Tag: Julie Shaffer

Why Would Julie Shaffer Launch her Re-election Campaign in a Wine Bar: Bad Decisions, bad behavior, and bad politics hiding behind kids

You would think that a person running for re-election to the school board of Lakota would launch her campaign somewhere smart, like a library or even at the local Barnes and Noble bookstore. But no, Julie Shaffer is running for her fourth term, and from all that vast experience, she picked a wine bar to launch her campaign, which was mentioned in a Journal News puff piece by her long-time associate in the media, Michael Clark. I have a long history with these people, so the irony could never be more obvious. Considering what everyone knows about Julie Shaffer, you’d think she would have known better. There was a National School Board Conference a few years ago where she and others got a lot crazy, and she ended up disgracing herself in many ways. I learned about it from people who were with her and tried to help her clean up after the event. But it goes much further than that. All the local politicians know about it and confirmed it in the aftermath. So, I was never much of a fan of Julie Shaffer, but I treated her fairly in the beginning until she showed herself to be quite a left-winged radical with vicious political intentions that, of course, like they all do, hide it behind the smiling faces of kids. However, the more I learned about her over the years, the more she showed herself to be one of the big problems at Lakota as she intends to bring progressive mindsets to the students. She was one of the first to support genderless bathrooms at Lakota before the alphabet sexual deviancies were announced on the news every day as they are now. 

Let’s just be polite about it: Julie’s condition at that National School Board Conference with other Lakota representatives was not pleasant. It involved severe intoxication and various states of undress, according to witnesses who were there and tried to help her. But there’s more, which came out during the latest drama with the former Lakota superintendent who apparently let people know that he had video of it all on his phone, and people were enjoying it. And knowing what everyone now knows about him; apparently, even he was embarrassed by the behavior of the Lakota leadership at that conference. I personally didn’t see the video; I had no desire to, even though it was an option from those close to the superintendent. We’re not talking about a “Girls Gone Wild” video in the sense that everyone was young and beautiful. These are middle-aged, beat-up potato sacks getting way too crazy when they should have been representing the Lakota district as proper education representatives. So just drinking too much would have been too much. Anything after that, which was a lot, was simply unforgivable. The whole video issue came up as many who had heard this story were wondering why Julie was so willing to give a free pass to what we learned about the former school superintendent. The belief was that she couldn’t afford to cast any opinions about his behavior because she had done equally disreputable acts. With all that in mind, it was baffling that she would launch her campaign at a wine bar to remind everyone of this embarrassing event. She’s a seasoned politician now, so she should have known better. But obviously not. 

This raises the real issue; deviant behavior is often more than what you see on the surface. Over the years, Julie has been one of the biggest cheerleaders for progressive changes while hiding the effort behind a non-partisan school board. School boards are very partisan, often filled with radical democrats with big government ideas about everything and an eye toward spending to match it. And we see how she arrives at these thoughts when you learn about her personal lifestyle. Like many progressive big government people, Julie is attracted to an extensive social safety net because she has problems controlling herself. If you want to be taken seriously as a leader of anything, you just never conduct yourself like she was caught doing at a National School Board Conference. When she says in that Michael Clark “puff piece” that “I believe that this is a fight for the heart and soul of a district that has been a destination district for many years but is being harmed by extremism, politics, and divisiveness.” She’s running in a very conservative district with people who care about things like drunkenness, overt sexual displays of disgrace, and lousy judgment. And like a lot of Democrats, she has been hiding her political tendencies behind the unspoken rules of bipartisanship. These public schools are not for the kids, as people like her claim; it’s for the adults to have free babysitting and to act like a bunch of teenagers when left alone in a hotel lobby while traveling out of town. In that article, she said that “this election will be a decision by our community about what they want Lakota to represent in the future.” 

And that’s why her behavior at school board conferences matters to the rest of us, although we may not want to disgust ourselves with the details. While Julie has worked to attack conservative voices in passive-aggressive ways for years, it’s evident that she has been fighting for the disgrace of children, not the preservation of them. And it shows up in her private actions. Then, like a lot of people who are so inclined to Democrat politics, they seek to hide their bad behavior behind big government mechanisms, which then shield them from reality. And there is a cost to all those big government ideas which Democrats use like a mask to hide what bad people they really are when they think nobody is looking. So, of course, they hate people who judge them for what they are. I wouldn’t call it “right-winged politics” as much as I would call it common sense. Anybody who wants to be a leader of anything should know that even at the late hours of the night when the alcohol with friends is flowing freely, it’s best not to participate and to lead by a higher example. I know many people who travel a lot, and they don’t end up in the compromised state that Julie was, where she had to be put back together by fellow school board members after disgrace had already chronicled the event for posterity. What’s even more stunning than all is that she would bring attention to it even during her campaign announcement. Talk about being tone-deaf. This will be a tough campaign for her, but she can only blame herself. She is offering herself as a leader of Lakota schools and is attempting to say that anybody who judges her behavior is a “right-winged radical.” But to the rest of the world, it’s just the rantings of people who can’t control themselves when they leave home. And the same can be said about her budget decisions as a school board member, where the same rationalization comes into play. And the track record is not a good one at all.

