It’s always the cover-up that brings to light institutional failure because the participants will stoop to no low to protect the organization of which they’re a part. With the same denials seen during the Penn State child molestation case where thousands of individuals protected Jerry Sandusky because of his legendary contributions to the football team’s defense, employees of the IRS are willing to do the same to keep their jobs and protect the institution. The IRS employs over 100,000 employees all across the nation, 4000 of which work in Cincinnati alone. It is a giant monster of a bureaucracy and no reform is possible due to the billions of dollars that are stolen out of the treasury to pay for all those employees—which are largely unmanaged positions with payroll values as ridiculously high as public school teachers teeming with incompetence for the same reasons. The IRS is the judge, jury and executioner of their own crime syndicate and every human being that works for them places their individual judgment into the back of their minds serving blindly an institution created by government to perpetually grow uncontrolled of service to itself and nothing else. This issue was particularly well articulated by Darryl Parks during his midday radio show on 700 WLW during May 18, 2013.
Darryl was right; there isn’t a politician in the Ohio region who will take on the IRS scandal any further than the Ways and Means hearings because they cannot in all consciousness go against the government institution for which they serve. People who think in such ways have lost their individual judgment, or their value assessment for other individuals because they are in service to an institution—and their primary task at that point becomes to protect that institution with any sacrifice necessary to further its continuation. That means lying under oath is on the table of possibility because most individuals who serve like slaves to the government and all its divisions have lost touch with their individuality not fearing even eternity in hell if the preservation of the institution can be preserved.
Local Republican politicians have known about this IRS scandal for over two years. I know personally because I have been intimately involved with the Liberty Township IRS harassment case. John Boehner knew all about it. Rob Portman knew all about it. Mitch McConnell knew all about it, yet nobody did anything about it because they all primarily serve the institution of the federal government. They do not serve the interests of the individuals who elect them. This is the fault of our social commitment to altruism which informs these institutional soldiers that individuals should always sacrifice themselves to the “greater good” and that individual judgment should be suspended for collective causes. Republicans willingly play their roll in preserving institutions at the expense of the individual—even at a cost to themselves.
If I had a quarter for every kitchen I stood in where the children disrespected their parents and the women looked wistfully toward every horizon for some great lover to sweep them off their feet in a passionate romance even though their families all live well in large houses with perpetual financial security, I would have already amassed all the world’s wealth in my possession. I can speak that in Cincinnati I have been on 90% of the roads of the city covering approximately 150 square miles. And at one point in time I have stood in the kitchen of at least one house in every neighborhood in all those communities and always the stories are the same, especially when one or both parents work for the federal government. There is a soulless look on the faces of such bureaucrats that is the direct result of such lack of individuality. The children of these households are attracted to any presence which might contain some sense of individual structure and they flow toward these personalities like water seeking a glass to hold some semblance of their personal identities. These children do not respect their parents because their parents do not serve the family, they serve their employer—the government first and foremost which is hidden to nobody. The women in such relationships if they are still young and attractive have affairs with any man with tattoos, long hair and some external exhibition of individual merit. Later, when they’ve become shells of their younger physical bodies and such men are no longer attracted to them, they fill up the nail salons’ getting manicures and pedicures so that they can have some sense of individual pampering trying to rekindle their individual identities which has been consumed by the institutions they serve. The effort is to feel individually special, since their jobs do not offer such entitlement—as they are in service to an institution. The men fare far worse in such arrangements. They drink to evade their social realities, they have affairs to feel young so to hide from themselves what they’ve become, and they all end up the same way. By the time they hit 40 they are physical wrecks often overweight with skin problems, eyesight deficiencies, and heart illnesses. Their broken hearts are more mental than physical, but the muscle of the heart reflects the broken dreams of every bright-eyed little boy who wishes to save the world with heroics, only to discover that they are middle-aged sell outs afraid of their own shadows. They become empty husks as the institutions they serve drain them of all their worth feeding off them like a parasite till their deaths.
The commitment to institutions over individual need is the leading cause of misery in American culture and the IRS is filled with these types of people. Most of them are suffering from the same ailments shown above, even though they have new cars, nice homes, and comfortable retirement packages. The 4000 employees who work in the Cincinnati IRS fit the above profile by nearly 95%. They are willing to trade their lives away for the security the IRS provides as an employer because the pay and benefits are good—better than they’d get at a comparable job elsewhere. They do not care that the value they reap as institutional employees is stolen from millions of tax payers with looted money in a system that mimics slavery in every definition of the word.
This is why the IRS is allowed to attempt ruining the lives of individuals no matter how severe the imposition. This is also why the IRS has so many supporters who are willing to lie on its behalf. This makes the testimony provided to the Ways and Means committee on May 17, 2013 that much more potent because if the IRS employees are willing to admit to their specific targeting of individuals in the Tea Party case, then what deeper imposition are they actually protecting? The IRS didn’t just decide to release a statement that it knew would anger millions of Tea Party protestors like a match thrown on piles of dry paper sprinkled with gasoline. The IRS itself as an employee of the much larger federal government is seeking to protect the institution of statist government from something the same way that individuals protect the IRS from institutional scandal. The answer to what that scandal is defines the real scoop of the current problem. For my money, I would bet on Benghazi.
What a lot of people do not realize is that Tea Party groups are educational organizations designed to get back into touch with Constitutional ideals and beliefs that were valued upon the founding of The United States of America. In essence they are like a giant book club where members get together and talk about the merits of books they have read like The Federalist Papers and The 5000 Year Leap. That makes the recent IRS scandal against the Tea Party that much more preposterous, which has been going on for over three years now, culminating in the testimony in Washington that is currently going on. All government entities from local schools to the smallest cubical in the IRS administration offices have in their culture an inherit desire to advance statism—and anything that is a threat to their statism they deem worthy of attack. If a school levy is resisted, the advocates of the tax increase believe they have a “right” to destroy businesses and any individual who stand in the way of their funding. The IRS does the same on a massive scale acting as agents of tyranny to those who oppose statist oriented government objectives. So as a supporter of Tea Party causes, it gave me great pleasure to listen to the testimony of May 17, 2013 and hear occasional cheers coming from the crowd sitting in the balcony—since I personally know a good portion of the Tea Party patriots making such a ruckus there.
Unlike my Tea Party friends, my interest in politics extends beyond education. I am an aggressive type of individual and I sometimes do and say things many of them would never consider. For that reason I keep a bit of distance from them so to preserve my right to exercise my intentions without bringing negativity into their direction, particularly from groups like the IRS or any other government body. So privately, frequent readers of my Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom got together with Justin Binik-Thomas to deal with this whole IRS thing. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. I’m not the kind of person who believes in mass demonstrations and protests. I don’t do the group activity thing but I do respect those who do. The people who were in that Overmanwarrior’s group were not the types who would collect in mass to show the IRS that there is strength in numbers—they are the type of people who are prepared for the next tragic steps once government organizations realize that the Tea Party will not back down. They are people like Justin Binik-Thomas who won’t be frightened away from holding leadership positions in the Tea Party organizations, due to IRS intimidation. Knowing something about media relations myself, if those steps are necessitated, I don’t want my friends in the Tea Party splattered all over the news as a negative connection to me, so I keep a respectable distance—because that is where I am. I admire their kindness, and desire to learn. That much I share with them. But I have different methods for dealing with bullies that is much more direct than a lot of people feel comfortable with. I intend to direct that kind of attention toward one of the biggest bullies around, the IRS. So the meeting we had with Justin well over a year ago in the middle of this IRS scandal was to deal with those next steps should the IRS push the issue beyond pieces of paper and phone calls.
This is where the statist government types like Barack Obama are at a loss, and why they find themselves in the center of so much trouble. America is not Europe; we have not been beaten down by thousands of years of statism under kings and queens. America was founded by rebels fleeing Europe. Rebellion is so deeply ingrained into our DNA that it cannot be easily changed leaving a subtle and constant push against statism. Even though government education has trained the minds of generations toward statism, deep in their hearts Americans hate it, and they act against it any way they can. Most of the people I know are happy to peacefully protest, as they traveled to Washington to show a unified force against the IRS. But I prepare in other ways for events that are historically probable. I do not count on government to submit itself to the will of the American people, and I expect a fight from them. So I am always in a state of preparation. But what we all have in common, my Tea Party friends and some of my “other” friends who will strategically stay in the shadows until needed–is that we are not going to yield. Submission to government is not an option. We will never submit to United Nations authority, we will never submit to the tyranny of the IRS or any other government organization. I personally won’t even submit to a local trustee or zoning board. I don’t go out looking for trouble, I simply resist the imposition of my time, money, and energy by those who want something from me, and hope to force me to act in the way they desire through “thuggish” democracy—mob rule.
What else is the motive when a bunch of union inspired thugs attempt to vandalize the property of a target, or organize a mass protest in front of a home or business? What is the point of spying on a target so that weaknesses in their defense can be ascertained? What is the point of using the rule of law through the tax code or some other government inspired imposition to arrest a target and throw them in jail just because they have charisma and a following? The intent is to “win” at their intended strategic objectives, through force. The IRS did these types of things to the Liberty Township Tea Party because they wanted to send a strong message to a Tea Party group in John Boehner’s back yard. They wanted to tie up the efforts of the Tea Party into not protesting big government and national debt, but to put them on the defensive with red tape and bureaucracy. It was harassment with the intention of “changing” the behavior of the Tea Party groups. By targeting Justin Binik-Thomas the IRS wanted to send a message to the other Tea Party groups that leaders in such groups would be targeted—so to discourage leaders from naming themselves for fear of an audit.
I am happy to see the victims of this IRS harassment enjoying their moment in the sun. They deserve to look down from the gallery upon those who intended to bring harm to their lives—and the IRS did intend to use their authority to change Tea Party behavior. Justin deserves that satisfaction as does Rachael and the representatives of the Liberty Township Tea Party who were there for the testimony. It is nice to see justice being handed out where it is deserved. I’d rather get everything out in the open so that the pretense of politeness can be dropped and everyone can start dealing with reality.
As these scandals break, and justice comes to the aggressors of the IRS and the government that supports such a tyranny, what I believe will happen may be delayed, where the federal government out of frustration just turns on the American people with out-right force. Such peaceful resolutions are the intentions of the Tea Party and I’m happy to see them getting some form of justice from the efforts and worry they have expelled. But such victories are paper in nature and easily forgotten. They are not the kind of conflict resolution that I am thinking of. It would seem that for that, I’ll have to wait a bit longer as the government recalibrates for their next psychological assault. But what we all share no matter what the method is that submission is not an option. Statist government is not what we are willing to support, and there isn’t any amount of forced imposition that can change that basic premise.
I can understand why the un-ambitious, physically frail, intellectually insufficient, culturally lacking and otherwise fearful human beings would be attracted to socialism. Competition is a frightening ideal to those who lack the confidence to advance themselves to a level of performance that is needed to overcome rivals. Such attitudes are what drive capitalism and bring freedom to the lives of everyone in subtle ways, yet the idea that there are winners and losers in life must be accepted. For the characters who wish to be handed victory trophies in life for simply existing—because they fear competition, socialism gives them the ability to feel they are equal to those who are clearly better at some skills and set the bar high for all others to meet. Socialism is more attractive to the weak and feeble masses because it keeps them from having to compete for merit. Socialism will always be appealing to those types of people.
But ironically socialism is not good for the collective society because it removes the merits gained through competition. When competition is missing from any endeavor, performance drops dramatically in every activity attempted under any effort. While socialism protects the individual from collective pressure exerted upon those who fall short in life it destroys the individual merits that a society enjoys because of competition driven by the best and brightest succeeding.
Americans for many generations, particularly since the 1930s have been inundated with socialism imported from the deficient European political theater, and it has harmed the American way of life dramatically. But since socialism was introduced so long ago, many modern Americans do not know life without it. They have socialism in their retirement packages, their collective bargaining agreements, in every aspect of their governments, in their taxation, in their medicine, in virtually every aspect of their lives because a democracy is ruled by the masses and the masses find socialism more appealing than capitalism—that is until they find their freedoms evaporating as a result.
