The Typical School Levy Advocate: A fat woman in a dress….(A METAPHOR)

If your wife asks you, “Honey, does this dress make me look fat?” Then you, the husband answer as you can see the skin dimples pushing through the fine surface of the dress as it hugs her hips, “No, no, you look beautiful.” The husband has committed a sin. You told her she was beautiful when you know in your mind that the correct answer was, “Hell, no, you’re fat. You have let yourself go over the last ten years and I’m embarrassed to be seen in public with you.” The husband answers the way he does out of a duty to his wife that goes beyond truth. He is forced to put on blinders to the truth in order to share a life with this woman, who has gained 40 extra pounds, wants the ability to eat, and eat and eat, but still expects her husband to lust after her for sex. The man, to avoid fighting with his over-weight wife will tell her anything to shut her up and get her off his back, so he tells her, “No, the dress looks great………..dear.”

I see the same kind of behavior coming from these people who support school levies. They have the same level of truth behind their eyes as the man who lies to his wife to avoid a conflict. Case in point, witness the testimony from this woman in Lakota who is supporting the most recent school levy.

Parents who have kids in those delicate years of childhood, who are in their school years, are an insecure lot. They of course want what’s best for their children, and desire every opportunity for them. So they tend to trust the opinions of others over their own knowledge because after all, being a good parent takes experience, and how do you get experience but by raising kids. So during that process, parents tend to believe they can throw money at a “professional” to give them the added security that those professionals will be there to pick-up whatever they miss as parents.

The trend ends up making a voting adult who will believe anything these professionals say in hopes that they can achieve their aim at raising good children. To the parent who believes that by spending money on security, they are more than willing to put on blinders to the actual truth to achieve that security even if it’s false.

The truth is that the “professionals” the teachers, the administrators are actually quite fat and when they ask for a school levy they say, “Look how lean we are? Look how much money we saved? At Lakota, we are operating at less per pupil than other districts, so pay us more money. We are caring for your kids! Give us more money!”

The parents both working jobs and paying a lot of money for a house they bought just so they could send their child to Lakota is no different from the husband who is just trying to keep the peace with his wife. “Yes, you look good to me. How much do you need to do your job better?”

The obese professionals caring for our children then take that money given by the enabler and buy more junk food so they can become even more obese. And when the food runs out, they will come back and say, “I need more! I am a ‘big boned’ entity and I need to maintain this large body. I’m hungry. We need a new levy.” The enabler, the typical tax advocate will then say as the woman in the video said, “We need to pass this levy so we can have good schools, so we can maintain our excellence.” But the eyes don’t lie. The public can witness the dishonesty which resides there seemingly hidden. They can see what the enabler is really thinking. “Wouldn’t it be better if the school system wasn’t so obese? Wouldn’t the school be better if it was much thinner?” The enabler is just as guilty as the husband who tells his wife, “Yes honey, you look good. You’re not fat at all.” The husband knows that if he doesn’t tell his wife something to that effect then sex will come with difficulty, and it will be a pain-in-the ass to pass his wife in the bathroom or in the hallways of his home. And thus the levy advocates are in the same boat. They must pass these inflated professionals in the halls of the school their children attend and communicate with others in social events, so they put on the blinders so that they can endure the experience with some resemblance of sanity.

If I knew the husband and he introduced me to his wife at a dinner party and the wife wanting praise from me upon introductions would say in a flirtatious social banter, “Do you think this dress makes me look fat?” The husband knowing my reaction would cup his hand over his face and brace himself for the anger his wife would soon feel. “Please Rich Hoffman, do not say what I know you are about to say. Please for the sake of my life, don’t piss her off.”

I would look at the woman with her body attempting to bust out of her dress and ask, “Do you really want to know?”

The woman expecting praise as she fans her hands down her thighs to straighten out her dress doing her best to look sexy, “Of course, darling.”

I would then say, “My dear, your ass is fat and you are a pain to all the eyes of this room for you should have worn a potato sack rather than do that dress injustice by asking it to hide your blob-like body. There isn’t any amount of perfume, make-up, or cosmetic accessories that can hide the fact that you have visited the potato chip bag about 100 times too many!”

The husband would be breathing through his hands knowing that the hours and hours ahead of him would be spent repairing his wife’s fractured psyche. The wife would of course be upset and would storm off in anger. And I’d have to say as she was leaving, “You wanted the truth.”

It is customary in our culture to avoid hurting people’s feelings even if in doing so we might actually help the person. And this is the case of our current education system, where they collectively believe they are more important, more powerful and ultimately influential on a child’s life. The success of a child’s life comes from the static patterns the parent provides for the child. Education is a part of it, but so are the parents themselves and the grandparents, cousins, nieces, nephews and friends. The teachers themselves are just a fraction of the potential success of a child.

But the mentality of the parent who believes that education will fill all the voids that they as parents lack are the same as the obese woman who drinks diet soda, and then eats whatever she wants expecting to lose weight. It doesn’t work, and telling those people that they are better or more important than they really are doesn’t do them any good in life by feeding their minds with a false sense of worth, of which they then expect us all to pay with increases in taxes.

It’s not against the law, or even wrong to be overweight. But when one is indeed fat, but expects to be lied to in order to further their own waistline without the guilt of public ridicule, then crimes are committed when society must decide between the harsh reality of the truth, or maintaining the status quo in order to avoid conflict.

For the answer to everything, CLICK THIS LINK:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Issue 2 in Ohio Could Save Your Community: Where did the jobs go?????????

Brian Thomas of 55 KRC had a fabulous segment on Wednesday, October 5th, 2011 covering Issue 2 in Ohio which is the collective bargaining reform law. As I heard this broadcast I couldn’t help but think of a debate I attended just a few days prior where the firefighter union had shown up to complain about the law. My feelings about that debate and most of what Brian speaks about in this broadcast can be seen by clicking on this hotlink. To listen to Brian Thomas talking about Issue 2, click the video below.

Anyone who reads me regularly knows that I have now designated those who work for public sector unions as being members of the “spoiled class.” The spoiled class believes that they are entitled to certain wages and benefits no matter what the cost to those who provide the money to fuel those benefits. They know of no end to that money supply and believe that they should be the first to get it upon their necessity. (As you heard Jeff Birding state, the firefighter suggested raising taxes to balance their budget.) This is an insidious concept and I blame the rhetoric of the labor unions for it. The unions have spent many year programming their members with a political agenda rooted in far left progressivism, to a point that even people who think they are conservatives, find that they are tools of this progressive agenda.

I didn’t know how bad it was till the Issue 2 debate that I mentioned where a member of the Middletown City Council pleaded to Senator Coley that jobs needed to be brought to Ohio, as if Coley could somehow reach into a magic bag and produce them from thin air. This man truly believed that such a statement was possible, and as I heard him speak I felt profound pity for the man. He seemed like a nice guy, certainly well-intentioned, but he did not understand where all the jobs in his city had gone.

High tax rates drive away business, and this nonsense of attacking Wall Street that is all the rage of the spoiled class these days, to solve many of the problems of the public unions and their demands of inflated wages is baffling. It’s like trying to cut the heart out of your body to lose weight, it makes about as much sense. The union advocates remind me of the typical suburban housewife who buy hamburger meat at the grocery store, and has become completely disconnected with the idea that once that meat they are buying was a living breathing thing, that was killed for her consumption. They have lost touch with the nature of their food because when they get it, it comes all wrapped up in a nice package. The same has occurred with the modern union worker. They know or care nothing where their wages come from. They only care that they get those wages. The unions are disconnected with the origin of money.

To understand this situation clearly and how close the alliance between big government and organized labor has become, one only has to examine the situation with Boeing, a large aerospace employer known best for their large manufacturing facilities in Washington, Oregon, and Kansas. Boeing is a private company, not a public one, but even here, the government has stuck its nose into the situation of regulating the way Boeing does business in favor of organized labor. Boeing has suffered some difficult work stoppages over the last decade with one of the most costly being a 58-day strike in 2008. So when Boeing needed to build a new plant for their new 787 craft, they elected to build it in South Carolina, a “right-to-work” state, which means the union would not be have an unfair negotiating advantage over Boeing to halt customer commitments of the 787 craft. Boeing knew that if they attempted to build the 787 in one of their existing manufacturing plants with a new building, they would suffer the same labor fates as they had in the past from devastating strikes, particularly District 751 Machinists Union.

Taking it upon themselves The National Labor Relations Board filed a law suit against Boeing for the move, District 751 spokesman Connie Kelliher that Boeing’s move “proves what we’ve suspected all along – that Boeing moved to Charleston to punish its members for exercising their union’s rights.” The Federal government on behalf of this union is suing one of the largest employers in the United States for wanting to build a manufacturing plant in a right-to-work state, and all parties involved, except for Boeing think this is acceptable!

I don’t blame Boeing at all for not wanting to put up with a radical work force, and I find it appalling that the government is stepping in where it has no business, but the same thing happens in our communities each time a teachers union decides to strike, a federal mediator comes in to negotiate, and what happens is our elected officials quickly get out-witted by the outside pressure and the unions win with public money we must then supply as tax payers. The situation is that ridiculous. And yes the spoiled class is that out-of-touch.

This is a serious problem as America must compete on a world stage where our competition will work for cents on a day, and they’ll work 10 to 15 hours because they are happy to have a job. Employees in India, China, and Indonesia and very industrious, and will stop at nothing when given a task, and they are typically happy to have a job, because many of the people they know don’t have one. (TO UNDERSTAND HOW BAD THE SITUATION IS CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE NUMBERS FOR YOURSELF.) I don’t blame large companies who move to these countries to avoid the pain-in-the neck of American Labor employed by the spoiled class. (THESE PEOPLE BELIEVE THE JOB EXISTS FOR THEIR BENEFIT!!) The companies would like to stay in America, but who wants to put up with radicals? Everyone wants to make money. Everyone wants to produce. But nobody wants to deal with economic terrorists, and that is what the spoiled class uses to get their way.