Rich Hoffman

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Lakota Gives Teachers Raises Mandating a Tax Levy in 2022: Lynda O’Conner stands alone against a wave of liberalism

Lakota Schools Seeks a Tax Increase to Cover Their Deficit Spending

I remember watching Brad Lovell’s campaign material on what he thought a school board was for.  I wasn’t going to make a big deal about his naivete, I didn’t care much about the issue so long as Lakota wasn’t asking for more money, but I was embarrassed for him.  He stated he wanted to get elected to the school board to support the leadership staff at Lakota, such as the current superintendent, the treasurer, etc.  The school board’s role is to manage the district and provide that leadership, not to punt to chaos and let the teacher’s union run the school.  And after the late Monday night vote of April 26th, it was only Lynda O’Connor who voted against even more raises for the latest teacher’s contract.  In voting yes, Brad and three other school board members, including the current President Kelley Casper, who is up for reelection this year, have guaranteed that there will be another Lakota tax levy in 2022.  They will wait to put the levy up for a vote because it will be between elections for the school board members.  They’ll have to due to the massive deficit spending that Lakota has been engaging in over the last several years.  Only Lynda O’Conner has shown any interest in managing the money of Lakota.  On the other hand, Brad and Julie Shaffer have turned over all that responsibility to the “leadership team,” which they seem to have forgotten, works for them as elected representatives. 

There were options, with the way that Covid has been, this would have been an excellent time to play chicken with the train of the Lakota Education Association.  They have very little leverage currently to use a strike to dispute a lack of labor contract.  The market conditions being what they are now could challenge a lot of the payroll that Lakota is committed to and force some legacy teachers to retire early.  Parents, after all, have become used to not having a school to take their kids to due to Covid problems, so the brand of Lakota would at least have withstood some scrutiny.  And given that Lakota is a destination community for many people, it would not be hard to replace any fresh out of college teachers and full of vigor for the job, making about half the wages of a legacy teacher of $100K or more.  Those are management decisions, hard ones, but the kind of decisions that we elect school board members to conduct on our behalf.  Instead, what happened was that only Lynda O’Conner had the guts to vote no on a new teacher contract that has unjustified raises contained within it.  The rest of the school board caved to the teacher union demands and have signed us all up for a levy fight next year.  Brad and Kelly are up for reelection this year, so that’s not a good time to put a levy on the ballot.  And in two years, Julie Shaffer will be up for reelection.  That makes next year for a levy to be just suitable for the politics of the school board at Lakota that is much more concerned about making progressive, expensive, and overrated teachers happy rather than working on behalf of the community to keep costs in check in a challenging time.

Many people who are voters in Lakota have been seriously restricted in their professional lives, going without pay increases since Covid started, or they have lost their jobs due to layoffs or forced early retirement.  Because of Covid, more people are working from home, have learned to do other things with their children since schools were closed, and many of these teachers were home sitting around doing nothing. Simultaneously, the pandemic was used politically to reshape our society into a more progressive one.  The voters aren’t going to be too happy to hear that all these teachers are getting a raise and because Lakota didn’t have the money to give them a raise, it’s going to force a tax increase proposal on their property taxes.  Due to Joe Biden tax increases, increases in the cost of gas, government tampering with market economy needs, and unemployment that is much higher than when Trump was in the White House, Lakota is planning to demand more money for their lack of leadership with deficit spending. 

Lakota had it made; they had a community of high-income wage earners with expensive property and many businesses to tax.  They had declining enrollment, which meant they were bringing in more money than they were spending, by quite a lot. That’s why there hasn’t been a levy request since 2013, when the last levy was passed.  However, Lakota has managed to deficit spend its way anyway by giving teachers raises over time that wasn’t needed.  They are mandating that they now have to ask the community for more money because of their lack of leadership in a changing public education landscape.  The pre-Biden administration problems of charter schools are still present.  The social movement to attach tax money to children instead of the school district is still a hot topic, and it’s going to change shortly out of necessity.  School board members like Brad, Julie, and Kelley at Lakota can drag out the inevitable for a while, but it’s coming quickly, and these reckless spending habits that they are so used to engaging in will be a thing of the past.  Soon, Lakota will have to compete with other districts in a very real way, and this kind of behavior in a very suddenly cost-conscious culture where everything is now getting more expensive due to the reckless spending of the Biden administration will change voting patterns dramatically. 

But you could hear in Brad’s voice the problem from before he was even elected to the school board. Like many people who run for that office, he has no idea what it’s supposed to be doing.  He likes to be someone important in the community; it gives people who want attention something to do. Still, the hard stuff is punted to a superintendent supposed to be working for the school board as the source of leadership.  These people want to do the job as long as nothing hard comes up, such as voting on the teacher’s contract.  But as we have witnessed, only one school board member voted against it, and she was put under tremendous pressure to vote otherwise.  People like Brad Lovell care more about school board uniformity, even if it’s the wrong answer, than in the proper response and arriving there through debate.  Then, of course, the LEA teacher’s union knows this going into negotiations.  They know they have the votes to approve a raise for their members before the negotiation even begins.  Someone like Lynda O’Conner can try to negotiate and draw a hard line, but there was no incentive for the teachers to give up anything.  They only know to take, take, take.  They know Brad has a wife employed by the school, that he would like to see increases to the payroll budget because it ultimately helps him through his wife.  And that is the truth of the matter, something they won’t talk about in the newspapers or nightly news.  So prepare yourself for a fight, next year at Lakota, there will be a tax levy.  Due to this school board making terrible decisions and spending money that they didn’t have, they were confident they could steal it from the taxpayers due to their selfishness and sheer stupidity.