When a football team starts losing because the best quarterback is on the bench because the head coach does not like the individual, or believes that other team quarterbacks deserve a chance but are clearly lacking in ability relative to the better player, the whole team loses and they will begin to embrace methods of capitalism to put the best players on the field so they can win. But such pressure is only introduced if the other teams are actually trying to win the game by putting their best players against other team’s best players. If all teams fail to recognize who the best players are from bad players then the game loses appeal to any audience as chaos and boredom are due to follow. Fans in the stands that pay money to be entertained and watch the game will quickly realize that they could perform at the same hapless level, and will stop attending football games. They’ll just organize their own games. So a level of competence and an attempt at becoming the best is required in such endeavors. Socialism harms this process.
Yet the same rules that make football a great game apply to science, business, education, even gardening—competition drives the level of society higher with quality being better wherever competition is present. The most dramatic example of such competition can be seen in Orlando, Florida. My absolute favorite McDonald’s to eat at in the entire country is the fabulous giant of a restaurant which resides just outside of Universal Studios. It is one of the largest McDonald’s restaurants in the world and is made that way out of a need created by competition. Universal Studios in Florida has two amusement parks just down the road and both are absolutely fantastic. But they became fantastic because they are in competition with the four Disney parks just down the highway at the next exit and all the wonderful entertainment options that connect the two multi-park complexes with International Blvd. And in between these two massive amusement destinations is the Sea World complex which has done so much good for marine wildlife research due to their excessive revenue generating capacity. It is competition and capitalism that make all the fabulous activity in Central Florida work so well. Without competition, Universal Studios could afford to cut corners and present the bare minimum investment needed to bring visitors through their admission gates. But they can’t, because Disney drove the market higher always pushing the other parks to become better, or go out of business. The result to all this dynamic is that an average fast food restaurant like McDonald’s which everyone takes for granted in their home town communities is driven to become better and more spectacular. Whenever I’m in Central Florida, I make a point to visit this McDonald’s so I can relish capitalism displayed in such a fantastic fury. There is no place on earth like Central Florida because capitalism has defined it and made it what it is.
Elsewhere, where socialism injects itself, such as in public education, any unionized effort, or any government position competition is missing. This is why such efforts struggle perpetually to maintain any level of quality—because they are essentially combating nature itself attempting to fight off the effects that destroyed the U.S.S.R and every communist country in the entire world that functions with a socialist foundation. Every village in Africa where starving residents struggle to live from day-to-day is due to the regulatory limits set upon them by their village authority. Those limits may only be religious, political, emotional, or any other variation, but they do not involved competition. Village chiefs do now as they always have, attempted to drive their collective society’s desire for competition into their military so that proof of valor and manhood merit is designated to bravery on the battlefield instead of creativity in manners of business. This is the result of socialism and has been going on since before such a term had a definition.
Socialism is the easy way for the masses to avoid not feeling the pressure of competition. Socialism as we see it today in medicine, in education, and in all government would be equivalent to Universal Studios being allowed to exist without having to compete with Disney World. Another tendency of socialism is to use the power of pull to eliminate competition such as the theoretical circumstance of Universal Studios using politics to apply too many regulations selectively enforced on Disney World to attack the fact that they have a broader revenue base and force Universal Studios to perform at a higher level than they might otherwise do if they didn’t have to compete with Disney. Using politics to sap all the wealth of Disney away into nothing, Universal through socialism could eliminate their competition through regulation. This would mean McDonald’s would only have to build a normal free-standing store since Universal Studios would be the only park around, meaning McDonald’s wouldn’t have to compete with the restaurants that are in business down by Disney World in the absence of such competition, Universal could afford to do the bare minimum of everything driving up costs but dramatically lowering quality.
This is the situation with Social Security, Obama Care, the Post Office, public schools and virtually everything that socialism touches through government. Socialism allows the average to sell their services as “superior” because they have eliminated competition. This is the spirit behind every collective bargaining contract—they are socialist attempts at fairness—but the fairness comes at a cost to quality, and dynamics.
So when it is said that people want to see better things out of government, they have to reject the socialism that they are currently addicted to as a safety net to their own incompetence. It is easy to declare that the entire world should be fair, but the cost of that fairness is terrible, as it pushes society into a black hole where nothing of any good can ever escape. The grand myth by socialism lovers is that if they collectively believe in something through the power of democracy that they can deny the laws of nature, but they can’t. Their beliefs are never realized, and their commitments to socialism destroy the world for everyone instead of just the targeted well-to-dos which they rally against. It is those who are best whether it be richer, stronger, faster, or even more attractive which set the standard for all others to reach up to. Without such goal posts, society just flaps in the wind and recedes backwards. The masses may never achieve the level of greatness that comes from the best. Universal Studios may never be as great as Disney World and McDonald’s may never be a good as The T-Rex Café but it is the attempt through competition which raises the performance of all to achieve heights they otherwise would never accomplish. Before society can every become better at anything it must reject socialism and embrace capitalism—because until they do, there is no reason for the average and mediocre to attempt to be more than they currently are—to strive for greatness, and goodness in a spirit only competition can provide.
This isn’t the first time I’ve said such things about Obama. I suggested impeaching the President after the controversial appointment of cabinet members during 2012. CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW. So this isn’t anything new for me. But if my congressman John Boehner had acted when I suggested it then the lost lives in Benghazi might have been saved, the economy would be recovering, and the IRS scandal which was happening to members of his district due to their involvement in Tea Party groups would not have occurred. Also members of the media would not have been subjected to harassment by the Obama Justice Department under Eric Holder and countless other tyrannies that could have been averted.
Instead, Boehner calculated that my urging to impeach Obama was radical, and represented a far right-wing view-point that he dismissed. After all, his concerns were to play golf with Obama and work toward “peaceful solutions” through diplomacy. Boehner also enjoys appeasing the local socialites who know little about politics, or business finance, yet inject themselves into every discussion where money flows attempting to bring altruistic judgment through joined wine glasses and catered meals. Such socialites support Obama’s brand of socialism, especially in public education institutions even though they claim to be conservative Republicans joined at the hip to Governor Kasich. Boehner and Kasich listen to the socialist whims of such people so that the purse strings stay open for future campaigns. After all, those socialites are “rich” and their opinions carry much weight even though the quality of their minds are detriments to society, and for politicians seeking re-election the former is more important than the later. It is because of such social pressures, and lack of determination that people like Ariel Castro can operate in the open, and why con artists like Barack Obama can get away with audacious lies behind a socialist agenda to fulfill goals that exist outside of fathomable reality. The blood is on the hands of those who didn’t act in the beginning hoping that elections would solve the problem peacefully, and far less grotesquely.
But elections didn’t solve the problem, and the “socialites” planned desire to maintain community integrity with wine glasses and fund-raising dinners allowed evil to grow, not abate, and now all those involved with the great indecision are guilty of not just assisting in treachery against The United States, but in assisting evil through inaction. The crimes committed by the Obama administration all during 2012 and thus far in 2013 are on the hands of those who failed to recognize evil hidden behind a smiling face and great charisma that only a demon from the temples of hell could generate.
It is a fair characterization to level such claims at Barack Obama because it was his administration that allowed for a terrible evil to be committed with full knowledge that it was a lie. Obama and his White House staff blamed the Benghazi deaths on Mark Basseley Youssef, AKA Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, AKA Sam Bacile the director of the terrible film “Innocence of Muslims” which about 10 people saw in a southern California movie theater. Other than that one public showing only a 15 minute video clip existed on YouTube at the time of the Benghazi attack. Bacile wrote the film in prison and shot it within two months of being release with no money, no real actors, and obviously an angry rant that was shaped during his stint in prison. Nobody saw it, and nobody cared—but the film was a symbol of free speech, which President Obama is supposed to protect. Instead, Obama allowed Bacile to take the fall for an alleged gun running operation in Libya and the apparently intentional death of those involved to cover the tracks. The Obama administration immediately hoped to hide their guilt behind the free speech efforts of a nothing film shown to a vacant audience counting on the American people to believe that the violence had been ignited by a 15-minute YouTube clip. See the rest of the story at the below link.
Obama knowingly lied to the American people and with the same type of public sincerity shown by the embodiment of evil in Ariel Castro who pretended sincere emotions during a presidential election that covered the gross abuse of his employees intentionally disgracing The White House. They did what they have done on purpose, and they trusted that the press and American people would not advance the issue beyond their deceitful manipulations. The worst of all these recent revelations are that the Obama administration designated a sacrificial victim in Sam Bacile who was only guilty of being a bad filmmaker, and tossed him into jail to cover the crimes of murder that was either intentionally committed by the Obama administration, or was caused by sheer incompetence. Either way, Americans died in Benghazi due to poor leadership by the Obama administration. Then the Obama White House tried to blame the violence on a silly YouTube video hoping that the scandal would not be pressed by the public any further. They insulted the deceased with their hope to get away with the crime.
The reasons for the impeachment of Barack Obama extend well into a long list of Constitutional violations and are voluminous beyond comprehension. But the worst is the intention of the administration to pick a sacrificial victim in Bacile and throw him upon an alter stepping all over his rights as an individual to preserve the collective aims of the Obama White House. If The White House will do such a thing with one man, they will do it with any collection of people, any business, or any philosophic idea, and that makes Obama and his employees dangerous to the American experience, and detriments to all free people who want a fair chance at life success and social opportunity. That is why Obama should be removed from office so to set the parameters for all future presidents of what is acceptable and what is not. A failure to act on Obama and his crimes will establish for the entire future an understanding that it is alright for Presidents to behave in such a destructive fashion against the American people. More destruction will follow of the American way of life if Obama is not impeached, and this is a reality that cannot be hidden from. It will take courage, courage from the press, courage from the politicians that must embark on the tragic journey, and courage from the American people to look evil in the eye and act against it, instead of being seduced. It must happen because America does not want to look at itself decades from now and wonder what happened in the same way that we are asking how Ariel Castro was able to chain three stolen girls in his basement in plain site of many people who failed to act in a way to save the victims. To me, Ariel Castro and Barack Obama are one in the same. Their only real difference is that Castro tortured and molested three innocent girls over a long period of time. Obama is doing the same figuratively with the entire world, and he needs to be stopped boldly and with great conviction. One is literal, one is metaphorical, but they are both the sheer face of evil in all its destructive qualities, and bottomless malevolence.
As Justin communicated with me his thoughts on the IRS revelation on May 10, 2013 he had just wrapped up a very busy day with the media finishing up with ABC World News Tonight, among many other television news programs. He was far from “satisfied” and I couldn’t blame him. Here is the prior article about the issue with the IRS and Justin.
* Reaching out to liberty groups and tea party groups is political in nature – an affront to liberty. I accept the organization (IRS) has a policy against it, but would like to know what actions are taken to assure this does not recur.
* Asking a group about a tax status, unless politically motivated, is ok. What leadership does in their free time is of no relevance to what the organization does. Asking about an individual, particularly an unrelated individual, is troubling. What purpose could it serve? Why was that individual, me in this case, not contacted or informed of outreach?
* As of writing I have not received anything in writing from the IRS besides the initial denial. It would be nice to receive an apology and to receive assurance it will not happen again and that responses, if any, will not be held against me the individual.
The IRS had attacked the Liberty Township Tea Party out of blind speculation that they were involved with Justin Binik-Thomas as he was a founding member of the Cincinnati Tea Party and the assumption was that the Liberty Township group had a way of getting to Thomas. So Liberty Township was maliciously selected for “enforcement.” This essentially meant that the leadership at Liberty Township had to jump through any hoops the IRS decided like mere animals doing tricks for their livelihoods. One of the targets of this IRS inquiry were videos I made featuring Sheriff Jones discussing immigration reform and another I put together featuring the current congressional violations against the 10th Amendment.
