Tag: John Kasich

West Chester Tea Party Shows ‘Atlas Shrugged Part II’: ‘The Strike’ comes to the popular Friday night movie event

I must thank Ann Becker President of the Cincinnati Tea Party and the producers of Atlas Shrugged Part II: The Strike for putting on a wonderful show at the very nice permanent facility dedicated to freedom in West Chester, Ohio where the WCTP meets regularly every third Tuesday of every month.  DSC04534Ann is also President of the West Chester Tea Party and has been doing movie nights on Fridays—about two a month featuring films that are intended for conservative and libertarian audiences.  This gives members of the West Chester community and Cincinnati at large a chance to escape the noisy children at the local multiplex in favor of intelligent correspondence among like-minded patrons.  There have been good crowds for the movie nights, and this was true of the film that I have so actively supported, the second Atlas Shrugged film based on Ayn Rand’s great 1957 classic novel which is second only to the Bible in the most popular books checked out at the Library of Congress.DSC04535

I have seen the second film many times now.  You can see my review of the film by CLICKING HERE:  It was slammed by the entertainment industry well before it hit theaters. The producers attempted to avoid the negative press by not releasing review copies, and opening the film to more than 1000 screens respectably, but reviewers shunned the film as soon as they had a chance to see it.  The big entertainment complex, including media subsidiaries like Entertainment Weekly, ETV, Entertainment Tonight and many others treated Atlas Shrugged Part II with the same disdain as they did the Romney Presidential run.  The media slant was extremely obvious.  The producers of Atlas Shrugged showed they would not be stopped in making the second film of an intended three-part series, even though the first film was equally treated with hatred by the general press.  The press and entertainment establishment had determined to circle the wagons against the effort.  They didn’t want the film to succeed whether it was good or not, because the message of the film is dangerous to the collective causes of many establishments—not only in the entertainment industry.  The movie is a bold attempt, and it delivers.  It’s easily as good as most of the films that can be seen in any movie theater for the price of admission.  The special effects were well done—many times they remind me of the effects from The Right Stuff.  And the train crash was better than a similar crash from the Steven Spielberg/J.J. Abrams film Super 8.   Atlas Shrugged Part II oozes with passion from the producers, and it’s easy to see.  It is hard to put a novel that is as philosophically heavy as Atlas is into a film version.  Fans of the book will always be hungry for more.  The effort here reminds me of the film version of John Grisham’s A Time to Kill.   The essence of the novel was achieved, but if fans want more, they’ll need to read the book.

For the uninitiated, many who saw the film for the first time in the West Chester Tea Party War Room on March 8th 2013, Atlas Shrugged Part II was their introduction to the book.  Upon the film’s release in October of 2012 the producers advertised heavily, and Harmon Kaslow went on just about every talk show from New York to Los Angeles leading up to the opening.  Many of the people who might find the Atlas story attractive have long ago given up on the official Hollywood product, and simply do not go to movies any longer.  So they skipped the movie when it hit theaters expecting another big Hollywood production that didn’t reflect their values.    Most of these types of viewers wait for a DVD release these days or for a big presentation like the one that Ann gave to her members.  This became obvious about halfway through the showing when I noticed the audience of just around 100 become emotionally involved in the film laughing at the jokes, booing at the resemblance to some of the contemporary problems America is currently facing, and finding themselves wrapped up tightly in anticipation of the climax.  At the end of the film—which is a cliffhanger—people were visibly upset wanting more movie.  They’ll have to wait for the third film which will really go down the philosophic rabbit hole as the lead character meets “The Perfect Man,” in John Galt.  It was fun for me to watch the reaction of the audience at the end as I know the story extremely well.  Seeing more people introduced to such a fantastic tale is enjoyable—like uncovering a treasure that has always been at their feet, and the light just comes on when they notice it for the first time.   If not for the West Chester Tea Party and the producers giving the green light to allow a public viewing free of charge—those 100 people may not have taken a chance on it any other way—because the print media was not kind at all to the film.

The reason for the hatred of the film is that two of the main villains in Atlas Shrugged Part II are Lillian Reardon and Jim Taggert, who resemble metaphorically most of the people in society.  The two conspire in the film to destroy the life of Hank Reardon—the creator of a new alloy of steel that is extremely light, very strong, cheap, and highly sought after by the government who wants to confiscate his technology for the “greater good.”  Lillian is the socialite wife who is a parasite to her husband Hank.  She only cares that he is a billionaire that can give her social status.  She does not earn that status on her own, and when she gets the opportunity to free herself from her husband once she discovers that Hank is sleeping with Dagny Taggert, Jim’s sister—(the main character), Lillian takes it.  Lillian makes a deal with Jim, who has the same parasitic relationship with his sister who runs the railroad company they inherited.  Jim is clueless about the ways of the world and can only achieve success in life through his political connections—which is referred to as “pull” in the film.    If I had to put my finger on a problem with the Atlas Shrugged film franchise, it is due to most people in society will see themselves as either Lillian or Jim—and they aren’t going to spend $10 per ticket to feel more guilty about their lives than they do already.  They go into a darkened theater to escape from such realizations, not to be hit over the head with them.DSC04536

All people could learn something from the story of Atlas Shrugged.  For many, they might find that they are like Jim’s wife, the innocent convenient store clerk who fell in love with the image of what she thought Jim Taggert was in the newspapers and television shows.  She married Jim and once she lived with him every day, discovered that he was simply a looter.  Jim Taggert was rich and powerful because he stole from others, while people like Hank were rich and powerful because they actually made things.  Not to give anything away but Jim’s wife kills herself in the next film once her disillusionment becomes too great.  She simply loses her faith in mankind and can see no way out but to take her own life—which is not light subject matter.  If I had to guess, I would think that a majority of a movie going audience feels some connection to Lillian, Jim or Jim’s wife—and none of those characters are the heroes of Atlas Shrugged.

Atlas Shrugged is not for the 99% as the Occupy Walls Street mantra defined.  Ayn Rand did not write her books for the masses, but aimed instead at the 1%.  Her target was not the very elite rich and famous 1% however, but those in the 1% who philosophically understood her message.  In the community of West Chester, Ohio which has 100,000 people minus all the children, the 100 present at the showing of Atlas Shrugged Part II represented accurately the 1% who are free thinkers and can wrap their minds around the hard subject matter of a very intense story.  For them Ann presented a wonderful evening free of the kind of mindless drivel that could be seen down the road at the various multiplexes.  Ann’s children and husband were present making popcorn that were free to the public which allowed viewers of the movie to sit down as the sun set out the west windows and enjoy watching a movie with surround sound and a screen that actually rivaled small movie theaters.

That is not to say that the other 99% of the population can’t enjoy Atlas Shrugged.  Chances are, they will watch the DVD which is currently released by 20th Century Fox, or catch it on Netflix out of curiosity, and the first time they see it, they might be devastated to learn how poorly they have conducted their lives and discover what parasites they are on society.  The movie will make them think which most people don’t enjoy doing.  But that is the function of art, and Atlas Shrugged Part II is an artistic rendition of the great novel—and it’s damn good.  It has the visual elements of a typical movie, but it’s not about visuals, it’s about philosophy—and that is not appealing to the masses.

The producers of Atlas Shrugged Part II can feel pride that big traditional films like The Hobbit and Dark Knight Rises were also blacklisted by Hollywood in 2012 for similar reasons.  Dark Knight Rises was almost as obvious in its anti collectivist message as Atlas Shrugged Part II.  In fact, I watched Dark Knight Rises right before seeing Atlas Shrugged Part II at the WCTP War Room and while the production value for the former is much higher than the later, the themes were just as powerful.  Atlas was just blunter about it, which was Ayn Rand’s writing style.  In Dark Knight Rises director Christopher Nolan had the ability to subtly bring the audience into the fray of the story through Catwoman played by Anne Hathaway who begins the film as a socialist, but through the course of the story learns how wrong she was under the patient tutelage of Batman.  The audience experienced the story through the eyes of Catwoman and at the end of the film discovered that Catwoman and Batman were equals—so the audience was able to get what they paid their money for.  Catwoman made Batman relatable to the mass audience.  That is why Dark Knight Rises made over $1 billion dollars at the worldwide box-office in spite of the bad reviews.  Lucky for Dark Night Rises the comic book media did not abandon the film on release, so it had financial success.  But in Atlas Shrugged Part II, there is no such character like a Catwoman.  The closest is Jim Taggert’s wife, and her fate is not a good one, as discussed.  So the audience gets hit over the head when they have to compare their lives to the heroes of Atlas Shrugged.  Very, very, very……………………………………….VERY few people can relate to Hank Reardon who isn’t even the hero of the story.  In the eyes of the protagonist Dagny, Hank had one major, glaring flaw–he cared enough about her to not allow her to be blackmailed when her brother, his wife and the federal government found out about their affair and wanted to exploit it to gain access to the patents on his metal.  Hank to save Dagny the pain of public humiliation finally gave up his fight.  Instead of running to Hank to comfort him in his darkest hour and show sympathy to the “man of steel” in thanks for defending her honor Dagny ran off to find John Galt—a man who has never compromised, who has never yielded, who has never lost—who is a genius, an expert tactician, a master of design and is perfect in every form.  Hank asked to see her in a moment of weakness when his whole world fell down around him, but she did not come.  And he did not cry about it.  He simply picked himself up and moved on.  That is not the Hollywood formula—so nobody in Entertainment knows how to deal with it.  They can only criticize it because of their lack of comprehension.