Cliffhanger the Overmanwarrior


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The Losers of Lakota: Ray Murray and Julie Shaffer are the keys to the bank vault the teacher’s union wants to rob

Let’s just say that the election for the local school board members at Lakota has been a miserable experience for me. Not because on the Republican side of the voting selection there aren’t good candidates. There are, Lynda O’Connor and James Hahn are very good candidates whom I am sure if both are elected together would represent us very well on the school board against a hostile teacher’s union that is always looking to wreck the budget we all supply that school with our hard earned tax money. But along the way, doing research of all the positions for all the other candidates, and the people attached to them, it has just disgusted me. That would of course be the plight of Ray Murray and Julie Shaffer. Julie is currently on the board. Ray lost his seat a few years ago and now wants it back. Both Ray and Julie are part of the budget deficits that I have complained about over a decade so I have never been big fans of them personally. But it has only been until this election that I did any real look into the quality of their positions, and what I have learned by asking lots of people, and reading lots of things is that they are just complete losers I wouldn’t hire to wash my car. They are far worse than I thought they were, and it has been depressing to learn.

Looking at all these candidates the way I would in hiring for a new position for some important job, which a school board management position is, it is clear that Julie Shaffer and Ray Murray shouldn’t be anywhere near a job consideration due to their severe ineptness as people. No wonder they are such bleeding-heart liberals. They can’t afford to be anything but, and that is not doing any children in the Lakota school district any justice, which angers me considerably. They should have respect for the rest of us to not waste our time. Now, for me, Julie Shaffer lost me a long time ago when she and I debated school topics on WLW radio. Back then the school board was Joan Powell’s and she was building her little coalition of liberal union suck asses and Julie was part of it. Electing a school board is to hire representatives for the taxpayers to negotiate on our behalf. Not to be stooges for the labor union which already is well represented in school board activities. They don’t need help. But the way Joan operated until she stepped down a few years ago was to be a stooge and Julie was part of that culture, which is why everything operated as a deficit. Of course she couldn’t debate me on anything anywhere, in public forums, on the radio, anywhere, so Joan, Julie, the previous school superintendent along with many mad mom Lakota socialites tried an early version of the “me too” movement on me with the help of the newspaper reporter Michael Clark. I’m still angry about that and likely will be for the rest of my life. It showed me just what lowlifes these people really were who were spending massive amounts of money that we give them so recklessly and maliciously. I can handle people who come after me, which Julie clearly did, but in so doing she showed what she was really about. After the last levy since they stopped asking for money at Lakota due to declining enrollment, I haven’t paid much attention to her or the school, so Julie has been off my mind pretty much. However, after the last debate done this year for this election I was reminded just how bad for the job that she is and to be honest I am embarrassed that she even lives in my community, let alone sits on the board representing me as a decision maker. I saw her recently at Sam’s Club in Tri-County and thought about confronting her about things I had learned about her bad behavior regarding extracurricular Lakota events that were quite embarrassing, but her husband was with her, so I left it alone. I don’t want to be the guy that destroys her family. But I wouldn’t vote for her for anything if there was only one name on the ticket.

And she’s the good one. Ray Murray I have learned is even worse than she is.

Ray Murray I always thought of as kind of the Juan Williams of the Lakota school board. I disagreed with his politics but thought he was a nice enough guy to not run through the ringer. He’s a neighbor of mine, he lives close to me and I see him around. My wife likes him a lot and always has. But I kept hearing things about him from people around the community, especially the business guys that Ray wasn’t such a good guy. Well, I had no reason to think otherwise until he threw his hat in the ring for another run at school board then heard his alarming comments at a recent public forum regarding budgets and his views on transgender politics. So I followed the leads where they went and sure enough found out that Ray has drugs in his past and that he has had some serious financial problems. I don’t want to embarrass him; people go through things in life. Some of those problems were years ago, but some were quite recent. If he wasn’t running for school board, I might slide a $100 bill under the door so he could buy lunch, but I sure as hell wouldn’t elect him to a managing position of millions and millions of dollars at Lakota. He was part of the problem before, and knowing what I do now, I wouldn’t give him the keys to a demolition derby car. I sure wouldn’t let him near my wallet. He obviously has a hard time with money, and we’d be crazy to put him anywhere near some. His comments at recent Lakota school board debates are just the tip of the iceberg. He is a walking financial disaster. Look him up on Courtview for yourself at the Butler County Clerk.org site. You’ll see what I mean.

Then there is the reporting, if we had decent local reporters, we should know a lot of these things. Honestly, a local blogger who is busy with millions and millions of other things shouldn’t be the one covering these stories. I’m not even talking about the partisan angle, which from my point of view, the Journal News reporters, well all the Cox Media people are deeply in bed with all the progressive activism that is going on all over southern Ohio, and they sit on stories that might make their people look bad. A lot of this information about Ray should have been covered by them years ago, and maybe if it had, we wouldn’t have had some of the very contentious levy battles that we did, which was very costly to the community. Their coverage has been and continues to be disingenuous to the community who would like to read their articles but have learned that they can’t trust the content.

I will be glad when the election is over because I simply don’t like seeing and hearing from these losers as much as I have over these last several weeks. These people have not been representing me as a voter but have been serious partisan hacks hidden behind a mask of bipartisanship which was always a complete lie. I’m not sure we can believe anything that comes out of Julie Shaffer’s mouth and certainly not out of Ray Murray. I’m not even sure he ever lived in Chicago at this point, let alone was a cop as he has been saying. I was so disappointed in him that I just stopped looking to confirm. The other topics I learned about left me sick. Its nice that we have some options in this election and we’ll see if people show up and actually vote. However, the process up to this point has just been a disgusting look into a bunch of losers at Lakota who should be hiding in the cracks of society instead of being placed on a pedestal. But of course, those who want to steal from us want a key to the door of the bank vault, and for them, Julie Shaffer and Ray Murray are the incompetent stooges who would let them in and to take everything and then some, then ask for a levy from the tax payers to refill the vault. That is the game that has been going on for a long time and the more you learn about the whole thing, the angrier anybody would get about it. And that’s certainly where I am at.

