Tag: Illegal Immigration

The Rodizio Grill at Liberty Center: Why Bruce Springsteen is crack-smoking wrong

I spend a fair amount of time discussing the Giambattista Vico cycle as it pertains to the human race. You could say it’s a hobby of mine. That particular cycle effects mankind over a relatively short period of time lasting centuries to decades. However, for culture building, which is another hobby of mine, the Vico cycle can be seen easily in how money moves around any given city. Take for instance my hometown of Cincinnati. A century or so ago most of the good money and investment around the city was in the location of the current zoo, just north of downtown. Now those regions due to the insistent rule of micromanaged and mismanaged mayors and city councils demanding ever-increasing tax dollars, retreated into the suburbs, specifically the Springdale and Fairfield areas, along with parts of Sharonville. About thirty years ago, those were the parts of the city that were flourishing. But mismanagement drove out the good money there leaving behind high taxes and ruins. Now, and quite spectacularly, it is the West Chester and Mason area that has all the investment as those who create and drive culture have gathered in the rapidly developing West Chester corridor. Among those developments is the Liberty Center development with all the wonderful new commercial announcements coming from it. For me specifically, I am excited for the announcement of a new Rodizio Grill.

Like my love of Mad Max, CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW I am hoping that the Giambattista Vico cycle will be destroyed because honestly I like my home area and that is where this new Liberty Center is located. Unlike other people whom I am friends with I love new development. I am excited—REALLY excited about the new Liberty Center, and I am quite sure that I will eat at the Rodizio Grill—a lot. I will take my family there often, and likely business partners—because it’s cool, it’s the best that human civilization has so far produced by way of food and the way it’s presented for consumption. Liberty Center is about human culture and the creativity of that culture—and I find that more valuable than just raw nature—because human beings took various elements, put them together in an artistic way, and produced something wonderful like Liberty Center.

But there is of course a warning that twenty years from now, the Giambattista Vico cycle will strike. If taxes are allowed to migrate north and local governments lose sight of what the driving forces of the community truly are—the individuals like those behind the Rodizio Grill, the new Cabelas, and all the other new creations that are so exciting—and they start imposing unnecessary restrictions on creativity and penalize profit making—then all that will leave for more profitable destinations. What will remain is poverty and decline. Good people are often the first to leave from the corruption of bad people—so to avoid the Giambattista Vico cycle bad people require judgment and definition.

As we watch this new Liberty Center open, and everyone is excited for what will prove to be one of the finest examples of commercial development in the entire United States up to this point, it is important not to lose ourselves. It is important to understand that the hotels rising in West Chester by the Streets shopping complex and upcoming Bass Pro Shop are not there because of new investment so much. They located there because that’s where the profit is. There isn’t any profit in downtown Cincinnati because there isn’t any money there. Government is too intrusive and too costly meaning investment will always go elsewhere. But that investment money is not guaranteed, it is fragile. It can leave as fast as it came. It requires local government to keep their hands out of the cookie jar and to allow creativity to flourish.

Prosperity is possible for long periods of time if we are all willing to step away from the Giambattista Vico cycle. For Liberty Center and the developments to the south in West Chester, many generations of flourishing economic activity can commence if government resists the trend to regress backwards—as is always the trend when it comes to human beings. If West Chester can resist the temptation to become a city so that politicians can have supreme power over all this creative development—it has a chance to continue to grow. If the Lakota school system can hold off their radical government union and keep their unrealistic labor needs tucked away in a corner—keeping taxes on property reasonable—there is a chance that the Liberty Center will continue to fill its leased property and ever expand.

I remember well when Forest Fair Mall opened with great fanfare. The Tri County and Forest Park area was a boomtown of innovation and creativity. Now Tri County is loosing stores rapidly due largely to the quality of their clientele declining so intensely. And Forest Fair Mall which was once touted as the new Mall of America is nearly empty. The mall was mismanaged by allowing low quality people to take over driving the Giambattista Vico cycle toward anarchy. The dagger in their coffin occurred when they tried to turn the mall into an adult playground of sin—with nightclubs and other low intellect activity. Good money left, bad money stayed, and when the bad money was spent—the mall went bust and never recovered.

It’s an exciting time for those of us who live near the Liberty Center development. It will take time for the threat of Giambattista Vico to emerge. But once he does, it doesn’t take long, and I hope that government which currently is largely conservative to various degrees stays that way well into the future. Once democrats are allowed to corrupt the logic of creatively through development, it’s over, the Vico cycle will begin to destroy all that is currently being built. So for those who want to see the continued economic development of West Chester and Liberty Township flourish, an avoidance of the Vico cycle is absolutely essential. Never take for granted that everything will stay as it is presently. It will only continue to flourish so long as government takes a back seat and stays out-of-the-way of good people using good money to invest in new business opportunities, like the Rodizio Grill. When that place opens, I can see myself on its reservation list many evenings—and I hope well into the future.

You see dear reader here is the secret……people listen to songs from artists like Bruce Springsteen and his liberal ravings about the value of hometowns, but he fails utterly to understand what forces he is fighting against. He believes falsely that capitalists are the robber barons from his song “Death to my Hometown.” He thinks it is the developers, the bankers and the soothsaying realtors who destroy hometowns. But he’s wrong, and so is everyone else—because they don’t understand the cycle of Giambattista Vico. Hometowns don’t last without money, and money doesn’t stick around when government seeks to steal it and distribute it to low quality people in exchange for a vote. It is the Vico cycle which destroys hometowns, not developers, or capitalists. It is profit that is the blood of a hometown. Without profit, that blood leaves and the town dies. So Bruce Sprinsteen can dance on a stage with great fanfare and get millions of driveling idiots to follow his words, but until they step off the Giambattista Vico cycle hometowns will continue to die—and I don’t want to see that happen in my hometown.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

‘Fury Road’: Rebelling against Giambattista Vico

I have a general assumption about mankind that is quite opposite of typical academia. Civilizations rise on the backs of innovative individuals and flourishing capitalism. They decline with more centralized control and absorption of individual achievement into the fabric of a collective society. When an unworthy king or bureaucratic democracy takes over the direction of economic enterprise and invention, a society is in decline. It is due to the hard wiring of human beings trained from their infancy to follow the Giambattista Vico cycle always witnessing societies fall only to be born again in a much regimented pattern. This holds true no matter what the society, whether it be the Mayan people, the Inca, the Mongol, the Roman Empire—all societies so far have followed the Giambattista cycle. This is why anybody with any honesty looks at George Miller’s Mad Max films and declares him a genius. It’s also why it was more than symbolic that Mel Gibson showed up at the premier of Fury Road, the latest Mad Max film now staring Tom Hardy. Studios didn’t want Gibson in the film as the Vico cycle declares that what’s old must be recycled to make way for the young and new. But Gibson showed up to give the young Hardy a bit of support because any Mad Max fan knows that Mel Gibson will always be the iconic Road Warrior. It all started with this movie.