I felt bad that my videos were under scrutiny and that some of my antics had gotten other people in trouble with the IRS. At one point in the early winter of 2013 I told some of that leadership just to blame the videos on me, that I was the sole owner of their content, and that I’d deal with the agents on my own. The Liberty Township group did a stand-up job of dealing with the IRS and took care of the situation, which was much more gracious than I was willing to provide, which probably saved a lot more headache. I provided the information the IRS was looking for, and once all those leads went nowhere, the IRS backtracked.
The entire witch hunt started as a direct assault on Justin, and the IRS was simply using mass peer pressure to force Thomas to comply, or back off his Tea Party actions. The IRS was essentially harassing the Liberty Township Tea Party as a way to get at the nerves of Justin Binik-Thomas, and that is not just wrong, it was criminal. So the apology from the IRS is nice, but way too late. It also hints at something else that is amiss.
I am very suspicious of government. I think of even the best of their representatives as habitual liars and con artists. I wouldn’t trust them to walk a dog on an empty leash. So their timing on this apology is actually alarming. The first thought that came to my mind is why are they doing it? And, why now?
Using pure deduction, based on the behavior of government in the past, the same government that lied under oath many times in the past declaring that the IRS did not do the things they just admitted to doing, I would say that the IRS as a member of the federal government is employing the old “bend but don’t break” defensive football strategy. The government knows that they are guilty over the Benghazi situation and are caught in a serious lie. They know that the Tea Party is still full of members that are very active and highly charged even after the re-election of Barack Obama. The government knows that there is an active campaign to remove Republican Governor Kasich from office in the next primaries for turning against the Tea Party, so they fear what might happen to them if the Tea Party gets even more detail out of the Benghazi hearings, which have been carried on Fox News, and extensively by The Blaze Network. The Blaze is a huge supporter of the Tea Party movement and it is getting bigger by the day. The IRS of course knows all this since they have the ability to pry into all our lives at will in the name of “revenue” for the always hungry government. During the Benghazi hearings The Blaze website had over 15 million unique visitors, which is a lot of Americans looking for the truth. So I contend that the IRS is taking a calculated move in relation to the rest of the government and yielding a little to the Tea Party in hopes of taking the edge off the really bad stuff coming out of the modern-day Watergate—which is Benghazi.
This is the trouble with a “collective” organization who thinks more like an ant colony protecting the “queen” than a society of free individuals. The IRS understands what their brothers and sisters are going through in Washington D.C. regarding Benghazi, and they are hoping to take the edge off the story with a nice little monumental revelation that seems so scandalous that it sucks the life out of the Benghazi story. But so what—what is anybody going to do to the IRS? So what if the IRS breaks the law and pisses off the Tea Party, what do they care if they make anybody angry? They revealed they lied in testimony, and that they actually target individuals whom they politically disagree with. So their admission means nothing, it gets played on the news and it makes many Tea Party members believe—falsely—that “the government” is coming around, that they are trying to be good, and honest for a change wishing to redeem themselves for sins of the past—which is far from the truth.
Experience tells me that the behavior of the IRS indicates a bigger fish to fry just outside of perception, and the attempt to throw the world off the scent is the real strategy of this sudden revelation by the IRS. So it would be my advice to those who read here frequently to not take your foot off the throats of those who seek to rule over you. Instead, push down and do not become distracted with this petty admission. I know Justin doesn’t feel happy about spending the last two years targeted personally by the IRS just because he existed. I know the Liberty Township Tea Party would like to have back the dozen or so 2 hour meetings they had to deal with just IRS compliance measures. And as for my time, where do I get back my Saturday that I wasted making DVD copies of my published videos so some pin head at the IRS can have hard copies of evidence gathered from the Liberty Township Tea Party? The answer is that I don’t, the IRS stole my time for no reason, and they don’t care one bit about it. Their apology is not one of sincerity, but of further cover-up of the many sins coming out of Washington D.C. One of my Saturday’s is more valuable and productive than the entire IRS building full of people over any given year. Every minute of my life creates jobs, hopes, and fulfills dreams for others, so wasted time on the IRS takes those things away from others which are why they are such a bad organization whose only primary role is wealth-redistribution.
The shocking revelation by the IRS is not out of goodness, but to cover up further deceit. For them to show humility toward Justin Binik-Thomas who was the real target behind the Cincinnati IRS probes is in the hope that the Tea Party becomes too compassionate to press on with the much more destructive injustices that are hidden just beyond sight. The General Petraeus affair was made of the same type of distractions. The tactical General was planning to retire anyway, so why not throw a juicy story to the hungry wolves hunting a guilty government in order to throw them off the trail? But the Tea Party didn’t take the bait and run back to their caves to eat the meat as hoped. Instead they sniffed and determined that the target was insignificant—and pressed on toward the real villain. Just the other day Obama declared to students at Ohio State that they “should not listen to these anti-government” groups. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain—was essentially what he meant. Government is feeling the pressure from the Tea Party and the strain is showing. Government knows they are guilty—all of them—of serious crimes, much more so than the situation of targeting Tea Party groups of tax exempt status then lying about it. And it is on those crimes that everyone must remain focused—which is what’s happening.
One of the Liberty Township Tea Party members in that leadership group most affected by the IRS inquiry released a statement which I will now provide on the matter. It’s from Mark Etterling, and articulates the problem very well, and provides insight to the next steps that are to come. Mark’s thoughts reflect my own.
An IRS spokesperson recently issued a verbal apology to the various Tea Party and Patriot groups whom they had specifically targeted for extreme scrutiny over their applications for 501C3 tax exempt status. Even though I can’t speak for our group, which happened to be one of those that was targeted, or any of the other groups for that matter, I can at least issue my own personal response. Your apology is NOT accepted. In fact, I’m willing to go so far in my response as to say that I would personally like to see those responsible not only fired, but also brought up on both criminal as well as civil charges for violating our civil rights via a direct abuse of power.
Exactly one month ago I wrote a commentary stating that I was fed up with all the bogus mea culpa’s. An apology based on an accident is one thing. However, an apology that is derived solely from being caught committing overt actions related to a political agenda is something else entirely. An apology isn’t enough after a school suspends a kid over eating a Pop Tart into the shape of a gun just so that the administrators can push a gun control agenda. Using the IRS to exercise extreme scrutiny against specific political groups is nothing more than an overt attempt to curtail the opposing voices of those groups. Therefore, an apology doesn’t cut it there either.
Those that are currently in power like to scoff at those of us who protest against what we view as tyrannical actions by claiming we are simply being paranoid. However, if you look up the Merriam-Webster definition of Tyranny it’s easy to see that bringing the full power and weight of the IRS to bear on a specific political group for the sole purpose of stifling their oppositional viewpoint fits the very definition of tyranny.
3: a rigorous condition imposed by some outside agency or force
4: an oppressive, harsh, or unjust act : a tyrannical act
I’m not acting out of hypocrisy just because this happens to be an incident that struck home for me. In fact, in the book I wrote two years ago I specifically stated that even though I disagree with almost everything liberals like Chris Matthews or Rachel Maddow ever say, I would still fight for their right to speak no matter how much I disagree with them. The reason is that freedom and censorship cannot coexist. The presence of one will automatically destroy the other. A person cannot profess a love of freedom and yet practice a tolerance of those things that destroy freedom at the same time. Therefore, your choice is to either tolerate the abuse of tyrannical censorship, or be as outraged about this as I am. I would suggest that no matter what your political leanings you should think about this carefully and choose wisely. Otherwise, the next time you might find yourself being on the wrong end of such tactics yourself where the tyrants will have already chosen for you.
Stop the presses! I thought the Community Foundation of West Chester and Liberty Township refused to accept funds or support political statements with their local charity group. Yet as the Lakota school system is gearing up for support of another levy attempt using their public relations machinery to close a nearly $2 million dollar budget deficit projected for 2014 due to employee wage increases, the Community Foundation did a really nice job of putting their name behind two teachers from Lakota, Amy Smith and Dean Hume featuring them with the Lakota Educator of Excellence Award. The Community Foundation promoted their picks with the following two videos featuring the teachers. Have a look.
The Community Foundation had this to say about teacher Amy Smith:
Those who nominated Amy Smith indicate that there is no teacher more deserving than she to receive the “Educator of Excellence Award.” Amy is described as a compassionate and caring teacher who goes above and beyond for her students. She is often spotted at her students’ sporting events and dance recitals, and has been known to call parents at home after school hours just to update them on something their child accomplished that day at school. Amy works to ensure that each of her students’ needs are met, whether that means enhancing curriculum for students who excel in a particular area or setting aside individual time for a student who might be struggling. Beyond academics, Amy prepares her students for success in life by teaching them empathy and compassion for others, and by building their self-confidence. As one parent writes, “Amy is the kind of teacher that every parent hopes and prays their child will get. The heartfelt nomination letters are a testament to the lasting impact that Amy Smith has made on her students, their parents and the whole Endeavor Elementary community.”
The Community Foundation then said this about Dean Hume:
The majority of nominations for Dean Hume to receive the Educator of Excellence Award came from former students who, under his tutelage, were on the staff of Spark, the award-winning student-run news magazine at Lakota East High School. Dean founded Spark 21 years ago and has since been the faculty adviser, although he takes no credit for the publication’s success. Instead, credits accolades like the publication’s 10 National Pacemaker awards and 18 All-Ohio rankings to his talented students. Dean is known at Lakota East for his unorthodox approach to education. One student describes her first day in Dean Hume’s class, saying, “He shut off the lights and climbed onto a table…he explained that as our time in the Journalism program went on, the lights of the world would turn on so we could see it for what it truly is.” Former students comment on how he saw in them what, oftentimes, they didn’t see themselves and pushed them to fulfill that potential. Dean would stay after school when his students needed to work on a story and would be there with them on deadline weekends when the pressure was on to put out another excellent issue of Spark each month. Dean Hume is truly committed to his students. As one nominator put it, “It is fitting that the newsmagazine he created is called Spark because that is exactly what Dean Hume finds in each of his students…a spark that he then fans into flame with unparalleled dedication.”
While all that sounds very nice, and sweet, and even though Dean Hume has reportedly said many bad things about me to his class, I do like his choice of paintings on his classroom wall. I’m sure those teachers are very good teachers, but I would argue that what they are doing is expected by the community, and should not be the exception, but the rule. I expect every teacher to perform at the level of those teachers, so I do not understand why all the hoopla. But from a public relations standpoint, just ahead of a levy attempt, I can see why these teachers would be highlighted. I’m sure they enjoyed the award. But here is the problem. During the winter of 2012 my group, No Lakota Levy tried to work with the Community Foundation to help pay for the students who were being raked over the coals with sports fees of $550 per sport because the Lakota administration mismanaged their money. We didn’t want the kids to suffer for the problems of the adults, so we approached the Community Foundation to join forces and help the Lakota school district have a positive experience. I thought it was nice for my partners to reach across the aisle, even though I disagreed.
Alderson told the board audience of more than 200, that No Lakota officials had approached the foundation but that “we refused to accept their funds.”
“We refuse to accept funds where political statements are attached,” said Patti who took exception to my comments here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom where I said about the levy addicts “even with the overwhelming proof I’ve provided the crazy PTA moms and their minions of latte drinking despots with diamond rings the size of car tires and asses to match, (they) plot against me with an anger only estrogen can produce. They have shown no restraint in casting aspersions in my direction by calling me every name the human mind can create in human language. Did they think it wouldn’t get back to me? And being a head for an eye kind of guy I’m happy to return the favor. And yes, I meant it the way I said it. I do not think an eye for an eye taken is harsh enough. I generally leave people alone and let them make their own decisions without my interference until they attempt to impose themselves upon me. School levies are imposing themselves onto my life.” I knew when I said all this that it would anger the levy addicts, so I put a period at the end of my statement directed to those strongest advocates of higher taxes. The levy addicts had already slandered my name every way possible and painted me as a community menace, so I felt my opinion of their lifestyles was justified since they had already thrown in my direction names like, “wife beater,” “hillbilly,” “child hater,” “greedy businessman,” and many other derogatory terms. So I made my opinions of the levy addicts known by saying they are, “just prostitutes to their husbands who do everything they can to be away from them aside from the occasional sex. Their husband’s roll them over at night and insert their manhood into these women of the bedroom and hundred-dollar bills find their way into their purses. The women don’t know what the man does to earn the money, nor do they care. They are busy saving the world one child at a time with howls of safety and more regulations as they rush to the polling places at election time.”