The success of Atlas Shrugged Part II unfortunately cannot be measured by box office numbers because the film was not made for the masses.  It was made for the 100 people in the WCTP War Room who showed up on a Friday night to watch Atlas on movie night with freshly made free popcorn and drinks for an audience who understands the plight of Dagny and John Galt.  For intellectual stimulation the audience wished to have an evening away from the Lillian Reardon’s of the world if just for a few hours and be around like-minded patrons.  Under that measure of success, at the conclusion of Atlas Shrugged Part II there were claps of approval and questions about the fate of the third installment, which suddenly had very urgent demands for the release date.  I told people who asked me that the plan for Atlas Shrugged Part III was for July 4th 2014.  For now, I am grateful that such a film exists for those smart enough to comprehend it, and clean enough in their thoughts to grapple with the themes.  If the producers had not worked hard to produce the film, and place themselves at great financial risk, this Friday night experience would have never happened.  The filmmakers like the fictional composer Richard Halley from the story know that the merit of Atlas Shrugged Part II cannot be understood by the mass public.  Halley when he received a standing ovation during his musical performance in the movie as the concert pianist simply disappeared off the stage without explanation.  Halley in the third film will continue to write and perform music but not for a mass audience who cannot understand or appreciate his music.  Instead he moved to Galt’s Gulch—Atlantis with John Galt and the rest of the heroes of Atlas to let society crumble away into nothing as they preserve humanity from the parasites of civilization.DSC04541

My advice to the producers of Atlas Shrugged Part III would be to forget the mass release to theaters in the next go around, but to perhaps have a premier in a few theaters, but to otherwise release the film to people like Ann Becker of the Cincinnati Tea Party and let the audience be much more targeted on the next go around with direct DVD sales.  Even the Walt Disney Company engages in direct to DVD releases, and that should probably be the future of the third film from a financial stand point.  Because like Richard Halley in Atlas Shrugged, only the people in Atlantis will understand and appreciate his music the way he intended it.  So to, out of 100,000 people in West Chester, there are probably only around 1000 who will understand the message behind Atlas Shrugged.  The rest are simply like Lillian Reardon and Jim Taggert who will do everything in their power to keep the lessons of Atlas from their minds so they can continue to practice mental evasion and parasitic looting of other people’s wealth.  On movie night for the West Chester Tea Party Atlantis was at 5430 West Chester Road, and we enjoyed the performance.

http://www.westchesterteaparty.org/

To the critics who will without question read this and be insulted at just the mention of Ayn Rand or Atlas Shrugged and will treat it like Holy Water being thrown on a demon possessing an innocent soul, if you don’t know the story, watch the videos above and you’ll understand that there is a lot more to Atlas Shrugged than just a pro-capitalism message.  I have seen 5 times in my life alone what happened to the fictional 20th Century Motor Company in the film for many of the same exact reasons.  And let me say…………..I understand John Galt as well as I understand the skin on the back of my own hand.  There is more truth in Atlas Shrugged as a novel than 8 years of most college courses.  And the movies only make the information more accessible to a wider audience.  So take advantage of the ease for which the producers have provided a vast treasure for the minds of the many, even if they can’t quite get their thoughts around it.  It’s worth trying.  You can find the DVD by CLICKING HERE. 

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

THE NOTHING

For years now I have wondered if Glenn Beck was getting his show topics based on my articles here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom.  What he speaks about and what I write about seemed to parallel closely over a long period of time.  I know I don’t have time to watch and listen to Glenn Beck in much detail.  My exposure to Beck is usually what people send to me in the form of clips through email.  On Beck’s end, given his success over the last 5 years, I’m sure he has the same problem that I do only 100 times worse, so I doubt he has time to read my articles—unless somebody he trusts sends them to him.  But it is beyond coincidence that he has arrived at just about the same place that I have in regard to public education at virtually the same time.  The only rational explanation is that people like Glenn Beck, Judge Napolitano, John Stossel and of course myself have arrived at the same independent conclusions based on our observations of public education because logic has delivered us to truth’s door.  The conclusion of those observations that is difficult for many to hear is that if you love your child, you should take them far away from public education.  If you love your country, you should take your children out of public education.  If you love humanity, you should take your children out of public education.  In short, public education is a terribly corrosive social element that is destroying everything we are as human beings toward an aim that is beyond human comprehension.  Watch Glenn Beck state the same things I have been saying for quite a long time now:

When I first worked with No Lakota Levy to reform the cost impact of our local government school I didn’t feel so strongly until I learned how mindless the collectivism in public education truly was.  But a few years into the levy fighting efforts and three elections later which were ignored by the administrators, I began to realize that Glenn Beck’s statements above were true, and a sad realization.  It was actually hard for me to accept and I have never been a fan of public education or collective endeavors of any kind.  Even in my own school days when many of the coaches wanted me to be on their track and football teams I was always hesitant because of the collective nature of the “team” concept.  Even as a young man I never yielded my individuality to a collective endeavor—so with that position in mind it was hard for me to realize that public education needed to be scrapped in America in favor of a system that is independently competitive, and innovative.  Anything attached to government control needs to be rejected and since The Department of Education was created at the federal level in 1979, public education has quickly degraded into a propaganda arm of progressive causes.  But why is this so?

The best explanation for the degradation tendency of public education and collectivism in general cannot be found in the rally cry toward socialism or communism that comes from the political leanings of progressives—it’s a far deeper philosophical problem than those types of ideologies.  To date, the best explanation behind the type of evil that is in the wake of public education was best defined in the fantasy film The Never Ending Story which came out in the 1980s just a few years after the creation of the DOE.  The Never Ending Story is a fantasy about a young hero who must slay a fathomless enemy called The Nothing and the pursuit of the hero’s journey for the main character is to learn that it is imagination that destroys The Nothing.  The way to destroy the evil that is destroying the world is to recharge the world with imagination—(thought).

Childhood mythologies often contain within them the stories of morality that all of society needs to keep order to their own value system.  As anyone who reads me often understands, mythology is the most important ingredient that a society produces which is why I so openly support the Star Wars franchise, because the product of Lucasfilm is in the manufacturing of values society is hungry for.  The reason that fantasy is so popular culturally in movies and books is because humankind seeks to counter the effects of the mythical “Nothing” which imposes itself on their lives—as defined in The Never Ending Story.  WATCH THE BELOW CLIP to learn more about The Nothing.

When I was in the fourth grade my class went on a field trip to see the Cincinnati Pops at Music Hall play a symphonic rendition of John Williams’s music for Star Wars.  Hanging behind the orchestra was a giant projection screen which displayed slides of the movie characters during the performance and the entire building rumbled with cheers as each slide arrived in procession celebrating the movie that had taken America by storm in 1977.  Star Wars to all my young classmates from schools all over Cincinnati were being enchanted with the values of the music and the film behind the characters that contained limitless imagination and boundless energy.  I thought the experience was a wonderful one.  But later, when we returned back to the school on a silent school bus and were back in the seats of our classroom our teacher unleashed a fury of anger at how inconsiderate we were for cheering on the heroes of Star Wars and ignoring the efforts of the members of the symphony.  Even as a young fellow in the fourth grade I shook my head at the obvious ignorance of the teacher. I knew that the teacher represented The Nothing well before The Never Ending Story so accurately placed a name on the type of evil she was spewing.  Her values taught to her as an educator pursing the field of instruction through years of college thought the symphony was more valuable than the characters the music reflected—her values came from The Nothing.  She valued the collective symphony as the source of goodness behind Star Wars instead of the individual characters who were the real heroes of the afternoon.  The music only supported the plight of the heroes.  She misidentified the value system of the entire event.

Years later when I first saw The Never Ending Story I had an awwh haaa moment while watching it, and it hit me most when I was first married and had a young child of my own sitting on my lap looking for family friendly programming to show my daughter.  When the wolf explained what The Nothing was, I immediately thought of the political world in the wake of the Reagan Presidency, my personal experiences with public education, the relationship between public sector jobs and private sector and all the drama of local politics.  The situation in America was not quite as bad as it is now so the impact of The Nothing was not yet in place so obviously.  I could see The Nothing even then as clearly as can be expected for something that doesn’t exists–because even a blank space is “something.”  The Nothing can only be seen for what it destroys, not for any mass it holds.  It can only be measured by what is missing from one moment to the next.

Now, in 2013 many years after the release of The Never Ending Story following 4 years of George Bush senior, 8 years of Clinton, 8 years of Bush Jr., and now 5 years of Barack Obama as Presidents of The United States, it is easy to see that The Nothing is moving easily through the world and it uses people like the wolf did in The Never Ending Story to carry the message of The Nothing.  The Nothing seeks to destroy thinking.  It is what Ayn Rand calls “evasion” in the philosophy of Objectivism.  In mythologies like Star Wars it is called The Dark Side of the Force. But in The Never Ending Story, it is most accurately described as “The Nothing.”

The products of The Nothing are all forms of collectivism which seek to strip away individual thought and action on behalf of a greater good.  The greater good is never on behalf of individual freedom, it is always in service of The Nothing—the evil behind the evil that some cultures call The Devil, Sith Lords, demons, or any face of sinister display. The attempt to articulate such collectivism with a face only names the crime—but does not define the origin of the crime, or the tendency to succumb to it.  In public education young people are stripped away of their minds and are vehicles for The Nothing which has slowly destroyed the entire world right in front of our faces.  No one person controls The Nothing.  But individual people dance to its strings just as the wolf did in The Never Ending Story.  In that context it could be said that The Nothing is behind government seeking to increase taxes forcing parents to have two incomes to accomplish what one used to—to strip mothers away from their children leaving kids open and vulnerable to The Nothing of public education.  It is The Nothing that moves the mouth of Barack Obama seeking to place every child in America during age four into pre-school so that a mind numb teacher can begin to teach young people to turn off their thoughts, and imaginations in dedication to The Nothing.  The Nothing is often difficult to see.  But in public education, it is evident for those with eyes that are open and willing to take notice.  Public schools—government schools–are dedicated to The Nothing like a religion.  To see The Nothing speak to people and learn what is NOT there.  That is how you know The Nothing is at work.