The spoiled class is an unfortunate burden. They have squandered away a lifetime of education to arrive as adults with the need to be educated again because they point at empty buildings and they contemplate, “Where did the jobs go that was in those buildings. Please, bring them back.” Therefore a discussion with them isn’t even possible and negotiating with them is even worse, because for negotiations to take place, the value of something must be determined and understood. And the spoiled class does not understand value, so they are ill-equipped to discuss anything about value, yet they hold equal ability to vote and be represented by tax money. This is a debacle that is epic, and permeates the very foundation of our entire country. This illness of the spoiled class must be dealt with before any advancement of our society can take place. Because when a company as valuable to America as Boeing cannot even build a manufacturing plant in a state without union labor, any discussion about education reform, medical advancement, or any public service cannot be explored. And this is something which should be of great concern to everyone.

In the end it will be the unions who look at the empty buildings and wonder why there isn’t any money and struggle to get their minds around the fact that those buildings are empty because they drove away the occupants, and all that will shine upon those monuments to industry is a setting-sun shining once more a faint flicker of light before dropping below the horizon leaving American and its unions in darkness, hungry, confused, and disillusioned fighting over the scraps that are left.

Thank the “Spoiled Class” for those empty buildings, and the job that was once there, but has fled our shores in search for freedom and the right to thrive and grow.

For the answer to everything, CLICK THIS LINK:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Quandary of Collectivism: But you need my job to make you safe!

Below is a message I received from a teacher who is attempting to play a little game that is now all too familiar. In the debate I had recently with the Pro Lakota Levy group, you could hear the same type of fear based placement of a core argument, resembling the message below.(CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THAT DEBATE)

_______________________________________________________

Mr. Hoffman,

I’m voting NO on issue 2. Issue 2 is unfair, unsafe and hurts us all. It takes away the voice of workers in the workplace and they will be unable to negotiate on important issues such as working conditions. Issue 2 will cost the state of Ohio a POWERFUL PRICE. When the good teachers leave for states where they are given a voice in the workplace, who will replace them? Teachers who are less able who can’t get jobs anywhere else.

_______________________________________________

What is easy to see in this small exchange is a kind of lobby attempt that can be seen in its exact duplication of tone on a larger scale over national issues. That is, those who work in government have strived to make themselves appear much more valuable than they truly are in a natural attempt at self-preservation. The tendency of that lobby is to attack the presumption that the world would be better off without the government workers creating needless bureaucracy, and they use examples like the teacher above citing that somehow all the good teachers will leave the state of Ohio if Issue 2 survives, or as in the below example, the world would be like Somalia if libertarians had their way. The government lobby message is the same everywhere……………….”You need my job to make you safe.”

It is in that keyword “safety” that the panicky young mother tunes her ear to the television. “I want my baby to be safe, so I should listen to them,” she says to herself. Or the grown man whose father ran off with another woman when he was a child, leaving he and his mom to fend for themselves, he thinks, “My mom needed the help of government. I’m glad government was there for her.” Or the old man facing his own terminal life who votes or the latest fire levy.  “It could be me they call to save my life.”  A thousand perplexed souls contemplate the same quandaries daily and it is these government types who capitalize on those primal fears to propel the security of their livelihoods in an unrealistic attainment of financial gain. But each time those government lobbyist open their mouth, the rhetoric is the same. The words are changed to fit the circumstances, but the intent is always to plant doubt in the minds of the tax payers that every government job created is needed. So when it is asked why does government seem to always expand, why is it so corrupt? Why is government so imposing? The source of the problem is in the desire of government to provide a job. In this way it grows like a virus unchecked by an immune system and destroys everything in its path in order to maintain the Static Patterns established by society in its pursuit of eternal safety.

The example of Somalia is a preposterous one. It is obvious that the creators of that little (anti-libertarian) film does not understand the greater aspects of social relationships. The real trouble in Somalia is due exclusively to their tendency toward collectivism as can be seen in this short documentary. It was on the back of collectivism that socialism was brought to that country, then when that fell, as it always does it paved the way for the clan Civil War that is currently taking place. Somalia is the direct result of government meddling at many levels, not the other way around, as the video obviously produced by some New Age Leftists, only able to see a small part of the overall picture interpreted.

The trouble with these documentaries is that they are often older than the minds of the modern socialist, whom was educated by a teacher similar to the one who wrote the opening statement of this article. Taken independently, I’m sure that teacher is a wonderful person. I’m sure there is a child who calls them a parent. I’m sure they are someone’s sibling, and is someone else’s child. I’m sure they shop at the same stores as the rest of us and it is their money that helps move wealth through our economic system, and that has intrinsic value. But the destruction comes from a belief in collectivism, a hope that government, and its expansion will bring justice and prosperity to everyone if only they worked for a big collective entity.

Collectivism is a naive concept conjured up over puffs of marijuana smoke in the college dormitories of America and it is in that naivety that people like Barry Obama formulated his belief system that teachers and public education are the salvation of the world, that would break down the barriers to everyone and reach into the villages of faraway places like Somalia and help the starving. Collectivists like Obama and the billionaire George Soros believe they can correct the part of themselves which they deem broken to be redeemed in social salvation. They are no different than Said Barre, the Somalia dictator. Even with all the evils of Barre, there are plenty of people who believe he’s a hero. Collectivists are ultimately the most selfish group on planet Earth, because they are typically flawed people who seek to redeem their own personal imperfections through philanthropy, and social reform, as if they can out-pace their internal demons with acts of charity.  (SEE MY ARTICLE ON JIM JONES)

It is collectivism that is the villain, and rhetoric is the mask that attempts to elude notice as it sneaks into American culture. The teacher who wrote me the letter was using rhetoric to mask the truth, that they can be replaced rather easily and they hope to scare me into believing otherwise, and the producers of the “Libertarian Paradise” film hope that the masses have just as shallow of historical knowledge as they do. And Barry Obama hopes that people will forget what he truly intended for America, a breakdown of the walls we had to the world, so that the world can share in our prosperity. After all, Obama has roots that come from a region of the world that thinks much like Somalia. Kenya is right next door. They all have in common the terrible disease of collectivism, which limits their minds and thinking to barriers in reduced social understanding. And that is why they fail time and time again.

I have been involved in the employment of people for quite some time, and I can personally verify that much of what people will tell you are laced with self-interest. Even in the most collective society, self-interest is the key ingredient. If a person believes they will be better off individually through collectivism, then they will seek to obtain in mass the fruits of that plunder, thus the labor movement. When the teacher says they must stand against Issue 2 to collectively bargain they are saying they want to dominate the process through collectivism so that they can en mass achieve the same results as the clans are performing in Somalia, individual gains reaped from brute force. And when those methods are questioned by the public, they already have the infrastructure in place to bring hardship to their employers in the form of a strike. Its military maneuvers at this point, not negotiation over tax money for the paying of government employees. And the mask is always one that says, “You need me. Only I can perform this task, so you must give me overtime to do it. Only I can do this job so you must put up with me and not hire a replacement.” Sometimes, you believe them, sometimes you don’t, but I have learned over time that after terminating dozens and dozens of employees and losing employees to disputes when you call their bluff, I have always been able to recover the achievement you hired the labor for in the first place, and the doomed promises predicted by the radical rhetoric never comes true. Because the rhetoric is only a mask and behind it is a soul with no real teeth who hopes that the public doesn’t catch on to their scam and pull the plug. Because in the world of collectivism, that world is financed by the tax dollar, and if tax payers stopped giving collectivists so much money, suddenly they are in real trouble. If government stops expanding, they suddenly lose the security blanket they built their collective lives around. So they will lie, cheat, mislead and conjure up any string of facts to justify their existence.

But that existence is coming under fire more and more, as the truth is seeping out from behind the collectivist’s masks of deception. And there is real fear in their eyes of what will become of them if those of us who produce decide to turn off the facet to their livelihoods. We are learning that the teacher asks for too much and does too little. We are learning that the government bureaucrat spends much time and money creating laws that get in our way of doing what we want, and it’s not worth it. And we are learning that community organizers who were forged in the radical sewers of human thought will have appeal to the weak and down-trodden who are willing to turn to collectivism for salvation they couldn’t achieve squarely on their own merit, and elect such a fool as President of a global village tribe, without considering that the tribe will break into an ideological civil war because society cannot be run by the weak collectives and their central planning.

The threats by these collectivists are utterances that aren’t worth the wind which carries the sound wave of discontent. Anyone who believes as collectivists do can be replaced by a superior mind quickly and efficiently, because it is the superior mind who avoids such occupations in order to avoid the fools who are currently employed there. The superior mind doesn’t waste their time on the quandary of collectivism. The apocalypse predicted by those employed by government as that body of collectivism is reduced by the tax dollar are unfounded, completely, the world will still turn tomorrow, kids will still be taught by a teacher, there will still be police and firefighters and many others. The term phrased, “the squeaky wheel gets the grease,” has been true. But my solution to the squeaky wheel is not to just put more grease on it; it is to replace the wheel all together with one that doesn’t make any noise, and might even work better. It is in such thinking that permanent fixes reside.

For the answer to everything, CLICK THIS LINK:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Rich Hoffman Hates Teachers: A stick in the waters of life

Naturally I get a lot of email that is derogatory in nature. Taking the positions I have on issues tends to draw attention from the empire builders who drape themselves particularly from the mantles of public service. A good many of those emails I can’t share, because they are too mindless, derogatory, or simply vile. But one email I received and the banter between this guy and myself I would consider to be an interesting study of psychology.

A guy named, Mike took exception with the comments I had made about Ryan Farhenkemp, the Lakota teacher recently found guilty of child pornography while on his teaching job. Mike didn’t like that I associated the teaching profession in a negative way by insinuating that the perversions of Farhenkemp made other teachers guilty as well. So he sent me an email to “correct” my thinking as I suppose he fantasized his action to be. For two days he and I bantered back and forth on the topic and I thought it was going in a productive direction, only to end unfortunately on a negative.

Below are the contents of this discussion:

Mike Stefanov has sent you a message On Tue, Sep 27, 2011:

You have some good messages but you really devalue them with statements such as this; “When they want to be paid well, they all stick together. But when one messes up and does something stupid, like the pedophile at Lakota, then the teachers act like he acted alone and they should not be judged because of him. So which is it? All for one and one for all………..or, judged by independent merit?)”