Rich Hoffman

 

Bipartisanship on the Lakota School Board is a Fantasy: Why being a Republican matters when managing money is the objective

One thing that is very obvious, especially this time around within the Lakota school district, and specifically Butler County, Ohio is this complete falsehood that any school board is a non-partisan entity sacrificing their time and energy for children. Wrong! School boards, especially the one at Lakota, are extremely partisan and they want to appear that way so they can get elected in Butler County to anything, due to the conservative electorate demographics that are required. When board members past and present like Ray Murray, Julie Shaffer and many others declare that there should never be an “R” or a “D” next to the name of a school board member they are wearing a mask of falsehood meant to deceive us all. They want to project that school boards giving children an education is “bigger” than politics and that people like me are trying to divide our community with partisan bickering. They are liars, and thieves, and no better. I would go on to say that they are scum of the earth because of their deceitful nature. School boards are nothing but partisan because of the liberal element that comes with every government school due to labor union membership. You can’t accept as an endorsement the school labor union but not the endorsement of the local political party and expect to make a case for neutrality on it, which is precisely what those two idiots have been doing.

Think about it, during this election season which ends on Tuesday November 5th 2019 we have continued hearing about this big budget surplus from Lakota of over $100 million, and rising. Ray Murray and Julie Shafer have been critical of the Republican endorsements of both Lynda O’Connor and James Hahn because in their view the school board is a non-partisan collection of community members, yet they were proud to get the endorsement of the LEA labor union. Julie will even say that she is a registered Republican. Well, all those statements are is a trick or treat mask. The labor union wants those two losers (Julie and Ray) on the board to make contract negotiations easier for them as Lakota blows a ton of money on a $200 million long term facilities plan entailing rehab, renovation, and replacements of buildings and much more which is not in that 5 year forecast that everyone has been beating on their chest in regards to that $100 million surplus. Believe me, the liberals on the board, wither or not they call themselves Republicans or Democrats already have that money spent, which is the cause of this emergency prior to the election for proper school board members.

Finally we have a choice to get a three vote majority. If either Ray or Julie get elected, that $200 million project is getting greenlit and that $100 million surplus is gone. If voters stay home that night and don’t vote, the endorsed labor union candidates will get elected and this chance to safeguard the budget will fly right out the window and it won’t take but a short time for us to go into another levy fight. While its true, I’d rather think about other things than this stupid Lakota school issue, because honestly, I’ve never been a big fan of the work government schools do with children. If we are going to have a big, giant black hole of a government taxation agency programming our children into liberal propaganda, then at least we can elect a school board to manage the money with true Republicans who are fiscal conservatives, or at least can read a balance sheet and understand what the treasurer tells them.

I’d rather not dig into the lives of these people, and I call them losers for a good reason. Especially the more I learn about them. Between Ray and Julie, I’ve heard enough. I didn’t have a very high impression of them before this election, and now that we’ve been through a few months of campaigning, I’ve learned enough to be disgusted by them. I have no question that they are liars and completely inadequate in managing any sum of money. Julie Shaffer may be a registered Republican, but she doesn’t vote like one. She is clearly one in name only, and she want’s to keep that mask on to even have a shot at winning anything in Butler County, just like her predecessor Joan Powell and the many others following in her wake who have pretended to be Republicans only to turn into big, sloppy liberals. You bet it matters what political party they are affiliated with, that’s how we measure their basic values and getting the respect of a political party enough to get an endorsement means a lot.

As I’ve said before, school board members are our representatives to protect our interests. How can they do that if it is the enemy of our interests who endorse them? And yes, the teacher’s union is the enemy of our interests. When they negotiate for the next union contract in a few short years the leaders of the teacher’s union aren’t thinking about the kids, they are only thinking of making more money and if they don’t get it, they will threaten to strike. They won’t care one bit if the kids don’t have a classroom to go to or if they are serving a good example as adults while they negotiate with the school board. The teacher’s union want weak people to negotiate with which is why they are endorsing Julie Shaffer and Ray Murray. None of them want Lynda and Jim on a board together, you can bet that because they will vote no against a lot of liberal ideas the teacher’s union wants to do with our tax money, such as implement transgender bathrooms while they blow through that $100 million surplus like gambling addicts at a casino.

The only reason anybody would say school boards should be non-partisan is because they want to wear a mask to hide their true intentions behind. Julie is no conservative and Ray Murray is even less of one than she is, and they don’t want to talk about it because they want a chance to get elected. By making politics a non-issue they can continue to deceive voters into thinking it doesn’t matter, or placate them to stay home on election night while the vermin of the teacher’s union go out in droves and vote for losers so that their next contract negotiation is in the bag along with those $200 million facility improvements that nobody is talking about yet, quite on purpose. Are those harsh words, is it fair to talk about the character flaws of Julie and Ray during an election for a silly school that sticks its nose in our lives in very intrusive ways, all the time? You bet your ass it is. These are nothing but robbers who want to steal money from the rest of us and I get tired of them lying to my face, and to the rest of us. Where is Julie going to find $200 million for those facility plans if she can’t even find her pants? I can promise that the endorsed Republicans on the board, especially Lynda O’Connor and James Hahn would never be involved in such embarrassing situations, you know why? Because they are Republicans, real ones. That’s not to say that they are made of the robes of Jesus, but they are pretty much what they say they are, even in social situations. The politics of any candidate matters and there is a reason the LEA wants people to wear the masks of bi-partisanship—it’s so that they can rob the bank of Lakota and hold our kid’s hostage while they steal from all of us. And if that sounds harsh, I would argue that its not harsh enough.