It is The Nothing that Pink Floyd sang about in their Wall album.  Many pot smoking patrons declared that the movie The Wall could only be understood when they were “high,” (mentally impaired, intoxicated—or otherwise inebriated) which has been the running dialogue among young people for the last 30 years.  But for me, as a young man of 16, 17, and 18 years old who didn’t do drugs of any kind, I understood The Wall on my first viewing, and knew the protagonist was fighting against The Nothing ultimately.  Pot smokers could only begin to wrap their minds around freedom from The Nothing when they were “stoned” and had turned off the rules of society.  This is why people do drugs and get drunk, so they can have momentary release from the grip of The Nothing.  But when the intoxication wears off, The Nothing has them again, and the poor souls become mindless dogs lobbying for more school levies, advocating more socialism under President Obama, and seeking to expand government so that it destroys each and every individual on planet Earth.

I know that many reading this will wonder how I can connect all these dots, and may even question whether or not I am even sane—because relative to their social position, these are outlandish claims.  For many people fantasies like The Never Ending Story or Star Wars are just entertainment and the lessons of mythology contained within those stories are dead to them.  Those are the kinds of people who are the wolves in our society who help The Nothing destroy the world without knowing it.  Like the teacher from the fourth grade who represented The Nothing yelling at our class her embarrassment of students clapping and cheering the images on a slide show instead of the live collective symphony of the Cincinnati Pops, The Nothing destroys by ripping away the source of goodness through deferment.  The teacher played her role in destroying the imagination of her students year by year until the kids were less mentally than what they were when they first entered kindergarten.  Teachers like that fourth grade instructor plant the seeds of The Nothing so that the adult of 50 years of age has less of a mind than the 3-year-old, because The Nothing lives in their minds and eats their thoughts.  It doesn’t mean the 50-year-old does not have statistical knowledge.  But the ability to think independently has been destroyed in such individuals—and that is the result of The Nothing.

When Glenn Beck says to take children out of public schools he is saying the same thing that I have been saying and for the same reasons.  However, it is not just collectivism that is the ultimate threat, but it is The Nothing that is behind the collectivism that we must fight against.  The way to beat The Nothing is with thought and independent values produced by a mind free of collectivism.  That was the lesson of The Never Ending Story which never does end.  We are living the story today as we have in the past and will in the future.  It never goes away; The Nothing will always seek to destroy mankind with the obscure allure of collectivism.  It takes an imagination to see the truth and understand the shape of The Nothing.  It also takes an imagination to apply thought and mythology to the legal world of the functioning adult which is what I spend a lot of time doing here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom.  Just because it is difficult for many to grapple with, does not mean the evil does not exist.  To stop that evil, every parent who claims to truly love their child should pull their children from public schools as soon as possible and find an alternative.  If parents do not do this, they will subject their children to a doomed life in service of The Nothing, which already holds the hearts and minds of 99.999999999999999999999% of the adult population.  Only a few—like Glenn Beck has managed to escape and report what is obvious to those not consumed by The Nothing—that public education is the vehicle that is used to destroy our children—and the problem is far bigger than most people are willing to accept.  But The Nothing still is there hunting us all for its collective consumption in a quest that will last all eternity if left unchecked.

It is because of what I have learned about public education that my feelings have evolved over time to seek answers for these modern problems in the myths that have built our society.  The logic of political life does not contain the answers—yet the childhood stories of our past contains the wisdom needed to understand the obscure problem of our present—why our children are growing ignorant over time instead of more intelligent and why our adults walk around like mindless zombies full of arrogance due to their years of exposure to The Nothing.  At golf courses they add up their scores over a day time beverage and whisk their children to and fro soccer practice thinking they are parents of the year—only to discover too late that they have delivered their children to the gates of doom.  The trivia of the adult, and school levy supporter who blindly believes that public education is the savior of society, are simply agents of The Nothing who reside behind all forms of collectivism and is instructed to our world population through public education universally committed to the kind of evil that only occupied the minds of childhood nightmares when the purity of youth could still tell the difference.

For the facts to sustain the assertions above click the link below:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/03/07/cscope-exposing-the-nations-most-controversial-public-school-curriculum-system/

That is how bad the system is.  If you have a child in public school, they are being trained by those methods.  Every child in a school district is being exposed to these things, and it is our tax money from property values that pay for it.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Take Away 2 1/2 Fries from a Big Mac Meal: The real cost of federal sequestration

On the day after the sequestration implemented from the federal government on March 2nd Darryl Parks from 700 WLW covered the events that transpired in the aftermath as government officials calculated that society might come to an end because of the cuts.  Well, in his usual fashion Darryl brought some non-partisan, non emotional, non group affiliated analysis regarding the sequestration cuts to the light of reality.  As many might be afraid of the rhetoric coming out of Washington Darryl put into the context the extent of the cuts in a fashion that everyone can understand.  The ridiculous amounts that Darryl laid out in his broadcast, and that I break down below in written form are so small that they aren’t even worth discussing.  Yet all the news broadcasts on television cried like infants for over three weeks along with virtually every politician, especially Barack Obama about the costs of these cuts to the social fabric of American society.  So without further fanfare have a listen to Darryl’s broadcast as it was given on March 2nd at 9 AM in the morning.

Most people think that 44 billion sounds like a lot of money, but in regard to the sequestration cuts, it is only 1/80th of the total federal budget.  The federal budget is in fact so large, and deliberately made complicated by the same politicians who have been crying wolf, that most Americans cannot even wrap their mind around the numbers.  Nobody can envision a trillion dollars, and one billion is well out of touch from most people’s minds.  Yet American spending is in a deficit trend of over a trillion dollars per year from an income stream where only 1.35 million Americans at the very top of the income bracket pay as much as the bottom 95%.  In total roughly 130 million Americans pay taxes into the total federal budget minus some revenue generated from foreign trade and travel gathered in the form of sales taxes.  So when it is learned that most of the federal yearly budget supplied to the government is provided by only 130 million Americans—while almost as many more pay no taxes off payroll or other direct measures, the situation becomes incredibly frustrating, and daunting.  Like their counterparts in the government school system, federal bureaucrats make it a practice to deliberately deceive voters into protecting the empire of spending they have recklessly erected.  For more information check out the links below:

How much the Top 1% pays in taxes:

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/12/top-1-of-american-taxpayers-pay-almost-as-much-in-taxes-as-bottom-95-and-half-of-that-group-paid-nothing-in-2010/

Federal budget by the numbers from the Heritage Foundation:

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/10/federal-spending-by-the-numbers-2012

Most people start to blank out when such large numbers are expressed so they cannot get their mind around such concepts.  Looting politicians like Barack Obama know this, and have successfully hidden the extremity of these federal numbers behind relatable faces, like children, National Park employees, government janitorial staff and so on—so that tax payers will be inclined to vote in favor of more tax increases to help out their fellow Americans.  The federal government essentially uses the same tactics that we have been fighting locally in the school levy debates—they clearly manipulate the numbers in hopes that nobody can wrap their mind around the truth.  However, Darryl Parks did better than President Obama in showing the hypocrisy of the federal diatribes by putting into a context that everyone can understand the amount of the sequestration cuts that prove just how small they really are—and how much politicians in Washington and the doomsday press blew out of proportion the extent of the damage—which proves that none of them can be trusted.

Darryl did the hard math and discovered that it was much easier to understand the 44 billion in cuts coming from the sequestration reductions that went into effect on March 1st by proportionally breaking it down against something that virtually everyone can relate to, a McDonalds Big Mac extra value meal.  Darryl took the known value of 1320 calories that are contained within a Big Mac extra value meal consisting of a Big Mac sandwich, a medium Coke and a large order of French fries that normally contain 87 individual fries within the container they come in and for sake of argument gave that value of 1320 an equal value to the federal budget.  Now we know that 44 billion in cuts is only 1/80th of the total federal budget, so if we apply the same reduction to the Big Mac value meal, we discover that we will only lose 2 ½ French fries from our feast

Most people eating such a meal would not notice a 2 ½ fry reduction, and in the society at large, particularly the 130 million Americans who pay nearly all the federal tax, they won’t notice any reductions at the federal level.  The only people who will notice the reductions are those who have built their careers in the flimsy existence of government and find themselves jobless in the sequestration cuts.  It will be discovered that many of those reduced jobs were not necessary to begin with just as many of the local schools who have had to reduce their staffs have found that they can still operate with fewer employees as they work to meet their budgets.  The impacted parties are those who work for government at wages that are too high for jobs that were created by government for government reasons.

Nobody in their right mind can argue that losing 2 ½ fries per Big Mac value meal will ever be noticed and will drive down the quality of the meal itself.  Just like the sequestration cuts don’t even come close to bringing our federal government into the light of reality when it comes to fiscal spending of those poor 130 million tax payers who are covering the whole bill.  Yet everyone who covered the sequestration in a negative way is guilty of openly misleading the American people with radical rhetoric that belongs in the basement of old hippie flower children engulfed in pot smoke as they watch reruns of Sesame Street and think themselves sophisticated contributors of society.  In reality, much, much, much more needs to be cut from our extra value meals if we wish as a nation to lose any weight and take measures to truly get our budget under control.  Taking away 2 ½ French fries out of 87 won’t do the job—and is not even worth the discussion which has transpired.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Senate Bill 18 in Ohio: Pandering to the fearful, panic driven voter and beta men

Ohio Senator Shirley Smith (D-Cleveland) recently introduced Senate Bill 18, drafted to ban all “assault weapons,” broadly defined as any firearm capable of carrying “ten or more” rounds of ammunition. In a February 12 release, the Senate Democratic Caucus listed the legislation as one of its ten priorities for the current session.  In a wonderful discussion on 55 KRC recently Brian Thomas challenged the premise of Senate Bill 18 with one of the supporting senators in what became a rather vigorous exchange that articulated the gun argument in modern politics very accurately.  Have a listen.

http://ohio.mediatrackers.org/2013/02/20/ohio-democrats-propose-assault-weapons-ban-statewide-ammo-registr/

If passed, the bill – co-sponsored by Edna Brown, Eric Kearney, Michael Skindell, Charleta Tavares, and Nina Turner, all Democrats – would also create a government registry to track all gun and ammunition purchases in the state, maintained by the Attorney General’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation.  The Bill as proposed is the result of overly emotional legislators who are responding to the lobby power of overly emotional voters, who spend much of their time afraid of their own shadows.  This tendency alone does not make them dangerous to the pursuits of freedom.  However, as voters, the fearful are represented in a republic just as much as the brave, and from the political vantage point of the progressive—and their most ardent champion—the Democratic Party, fear is the way they advance their causes of liberalism.