Your insinuation that the pedophile may not have acted alone is deplorable. You should be ashamed to equate other teachers with the trash of a pedophile. Your message is getting lost by some of your attacks on teachers. I think that you would have many more sympathizers to your cause if you did not spew the vile hared that you so often do. Putting all teachers in the same basket with the other pedophiles is classless. It would be like someone putting all Catholic priests together because there have been a few that have abused kids. Pedophiles can be found in every walk of life and in every occupation. Keep spewing your hatred and your message will soon be falling on deaf ears.

On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 12:29 PM, Rich Hoffman wrote:

Don’t count on it but thanks for the comment. In the case of that particular teacher, people knew what he was up to, and didn’t say anything. That doesn’t make them as bad as the pedophile, but they aren’t innocent either. The statement was a general statement on collectivism, but your interpretation is fascinating.

Keep in touch,

Rich

Mike Stefanov wrote:

Rich,

Thank you for the reply back. Just FYI; it was the Lakota SD that brought this particular pedophile to the attention of the authorities. If it were not for some at Lakota that alerted the authorities, this sick teacher may still be amongst the students.

As I alluded to in the other email, some of your messages are good but do not cause them to be viewed as untruthful by distorting the facts that you are presenting. Smart people will see through your distortion of facts. I view myself as a Libertarian but the bending of facts can be construed in the wrong way. Your enthusiasm can be commended but it must be tempered with truthfulness. I do not appreciate your attacks on teachers that actually are honest and hard working. I see through your distorted message. Keep bending the truth and spewing hatred and the message will be lost. History will back me up on this. Ronald Reagan must be turning in his grave when he sees what the GOP has become.

Mike Stefanov

On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 5:37 PM, Rich Hoffman wrote:

Good points, Mike. I’ll keep those views in mind and in perspective.

Thanks,

Rich

(Now here comes the going south portion)

On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 7:57 AM, Mike Stefanov wrote:

You do that, Rich. Keep those views in mind. I am one that may have given you support but will not because of the manner in which you degrade teachers. I have been fortunate to have had good teachers. Teachers have made a positive influence on my life and they have had a positive role in the life of my children as well. There are some bad teachers but there are many more that are good. Bad and incompetent workers can be found in every occupation. Education is not alone in this.

I have been blessed that I have had a good life and have been able to afford just about whatever I want to. I have an income that is in the 99th percentile. I have a nice home. A lot of this success can be traced back to having quality teachers. From what I can glean about you it appears that you are most likely unemployed and have had bad experiences in school. If you are employed you occupation is most likely menial and you more than likely have a middling income. This misfortune has caused you to become bitter. If you think that the Lakota SD is so poor and you don’t like it, just move to an area that would be more to your liking and more affordable for you. In the meantime, don’t continue your attempts to lessen the quality of the schools. Additionally, you are having a negative impact on the value of my home and that is not welcomed by me. The amount of additional taxes that I will pay is nothing compared to the amount that my home will depreciate by because nobody wants to move to either Liberty Twp or West Chester due to a school system that is subpar.

Believe it or not, I like minimal government. I am a Libertarian. I don’t like any more than you do. However there are no free lunches and paying for a quality school system is money that is well spent.

Mike

Rich Hoffman Replied:

You were doing so well, Mike, then you had to come back with that.
I am certainly not unemployed, or underfunded. That’s cute that you’d make that assumption. As for school, I don’t think it does enough and gets in the way of the ambitious. I wouldn’t say I had bad experiences or good ones in school. I think it wastes the time of children to create jobs for the adults. I find it hard to believe that you are in the top 1% with your beliefs.

Bitter, me? I’m not bitter about much of anything. Don’t confuse lack of respect for bitterness.

Rich

——————————————————————-

Mike seemed in the end more concerned about proving to me that he had value as a person, and he sadly associated that value with money. This tells me a lot about the contents of his mind. He represents many of the teachers whom he is defending in this exchange with an assumption that money equals value. He misses completely many of the points I have been making because he does not have a mind to understand them. So he came back to me at the end of this exchange with accusations that I’m unemployed and somehow bitter about the teaching profession as a whole.

The unsettling aspect of this discussion is that Mike believes so strongly in this exchange that he took considerable time to try and convince me that I’m wrong, and even when I gave him an honorable way out, he came back for more.

There are many Mikes out there and they vote. They bounce around life like twigs in a raging river. They go with the flow of popular sentiment even if that direction is one of destruction, and they forget that once they were part of a tree that had broken away from their roots and now find themselves soaking wet and directionless going wherever the river takes them.

Mike obviously wanted to prove to me that he was a person of value, which actually makes me feel for the guy. There are so many people like him that it would be easier to count those who are unlike him.

This doesn’t make him right or wrong, but simply an interesting scientific behavioral study which can provide insight into the kinds of nonsense “thinking” people shake their heads at in contemplation. It must be a terrible thing to have no control over one’s destiny, and to just go with the flow. I personally can’t imagine such limitations, so it never ceases to amaze me to observe the conditions of such types, and the utterances which emanate from their condensed lives as they travel aimlessly down the rivers of life.

For the answer to everything, CLICK THIS LINK:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

“The Tea Party is Racist”: But they like Herman Cain, how can they be both?

The comments from the actor Morgan Freeman over this last weekend citing that the Tea Party are racists and have a sole purpose in removing President Obama from office because he’s black proves how little so many people who vote truly know. Click this HOTLINK to see a recent article of mine where I play the video from Freeman. Without extrapolating further the authority by which any value in Freeman’s opinion dictates, let me just say, Morgan Freeman is looking for a convenient outlet for his lack of understanding.

Herman Cain is my pick of the Republicans so far running for the 2012 election and I think he’s black. I didn’t consider his skin color until Morgan Freeman made me think of it. As I watched the Freeman interview I said to the TV, “Hey, wait. That’s not true, Herman Cain is black. The Tea Party is trying to replace a black progressive with a black conservative. It has nothing to do with the word, ‘blackness.’” It’s more like replacing someone who can’t do the job with someone who can.
I like Cain because he has more experience than our current president and he seems to understand the concept of limited government. Virtually everyone agrees that our tax system need reforming, including President Obama, and Cain has a plan. It’s called the ‘9-9-9’ tax plan. Check it out!

Saturday Night Live did a skit involving Herman Cain as an “unelectable” candidate. They also made fun of the fact that Cain was the CEO of Godfather Pizza, as if that “small” amount of experience did not qualify Cain for the Presidency. As I watched and considered the two weekend comments together I could not help but conclude that the “Progressive Machine” was functioning with full steam applied. Many in the media are afraid of Cain, because he is a black man, and he’s articulate, quite intelligent and he has a plan to straighten out an actual chaotic situation of government with solutions. That makes Progressives nervous because they need chaos to survive.

President Obama had virtually no experience at doing anything when he ran for President. Herman Cain has actually had success as the head of a company. The implication is that because it’s a pizza company, somehow the effort contains less merit. The media considers “community organizing” much more valuable, apparently.

I was happy to see that Herman Cain won the Florida Straw Pole. The reason for these debates is to show who the strong candidates truly are over time, and Cain is emerging as one of the stronger candidates even though the orthodox media and political machines wish those candidates to be Mitt Romney or Rick Perry. You see, the static patterns of society know what to do with people like Perry and Romney, and the media has already decided they will not allow Ron Paul a seat at the table even though Paul is a fantastic candidate. But Herman Cain is fresh, and Presidential. And he’s a black man. The only knock against Cain (according to the media) is that he’s a conservative.

What would the Progressive Community do if Herman Cain turned out to be the Republican Nominee? They would not be able to say that conservatives are racist because they nominated a black man. And the Tea Party likes Herman Cain. So how could the Tea Party be racist yet at the same time support Herman Cain?

Herman Cain proves the hypocrisy of our modern society. I don’t care what color Herman Cain’s skin is. I really didn’t think much about it. I simply thought Cain was the best of the offered candidates. I have heard that many people would support Herman Cain but are afraid to because he’s “unelectable.” What does that mean?

There is a belief that if the media will not endorse a candidate, that a person running for the Presidency cannot become President. So even though people may think Herman Cain is the best guy for the job, somehow the good people of the United States must settle for someone like Mitt Romney because the media will support them. It would seem the media has too much power and have themselves become a corrupt nobility who view their role on the world stage as reformers, not reporters.

The media does not create policy, even though they did create President Obama, the empty promises behind their strategy is immediately evident in the collective media’s utopian naïveté, because Obama is lost when it comes to any kind of management. Obama’s economic plan is one concocted by a small army of fools displaying an unprecedented ignorance and evidence that America’s education system is a failed institution—because it produced these fools.

Herman Cain’s ‘9-9-9’ plan will raise about $1.768 trillion in raw tax revenue and economic growth using numbers similar to the Obama Administration’s own estimates, will bring in an additional $1.4 trillion more creating $2.17 trillion which matches the $2.16 trillion in tax revenues collected this year, and it takes away all the corruption and lost money that thrives like a virus in the chaos of our current progressive tax system.

That’s a much better system than President Obama’s plan of taxing the social minority of 235,000 millionaires and billionaires, (you know, people like Obama) that already pay 40% of all Federal taxes. Obama seems to leave all the trouble of the current tax code on the shoulders of the “rich,” such as the fact that the bottom 50% of all wage owners pays just 3% toward taxes. And about 47% of all American households pay no federal income tax at all. Those are the Obama supporters. Of course they will endorse a candidate that will steal money on their behalf…..and it’s legal. “Go after the rich Mr. Obama and loot us some of that Obama money!”

Cain’s plan makes taxes fair for everyone, and it just makes sense. It solves a problem that progressives created, and this is why the progressives will not support Herman Cain even if he is a black man. Because the issue is not about the color a man’s skin, the color is just a deterrent from the real issue which is that progressives need chaos so they can have excuses to expand government even more and with each encroachment for American society to become less free.

The agenda is not to have a black president, but to use the guilt of racism to advance a political philosophy supported by the intellectual elite, which make up the media.

For myself, I will support Herman Cain to the ends of the Earth because I believe in the man, and I think he has the best plan I’ve heard for reforming the tax code and starting the country on the right course. And I believe Herman Cain will support American’s more than Agenda 21 and that makes him the ideal guy in my book to take America to the next plateau of greatness which it deserves after a waltz with the demons of discontent. (CLICK HERE TO UNDERSTAND WHAT AGENDA 21 IS)

Clearly we are two America’s and a confrontation is inevitable. Hopefully, that confrontation will stay at the ballot box. That’s why I will be voting for Herman Cain in 2012.

