad, because they are too afraid of the cutting edge at the front of the train to make decisions there.  It’s scary at the front, and most people in the world, more than 99% of them, would rather be in the back of the train.  I have literally dealt with consultants at every level who proclaim to know a lot about these things, who are in that consulting business because they are afraid of life at the front of the train, where all the scary stuff happens.  They don’t want scary things in their lives, so they do what many people do who aren’t very good at life: they teach.  Nothing is safer than putting the train on pause and studying its contents while it’s not moving, in a classroom environment where there are no dangers of driving through day-to-day life.  And this isn’t some fluke opinion; it’s actually a flaw in the way we teach generations of people in a classroom environment, and why those who survive the schools of hard knocks are actually better prepared for authentic leadership.  Leadership isn’t taught as much as it is learned in the challenging places that the world presents. 

The problem with all the COVID protocols and the obsession with moving the world into an administrative state management condition, where people could sit in their living rooms in their pajamas and tell others things from a Teams call, was absurdly stupid.  Yet, that is why so many companies are now struggling to meet customer demands.  The marketplace did not go the way it was expected to, and virtually everyone is struggling to catch up.  Many organizations are seeking new management to replace the old one, and they are posting signs to let their customers know that they are trying to find effective leadership, even if the kind of leadership they are looking for is actually one of the rarest commodities in the world.  Good leadership thrives at the front of the train while most of the world desires to hide in the back.  They might make a lot of noise back there and bark out commands, but on a fast-moving train, by the time they see them, the train has already moved well beyond the point of decision-making.  And that is the core of the problem; it takes courage to run things from the front of the train.  And our schools don’t and can’t teach courage.  They teach people to be in the back of the train, where the bootlickers and con artists reside. They are that way because they lack courage and have to fake it to make it.  They learn to appease the teacher in a static classroom, and once in the world, they do the same from the back of the train.  And that is why most management in the world is ineffective.  But then we marvel when we see individuals who have great success at almost everything they do.  This is why it’s called “Metaphysics of Quality” by Robert Pirsig, and it’s one of the most outstanding books on the subject of business that has ever been written or thought about.  I’ve read numerous books on business, including some of the most popular titles on Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma.  All that means nothing if your organization doesn’t have a leader at the front of the train.  And you can put all the signs out about new leadership, but it doesn’t matter if all that leadership is where most leadership is in the world today – at the back of the train, hiding, where it’s safe.  Leaders need to love danger and to make decisions unafraid as they face it moment by moment.  That is the difference between success and failure.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

The FBI Has Been Caught Manipulating the J6 Protests: Hiding crime behind more crime

So it’s no longer speculation, the FBI had 274 plainclothes operators in the crowd for the J6 attack on the Capitol, as we have long suspected.  And they intended to provoke an angry crowd into doing something that would capture the attention of the general public.  So if these FBI agents were not at the J6 speech, where Trump was encouraging people to hold strong while one of the most significant crimes in the world was taking place, election fraud on a mass government scale, that same government placed employees in that crowd with the intention of causing trouble that would otherwise conceal the crime of election fraud.  On the day that the certification process took place, January 6th, 2021, the FBI operated to stir up the crowd and create a cover story that was designed to hide election fraud, which is why people were so upset in the first place.  They were watching a government steal away their pick for president right out of the White House.  And we’ve seen how this government operates, we’ve seen several other assassination attempts against Trump since then, numerous court cases, and we’ve seen the assassination of Charlie Kirk on a college campus.  And there are all kinds of strange activities around these acts of violence that are part of a general enforcement policy at the FBI.  That they were caught over January 6th, where lots of people were harmed and their rights were violated horribly, in the J6 prisoners, who were only let out of jail because Trump won re-election, we can’t forget what we saw, nor ignore the amount of bad behavior we have witnessed here.   We can only discuss it now because Trump was so resilient that he outlasted the attempts against him, thanks to his substantial financial resources. Most people with that kind of wealth tend not to fight as hard for anything.  However, we now have the proof we needed.  The question is, what do we do with it? 