Rich Hoffman

Julie Shaffer and Ray Murray Want Transgender Bathrooms at Lakota: Lynda O’Connor and Jim Hahn could stop them if elected

Another thing that voters need to understand in the Lakota school district as they vote on November 5th 2019 to cast a ballot for new school board members, is where they stand on the transgender bathroom policy. Clearly by the video below, and on many other issues there are two right thinking candidates, and two who are out of their minds. The two good ones are Lynda O’Connor and James Hahn. The two bad ones are Ray Murray and Julie Shaffer. What makes Ray and Julie bad are several things, but for this particular circumstance its their policy of allowing sex to determine the focus of a taxpayer funded education that makes them such villains. Lynda and Jim are against the proposal of taking away parental rights from their children by allowing transgender kids in locker rooms and in the general bathrooms. Transgender politics is a dangerous progressive platform that is driven by government schools and is meant to erode away family value so that children are raised under the umbrella of an all intrusive government. The issue is not about fairness, its about family destruction. Listening to Ray and Julie below I would say they are not savvy enough to understand the politics behind the movement. And that makes them even more dangerous to the Lakota school board, because they are pawns to a progressive policy without even knowing it. But if left to them, if Julie and Ray are on a board together, you can bet they will be voting for transgender bathrooms and locker rooms. Listen to them for yourself:

In many ways Lakota dealt with this years ago, and Lynda O’Connor was part of the leadership in creating an option for transgender kids with a separate bathroom. The continuation of this issue proves that the agenda is not about keeping kids from committing suicide because boys want to be girls, and vice versa. It’s about eroding away the values of students into instruments of progressive thought and turning them into activists for change into a liberal, anti-traditional family direction. To be clear, Jim and Lynda working together on the school board would prevent further transgender issues from becoming a distraction. Ray and Julie would perpetuate the issue and vote to allow mixing boys and girls into general bathrooms and locker rooms. They are weak people who are not very smart making them easy victims of the aggressive teacher’s union. The union has supported both of them because they know that Julie and Ray are easy targets for their agenda of progressive considerations. To prevent this issue both Lynda and Ray would need to be elected because currently Lynda is outvoted on the board two votes to three for approval. The only thing stopping it currently is this upcoming election.

Its hard for many people to admit, including school board members, but education is much less about teaching kids anything, but is more about changing them into progressive activists. In many ways, no discussion about sex should be going on with taxpayer funded efforts. Liberals have been pushing for years to continue lowering sex education among student populations into younger and younger ages. In many cases students aren’t even thinking about sex as public schools are proposing teaching about it in the fourth and fifth grade. Progressive planners at the state level who make up these curriculums know that most children are home alone and bored out of their minds as both parents work these days. And when kids are thinking about sex, they are easy to control especially at school because the teachers become the adoptive parents. Julie isn’t thinking in such conspiratorial terms and Ray is too busy smoking pot and digging his hands into the pavement of Chicago streets to think very deeply about anything. But those are stories for other articles. For this, they just do what they are told by the union. And believe me, the leadership within the unions are all about advancing the progressive anti-family national position of their liberal organization.

Transgender issues are a minority and to provide them with a bathroom to use is fair. Anything beyond that is disruptive to the other students. I could go back to my school days and tell lots of stories as these issues were just becoming part of the narrative. I was a very good athlete and obviously all the school coaches wanted me to play on their programs whether it was basketball or football. I liked playing the games, but I hated, HATED undressing and dressing in the locker rooms. I hated it with kids of the same sex. I can’t imagine it with people who were openly gay and girls who were claiming to be boys. Nudity for me was always a very vulnerable position. I grew up going to church every week. My mom was a housewife and we had a very traditional family structure so I had clear definitions of right and wrong and not being vulnerable around strangers.

We have learned over the last decade or so however that sexual manipulation is actually very common among coaches and students and creating conditions where kids are getting nude is meant to teach them to lower their defenses. With me, I never did. I just didn’t play the sports, because I didn’t want to be stripped of my clothing and assimilated into a Borg Continuum that they called a “team.” I would say that most people reading this are at least my age or older, so they likely had similar experiences and all this modern talk about transgender locker rooms and bathrooms is beyond their understanding. But its quite an obvious attack on our lifestyles in America and its on purpose. It is happening at Lakota. But it is happening everywhere that the teacher unions touch taxpayer money.

When Julie Shaffer says that over 70% of students are thinking about committing suicide, she is talking about 70% of something like 2% of the student population, overstated on purpose to exacerbate the issue for overly emotional people. Rather than deal with the exceptions the progressive position is to use the exceptions to change the standard and drag more and more kids into the confusing condition of sexual identity when most of them can’t even read a book or do basic math. And that is the real crime. Even if nobody wants to believe that progressives at the state and federal level are attempting to destroy the American family with these transgender policies, the truth of the matter is that while we are talking about these issues, kids aren’t learning what they should be, so a change is desperately needed if we are to save them at all from these dangerous educations. What is absolutely certain is that if either Julie or Ray are elected to the Lakota school board, then they will have the votes to advance this agenda. They both support it, you heard it from their own mouths. But if Jim and Lynda are elected, then the issue will be held off and parents will retain their rights to at least manage their children’s sexuality as they should have the responsibility for. Its not the school’s place to stick their noses into such a small topic of the human experience and anybody who says otherwise is looking to limit the intellect of young people with such a trivial topic to consider. Which to my mind should be a crime. But for now, its at least subject to a vote and with an election, we can stop the continued damage.