For the answer to everything, CLICK THIS LINK:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

The Buffett Rule: The sad position of Barry Obama

What? The President said he’d veto any proposal that did not include tax increases……oh, I mean “revenue.” I thought this President was all about “compromise.” (Auh Oh, I better be careful. Someone might send this article to Attack Watch.)

The President of the United States continues to be a complete joke. He is maybe one of the most incompetent administrators I have seen in a long time. I believe he is WAY over his head in this job of President. I knew what the President was going to say before he even got up this morning, but the recklessness for which he says it is stunning. I’ve known for a long time in fact what the President would say, because Barry Obama is simply a puppet that speaks what his political party desires, and if you know who they are, you can predict what will come out of the president’s mouth. So as my new article on Issue 2 was published in American Thinker, which ironically is partly about how Obama is basically a spokesman for labor unions, part of my mind marveled at how convoluted this President continues to think. (See that American Thinker article here)

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/09/the_barbarians_of_issue_2.html

Doc Thompson of 700 WLW was interrupted by the President during his broadcast, and had some things to say about the merit of Barry’s little speech which will lead to what I’m about to say. Listen to that broadcast here.

People like Barry Obama, and many in his party and some from the Republican Party are not acting in our best interest. For many years there has been a plan to turn The United States Republic into something else.

Enter Norman Mattoon Thomas, who in 1944 made the statement you will see included in the fine little picture included here. Take a minute to read that before continuing.

Now, how about that? Are those the words of some conspiracy theory, Tea Party, radical? No, those are the words of a real person who along with an army of like-minded pacifists helped usher in the radicals 60’s movement with the aim of bringing Socialism to the United States. You can see in his own words the method by which he and his friends intended to do this, liberalism.

The key to me in listening to the President’s speech was why do I have to pay for all these social programs that are attached to liberalism, if I don’t support liberalism? Why should I support any liberal program, especially knowing that socialism has always been the goal? Why would I knowingly choose to fund my own country’s destruction by funding liberal policies? That doesn’t make any sense.

Much of what Barry Obama stated were “essential” programs that must be funded by my tax money are programs created under the umbrella of liberalism, or as shown by Mr. Thomas, “socialism.” So why do those programs deserve to be funded at all?

The President mentioned that some of that tax burden of which he wishes to fund using the wealth of the “rich,” would go to fund education. OK, so what does education entail? Is education making sure children learn to read, write, and do math, or is education actually liberal, (socialist) instruction? And is a teacher a mentor, or someone who is supposed to teach a child the basics? And is a teacher worth 40K a year, 50K per year, or 60K per year? If it is determined that a teacher are essential mentors and instructors of basic instruction and are worth 60K a year in salary, then how many teachers are performing at this level, all of them? Because currently we pay in taxes a value which assumes that every teacher is performing with spectacular results, the best of the best, even when we discover they are having sex with kids and other indiscretions during school hours. Not all teachers mind you, but some. (Here’s the trouble with taking teachers as a collective in assessing value. When they want to be paid well, they all stick together. But when one messes up and does something stupid, like the pedophile at Lakota, then the teachers act like he acted alone and they should not be judged because of him. So which is it? All for one and one for all………..or, judged by independent merit?)

GET THE POINT?

In Ohio out of the 612 school districts they are collectively running at a $8 billion dollar deficit, 96% of which is compensation costs. According to President Obama, tax payers should just pay the money to close that deficit gap without asking why the gap exists or without having an intelligent discussion as to whether or not the compensation for those teachers is worth it, because I see an awful lot of children graduating from high school these days who aren’t very smart.

That small example could be greatly expanded to include Medicare, Social Security, The EPA, the entire Department of Education, and Homeland Security. In fact I could probably put down a whole book just on the wasteful programs built by liberalism, as a subtle march toward socialism, that simply cost too much money and don’t deserve my hard-earned money.

The President mentioned again that people “like him” should make a sacrifice, to dig deep into their pockets to pay their fair share of taxes. Well, no WE shouldn’t. First of all, Barry Obama became wealthy because of his public service. Without politics, Barry would still be organizing rallies in Chicago and smoking joints like a lot of his union brothers. He certainly wouldn’t be a millionaire, because he doesn’t make anything or manage anything that can produce a profit. Second, what is a “fair share?” Why is it fair to require me to fund programs I think are ridiculously foolish and are weakening our society, in my opinion? I have no intention of ever receiving a Social Security check, so why should I continue to pay? How is that fair, that some absentminded fool politician came up with some looting law for me to work extra hard to pay for, when if I kept the money, could have done something more productive? The tax to me is just legalized robbery. It’s going to groups I don’t believe in to fund philosophies I have no faith in, to support an agenda I find detrimental to the future of the country. So why do I have to pay again? How is it my obligation, because some incompetent manager like Barry decided I had to pay?

It’s easy for a looter to give away things; because they can just take away from “the rich” anytime they need to refill themselves. And that’s what all these tax increases are. If the wealthy were a minority group representing bloc voters, Barry Obama would never think of insulting the wealthy the way he does. He only does it because there aren’t that many wealthy people, so if they all vote against him in the next election, he could care less. He’s all about taking from those who have, and giving to those who don’t, and there are more people in the world that don’t. So it works out from his stand point, which is a premise of socialism.

Just like Mr. Thomas knew that people would never accept socialism at face value, so they changed the name to liberalism, progressivism, the enlightened philosopher kings of Plato’s Republic. But the reality of their mentality is socialism. Just like the reality of demanding more taxes is simply no different from a thief holding a victim at gun point to rob them of the contents of their wallet. It is purely relative as to whether or not the robber has a gun or a whole country with the IRS, CIA, ATTACK WATCH or any other weapon at their disposal. The intent is the same, and that is to loot those who have so those that want it can have it.

The reason Barry is so incompetent is that he can’t see that even if he took all the wealth the “rich” had, then what would happen then? When that money is gone what happens next? If Barry gets reelected President, what will happen two years from now when taxes won’t fix the problem and spending is still on an upward trend and the rich have simply moved to Hong Kong, or Singapore to hide from the long arm of the Government? What will that bamboozled president do then? Who will he rob then to take care of his own “special interests,” his voting bloc, his political contributors which move his mouth to make words come out? Who?????????????

He’ll do the same as the gambler who has lost his whole fortune in one night at the tables; he’ll roll the dice again, and again, as long as we let him. Just like the gambling addict, he will continue to sprinkle illusions at even himself because he is fully committed to the strategy of those who came before him, people like Mr. Thomas, even when there is no money to bet with any longer, and his credibility has long since left him, because the foundations of his beliefs were wrong to begin with, and everything he is, and hopes to be will require him to steal from someone else so that he could be something………….anything in the age-old tragedy the likes of which made Shakespeare seem so prophetic.

Look in Barry’s hand there if you doubt what I’ve said here and shown you.  To see what that book is about check it out at this link:

http://www.amazon.com/Post-American-World-Fareed-Zakaria/dp/039306235X

For the answer to everything as to why labor unions fail, check out this link:
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/why-public-labor-unions-fail-the-science-of-stagnation/

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

The Answer is “C”: Who runs society the engine or the boxcar?

In this article, which may seem long, but if you take the time to read and watch the videos here, I will promise you a new level of wisdom gained that will give you insight into a world that was once invisible to most of the population. Better than all that, I will tell you why. But for some reference you might want to refer to my articles on Static Intellectualism and patterns by clicking on this hot link.

To provide testimony for everything you will read and see in this article I would like to present to you a simple game called, “The Answer is C,” presented by Doc Thompson of 700 WLW. Listen to this short little contest and study the questions and answers by the public.

The lesson to that game is that the participants, 3 out of 5 were completely unable to see beyond the Static Patterns of what they understood a multiple choice test to be. When the callers were waiting on the line to go on the air they were focused on the hope that they would be able to understand the question and provide an answer so that they could win a gift card to Frisch’s restaurant. What the listeners didn’t consider, because their static patterns would not allow them to see it, was that Doc Thompson told them the answer ahead of time. In fact Doc told the callers the answer at least 20 or more times in that short 6 minute broadcast. The answer to the questions is even in the title of the game! Yet 3 out of 5 people missed the question even when given the answer. WHY? And what does it have to do with our current political trouble? Well everything.

In our fundamental education at public school, our first real experience outside of our parent’s homes, progressive philosophy imported from Europe has taken over the essence of that education, because the Victorians of progressivism marketed those values into curriculums at all levels. The traditions of our daily habits and lives still come from our parents, but our social values are largely shaped by our experience in public education, so in creating a static pattern for all human beings, if the progressive mentality wished to become accepted, it had to do so through education, which is why to this day so many who work in education are considered leftists, democrats, progressives and unionized radicals. It is because the people drawn to that field of endeavor, education, found that to advance in the static patterns of that culture they had to adopt those progressive ideas. This created a large group of teachers at all levels who tend to be progressive thinking people whom every child in America is then exposed to as a competing social idea in shaping the static patterns of the child.

This has created the trouble of young people being liberal leaning when they first leave school. It is after those children live life for a few years and raise a family of their own that they begin to see the error of progressive/liberal thought. Young people are attracted to characters like Van Jones and the kind of speeches people like him make at the below progressive conference. Government dependence is an attractive concept to young people who are uncertain about their ability to compete in a very competitive world.

Progressivism is attractive to the down-and-out also. The illegal immigrant, the welfare recipient, the unhealthy, all are the types who are drawn to the Van Jones message. After all, by looking at the receipt to the right which was found in a Menominee, Michigan grocery store parking lot you will see why. For the non-competitive, life under government security allows them to purchase lobster and steak with food stamps while the competitive fund it. The error of what Van Jones preaches is that the system only works so long as there are competitive people out there willing to produce. I shudder to consider what would happen if the truly innovative, and hard-working decided to do as the characters of Atlas Shrugged did in that classic novel, and that’s stop working just as those people who are collecting food stamps are doing. Progressivism fails when everyone in society just gives up trying. Progressives fail to understand that someone has to be the engine, the producer, the driver. Progressives are simply cars that are drug behind the train engine and the more cars there are just carrying passengers, the harder it is for the rest of the train to pull.