As The Enquirer stated I was unapologetic for my writings. In fact, I should have really spoken my mind. I actually held back in concern that little children might read what I thought of the levy addicts. Knowing the real motive behind the games that were at play within Lakota made me very angry. The Community Foundation did not spontaneously line up to speak against my comments but had been planning them for a long time.
I said in The Enquirer about the issue, “Emotions get pretty intense in political campaigns and let’s face it; we have had to continue with our levy resistance for a couple of years now. It gets very frustrating when you present good arguments then the pro levy side paints you as being against children, and wanting to dismantle the community because they can’t come up with compelling arguments against you.”The rest of the article can be seen by CLICKING HERE.
It is often very difficult to tell good intentions from bad ones when children are being used as extortion mechanisms. In my community there are a lot of groups who advocate that what they do is for the good of “children” but what their real intentions are constitute power, whether that power is political, emotional, economic, or just psychological. It is even more difficult to announce the kind of tyranny that I am about to name, because there isn’t any mechanism in our courts that define the behavior as bad, or even illegal. There are no moral codes that do so either. In fact, Christianity espouses the value of charity with great fanfare, so organizations like the Community Foundation feel that so long as they show altruist measures in society that they will be given a free pass to behave in any manner necessary to achieve any aims they deem “good.”
Some of my partners in No Lakota Levy were also very active in the Community Foundation, which is a good organization with intentions that are beneficial. They expressed an interest to donate money to the Community Foundation but they were not doing it because they wanted to solve the problem. They were doing it because powerful community members in the culture of the Foundation were applying pressure on them to cave on their resistance to the school levy at Lakota. As a local charity group the Foundation appears to have believed that they needed to support the school levy otherwise they were letting down “the children.” As perceived leaders in the community many of these people were pushing my partners to separate from me as I was too radical and detrimental to the “growth” of West Chester and Liberty Township. I watched all this activity with great humor. I eventually agreed to help with the donation project because on the surface it was a good one. But I had something else in mind for all those “society” types who were slandering my name to my partners, and to other people around the community who were firm “NO” votes on tax increases. I needed to identify the slanderers by name for future battles, and I needed to expose their true intentions. This meant flushing them out from behind their hiding places of smiling faces attending Lakota. The best way to do this was to expose the game they were playing by beating them at it.
In spite of the comments I said above, I have said far worse publicly, in writing and in fisticuffs around town. But the levy addicts never cared much until The Enquirer article from March 7th. After my partners and I started our own foundation once the Community Foundation closed their doors to our $10K donation the following dialogue appeared in The Cincinnati Enquirer. “Unlike similar anti-school tax groups in some other area suburban districts, No Lakota is now in a privately funded $10,000 partnership to help students pay for higher school sports fees, says the group’s founder Rich Hoffman.
Hoffman and other tax opponents have long contended that Lakota’s teachers and their union should be taking the brunt of recent budget cuts through pay cuts rather than eliminating student services and upping sports fees.
“It’s obvious that the greatest casualty in these three levy fights has been the kids, and that’s really unfortunate,” says Hoffman of the “Yes to Lakota Kids” program to be publicly unveiled later Tuesday.
Hoffman said the unusual effort is designed to remove students from being used by school labor unions as “emotional hostages” in the often contentious tax levy campaigns of recent years.
Just a few days later, Patti Alderson made her comments to the school board and one week after that Enquirer article levy addicts were scouring through my public writing here on Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom looking for anything they could use to smear my name not just privately—as they had been doing—but to take me out of the “public” debate. However, their behavior was something that had to be triggered because behind the scenes—through charity events, fund-raising dinners, and inner circle emails, the attack on my group was taking place from the Lakota levy addict public relations machine—and I didn’t appreciate it. School officials were working illegally behind the scenes to pull the strings of power to make their moves of offense. (illegally because officials were working on levy related material during school hours, which is traceable by email and witness testimony.) It was expected that since I was a public figure that I would behave like Mitt Romney did during his presidential campaign when Barack Obama called him names and slandered him any way possible, but Romney was inclined to show that he was “above such reproach.” Well, I don’t follow any such rules. After The Enquirer article there was the Forbes article and my comments about students being used by school labor unions as “emotional hostages” was too close to the mark for the levy addicts. They were forced to make their move against my organization to reveal what they were secretly attempting to do behind closed doors. For me this was equivalent to a “controlled blast” that a bomb squad might attempt to do to safely detonate a booby trap or other dangerous device. The trick was in the timing.
I published the comments seen above in the middle of February after I learned about the Kroger survey organized against me to smear my name publicly. I was curious when and if anyone from the other side would take issue, but they didn’t as I had said such things before. The important thing to note is that the levy addicts did make their move once they realized that my organization was stripping away their “emotional leverage,” with the financial donations. This was the weakness of the levy addicts. Deep in their hearts they were conscious of their social hypocrisy. They were aware of what they were doing, but they could not reveal the truth, even to themselves. The levy addicts attempted to make my comments into one of sexism, vulgar pretense, and social unreliability. But their anger was toward none of those things. Their anger was toward the worst thing that I said which was that the school, and everyone attached to promoting school levies were guilty of using the children of Lakota as “emotional hostages.” For that comment Patti Alderson took to the microphone on behalf of her Community Foundation and feigned anger at my derogatory remarks when the real issue was the role that the Community Foundation had to take in denying the $10K check from No Lakota Levy as a contribution to the children of Lakota attempting to actually unite the community.
This brings us full circle back to the Community Foundation giving two teachers from Lakota, Amy Smith and Dean Hume Lakota Educator of Excellence Awards. Patti Alderson proclaimed in her public comments about me that the Community Foundation refuses to accept funds where political statements are attached. Yet the support of the Community Foundation getting behind the Educator of Excellence Award with a flashy video and a touchy—feely symposium of Lakota employees, obviously filmed during school hours was a political statement considering that Lakota is gearing up for another tax increase attempt.
They are of course entitled to their opinion at the Community Foundation and on a perceptual level, anyone with a brain can tell that there was something wrong with the scenario, but the crime is difficult to define conventionally, which is why it continues to happen in virtually every school district across the country. After all, the school and the Community Foundation are helping children. This is supposed to give them a moral license to do and say anything they want so long as they are flying a flag of honor with pictures of smiling children upon it. But when I pulled the flag down giving both parties nothing to hide behind, they reacted in fear and extreme revulsion lashing out predictably. The question of why this happens is the real mystery that many of the levy addict players cannot define themselves. They have no idea of why they are motivated to behave in such a way.
In the 1960s even up to the current gay marriage debate the essence of the free love and non sexual denomination relationship discussion is to achieve one primary aspect of life that is particularly disconcerting to voters who tend to lean-to the political left. These people tend to want to be loved, and they are often insecure about losing love once they obtain it from others. Love is one of the most primary functions and desires of a human being. It could be said that the level of love in one’s life dictates their happiness. The trouble is some people understand that love is obtained when two or more individuals share common values, and some ignorantly believe that it is obtained through altruism—a sense of sacrifice. When a man tells a woman, “I’d die for you,” he is proclaiming the later. He is an idiot. It sets the relationship with the woman on the wrong footing. She will always unconsciously be on the lookout for another mate in case the man fulfills his proclamation. If the same man says to the woman, “I love you because of who you are.” This has more weight and the woman will understand that the love is generated from shared values. The former will be successful because the relationship is built on values that are shared. This is the ultimate failure of our modern age. The wrong types of people seek love for all the wrong reasons. The left leaning voter seeks sacrificial love through the measures of non value because it is less risky for them. Love without value means that any given person of any given value can love any person anywhere no matter what their sex, age, or success factor. This belief is driven from the fear that if love is obtained, that it might be lost if the values of people change. So to safeguard themselves from this fear, they seek to remove value from love so that they never have to be without love. This is of course sweet when looked upon in this fashion as it is easy to feel compassion for such people. But this leads to social failure because it strips society of values, which is what we are seeing in America today.
Many of the levy addicts involved in the Lakota Levy debate are suffering from this problem of insecure lust for love. Their intentions are not to pass a levy, save children, or ever solve the public education funding problems provided to them by greedy labor unions. Instead they hope for a return to the problem every couple of years because they are addicted to levy attempts as this is the way that they have learned to make other people “love” them. For an example of this need for love, look at the faces of the levy supporters in the picture at THIS LINK, CLICK TO VIEW. It’s not about children for them, but about community, love, sharing, and all kinds of mushy emotions. This is the real intention of levy supporters and why I call them “Levy Addicts.” They are addicted to the euphoric feeling of crusading for a cause (children) for an invisible desire for goodness—as it has been defined by government. Anyone who stands in the way of that “love” is a threat to their existence, and they attack the way a jealous spouse attacks someone who they fear might steal away their love. But the love is not pure. It is instead neurotic and doomed from the start. It can never be filled, or achieved because it requires the theft of other people’s money to acquire. Many of the levy addicts could write personal checks for the $2 million dollars and never miss the money if they really wanted to help the community. I can think of a few of the levy addicts who would consider the $10K that No Lakota Levy raised for the children of Lakota to help pay for their sports fees as equal to the same cost that they spend on lunch. It doesn’t mean anything to them, the value of money is negligible because they have so much of it, and have forgotten how they came to it. But what does mean something to them is whether they can manage to unite an entire community through charities, politics, or business into loving them to the extent that they are willing to surrender their personal values and logic. These are the deep dark secrets of the levy addicts.
My threat to their existence is that I proposed to solve the problem and remove the financial chaos which they need for their scam. The levy addicts need the chaos to fill their lives with love which they are always yearning for—the desire to be loved by others to fill a value they can never seem to find any other way. In this way the levy addicts become just as tyrannical as the Crusaders attempting to move the world toward a particular religion out of a professed love of God through altruistic sacrifice—but if not the Crusades pick a mass movement of any other radical group seeking to crush individuals in pursuit of a collective good. The definitions of “goodness” are set by those with the loudest mouths and deepest yearning for public love. At Lakota the fantasy of the levy addicts is if only they could remove the opposition to their plans, then the community would shower them with love and affection—kissing their ass in every public appearance because they are powerful financially, politically, and socially. They would thus be loved by all for every reason imaginable—except the one of personal value—which they are lacking. These levy addicts become terribly insecure when they realize that people only “love” them for what they can give them. They are always looking for ways to give other people things they’ve stolen from someone else because of this deep fear of lacking personal value.
This is what the hate due to my words was really about, and what was exposed when No Lakota Levy wanted to actually help children with a $10,000 donation. Nobody in either the media or the politics of the community knew what to do because they had been exposed for what they really were. Everyone involved pretended that they were innocent of any emotional crimes, but when I spelled it out in The Enquirer the real sin of which those supporting school levies were guilty of using children as emotional hostages I had hit the nerve everyone wished to keep hidden from the public. The hypocrisy and sin against all children by the adult population seeking community love was out in the open and nobody knew what to do with the emotions.
The Community Foundation which had declared itself non-political announced its political support of the local government school with their video support of the two teachers which they recently awarded. If such charitable foundations really wanted to help the entire community, they would simply cover the cost of the tax increases with their own personal checks instead of attempting to compel the entire community to support a school they may not like or support. There is no call by the charity group to solve the actual funding problems at the school because that would defy their real intention, which is to maintain their power base at the center of the community which is in perpetual pursuit of “love” from their peers.