Rich Hoffman

The Timid Lakota School Board Candidates, Julie Shaffer and Ray Murray: Being a cop doesn’t automatically make a person an expert on courage

With a big school board candidate election coming up this year at Lakota in southwest Ohio the differences are quite obvious between them. Of the topics most talked about at a recent Meet the Candidates evening at the VOA Miami University Lecture Hall on October 22nd 2018 the topic of arming the teachers to prevent another mass shooting, especially at a large, affluent school like Lakota, and the various ways of looking at that problem was very well defined. Lynda O’Connor and James Hahn had the obvious conservative approach to things, self-reliance, and solution-based results at the point of danger whereas Ray Murray and Julie Shaffer were obvious liberals who believe in big government, passivity, and some kind of prayer to avert danger. Of them Ray had the most ridiculous answer to the question of arming teachers in the classroom, although Julie Shaffer wasn’t far behind with her 22% of shooters hit their targets under duress. Well, that’s 22% better than not having a gun. What a lunatic. But her thinking was very much captured in Ray’s statement which can be seen below, and it took everything I had to sit there and listen respectfully.

I get tired of people like Ray, people who are obviously timid peaceful people lecture the rest of us how society should be constructed to their sensibilities, then selling it as if being a police officer at some point in time gives him the right to say such a thing. As he told his story about wanting to dig into the concrete to get away from a firefight when he was a cop in Chicago all I could think of was the word “wimp.” Now that’s not a politically correct term, but lets face it, that’s what we all thought of it and if we didn’t, we would call ourselves liberals, people who count on some institutional system to avert our fears about the things in life that scare us. Just because Ray was a cop doesn’t make him some magical man of authority on the subject. Lots of people become cops for all the right reasons, and when they get shot at, they learn perhaps that the job is not for them. It can be scary, but for some people, being shot at is exhilarating and they are the best that they can be when danger is presented. I’m sure we have those types of people working at Lakota and it is they who should be carrying a gun. If Ray is too scared, well that’s fine. We don’t want him digging into the hallways of Lakota if there is a firefight. We want someone to engage the target, so I get it, Ray and Julie are not the people we want armed. But when a bad guy shows up, somebody needs to meet them while we wait for the police to arrive, because the body count will be measured in seconds of engagement, not minutes.

Speaking for myself I am an adrenaline junkie. I have been shot at and had guns pointed at me, many, many times. I am a little too crazy for the structure of the military or the police force but unlike the institutional perspective of Ray Murray and Julie Shaffer there are other ways that people get shot at in life. For a time, I was a repo man during the years that a lot of people go to the military repossessing cars from deadbeat owners who often become violent when they learned you were there to take their property away. I volunteered for every assignment I could because I thought it was exciting and when gunfire did break out, I thought it was pure heaven. Being that close to a dangerous situation was fun to me and I couldn’t get enough of it. I was also a bouncer at a night spot I worked at around the same period of my life. I wasn’t yet 21 years of age, yet I was throwing out drunks, breaking up fights, and taking fights to safe places with people much older and bigger than me. And in those fights guns came out all the time and I never thought twice about crying about it or digging into the pavement while bullets flew around. I’ve seen people get shot, and I’ve seen people die. And all that occurred in the private sector. I once knew a judge of very high rank in the city of Sharonville and when I got into trouble, he helped me out. It was a good arrangement and I learned a lot from it. But why did he help me, well, people who love danger as much as I did, and still do are hard to find. And he appreciated that trait and thought it valuable enough to cut me some slack when things did go wrong. Let’s just say that.

I tell that little bit of the story to say that some people love danger and they want to help others get away from it. And we need to empower those people to stop crimes before they happen. It’s better to have someone smashed up and in the hospital sometimes than to play everything safe and leave the problem to the institutions where some pot smoking loser kid who knows they are going nowhere in life decides to go shoot up a school. By the time Ray and Julie’s police arrive, 5 to 20 kids could be killed, because that is the kind of world we are living in. And you’d be surprised at the kind of people who hear a gun shot and will run straight through the bullets to stop the carnage because they have a natural inclination to do well while in danger.

I thought hard about becoming a cop, or joining the special forces in the military, but honestly, I was never a yes sir no sir kind of guy. I don’t like the structure of those organizations, so I didn’t join, even for the ability to carry a gun and shoot down bad guys. It was tempting, but it wasn’t worth enduring all the silly rules. But don’t assume that being a cop makes someone an expert on gunfights. Personally, I’d love to be in a gun fight, every day if I could. So, Ray is speaking from an experience of a guy naturally timid, and that’s OK. But don’t assume you speak for everyone.

Just a rough bet, but I would say that at least 5% of the employees at Lakota have some bit of the adrenaline addiction that I described about myself. When danger happens, they only think of one thing, engaging it and stopping it. They don’t pay attention to the sounds of the gun fire; they are instead inspired like a fine symphony to conduct their lives to the beat of danger. And if not for those types of people, we would have a much more dangerous type of world in America. I would argue that suppressing those types of people with institutional constrictions has led to far more death than in allowing adrenaline junkies who love justice for all to carry open firearms to engage any potential targets in fractions of seconds than the time it takes to make a 911 call. And that again is proof of how ridiculous Julie Shaffer and Ray Murray have been as school board members. They make decisions based on their timid perspectives while the real solutions are handcuffed behind institutional virtue. To assume that everyone in the world is just as timid as they are is more dangerous than arming teachers. And that is what nobody is putting into perspective, that is, perhaps until now.