Our current world is not very far from the world of the first Mad Max movie. Police are now being openly murdered and Vico’s final phase of anarchy is fully at hand. What happens next is the rise of a theocratic society followed again by aristocratic, then democratic rule, followed by chaos once again. In the film Fury Road we find that in the period between the first Mad Max film society has devolved into the rise of theocratic civilization. No longer is society concerned with missions to Mars or inventing a new iWatch—now the primary concern as it has been in the past is to establish a new deity figure for the society at large.

I have always loved the Mad Max character because he maintains himself throughout the entire cycle as a constant reminder into the phase of the Gambattista cycle from which everything was taken from him, his wife, child, friend, career—everything he cherished from that time. Unlike the rest of the world he finds himself standing up against the tide of regression. He is a representation in these Mad Max films as Nietzsche’s ubermensch-otherwise translated as the overman. Nietzsche’s ubermensch is one who has graduated from mankind and stepped away from the Gambattista cycle all together—and has decided to advance their life based on individual creativity.   But this is a dangerous road, Hitler tried to take Nietzsche’s ubermensch and advance Germany, but failed in his interpretation and instead moved his country into a Karl Marx inspired socialist democracy—followed by war defined anarchy, then back to a theocratic/democratic existence where it currently finds itself in a European Union—otherwise a democracy that is once again plunging into anarchy now inspired by the failing economies of Greece.   Mad Max is the figure who refuses to submit to these tides of the world.

I have no doubt that George Miller would agree with this assessment. He knows all too well what he’s doing. He’s not just making a popcorn action thriller with great car stunts and bizarre characters. He’s making a rejection statement against Gambattista’s famed cycle. He may not have set out to be conscious about that statement but rather let his intellect drive those elements of the story along as evolution of the various aspects of the story evolved, but based on the presentation of Fury Road, it is clear he understands what he’s doing all too well. It’s also clear why so many people are excited to see such an apocalyptic story and why after all these years it’s so close to the hearts of so many people. This is not a typical summer blockbuster film.

So, how excited am I for the upcoming Fury Road? Well, let me tell you, I have dedicated this upcoming Friday to seeing it. I will certainly be one of the first, and I will likely see it several times. I love the action, I love Mad Max and all that he stands for, but more than anything I love seeing the Gambattista cycle challenged. The world may have went crazy in relation to the advanced days of invention when oil was being produced to propel cars from city to city, to instigate the growth of economies of various trade. All that can and will fall apart within just a few decades of human development—just like the Maya abandoned their cities apparently very fast—as if they just evaporated. It’s not that such people abandoned their cities because they left earth for alien destinations, the people of Ur did not suddenly become equivalent to the Neanderthal after building hanging gardens and massive temples—they regressed because they emerged into war then reinvented theocracy starting the Vico cycle fresh again losing all that they had gained before. Mad Max is that personality in these George Miller movies who in spite of everything that he has lost and continues to lose, refuses to give up on his heroic past and be the last representation of a time when mankind was truly great.

How many people do you know who would at the drop of a hat become one of the mindless followers of some future attempt at theocratic rule? The current Muslim obsession is but the latest. How many maniacs would kill the masses for a chance at everlasting life in the hereafter because some slug of a wanna’ be king dictated that such a thing would bring redemption to the soul? The answer is probably everyone that you know. Most of the people shopping at the grocery and working in a corner cubical would gladly trade in their suits and ties for a thong and Mohawk if some skull inspired death cult instructed them that through worship of his heavenly presence that someday they too might rise up to greatness if only they adhere to the tenets of collectivism.   Miller’s brilliance is that he was able to see such a clear vision from our present age. It’s not easy to see that overweight school levy supporter buying meat at the grocery as a future sex slave to a blood thirsty cult fighting over the worship of water—but Miller does, and with a grand design. It’s not easy to see that corrupt politician kissing babies and whatever else as the skull wearing Immortan Joe hunting down the wives who are desperate to leave him. But in Miller’s films, it is quickly recognizable that most people we know under similar conditions would find themselves as some character in that wasteland. It doesn’t take much to forgo everything we have ever been and throw it away in exchange for basic human necessities, like food, water, and sex.

I am excited for Fury Road, but for reasons that go well beyond the visual spectacle. I love it for the rebellion against Vico. On one hand the Vico cycle is shown in all its brutal honesty, but through the character of Max—using almost no dialogue—Miller beholds the ubermensch—a character that launched the career of Mel Gibson who in almost every movie refused to buckle under the pressure of Vico to decline—but always to advance. Whether it was Riggs from Lethal Weapon or William Wallace from Braveheart, Mel Gibson started as Mad Max, that hero from the past who punched through the Vico cycle with the throttle down and the skill of a Road Warrior as the rest of the world attempted to drag him back into the Stone Age. That’s why Fury Road is more important than a four-year degree in college studying history and the Vico cycle. Because Fury Road shows through art the results of that path—and how treacherously close we always are to falling off the edge of reality into an abyss controlled by maniacs like Immortan Joe—or the Toe Cutter.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Battle of Two Wolves: Mythic tales from Star Wars 2015 Celebration

It’s important, so I’ll keep talking about it—the Star Wars Celebration showed the outside world just how much potential there is in the Disney owned movie franchise. I’ve been covering that topic for quite some time—I write about the Star Wars video games, the books, the television shows, and the movies often—but the essence of it and the longevity, is the extreme power of the mythology to shape the modern world. Mythology is excessively important to human beings.   As thinking specimens of cell building technology, humans need mythology.   Our childhoods are often rich with mythology, but our adult and old age lives are often much more limited to tabloid type concerns. Our lives are shaped by the kind of mythology that we think about. Star Wars as shown in the videos below by the filmmakers’ themelves from the Celebration event is the best offering that human minds have created in the world of mythology. To understand a bit about the why and how let me bring to your mind a nice little Cherokee Indian legend passed from a wise man to his grandson.

A Native American Cherokee Story – Two Wolves

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said, “My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all.

“One is Evil – It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

“The other is Good – It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/TwoWolves-Cherokee.html

Star Wars is the modern update to stories like those old Indian legends. All cultures have some mythological comparison—so having a modern version is extremely important to young people—and old people. That is why the box office numbers for the next Star Wars film will be so outrageously high. There is a hunger for the type of mythology which places values into story form for humans to build their lives around.

Star Wars is essentially the story of the two wolves of Cherokee legend. It’s about feeding good and evil then watching the results. People are so desperately hungry for that type of story telling. There is a reason that westerns were so popular in American culture—because they were essentially about these perilous choices between the good wolf and the bad wolf. Mankind wants to know which one wins, because they want help in determining which wolf to feed.

I know, and have known a lot of bad wolves and I tried to starve the bad out of them in favor of the good. But so often the bad wolf eats the good wolf in these young people’s lives because behind my back they starve the good one and feed the bad. The bad wolf is the squeaky wheel in their life needing the most grease. Many from that side of the tracks of perpetual duality want to justify the actions and social perception of the evil wolf, the bad side of human sentiment, the anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego—as being misunderstood—as if understanding were required to justify the feeding of a bad wolf.