If the motivations were not one of public love, the money would quietly find its way into the Lakota treasuries in the still of the night without a name attached to the donation. If those involved in community health were actually willing to serve altruism, they would not place themselves on pedestals so that everyone could see how much they did for the community–they would simply do the work without fanfare. But the intention is not about “goodness,” but is instead about “love,” and the pursuit of it for all the insecure reasons it was ever pursued. The reasons behind the Community Foundation award to the two teachers sadly looks to not be about merit, but politics, and even more tragic are the attempts to hide such charades behind children. Without my incident to measure against described above, the presentation of the award to the Lakota teachers might otherwise go unnoticed. But in relation to the upcoming school levy, the objective is clear.
The funds that No Lakota Levy attempted to give the Community Foundation occurred before I wrote what I did in mid February. In fact, there wasn’t even a levy announcement yet for that year as No Lakota Levy had just won the recent election. The Community Foundation well before any of these events occurred declined to work with my partners and me for reasons that are obvious now, because they support the school levy at Lakota perpetually. They care not what causes the levy, they just blindly seem to support them for the reasons offered. The response in the early winter months of 2012 was instead to smear my name and attempt to remove me from the argument instead of bringing the community together as we proposed. I simply wanted to see the school offer the teachers union a 5% pay reduction to prevent another levy. The school district as a whole chose not to listen to the 18,000 voters during the previous election. Instead they chose to proceed with a smear campaign against me personally instead of solving their problem. Then they expected me to take it when word came back to me from No Lakota Levy members and Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom readers who told me what was going on behind the scenes—what was being said about my name and why. That is when the decision to advance the campaign to a new level proceeded.
All the parties involved believe they are right and moral in their position. Yet only one group is right. I would contend that these charity groups and levy addicts are detriments to the community because they feel they have a right to compel property owners to contribute to their silly pursuits of community love. The Community Foundation is perfectly free to support the Lakota school levy if they wish to, just as the levy advocates are free to support their public educations to their heart’s content. They are all free to pursue their desire to be loved by the public by giving teachers special awards and publicly showing how much they love children through charitable contributions. But they are not free to compel me to do any of those things, and they are not free to bend an entire community around their small-minded needs for social “love.” They are not free to impose their beliefs on others by forcing tax increases on everyone to fulfill their worldly visions corrupted by an unquestionable hunger for love—devalued love where judgment of right and wrong are not applicable. That is the trouble with the situation of government politics which public schools are tightly bound with large charity organizations camouflaging their inner desires for attention through altruistic goodness. The fact and hypocrisy remain that if those who speak loudest of the value of teachers, Lakota schools, and community value of government education institutions, then they should cover those costs on their own and not try to compel people like myself into contributing where I chose not to, and then seek to defame me personally because the neurotic, love starved levy addicts didn’t get their way. It is not OK for institutions to crush individuals all in the pursuit of collective love. And that is the current arrangement between local charities like those who attach themselves to public schools with the primary, yet disguised intention of promoting the image of that school in order to garner votes in an upcoming election. The levy addicts do their so-called good by writing checks on the backs of children using their innocence to justify community tax increases. The reason is for love, not justice—and in that revelation much coercion is performed against free minds for a tyranny that destroys generations.
When the question was asked of Tom, “do you think you can be a team player” regarding the upcoming election, and getting behind Governor Kasich in his next run for governor, the question provider said a mouth full without realizing their violation. Tom attempted to explain that the Tea Party movement is like herding cats, as everyone is a free-thinker who cannot be unified under a flag of compromise, as traditional politics requires. This is true, and to date, there are not enough cats in the game to make much of a difference in elections, so the Tea Party has been quietly shunned by established political rule in an attempt to maintain the status quo. The crux of the problem is in requiring free thinking individuals to compromise their beliefs to be a part of the “team” which is the primary problem in American politics at every level, and I for one am tired of it. In this regard, a candidate either stands for capitalism and is willing to defend it, or they aren’t. It is that simple.
Governor Kasich ran his 2010 campaign as a defender of capitalism. He was for business; he was for reeling in the costs of big government. He was against Obamacare. He was against taking federal money for silly intrusions that erode away the 10th Amendment through the Commerce Clause. He was for School Choice in Ohio, so he had a lot going for him that represented much of what the Tea Party stands for. They all share in common, a support of capitalism—because even if everyone disagrees on various policies—the cats all stand for capitalism as a political ideal and can unify behind such a banner. However, Kasich and House Speaker Boehner went on a golf outing with President Obama and Vice President Biden and have never been the same since. It could be noted that Kasich and Boehner were seduced by the snake-like charm of Obama and his collectivist minions because as political parties go, Kasich and Boehner have more in common with Obama and Biden than they do with any citizen in America who stands for individual liberty.
Kasich’s fatal flaw in his thus far first term is that he has attempted to expand Medicaid, which is essentially the same sin that was committed by Barack Obama—it is using other people’s money stolen in the form of taxes to purchase elections. Ideologically, Kasich didn’t fight very hard for his Tea Party beliefs. He abandoned them at the first sign of trouble, allowing the rule by force of a mixed economy to determine his core beliefs. After his golf game with Obama, and the defeat of Senate Bill 5 by the public sector unions in repealing Kasich’s reforms at collective bargaining, Kaisch turned into a progressive. Within two years of attempting to take on public unions with needed legislation, he surrendered and joined with the enemies of freedom by attempting to expand Medicaid in Ohio to purchase votes for the next election.
The Republican Party currently being led by Kaisch in Ohio expects other Republicans like Tom Zawistowski to fall in line with the party platform and “compromise” their beliefs for the good of the collective party, and that is the difference between politics of the past, and the politics that the Tea Party is pushing for. It is not Tom’s job to conform his beliefs to the party strategy of John Kasich or John Boehner as both men have elected to sell out their ideas as a compromise to the forces of persuasion—the pressure groups who routinely lobby such men with trinkets of advantage in trade for political pull. That is not governing, or leadership. It is simply appeasement in the same way that payoffs to the mob might be encouraged. If the yielding of beliefs is not achieved, then the pressure groups will pounce with collective authority to change those beliefs. This is the direct result of the type of economy that has moved away from capitalism and toward socialism. It is the direct result of a mixed economy. A mixed economy Governor is the type of man who Kasich is. When the wind blows from the Tea Party, he spoke of Tea Party values. When the wind blew from the direction of the opposing labor unions, Kasich then became an advocate of Medicaid expansion to redeem his “sins” of the past. When John Boehner was throwing his support behind Mitt Romeny for President, he spoke of ending Obamacare with a repeal the first day of Romeny’s administration. But when Barack Obama won the election through questionable means, Boehner declared that Obamacare was the law of the land, and seemed to forget that as House Speaker he has the power to fund or not fund the train wreck of socialism that Obamacare is. He simply changed his mind in response to the “pressure groups” in charge.
This is not how government was supposed to work according to the foundation of America. The Tea Party represented in politics by people like Tom Zawistowski and Matt Mayer are not running for office to respond to the consensus whims of pressure groups—lobbyists. They are running for office to maintain purity of the Ohio and federal Constitutions. This is an idea that is not understood by virtually anybody, particularly in the media. That is the reason the question, “do you think you can be a team player” is such an absurd question. It openly suggests that Tom should be willing to compromise a right idea for a wrong one depending on the nature of the pressure groups who are really in charge which is against everything anybody who believes in a representative republic stands for.
The way to beat this monstrosity of political corruption is to just make things simple and focus on the idea of capitalism. In politics, an idea is either good for capitalism or it’s not and from that vantage point, political unification can be achieved by removing the emotional elements from the debate, of which nobody will ever completely agree. A political commitment to capitalism also declaws the pressure groups that have the mouth of politicians like Boehner and Kasich on their marionette strings rendering them ineffective. It doesn’t take a heard of cats marching to orders like a bunch of mindless automatons to run a government. It simply takes the commitment to a political philosophy that carries over to the benefit of the population at large. Capitalism naturally sorts out the good from the bad, the corrupt from the saint through competitive efforts. The cheating that goes on so often of which capitalism gets the blame comes from the pressure group relationships such as what Speaker Boehner and Governor Kasich represent—a mixed economy relationship ruled by thugs who have more “pull” than others without such arrangements. Under pure capitalism, such relationships would not be possible as the best and most effective ideas would percolate to the surface in spite of the desires of various pressure groups.
If I had to make a prediction as to the direction of Tom Zawistowski I would say that people like him will migrate to a party like the one I’m talking about, the “Capitalism Party” to begin the intellectual argument that has to take place in the coming months. After all, it does free thinking people no good to vote for Governor Kasich once again. He has shown to be just as fiscally destructive as Governor Strickland, the socialist democrat was. The biggest difference is that he had a “D” next to his name so he was easy to identify. In many ways the “R” next to Kasich’s name is more dangerous because voters thought they were getting a Tea Party conservative—instead they got a sell-out, and a LBJ fascist—well intended, but desperately, and catastrophically wrong in his political philosophy. That is why people like Tom Zawistowski are leaving the Republican Party. If they are smart, they’ll join me in the Capitalism Party then things can really get moving as the debates will evolved from ones of emotion to ones of actual goodness that is not relative to opinion.
To prove that the government is involved in a coercive monopoly with labor unions both private and public, examine the evidence, and the path of behavior which delivered us to the conditions of 2013 where much is made over the size and ambition of virtually any company or financial entity endeavoring to make money. The landmark case of the government against private business establishing the terms of what “the government” considers a financial monopoly can be seen in the United States v. Alcoa case from 1945.
United States v. Alcoa, 148 F.2d 416 (2d Cir. 1945), is a landmark decision concerning United States antitrust law. Judge Learned Hand‘s opinion is notable for its discussion of determining the relevant market for market share analysis and—more importantly—its discussion of the circumstances under which a monopoly is guilty of monopolization under section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
During the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Justice Department charged Alcoa with illegal monopolization and demanded that the company be dissolved. Trial began on June 1, 1938. The trial judge dismissed the case four years later. The government appealed. Two years later in 1944, the Supreme Court announced that it could not assemble a quorum to hear the case so it referred the matter to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In the following year, Learned Hand wrote the opinion for the Second Circuit.
Alcoa argued that if it was in fact deemed a monopoly, it acquired that position honestly, through outcompeting other companies through greater efficiencies.
Learned Hand J held that he could consider only the percentage of the market in “virgin aluminum” for which Alcoa accounted. Alcoa had argued that it was in the position of having to compete with scrap. Even if the scrap was aluminum that Alcoa had manufactured in the first instance, it no longer controlled its marketing. But Hand defined the relevant market narrowly in accord with the prosecution’s theory. Hand applied a rule concerning practices that are illegal per se. It did not matter how Alcoa became a monopoly, since its offense was simply to become one. In Hand’s words,
“
It was not inevitable that it should always anticipate increases in the demand for ingot and be prepared to supply them. Nothing compelled it to keep doubling and redoubling its capacity before others entered the field. It insists that it never excluded competitors; but we can think of no more effective exclusion than progressively to embrace each new opportunity as it opened, and to face every newcomer with new capacity already geared into a great organization, having the advantage of experience, trade connections and the elite of personnel.
”
Hand acknowledged the possibility that a monopoly might just happen, without anyone’s having planned for it. If it did, then there would be no wrong, no liability, and no need to remedy the result. But that acknowledgement has generally been seen as an empty one in the context of the rest of the opinion; because of course rivals in a market routinely plan to outdo one another, at the least by increasing efficiency and appealing more effectively to actual and potential customers. If one competitor succeeds through such plans to the extent of 90% of the market, that planning can be described given Hand’s reasoning as the successful and illegal monopolization of the market.
The basics of the case were that Judge Hand decided that Alcoa Aluminum was guilty of operating as a monopoly because their superior manufacturing techniques had deemed them so much better than their competition and they had to be stopped so that other companies could compete. This case set up the history for which much of the modern business landscape has been established for the worse, and is the direct example of “the government” sticking its nose into the business of potential revenue generation to micromanage Alcoa into become less threatening to its competition so that other, less productive companies could gain a helping hand from the government to stay in business. These days we would call this “wealth redistribution,” as wealth and potential profit were stolen from Alcoa through the court system and delivered to its business rivals. Many today have long forgotten about these antitrust laws allowing the government to behave in such a fashion. Most people assume that things have always been as they are now. But the government intrusion attacking capitalism with Karl Marx inspired socialist tendencies began roughly 40 years after the Communist Manifesto was published for the world to read paving the way for that collective based philosophy. In Russia, the communist movement came on the heels of World War I and through the seductive words of Lenin in 1917. In The United States because of the independent nature of the average American, it came subtly through government regulation beginning with the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890, which was the measure used in the Alcoa case.