Rich Hoffman

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Ray Murray Thinks it will take 38 Years to Spend Lakota’s $100 Million Surplus: Why people like he and Julie Shaffer should never be in charge of a budget

$100 million is a lot of money to liberals who only see future pay increases for subpar work leading to easy labor union contract negotiations. And clearly one school board member, Julie Shaffer displayed at a recent meet the candidate’s night at the VOA Miami University Campus Lecture Hall how little she knows about money. Her partner in such a perspective was Ray Murray, the former school board member coming back for more and local pastor pontificated that we wouldn’t—couldn’t spend that much money of a surplus for 38 years, so to his utterances why not give it all away. Now you can see dear reader why it’s dangerous to elect these kinds of people into a management of our tax money. Instead of respecting that money and understanding that the surplus wasn’t really one at all, but a debt leverage problem that needed attention, they tried to paint the fiscal conservative on the board, Lynda O’Connor as a Chicken Little for pointing out that deficit spending is not a healthy condition. No wonder the teacher’s union is licking its chops to get Ray and Julie back on the board and managing their contracts a few years out. They already have that money spent whereas Lynda and the newcomer James Hahn understand that $100 million is not that much money, especially when you look at the overall budget needs.

I did get to talk to Matt Miller the Lakota superintendent and the very good treasurer Jenni Logan, recognized throughout the state of Ohio as the very best in her field, and they assured me that they were going to tackle the deficit spending problem. Sure, it’s fun to spend money like there’s no tomorrow, but smart people like Jenni, and Lynda understand that $100 million as a surplus isn’t much when the operating budget is around $160 million per year, where the only product is educating students, (or babysitting them) and they aren’t doing a very good job at that either, getting a recent poor report card from the state that shows money does not improve results. The teachers need to work harder and worry less about transgender bathroom policies.

I was encouraged to see many friends from the business community not sitting this election out, they are not impressed with the $100 million surplus either. They are wondering why Lakota can’t lower their tax burden if they are operating at such a surplus and not considering spending pauses so that they could continue to build up elements of our community that really matter, jobs and recreation that make a community what it really is, and not just a cesspool of employment for a liberalized labor union trying to program our children into future Democrats. Had they not been there this election might have a different tone, but even the spending addict Julie Shaffer had to watch her mouth so not to sound “too” Democrat in such a conservative district even with pro spending liberals showing out in full force to support future contract negotiations. The smart people want to see James Hahn elected instead of Ray or Julie because that would put a third conservative on the board and would help manage that surplus responsibly. But if left to Ray and Julie, to Lynda’s point, the money will all be gone in around 5 years. Jenni gets it. But Matt didn’t look so happy to see me, and not so excited about focusing on the deficit spending aspect. Elections have consequences and a lot of people are waiting to see how this one turns out.

The best thing to do with the money would be to lessen the burden on future taxpayers to inspire more investment and continued growth. What is lost on Ray and Julie as to the role of the school board in the community is that they not only have to manage the quality of the school, but the cost and to understand the balance between the two. The way it has been, which has sickened me to my core, is that school districts leverage their power to tax against future investment. If you want to play in their school district then they expect you to pay, which is something I will be covering much more in subsequent articles. I can understand the tension in the room at that candidate’s forum. I understand idealistic people with a bloodthirsty zeal to support their school system without understanding how the cheese is made behind the scenes. It’s much easier to just focus on kids and transgender bathrooms, whether or not busing is available and the quality of the sports program. But the question remains, what makes a school district good, is the businesses that attract jobs and good quality applicants who need housing, places to eat, and shop. Or is it the schools that we pour millions and millions of dollars into that just go to overpriced teachers teaching our children radical leftist political activism only to have those kids grow up and to move away. I would say it’s the businesses that come first then the schools that reflect the quality of a well-managed community. And that is something no school system wants to admit to, because it would destroy their extortion racket that they have politically on a community, and financially.

There is a reason so many real estate people are involved with pro levy endeavors, or government labor union types. It’s because behind the scenes schools leverage themselves into the business community with subtle threats directly attached to their ability to tax. Pay or be destroyed, or don’t do business altogether. Being in pro education anything groups like I was last night the people are not the risk takers who go out and obtain financing for some next new great thing, they are just average people who want to feel what they are doing by investing in Lakota will make their kids like them when they grow up. They want to think that the education system will fix all their deficiencies as people. That is certainly the case of Julie Shaffer and her past protégé Joan Powell who were part of those upside-down deficit spending habits that almost destroyed Lakota and the community it sits in. The reason there is a $100 million surplus now is because so many kids grew up and away and new kids did not replace them, so Lakota has declining enrollment that will continue into the future, and that took the pressure off our budget tremendously, but the deficit spending has continued and will so long as there is a three vote majority against proper budget management.

As Julie said trying to defer blame from herself, school boards don’t pass levies, they don’t demand further tax increases. They leave it up to the voters. But what school boards do however is mismanage the money we give them. They cave into labor union demands for ever increasing rates of pay that is not connected to any performance standards. And when Julie won’t take her part of the blame for the deficit spending and when Ray, who was there all along thinks it is party time at Lakota, that they have 38 years to spend that $100 million surplus, well there is the problem. We have a chance to fix it with this election, but people are going to have to show up to vote. If they don’t then the same deficit spenders will be in place, the labor unions will love it because Julie and Ray would gladly approve a contract negotiation because they don’t have the guts to deal with a strike or bad press for standing up for the taxpayers. And they will lead the charge against the business community to twist their arms into silent approval or else boycotts from the radical union members will come after their brand with a fury. And none of those questions were asked at the candidate forum because as we all know, it’s something that people just don’t talk about. But it is every bit the core of the problem.