When Van Jones talks about the success of Germany and China taking care of their people what he fails to mention is that China is not exactly a free country. They do not share the same values as the United States. You are not even allowed to have more than one child per family, let alone decide all other aspects of their life. And Germany is just now recovering from the fall of the Berlin Wall where the West was finally able to merge with the Soviet controlled East. Once capitalism was able to work in Germany their country began to produce again. In China it was when Hong Kong was transferred back to China from the Capitalist tendencies of England in the year 2000. Back then there was a lot of fear as to what would happen to Hong Kong under Chinese rule. Would China bring down Hong Kong into a communist province or would the communists attempt to accept Hong Kong and the great economy that was flourishing there? China decided to adapt, reluctantly, and their economy is flourishing.

But Van Jones won’t tell anybody that, and nobody bothers to ask the question, because just like in the game that Doc Thompson put on, where he even gave the answer at the start of the question, the callers still got the answer wrong. The same types of people are at those progressive events. The goal of progressive public education is to make competition less attractive, except in sports which are used to fund the whole enterprise. But for the regular student, competition is being frowned down upon. Progressives have always known that by eliminating the competitive tendencies in a child, who will grow up into an adult and accept their philosophy, that stifling personal ambition was the focus all along, but ambition toward altruistic goals are greatly rewarded. Thus the static patterns of modern society have been shaped, and even when proof that the choices people have made are wrong, they generally cannot see why, for the same reason that people answered the questions wrong in Doc’s game.

But not everyone is falling for it. More and more young people are leaning in the direction of conservatism. I would say that in social representation, they are the 2 out of 5 who answered right. These people have the ability to see that there are serious errors to the social patterns that have formed around them and they are beginning to emerge, which was the topic of a recent discussion on GBTV.

Another young person who has emerged out of this public education static pattern of progressivism is the radio personality Matt Clark who is a freak of nature. He is way ahead of the curve at his young age. He is the type of person who would have gotten all Docs’ questions right immediately. He’d be the first to say, “Why are you asking me this question, Doc, because you already gave me the answer?”

This is the terrible condition people like Matt will always suffer from. Matt is a smart young man, but so are people who are progressives. I would venture to say that George Soros is smart, after all he’s a billionaire so he did something right. Van Jones is smart. Barack Obama is probably smart taken one on one. But all those people are suffering from a failed understanding built within their static patterns. Their failure comes from their education to begin with. So it’s not a matter of intelligence. I know a lot of smart people who are really, socially stupid. Some of them suffer from having traditional parents and a stable household, but try desperately to merge those values with the values they learned in public education and college and what happens is a mess of personal ideology which prevents them from seeing the obvious, because their static patterns are fundamentally broken.

Matt Clark however managed to come out of college recently much like the young people on GBTV, and they are fully aware of what is wrong and can see it clearly even if the rest of the world can’t. Even without a life of experience behind Matt, he can see the error of what Nancy Pelosi’s progressive philosophy is advocating, even though Nancy seems oblivious to her hypocrisy even as she says it.

If you’ll remember back to Doc’s contest, 2 out of 5 callers got the answer right. Well, if you think about it, that same ratio seems to be evident in the nation as a whole. The country leans slightly to the right of center. The people right of center to varying degrees are aware that something is wrong with progressives. The one’s who are close to the center know it, but can’t articulate it. But the further to the right that you get, the more obvious it is. Somewhere out there to the firm right is the libertarian who wants very little government at all, because they simply don’t trust government to do anything right.

This isn’t so much a question of does those on the left have a right to exist or not. People are free to believe whatever they want to believe. But when policy is formed to reflect one point of view over another point of view and the security of maintaining that philosophy requires the looting of everyone to maintain the philosophy of that one side, a big problem emerges. And that is what we have found has happened with the progressive leaning public sector service jobs we’ve created in our American culture.

The trouble here is that many police and firefighters seem to lean in a conservative direction politically, unlike teachers who overwhelmingly are liberal, yet all fall under the category of public service and are all guilty of the kind of explosive growth shown by Nick Gillespie from Reason Magazine.

All states must find a way to deal with this terrible situation. In Ohio the discrepancy of public workers versus private workers is 43.4% in favor of the public workers! Yet strangely people can’t see the answer even though it’s clearly spelled out. Just like Doc’s game, 3 people out of 5 still got the answer wrong, and in this case with public unions, the idea of a union is a progressive position which has been embedded in our culture through education. And when the static pattern of those beliefs are challenged, as they are in Ohio with Issue 2, the public unions even though they are politically represented by conservatives and liberals, all unite under the static pattern of union radicalism to protect the advancements their progressive unions have imposed on society for decades. Ohio passed a law to help close the gap in that huge disparity between public and private workers because after all the burden of paying for everything in the progressive platform requires the private citizen to carry the entire burden of an enterprise. The whole of any public sector position rests on the shoulders of private enterprise, and the same is true for government itself. Yet progressives routinely forget this and believe that they exist as an entity all their own. So police, fireman, and teachers all pulled together to collect 1.3 million signatures to repeal the bill passed by Governor John Kasich to close the disparity gap and make Ohio more economically attractive to outside investment and prospective homeowners (tax payers). Because of the repeal attempt by the unions, Ohio must vote to keep the bill known as Issue 2.

The solution is very easy for those of us who can see, just like many people listening to that broadcast with Doc Thompson were shouting at their speaker saying, “HE’S TELLING YOU THE ANSWER IN THE TITLE!!!!!!” Yet there are others, who are stuck in a learned static pattern who make up the progressive labor unions, which transcends political ideology in this case and have turned into a radical group who are insisting that the answer to our public problem still rest in some progressive solution when it is the progressive platform that has created our trouble to begin with. The equivalent to this would be one of the people in Doc Thompson’s broadcast insisting that the answer to the game was in fact A, B or D, anything but C, when the only correct answer is C.

And that’s the real problem. Progressive thought has devastated our country and 2 out of 5 people are seeing it. Those 2 people are beginning to make up the new group called the Tea Party, they are part of the 2 to 3 million people who make up the Glenn Beck audience, listen to talk radio, and read articles like my 500 readers a day here. They know something is wrong, and like Matt Clark, and the kids on GBTV are starting to look for ways to solve the complicated problem and they are doing it without of any hostility toward progressives. They just want to solve the problem.
But now we see what the real agenda has always been among progressives. Now that progressives see those 2 out of 5 people are starting to question them, the unions are seeking to use the other 3 to form an army to force the 2 to comply with their view of the answer even if their answer is wrong.

That’s where this situation has become out of control. Now that some of us are trying to fix the problem we are learning why progressives want unions to begin with, to not only fund political endeavors, but to use them as a civilian ground force. I think the young, and forward thinking Matt Clark has the situation nailed in this broadcast where he plays clips of the current leaders of progressive politics who are actually saying as much. Matt takes the situation and plays it a bit over-the-top, but I think it deserves to be.

It wouldn’t be the first time a political uprising formed under the nose of a current culture. Such things take place over a long period of time and do not happen quickly, and anyone who has studied the Art of War by Sun Tzu, which I have, understand that the most desirable way to conquer a country is without firing a shot is by using the “subtle” to overtake a culture. In this case it was the infusion of progressive politics almost a century ago which has led to a confused society that on one hand thinks it’s fighting for traditional American rights, like many of the cops and firefighters believe they are doing, but find themselves simply foot soldiers in a civilian army designed to topple American Capitalism. The way you perform the invasion is from within the country, not with planes, tanks and nuclear weapons. You do it while the passive citizens, trained under your progressive institutions paid for with progressive taxes, wave flags of peace in the air and greet those progressive invaders with open arms and perhaps even a place in their beds. Those young students so unsure of themselves won’t believe that the answer is “C” even if you tell them the answer until life proves to them that everything they believe is wrong, and over the course of their lives from age 20 to 50 they finally learn how wrong they were. They finally find out that being conservative was the way they should have always been, because traditional values worked in the past and they will always work in the future.

I can say it now because by the time this hits the net, my wife would have already given the present to my sister who is about to have baby twins. My wife has made a blanket for every baby that is born in our family. She’s done that for 20 years, and these twins are just the most recent. These blankets are unlike anything you could ever buy at a store, and they are intended to provide a sense of security for the young child as they form those crucial static patterns of their lives. It is the static patterns of life that people form their beliefs around and a blanket of security made with love from a treasured family member is extremely important to the life of any child. But when progressives started to attack those traditional values by undermining the family unit to be replaced by progressive education which created an unstable static pattern for these young children to grow up confused and pulled in a thousand different ways only to learn in their 50’s that the whole process was a mess and needs to be reformed completely from the ground up. That rebirth needs to be built upon the static pattern of American Tradition, which is a topic of its own. Click here to see a sample.

But the focus of this all along has been to weaken the United States with progressivism and to use its own people as the army. The recruits of this army are those 3 out of 5 who simply can’t see the truth even when you place it right in front of their face. You can spell it out for them implicitly, but they still won’t see, because their static patterns are wrong to begin with, so they cannot see it even if they tried.

The work rests on the 2 out of 5 to do all the work anyway. They must carry the whole burden of this failed philosophy called progressivism and replace it with what worked before progressives brought their nonsense to the whimsical Victorians of early New York City, to culturally launch the nation into a static pattern of degradation much to the pleasure of our enemies.

And yes dear reader, the United States has enemies. It has since the beginning. The War of 1812 was England’s last attempt to recapture its colony; for fear that the young nation would leave it behind, which it did, in just one short century. And that growth exploded upon the world scene and brought freedom to the far corners of the world, until progressives stopped that growth with litigation, unions, and social reforms centered on civil rights.

It wasn’t the progressives who initiated the civil rights movement, it was the American Transcendentalists, and I’m thinking of Ralph Waldo Emerson specifically. Progressives did what they always do, and that is to loot the idea from those who created the idea to begin with proving that the all-American novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand should be required reading for every single child in grade school because it is a work more important than any literary work produced in America since its inception. Because Atlas Shrugged provides the blueprint on how to live in an America free of progressivism and it shows what life would and should be like in absence of that philosophical disease called the progressive.