Progressives use fear to expand education spending without results, they use fear to expand government such as what has been seen over the sequester cuts, they use fear to pass police levies, fire levies, and virtually every government program where a legislator writes words into law to appease the weak and small-minded.  It can be argued accurately that the trouble of our modern society is that we have allowed the frailest minded to dictate our path toward socialism through their lack of personal courage.

Senate Bill 18 is driven by these fearful forces.  Their historical accomplices might have been the Mayan society who cut out the heart of a captured enemy to appease the God’s so that their crops would manifest and their city residents would not starve from lack of food.  The advocates of gun control wish to believe that if they impose upon society a weaponless culture that human beings will be forced to embrace each other with intentions of peace.  But they are wrong, terribly wrong.  Their folly is rampant with voodoo like superstition that has no basis in reality and simply settles in their minds the illusion of security.

For a long time the courageous in society have yielded to these panicky politicians and voters so not to hurt their feelings.  It was out of compassion that the American brave shook their heads and treated these law driven entities like children afraid of bolts of lightning that streak across the sky.  But that time has closed, as the brave in America have seen the result of such capitulation.  American society is on its way to becoming just another third world country reeking with rule by superstition instead of bold logic, and we don’t like it.  This realization has given rise to the Tea Party and other liberty pursuing groups that are putting the arguments on the table for discussion in some instances such as in the Brian Thomas discussion for the first time.

Brian Thomas on 55 KRC has stood up for Second Amendment rights for many years—well before there was ever a Tea Party movement.  But the discussions were often categorized as radical conspiracy theory by a far right fringe mentality.  But the viewpoint of gun rights is not a political ideology of the right or the left.  It is of the bold and the weak.   Gun advocates wish to be in charge of their own lives and not trust their life or death to the devices of government.  Government can’t even get public education correct, let alone show up at a home at 2 AM to prevent the robbery of a family defending their property from a villain.

After listening carefully to the words of the senator in the Brian Thomas interview I am convinced that progressives seek to hide their natural cowardness from society with a blanket of security provided by government.  Progressives wish to think themselves equal to the courageous, without being actually brave.  Therefore the cost of government is so great in 2013 because the trend in America is to grow up as soft minded overly emotional, individuals that conglomerate like animal herds to celebrate their lack of courage.  Government expands to provide security to the masses who have allowed their minds to be fearful of every possible tragedy, and to hedge their lives against those threats not by their own actions, but those of collective security.

America is supposed to be the land of the free and home of the brave.  The brave are the backbone of America, and the Constitution assumes that it will be the brave who will defend America from all forms of tyranny, both foreign and domestic.  The Second Amendment is for the brave, who should be on hand to eliminate threats as they happen, not afterwards.  The brave could have prevented Sandy Hook in the halls of that school if such a place would openly embraced in empowering the brave to defend the weak.  It could have prevented Aurora if the entire audience hadn’t been disarmed before seeing a movie in that tragic Colorado shooting.  It is the brave who always protects the weak, and that needs to be celebrated.  There is no law that can truly protect the weak from the parasitic aggressive—only the brave can.  Only the courageous can defend America from those who wish to harm it and that is why there is a Second Amendment.  The brave do not ask the weak to be courageous.  They only ask the feeble-minded to stay out-of-the-way while the strong perform their work—and to have the respect to not muddy the waters of the electorate with cries for more politicians to pander to the whims of the deficient.  Even the beta man has a role in the grand tapestry of society.  They may excel at presenting spreadsheets for fiscal planning; they may even have a fresh perspective on an idea.  They may invent the next great thing in society—but they may not be good with a gun, or putting down a potential rapist attempting to impose themselves on an unwilling victim.  But they should respect those who are good at such things.  Because the best gun control is putting them in the hands of those who know what to do with them, and are brave enough to use those skills to keep society truly safe, with the valor that comes naturally to a minority of the population.

The videos above are America’s version of gun control.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The Conservative Versus Libertarians: Looking for laws to create shared values

John Stossel and Ann Coulter had a wonderful debate recently in front of a group of college Libertarians in Washington D.C. over the nature of personal liberty.  During the debate Coulter told John and the audience that Libertarians were a bunch of pussies for pandering to liberals with a social message of drug use and gay marriage.  I normally agree with much of what Stossel, Judge Napolitano, and Glenn Beck who are all declared Libertarians state, but in this debate seen below, I am on the side of Ann Coulter 100%.  I personally deplore drug use of any kind, and that includes over-the-counter medicine.  I would never use marijuana as an ingested smoke into my lungs under any circumstance.  I resist even taking aspirin or drinking alcohol.  I think anyone who drinks alcohol to get drunk is an absolute fool.  I have ended long-standing friendships over drug use and even abuse of alcohol, so I have no tolerance for it among the general population.  Even in my teenage years where such behavior was expected, and I lived a life from 16 to 18 years old that would fill encyclopedia volumes with wild adventures, I had a sign in my car that indicated that no smoking was allowed.  And it wasn’t…………for anybody.  I have even thrown people out of my car for lighting up cigarette in the back seat while I was driving.  I have no tolerance for drug or alcohol abuse and I have always been that way.   So like Ann Coulter, my biggest problem with modern Libertarians is their permissiveness of drug use and the name of their movement, which is way too close to the word “liberal.”  So I do not identify myself as a Libertarian.  The barrier for me is their permissiveness of social debaucheries behind a flag of liberty.

The question that arises from Libertarians is how can government control what goes on in the bedroom of citizens, or dictate what an individual puts into their bodies?  For me, government can’t, and shouldn’t be in the business of social behavioral regulation.  That type of thing would normally be regulated to the spiritual pursuits of an individual which would create the goals people strive to live within.  This would work fine if people shared similar values, such as a majority of the population wished to live by Christen values or Buddhist ideas, but in the absence of such social conviction there is a kind of free-for-all mentality that causes some to impose their freedoms on others who don’t share their values.  So a law is necessary under those conditions, and a penalty for that law must be swift so it is respected by the public as a shared value.

For instance, if I’m in line at Kings Island, a popular amusement park in Southern Ohio and there is a guy in front of me smoking a marijuana cigarette, he is making a decision based on his personal liberty to impose upon me the expelled air from his lungs that contain within it chemicals I do not want in my body.  Currently the law protects him from me, because I cannot just go up and knock his face into another dimension as he imposed upon me the marijuana smoke from his lungs.  Because using drugs in public is illegal, the conflict is averted, where it wouldn’t be if marijuana use in public were legalized.  There is nothing more disgusting than such public displays where the careless use of intoxicants can be seen coming out of the mouth of an individual and the only way you can prevent yourself from ingesting it yourself is to hold your breath.  Such a thing is nearly as disgusting as seeing discarded cigarettes on the ground of a parking lot, or walkway that has been saturated with rain and are smashed flat.  When in a public place I am always cautious to avoid stepping on them because I don’t want to drag that trash into my car, or my home as the old cigarette might become lodged into the tread of my shoes to fall out within my property littering it.  I am just as cautious about looking for places in public that people have spit on the ground.  I do not want to step in the spittle of some other person and drag their chemical intoxicants into the carpet of my vehicle on the way home.  The rights of liberty from the person who spit on the sidewalk do not supersede my rights to maintain my property free of their discarded saliva, or cigarettes.

With liberty comes responsibility and if the social trends of the day leaned in the direction of social valor, then I might embrace the Libertarian designation a bit more amiably.  I have no desire to visit the city of Amsterdam because of their loose drug laws, and now that Colorado has passed legislation legalizing pot, I may never visit that state in the years to come.  The very idea of a body of people who collectively wish to participate in detrimental drug use is disgusting, and changes the way I view the entire state.  I find the tendency to use drugs even for bi-polar disorders to be deplorable.  I would like to see the human spirit overcome shortcomings and illnesses in the most self-reliant fashion possible—and I don’t see the Libertarian political movement going in that direction.  Instead, it appears to be a happy middle place between what the Republicans once stood for, and what the hippie liberals promote actively–human weakness.

I hate more laws, and encourage breaking unjust laws as the situations dictate.  The ultimate question is who decides what good and proper social behavior is—is it the Republicans, Democrats, or Libertarians?  The answer is in none of them.  Before the kind of freedom that Libertarians are striving for can ever occur the human race has to have a desire to behave with quality.  They have to want to live quality lives and to respect the quality of other peoples’ lives.  Without a firm definition of quality and what makes one thing better than another one persons freedom becomes another person’s hell.  Without a spiritual bonding agent that is shared between one group of people and another, freedoms will collide and impose on unwarranted victims the pursuits of less stable personalities and their flaws.