With all the recent shooters, we see the same kind of operation as we saw on January 6th, 2021, especially the Charlie Kirk assassination.  The killer, Tyler Robinson, was part of a discontent gamer community filled with transsexual actions and furries.  And like the J6 crowd, we were already upset at several things.  Breathing on a fire of discontent and pushing them to commit a crime is something that happens too often and appears to have a direct connection to the FBI and how they have learned to operate.  They are not what they are supposed to be, which is an investigative body.   We even have a MAGA guy in Kash Patel running the FBI, but these career types know the game and clearly plan to outlast their bosses.  And they intend to get away with everything, because essentially, they control the courts and the entire legal process.  As long as they don’t have their hands directly on the murder weapons, they think they can get away with things.  Even if they get caught, as they did with J6 in putting people in the crowd to encourage them to storm the Capitol and cause trouble, trouble that would hide the government’s crime of election fraud, they expect to get away with it.  With Tyler Robinson, we know he was the killer.  But there is a lot of strange behavior that points to circumstances where a disconnected kid felt he needed to throw his life away to kill a political figure that the FBI didn’t like.  Where did Tyler Robinson get the idea to kill Charlie Kirk with his grandfather’s gun? 

In the case of the Charlie Kirk shooting, it was a Discord chat room that the gaming community was using to discuss their opinions.  And when the people who routinely participated in that chat room are discussed in investigations into why Tyler Robinson did what he did, the story cools off really fast, just like the J6 prisoners.  And what’s alarming about that is that this appears not to be unique, but is a way to manage society.  When the FBI, as a group of career administrators, wants to shape the world to their liking, they use their grip on power to push other people into violence that serves their cause, while they hide in the background.  And they even got caught in this case, hiding critical information from their boss, who had to drag it out of them.  Ultimately, the indictment of James Comey, the former FBI Director, tells the whole story.  He has been charged with crimes, the same kind of crimes that Peter Navarro was prosecuted for, but the FBI has yet to pick him up and arrest him because he’s one of their own.  I’ve seen this kind of thing before in the various teachers’ unions that hide the bad behavior of teachers from the public.  For the FBI, numerous government unions operate independently, operating as their own kind of government without oversight. Among these, the FBI Agents Association exists as a kind of brotherhood that transcends the scope of government oversight and administrative management.  And as their actions have revealed, they see themselves as a fourth branch of government that rules through fear and their ability to manipulate the conditions of law and order from the shadows.  We have been suspicious of them for years, wondering whether they could be trusted with that kind of power.  But now, we know the truth, and the J6 incident was so extreme and involved so many people that they got caught. 

But if we hadn’t won that last election by putting Trump back in the White House with overwhelming support, and if he hadn’t offered himself in the very tenacious way that he did, we wouldn’t know any of this.  The FBI would have gotten away with literal murder, and the investigation would have gone cold a long time ago, just as it has with the inquiry into Charlie Kirk’s murder.  There are still all kinds of things wrong with the kid who tried to kill President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.  The crimes are happening so quickly that before the evidence of the previous crime cools, another one occurs, which is part of the cover-up.  That is part of the problem.  And when the FBI is the lead agency in all investigations, they can clearly avoid investigating themselves.  We have a real problem here that defies oversight, and most of the agents involved value their brotherhood to each other and the power they have been given through manipulation more than in the actual election process of maintaining administrative oversight through a democratic process of maintenance through elections.  They can rig elections and murder people who get in their way, and nobody will do anything about it.  And even if challengers to their order do get into office, such as Trump has, and Kash Patel actually runs their efforts, they will ignore them and work against them, waiting out their term in office as career politicians.  They are a lot more loyal to their brotherhood in the FBI Agents Association than they are to the people’s pick for president who sits in the White House.  And will they abuse their power over law and order to conduct crimes if they can get away with it?  Yes, they have been caught doing so, and their disrespect for the human race outside of their association is grotesquely apparent.  They are guilty of much worse than just murder and election fraud.  And it forces us to deal with them accordingly. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Yes, We Need a Ballroom at the White House: Setting an expecation for the rest of the world to follow