This entire essay is a sincere hope on my part to share with you, the reader a world that should be obvious. To those who already know that the answer to Doc Thompson’s questions is in fact, “C” thank you for bearing with the length of this article, for it will only confirm what you already know. But to those of you that don’t know that the answer is “C” but instead is “A,” “B,” or “D,” I hope you just learned something that can help you to not be such a drag on the rest of society, and to join the rest of us who are trying to make the whole thing work well into the future.

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Why Cincinnati is Failing: My Personal Experience with the CBC

With the recent news that Chiquita is considering a move from Cincinnati to Charlotte, North Carolina, it has left Cincinnati in a state of panic as to why Chiquita or any other business would desire to do such a thing. Doc Thompson covers this issue with Cincinnati Magazine Executive Editor Linda Vaccariello in an illuminating broadcast about what Cincinnati has to offer, then considers why Cincinnati has a problem attracting and keeping business in the city.

Well, I have a bit of experience with doing business in Cincinnati that I’ve touched on before, but this topic lends itself to a bit more detail. Well before there was ever a Paul Brown Stadium or even a Great American Ball Park I was with a group who was trying to win the design for the riverfront development project. In fact, the guy I was with presented a wonderful plan to the city council of Cincinnati of which Dwight Tillery seemed to like, (Dwight was the mayor at the time). The plan included paving over completely the various roads that connect the highway system downtown, and put them underground to connect Cincinnati’s downtown with the riverfront. On that paved-over section would be a grassy park, various restaurants, movie theaters, shopping centers, new stadiums, and a plan for including Longworth Hall as a Historic District connected to everything else which would wrap around to join with Union Terminal. The plan received a rousing applause from the people attending this meeting. I thought at the conclusion that the group I was with would undoubtedly be the lead design team which would head the development of the riverfront development.

After the meeting found it odd that none of the city council members, or the media wanted to speak to anyone from our group, after all, we just had the best presentation without question, but we also didn’t have “formal” relationships with any members of city council. By formal that means “friendly” in the world of politics. I knew every member of council through my work at city hall where a friend of mine and I were at that monstrosity every day trying to get the Cincinnati Building Commission to approve plans for a development we were working on which required a simple change of use on an existing building.

What should have been a simple job, relatively speaking had turned out to be a political nightmare. The CBC seemed more interested in creating work for their friends, who are architects, engineers (to design fire escapes and such) HAVAC installers and all those types of related businesses, then in helping a business get their feet on the ground in the city of Cincinnati.

Getting information out of any member of the CBC was like pulling teeth from a 4-year-old kid. I can’t even begin to illustrate without writing an entire book on the matter of how many engineers we fired for not moving at the speed we demanded, which was the speed of business. In fact I remember vividly a conversation I had with our architect and investor at the time. This guy had liked our business plan so much he put some of his own money into the project. Then one day he gave us a call and said, “I heard you guys were down at City Hall yelling at the guys in the CBC for dragging their feet. I want you to know that I have a good standing with those guys, and I find it offensive that you’d chose to do business this way.”

Our response was, “Hey, you’re our architect, you work for us. You don’t work for the CBC. If you are friends with them, that’s not our problem.”

The architect then said, “But you guys are trying to cut too many corners. They are telling you what you need to do and you are bucking them at every issue. They told you the type of HAVAC unit you had to install. They told you what the structural improvements were going to be. They told you how many restrooms you were going to have to install and on and on, and you guys seem to want to argue every fact!”
“Buddy, you are supposed to be working on our behalf. You are supposed to do this arguing for us. We’re not supposed to even be involved in this kind of thing. We’re doing it because you aren’t. Anyone can just say ‘spend more money,’ which is what you are saying, and it’s what they are saying. They want a larger fee for the cost of the project. That is all they are after. They are deliberately driving up the cost to receive the larger fee, why can’t you see that?”

“It’s the cost of doing business and you guys don’t want to pay it. It’s cheap and classless. I’m embarrassed to be associated with you guys. I’ve known those people for years and I don’t know what to tell them when you won’t follow their guidance.”

“Who are they but a bunch of pencil-pushing government workers? If we did what you and the CBC are suggesting you guys would add a million dollars to the cost of this project, and that’s just not in the budget.”

“So put it in the budget!” Said the architect. “Just go raise more money. Isn’t that easier than all this?”

My friend and I looked at each other and realized what was going on. It is the same “looter” mentality that we see in all government, especially in schools driven by radical unions. And here it was in the CBC who had an alliance between them and their friends in the building field. And we were being told to “pay up” or get out of town.

“You’re fired,” was what my friend told the architect.

There was silence for a moment on the other end of the phone. “You can’t do that. I’m an investor.”


“Consider it done.”

My friend and I finished the job by doing all the architectural work ourselves, and we found amendments in the building code that allowed us to by-pass all the additional costs that were just ridiculous excuses to make work for members of the building fraternity which centered on the CBC. The architect went from a friend to an extreme foe, but that’s ok, because he was on the wrong side and chose to put himself there. The situation took years to unravel and was extremely disappointing. My experience in working with Cincinnati is that they have made it entirely too expensive to do business within the city because just like a union, the many political factors have attached additional costs to projects just to take care of their friends in the field.

That’s why nobody would speak to us after the riverfront development meeting. We were in that class as, “radicals” who didn’t want to pay off their friends around the city. The result of course was that we took our business across the river to Covington. My meeting with their building division went something like this.

“You guys want to do what? Well, Ok. Sure, no problem.”

My friend and I looked at each other. “But don’t you want to contest HAVAC units, fire escapes, access ramps, structural improvements and fire easements.”

The man laughed, “Hell no, it’s your business. We want you guys over here. Give me a call when you’re ready to move on this project.”

To this day you can see clearly all the development that has moved in along I-275 by the airport and up in Erlanger and Florence, Kentucky. And in Newport along with Covington where both cities had a very friendly attitude toward business, surprisingly “looter” free. Covington built the Covington Landing and all the nice development around the Convention Center and Newport built Newport on the Levee which turned out to be hugely thriving business. In the process Newport gave new birth to Monmouth Street which used to be a hell-hole of prostitution, gambling, and organized crime racketeering, and turned it into a place that families could take their kids to at night. Meanwhile across the river Cincinnati built two stadiums which went drastically over budget (I wonder why) and to this day threaten to bankrupt the city with the excessive tax burdens they exclusively occupy. And Cincinnati nearly 20 years later still doesn’t have any development on the riverfront. They are just now getting around to that type of development.

That is why Cincinnati fails. And that is why Chiquita wants to move to a dust bowl of a town in Charlotte, North Carolina. Because when times get tough, for a business to survive taking care of the “looters” of a town is not their responsibility. This is the reason so many of those “looters” seek government work, because that is the most secure way to care for their network without having to deal with people like me and my friend who refuse to be “looted.”

This is why Cincinnati is in a state of decline, because it has been overrun by these types and all the people with bright ideas and money will take it someplace else, for all the same reasons that companies don’t want to be limited with unionized labor or to deal with companies who are driven by unionized labor. It’s not because they want to hurt a worker’s rights. Most companies don’t want to worry about that kind of thing, that’s why they hire human resource managers, so they can advise the company how to take care of the employees. Because the men and women of this world with ideas and the money to spend on them do not want to be tied down to the speed of complacency and network friendships. They want to move at the speed of business, which is what drives communities and countries to greatness, and is what the looters of the world simply slow down.

For the answer to everything as to why labor unions fail, check out this link:
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/why-public-labor-unions-fail-the-science-of-stagnation/

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Graveyards and Government: Why do we need more taxes? Ask The Brakeman!

When I hear the President discuss the details of his Jobs Bill, the same question comes to my mind as it does when a local school or a city discusses their budget demands for raising taxes, and that is, why does the government assume that every job created in government deserves to be funded, and that the funding of that job dictates higher taxes?  Just because some politician in Washington, or some board of education member either at the state level or local level makes a decision and creates a job, the merit of that job never gets questioned……….why?

Why is it our obligation as a tax paying base to subsidize bad decisions made by politicians who have long since left office, leaving in their wake a turbulent chaos of bureaucracy, so that their puny minds could relish in the creation of a job, when in fact the merit of those jobs add little to the overall society? It would seem that politicians like Obama are so emotionally attached to certain jobs like teachers, police, firefighters, BMV workers, administrators and the like that they never measure the productivity of those positions against the taxes it takes to maintain them, and that is a catastrophic error.

If the United States is not number one in the profession of teaching, then why would we spend so much money to maintain that mediocre status. Or why would we spend more money, when other countries which exceed our education statistics, do more with less money spent per pupil? How many firefighters does it take to run a community given that there aren’t exactly fires and emergencies every single day, could much of that staffing be done equally well with a volunteer staff instead of an army of full-time employees, the same with police? What are the measurements as to how many you need to keep criminals in check? Who is asking those questions…………nobody? How many workers does it take to run a Bureau of Motor Vehicles? Couldn’t some of the traffic regulation be reduced to help with staffing of these bureau positions?

The trouble with government is every time someone like Obama wants to make a name for himself, and history has produced millions of those types, they “create” a job and expand government just a little bit more. And the cost of that expansion is what drives our taxes higher and higher in order to maintain the growth. This is why politicians are in such a panic over the sudden desire from the public, of which I am a proud part, to reduce government, because those expansions are part of a politicians “legacy.” To a politician removing a government program is similar to taking away their tombstone once they’ve been laid to rest in a cemetery.

My family explored a cemetery hidden away in the hills of Eastern Ohio a few years ago which was supposedly haunted. As we sat in the dark with cameras and other recording equipment waiting for a ghost to come up out of the ground and dance with the evening mist which engulfed us, I looked at the tombstones laying all about, mostly eroded away beyond recognition. The cemetery itself was about 150 years old and the town which housed the residents had long ago disappeared. This cemetery no longer had relatives who came to visit. These people were simply forgotten by a town that no longer existed. (TO SEE SPECIFICS ON THIS TYPE OF STORY SEE MY ARTICLE ON THE GHOST TOWN KERR CITY) CLICK THE LINK:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/the-ghost-town-of-kerr-city-a-metaphor-for-planet-earth/

To the people of a ghost town, all the activity of the town seemed so important while the town lived. My daughter and I looked at the tombstone of “The Brakeman” in the misty, haunted night where civilization wasn’t even remotely connected. The night air called out no hints of mankind’s existence from this place, as we waited for the ghost of The Brakeman to walk the cemetery at night, as legend said he does occasionally.