We live in an age where we are told not to judge others—we are told not to judge the good wolf or the bad wolf because they are all wolves and equal under the sky of mother earth. Well, they are not equal, and they cannot co-habitat on earth with one another in peace. Good and evil are at war and if there is any point to life in the realm of four-dimensional reality it is to determine which wolf people will feed—because that will determine the course of your very soul. That is the great test, which wolf will we feed?

Star Wars functions in a fashion as it puts the question toward mankind in the same way that the grandfather did for his grandson. The choice is ours always to make, Star Wars does not tell us which one to feed. It simply says what the results of one wolf will be over the other. That is the purpose of mythology and a society without it is lost—as we have all been for many years—in spite of a very rich culture of story telling. The quality of that story telling has not been very high. Star Wars however is very high quality story telling—it is mythology at its best.

Bob Iger the CEO of the Disney Corporation gave a surprisingly fluid clarification of his understanding of the Star Wars property. He understands quite clearly what his responsibility to mythology is as one of the largest entertainment companies in the world. As I heard him speak it was almost chilling because I can see how this will all play out and it will be earth shattering—just because there are so many people today who are such empty vessels. Star Wars will be like a drink in the desert for them, and it will fill them with choices. No longer will they wonder how to keep the two wolves from eating each other, they will learn to feed one and kill the other—and their lives will suddenly have meaning. That is the power of myth.

That is also why Star Wars: The Force Awakens will make so much money that the movie business will have to totally re-think how it does business. Next to Star Wars, average Hollywood movies will pale in comparison as the global measure made today will far surpass everything that many think are successes. Many bad wolves will speculate that Disney is evil and just out to make money, and that the world has had enough of Star Wars. Those will be those bad wolves who don’t want to share their food with the good—so of course they will say that. But Disney will increase their value to heights they never thought possible—and they’ll soon learn that the price they paid for Lucasfilm was a fraction of the real value. The power of myth is what drives Star Wars, and the hunger for it is in understanding which wolf to feed, the good one or the bad one. The world wants answers to those questions and these days only Star Wars is offering a clear answer. That’s why it is so successful and why I have so much to say about it.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

How Much is $15 per Hour, Really: Understanding money and how its measured

Somehow the world has gone insane. I place the blame on our educations system, but that is even too general. It really comes down to the basic philosophies that we function from as a species—the thought processes which defines our motivations. The insanity is endemic from modern Greece to the local high school kid working at a fast-food restaurant. Most people today do not understand that money is a measurement of productivity and that without productivity it has little value. Matt Walsh from The Blaze incited great controversy during the third week of April 2015 when he properly articulated the demand from the workers of fast food—specifically in Seattle—to be paid $15 dollars an hour. Even Bill O’Reilly has come out in favor of a minimum wage increase to something in the ten-dollar per hour range—and the movement has migrated as far away as Brazil—which is a functioning socialist country. I can understand that Brazil doesn’t understand the economic value McDonald’s brings to their country, but Seattle, Washington should know better. They obviously don’t.

Fast food workers are being incited into a frenzy by socialist organizations to increase the minimum wage to $15 dollars an hour which is simply astonishing to me. By watching the videos on this site—all of them—especially the PBS video, it is just astonishing that so many people do not understand the value of money and have not been taught that their actions—their choices in life—have a direct impact on the results of their life. It wasn’t that long ago that I worked fast food and made only $6 to $7 dollars an hour. I have worked in those places—several of them, and I always appreciated the job. I have worked at McDonald’s, Frisch’s, Wendy’s and had success in those places. I worked hard and used those jobs as a platform to re-launch my life after devastating events that pulled the rug out from under my family at times. I have had much harder conditions in my life than the woman shown in the PBS video above, let me reiterate that. Yet I never contemplated that I should make $15 dollars an hour for that labor. I never contemplated, or lobbied to make $10 per hour.   I never planned to live off a fast food job, just to supplement my income so I could keep my wife home with my children. I used fast food jobs as a second job—and I enjoyed the work. I love eating at McDonald’s—to this very day. I love all the places I ever worked, and I appreciated the opportunities they afforded me. Yet we are dealing with an entitlement culture that expects to sit around and get paid for nothing—no actual productivity. Instead, they always think to cheat the system to their advantage and wish to place the burden for their lives on their employer. And they have completely lost touch with how much $15 an hour is in our current economy and what measure it has in value to productivity. To comprehend that read the Matt Welsh quote below followed by the two links.

Dear fast food workers,

It’s come to my attention that many of you, supposedly in 230 cities across the country, are walking out of your jobs today and protesting for $15 an hour. You earnestly believe — indeed, you’ve been led to this conclusion by pandering politicians and liberal pundits who possess neither the slightest grasp of the basic rules of economics nor even the faintest hint of integrity — that your entry-level gig pushing buttons on a cash register at Taco Bell ought to earn you double the current federal minimum wage.

I’m aware, of course, that not all of you feel this way. Many of you might consider your position as Whopper Assembler to be rather a temporary situation, not a career path, and you plan on moving on and up not by holding a poster board with “Give me more money!” scrawled across it, but by working hard and being reliable. To be clear, I am not addressing the folks in this latter camp. They are doing what needs to be done, and I respect that.

Instead, I want to talk to those of you who actually consider yourselves entitled to close to a $29,000 a year full-time salary for doing a job that requires no skill, no expertise and no education; those who think a fry cook ought to earn an entry-level income similar to a dental assistant; those who insist the guy putting the lettuce on my Big Mac ought to make more than the emergency medical technician who saves lives for a living; those who believe you should automatically be able to “live comfortably,” as if “comfort” is a human right.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/04/19/grow-up-blaze-readers-react-to-matt-walshs-message-for-fast-food-workers-who-demand-15-an-hour/

http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/fast-food-workers-you-dont-deserve-15-an-hour-to-flip-burgers-and-thats-ok/

A monetary value is not a “human right.” If all those fast food workers were paid $15 dollars an hour the measurement of that money would be inflated beyond market parameters. That means that instead of an Xbox game costing $59 it would soon cost roughly $89 dollars because a disproportionate number of the economic population have been paid roughly double their market value without productivity matching it. The value of a video game would be the same, but the measurement of that value would be inflated. The numerical values would be $89 instead of $59—that’s called inflation. So raising the minimum wage does not create wealth. The “world government” will never defeat “poverty” as they pretend to by throwing good money at bad—unproductive behavior. It will never, ever, work—not in a hundred million years. The “rich” can never be looted enough to make the “poor” have value because the bad, unproductive behavior that makes people poor is never dealt with.

Take the woman in the PBS piece, described above. She seems like a nice lady—she’s a line trainer at McDonald’s and wants a “living wage.” She has a criminal background, children without a father in the home, an old car that eats up her money as fast as she makes it and a number of other conditions that she caused for herself to toss her life into an existence of poor productive value. The work she does at McDonald’s is entry-level work and does not command a respectable salary of $15 dollars an hour—which is roughly $29,000 per year. In a dual income home if both husband and wife make $29,000 per year the household income is roughly $58,000 per year which is actually above the average in the United States which in 2013 was $51,939. That’s not bad—it’s a respectable amount of money. To make that kind of money and still keep my wife home with my children I often worked two full-time jobs at approximately that value to bring home the average household median income needed to live off of. Obviously a job at McDonald’s did not pay $15 dollars an hour; it only paid something like $6.50. I would have to work a decent full-time job with some overtime on the weekends to close the gap. I never, no matter how hard things were—expected value for tasks that the market didn’t support.