I recently visited the White House with my wife in 2025.  With Biden or Obama in the People’s House, I had no desire to go anywhere near it.  But with Trump in the Executive Branch, I am pretty proud of the place, and I have taken time this year, with Trump back, to enjoy it.  But for what the White House does on the world stage, it’s too small, and I always thought that would be a problem for Trump, who is used to big settings for deal-making in all aspects of his life.  For what he has made use of at Mar-a-Lago and his many golf resorts, Trump is accustomed to lavish settings, where he feels most at home.  I am glad to see him investing his own money in fixing up the White House and leaving a personal mark on it that matches how the residence has evolved on the world stage.  I love the gold in the Oval Office.  I love the large flag poles for the American flags.  And I love the idea of a new 90,000 sq. ft. ballroom being built for around $200 million of privately invested money.  It’s the right kind of message that the American White House should project to the world when hosting significant events.  As it stands now, the White House is too small inside for large gatherings.  When making deals with people, it is essential to communicate effectively and have a clear understanding of who you are dealing with.  And Trump is all about setting those expectations at the start of a deal, with proper attire and a focus on economic viability represented by gold. These designs are going to cross over into the new ballroom construction, which is set to begin as early as September 2025. 

I get it, when my wife and I were last there, we spent some time enjoying the area around the White House, really for the first time.  And we went to the Visitor’s Center on Pennsylvania Avenue just east of the White House on the south side of the street, and I geeked out on history quite a bit.  The White House was built to be unpretentious for world leaders and to convey that it was not the palace of a king or a ruthless dictator, but the temporary residence of the people’s representative in an executive capacity.  The White House was built small to convey to the world that the people living in it were unpretentious.  It’s a nice idea that represents the founding of our country as a small set of colonies that just wanted to be left alone by the outside world.  But that’s not how things have turned out, and perhaps, that’s for the better.  We are the idea that the rest of the world has for civil government. We essentially do rule the world, and we have learned over time that the best kind of presidents to put in the White House need to be more like Trump and less like Jimmy Carter.  When you are the best at what you do, it’s okay to take pride in your accomplishments and let others know about it.  They need to know there is a specific expectation, and our White House has evolved into being that symbol for the world.  Many people visit there, and the premises themselves are in dire need of renovation to accommodate the growing demand in a world hungry for it.  And if you are going to build something like that, it needs to be opulent and comfortable to facilitate people talking to each other.

We are living in a time where there is always a Marxist assumption to downplay everything, including how we dress.  I’m not a casual Friday kind of person.  I find the practice of dressing down on any professional occasion disgusting because it shows a lack of respect for the work being done.  But when Chuck Schumer says that we don’t need an opulent ballroom at the White House where everyone dresses up in their best to speak to each other, that he’s a hamburger at his desk kind of guy, he’s trying to appeal to the socialists of his party who want to overthrow expectation itself.  And our culture has deteriorated tremendously as a result of those efforts to the point where it has contaminated nearly everything we do.  As individuals, we need to expect more of ourselves, and it’s a very Marxist assumption.  Dress-down days are similar to the kind of people who say on Friday, “Thank God it’s time for the weekend,” because the association is that work equals unhappiness and that American culture needs to work less to be happier.  So we should dread Monday because we are going back to slaving for the “man.”  And we should love Friday because we get freedom from work.  Historically speaking, all of those assumptions were built into our culture by Marxists who wanted to attack the premise of capitalism and take away the management of companies and give the means of production over to the workers of the world, who are supposed to unite and know how to make a profit in a work endeavor.  But America was built on the back of hard work, and that is the kind of president that Trump is.  And when you work hard and smart in a free culture, you can afford nice things, and we should show them off to inspire others to do the same. 

When attending these types of social events, it’s essential to be in large spaces that inspire people to greatness.  And when you go to an event at the White House, it shouldn’t be to see the President of the United States, but some critical person who is at the top of their field who might help advance something you want to do along the lines of new and improved work.  That is the real definition of management in the workplace: to provide workers worldwide with an opportunity to exchange labor for a livelihood.  And the more work people are willing to conduct, and the more critical it is, the more money people should be able to make.  And to showcase those inspirational traits, people should gather dressed in their finest attire to demonstrate to the world that they have something to offer and are worth listening to.  People need space to rub shoulders with a lot of others without feeling pressed together.  So, a 90,000 sq. ft. space to meet in will be fantastic and has been much needed for many years.  We need to set the expectation that the rest of the world must follow, and Trump is making the White House into what it always should have been.  As Americans, we have to stop catering to other people’s lazy natures and their tendency to gravitate to socialism to hide that laziness from the world.  And we need a White House that tells the success story of capitalism, not some non-pretentious younger sibling in the world that doesn’t want to make other countries feel bad about themselves.  We have the greatest economy in the world, and it’s about time that the White House projects that to all the visitors who attend.  People need to be inspired.  Not eating a sandwich at their desk in a t-shirt and a pair of flip-flops.  People need to step it up, and that starts in America at the White House, as Trump is living there by our choice and expectation.  And we need the White House to set a standard that the rest of the world must live up to. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Republicans Need to Redraw the Maps: Redistrict wherever possible, do not play fair with Democrats