Sherman Antitrust Act, basic federal enactment regulating the operations of corporate trusts, passed by the U.S. Congress in July 1890, through the efforts of Senator John Sherman of Ohio. The act declared illegal “every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations.” Criminal penalties were provided for violators of the law, and aggrieved persons were entitled to recover three times the amount of losses suffered as a result of the violation. The Sherman Act has been amended and supplemented by several subsequent enactments. Most notable among these enactments was the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914. See Monopoly; Trusts.[1]
A few years later with the rise of progressive politics in America following the aggressive behavior of President Teddy Roosevelt, who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but never learned to make any real money of his own, progressives applied antitrust laws against “big business.” The Clayton Antitrust Act was passed in 1914. Woodrow Wilson was president at the time and represented the most aggressive push in history where academic intellectuals attempted to gain power through regulation, as their theories could not compete head to head with the titans of industry. So they used the government to perform coercive monopolies against any organization who thought they were too big to bow at the feet of the political class. Wilson and the Roosevelts both Teddy and Franklin a few years later were deeply in love with European politics and were inspired by the works of Karl Marx and used progressive action by government to further strengthen the Sherman Act.
Clayton Antitrust Act, legislation passed by the Congress of the United States in 1914 to prohibit certain monopolistic practices that were then common in finance, industry, and trade (see Monopoly). Sponsored by Alabama congressman Henry De Lamar Clayton, the Clayton Antitrust Act was adopted as an amendment to the Sherman Antitrust Act. Designed to deal with new monopolistic practices, the act contained provisions covering corporate activities, remedies for reform, and labor disputes. Unfavorable court interpretations weakened the act, however, and additional legislation was required finally to carry out its aims.[2]
Fair Trade Laws, in commerce, legislation permitting manufacturers to set minimum resale prices for their branded products sold by retailers to consumers. The proliferation of chain stores prompted attempts to introduce such legislation in the 1920s to prevent the price-cutting policies characteristic of the chains, but passage of regulatory state laws did not occur until California led the way in 1931. By the 1940s all but three states had enacted fair trade laws governing intrastate transactions. Although the Sherman Antitrust Act prohibited all price-fixing agreements in or affecting interstate commerce, it was amended by the Miller-Tydings Act of 1937. This new act permitted resale price maintenance agreements on trademarked commodities sold in interstate commerce in states where contracts between manufacturers or wholesalers and retailers were sanctioned by state legislation. A 1951 Supreme Court ruling released all merchants who had not signed such contracts from the requirements of this act. The McGuire Act, passed by Congress in 1952 , reestablished the requirement that nonsigners abide by the same terms as signers of contracts. Although subsequent Supreme Court rulings upheld price fixing, the laws were challenged in state courts and enforcement became increasing difficult. In 1975 President Gerald Ford signed in law an act repealing the Miller-Tydings and McGuire acts, again making all resale price-fixing agreements affecting interstate commerce a violation of federal antitrust laws. Most states subsequently repealed their fair trade laws.[3]
This of course brings us to the modern age where companies terrified of being accused of a monopoly status must send lobbyists to Washington to pad the pockets of politicians with riches hoping to avoid the dreadful designations and court proceedings which can come out of an antitrust case. Now, before anyone states that the events so far discussed are “ancient history” and not relevant to the modern age, let us examine the most recent example of government trust busting where it used The Justice Department to prosecute Microsoft for being too big using the Sherman Act to do so.
The plaintiffs alleged that Microsoft abused monopoly power on Intel-based personal computers in its handling of operating systemsales and web browser sales. The issue central to the case was whether Microsoft was allowed to bundle its flagship Internet Explorer(IE) web browser software with its Microsoft Windows operating system. Bundling them together is alleged to have been responsible for Microsoft’s victory in the browser wars as every Windows user had a copy of Internet Explorer. It was further alleged that this restricted the market for competing web browsers (such as Netscape Navigator or Opera) that were slow to download over a modem or had to be purchased at a store. Underlying these disputes were questions over whether Microsoft altered or manipulated its application programming interfaces (APIs) to favor Internet Explorer over third party web browsers, Microsoft’s conduct in forming restrictive licensing agreements with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and Microsoft’s intent in its course of conduct.
Microsoft stated that the merging of Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer was the result of innovation and competition, that the two were now the same product and were inextricably linked together and that consumers were now getting all the benefits of IE for free. Those who opposed Microsoft’s position countered that the browser was still a distinct and separate product which did not need to be tied to the operating system, since a separate version of Internet Explorer was available for Mac OS. They also asserted that IE was not really free because its development and marketing costs may have kept the price of Windows higher than it might otherwise have been. The case was tried before Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The DOJ was initially represented by David Boies.
It can be argued that Microsoft has never been the same company since that case. A few years later, Bill Gates retired to philanthropy to become a guilt ridden ex-capitalist attempting to further expand the government education empire of which he rejected as a youth to wash away the sins exposed by the government prosecuting him for his lack of business altruism. Microsoft prior to that case did not effectively use lobbyists in Washington to pay off the trolls of legislation, which is something they remedied after that case and many companies followed. The message to business in America was that if a company decided that it wanted to corner the market through competitive superiority, then they would be punished—unless however a company sent representatives to K-Street to grease the wheels of politics away from prying eyes.
The government established itself as a crusader for “the people” in an attempt to create a “fair” business environment, as defined by socialists, communists, progressives, and other Karl Marx fans. Yet their attention only gazes in one direction—toward money making enterprises. They ignore however the antitrust of the labor unions who hijack business labor, especially in the public sector with excessively aggressive examples of coercive monopoly. Unions avoid the ridicule because the antitrust laws have been designated toward the bourgeoisie producers of products to use Karl Marx’s term and ignores the actions of labor which is inserted as a competitor within any organization dealing with labor unions. This action is most evident in the public sector unions of education where their behavior prevents competition, deliberately drives up the wage rates outside of market parameters, and is the grossest modern example of a coercive monopoly. As defined by the government in their cases against Alcoa back in 1945 and Microsoft in 1998, teacher unions and education institutions in general are the absolute worst forms of coercive monopoly in existence. Based on their behavior, they may be the worst to ever exist in the history of the world. Education unions steal tax money by striking, preventing competition through force, protest, and lobbying having a sole purpose of maintaining a labor monopoly by excluding entry into their markets with “force.” In this way, modern unions are far, far worse than Alcoa ever was as a monopoly power, or Microsoft ever came to be, yet no politician thinks to attempt prosecution against the labor unions in a way that Senator John Sherman of Ohio did back in 1890 toward business or Henry De Lamar Clayton did in 1914. But why?
We have seen in Ohio and Wisconsin what happens when legislators attempt to apply such rules to unions; the unions use their coercive monopoly to apply physical harm to legislators who attempt to designate their actions in such a fashion. CLICK HERE FOR AN OBVIOUS EXAMPLE BY THE SEIU IN OHIO. Businesses like Alcoa and Microsoft didn’t act in such a fashion. That is why they were picked on by the government. Government like the labor unions of which both are products of socialism, achieve their goals trough coercive monopolies and they use their power, and desire to use force to extort from those too placid to fight back. In the case of businesses like Alcoa and Microsoft, they were producers who have everything to lose; the government has nothing to lose since its sole function is to steal from others to fill itself. In a conflict, this gives the government the upper hand. This is the cause of the lobby influence in Washington to this day. The goal of the lobbyists is to keep the government in their offices and away from prosecution using the Sherman Act to attack their companies with antitrust violations. Yet the same doesn’t work the other way as it should. Legislators fear applying the same antitrust terminology to a firefighter union, a police force, or any of the teacher unions even though they engage in exactly or worse antitrust violations than have ever occurred—anywhere, because the unions operate through fear, intimidation, and extortion. Legislators instead of confronting them, attack people like Bill Gates, a computer geek who became wealthy inventing the computer industry from his garage as a college dropout. No threat there. Or they attack Alcoa for simply being too good at their business.
The hypocrisy is obvious, and demands serious analysis. Labor unions in The United States are parasitic entities that only exist through coercive monopoly status. They are the cause of continuous tax increases and unmanaged local budgets. They don’t get paid based on the quality of their work, but from the fear they inspire into the political machine. They, unlike Microsoft or Alcoa are not the best in their fields of endeavor, they are simply willing to use force to achieve their desires—and that means they should be prosecuted to the furthest extent of the law with the same gusto that The Sherman Act was created and for the same reasons. The only reason they are not is because legislators are afraid to put such words into the public for fear that they will be examined by history for taking away the “rights” of such people. What those politicians don’t know because they lack a study of history is that such rights do not exist—except in the mind of Karl Marx, where the labor unions were born using tactics that have built the worst coercive monopolies in the history of mankind—all on the backs of the American taxpayer, while the innocent are hung like thieves by the murderers of capitalism—labor unions and their government conspirators with their coercive monopoly which involves the legal system.
In front of a seafood restaurant in Delaware flies the flag readers of this website will proudly recognize, pictured on the left. At the base of that flag pole are items the owner of the establishment greatly treasure, pictured on the right. These pictures were posted by a fan of my new novel Tail of the Dragon. The rum is a reference to an article I wrote about pirates a few weeks ago. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. She has let me know that these are some of her current favorite things, and her idea of an exquisite evening is drinking some of that rum while reading Tail of the Dragon from her nightstand so that she can crawl into the mind of the novel’s hero Rick Stevens and enjoy his rebellious charisma from the greatest car chase in the history of car chases. About halfway through the first draft I realized that I wasn’t just going to tell the action packed story of a modern car chase, but the philosophic underpinnings of a society struggling under the pressure of “statism” and a rebellion against it. This article is Part IV of a Making Of series for my recent novel which explores the path I took to arrive at its unique philosophy of freedom. CLICK HERE to review the previous installments. I had clear in my mind the locations I was writing about, and I understood the rebellious nature of the main protagonist, Rick Stevens, but one thing that still lingered in the back of my mind was the notion of freedom versus collectivism and how those two things are so closely associated sometimes within the same context. For me, there is no greater example of this duality than in motorcycle riders who claim to be free and independent, yet tend to travel in gangs riding their motorcycles in formation whenever they gather. This trait was as I saw it a failure of American philosophy so I wanted to become more acquainted. This was the reason I joined the Suzuki Owner’s Club of North America and quickly became the Vice President of the Ohio Chapter. One of the tasks of such a leadership position was to organize new membership drives, so the President and I organized a small ride to promote the organization. The President was from Cleveland and I was from Cincinnati, so we agreed to meet up at a McDonald’s just south of Cleveland and head across the top of Ohio to the Fremont Suzuki dealer south of Sandusky and set up a booth to recruit new members. It was a planned day trip that seemed like a simple endeavor on paper taking place just a few months after my wife and I traveled to Key West, from Part III. The trip ended up being a 500 mile adventure that took us to many places throughout the day and would prove to be a memorable escapade that was more epic, than simple.
We left our home at 4:00 AM to meet the President and some of the other Suzuki Owner members at 7 AM. It was not difficult to cover the vast distance between Cleveland and Cincinnati by motorcycle in such a short time. With an average speed of 77 MPH, and just a few stops, we arrived at the designated McDonald’s ahead of the other riders. I enjoyed my affiliation with the Club, but in the back of my mind was the nagging sensation that I felt constrained by my involvement. I knew I shouldn’t feel this way, yet the closer to Cleveland we became, the more tense I was. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the President or his riding partners, but it was the feeling that the closer I came to Cleveland the more I lost my individual identity. I was honored that they invited me to become the VP of the Club after only a few short months, but VP was still a subordinate role, and I’m not a very good subordinate. Typically if I’m not the leader of the pack, I’m not interested in any endeavor. I just can’t stand taking a passive role on anything in my life, no matter what it is.