When I had economics in college I don’t remember it being overtly liberal. At least there the professors seemed to enjoy money as a measurement of GDP and understood these things. So it is baffling how so many people these days believe otherwise. In my levy fights with teachers in the affluent school district I live in where the average median income is around $90,000—well about the national average, I have seen many of the same arguments. Those government employees believe incorrectly that because they teach in such an affluent area that they have the same worth to instruct children essentially liberal points of view. They ignore the laws of economics with the same disregard that someone who wishes to fly might ignore the laws of physics and jump off a cliff expecting to float. Their average wage rate at the government school of Lakota is upwards of $63,000 per year per teacher which is outrageously high for services offered which is essentially a glorified babysitter while those high income earning parents build their careers at the expense often of their families.   The teachers in that case were like the fast food workers expecting a union wage that exceeds the market value of the task they offer. The reason I bring it up is because that same lack of economic understanding has been taught to our children so that by the time they enter the job pool they expect jobs at McDonald’s at $15 per hour which is just ridiculous. Such a wage rate breaks the laws of productive equity—the tasks of a burger maker at McDonald’s is not worth the market value of an average income earner in the United States. If McDonald’s were forced to pay such a rate the cost of their services would have to go up to meet the labor because the measurement of that productive effort has a fixed market presence that is rooted to the demand for the product produced—and the effort to produce it. Anyone who doesn’t understand that needs to re-learn everything in their life—because their foundation beliefs are totally incorrect.

I have heard for years what many wealthy people have heard often—why do I have things that others do not—why can I live in a nice area while others cannot? The answer is that it is unlikely that anybody reading this has the ability or the desire to out-work me. I’ve never met a single person who can outwork me. I’m sure somebody out there can challenge my efforts, but it’s highly unlikely they can constantly surpass my work ethic. And of the people I know who are affluent, that is the case in all of them. Very few people just fall off the wagon and make millions of dollars.

I shake my head constantly at the people who buy lottery tickets at a convenience store and actually scratch off the numbers on their steering wheels hoping to win $10 to $1000 dollars for nothing. The same agony is seen in any casino where desperate lazy people toss fate to the wind hoping to win a jackpot of money that thousands of fools have tossed a little bit into. What a stupid idea—lottery tickets and gambling. Everyone who wins such jackpots blows the money nearly as quickly as they made it because the money is not representative of any productive measurement—just wishful sentiment of being able to sit on their ass and buy things without doing anything productive to earn those things. That is not the American dream. That type of behavior is just as stupid as the fast food worker hoping to make an average income by doing nothing more than showing up for an entry-level job.

I blame our education system for these radial and stupid ideas that young people have today. Now we have several generations of people who don’t understand basic economic theories and they actually believe they are entitled to something because their mothers gave birth to them. Teachers believe the community owes them something because they baby sit their children, and the students of those teachers believe that everybody owes them something just because they are human beings—and they are all dreadfully wrong. Dreadfully! $15 dollars an hour is a lot of money—it’s higher than the national average. Just giving that monetary value to people won’t increase the purchasing power of those people. It won’t end poverty. And it won’t make the world a better place. The only way to make the world better is to get up off your ass and work. Work hard—do so every day, and never stop working—and you might earn the right to make $15 an hour. Anything less than that will cause inflation—and that is not beneficial to anybody, anywhere.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Ayn Rand and Social Security: Confiscated money that is owed eventually

As far as Ayn Rand and her modern footprint into politics and philosophy many on the left have attempted to discredit her based on the notion that she drew from Social Security late in her life. As a small government advocate deeply suspicious of America’s steps toward socialism—which she had fled from, and lost her family to, many progressives have identified her as a danger to their Kant driven philosophy doing whatever they could to discredit her writings using the Social Security issue to lead the charge against the logic she presented. Recently my friend Mark Etterling ran across just such a person on his email musings with the far left and radical nut cases hoping to shut off the world to wisdom, so to disguise their treacherous attempts against righteousness—specifically a strong economy driven by capitalism. Mark presented a strong case in favor of Ayn Rand which I thought was effective enough to repeat below. Many assume that Social Security is a government entitlement when in fact as Mark presents; it’s supposed to be an investment. The distinction is important as Etterling explains in greater detail:

From: Mark Etterling Date: April 5, 2015 at 1:31:22 PM EDT Subject: Moron, expose theyself Reply-To: Mark Etterling

 

Recently I read a Facebook post from a liberal that was meant to be a “gotcha” moment against conservatives and in this case the now deceased author Ayn Rand in particular. Upon reading the post I actually found myself laughing out loud. Not only was this a hilariously bad attempt at painting the right as hypocrites, but was so moronic that the poster had no idea who he was actually insulting.

The post was a story about how the vaunted die-hard capitalist Ayn Rand had actually dared to collect on Social Security in her old age in defiance of her own writings demonizing big government. This is the same tired assault that liberals have tried for years by claiming conservatives are hypocrites for railing against intrusive government up until such time as it’s their own turn to stand in line for some government goodies.

So for the umpteenth time allow me to explain what the half-wits on left just simply can’t seem to grasp. SOCIAL SECURITY ISN’T A GOVERNMENT HANDOUT! Let me put this in simple terms. If you loan someone $100 today and then later return to collect on your loan that doesn’t make you greedy, a thief, a handout recipient, a hypocrite, or any other such non-sense. It simply means that you are collecting a return of what was rightfully yours all along. The fact that the government forcibly confiscates that money from you (and the matching funds from your employer) throughout your working life on the promise of returning it to you later (if you’re fortunate enough to live that long) doesn’t constitute even the remotest concept to anyone above the IQ of a horsefly that it somehow magically becomes a handout.

To prove my point all you need to do is look at your pay stub. You have separate line item deductions for Social Security and Medicare because those moneys are SUPPOSED to be placed in a separate government trust fund so that people won’t foolishly waste all their money before they reach retirement age. The reason I capitalized the word supposedly above is because under this scenario the ugly truth is that it’s been the government all along who has foolishly wasted your money instead as they have basically borrowed and spent against all that money until the actual trust fund is pretty much an empty vault of IOU’s. Personally, as an intelligent adult I would have preferred it if big brother government would have simply butted out of my life so that I could have invested that total of 15% annual matching funds on my own instead of through a glorified government sanctioned Ponzi scheme. However, now that they have it, you can bet your @ss I want it back!

It blows my mind every time I hear some idiot from the left proclaiming that the elderly are better off because of Social Security. In saying that they are not only stating by proxy that all Americans are too stupid to be trusted with something like their own retirement (same thing for healthcare), but completely forget that had the government not interfered the money that was confiscated would have been the people’s money all along (plus interest) anyway. It’s like a thief robbing you and then expecting a big old “thank you” for returning the things they should have never stolen at government gun point in the first place. Here’s another way to think of it for when they ignorantly try to insult conservatives for trying to collect what is rightfully theirs. Is it right that someone should be forced to pay for a meal in advance and then demonized simply because they would now like a chance to eat it before it’s all gone? Honestly, I wish I could think of a stronger word than “moron” in situations like this.