The Brakeman worked the railroad of the nearby town and had an affair with the wife of his card playing friend who was in charge of all the freight which left the town. When the friend found out about what the brakeman had done with his wife, he challenged his friend to a card game where he got The Brakeman drunk to the point of passing out. At that point the estranged husband laid his friend “The Brakeman” across the railroad tracks to be killed by the passing train, which happened within the hour, decapitating completely The Brakeman. Now legend has it that the ghost of the headless Brakeman roams the cemetery at night, and that’s what we wanted to see for ourselves in spite of all the reports from people who did exactly what we were doing, but suffered from being driven insane by curses that the angry Brakeman casts upon anyone who disturbs his grave. That’s the story anyway.

Strange things did happen that night, but not the expected “strange stuff.” But as we sat there waiting I thought about how important sleeping with that man’s wife had been to The Brakeman. How important all their jobs had been to the people of the town, even how important the man’s marriage to the cheating wife had seemed to the killer. Now here we were 150 years later waiting for a ghost to appear from that time and show us some hint to a mystery which occurred so long ago. And all the things that seemed so important to the people of this graveyard back when they lived were no longer even relevant to the order of the universe. The people were all decayed away and forgotten. Even the tombstones proving their existence was nearly gone. In another hundred years nobody would even know this graveyard ever existed.

This is the secret behind government expansion, and what is truly behind the words of politicians like Obama. Government programs and created jobs are the “tombstones” of the politician. They hope that when they are long gone, dead to the world that society will remember that they were good people once, and that their legacy will live on in some way. Social Security is the tombstone of FDR. Medicare is the tombstone of LBJ. I am 100% convinced that when those presidents signed those government programs into law that they thought to themselves, “people will remember me when I’m gone. These programs will outlast a tombstone.”

That is what is behind almost every government program created. It’s behind nearly every law created, every building built, every bridge that spans a river; it is in the infantile mind of the spiritually cumbersome which seeks some measure of immortality in the form of something that will carry their memory beyond the tombstones of a cemetery. And this is the mentality behind the President’s Jobs Bill, and the anger of many who think like him that people would “dare” to reduce the size of government by eliminating government programs, or even entire branches of it, because to them, this would be equivalent to desecrating the grave of the dead, for the impact, is the same. The fear is to be forgotten so nobody ever knew they lived. People like Obama understand this at a primal level and will protect those who came before him in hopes that someday someone will protect his tombstones in the form of created legislation. Isn’t that what Obama Care is after all, a memorial to Obama for all eternity?

When I was a very small kid, I actually took a tombstone from a graveyard and hid it in the basement of our house. I wanted to study it. My mother was aghast and demanded I put it back where I found it, which was an old cemetery I had found deep in the woods near our house. She told me the ghost of that man would track me down all my life, that God would be angry with me for desecrating the grave of this poor man. I was confused by her anger so I drug that tombstone the 2 miles back to the graveyard and put it back the best I could, wondering why my mother was so upset about it. I found out later that she had done the same thing when she was a little girl and her parents, my grandparents had put the fear of God into her, and she never did such a thing again. I asked her if she actually believed the Earth would swallow her up and she’d be damned to hell for all eternity if she took a tombstone, a simple rock with writing on it that the process of natural erosion would destroy within a few hundred years anyway. Why did human beings think such things are actually sacred? Well, the only answer she had was that it was wrong to do such a thing. And the rationality is just as simple when speaking about reducing a government program, or a law. All those things are just memorials to the deceased when taken down to their most elementary function.

I’ve explored graveyards all over America since then and seen and done things that many would consider sacrilegious to the religions of the Earth. I have done these things with the view toward science, not just belief, and this lends itself to the proper perspective in understanding the nature of a problem. And this is the case of government. It grows and expands not out of necessity, but out of fear……..fear of the lives that make up that government growing old and dying off to be forgotten by the world. This is the fundamental error behind many of the human beings who roam this Earth. They are living their deaths by planning for it their entire lives, wondering how they will be remembered instead of living the life that is before them one day at a time and when the time comes to leave this world of the living honorably to join with the greater mysteries of existence, most of mankind clambers with the fingers of both hands dug deep into roots of the living and while they hope that there is an afterlife, they don’t truly believe it. So they seek to be remembered for “something.” And this is the catastrophe of politics. It allows the small-minded to use tax money to build memorials in their honor, and that is not the role of government. And it is not the responsibility of the tax payer to make people who view themselves inwardly as “worthless” to project an outward appearance of “worth” long after death robs them of life and confines their Earthly bodies to a cold, decaying grave.

What I learned in my many trips to the graveyards of the world is that many people are dead long before they ever come to these places, and memorials are the most common form of hiding that fact from themselves. But deep inside, we all know the motives, including people like Obama. His ghost already haunts him, and he is doing what politicians all do, he spends money, he runs for office, and he runs, runs, and runs hoping he can outpace his own ghost, because when the ghost finally catches up with him, he will face a crises that no law or memorial can hide him from. On that day, he will be wrecked with that grim reality that his life was no more important than anyone else’s, and that when he dies, he will be forgotten just as everyone is because within a few millenniums all the laws of politics will be gone forever and the Earth will have recycled the human race many times over and the world will be plagued with the ghosts of those who just never understood what happened, like The Brakeman who just wanted to have sex with his friend’s wife in a town in Eastern Ohio in a moment of passion. Death came so quick that the man never knew what hit him and he still roams around sadly looking for a town, for a people, for a world he knew but is now erased from the world except for a few eroded tombstones.

Every politician ever known or yet created will suffer the same fate as The Brakeman, and no amount of money, of government program can protect them from the fact that they are living a death and their ghost will soon come to claim their bodies erasing their footprint from the mind of mankind forever.

So knowing all that, why should the rest of us pay for memorials to those weak-minded fools?

For the answer to everything as to why labor unions fail, check out this link:
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/why-public-labor-unions-fail-the-science-of-stagnation/

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Bullwhips and Ohio’s Issue 2: “Those forefathers from the ’70’s?'” LOL

Using a bullwhip to demonstrate the benefits of Issue 2, in Ohio makes perfect sense to me. To many progressive minded people a bullwhip represents abuse, slavery, or S&M. But to me, a bullwhip is one of the rarest items of efficiency ever created. It’s a simple weapon that by calculus standards is quite complex. The function of a bullwhip is such that a focused effort applied at the handle of say 10 to 15 mph of thrust becomes over 750 mph of force within 6 feet of the application. For the crack you hear coming from a whip it is nothing less than the sound barrier being broken. Thus, the crack of a whip is a “sonic boom.” That “boom” was created with a small amount of force of which the tapered design of the whip magnifies the applied force into devastating effectiveness. To become so good with a whip that you can capture that energy and project it into a focused point in space is a grand achievement, so to put out a candle with a bullwhip is extremely rare. I only know of a handful of people in the entire world who can do it.

So when I want to demonstrate precision, power, effectiveness, management of resources, I often use the whip. I’ve used my bullwhips to explain to businesses how to function more efficiently, so it only makes sense to me to use a bullwhip to explain how Issue 2 can be effective in controlling the costs of communities all over Ohio. And I do it by showing that Issue 2 will allow communities to “target” their costs specifically, just as I do by targeting the flame of a candle, putting that flame out without disrupting the content of the candle. In this case it is the wax that makes up the candle and it is the flame that consumes it. If I want to save the candle from consumption by the flame, I must blow out the candle. Putting the candle out with at whip demonstrates how incredible force can be applied “precisely” without harming the rest of the candle. So the political metaphor is appropriate. See for yourself.

Who are the flames in society, the “public employees” who consume the “system?” What flames would I target with Issue 2? Well, what comes to my mind immediately is a situation we had at Lakota where a teacher Ryan Farhenkemp just plead guilty to taking inappropriate pictures of a young student while on an out-of-town field trip. That teacher had a serious case of pedophilia, where he desired sex with children, boys specifically, and should have never been allowed to teach. Because the teachers union is so radical, they prevented a proper investigation into this behavior, and did not allow any management to even investigate the matter, until it’s too late. Read more about this situation here:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/01/04/lakota-teacher-busted-for-child-porn-made-over-65k-per-year/

Just one school district over in Mason another teacher was having sex with the football team, while her boss, the assistant principal was sending pictures of his penis to the teacher’s phone. Many people, including the Superintendent knew that things were not all well and good among his staff, but the teachers union has made investigations into this kind of business nearly impossible, so the bad teachers out there, “and there are many” are allowed to continue on with bad behavior because they are “protected” by a union. Issue 2 will allow performance based evaluations which will help root out this kind of trouble by “allowing” the discussion to initially take place, where now it doesn’t happen at all, because legally, it can’t. Read more about the Mason situation here:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/sex-murder-teachers-and-the-taxpayer-ryan-widmer-and-the-mason-teacher/

And to understand how out-of-control the union contracts are, listen to Scott Sloan of 700 WLW read the Lakota Teachers Contract, the more complex something is, the more money it costs. The Lakota contract is not unique, but is pretty standard all over Ohio.

In addition to the lucrative teaching contracts the practice of double-dipping among retired teachers, firefighters, police officers, and school superintendents is so rampant that the projected cost of this abuse is almost unfathomable. It’s a real, significant problem which actually burns our community candle at both ends. In fact I wrote an entire article on just that problem here. Listen to the broadcast there done by an I-Team investigation of which I played a part. The numbers will stun you:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/the-most-important-broadcast-youll-ever-hear-the-crises-in-west-clermont-school-distict-and-every-public-school-in-ohio/

Those are examples of the kinds of “targets” that we as taxpayers must remove from our public employee system to control the out-of-control tax increases that are coming at us. Only in a community do we know what our problems are, and our school boards, city councils, and trustees are there to represent our interests. But often if you go to a community meeting, you will find that even if you speak, those elected representatives won’t listen to you, because the deals are already solidified in the chaos of Columbus. It is the union lobby power that has twisted the arms of legislators and passed legislation like the “double-dipping” provision while the tax payers were busy “working” those lobbyists and politicians, all paid for by us, were having lunch together in Columbus and writing laws to enrich themselves in the chaos they initiated.