The argument between Ann and John above is the direction that I see America going.  As for the liberals, the Democrats, the communists and socialists of collectivism, I don’t even recognize them as having a seat at the table of tomorrow.  I see them as having the same kind of living quality as any other animal on Earth.  They live, eat and die in predictable fashions but are governed through their lives by animal instincts, the desire to have sex, consume food, and sleep.  Without a personal commitment to any higher thoughts or causes, they are no different to me than an average household pet—and they will lose their standing all together in the future of America between the pot-headed Libertarians and Republicans like Ann Coulter who are trying to return the party back to the ideas it was founded on.  As for me, no political party represents my thoughts best but the old Anti-Federalist Party of Thomas Jefferson.  All these new political variations are lacking an inherit wisdom that is governed by personal valor.  Without a human desire to be good, all the laws and political posturing of any collective group of individuals is a worthless pursuit that lacks sustainability.  So long as Libertarians embrace drug use of any kind, I will never have an “L” next to my name in any professional or casual reference.  I’ll stay with Independent—which is what the aim of all politics should be.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Greenon Schools Want More Money: Employee Debra Mauer arrested for embezzling $40,000

I provided the other day an example of the school system Springboro that finally has proper management of its financial resources and is establishing a relationship with its unionized teachers that is beginning to be beneficial to the children.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  I consider Springboro a success story that is the example that all else mentioned below should be measured against.  I also recently covered the superintendent of Franklin and how he complained with great spectacle about how rich communities like Springboro were stealing tax money from poor districts like his in Governor Kasich’s new budget.  CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW.  Creep teacherThe Franklin superintendent of course had the situation backwards, which is quite common with smaller schools with less checks and balances in the media, especially those surrounding Springboro and other Dayton suburbs.  I even covered the case in Steubenville, Ohio where many in the town refused to pay justice to a rape victim because treasured members of the football team were involved.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  Even with all the bad behavior that I have pointed out in large public schools like Lakota, Mason, and Fairfield in Southern Ohio which are considered the best of the best from the teachers and staff, much of the labor from these schools have thought that it was unfair to judge them in relation to stories that only education insiders know about. To them, they are exceptional when compared to the antics from smaller schools with a much lower profiles that garner much less public attention.  The bar of justice has been set mighty low in public education so to the self-assessment of teachers who work in public education seeking to justify salaries that exceed the taxpaying public by almost double, they consider the job they are doing good if they are not abusing special needs kids  like Amanda Kitcho is accused of at Kings school system.  Teachers these days think they are doing good just because they showed up for work and run a clean classroom.  But more reporters than ever are showing courage in covering these terrible stories, some of which can be seen below in the videos that follow.  Amanda left her position as a teacher and is now a bridal consultant while a trial proceeds over the Kings scandal, but following the trend of smaller schools, the more that an investigator digs, the more crimes they typically find occurring in broad daylight in public education like cheating on test scores, abuse of students, and even embezzlement—because their small town nature keeps critics and other prying eyes from their activities.  Such an ideal example of extreme corruption and characters of low quality in public education would be the Greenon Local School District which is just to the north of Springboro.

On January 17th following a three-month sheriff’s investigation by detectives of one of the leading school levy supporters of the recent Greenon tax increase from November police converged on a home at 150 S. Harrison Street and arrested Debra Mauer confiscating computers, papers and mail before being charged with theft by embezzling $40,000 from the village and altering their financial records as Enon’s fiscal agent between 2008 and 2012.  She was also charged with tampering with evidence.  Mauer was elected to the office in November of 2003 and ran for re-election for a second term ending in March of 2012.  Mauer also served as interim fiscal agent for Mad River Township. Mauer was employed full-time at Greenon Local Schools as a High School Social Studies Unit Leader receiving a contract stipend for $609 at a June 21st 2012 meeting just prior the last levy attempt.

Greenon Local Schools placed on the ballot for November 6 2012 a combined 6 mill bond issue and 0.75 percent earned income tax for voter approval. Passage of this issue would have provided the matching funds required by the Ohio School Facilities Commission to leverage $22.5 million in state money to build two new schools and provide long-term operating dollars. The ballot issue was defeated by a vote of 3,000 “for” vs. 3,689 “against” votes. In the wake of that defeat of which Debra Mauer engaged in a rather colorful levy campaign against the only NO voter campaign in the area, who happen to have lived across the street from Mauer, superintendent Dan Bennett is seeking to place on the May ballot of 2013 another levy following the same pattern that most schools do after a levy defeat, and that is to come back with a smaller request and hope the numbers fall in their favor.  This next attempt will be a 4.95 mills levy which is a bit less than the November attempt.

While Debra Mauer’s antics as a fiscal officer in an elected position may seem bizarre and corrupt beyond measure, her employer Dan Bennett at Greenon has had a track record that is less than stellar.  Bennett moved to Greenon to take a job that superintendents understand internally as equivalent to being sent to Russia’s Siberia.  It’s his last chance at success as he was the former superintendent at Little Miami where voters turned down eight consecutive levies before Bennett had to leave the district in a fiscal emergency to take the Greenon job.  The stories left in his wake lends credibility as to how Debra Mauer in the tiny district of Greenon could have conducted her alleged crimes without detection as school employees placed their focus on passing levies and gaining more tax money rather than managing their employees properly and controlling their costs.  You can read more about Bennett at the link below.

http://www.fox19.com/story/15037949/little-miami-superintendent-leaves-district

The Debra Mauer case points to the tip of an ice berg which resides just below the surface of the small Wright Patterson Air Force community of workers with a total student population that is less than what Lakota schools will lose each year for the next 10 years in declining enrollment.  The community is small and everyone knows each other, but to show the emotional remoteness of Greenon Local Schools where most of their community is in fear of the sequestration cuts coming from Congress, the announcement of another tax increase from Bennett without any consideration to the community’s ability to pay even $12 more dollars a month in taxes, has not stopped the school’s arrogant agenda.  They, like their employee Debra Mauer do not care about those around them as can be easily affirmed by their actions.  They only want to prove that they can pass a levy which is all superintendents are really tasked with under the guidelines established by the OSBA (Ohio School Board Association.)  If a superintendent cannot pass a levy for their district, they will be passed around from job to job until they can, or be forced into early retirement.

The only people in the community of Greenon who opposed the last levy, watched the antics of Debra Mauer from across the street.  When police cars came to take away Mauer for her accused crimes after spending most of the previous fall looking at the campaign propaganda coming from the pro levy home on Harrison Street, it wasn’t much of a surprise.  After dealing with the Greenon administrators for some time and asking many questions the reality gradually fell on the founders of Vote No on Greenon School Levies that they were dealing with people whose actions belong in the back of a police car, instead of tampering with the lives of children.  Greenon School employees like Debra Mauer seemed to capitalize off voter naiveté at every turn and every opportunity for their own selfish gain.

You can visit the Vote No for Greenon Facebook page at the link below to provide them with assistance and wisdom.  They have a heck of a fight on their hands because they dared to question more of the iceberg than what everyone could see.  Unfortunately for children attending Greenon, by the time a teacher like Debra Mauer is arrested and processed by the court system, it’s often too late.  Without people like Chris Finney at Kings Local or the couple at the Facebook site below, there is no defense for the children, because school employees and the legal system in general work in favor of modern public education and have shown where their passion is, and it isn’t in children.  Their actions speak for themselves, and can be found in virtually every school district–especially ones in small towns, where the superintendents are spill over’s from larger districts.   Public schools then reflect more accurately a crime syndicate than an institution of learning that places before the children the highest priority of moral stewardship over the personal failures of teachers like Amanda Kitcho and Debra Mauer.   Like the mob, the harm that comes to those who stand in the way of the school making money off tax increases will not be tolerated, and harassment of every kind is on the table.  If one wishes to stand in their way of a new levy, then destruction of those barriers will be pursued with every measure the law and the cohorts of organized crime can muster for the perceived greater good of failed superintendents or alleged embezzlers like Debra Mauer—former advocate of Issue 21 and teacher of children in the school district of Greenon.

https://www.facebook.com/VoteNoOnIssue21NoNewSchoolsForGreenon

For more about the Kings story CLICK HERE for the Channel 19 Exclusive. 

And to understand how law enforcement often tag teams with their labor union comrades in the teaching profession CLICK HERE for a story where the police were caught trying to defend their own wrongs even when great video of the actions were on hand.  Just because law enforcement investigates a matter in education it does not mean that justice will be done.  Someone has to watch the watchers.  

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The West Chester Police Beating that Cost $265,000: Trustee George Lang presents the case

On February 13th, 2013 West Chester Township decided to settle a lawsuit brought against it by Jeremy Lewis winning the victim of police brutality $265,000 of tax money because of the over zealous work by four officers who called to a bar fight as a sports bar was closing.  Because of the large settlement, West Chester Trustee George Lang wanted to provide an explanation to the portion of the community most concerned over waste in tax expenses—the West Chester Tea Party.  In the video below Lang explains in explicit detail the now famous video in slow motion and why he felt the township should settle out-of-court rather than risk showing it in a court of law.

http://www.wlwt.com/news/local-news/butler-county/West-Chester-reaches-settlement-in-beating-lawsuit/-/13601510/18529370/-/f7d2m8/-/index.html

Watching that video no matter what the official comments of the police force were, it is easy to conclude that the second officer who arrived on the scene, the one who sprayed the pepper spray in Lewis’s face, would have done much better to express more logic.  Since the video has no audio we will never know what Lewis might have said to the officer to provoke being sprayed in the face with repellant, but logic would dictate that the officer used excessive force that was not necessary.  If the training that officers are given instructs them to be such panicky primates, then the training needs to be re-evaluated quickly.

To my eyes if I were on a jury watching this video I would have to agree with the assessment of Trustee Lang—the second officer with his adrenaline pumping wanted to show his authority over Lewis in a way that would make Cartman from the cartoon on Comedy Central South Park proud.  If the officer had been comfortable with his position of authority he could have easily handled the situation differently waiting for his back-up to arrive in mass and hand cuff Lewis for an uneventful arrest.  Rather, he chose aggressive domination of Lewis behind the authority of the law for reasons that appear to exceed the situation which deserves ridicule.   It is in those actions by the police that the cost of $265,000 was levied against the West Chester tax payers.

The situation exacerbated once the other two officers arrived on the scene and through collective recourse they felt entitled to beat Lewis into submission with gang like imposition.  In spite of what the unified front from the police department stated in defense of their officers they were obviously more concerned with protecting their own than the merit of true justice.  There were officers who felt guilt over the incident and reported to Lang later the information that the police who conducted the beating were bragging about the incident at the station, much to their disgust.  In my assessment the officers who were upset by the bragging are the kind of officers I have no reservations of employing.  But the officers who conducted the beating and the administrators who wished to shove this incident under the carpet with flimsy explanations and malicious intent are those who make me feel terrible to learn that West Chester police make more money than any police force anywhere from Pittsburgh to Indianapolis, which is quite a statement.   CLICK HERE TO SEE WHAT WEST CHESTER POLICE MAKE.