Morons are morons and nothing will ever change that. However, in posting what he posted this particular moron doesn’t even realize that who he has basically insulted isn’t just conservatives, but every American who has worked all their life and is now old enough that they are simply trying to retrieve what was rightfully theirs all along. The checks they are now receiving aren’t government handouts. They’re long overdue reimbursements. Personally, I hope he reposts his article over and over. In doing so he’ll be accomplishing far more to expose his own true self-insulting ignorance than any rebuttal I could ever hope to write.

P.S. As a side note please remember that it was DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Shultz who recently proposed the idiotic idea of having the government confiscate everyone’s IRA’s and 401K’s and using that money to shore up the missing funds from Social Security. As you can see, these people aren’t just simple morons. They’re morons that are hell-bent on ruining all our lives.

Social Security was a stupid idea, and it never should have been enacted. It is an insult to stick the government in between Americans and their so-called retirements. I resent every deduction taken from my paycheck as a theft stolen from me, because the government will never be in a position to pay me back all the money I have “invested” under coercion. I have personal friends who hate Social Security so badly they have essentially given up their citizenship over the issue. One of those friends had began plotting his deferral from the Social Security system in the 5th grade—no kidding. He was a very smart kid and while the other kids were talking about the rock band KISS and the new show on television called The Dukes of Hazzard, he was planning on how to legally refuse his obligations toward Social Security. As an adult, he gave up his citizenship after years of legal entanglement—but—he doesn’t pay into the system, because as he was always right, Social Security is stolen money not granted by an infant when they are issued a card after being registered by their parents. His argument was that his parents didn’t have a right to commit him to a life obligation into such a contract with the government.

The rest of the world isn’t willing to take such extremes, so we just pay into it knowing that its wrong—because we don’t want the hassle of fighting the government—and they know that. My friend had a lifelong crusade against Social Security which continues to this very day—but I have always found it easier to just outwork the money grabbing hands of the government. I have infinite energy which they don’t posses. With me it’s a delicate balance; government knows they need me to be productive to pay their salaries, so they generally leave me alone. But, I have to accept that they will steal a portion of my money every week because they made laws enabling them to do so. I have the same deal with insects in my house. I know they are there in the cracks, but if they come out in the open, they are disposed of. I don’t want to see them even though they are likely hidden in every crevice available. The government takes my money before I even get to see it each week. They get first dibs on my earnings—which is why more Americans aren’t angered by the stolen money because they figure they never had it in the first place. But when it comes time to get that money back—everyone expects it—just like we expect tax returns at the end of each year for the overpayments interest free we make to the government through the same withdrawal system. The idiots who came before us who voted in favor of this kind of thing made a major mistake, and it should be rectified. But until then, like Mark Etterling said in his article—I want my money back at the first opportunity I can get it. And I won’t apologize for wanting it either. It was stolen from me without my permission, and I want every dime back before it’s all said and done. When Ayn Rand needed the money she put into the system, I don’t fault her for getting it. She paid into it, so she deserved to get it back. But, she would have been the first to argue, if the government had stayed out of the exchange in the first place that same money may have made her rich, instead of needing Social Security in the first place. She was more qualified to handle her own money than the government was, and that is the tragedy we all face—at some point in time.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Why America is Split Down the Middle: What the election of Bibi means world wide

I have learned more about Israeli politics over the last couple of weeks than I had learned in the years prior combined. It started with the Netanyahu speech in front of the United States Congress and ended with the historic elections of this week. The great mystery for me was why Obama was so concerned about the Israeli elections, and why he was so insulted that Bibi was coming to America just a few weeks prior to the election. The revelation was that Obama was working against Netanyahu all along trying to remove him from power with the support of a leftist labor party influence. Now that Netanyahu is back in power, the two state solution in Israel is off the table. Obama and his supporters openly support the Arab Palestinians whereas Netanyahu and his conservative Likud Party are refusing to be divided up as a country. This explains a lot about Obama’s actions. Here is how Fox News reported the situation:

(Josh) Earnest acknowledged Wednesday that the U.S. would have to “re-evaluate” its position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in light of those comments. But he stressed that Obama believes a two-state solution is best. And State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki clarified that the administration “absolutely” will continue to push for this.

Further, Earnest chided Netanyahu’s Likud Party on Wednesday, saying the White House was “deeply concerned” about divisive language emanating from Likud. He said the party had sought to marginalize Israel’s minority Arabs, an apparent reference to social media posts the Likud distributed that warned Israelis about the danger of high turnout by Arab voters.

“These are views the administration intends to convey directly to the Israelis,” Earnest said.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/03/19/israeli-election-means-obama-likely-stuck-with-netanyahu/

Even worse, like a little baby, Obama refused to call Netanyahu and congratulate him on his election victory. His behavior is really unprecedented and reveals to what extent Obama and his army of progressives wish to change the world into something else. Netanyahu certainly didn’t refuse Obama because of the rhetoric the President uttered in his previous elections—the divisiveness and anger incited by the former community advocate and Saul Alinsky student. Much of the divisiveness in America currently is a direct fault of Obama—yet Netanyahu spoke well of the American president in public when he clearly didn’t need to.

The actions of Obama and the media in the wake of the Netanyahu election point directly to the greater strategy of modern progressives throwing their influence behind the two state solution of a perceived peace in the Middle East. They wish to carry the Middle East into the world before the Sykes-Picot agreement where their president of Woodrow failed epically in the region through the Treaty of Versailles. Now they wish to erase that error as if it never happened—and that means in this case the destruction of a Jewish nation bit by bit.

Ideologically driven, Obama can think of nothing but the aims of progressive influence. Using the same storm the border tactics happening right now in America where foreign influence and money shape American politics for the worse—the same has been going on in Israel with a quiet insurrection by progressives against conservatives like Netanyahu. Obama placed his bets against the Prime Minister. And he lost—and he’s upset about it—enough to make a national incident out of protest. That’s how radical and the media that supports Obama—truly are. They are radical to the point of meanness, and then they wonder why America is a divided nation.

The difference between us in America now are that some of us refuse to be lied to, and others go to the Obama lies like moths to a flame—hell-bent on their own destruction. So the nation is split down the middle between the lazy and stupid and the righteous and wise. Obama likes the stupid and hates the intelligent—because the later sees through his schemes. And it appears that the very same divisions are happening right now in Israel over an election that most Americans thought was inconsequential—but it wasn’t—was it?

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Jeb Bush and Common Core: Why public education is the wrong way to instruct children

Jeb Bush has doubled down on his position regarding Common Core obviously because he’s been with the program from the beginning and truly believes that government is capable of educating the population. However, the results have proven the opposite—government education has been devastating to the American public and is something that needs to be completely overhauled. To understand a bit of the conflict the following videos one by Jeb Bush being interviewed by Sean Hannity at CPAC shows how deeply Bush believes in government education. Then the second video of Michelle Malkin shows the reality of government education and how far left of the correct position Jeb Bush really is.