We arrived at the McDonald’s, ate a well deserved breakfast, and met up with the President and his riders outside. After some brief introductions and typical motorcycle talk, we planned our route to the Fremont dealership roughly 70 miles away across very rural farmland. There would not be any highway access, so we’d be traveling relatively slowly across God’s country of the Ohio north 40 to 50 miles south of Lake Erie. Once the route was established on a map spread out across motorcycle fuel tanks we were off. The President in such groups usually takes the point position on such rides which is slightly off-center to the left of the road. Riders behind the leader take up positions of formation staggered behind. I migrated to the back so I could observe the behavior and noticed that the other riders worked very hard to maintain the closest position behind the leader possible.
We traveled across the top of Ohio by many farms and several rain storms before arriving at the dealership right around 9:30 AM. We were scheduled to arrive at 10 AM so we were a little early. Once at the Fremont location the President set up a booth for the Club to promote itself. We spent from 10 AM to 2 PM having lunch, telling biker stories, and talking about various wild adventures. The company was good, but all the while I had a terribly uneasy feeling that was difficult to shake. There were three times in my life prior to this bike ride where I had a similar feeling. The first was in the fifth grade when some girls I knew set me up to “go steady” with the class beauty at the time. She was a pretty girl, but I didn’t want the obligation to have to speak to her every night on the phone like boyfriends and girlfriends were required to do. In the fifth grade I had just won the pull-up contest in the Winter Olympics and many people were projecting me to be a star athlete as I was clearly the fastest kid in the entire school. I could shoot basketball, play hockey, and I was untouchable in dodge ball. But I hated all those group sports, even though I was excessively good at them. This drove my gym teacher nuts as he didn’t understand my reservations. Because I was so good at these sports, this little girl wanted to be my girlfriend so her friends arranged it by nagging me until I said yes. I went steady with the girl for about 2 hours. Once I came home from school and was eating dinner and planning the activities of my evening which involved, reading, drawing pictures, playing war with my brother outside, and building a model car, I did not have time for the little girl when she called and wanted to talk on the phone for an hour. I reluctantly told the girl I wanted to break up. She cried, all her friends were mad at me for years, but I was free—and that made me happy. I was free to read my books, draw my pictures, write my stories, and play outside—and that’s all I wanted out of life. I reasoned that the only reason I wanted to go steady with the girl was because I wanted to see her naked—but that wasn’t a good enough reason to imprison my soul to another person. When I broke up with her I was greatly relieved. The second time was when I allowed myself to be talked into trying out for the Lakota soccer team during my freshman year. I had a reputation as “The Animal,” because I was so vicious when I played the game. I would often head butt other players intentionally to take out their star players. I was good at disguising the effort as going for head balls to avoid the yellow cards, so many of my couches and parents who watched me often talked me into trying out for the school team. The first day of tryouts I was miserable. I thought the coach was an arrogant bastard and I couldn’t stand the body language of the guy. He was clearly looking for butt kissers on his team, and that wasn’t me. He didn’t like my aggressive playing style, or my rebellious attitude. I also didn’t like the girls who seemed attracted to the school soccer players, the girls who hung out around the practice field and were always being passed around by the other players. They were short-legged stubby girls with square faces and potato asses, not the kind of girls I was interested in. So I became more and more belligerent as the tryouts went on for two weeks. During a scrimmage I head butted our goalie who had called off the ball because he made fun of my haircut in the locker room. My mother always cut my hair, but she did it in the classic “bowl cut.” So I sent him home with a bloody nose that day and a loose tooth. The coach made me run laps hoping I’d pass out, but I didn’t. I stubbornly completed his assignment, but our relationship deteriorated. I was relieved to learn that I had not made the team. I knew everyone would finally leave me alone about trying out for all the stupid team sports, and I could go back to my books and stories without the constant nagging from the adults in my life who kept telling me to grow up and do something “productive.” A few years later the high school football coach hinted that I should try out for the football team to direct my “aggression” in a positive direction. But I had a reputation in school as a person who fought way too much, and was utterly unmanageable socially so their urgings quickly ebbed once they saw no light in my eyes over their promises of college football lights and easy girls. I had no problem with girls, and the lights didn’t impress me, so they didn’t have much to offer. The third time was when I was 18 and I had a modeling agent who booked me to do a lingerie show with a stage full of beautiful girls. I had just met my wife and had a choice to go see her for the evening or go to the paying gig that my agent had set up. The money was good, and there was a chance to meet not just a few beautiful women, but several. Not the stubby fingered, potato butt girls, but the kind I liked, with long legs, round lips, eyes just perfectly spaced—the kind of girls who strive to become actresses and fashion models. So I took the job and my future wife cried because she was afraid she’d lose me to the job assignment. I found out prior to leaving my apartment that my task at the show was to “dance” around the girls lip-synching to David Lee Roth’s song, California Girls. I was en route to the event, but instead of taking I-75 south, I took I-275 east and went to my future wife’s house. My agent was furious as she had a stage full of beautiful fashion models but no David Lee Roth impersonator to dance on stage around them. The show tanked, and I never worked as a model again. But I did get married to my wife a year later. She drew a line in the sand and told me that she didn’t care about making money if I had to make money doing stupid things like dancing on a stage to David Lee Roth songs. Once I arrived at her house, I felt free of that social pressure to perform to expectations that the media culture valued, but were at odds with my own beliefs.
Now, that nagging feeling was there again in the motorcycle group at Fremont. I was helping to register new members to a group that I was Vice President of, which I became a part of in much the same fashion as in the stories just told. I was a reluctant participant. My talents were desired for various reasons to serve collective institutions, and I have ALWAYS been reluctant to surrender my sovereignty to anybody ever, no matter how beautiful, how lucrative, or under any amount of pressure. I have always turned obligation away in favor of freedom. I often say yes initially because I like to help people, but when things get too cozy in the collectivism department, I always look for a way out.
I pulled my wife to the side and suggested to her that when the event was over at 2 PM that we not ride back to Cleveland with the Suzuki group but instead go up the road to Cedar Point and ride roller coasters the rest of the day, since we were close. She shook her head knowing what was driving me, as after twenty plus years of marriage she had come to understand my decision-making processes. When it was time to take down the tent, I informed the guys that my wife and I were going to Cedar Point, and not riding back in formation to Cleveland. I got some puzzled looks, but they agreed to go on without us. We spoke in a friendly manner as we parted promising to touch base by email when we all returned home. The minute I was back on my motorcycle going north as they traveled east I felt the shackles coming off me and I enjoyed freedom once again. That was the last time I would ever see those guys, and the email messages never came or went either way again. That was my last day as Vice President of the Ohio Chapter Suzuki Owners Club of North America.
My wife and I had fun on the bike trip, but our day really opened up into a wonderful experience once we arrived at Cedar Point about 45 minute later. It was a relief to not have to ride in formation, to recognize a leader of any kind, to adhere to any kind of pecking order, to go where we wanted when we wanted to go, and to have the freedom to make a decision and to act on that decision. We spent the rest of the day at Cedar Point until the closing time of 10 PM that night. Once they closed the doors on us, we got on our motorcycle and headed for home. We arrived back around 3 AM–23 hours and 500 miles later. It was a cold ride home, so we were fairly frozen. We warmed up in our hot tub and I wrote notes on my laptop from the day while they were fresh in my mind as I hung over the side of the Jacuzzi typing madly. The thoughts of that day made it into my opening chapter which went on for nearly thirty pages. My editor had me cut it down to roughly the first 5 pages of the final Tail of the Dragon draft.
Freedom is a difficult concept to understand, especially for those who aren’t nearly as stingy with it as I am. People find themselves agreeing to things they otherwise wouldn’t do because some collective force applies pressure to them to say “yes,” then once they do, they are stuck in rigid confinement. Most people become used to accepting this gradual loss of freedom, so they don’t see the effects of socialism seeking to subtly impose itself upon their lives. I never developed that problem, so it’s easy for me to see. In Tail of the Dragon I had to create in the characters of Rick and Renee Stevens two characters who valued their freedom to such an extraordinary level that they would not yield to those tiny encroachments, so that their refusal would cause the next Civil War in America in an understandable way. I wanted readers to see what freedom was supposed to look like, how it felt, and how tasted, because most people don’t know what freedom is at all—as they are encumbered with too many obligations. Freedom is the essence of what Tail of the Dragon is all about, freedom from clubs, from socialites, from agents, from coaches, from all the pressures of life which desire to steer a human mind in a direction that is not authentic to the individual. My experiment to investigate a collective entity had proved fruitful if it did only last about 2 months. They were two months well spent, because the result found its way into literature for all time, and many years beyond.
And a special thanks are deserved for Kathy. I appreciate her flying that flag in front of her Delaware seafood restaurant, and I appreciate the effort she put into making my day a little better by displaying Tail of the Dragon so proudly. It was for such people I wrote the novel and I am happy to know that Captain Morgan is going on the adventure with her.
“Even with these cuts, Lakota schools are still worth “cheering” for. We are not part of a losing team, but our children and grandchildren could lose out on future opportunities if there isn’t more financial support. So, let’s drown out the Rich Hoffmans of our community by making the next levy a successful one. If that happens, we all win.”
“GO TEAM GO…….HURRAHHHH”
The above statement was written by Lakota Levy cheerleader Laura Sanders, who responded to my Letter to the Editor in the Today’s Pulse April 14th edition. The letter she is responding to I have placed below for ease of review. As to Laura’s fantasy that she will drown out the Rich Hoffmans of the community, I have very bad news for her. I can swim longer than anybody she knows and I can shout louder—far louder than I have so far displayed. So if that is the path she and her levy cheerleaders wish to follow, I am looking forward to it. I have also placed below the letter she put in the paper for analysis. I will answer her assertions following her text.
First the letter I submitted:
The Lakota Levy Cheerleaders
Combined with the Lakota Superintendent’s articles here in the Journal, the “Community Conversations” program, along with a few pro Levy speeches, and I can’t help but feel that I’m watching a football game where the home team is losing 45 to 0 yet the cheerleaders are still on the sideline with their pom poms in hand completely oblivious to the events happening on the field of play still reciting the “cheers” they learned in practice.
Much to their dismay, the “Levy Addicts” who are pounding the drums for another tax increase this year and are attempting to soften the resistance with new strategies, the score up on the board is not in their favor. Lakota as a district is about to see an influx of income from the Liberty Way Development, the Carriage Hill Development, and the continued growth of the Union Center corridor. All the tax revenue coming in from these activities will be more than the previous year. Combine that trend with the 10 year projection of declining student enrollment due to the number of homes in Lakota without children increasing–balancing the budget without a tax increase should be easy.
The old mantra that education is for the “kids” is old and worn out. Nobody believes it any more just like nobody believes the home team is going to win when the score is so lopsided yet the cheerleaders are still on the sideline saying the same mindless drivel that they have the entire game. What the levy supporters want with tax increases is simply a glorified community babysitting service. What I have learned about public education these last couple of years does not lend credence to any kind of education quality even for so-called great schools like Lakota. For the 18,000 people who have turned down these levies over the years for multiple reasons, we have no choice but to support the product now, which is currently too expensive. It is simply unfathomable to ask for more, especially when the score is so lopsided—in spite of the mindless cheers.
Rich Hoffman
Now, Laura Sander’s response:
Lakota Schools Still Worth ‘Cheering’ For
Here we go again:”……levy addict…glorified community baby-sitting service.”
Wasn’t Rich Hoffman already discredited by the media one year ago because of phrases like this and previous comments such as “…crazy PTA moms and their minions of latte drinking despots with diamond rings the size of car tires and assess to match…”
Maybe Mr. Hoffman thinks its clever using metaphors comparing levy supporters to mindless cheerleaders (another attack on women). Unlike his approach, I prefer to use facts.