I have written a lot about S.B.5, ISSUE 2 specifically. To read what that law does for you, read this article on it:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/all-the-reasons-to-vote-yes-on-issue-2-being-bold-and-doing-the-right-thing/

But the video below will give you a basic understanding:

Those who are in favor of Issue 2 could provide fact after fact, after fact on why it’s a great law. Basically we have a system that is currently in chaos, and there are a lot of people working in the public sector who fully intend to enrich themselves in the midst of that chaos. What you will find is that those groups who wish to take advantage of that chaos against the tax payer will attempt to divert the attention away from the details of an argument to an emotional one. In recent radio broadcasts we have begun to call this the Wookie Defense. Click here to read all about it:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/the-wookie-defense-class-war-is-here-public-unions-against-everyone-else/

You can see supporters of Issue 2 pick apart the recent “Firefighter” ad put out by We Are Ohio here, which will demonstrate unequivocally just how the system is flawed. If these guys won’t tell the truth about things right out in the open, what will they lie about behind closed doors? The answer to that is why things in government cost so much money, and why Issue 2 is so important. The savings doesn’t come from a literal figure on paper. It comes from decentralization in Columbus so people like me can help manage the costs in our communities, where they should be negotiated.

Now, this next video which was put out by a bunch of Firefighters working with a local school is using the same tactics that most public employees use to pass new levies, shows the kind of game they want to play. Now, when I saw this video I laughed hard for a long time. In fact my stomach still hurts almost 24 hours later from laughing at it. It’s not that the people in the video did a bad job. Actually, I think it’s a good effort at a dance routine. What I laughed so hard at is the level of manipulation they are employing in plain sight. They are basically expecting the voter to vote against Issue 2 because they can dance, and that is hilarious.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My stomach hurts again………………………………………………hold on…………Ok. How are the communities going to be weakened if we give the communities more power to handle their costs? Instead of the fire chief talking to his union people and then the union lobby going to Columbus to create a new law that then comes back to our community as an unfunded mandate, how about that fire chief talk to the people in the community about their staffing levels, their pay, and their equipment. That seems like it would create a stronger relationship, not a weaker one. If taxes needed to be increased, then the community could decide, but as it is now, the tax increases are “dictated” by the state through chaotic legislation, which is just how the union likes it. You see these emotional types won’t deal with facts they’ll instead rely on emotion to convince you to throw money at them.

However, in this next video the firefighters attempt to “look” like they are dealing with facts by letting you listen in on one of their picnics. I laughed hard at this one too but for an entirely different reason. In fact, this has been a running joke among my wife and me now for an entire day. We will probably make fun of this one for years to come.

Oh my goodness! “Our forefathers and firefighters tried to do back in the 70’s?” Thanks for that, Joe. In case you missed it that remark is at the 7:45 mark. Dude, the history of Ohio goes back a lot further than the 70’s! Also, hey, Joe you must not have met the mayor of Toledo. He’s for Issue 2. You should get out more, you’d meet more people than a bunch of bobble heads waiting for you to tell them what to think.

 

 

Here’s what’s going on here. The unions are using firefighters because they along with police are supposed to represent authority, and especially in light of the tenth anniversary of 9/11 these union leaders will show that they will absolutely stop at nothing to manipulate the tax payer with emotion and fear. The public is not supposed to question these people, because they have authority over us. Now this video disgusts me, because they are using some “slick” production values to attempt to completely manipulate the public. By allowing the viewer to sit down with those in authority as though it was a privilege, they hope to lure the viewer into a feeling of “entitled” information. It’s simply a variation on Saul Alisnsky’s Delphi Technique. But here’s the trouble, none of the people speaking in this video are speaking about any facts. They are simply speaking about what they fear, which is no more justified than people telling Christopher Columbus that if he sailed west across the Atlantic Ocean, that he’d fall off the side of the Earth. Its fear based on absolutely no foundation.

The next question that arises from this is, even these “honest” firefighters are not willing to address the facts, and instead peck around the parameters of truth, relying on manipulation instead of out-right presentation, then what are they hiding? Well, I published the wage rates of the police and firefighters from my community in the below article. It’s pretty standard stuff all over Ohio. As you will see, they are making very good livings, and as I’ve said before, if the public thinks that level of income is acceptable then fine. But my inclination is that these public workers are very aware that they are making approximately 30% more than the people who are paying their salaries, and they’d rather keep that bit of information out of the discussion, out of fear that the public might turn on them and actually question their actual value. See my article on what these guys make in my community: (the spreadsheet with all the costs is toward the bottom)

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/03/12/oh-what-big-teeth-you-have-how-much-to-police-and-firefighters-cost-in-west-chester/

I have been in management for a while now so I understand this issue from many angles. I’ve worked at all levels of a company, and I have dealt with unions. I’ve been in actual fights in parking lots with shop stewards so I know the mentality of these people. Taken individually, most people are good citizens who just want to do the right thing. I once worked with a guy who was a major union supporter yet had a fascination with airplanes and considered himself very patriotic. I thought of him when I heard Joe speak in the above video. He used to say to me, “You are building those units too fast. You have a rate of 120%. You are making us look bad.”

I’d say to him, “You make yourself look bad by holding back. We have a contract deadline and you are jeopardizing it by not filling the production requirements. You could build at least three times faster than you are, but you and your friends won’t do it. So I’m picking up the slack so we don’t miss our deadline.”

“Kid, this whole union thing doesn’t work if we don’t stick together. It takes all of us, in solidarity.”

 
I’d smile at him, because he knew what my reaction would be. We got along in a friendly way because we both shared a love of airplanes even if we differed politically. “Now why would I want to do that when I can work extra overtime, make more money, by doing the work you and your fat ass friends won’t do?”


He’d chuckle and say, “You know back when we walked the picket line we’d call you a SCAB. In fact, I’d tell you that behind your back, they’re calling you a SCAB around here because you are up the ass of management.”

At this point I would turn down the radio and lay down my wrenches and all the guys working nearby would stop to see if a fight were about to break out. “Dude, to me a SCAB is something that heels a wound. When your body is cut open, you better pray a SCAB forms to heal it. If I am a considered a SCAB around here, because I like this company from head to toe, I like the people in management, and I like the people on the paint line, then that’s a compliment. I like them all to some extent, and I’m not picking sides to suit the needs of your unions political position, which I adamantly disagree with. If I’m a SCAB it’s because I’m here to heal all the wounds you union fools inflict upon yourselves with your adversarial relationship with management in an attempt to bleed the company dry in order to garner more money for yourselves.”

He’d put his hands up defensively as the union stewards would come in closer for a listen. “Hey, I’m just trying to help you out. They (management) will use you against us, to break down our solidarity, brother.”

“I’m not your brother or any of you other guys. I’m here to make a living for my family, and if you idiots want to produce at a 40% efficiency rating, I’ll do my work and your work and take your money in overtime so I can take my wife to nice movie, or out to dinner. It’s your loss.”

Then the union steward would step in. He was a guy who clearly didn’t like me and I didn’t like him. So confrontation was inevitable. “You jeopardize everything we stand for.”

“Then you are standing for the wrong things.”

“You are too young to know what you are talking about. We worked hard for every right the people in this company have. You are ignorant, you have no idea. Someday you’ll want us, and we won’t be there for you, because you wouldn’t stand with us, and by then we will have collapsed.”

“Is that the kind of talk you use to get your wife to sleep with you? Because you’re wrong, this contract must be met. If you make yourselves a pain in the ass to the customer, they won’t give you another one, and you’ll be out of a job and all your union bullshit won’t mean anything then. “

At this point the union steward waved me off and said, “Forget it guys. He’s a puppet for management. He’ll never stand with us.” The crowd broke up and went back to work. For that day, all the workers improved their efficiency by about 15% points on average. Then the production values fell the next day back to what they were.

I made about 80K that year in overtime opportunities, picking up the slack of the union work force. The contracts did fall behind, but I made decent money for a while. The confrontations did get more violent after that, but that wasn’t a big deal. Management took my side in the injuries to the employees because they saw that I was trying to help them. But with all my effort, I couldn’t prevent the company from going out of business when the salesmen told me that nobody wanted to give our company a contract because they didn’t want to deal with our delivery times, and our union work force. So once the contracts were fulfilled, the work dried up and the company was sold within two years of that discussion.

The public unions are at that point. They have negotiated themselves out of value. Their services are too costly taken collectively, and they have built a system where much abuse is taking place, such as the double-dipping issues. If they were a private business, they’d be going out of business. But these are public employees, and we need those services. We need teachers, we need firefighters, and we need police, and we will have them regardless of Issue 2 or not. We will have strong communities too. But we won’t be used and abused as tax payers by greedy unions who force upon us a system that is rampant with undisciplined spoils. Ohio is at a point where we must have the ability to remove with surgical precision the trouble areas, and no politician in Columbus can do that. Only the members of the community know where the real trouble is, and Issue 2 gives our communities the tools to remove those trouble spots that are both costly financially, but also ethically.

Issue 2 will change things for the public unions. It will force them to deal with the tax payer more evenly. But this notion that Joe has…..that firefighter who thinks our forefathers are from the 70’s….. that Issue 2 will take away his “seat at the table” he is just sadly mistaken.Issue 2 puts the tax payer at the table equally with the unions, because right now, the only people at the table are the unions and their friends, the people we elect, yet they control, because of how the law was before Issue 2. The public is outside the door and when we ask to come in we get some stupid dance like you saw above. And when we ask what’s going on, we get the Wookie Defense and many of us are tired of it. Issue 2 brings everyone to the table equally, and that is what the public unions are afraid of, because once we get there, we’re going to find out just how much they’ve been screwing management, (ALL OF US). And they know that we will be mad when we find out. That’s what they are really scared of in regard to Issue 2. That is a wrath they aren’t prepared to deal with.

For the answer to everything as to why labor unions fail, check out this link:
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/why-public-labor-unions-fail-the-science-of-stagnation/

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com