The police union has already shown displeasure with Trustee Lang because he recently did not vote in favor of their recent contract increase.  Lang is trying to reel in costs for the police department the way he should, but that doesn’t stop administrators from using other measures to apply pressure against Lang.  As Lang spoke at the Tea Party meeting an undercurrent of fear emerged that was almost audible during the silent portion of the video viewing the first run through.  The reason came from not desiring to be on the wrong side of the law.  Politicians like Lang have a good reason to fear the same police they employee because the collective force behind law enforcement is one where it is well-known that police will look out for their own as a collective unit, and this is what makes them dangerous.  If they get caught doing something wrong—as in the case of the police beating, the police force expects the trustees to just pay the money and make the problem go away.  Internally, there was no disciplinary action, no recourse, and no punishment of any kind.  There was just a hope that the trustees would pay the money and make the problem disappear with the same audacity that the police force expects trustees to blindly approve pay increases for them without question, even when they are already the highest paid officers in this part of the country.

In my assessment of the video looking behind the shell game of blame, I see in the actions of the police force a desire to occasionally beat people like Jeremy Lewis so that the authority of police is asserted on the public so that when levy time comes, there is the gentle nudge of intimidation that puts in the minds of voters a fear that they don’t want to find themselves on the wrong side of the police.  Even as Lang spoke, it ran through my mind that he was taking a risk, because word would get out in the station house that one of the West Chester Trustees was speaking out negatively in regard to the police action.  The hot-blooded youth in the modern police force do not see the logic or cost implications behind the out-of-court settlement, they will only see that Lang is not with them right or wrong—and that makes Lang a target.  The same fear came from people directly related to the case who didn’t want their names revealed least they find themselves pulled over by the same police officers at midnight and treated the same way that Jeremy Lewis was.  The public tendency of norm including the other two trustees in West Chester has been to ignore these kinds of problems and throw money at them to go away and hope that those of authority are not angered so that the officers do not cast their revenge upon the tax paying citizen.  The fear is real and was put there by cases like the one that occurred with Jeremy Lewis over a long period of time.

In the audience at the end of the video George Lang presented, was the former assistance chief of police from Union Twp., which is what West Chester used to be called.  This man held the position as far back as when the great tornado of 1974 hit Mason causing him to work 7 consecutive days without sleep because of the massive damage done.  All cops are not bad, in fact many of them are very good people.  But…………when they function as a “collective” entity, they can be dangerous.  Many of them are only 25 to 30 years old and do not have much life wisdom about them yet, so when 4 hot-blooded males in a police uniform with the power of the badge behind them show up at a bar at 2:30 in the morning, the ability to beat an unarmed man into submission to prove their manhood and overcome internal insecurities is very tempting.  The old assistant chief of police testified before the Tea Party his experience with violence and the tendency of new officers to escalate a situation instead of exercising de-escalation procedures due to their modern training.  The training officers receive is largely approved by FOP organizations that have contained within them a desire to put political posturing in such confrontations to escalate a level of fear and respect that has aims beyond righteousness.  The aims behind the beatings is to create a level of perceived danger that ultimately hopes to influence the public when police levies come due, in direct reaction to contracts that are often approved by trustees who fear falling out of favor with their employees, the police.  In West Chester the scheme has worked, police are paid more than anywhere else in the Midwest—yet the danger on the job is less than just about anyplace else.  So there is pressure to “create” dangerous situations from time to time and a drunk fighting at a bar at 2:30 in the morning is an easy target.  Unfortunately for the young officers who participated in the beating, they didn’t think that the action would be captured on a security camera—since normally the situation would have been contained and rumor from the mouth of Jeremy Lewis would have moved through the community without the court system regulating the authenticity.

The lesson of this incident is that police should do a better job of controlling their personal fears and not let their anxiety get the better of them.  They should also not use the unfortunate position of people like Jeremy Lewis to impose their authority on the public in general with such force.  The police should also not take out their wrath on trustees who do not agree with their labor contracts, or speak out against the actions of the collective because they feel they need to explain why the bad decisions of the police force cost West Chester tax payers $265,000.  But on a larger scale, the public in general should come to understand that police should not be given absolute authority over the lives of private citizens.  The failure of the police in the Jeremy Lewis case is exactly why the new federal NDAA Act will never work, and cannot be imposed upon American citizens.  Police are only human beings, and can never be given so much power to violate the lives, liberty and pursuit of a good life of any person.  The aims of their collective organization do not supersede the rights of an individual even if that individual is a drunken malcontent shouting obscenities at authority without discretion.  The first and second officer at the scene knew they had a gun on their hip and other weapons on their bodies that could easily subdue a person of such staggered appearance.  The officers are expected to be cooler than that, and they are paid well to be the best.  They are not paid to be thugs in the streets of West Chester and to give in to boyish desires to prove their manhood.  And because they weren’t West Chester is not only out the cost of their salaries, but also a hit to our community reputation, and the cost of the court settlement—which are all excessive just because the personal valor of the officers was lacking.

To review this case as it appeared in the West Chester Buzz, click the link below:

http://westchesterbuzz.com/2012/06/29/video-shows-police-striking-patron-with-batons-at-west-chester-bar/

To see the union response against Lang in the Middletown Journal, which provoked this explanation by the trustee, CLICK HERE:

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

How A School Board Should Work: The Success of Kelly Kohls in Springboro

With all that I have said about the proper way to manage a public school system the birth place of such thoughts has not previously been revealed.  But I am happy to reveal now that birthplace after my friend Kelly Kohls spoke at the West Chester Tea Party to a packed house on February 19th 2013.  Several years ago Kelly invited my wife and I to The Golden Lamb for a special meeting in one of the upstairs banquet rooms for a group she started with other Ohio school board members called Educate Ohio.  Kelly had recently become a member of the Springboro school board and had a lot of ideas on how to improve education quality for children while driving down the costs for the taxpayers.  Since that very innovative meeting Kelly has went on to become the head of the Warren County Tea Party and is now president of the Springboro school board and managed to drive the per pupil cost of their district downward.  Kelly has become everything that I would consider to be the most pristine example of what a school board president should be for every school in Ohio.  Watch the video below to see how she did it, and how the same type of thing could be duplicated in any district.  Her style of management should be the example that every school in the United States should follow.  But it’s not easy, if it was, everyone would do it.  And as Kelly will describe below she has faced many challenges.  In fact, on the eve of the below speech the SEA, (Springboro Education Association) filed a complaint against Kelly’s school board for unfair labor practices—which I will get into more detail in a bit.

I knew when I attended The Golden Lamb meeting years ago that good things were going to come out of Kelly Kohls and I am very proud of the very good work she has done.  It is far from easy to stand up to organized labor the way she has, but her district is much, much better for it.  If you watched the video above, you learned that Springboro’s per pupil costs are on a downward trend.  They are now into the $7,000 range down from the mid $8,000 range and this is unprecedented for any school board anywhere in Ohio.  They are actually now projecting a budget surplus which is also unprecedented.  In addition, Kelly has managed to bring up the weaknesses in the district rating system and performance of students by setting new standards of performance that are not driven by union controlled lobby expectations, but instead by common sense.

One of the major ways that Kelly has managed to gain control of the costs in Springboro is that she convinced her school board to drop out of the OSBA organization.  The Ohio School Board Association is a membership driven entity that is locked arm and arm with the Ohio Education Association, the largest teacher labor union in Ohio.  The goal of the OSBA is to train new school board members to show the community a unified front while actually taking direction from the teacher union leadership.  As soon as school board members are elected they are whisked away to Columbus for a weekend of “bonding” with other education professionals so that loyalties can be achieved and consensus delivered.  This always works against the tax payers and does absolutely no good in controlling education budgets.  Kelly’s school board has cancelled their membership to the OSBA and instead has started her own leadership group designed to teach school board members to think independently of the OSBA and the OEA.

Another thing that Kelly revealed in her speech that was very illuminating was that Ohio no longer requires teachers to have a master’s degree from college to teach—which is contrary to what many districts have been telling the public when levy pushes are provoked.  If I had a quarter for every time a teacher stated that they had to pursue a master’s degree to become a kindergarten teacher at Lakota there would be enough money to fund that school for decades with the result.  The required master’s degree mandate uttered from public schools has been deliberately misleading.  Ohio for four years now has dropped the requirement for master’s degrees for public education teachers.  The pursuit of master’s degrees has artificially driven up the labor costs of teachers through step increases which amplify budget costs.  Kelly has begun to make decisions from her school board with that knowledge which has led to a savings of the overall district financial requirements.

Of course the labor unions have had many problems with Kelly Kohls.  After the meeting shown above Kelly and I had a good laugh reminiscing about all the reporters we know who eat out of the hand of the OSBA and local teacher unions.  For Kelly it is the Dayton Daily News, a Cox Media division that writes many hit pieces against her.  For me it has become The Cincinnati Enquirer which has been chronicled with much fanfare.  The newspapers are functioning from a position of desperation.  They need content to fill their paper and they often get that content from the local school system.  They need a good relationship with the school system more than they need a relationship with the reformers of education, so loyalties fall in line accordingly.  But in Kelly’s case, especially now that she’s the president of her school board, the media needs her again, but she doesn’t need them—so they are in a precarious situation in Springboro, Ohio.