Mr. Hoffman claims that Lakota will “see an influx” of tax revenue after new developments are built. That sounds great, but it’s not reality. Commercial property contributes very little to school funding and has not kept pace with residential growth. Gov. John Kasich cut $1.8 billion from schools over the last two years and his current budget increases funding for charter schools and proposes additional vouchers on private schools, once again depriving public education of money.
Ohio’s charter schools received $775 million from the state last year. That amount of money could fund numerous public school districts.
Lakota Treasurer Jenni Logan predicts the district will face a $1.8 million dollar budget deficit by 2014. This is after $35 million in cuts over the last three years, which has resulted in minimal bus transportation; larger classes; fewer days for art, music and gym; no reading specialists; a dismantled gifted program, etc.
Even with these cuts, Lakota schools are still worth “cheering” for. We are not part of a losing team, but our children and grandchildren could lose out on future opportunities if there isn’t more financial support. So, let’s drown out the Rich Hoffmans of our community by making the next levy a successful one. If that happens, we all win.
Laura Sanders
Now to address Laura’s points:
I never said the cheerleaders were women or girls. Isn’t it sexist and presumptuous of to assume that all cheerleaders are “women?” Just because they are traditionally women does not mean that cheerleaders are not men too. They have men sometimes, especially in college. Whether there are men or women, cheerleaders have a job to do and that is to engage the audience with positive entertainment no matter what the actual conditions of the game. That job is more difficult if the score is so bad that it is obvious the team they are cheering for is going to lose. It helps the cheerleader’s task to not pay too much attention to the facts on the field and just repeat what they have been taught in practice, no matter what the reality on the field displays to them. It is a proper metaphor for what is going on at Lakota with the cries for yet another levy. Laura and a handful of others have behaved very similarly to the metaphor I used. But I never said the cheerleaders were women.
(C)(1) Except as otherwise provided in division (C)(2) of this section, no board of education shall use public funds to support or oppose the passage of a school levy or bond issue or to compensate any school district employee for time spent on any activity intended to influence the outcome of a school levy or bond issue election.
(2) A board of education may permit any of its employees to attend a public meeting during his regular working hours for the purpose of presenting information about school finances and activities and board actions, even if the purpose of the meeting is to discuss or debate the passage of a school levy or bond issue.
I sat on the story because the owner was terrified to come forward in fear of losing her business. Well, guess what, she lost her business a few months later. I took the story to The Enquirer—who didn’t cover it and I took the story right next door to the Pulse Journal who wouldn’t touch it. With the kind of power the business owner felt was against her, she asked me to sit on the story, which I did. Surely all the Levy Cheerleaders know all about it. That kind of behavior is extortion, and is an attempt to win elections with coercion which if this wasn’t a government school would be considered criminal activity with jail time attached. Because it’s a school with a tremendous public relations budget, no court would attempt to enforceOhio Revised Code ORC 3315.07 (C) (1) and (C) (2).I find stories like that one appalling, and made even worse because they are done behind the cover of children. I consider anybody who would engage in that kind of activity to be morally bankrupt and a detriment to society. You are lucky I held back my tongue on that comment because a lot more descriptive dialogue was on my mind. Now, for the other case which I have document release, CLICK HERE to view.
As to my being discredited let me shed some light on that little topic. WLW was running dry, we covered education till we were blue in the face and it was starting to drag on the ratings. They wanted to swing more toward sports talk radio; I wanted to take the rhetoric to a higher level because of the behavior by the school board after the third levy failure and the decision by Karen Mantia to not engage the teacher’s union with a pay reduction. So we were going to part ways anyway, especially after Doc Thompson left. Traditional newspapers like The Enquirer and The Pulse were stuck between pro levy people and me and they had to pick a side. After Michael Clark’s behavior with the exclusive I gave him regarding Yes to Lakota Kids, I knew where he was going, in the direction where his wife was employed—in public education. So traditional media did pull away, and I had been holding my tongue to keep them in my corner until I had a suitable network built that could sustain those loses when they occurred. Once I had it secure, I let my tongue speak. In addition apparently Laura missed this Channel 19 interview once it was announced that Lakota wouldn’t be seeking a levy in 2012. CLICK HERE TO SEE FOR YOURSELF. So much for discredit.
I. I knew when Karen Mantia arrived in town that she would seek to attack No Lakota Levy diplomatically and split us from the inside. That is after all what she did in Pickerington and the people from up there warned me ahead of time what her mode of operation was. In a personal meeting I had with her I got a wonderful feel for how she was going to play her hand. So I started to set up my operation independent of my partners in No Lakota Levy. If they stayed, great, if they broke, I could still proceed on as planned. They had showed signs of cracking earlier in the year, so I didn’t think they’d stay the course through a fourth attempt. On the third levy, they handled the sign delivery around the community during the last two weeks of the campaign and little else. I took care of all the media work, the blog postings, the debates and anything else that came up. If I lost them politically for the fourth levy attempt, which I felt was Mantia’s strategy—based on our meeting, I would have to maintain my ability to continue. In future levy attempts I would need the more radical members of the No Lakota Levy front to continue the fight. Many of them were frustrated that I didn’t hit the school hard enough often enough. My response was that a day would come when we would be able to hit as hard as they wanted. But for now, in the early stage of these levy fights, we had to save the best tricks for later—which we have. Most of the primary members of No Lakota Levy wanted to form Yes to Lakota Kids which I wasn’t crazy about, because they were tired of being called selfish businessmen—again by the PTA community. The threats of boycotts and other harassing measures were unconscionable in my opinion, and I couldn’t get Michael Clark from The Enquirer to cover those stories either. This left those members to strive for a public image campaign with Yes to Lakota Kids, which I felt was just feeding the monster. The sports fees shouldn’t have been put in place and even though we were raising $10,000, it felt to me like a drop in the bucket. So I wasn’t happy, but I represented their interests out of friendship. In private, on my blog, and elsewhere I voiced my opinion. Laura’s desire to make some of those comments one of sexism is a surrender on the pro levy position. They know they cannot win based on their arguments, so they played the progressive “feminist” card in an attempt to remove me from the debate. But, as predicted, there were a lot of silent handshakes and smirks about my comments from people who had been thinking the same thing. I just gave them a vehicle to vent their frustrations. A lot of the votes that the pro side wins from arm twisting, extortion, and other forms of coercion came back my way due to my controversial comments, which is what I needed to do on my side to prepare for the next try. Voters were just waiting for someone to articulate what they were already feeling.
II. Now as to facts………….I have delivered facts, upon facts, upon facts. Laura’s statement that she is dealing with facts whereas I am not is typical of the pro education debate where they ignore all facts except the ones they wish to see. It’s that cheerleader mentality again. If they look up on the scoreboard they don’t want to see a 45 to 0 score. They simply look at the clock to see what time it is. They ignore the actual score because they have a show to perform, and can’t let the facts ruin their desired reality. So here are the facts as she addressed them.
Laura ignores in her statement that Lakota has a 10 year declining enrollment projection which means that student enrollment will be decreasing. That means Lakota will have to lay off teachers, consolidate schools, and roll back their staff to accommodate the lower student levels. With tax revenue staying the same, and enrollment going down, any idiot should be able to balance their budget. That is unless they plan to give away the farm on the 2014 labor contract that is coming up with the LEA.
Laura obviously doesn’t know anybody with commercial property who has to write a check on their property values at $1.5 to $5 million dollars. Businesses are taxed at the same rate as residences, and there is a lot of business in the Lakota district. To say that commercial business does not contribute much to school funding is like saying that the sun does not contribute to sun burn. It’s a statement based on levy propaganda and a denial of the facts.
Kasich did not take money away from Lakota in 2012 and the spending on school vouchers and charter schools is a very good thing which I support 100%. Public schools need to become profit motivated and drive their costs down, not up. I want to see a chart that shows the per pupil cost at Lakota going down each year, not trending up. Education options are what drive down costs, and I am happy to see that Kasich put more money into charters. To speak otherwise is to be a stooge for the labor unions who wish to maintain a monopoly status on public education. If Kasich had thrown the $775 million dollars she discussed at Ohio’s public schools the unions would have gobbled it up like a black hole. They’d be hungry for more money the very next year. $775 million dollars does not go very far in public education. Not when the budget just at Lakota is near $200 million with undeclared costs added of course.
If Lakota is predicting a $1.8 million dollar deficit in 2014 it is because they have mismanaged the money the tax payers have already sent them. The fact that Karen Mantia cut bus transportation, dismantled the gifted program, reading specialists, has fewer days for art, only says that she did exactly what she was taught in Levy University at the OSBA Conference in Columbus point for point. If Lakota decided to cut those types of programs instead of doing what No Lakota Levy told the school board to do, and that was present a 5% reduction of wages to the union, they are guilty of mismanagement. They have let the “tail wag the dog.” They have failed to handle their labor contract, it’s that simple, and that failure is on her management style. As a former teacher herself, Mantia aligned herself with the employees of Lakota and not the community who pays the bills. That is her failure and if there is another levy, it will be due to her mismanagement of the finances provided, especially since student enrollment is on a sharp decline.
I spent a good part of this past Friday evening speaking to a reporter about virtually everything that I’ve said here. We are living in a new age; traditional media doesn’t hold the same power that it once did so creativity and innovation favor those on the side of the truth. The only thing that has held back others from jumping on the No Vote bandwagon was fear, because they have truth on their side, which is what I explained in a speech recently to a group I spoke to in Oxford. CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW. My hope after the third levy attempt was that I could inspire more people to step forward so that it wasn’t always Rich Hoffman doing everything, because that can only go on for so long. To have a healthy resistance, the formations have to constantly change, and new players have to be rotated in and out just like in a military engagement—because that is what we are fighting. Public education is not a nice institution that is protecting children as it’s sold; it’s a government propaganda machine and a babysitting service for parents too busy to care for their own children. I really don’t care if that makes people angry, because it’s true, and there are enough residents at Lakota who have grown children who know that it is. In the next levy attempt it is my hope that there are 20 levy fighters doing what I was doing in the first three at Lakota. I think that will be the case, and if it’s not, then I will pick up the slack……………..gladly. I’m happy to be civil if the pro levy people are, but if they wish to be uncivil—like they usually are, I will respond—as I have. Meanwhile, my advanced position on all public education is that it should be abolished as a tax payer funded entity off property tax. If Laura Sanders wants certain things for her child to learn, then she can pay for it. I’m tired of paying money for people like her to benefit, while they constantly complain that other people should pay more taxes. CLICK TO REVIEW THE KIND OF THINGS KIDS ARE BEING TAUGHT ABOUT EDUCTION FROM THE LAST CAMPAIGN. That kind of thing makes me absolutely sick. And when she states that commercial businesses do not contribute much in property taxes, she’s clearly not up to speed.
So go ahead and test me Lakota people. Go ahead and think that people are going to fall for the same old emotional arguments of the past, the accusations of sexism, selfishness, and compassion, and see where it gets you. I have saved a lot of people hundreds of thousands of dollars around Lakota and I purposely kept the budgets low in the previous three levy attempts so that the coffers would be there when I needed it. So when Laura Sanders says as she did in the opening of her letter………….. “Here we go again” that’s right. If they want to go again, they will see more fireworks than they’ve ever seen before……especially since my next campaign will be using new media, not traditional media. I don’t have to worry about offending people in the next attempt, now that the resistance network is built with fresh faces. For me this is a moral argument now, not just a financial one.
I would say this to Lakota. I am happy to do as I promised at the beginning of the deal in 2012 when it was agreed to not put a levy on the ballot. I am happy to leave Lakota alone in my crusade against public education if Lakota keeps its head down and out of the voting booth. Take the declined enrollment and ride off into the sunset, because if Lakota puts itself on my radar, it will be their own fault. That is a bit of friendly advice. Or, Lakota can listen to the winds of war from the pom poms of Lakota’s Levy Cheerleaders and see who can swim the longest and shout the loudest. And I know where the Vegas odds makers will put their money—and it isn’t on Lakota.
“If they attack first………..blast em’!”
The Overmanwarrior 