Jeb’s mistake is in his belief in government solutions to what should be free market competition. Education needs an infusion of competition instead of a standard for everyone. The belief that Bush has that a high standard set by government will provoke quality in education is a false one—it only plays into the mundane complacency of the labor unions behind education and their desire for a comfortable standard that the weakest links of their collective bargaining agreements can sustain. The government model allows the weak to rule the strong and that will never create an environment where the best of anything is brought forth.

It is time to have that hard discussion about education. It has been for a while, but the evidence is just so obvious, even more so than when I so adamantly pointed out this inconvenient truth a decade ago. The more I learned about public education the more convinced I was that it was the wrong thing to do, and was completely wrong for children as a learning tool. Public schools are no different from public housing projects—the intention was good, but they quickly become a cease pool of bad behavior and crime. Test scores and the general wherewithal of today’s youth shows the devastation. Public education with years of Common Core like practices have destroyed the minds of the youth—it has left them ill prepared for even basic tasks in life and certainly isn’t worth all the tax money stolen from property owners to pay for.

Education can only work if there is investment of some respectable level by the students and their parents. Parents can’t just drop off a child to a government professional and expect magic, and in today’s public education environment—that is precisely the expectation. Public education is a baby sitting service at best followed closely by a social experiment.

When my wife and I home schooled our children for a period of time there was serious blow-back from family and friends. Some of those people we no longer speak to as a result of the things that were said back then. The great fear was that my children would not be “socially adjusted” and would become social malcontents. The trouble is that social malcontents was a definition that was created and defined by government schools over the last 100 years, and has largely become a topic of falsehood over the last decade due to the instant rise of social media and technology which connects people in ways they never could before. The rules of conduct established by public education were created during a time when the AM radio was a new invention and telephones were beginning to show up in personal residences. It really hasn’t changed since—due to the labor union resistance to change and their desire to lobby political waves to maintain a status quo. But kids have changed and their needs are different from they were a century ago.

Jeb Bush is caught in that old century long belief that government schools can teach children to be great innovators and there just isn’t any evidence which produces such a conclusion after all this time. The opposite is true. Public schools are more concerned with integrating individuals into a collective mass than in nurturing the thoughts of gifted minds into unleashing new thoughts and concepts. If government schools were removed from children’s lives it is a safe assumption that creativity and individual happiness would increase greatly throughout society. Home schooled children are obvious examples—they statistically out perform government taught children in most categories—so the evidence should be easy to contemplate. But it is scary for old politicians to admit to themselves that government schools are utterly incompetent to the task of their intentions. A brand new means of instruction is needed.

This requires a complete deregulation of public education into a system that is owned and is individually profit driven both at the student level, and the level of the institution itself. They cannot be tied to state and federal money, or grants—but must rely on individual contributions from a student population that values what they offer. Then and only then can bad ideas be tossed out, and good ideas expanded upon. There is no motivation otherwise. Politicians need to get out of the education business—completely. They have trouble building roads—let alone teaching generations of youth. It’s just a stupid outdated model that is in serious need of an overhaul.

Public schools will become more and more irrelevant year by year until eventually people arrive at the same conclusions I have just expressed. It is doomed and over—which I declared nearly 5 years ago. It’s a thing of the past even now in the present. It only exists to keep government employees in a job, and politicians to say they did something positive. But those efforts are destroying minds, and that just can’t be allowed to happen without contemplation. And upon that contemplation, Jeb Bush is entirely wrong whereas Michelle Malkin represents the mode of behavior that will gradually pick up steam until public education is abandoned in favor of something that works.   The periods between now and then is something that will be painful, but will quickly sort out the righteous from the malcontent. On the issue of public education Jeb Bush falls on the side of the malcontent. He only knows to throw more federal money at something that is destroying our nation believing that it’s crucial to success.   And that just makes him out-of-touch, and unqualified to be a president for the age that is coming. The curb of politics is ahead of him, and he is incapable of catching up to it.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Labor Unions are a form of Terrorism: Scott Walker was right

The scum bag old hippies from the labor movement sent me one of their propaganda pieces over the weekend still upset at Scott Walker for successfully making Wisconsin a right-to-work state. Their argument was an implied insult made by Walker during a speech poising himself for a presidential run saying, “If I can take on 100,000 protestors, I can do the same with Islamic terrorists.”  The labor unions of Wisconsin and within the Democratic Party felt that the comparison of labor union workers protesting the reforms that Walker was implementing were inaccurately being compared to terrorists as if such a thing was a radical departure from reality. But the truth is, any labor union that uses force, coercion, or fear of any kind to make their point is an act of terror. They may not go to the extra level of killing people to make their point, but they certainly did try to damage Walker politically and personally on several occasions and their motives were to invoke terror upon the governor with the same tactical aims in mind as the terrorists of Islam are seeking to achieve through their actions.

Just because the terrorists in this case aren’t wearing towels on their heads and cutting the throat of so-called infidels on a beach in the Mediterranean, if the intention is to make a point against a rival position by using fear instead of logic—the action is one of terrorism. The labor unions have been conducting themselves in such a manner for years, and they don’t get a free pass just because they are American citizens, or members of the Democratic Party backed by laws created by the Department of Labor. Terrorism is anything that invokes fear to accelerate acceptance of the perpetrator’s point of view.

And while we’re at clarifying definitions, let’s also look at the type of language used by labor unions to describe themselves. In the propaganda piece the labor union described their position as such, “Scott Walker compared Wisconsin workers to terrorists. He wants to be president, STOP HIM.” From there they have a little link you can click that takes you to a petition page so you can sign your name to their plight as if some collective mass of ignorance could stop the reality of their foolishness. Workers in the way that labor unions and members of the Democratic Party machine use it, is a term utilized by the philosophy of Karl Marx in his various articulations on the merits of communism, such as in the Communist Manifesto where he ends the book “workers of the world unite.” In the manner that Marx indicated he was calling for an act of terrorism against the management of labor in capitalist enterprises. When “workers” strike and don’t perform tasks of labor, they are no longer “working” they are denying labor to an employer—so they require a different technical classification. A worker in a capitalist country is someone who conducts productive enterprise. A worker in communist and socialist endeavors is a protestor who uses terrorism to extort money they did not earn through collective bargaining agreements by threatening to destroy productivity or the profit margins of their employer through a strike.

Recently the labor unions of the west coast port workers managed to wrestle a contract negotiation settlement for themselves by slowing down work for a number of months costing many millions of dollars in profit. That was economic terrorism where the employers were forced to take the lesser of two evils, they could not operate their business due to the back log in work the labor union “workers” were imposing on them, or they could agree to the labor demands of their protestors and at least collect enough money to stay in business. With average wages of $147,000 per year the ILWU union deliberately brought the management of the west coast ports to their knees with drag-assing techniques designed to hurt their employer so to wrestle away more money from them. That was and is an act of terrorism.