The unions see the writing on the wall under the leadership of Kelly Kohls, and know that they are losing their power and influence.  There is no public tolerance for a strike in Springboro or any of the Southern Ohio districts, so they know they cannot play that card in the future to extort more money from the district.  Unions are also losing the power of the media, because the negative press they attempt to wield has only helped Kelly Kohls and those like her become stronger and more influential.   So when Kelly indicated that the school board wished to begin negotiations on a contract that is up in June of 2013 the SEA union filed a motion against Kelly’s school board with an “unfair labor practice” complaint.  The union desires to not negotiate the new union contract until the last minute, using chaos to drive up the costs in their favor, which is an old union tactic. Kelly, being a good manager is trying to get the contract negotiated well before hand so that the numbers come out in favor of the district—which is what she is supposed to do.  The action taken by the union is a toothless gesture.  Without question they will attempt the same tactic again and again in the months to come trying to turn the public sentiment against Kohls, but it won’t work.  Kelly will gain in popularity with each labor attempt because normal people admire courage, and respect people who stand squarely against adversity.  So the more the Dayton Daily News writes about the labor dispute in Springboro, the stronger the public will lean in Kelly’s direction.  This has placed the Springboro school board for the first time in perhaps 100 years in a position of strength, and is certainly a modern first in Ohio.  Kelly’s Springboro school board is the shining modern example of how a school board should operate, and they are having immediate and noticeable success that is very dramatic.

The success of Springboro is dispelling all the myths that levy advocates for public education have been using to increase property taxes with an ultimate subtle aim of fulfilling Agenda 21 goals by collapsing suburbs through taxation using progressive groups like labor unions to set the mechanisms in place.  The unfortunate victims have been the children who by Kelly’s charts have been denied proper educations in favor of an education system designed to benefit the adult employees at the expense of youth.  The fight that Kelly has been combating is one that is of the highest honor, because in the history of Ohio far into the future, it will be remembered who fought on behalf of the children, and the future of not only Ohio, Springboro, or education in general, but the future of all mankind in the minds of our youth.  Kelly Kohls is fighting that fight and has been successful.  Now all the children of the world need is more brave souls to join Kelly in this fight against education tyranny so that proper management of tax payer resources can be provided, and the children can directly benefit.  The thieves of public education need to be put out of business, and it takes tough ladies like Kelly Kohls and a handful of others to advance that cause in order to preserve our species from the downward spiral that is currently engulfing us all in public education.

If you are a school board member or would like to become one and need guidance, please feel free to contact Kelly Kohls and the other members of the OSBLC (Ohio School board Leadership Council) at the link below.

http://ohioschoolboardleadershipcouncil.com/board.htm

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The Tea Party is America’s Only Hope: A look into the future of politics

The political entities who claim that the Tea Party is a radical organization of dangerous individuals are speaking relative to their far left positions, and that includes people like Karl Rove—political strategist for the Republican Party.  In a very clarifying example shown below by Glenn Beck and Judge Napolitano it is displayed why Republicans and Democrats are emerging into a single party that we might at this time call “Republicrats” which is a combination of raw communism, progressivism, and soft socialism following the Overton Window of gradual progression toward big government.   To them, the position of the Tea Party does seem radical as it is their desire in both parties to move further and further toward big government until all personal freedoms are completely lost.  The video below should be watched in its entirety, because it is filled with information that is very useful in explaining the direction of politics today.  I personally consider Judge Napolitano to be one of the greatest human scholars of Constitutional understanding alive in America with the exception of Supreme Court Judge Scalia.  Scalia, Napolitano and other members of true American conservatives represent my beliefs and the thoughts of most Americans.  It is the big government radicals on the far left relative to the Tea Party position who consider such conservativism as radical.  It is they who have attempted to move millions of Americans toward an unmanaged government utopia with an end game of far left control.   It is people like Karl Rove who have split the Republican party by strategically taking the party toward the misfits of socialism instead of the direction of American liberty and it is not the task of Americans to buy into the collectivism of party rule—but rather to reject it in favor of Constitutional logic and freedom loving scholarship that paves the way toward self-initiated prosperity.  Watch the clip below carefully and take notes.  This one is very, very important.  The fate of America and each of our lives is described within it.

The failure of Republicans to unseat President Obama can be said to have rested upon the power of collectivism.  Democrats have long ago surrendered self-initiation and are happy to function as a blob of collectivism, so they do not have a philosophical struggle within their party.  They are all to some degree or another socialists.  Some Republicans have taken notice and have allowed themselves to be pulled in that direction for many years.  They have been weak in their convictions and have lost consistently to the radicals on the left.  The best and most recent example is that Mitt Romney felt he had to defend his wealth and success in his run for president, and the campaign became entirely about the bourgeois class against the proletariat which is a communist strategy from the far left.  Some conservatives like Rove, Governor Kasich, and Speaker Boehner have decided that they need to move from their conservative positions to meet the liberals halfway, but often get scammed when liberal politicians refuse to meet them at all creating a situation where the conservatives move to the left, but the left stays where they were.  Once the conservative is with the liberal, the liberal then moves further to the left, which is what has been happening during the Obama Presidency.  Karl Rove is urging conservatives to rally behind the party so they can defeat the mass of liberal collectivism aligned behind politicians like Obama, and the Clintons behaving like insects in an insect colony rallying to the urgings of the queen.  But reaction and compromise is the worse thing that can happen, because it is the strategy of far left radicals to propagate their scam using the Overton Window to continue a collective march to the left.  Rove says, “If you can’t beat them, join them.”  That is where the Tea Party has emerged to fill the void and provide representation to those not represented by the two-party system which is in essence just one leftist leaning party all dancing to the same music.

The successful formula for America is in The Constitution.  It has worked in the past and it can work again, because it was formed by people with a deep philosophical understanding of life and politics that transcends historic barriers or limitations.  The Constitution has most come under attack as Judge Napolitano pointed out in the video above during the Presidency of both Roosevelt’s and Woodrow Wilson.  The deal at the time was a basic disagreement over the style of collectivism that would be imposed on society.  Teddy Roosevelt deeply in love with European hierarchies openly began the process of bypassing The Constitution that is seen to this day by virtually every President which has gradually moved America further to the left as seen in the chart Glenn Beck displayed.  It is not the problem of me, or you dear reader that politicians like Roosevelt, Wilson, and Johnston imposed their personal views—and personal failings into politics and attempted to suppress The Constitution with their own princely influences.  It is not our job as a collective society to cover their follies with more mistakes.  It is our job and duty to return the country back toward the Constitution.

As Judge Napolitano stated, that process will be painful.  It is hoped that perhaps time will merge the two current parties together into some form or Republicrat and that people in the Tea Party will be represented by some sort of Freedom Party that is more representative of the original Anti-Federalists.  In the mean time America may become a three-party system as strategist have abandoned conservativism in favor of short term political victories.  But things will not continue to proceed to the political left without conflict.  I’m not going in that direction, and the people I know in the Tea Party aren’t going either.  It is not my job to follow Boehner or Kasich in a march to maintain party rule, it is the job of the Tea Party to return the nation to Constitutional principles and to chastise those who abandon it in favor of financial security under the covers of collectivism.  Napolitano also discussed the unfortunate end game if the political process fails, and that is that we have an obligation to return the nation back to The Constitution away from the hands of Obama, Kasich, and Boehner with force if needed, which is why we must have the Second Amendment.  That is not a negotiable Amendment, and history proves that politicians cannot be trusted with power.  So guns will always be needed.

In short, the Tea Party exists not as a radical organization hell-bent on old-fashioned ideas, but as a defender of The Constitution where the present political system has failed—immensely.  It is not the collective obligation of American citizens to continue to cover up the false interpretations and radicalism of European loving monarchs who would crown themselves king of America—if allowed.  They are not allowed, and presidents, speakers of the house, governors, congressman, senators, trustees, commissioners are all servants of the people—servants of the republic of America.  If they insist on anything else, they are wrong and it is the obligation of Constitutional protectors like the Tea Party to reset the correct political course through debate or conflict in the unbiased pursuit of justice.  The movement to the political left by both parties can no longer be advanced through name calling and extortion.  It is time to stop that progressive erosion of American value with a firm dedication to Constitutional adherence and not the loose interpretation of radicals who would seek to end The United States through the Overton Window.  CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE.

Click the link below to see how George Washington viewed government, which is what the Tea Party wishes to bring about again.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/18/its-george-washingtons-281st-birthday-here-are-his-5-most-important-warnings-to-congress/

Only an idiot would call the logic of Washington’s arguments “radical.”

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Rich Hoffman Loves Education: Thomas Jefferson did not have sex with Sally Hemings

Contrary to what many think I do not hate education.  In truth I doubt you know dear reader any ten adults combined who works as hard as I do every day to learn something new.  The people I look up to and admire are not movie actors, sports figures and celebrities, but rather scientists like Leonardo da Vinci, and Founding Fathers like Thomas Jefferson.  I admire personalities who continue to grow and learn their entire lives and dedicate their very souls to goodness, and perpetual knowledge.  I find anything less to be disgusting honestly, and I have no pity for less.  In that regard I felt it necessary to provide some context about some of the many bits of mail that I received after my article on the new superintendent Keith Kline who moved from Lakota to West Clermont recently.  The collection of nay-sayers in the wake of that article (CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW) collectively assumed that I had no right to say anything about Kline’s movement from one job to another—that it wasn’t any of my business—“that everything that happens in public education doesn’t have to be approved by Rich Hoffman.” Well……………….I beg to differ.  Before I explain why, please do refer to the below article link about the Franklin superintendent who recently rallied against several schools including one where my friend Kelly Kohls happens to be president of the school board in Springboro.  Apparently Arnol Elam was playing Angry Birds on his phone during Kasich’s recent budget proposal because money is not being taken from the poor districts and given to the rich as Elam suggested in a letter he sent to parents urging them to remove Kasich and other legislators who supported the new budget.  Elam should have been paying attention because in fact the opposite is true, much to my displeasure.  (CLICK HERE TO HEAR THE GOVERNOR HIMSELF talk about his budget)  Kelly Kohls and her Springboro school board have done a good job of managing their district without tax increases and is one of the examples that Kasich has been looking at for how all public schools should be run. (CLICK HERE TO SEE KELLY AND I SPEAK AT AN EDUCATION EVENT.  But Elam has other motives.  He doesn’t like Kelly Kohls because of her open campaigning for Senate Bill 5 a few years ago, and he doesn’t like the conservative governor.  He represents the typical labor union radical that is in public education these days, and it is people like him that have brought me to my conclusions about public education.

http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/news/franklin-schools-under-investigation/nWPmZ/

Below is a clip of what Kelly has been able to do as President of Springboro schools.