Rich Hoffman

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Monroe Schools Plays it Safe: One of the many reasons that Julie Shaffer has to go

I was very happy to learn that James Hahn, who is running for the Lakota school board is aligned with the Trump plan to allow concealed carry in the Lakota school district to stop potential threats to children at the point of danger. Lynda O’Connor is as well. If people who normally don’t vote in Lakota oriented elections within Butler County actually showed up to vote this November, there is the potential that this important program could be enacted at Lakota. However, as long as Julie Shaffer sits on the board, inaction and liberal policy making will continue, dangerously well into the future. Lakota like most districts without such a concealed carry policy will remain victims, and as the Monroe school system reminded us this past week, the danger is ever present.

Of course, the alternative to under preparation for moment to moment dangers is over reaction, and to their credit, Monroe schools in southwest Ohio has been very aggressive in monitoring social media accounts and cracking down on every little threat, which the Wednesday alarm turned out to be this past week. The alarm was real, but the threat wasn’t credible. Better to be safe than sorry. Yet a few years ago Monroe schools was accused of going to far digging into the text messages between students which led to the police isolating a young man and making an example out of him for a very minor commentary on his cell phone. For that the kid was suspended and had his cell phone confiscated by the police and was isolated within the student population for “security.” Better to ruin the reputation of one kid than to have a bunch of dead kids due to a rash of violence would be the reasoning. But that is what state controlled security looks like, they are watching everything we do even outside of the classroom, because that is where the roots of threats start and must be detected.

As all trained shooters know however is that the best way to deal with violence isn’t in suspending the liberty of all your students or voters, but in dealing with the problem when it occurs. Just doing the little things right, such as diligence on security check ins, following up on rumors with logic, and carrying guns for when and if a threat emerges so that it can be dealt with right then and there, not five to ten minutes later once the police arrive. That is after all the reason that our Constitution promotes private people carrying guns, so that the other aspects of the Constitution can be protected, such as unlawful searches and seizures.

Given the Monroe approach, which is keeping threats off the radar, but it’s always running all over privacy rights all in the name of safety, and that is the problem. Is that really what we want to teach our children, that their rights can be always superseded by the state need to protect them, when in fact they have a right and obligation to protect themselves? Of course, I would say not but this is a question for the general population. For most people safety is the limit of their concern, all they care about is whether or not their kids come home from school, and shallow thinking politicians will be happy to give them the minimum of their concern requirements. But at a cost, philosophically, and legally. Should the state take responsibility for safety or is it the task of each and every individual. Leave the math, the reading, and the history to the schools, but for the parents and school administrators, its their job to make sure things remain safe.

I’ve debated Julie Shaffer on WLW radio before, and in other forums and let me just say as politely as possible, that type of deep dive conversation is not within her intellect. She’s a pretty shallow stream, not very deep. For her, so long as Lakota, or any school system prevents mass shootings by intruding on the rights of the students and their parents, she’s fine with that, even if it does push kids into accepting that everything they do in life can fall under the purview of the state all in the name of safety and security. So long as something can be deemed “safe,” people like Shaffer can justify personal intrusion of the students. That is why she led the school board at Lakota to a stall out on the Trump initiative to arm teachers in the schools with concealed carry hoping to run out the clock on the inevitable act of violence that any district with 16,000 kids might embark on. Its safer to turn the responsibility over to the state and throw the rights of the students out the window. And when they grow up, they will then vote for the same policies because its all they know.

Lucky at Monroe this past week the threat wasn’t credible. But one of these days it will be, whether its there, or at Lakota, or some other big-name school in the famous southern Ohio districts outside of the I-275 loop. Its easier for shallow school board members to kick the can down the road and let someone else solve that problem for them even if it does step all over individual rights—because on the political left, that is the agenda anyway. At Lakota presently three of the five school board members are what we’d consider liberal, while the other two trends toward conservative. If James Hahn could find the votes from a sleepy public, that ratio could be turned around and this whole concept of safety and philosophy would have a chance to be heard. But not until a major change occurs.

Monroe, which is right next to Lakota as far as districts go has shown the trend of the future, monitor everything and at the slightest provocation, over-react. Play the better safe than sorry angle and hope you get to the bad guys before the bad guys get to you. But in the process, lots of innocent people are being scrutinized in ways that would have sent shudders up our spines just a few decades ago where nobody would ever think that such a day of personal intrusion would ever be acceptable. Just think of two more decades into the future where these kids will be running things, and what they will be willing to justify all in the name of safety.

Of course, the cause of the tendency toward violence is very much a current debate. I would say that we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg. Fatherless homes, failures of state care, a lack of personal responsibility where everyone gets a trophy, the legalization of marijuana, the over medication of depression medicine, the failure of religion, all just to name a few are contributing to the concept of violence against classmates that certainly wasn’t a consideration when I was in school. I would place the blame squarely at the feet of liberalism, which most of these school boards are functioning from, so we are mathematically inclined to get more of the bad behavior not less. That means we need to get our approach to this crisis faster than we are now. Kicking the can down the road doesn’t work when you run out of road, and I would say that’s where we find ourselves presently. And the demanded action will require more than a letter sent home to parents.

Rich Hoffman
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