In my home school district of Lakota in 2013 when they wanted to pass a tax increase which they had been unsuccessful three prior times due to arguments that I posed to the public which they could not overcome, they resorted to terrorism through labor union radicalism. The district wanted to give overpaid government employees more money so they needed a tax increase on property values to do it. They used the recent school shooting at Sandy Hook to swing voters about 5% into their direction as they promised to spend the money on “safety and security.” Lakota as a district was doing what public schools do all across the nation when they want more money for their teacher unions—they make parents afraid that something might happen to their children if something isn’t done in their favor. To help drive the point home just a few days before the election a death threat was found in the girls bathroom promising a shooting spree which of course made all the papers and news outlets. Enough parents were scared to vote in favor of the tax increase and Lakota received their money. They didn’t get the money in a straight up and down vote on logic. Lakota had to utilize some form of terror to provoke people into voting for their cause making it an act of terrorism. Of course they didn’t cross the line to become actual killers like the ISIS terrorists have, but they did use fear to achieve their objectives.

And in Wisconsin, against Scott Walker, there were death threats, political maneuvers designed to invoke fear in the population, threats that the economy of the state would be wrecked if Walker got his way—none of which actually happened. The labor unions were using fear to preserve their grip on the state’s economy and under Walker’s leadership, they failed. So out of all the presidential candidates seeking a run for the office in 2016, Walker is the most experienced in dealing with terrorism. He did successfully battle it among the various labor unions in his state. Those labor unions did sometimes threaten to kill him, but unlike ISIS, they didn’t actually try to carry it out. But the threats were made—and those threats are considered to be terrorism with the same intentions as the ISIS terrorist—to achieve a tactical objective through the means of inflicting some form of terror to move an opponent off their position.

The word “worker” is not sacred in American politics. To people who create work the term indicates the potential for some radicalized protest that will cost money and a huge amount of damage to the public relations of any endeavor. Labor unions don’t get to live under different rules by the shadows of reality just because they are Americans. If they desire to inflict fear because they can’t win an argument through logic, they are in fact a form of terrorist. Any time coercion is utilized to achieve a political objective; it is an act of terrorism.   Obama conducted himself as a terrorist when he sent a picture to congress with his pen promising executive orders if they did not do as he demanded. When they refused, such as in the amnesty issue, Obama signed an executive order that ended up as a rider to the Department of Homeland Security bill which is presently being voted upon in the House. Those against the DHS funding bill are upset at Obama’s executive order for amnesty which is really just another way for Democrats to buy votes for future elections. They make up lots of fancy terms for things, but at the heart of the reality, they are behaving as terrorists, because they use fear to drive policy implementation. And of the potential candidates in 2016, Scott Walker has the right kind of mind to deal with the type of domestic terrorism that has so crippled the American economy for years in the labor unions. It’s quite clear that he has the ability to deal with terrorists who don’t even try to hide their actions behind suits and ties—and Washington lobbyists. Walker’s track record and statement was correct. And the labor unions know it—that’s why they’re afraid of him.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

 

Why FCC Chairman Wheeler Wants Net Neutrality: Sign the petition today against it

Below is a good video that demonstrates exactly what Net Neutrality is and it should be watched. It’s a very confusing issue because the advocates of Net Neutrality are actually taking the position of the opposition in saying they are defending the freedom of the Internet. However, it is a ruse. The FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is a Obama guy, as will be shown below and is a former lobbyist for the cable companies. The Net Neutrality supporters are trying to make it sound as if it is the cable companies who are pouring millions of dollars into defeating Net Neutrality, but it is the opposite that is really happening. It is the status quo technology that wants Net Neutrality and it is all the upstarts that are against it—because the FCC chairman under Obama’s direction is seeking to make the Internet a public utility—so they can control it—tax it, and unionize it. Just four days before the FCC historic vote, over 200,000 signatures have signed the below letter to the FCC, which can be accessed for yourself at the following link.

https://www.protectinternetfreedom.com/

Dear Chairman Wheeler,

Internet use and online communication is the scourge of autocratic governments that deny basic freedoms to their people. Internet information has proven to be a spark that creates the fire of freedom in the most oppressive corners of the world.

The Internet is one of the most positive forces for improving the human condition the world has ever known. It is the hub of innovation for the economy in America and the world. It’s a source of progress, democratic distribution of information, societal change, personal empowerment and technological innovation.

The attempt by the Obama Administration to control the Internet as a public utility takes power away from consumers, website developers and small business owners and puts it in the hands of Government. This will drive up costs, slow down innovation, and put unelected political appointees in charge of picking winners and losers.

And it will take away America’s moral authority to argue that autocratic regimes have no right to assert control of the Internet in their own countries.

Mr. Wheeler, I am signing my name here today, asking that you and your colleagues vote NO on bringing the Internet under Federal Government control.

Sincerely,

Now watch this video–they are all on the same team.  The protestors, and Wheeler.

It is the right thing to do to sign the letter and send it to the FCC, but be warned, the Chairman already has his marching orders by the president, so the letter won’t have any levity to his decision-making process. All that signing the letter will accomplish is in letting the government know how many people actually stand against them in a fashion to actually put their name to it. By traditional White House analysis, 200,000 signatures is a large number. It’s a small number of the population, but it represents a fairly scary opposition that they will try to minimize, but to a less successful effect. To understand why, study the history and background of the FCC chairman.

Thomas Edgar Wheeler (born April 5, 1946; Redlands, California)[1][2] is the current Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

He was appointed by President Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in November 2013.[1] Prior to working at the FCC, Wheeler worked as a venture capitalist and lobbyist for the cable and wireless industry, with positions including President of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) and CEO of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA).

Originally considered a frontrunner for the position,[7] Wheeler was confirmed as the new Federal Communications Commission chief in November 2013.[8] Despite a letter written by several prominent former Obama administration officials endorsing Wheeler for the position, many people expressed concern over the consideration of Wheeler for the position due to his history of lobbying for industry.[7]

In recognition of his work in promoting the wireless industry, Wheeler was inducted into the Wireless Hall of Fame in 2003, and in 2009, as a result of his work in promoting the growth and prosperity of the cable television industry and its stakeholders, was inducted into the Cable Television Hall of Fame.[5][9][10] He is the only member of both halls of fame.[6] Cablevision magazine named Wheeler one of the 20 most influential individuals in its history during cable’s 20th anniversary in 1995.[5]

During Barack Obama’s presidential campaign Wheeler spent six weeks in Iowa aiding his campaign efforts and went on to raise over US $500,000 for Obama’s campaigns.[7][11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Wheeler

On the current path, large cable companies are becoming extinct, the government cannot get their control around information because of the free and open Internet that exists now, and they want the FCC to begin getting things back under control from Google, Microsoft, and Amazon to actually protect the companies they are claiming to be against like Comcast, AT&T and other traditional communication companies. They are playing the same tricks they did with Obamacare, Benghazi, and open border immigration to overwhelm the system, hamper the minds of the masses with too much data-and to shove through new controls and regulations that nobody will stand against until it’s too late.

Wheeler is going to vote in favor of Net Neutrality because he’s been told to by his boss in the White House to do so. This is a power grab by the FCC for more control, not less. The government position is actually that they want to protect start-ups and porn providers with a free and open Internet by defeating a pay to play system—but what they don’t tell anybody is that they are seeking to control and limit that freedom for everyone, not just the big companies. In that respect the Internet will be “equal,” it s just that everyone will be equally limited and taxed.