If public education were about actually teaching children, I would be all for it.  If little boys wanted to grow up to become Thomas Jefferson and little girls Annie Oakley or Amelia Earhart I would support public education in less than one second.  Instead, public education inspires young people to be more like Kim Kardashian and Honey Boo Boo.  When I speak against public education and college it is not because I don’t love learning.  It is because those institutions are reeking with liberalism and are teaching our youth everything wrong.  They are filled with teaching positions held by liberals scared of the real world and in no position to teach the youth of American anything!  The evidence of this liberal presence in all tax payer funded schools is overwhelming, and is vastly ignored by the adult population because the knowledge is inconvenient.  Parents fear losing their day time babysitting service, which is all public education really amounts to these days—which is quite tragic.

Many people today would be shocked to learn that in the year 1636 Harvard was founded by Congregationalists to train for ministers.  Yale in 1701 and Dartmouth in 1769 were founded with the same intention.  The College of William and Mary was founded to train Anglican ministers.  In fact many of the early education institutions in America particularly those guided by minds like Thomas Jefferson who founded The University of Virginia as a multi denominational school committed to higher learning, emphasized critical thinking, and a yearning for philosophy in their studies.  Education in the early days of America was committed to more than just landing a good job with a high salary.  The students were encouraged by their teachers to be good people, and to operate under moral conviction.  Education in America during the time of the Founding Fathers intended to elevate the soul of the students through education not to reprogram them into some small-minded perpetrator of liberalism.

It is educators like Arnol Elam who have yelled to the world that good men like Founding Father Thomas Jefferson should be discredited by an affair with his 15-year-old slave Sally Hemmings—because the tenants of progressive philosophy must tear down Jefferson and those like him so that history will not measure progressivism against the philosophy of Scottish Common Sense, that are most guilty of destroying our society with moral depravity and watered down educations.  But guess what?  I measure Progressivism against the philosophy of Scottish Common Sense that founded American very unfavorably, so unfavorably that I reject modern education because of it.

The Scottish School of Common Sense was a school of philosophy that flourished in Scotland in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Its roots can be found in responses to the writings of such philosophers as John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume, where its most prominent members were, among others, Dugald Stewart, Thomas Reid andWilliam Hamilton, who combined Reid’s approach with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. The peculiar influence it had on philosophers elsewhere in Europe, not to mention in the United States, exemplified by the American pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce, is of a considerable magnitude.

One central concern of the school was to defend “common sense” against philosophical paradox and scepticism. It argued that common-sense beliefs govern the lives and thoughts even of those who avow non-commonsensical beliefs and that matters of common sense are within “the reach of common understanding”.[citation needed] The qualities of its works were not generally consistent; Edward S. Reed writes, e.g., “[Whereas] Thomas Reid wished to use common sense to develop philosophical wisdom, much of this school simply wanted to use common sense to attack any form of intellectual change.”[2] 

In regard to the affair of Jefferson and Hemings it is highly unlikely that Jefferson even had intercourse with another woman after his wife died, let alone had an affair with Hemings.  It was largely because of Jefferson that slavery began to be examined as immoral in The United States, steps that Lincoln would later utilize to abolish the practice for the first time in human history.  And Jefferson was NOT having sex with underage girls as progressive modern educators hell-bent on embracing human weakness wish to slander and propagate to further their agenda of social destruction.  Jefferson it would appear—especially once he was over forty, was far more concerned with reading, writing, and scientific thought than plotting ways he could have sex with a woman for a mere two hours of pleasure.  Only an immoral progressive educator would think such a thing—who has nothing going on in their minds or private lives to indicate to them that people think any different from them.

Imagine the typical modern-day school superintendent who has a doctoral degree in education—in liberal studies, in progressive social advancement–that is committed to attacking America’s version of Scottish Common Sense, who don’t even have understanding enough to see that Kasich wasn’t stealing money from the poor to give to rich schools, but that it is the other way around.  Modern education is not about teaching children big ideas about science, philosophy, or even spiritual awareness.  It’s about creating good jobs for progressive minded human beings who seek to impose their small-minded world view onto all tax payers with the blanket assumption that education is universally good—when in fact it only advances thoughts favoring liberalism and rejects common sense entirely.  The product of modern education is bad.  It creates bad, immoral characters, and it is responsible for much of the misery that can be seen around the world to this very day.  It is truly sad that dusty old relics such as the Founding Fathers of The United States were far more intellectually sound with all the limits of their day than the modern educator with far more tools at their disposal—but it’s true.  Educators like Arnol Elam see only one thing—money and progressive causes in the daily conduct of their lives and they disgust me.  I despise having to contribute money to such people with my tax dollars.  I hate that a small portion of my money goes to the salary of Arnol Elam to propagate such disgusting verbiage to his school district that young people will learn and carry into their adulthoods.

There isn’t much in this world that I love more than books.  I read every single day of my life, and most days I read for many hours.  I understand people like Thomas Jefferson, and yearn to see his kind of America.  I do not want to understand people like Arnol Elam.  Educators like that are small people with small minds and they are teaching young people to be small adults—and that absolutely disgusts me.  It is not the job of the American tax payer to throw more money at education so that people like Arnol Elam can have a good job on the public dime.  The job of education is to teach young people how to be successful adults, and that job is not being done.  So in that respect I see every public education issue as my problem because my money is being used to advance it.  If I’m going to pay for public education I’m going to get a return on my investment.  If public education takes my money, they will get my criticism especially when they fail to do the job as I think the job should be done.  My measure for good education is people like Thomas Jefferson who placed education on the highest level of human thought and spent his life learning every day and wanted to share that love of learning with all American citizens.  I do the same, and understand that.  But advocates of a faulty product such as modern education like what Arnol Elam represents are parasites to common sense; they seek to advance the basic tenants of Immanuel Kant and the European Enlightenment.  Jefferson spoke of that same European Enlightenment by saying “the comparisons of our governments with those of Europe are like a comparison of heaven and hell.”  And so too is my idea of education compared to Arnol Elam, it is for this reason that I reject modern education in public and college models.  I see them as lost ships guided far out to sea under the idiocy of modern progressives who built their philosophies off Kant and the European Enlightenment monstrosities.    Such things may sound like disconnected rubbish when attached to superintendents like Arnol Elam, but the roots of progressivism are in his concerns, his political actions to move the city of Franklin to political action against a governor in Kasich that is trying to reform education spending.   Districts being run by my friend Kelly Kohls are cast in a bad light by people like Arnol Elam because it is Springboro that is trying to emerge from the darkness of liberalism that has so infected every single education institution in America, breaking the universal commitment to collectivism which so terrifies progressives.   As a conservative, anti-Federalist, Tea Party loving American, the liberalism being taught in public education is unacceptable and I’m not happy with it.  If I had a choice, I wouldn’t spend one dime of my money on it.  Instead though, because of big mouth, greedy, small-minded educators like Arnol Elam who cries out for more money at every turn to fuel their progressive diatribes my money is taken from me and wasted on liberal institutions in the form of public education without my consent—and that is not acceptable.

So it is not true that I hate education just like it is not true that Thomas Jefferson had an affair with Sally Heming’s.  Both falsehoods have been spread by progressive enemies of Scottish Common Sense in order to advance modern progressive activism rooted in European Enlightenment.    I love education, but I reject the liberal institutions that currently possess those houses of learning.  Instead I advocate individual learning so to bypass the liberal control of the education process so that young minds can return their concerns to common sense and a life-long study of morality and goodness that they can carry not just into a job making them subjects to consumerism, but in every aspect of their lives from being good parents, to responsible voters, to committed community contributors, to thriving human beings.  If education is not concerned with these things, it is worthless.  The evidence to the state of modern education is in the words of Arnol Elam and his cries to steal more money from the rich to fuel his progressive school district toward the destruction of more youthful minds and their last hope for a clean and productive life.

Education is more than cheerleading, band, football practices, and art class.  Education is philosophy, critical thinking, and moral grounding along with igniting a life-long yearning for knowledge.  Education in the state that 2013 America holds is a deplorable excuse for human achievement that does little if anything to advance human progress.  Instead, it seems committed to carrying mankind backwards to the tribal villages of Africa or the human sacrificing city-state of the centrally planned communities of the Aztecs and Mayas.  I wouldn’t offer modern education to a dog I cared about, let alone a child I loved.  So it has no value to me as a viable tax expense and there are few politicians qualified to offer commentary on the subject when their primary concerns in life is the quality of their golf game instead of the quality of their life. Thomas Jefferson did not, and would not have an affair with Sally Heming’s or any other sexual representation of feminine magic.  Such a thought is hard for people who are still intellectually inept to grapple with, but sex is not the only concern for the human mind.  As anyone who has a love of learning can attest to, and has lived a full enough life to tell the difference, books and learning are far more rewarding than sex.  Thomas Jefferson in all probability spent the last 45 years or more of his life sexless completely because his mind was so active.   Modern educators who seek to teach young people about sex in the 4th grade can’t imagine such a person as Thomas Jefferson—and because they can’t are not qualified to teach anybody anything, let alone a child.   Thomas Jefferson to me represents how education should be in America and anything less than his approach is worthless and not worth any amount of money.  If the desire in public education were to carry every child into the life of such a classic founding father, I would support it unequivocally.  Instead, modern deconstructionist education seeks to tear Jefferson down, so that people like Arnol Elam can be seen by the public to be viewed as an equal measure of a man, instead of a money-grubbing thief with their gluttonous eyes on the public treasury.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com