Don’t feel bad about winning.  Do Republicans owe it to Democrats to be fair?  Never forget, Democrats want to change the way America works, and we should have learned the hard lessons from playing fair with them in the past; we know what they do when given a chance at fairness.  We are now at a point where we control all branches of government, and there is a chance to gain many seats in the House and Senate, thereby strengthening our majorities.  And that we should do everything we can do, even if it means gaining just a single seat.  It drove me crazy in the 2024 election to see so many close races going to the Democrats, especially in California.  If we had monitored election fraud more closely, there would already be larger majorities in Congress. And yes, there was a lot of election fraud where illegal aliens and mail-in ballots pushed tight races to Democrat wins.  We were all paying attention to Trump and were happy he won.  We were delighted to get majorities in the House and Senate.  But we could have had more.  It should not be as close as it is right now.  So, we owe it to ourselves to stop the midterm trend of giving the keys back to the other party and instead gain deeper majorities. There are several ways we can do that.  And even with all that said, remember what I say all the time, because it’s true.  If you make it harder for Democrats to cheat, they can’t win elections.  Not even in places like Los Angeles and New York.  Democrats only have any trace of power through election fraud and other scandalous activities, so don’t feel bad doing what must be done to keep them from acquiring power ever, especially for these upcoming midterms. 

The biggest news of the moment is that Texas is redistricting some of its congressional seats to favor GOP candidates, which could result in an additional 3-5 seats, a very positive development.  Other states are considering the same approach, particularly in Florida and Missouri, which could result in a few additional seats.  The rule is, if you can pick up one seat, Republicans should do it.  Democrats have only been playing nice because they assume they will take back power in Congress in the midterms, and they plan to be obstructionists on every issue.  And you can bet that they plan to impeach President Trump over every radical issue, just as they did in 2019 and 2020.  The best way to prevent that is to eliminate the threat of power by not allowing them to have it.  They might be upset at gerrymandering intentions with redrawing the maps to take advantage of Democrats, but what they have planned is far, far worse, and at this stage in 2025, completely avoidable. Historically speaking, a president’s party loses 32 House seats during midterm elections because voters swing between parties in frustration with the rate of progress that comes from the White House.  Which is part of the plan in stalling everything Trump is trying to do, including appointing radical judges and even Jerome Powell keeping the Fed’s interest rates high, hoping to hurt Trump’s economy ahead of the midterm elections.  So Democrats are already doing much worse than gerrymandering congressional districts.  The key to success in holding onto Republican seats and even gaining more is for Trump to maintain an approval rating of around 63% and for Republicans to gain advantages in redistricting.  Trump’s approval rating was excellent in June as the bombing in Iran and the Fourth of July events had everyone feeling good.  Lately, with the Epstein talk and Russia causing lots of trouble, Trump is hovering at 44%.  Democrats see that as blood in the water for them to exploit, so they will continue to throw gas on any fire that might hurt Trump.

Republicans, through redistricting efforts, could pick up 5-10 extra seats, which is a significant gain right out of the gate.  There is additionally a Supreme Court case, Louisiana v. Callais, that indicates that Democrats have been accused of severe unconstitutional racial gerrymandering under the 14th and 15th Amendments.  And if this provision were found to be the case, as we should not be making up districts based on race or sex, Republicans could pick up as many as 25 seats.  This Supreme Court case is essentially judging on the premise of election fraud; the system is set up to take advantage of disadvantaged people for exploitation.  Not fairness.  This is the case regarding most things coming from Democrat politics.  The argument in the Louisiana case is expected to occur in the fall of 2025, with a decision anticipated in mid-2026.  And suppose the court rules that the Section 2 requirements for majority-minority districts are unconstitutional. In that case, states across the nation will need to redraw new maps before the 2026 midterms, potentially resulting in Republican pickups of 1-3 seats in states like Louisiana, Georgia, and Alabama.  The probability of the strike down of S.B. 8 to limit Section 2’s will likely come down to a 5-4 or even 6-3 decision with Kavanaugh and Roberts siding for the change, which is now racial-based intent that supports unconstitutional gerrymandering.  So do not feel bad about pushing back. Democrats have already made a mess of things for years, and countless Democrats who should never have been in representative government have been elected to seats they never should have had.  And it’s time now to change all that.

Obviously, in the Senate, things are counted a bit differently, as two senators represent each state.  So, gaining majorities requires a different strategy. However, suppose the trend toward wins in the House breaks the cycle of expectation that currently exists, where the party in power loses power during midterm elections. In that case, there is a possibility of gaining supermajorities in 2026 through 2028.  And that is how we should all think about these things.  So drop the pretense of fairness and play these things to win.  And keep in mind the long game.  The things we do today have an enormous impact on tomorrow.  And you win tomorrow by planting the seeds for it today.  I would add that if election reform were implemented alongside these mitigating factors, Republicans could achieve supermajorities in the House and Senate, possibly even before 2028.  Numerous close Senate races fall within the margin of error that Democrats have built into their assumptions.  And if we take that away from them, they will start to drop away like flies.  They won’t be able to win future elections.  So, redraw those maps wherever possible.  Fight the Democrats in court over every issue, and don’t feel bad about wearing them out.  They intend to destroy America; we have seen their actions before.  So when you get a chance to take their head off with a boot to the neck, do it.  Don’t hold back with compassion.  Don’t get caught up in a contention of playing fair.  Play to win, and play to defeat a political enemy that seeks at every turn to manipulate things toward our self-destruction.  We don’t owe them any assumptions of fairness.  The best thing we could do as Republicans is play to win by any means possible.  And let the sums of those wins add up to supermajorities that will take our nation to a much better tomorrow because tomorrow starts today.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Todd Minniear and the Liberty Township Trustees: Protecting a great area from bottom feeders and other social parasites

It was always a disaster in the planning to guide development to include apartment and attached single-family homes.  That was a ridiculous Agenda 21 sustainable living idea that does not stem from American needs, but rather from the United Nations, and it’s good to see that Todd Minniear, the great trustee of Liberty Township, is fighting back against this ridiculous trend.  Because it’s all about value and the quality of living, and even if it comes out sounding mean and not very equitable, those are not values that can build a good society.  You can’t put too many apartments into a community full of people who don’t own property and expect everything to go well.  The population density is one thing.  However, the kind of people who live in apartments is quite another matter.  When a township like Liberty puts together a comprehensive plan, as I have explained over the years, the kind of people who are hired to make those plans are trained in universities to make Agenda 21 and 2030 from the United Nations a priority, and within those constructs is the notion that the most sustainable living is to stack humans on top of each other and prevent them as much as possible from getting in their car and driving somewhere.  Because the goal is to lower the carbon footprint of people with all kinds of hippie thoughts about protecting the planet and taking away individual development in favor of collective surrender to the common good as defined by the parameters of communism, exported from Europe.  And it ends up in communities like Liberty through the comprehensive plans that their building planners implement.  It’s one of those things that often slips under the radar when elected trustees review their comprehensive development plans for approval, and the context of what’s in them isn’t well understood.  We tend to think that people who write comprehensive plans are smart, but what often happens is that they learn too late that they were trained to be radicalized liberals taught on a destructive, anti-American agenda.

Everyone wants to live in Liberty Township, and when the area Journal News newspaper reported what Todd Minniear and the other trustees had done, they picked up on the sentiment correctly by stating, “Liberty Twp. Is closing its borders to future developments that include apartments or attached single-family homes, as trustees approved changes in its 2020 comprehensive plan and future land use map – which guides development.”  Most of the time, trustees in their positions across the country think they are hiring good people with excellent college credentials when they bring in individuals to write their land-use plans.  And their lives have not prepared them for the shell game that comes with such land use planners.  But it’s an industry full of parasitic communists trained in their colleges to implement extreme liberal politics into everything their careers touch.  Remember, it’s not where people went to school, but the kind of garbage they learned there that’s so dangerous.  And in Liberty Twp’s case, the value comes from the type of property people can buy, and how it restricts many people without shared values, bringing them together unnaturally, which eventually lowers the area’s value.  The kind of people who end up living in apartments and attached single-family homes tend to be people who didn’t make very good decisions in life, and when you start stacking those kinds of people into dense property use, they vote that way at the ballot box and pretty soon you have all their bad decisions changing the politics of your community into something else, often destructive.  And not protecting property values because parasitic tendencies were allowed to permeate. 

Of course, the implication made by the Journal News is that Liberty Twp is moving toward exclusivity by closing its borders to outsiders, when the socialist trend is to make everything more equitable.  With Liberty Township being such a nice place to live, the goal of the trustees, as defined by radical leftist community planners who teach the values of Marxism in colleges, is to make valuable places to live more accessible to everyone.  Because everyone deserves to live somewhere nice.  And if you’ve looked around Liberty Township, you now see apartments going up everywhere.  And what goes into them are apartment-dwelling people who vote, and they vote with the kind of values that come with people who don’t have profound roots in property ownership.  I like the proposed type of living at the Liberty Center development, which combines mixed-use shopping and living, creating a big city environment that gives kids growing up in the area a reason not to move to New York City or Los Angeles to experience that kind of life in their post-college years.  However, the downside is that more apartments mean more voters, as opposed to the wealthy homeowner of a property worth more than $400,000 who wants to keep it that way.  All over the country, when you study why communities fail, it’s because they didn’t protect what made them valuable in the first place.  And once you start letting bottom feeders move into your area, you’ll run into them at gas stations and the grocery store, and they bring down a positive living experience everywhere they go.  And while that doesn’t sound fair or equitable, it’s the truth.  Values decline, whether they are property or social, when we fail to protect them. 

Making it too easy for people who are not very good or wise to live in your area will only bring trouble.  People who make poor decisions in their lives are likely to reflect that in their voting behavior when we invite them to join our communities and live in an apartment, just to be fair to them.  They bring with them trashy kids, destructive lifestyles, and disastrous extensions of their families who visit them in a condition of dereliction.  And attacking that premise of value is baked into the background of all Agenda 21 and 2030 land use plans.  When you speak to these kinds of people, DEI policies, specifically equity and inclusion, are their primary concerns.  And builders end up following those ridiculous concepts in their architectural plans, and before you know it, you have a mother of five with three different fathers of those kids, all of whom visit her, coming and going, living next to a property worth more than a million dollars.  And they are all shopping at Kroger together and regretting it.  And when it comes time to vote, they disregard the million-dollar property owner vote because there are more of them, and because of the terrible decisions they have made in life, they are now voting for more government services, as they are never going to own a million-dollar property of their own.  And soon thereafter, you have a community in decline as people with value pick up and move away, where they don’t have to be around losers in life in their leisure time.  Thankfully, there are people like Todd Minniear who are finally standing up to this kind of nonsense.  Yes, suppose Liberty Township wants to maintain its value. In that case, just as the United States is learning to do, we must hold people accountable for earning their place in the community by working hard and making good decisions that live up to the high standards of value that make communities great.  However, when you make good things available to everyone, whether through comprehensive land use plans that stack property density on top of each other mindlessly, or through more government services that cost taxpayers a lot of money, social decline is not far behind.  When that value isn’t protected, of course, a community will move into decline.  And once that happens, nobody is happy.  This is a good position for the Liberty Township Trustees, as they are protecting a great community from the erosion of outside influences, which are certainly not in the best interest of the future.

Rich Hoffman

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The Underwear Gnomes of Lakota Schools: Why do they have a COO

When it comes to waste, we are seeing a lot of that these days, and as we do, remember that public schools are nothing but free babysitting services for busy parents, paid for by taxpayers to support radical labor union structures that are politically dangerous to any healthy society. So there is a cost to that free babysitting service.  Sure, both parents might work to buy things that might impress their neighbors, who are doing the same to try to impress them. In the end, everyone ends up miserable, and the next generation of kids gets all messed up in the process.  And while all that is going on, a bunch of really dumb people with access to over a quarter of a billion dollar budgets fumble around like the three stooges, making mistakes with every step, and try to cover it all up at school board meetings as if they are masters of the universe.  And that is the real problem with the leaked discussions about Chris Passarge, the Chief Operations Officer at Lakota schools, and some money that mysteriously disappeared due to his alleged mismanagement of $64,000.  I have heard several people tell me this story, which the media hasn’t reported on, and likely won’t, as it is under investigation at the large, northern Cincinnati public school.  And my first reaction to it was, why does Lakota Schools have a COO?  Their entire business model is the Underwear Gnome endeavor from the popular cartoon South Park.  They collect money from taxpayers; they throw it into a big basket.  Then the labor union pays itself enormous amounts of money and goes on summer-long vacations.  And when it’s all gone, they ask for more.  Why is there a need for a COO?  And while the people were telling me this story, I kept thinking that $64K is a lot of money to you or me.  But in proportion to these public school budgets, like Lakota’s, it’s a slight drop in a vast ocean, and many administrators take advantage of the system, siphoning money off the top.  We receive reports frequently from people who are, or were, married to these individuals, and numerous free vacations often result from those positions.  It’s not too hard to figure out where that money went.

I have a long-standing interest in this topic. Years ago, I was one of the key individuals featured in an I-Team Report for Channel 9.  They used to hear me on WLW radio all the time talking about these issues, and they conducted a thorough investigation into one of my pet peeves: the issue of whether school superintendents were equal to private sector CEOs, which I thought was laughable.  John Kasich was the governor of Ohio at the time, and we did a whole segment with the I-Team on how most of Ohio’s biggest schools had superintendents who were being paid significantly more than the governor of Ohio, and for what?  I knew a lot then and know a lot more now. Many CEOs and COOs, as well as other types of leadership designations from the private sector, were doing things that were a lot more valuable as to those in public schools.  I had done all this well before Trump was in office, and I went through all the things he did now, which I had already experienced back in 2010 through 2012. Over time, I learned who I could trust at these news organizations and who I couldn’t.  Eventually, I created my own media because there were so many hooks into the public schools that depended on easy money, making it difficult to trust anyone. As a result, I stepped away from doing so much radio and television, as my blog proved to be much more effective. 

But this recent Lakota story regarding Chris Passarge being under investigation wasn’t surprising at all.  It was outrageous to this newer generation of parents telling me about it because this is all new to them.  I’ve observed this over a long period, and what I find most shocking is that these individuals continue to give themselves titles like CEO, COO, and CFO.  All these public schools are just playing house and pretending to be kids, living in a grown-up world.  They are playing with plastic food and pretending to work fake checkout lines in their parents’ basement.  There is no effective management of public schools, and all the money taken from taxpayers is wasted on unnecessary expenses.  It’s a ridiculous scam that people are too busy to pay attention to, but that’s all the public education experience is, and I can say that from years of experience.  This story with the Lakota COO is no different than the South Park story of the Underwear Gnomes, where little people would break into people’s houses to steal their underwear in the middle of the night.  The South Park kids wanted to find out why the Gnomes were doing this, so they followed them one night to a tree deep in the woods and caught the little creatures red-handed.  It was at that point that the Gnomes explained their business model, which is essentially the same as what Lakota schools provides at school board meetings when they try to explain a budget of over $250 million. 

The Gnomes’ business model was to steal underwear.  Their step two was a mystery to them.  They had collected piles of underwear, but it was still stacked in the tree waiting for something to happen that would make them a lot of money.  However, they had step three all worked out; their goal was to make a profit.  Everything was great; they were happy stealing underwear and storing it in their tree.  And they knew they wanted to make a lot of money.  However, they had no idea how to complete the middle part, specifically the step 2 portion of their business plan.  And that is precisely what Lakota school administrators are like.  It’s not a surprise at all that Chris Passarge could lose such a large amount of money.  What is most surprising to me is that they refer to him as a COO.  He’s just a tax looter stealing money from the public and distributing it to a bunch of government employees who want an easy living, grooming children into liberal politics.  And if a free vacation to some Bahamas cruise comes out of it, with a cover story of being an “education conference” is where that $64K went, it would not at all be surprising.  And the media doesn’t cover the story because they have kids and drop them off at these schools while they run around the city covering every cat that gets stuck in a tree, so they can buy a new car and impress some nosy neighbor, who is equally worthless.  But they want to think that Chris Passarge knows what he’s doing.  But he doesn’t.  None of them do, that’s why they work in government schools, they are all Underwear Gnomes pretending to be enterprising public servants.  But what they are, are small-minded pretenders playing house with taxpayer money, and hoping that nobody notices that they have no plan, but to steal money, put it into a bank account, and then give it to unionized employees for work nowhere near good enough.  And they call that public education.  However, the Underwear Gnomes refer to it as making a “profit.” 

Rich Hoffman

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