So fill out the form, send it in so that guys like me will have ammunition to slam the FCC with later when we can expose the crimes about to be committed. The more people who fill out that form, the better the case will be later to prove that we told you so—so that by the time there are new elections in 2016, congress, the senate and hopefully a new president will pull the FCC back in and defund them into oblivion. That is the best way to strike a blow at this encroaching insurrection. So, make sure to fill out the form today, so that when we fight tomorrow—there will be some statistical information to use in proving what a gross violation the FCC actually imposed on the freest place on earth, the Internet. And they did it all in the name of control, taxation, and much more limited options for a tomorrow they dread to see coming.

Rich Hoffman

CLIIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

 

Ideas are Scary: The important task of being a place that lets them grow

By far my favorite commercial of 2014/2015 is the one below from GE about how ideas can sometimes be scary featuring a little alien looking ET creature being born and ridiculed until GE opened its doors to the innovative prospects of the fledgling creature. It’s a very honest commercial for such a huge corporate giant and it tells me that at least in practice GE hasn’t lost its way in understanding where it came from and what role it plays in America’s future. Growing up in Cincinnati it is impossible to not have GE a major part of my life and whenever I have to travel downtown and drive by the Evendale plant there is a little happy place that keys off in the back of my mind knowing to what a great extent GE has advanced technology and really lived up to the aspects of the commercial on innovation.

Being a corporate giant isn’t easy, and I am often distrustful of them to stay nimble in the field of innovation simply because there comes too much pageantry and fluff just to keep rules and regulations off their back to maintain the kind of forward thinking that made them great in the first place. Jeffrey Immelt after Barrack Obama was elected was put into a very difficult position. Here was a president openly hostile to corporations and business that would see GE as a massive target for socialist implementation. As a CEO it is first the job of such a person to guide their corporation through the potential threats that exist so that those gates of innovation can stay open for such fledging ideas shown in the commercial. So Immelt did what he thought was best, he made a partner out of Obama running the president’s Jobs Council for a few years. In so doing he was able to exploit the lack of financial understanding of the barely concealed socialist by enacting 54 of the 60 recommendations made by the Council—such as fast tracking key infrastructure projects and selling more leases for both oil and gas production. But in the end, only 4 of those recommendations were completed as is typical of government which loses focus quickly as life in the Belt Way quickly kills off ideas like an African hunter on the Serengeti. Under the auspices of government ideas quickly become extinct—and Jeffrey Immelt’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness was one of the first things that Obama hung on his trophy wall. Obama tried to use GE to stimulate his economy, and largely took Immelt’s advice without knowing anything else to do—but failed to nurture those ideas into fruition

http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2013/01/31/the-one-job-jeff-immelt-might-be-happy-to-lose/

For the last 20 years the GE90 engines from GE have been a game changer in commercial aviation. It is largely because of this engine that oversea travel has been on the increase just because now airlines can perform such a task with such a powerful engine without massive fuel consumption. That engine is exactly what the metaphorical commercial about GE innovation was all about. It was one of the great leaps of innovation from American culture that could have only come from such a large corporation that embraces such invention. And to make the GE90 work, it took a lot of the best minds at the time in the field of aerospace to pull it off.

There is a new generation of engines coming to serve for the next two decades, so the GE90 today is something of a Payton Manning in aviation. It’s still a great engine, but it has set the bar very high and newer, younger players are entering the market to break those previous records—but it took the pace setter first to show everyone what the innovation looked like. While some may look at the GE commercial in respect to Immelt’s work with President Obama and cry foul, I have a tremendous amount of respect for those open doors which allow scary little creatures like new ideas a place to go. I wish there were a thousand GEs in America—and I believe there is plenty of room for all of them—but unfortunately for most, they end up in the trophy case of some politician’s game wall—hunted, killed, and stuffed for memory.

I don’t watch much television so I didn’t see the GE commercial until I was watching the start of NASCAR last weekend. I love NASCAR because of the innovations—the new MAC tools, the tires, the corporate sponsors. I love seeing a pit crew in action trying to troubleshoot a problem in record time to get their driver back on the track as quickly as possible. There are a lot of ideas born on those tracks which end up in the cars we drive, so I love to just watch NASCAR for a glimpse into the future. It was in looking for innovations that I actually saw the GE commercial.

Recently I had one of the worst days of my life where everything that could go wrong did and there was just a mess of activity that had to be cleaned up from more of those idea killing vermin. So to brighten my day, my wife went to McDonald’s and picked up a couple of Big Mac meals so I could watch the news while enjoying that wonderful idea from McDonald’s ancient past—which I still think is one of the greatest inventions ever created. Big Macs would be an impossibility to the typical hunter and gatherer in New Guinea or Africa—yet out of the mind of Ray Kroc came a company called McDonald’s that made quality fast food easy and affordable on the go—the Big Mac was created. When I have a really bad day-one of those days where it’s difficult to breathe from one moment to the next, I typically get a Big Mac and just like that—I’m good to go. My worries and concerns evaporate. It’s not just the taste of the burger that drives my interest, it’s the story of McDonald’s itself that does. It reminds me of what innovation is supposed to look like. As rapidly as McDonald’s makes Big Macs it is astonishing that they always come out well, cooked perfectly, possessing just the right amount of lettuce, onions and sauce, and can be done so quickly. To this very day if I buy a Big Mac in Florida, it will be made nearly to the same specifications as one that I might buy in Wisconsin. They are little miracles—now taken for granted like the GE90 jet engine—but they have changed the way the world interacts with each other—and each one of those ideas is beautiful.

So I have a major soft spot for the GE commercial with the little alien idea being born to the voice over about ideas being scary. Ideas are the natural-born enemy of the way things are. They are ridiculed and mocked, and are often hunted by members of the political class for sport. When Immelt joined Obama’s Job’s Council, the move to me was to protect all the ideas brewing at GE from the hunters of the political class who want to destroy those wonderful creatures before they can bloom into beautiful creatures. That’s what a CEO should do, and if that sometimes means drawing fire away from those they are trying to protect—then so be it. Because as the commercial says, “under the proper care, [ideas] become something beautiful. They do.

The task of a massive corporation like GE is to create an environment where ideas can grow. Not everyone within that culture embodies such a spirit, of course, but in general, the philosophy of the company must seek to strive for such creation. If it does, then it will bring into the world ideas that would otherwise be destroyed by humanity always speculative, and short-sighted. It was a bold commercial from a company that really didn’t need to push the limits of perception—yet they did. They didn’t have to ruffle any feathers, yet they did—and for that I deeply appreciate the commercial. It is good to see that GE is not playing it so safe in the public relations market—and that they are remembering who and what they are—and how they got where they are today. Ideas are beautiful—even when they look scary to the un-enterprising and clandestine political hunters. It is good to be the natural-born enemy to the way things are. That is the spirit of innovation—and the direct benefit is humanity and its offspring.

Rich Hoffman

CLIIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT