Tag: Lakota Schools

President Trump, Warren Davidson, and George Lang: ‘Nobody Does it Better’

It was good to hear my congressman’s name come up during President Trump’s March for Life speech on Friday. Warren Davidson has been doing such a great job representing me in Washington D.C. that it gave me a great moment of pride in hearing his name mentioned so prominently by the greatest president in American history. But that wasn’t all that Trump was up to that day, additionally he had a meeting of the nation’s mayors at the White House so to inspire them into better things. Also he released on Twitter the new logo for the sixth branch of military service, the Space Force which has come to be under his presidency. For most people any one of those things would have been the climax of their week, even for former presidents. They would have needed a nap after just the mayor’s event. But for Donald J. Trump and those rising to great success under his influence leadership, like Warren Davidson, its just another day at the office. Few people would have known it, even though every network had committed most all of their broadcasting effort toward the effort, but an impeachment trial was going on at Capital Hill by those seeking any way possible to slow this president down. And this coming on the heels of new trade deals with China, Mexico and Canada, and a very successful trip to the Davos economic forum of world leaders. This president is too big of a thinker to be encumbered by the small minded, and after a week of impeachment coverage, it was quite clear that President Trump had more of a personality of a James Bond theme song than the scandalous acceptance of political diatribes that brought down Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon. Trump is a winner and everything he touches improves just by his influence, leaving attempts to paint him as a lesser person weak and affectless.

This isn’t a new idea to me, that is why actually I have named this site for more than a decade now, Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom. As an individual I live my own life in such a way, something that is bigger than just the meager exploits of common human ambitions. That’s where the “overman” comes from, expecting more of yourself than just the primitive attempts at basic living, but to do everything in your life as if it were a legendary status. So it is great to see that those types of people are finding success these days instead of being held down by some pretense of social construct. Those cracks have been forming in every field of endeavor for well over 100 years, and it is very exciting to see what having one finally live and work in the White House can do for people, and that wonderful new politicians like Warren Davidson on the national level and George Lang at the Ohio level, are emerging under a flag of winning that people just haven’t experienced before.

A lot of people over the weekend tried to put their finger on the issue, really of what happened during the third week of January 2020 in America with a president who has a personality that is bigger than the news cycles and the top stars of Hollywood and within the networks. It obviously bothers them that they can’t match his efforts, but I would say that the fault is entirely theirs. They have simply set the goals for themselves too low, and their lives have been too meek to compete with President Trump, that even with all the vast resources of the federal government to utilize, they have not been able to hurt him at all politically. They may have kept his influence from spreading to those who have already voted otherwise. If not for their efforts, President Trump may have 90% of the country behind him currently. He may actually be the first president in American history who is truly a president to all people no matter what their political backgrounds. There were some bad mayors in the White House at that meeting, and Trump treats them all very fairly and always above the line, which is consistent with his business background. I think most successful business people are good at finding what’s best about people, even if those people don’t yet see it in themselves. Its not a bad thing to call them out and to try to push them into greatness, even if they insist on being sticks in the mud. Optimism is good for business, and now its also good for politics and the effects are now exploding onto the scene.

And to think how much President Trump has endured and yet stock prices on the Dow are hovering at 29,000. Trump was the first president in American history to speak at the famous March for Life that occurs every year. I mean how could anybody not be for life? Certainly, a positive person like President Trump wants to see every life have a chance at something great for themselves, especially those being born. How could any politician put their name next to a death cult of abortion and try to sell it to women as a right to be a murderer? Yet that is how it has been, and presidents were so terrified to be pushed under on the media cycle to even appear to challenge Roe v. Wade that they fear women may not vote for them in an upcoming election. President Trump however didn’t just make himself that first president to so publicly speak in favor of such a pro-life position, but its just one of the big things he did that day, and that is pretty much every day in his administration. He is an amazing character of significant achievement and like any overmanwarrior, he is not content with those efforts, but is always looking for the next win. Lesser people who don’t have such high goals for themselves simply can’t touch him. Look at how pathetic Adam Schiff was in the senate trying to use 24 hours of legal banter to make a case for impeachment only to look like a loser who farted in a corner and then tried to blame it on everyone else.

I know how hard Warren Davidson works in my district and I feel privileged to have him as an option for representation. Not that competency should be unjustly rewarded, its expected, but all too often we end up with hacks like Adam Schiff in federal positions, and those people are really struggling with the influence leadership of President Trump because they can’t keep up. All they can do is yell at the bus that has come and gone leaving them on a street corner of philosophy with all the rest of the garbage that has refused the call to be better than they were yesterday. In Trump’s America, everyone should strive to be more than they were even five minutes ago. He has lived his life that way and now as a President, he is showing what such a person looks like. Most of us, a majority, love it and will continue to support it well into the future. And that is unique to our times and is a growing movement that I relish. I have never enjoyed watching the news so much than I have from the day that this president was voted into office in November of 2016. He is simply too big to stop and the world knows it. And that big concept thinking is now giving a voice to other big thinkers, like Warren Davidson, and George Lang to become more than they ever could before, which is probably the most exciting thing that nobody is talking about. For a change its not the nobody’s who are shaping our lives. It’s the winners, and this is what it feels like, which is a great and welcomed condition. These times are for winners, and President Trump is the embodiment of the Carly Simon song, “Nobody Does it Better.” And we are all benefiting from it. Trump is the best, and the world is coming to understand it, even his enemies.

Rich Hoffman

Lakota Alums Complain about EdChoice: School superintendents show they aren’t anything like CEOs, they just don’t have the skills

“I’m OK with choice and options for your kids. I’m not okay with public tax dollars going to the private schools,” said Matt Miller, the superintendent of Lakota Schools in reaction to this year’s expansion of Ohio’s EdChoice program. And across town at Hamilton City School’s Mike Holbrook the former Lakota principal and complainer-in-chief who is now the superintendent there, he’s back to complaining about money because this EdChoice challenges his district which has a report card of a “C” into making better decisions instead of just continuing to ask for more and more budget to fund failure. These Lakota school alums have spent some time lately complaining that the Ohio voucher program is getting more aggressive, which I have always said that it would, and its forcing them to control their budgets better, and they just don’t like it. I find their statements amazing because after all these years, we have been told that a school superintendent is like a CEO at a public school. Yet all they really have done is lobby for more money. Anybody can do anything with infinite amounts of money to work with, but only in public schools is it assumed that more money gets better results. Yet in Hamilton City and at Lakota Schools, that clearly is not the case. Those districts are not getting A+ grades and we pay them fortunes. So why not attach the state funding to children and allow competition to make everyone better? A CEO would certainly understand that, and these guys show in their statements on this EdChoice debate that they are clearly not up to the task.

This is what happens to a governing body when they are allowed to inflate their budgets with union contracts and overpay their staff without a funding model that lives within the scope of their resources. I have written about Mike Holbrook before when he was just a Lakota principal, you can see his comments after a levy defeat by clicking here. He has a long history of complaining about money, which public schools have allowed to be the role of superintendents. These guys want respect and to be treated as top managers, but they don’t want to do the work. They coddle the teacher’s union during contract negotiations and drive up their costs then expect taxpayers to bail out their failure. Hamilton certainly isn’t anything to be proud of with their “C” grade report card. But Lakota isn’t much better, and we did pass a levy in 2013 after a lot of debate, and guess what. They did just what I said they would, they gave the money to the teachers in the form of raises and performance went down. The school’s performance worsened. Paying top dollar for the so-called best teachers did not promise Lakota an A+ report card, and it should have.

The best way to secure the best scores is with vouchers, where tax money is attached to the kids. If parents don’t like the school, they should be able to take their tax money and pick another school. And if the schools want to be in business, they need to do a better job. That is the job of a CEO, to make sure that parents want to send their kids to their schools, and to make themselves that choice. They need to work at it, and if you have a six-figure income, that is your job to figure out guys. These token superintendent jobs were never intended to be levy cheerleading positions where you just spend and spend and spend and have guaranteed security due to the kinds of people living in your district. You should want to work for better kids, better parents, and better results. Not some state definition of success, but one that is market driven

.

Senator Bill Coley, whom I’ve known for a long time and who cares about this voucher issue a great deal, tried to explain it to these superintendents in ways they might understand. The school district still has tax money coming in from every home and business and those values are continuing to appreciate, the revenue continues to increase every year in an area like Butler County. What’s the problem? Well, the problem is they have gotten used to not having to manage the money. That’s the issue. They are used to it always being there and most of the problems have been solved with coffee talks. Schools like Lakota took away busing to save money. Parents have gotten used to driving their kids to school. So why wouldn’t they just drive their kid to school somewhere else if they had a choice? And why should Lakota get all their money just because that student lives in the district? If the money is for education why shouldn’t that money follow the student, and the performance that the customer expects?

Of course, we all know the answer, public schools and their labor unions depend on these fixed numbers to manage their collective bargaining agreements. But wouldn’t the unions get what they want with this EdChoice? Teachers would get smaller class sizes due to declining enrollment in failing schools, those only getting “Bs” and “Cs” are failing based on marketplace analytics. If parents want the best for their students, that would be an A+ on the report card. If a district can’t get that, get rid of the teachers and get better. Oh, you can’t do that because the union contract won’t allow it. Well, there is your problem and so long as the tax money is locked to the school, not the student, we will continue to fund failure.

Only by having such a competitive element, such as EdChoice will school superintendents be forced to do the job they were hired to do in the way that schools need to do it. The word “public” assumes that there is some community right to money and the education of kids. We have seen over the last century that public education is not the best way to teach a kid, and parents who understand that private schools are clearly better for children are already paying for that improvement. Why should their tax money go to appeasing failure? But as Senator Coley has said, Lakota will still get their money, so will Hamilton. They’ll lose a little but they’ll also lose some class size. Everyone should be happy. Property values continue to go up in this Trump economy. A CEO would understand how to make those elements work, but apparently all the Lakota alums want to do is complain that they don’t have enough.

Any real CEO of an organization would love to have the problems of these public schools, they have guaranteed income, they have nice new buildings, and they have sports programs to distract the base and keep team building exercises active in the community. It’s a dream job for anybody with half a brain so it is extremely disappointing to see these guys crying like babies. Manage your contracts, let the complainers leave with their poison to other districts because it hasn’t helped your report card anyway and pull up your bootstraps. Don’t ask for more money with levies because that’s lazy, work with what you have. And work to be better and to make yourself an EdChoice destination instead of a repellant. And if you can’t, cut your losses and be happy being a “B” or “C” player in the world. That’s life. The trend is in choice, choice in entertainment, choice in food, choice in government, and especially choice in education.

Property values unlike what people may have thought ten years ago are not so intricately linked to the public school in their districts. They are linked to choice, the kinds of jobs there are, the entertainment options, the overall quality of life. Most people in Lakota don’t even know that there are football games on Friday nights. They could care less; Netflix has all the options they need and the carryout down the road has dinner. I would suggest to these superintendents that they start acting more like the CEOs they want to believe they are instead of union stooges padding the way for continuous contract increases to their labor rates. Choice in performance will demand them to get with the program, EdChoice is just the beginning.

Rich Hoffman

Candice Keller Should Know Better: George Lang is the most honest and toughest opportunity for the 4th District Senate seat

I must admit to being extremely disappointed in Candice Keller as she has been stoking her supporters against George Lang by bringing up the Dynus scandal that moved through Butler County politics a decade ago or so. That event which involved the company Dynus trying to win a business alignment to bring in high speed networks into the I-75 corridor, which involved many politicians from John Boehner, Bill Coley and Butler County auditor Kay Rogers, who was sentenced to two years in prison for her role in the effort, was a tough period for area Republicans. A very aggressive prosecutor for the Justice Department wanted to go after people close to John Boehner because he was poised at the time to be the next Speaker of the House, so the prosecution meant to take a stab at Butler County politics which was, and remains a hot seat of Republicans throughout the country. It was crazy lunatic assistant U.S. Prosecutor Jennifer Barry who wanted to go after George Lang for testimony he gave in relation to the prosecution of Orlando Carter from Dynus on eight different accusations. She tried to make the case that he lied in that testimony on those eight accounts and she was pushing 5 years of prison. George was found not guilty on all accounts, even with the FBI and Barry going after him with all the power the government had, and the jury deliberated for a short time and found him not guilty. I would expect that Keller would see how closely this case was just like that modern one against Trump, and that it wasn’t a scandal at all, but a hit job going after one of John Boehner’s good friends, and a hot target for higher office himself, and the government was poised to take George out at all costs.

I have supported Candice Keller, even when Sheriff Jones showed a lack of support for her. There is a lot I agree with her on, she is likely one of the types of people who are readers of my blog site. But she should know better than to take a cheap shot at George Lang as she has on her Facebook page. She knows the Dynus case was completely a hit job which involved a measly little payment of $100,000 that the prosecutors wanted to call a “kickback” which is equable to the many attempts to twist the Ukrainian phone call into an impeachable offense against Trump. Its all the same game and she knows it. To try to rip down Lang to prop herself up is not a good idea, especially if she wants a crack at one of those higher offices in the future. I understand that its politics, but George isn’t the kind of guy to target, let me tell you why.

I met George during this period where he was worried as hell about getting dinged jail time if a jury of his peers would have decided otherwise. It was costing him a personal fortune to defend himself, which was the point. He knew he was innocent, but it was terrible to be in such a position where his life and fate were not in his hands, it was in the hands of the court. He had a couple of kids getting ready to go to college and there was a lot of uncertainty at that time about what would happen in his life. His wife Debbie was so solid that she and he earned my respect for the rest of all of our lives. She was so graceful under pressure, and so was he, really. I admired how well they handled all that tremendous pressure. You can really judge a person’s character by how well they are under pressure, and I saw the guts of the Lang family up close during that trial and will always admire them for it.

At that time I was pulled into the IRS scandal as one of my personal friends became a direct target of the Obama White House due to his Tea Party leadership. I was looked at due to my connection and it was quite insulting, and an obvious hoax against all of us who were supporting the Tea Party movement. For me it was my part in supporting the Liberty Township Tea Party that caused them to dig into my life. Then a year after George’s perjury trial, after the FBI essentially turned him inside and out looking for anything and everything they could think of to bust him on, I went through an experience of my own after all my successful WLW radio broadcasts had been keeping the Lakota levy addicts from passing a tax increase on property owners in both Liberty Townships and West Chester. I went through a smear campaign organized by Joan Powell and many others from Lakota and executed by Michael Clark from the Cincinnati Enquirer. Now, to be honest, I expected them to take a shot and I was ready for it. But to see the bullet come for your head confirming what you think will happen was a different matter.

I was angry, I’m still mad about it. I will never get over it because the attempt by them was so obvious. What they went after was different than what George went through, but instead of jail time, they were targeting my reputation which of course has financial implications and other things. They went after me in a very personal way and they didn’t care what it did to me. It was another example of a political hit job to take out opposition to the plans of government whether it’s a public school looking for unlimited taxes to pay their labor unions, or it’s a shot at John Boehner through his friends to curb his enthusiasm for reform as Speaker of the House of Representatives, the third most powerful public office in the country. It’s all politics, and it is ruthless. Not for the weak, that’s for sure.

For those who remember my name was on the front page of all the newspapers at the time and on all the radio broadcasts trying to paint me as a crazy Republican sexist. My event was a counter punch no different than what Trump does now on Twitter only then it was new. Nobody had seen anything like that before, so they didn’t know what to do with it. I bounced back with no problem but right after the event I held a super-secret meeting with my Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom supporters who work a lot of issues behind the scenes. Our meeting was at a local LaRosa’s and it met a lot to me to see that everyone believed in the effort as much, if not more than ever. Well, one person came and he didn’t need to, because at the time, I was politically toxic—the way that regular people measure such things. That person was George Lang. I had a picture taken at the time to reflect on it in the years to come and guess who took the picture—it was George. I thought it was best that he not be in the picture because he was still building up his reputation after his own perjury case. George didn’t care though, he was happy to be in the picture if I wanted him to be, and that told me a lot about George Lang. Sure, he has always wanted to be in a higher office. But in the trenches, to his very gut, he stands by people through thick and thin and is one of the most honest people I know—which is why I call him a friend to this very day. So I’m not happy about Candice Keller trying to prop herself up at his expense. George may be the guy to beat, but you can’t lie about him. George may be the most honest and vigilant politician I’ve ever known, and I’ve known a lot of them.

I haven’t told these stories before, not to this detail because people didn’t really have context to understand just how dishonest our government is. The hit job against George, an attempt to put him in jail and drain his finances to let John Boehner know that no matter how much power he gained in the House of Representatives, that the government would know where his friends lived, and they would suffer. Look at all the people around President Trump, they are going to jail or being harassed in precisely the same manner. And I got my own taste of that scandal and felt the sting of it up close. I will forever be angry about it, and George was hit much harder than I was, and his attitude is far more forgiving. I would expect Candice to play fair because she should understand how the game is played, and she says she does. But if she did, she wouldn’t have tried to use the Dynus scandal against Lang. Because that’s no different than trying to impeach Trump over the Ukrainian phone call, or the phony Russian case with the FBI actually planting evidence to prosecute him with. What the Department of Justice tried to do to George Lang was no different. And because George and his wonderful wife Debbie held up so well under the pressure is exactly why he should be the next senator of Ohio in the 4th District. I can speak to his character which I would challenge is at the top of any public office, even when politics was ugliest and jail time was hung over his head just as Roger Stone, George Papadopoulos, and Michael Flynn have had to endure, just for knowing the President. George Lang didn’t waver, didn’t let his knees buckle, and he came out of it stronger than ever and when he calls you a friend, he does not play politics. He is just an honest person who can walk through the fires of hell and never even frown when the pressure is greatest. That’s what we should all expect in a senator anywhere, especially in Ohio.

Rich Hoffman

Fighting Bullies: At Thanksgiving Dinner its important to understand why you believe what you do

It’s that time of year where families get together for the big Thanksgiving dinner and of course navigating the political debates can always be a challenge so before doing so, its important to understand why you believe what you do, and what it is that you do believe as opposed to the raw talking points that come off Facebook or Fox News. My sister recently was frustrated with me when we were talking about busing at Lakota schools, where she just rationalized that I hate everyone. These are the types of results that often can come out of family get-togethers so before getting frustrated with the outcomes you need to know why you are conservative and to what degree those values are more important often than whether or not you leave the table of a family gathering with your relationships intact. I would say that its better to keep your values supported rather than to surrender them just to get along. However, there isn’t any use in having a fight that won’t go anywhere either. Usually at these kinds of things I sit quietly and just eat the food and offer any little contemporary dialogue that goes meaninglessly into the thoughts of oblivion. Family is important but surrendering who you are to have them shouldn’t be a requirement.

For me its never about conservative versus liberal, or Republicans opposed to Democrats, or Fox News against CNN. Being cast into the forge of political ideology created by the media makes things worse not better and the real reasons we believe what we do is often far more complicated, and a social order does not have the resources to deal with the true intellectual impact. With that said, my thoughts about most things are that I don’t like bullies and I hate even worse being type cast by any social order that seeks to separate our individual natures into categories that make it easier for them to bully any of us into forms of control that are only good for collective consciousness toward the Vico Cycle order of things, the vicious cycle that has followed all human lives since the beginning of time, theocracy, aristocracy, democracy then anarchy. Since day one of my birth to the present I have always hated bullies of any kind and have fought them at every chance. I have never accepted that yielding to a bully in any way is something I was ever willing to do, and that is the root of my political beliefs, and likely if you are reading this, you share that sentiment.

Bullying happens most of the time through peer groups, or friendships that occur early in our lives from people we’d like to trust such as, “I’ll be your friend if this….” Or “if you dress this way you can be in this group.” As I’m thinking of this, school days where we learn these behaviors come to mind. The athlete class typically dressed well on the Fridays of the big game with some cross-town rival which associated them as school aristocrats out doing important work within that culture. Kids of a lower class would then follow with their own versions of that reality down to the kids who start smoking and dressing grungy early in their life. Bullying would then herd most of the kids in school to seek the protection of one of those peer groups to begin associating themselves with something bigger. This is the beginning of creation of some variation of a liberal and it is forged out of bullying.

That is why most of us enter our adult lives bullied by a boss at work, or bullied by a school system over busing, or a teacher’s union. Or, an FBI that sought to tamper with the election of President of the United States and if you didn’t like it, then someone like Roger Stone would be arrested in the middle of the night and thrown into jail. Or Julian Assange as the founder of Wikileaks would stand up to the bullies of the media and political orders around the world and be made an example of so that others wouldn’t dare follow. When you start to think of things in this way and while you may be a Republican or a Democrat, it makes a lot more sense. For many, they only dared run to the Republican Party because they saw it as a safe place where bullies couldn’t get them, and maybe they’d get a chance to bully back for a change those who have been pushing them around most of their life. Most of the forces of our concern are the result of some bully in our lives. It could even be a parent who didn’t like the person you married, or a neighbor who doesn’t like the car you park outside your house that embarrasses them. Most of us feel we have the right to bully or be bullied depending on the forces at play and that leads to anxiety which usually gradually destroys us throughout our lives.

Speaking personally, my love of Star Wars can be traced back through a lot of blood. That film series which most of us agree is fun and entertaining is all about anti bullying. When I felt the bullies in my school trying to force me into some peer group I didn’t want to be in, I used to intentionally wear a Star Wars shirt to school to provoke a fight, which happened constantly. I remember one fight where I punched a kid into the back of the head sending him right into the principal’s office. It was vicious and bloody, but it was the true essence of the public-school experience. Yeah, I got into a lot of trouble over that and many other circumstances. And yes, people have lost their lives in these fights. But it was always worth fighting back against bullies. In the end, after going to court dozens and dozens of times and paying many thousands and thousands of dollars in court fees, attorneys, and damages, I am happy to say I have never accepted any results from a bully and I have Star Wars to thank for that because as a young person it worked for me in solving some of these complicated social issues. Star Wars is all about standing up to bullies and those who have caved into those pressures over their lives naturally are embarrassed by their efforts and will make fun of those who don’t want to follow that path in their own lives. When I talk about Star Wars as a break from these daily commentaries, its for this reason, to help people have some foundation in their lives to free their minds from the results of the bullies trying to impose on them.

That is why you should not worry about Thanksgiving dinner dear reader, and that is likely why you are a conservative to begin with, and why you like President Trump. You have learned to fight back against the bullies, even within your own families. It’s not necessary to rub their face in political ideology, or even to physically fight them. Bullies usually want something from you, so you don’t have to give it to them. That is your choice and the fight isn’t so much in changing minds, its in holding your ground. That should always be your focus. If they attack, that’s their problem. I will say from experience, vast amounts of it, that they won’t be ready for you to defend yourself, and that’s all that’s required. Don’t let them rationalize you into just having a political ideology or in enjoying some pop culture element that isn’t conducive to surrender toward bullying, just hold your ground and let come what may. Its not their approval after all that’s important, its whether or not you leave the dinner table intact as your own person, and all the things you were meant to be, as an individual.

Happy Thanksgiving!
Rich Hoffman

 

A $1000 Check to Saugus High School: The social decay that leads to school shootings nobody is talking about

After a recent shooting at Saugus High School in California where the 16-year-old birthday boy Nathaniel Berhow shot at five students early in the morning killing two before shooting himself in the head, a local woman donated $1000 toward the school which I found perplexing. The donation was an obvious act of rebellion from the woman toward the trend toward violence among young people who are using guns to inflict harm in the pressure cooker that is public education. The woman obviously wanted it to be known that she stands by her support of the school and would go to extreme acts to show her solidarity with the students. But as we know who have been fighting the trends of public education for a long time that $1000 check was next to useless, as the teacher’s union would quickly consume it. For the overall problem, it was a simple gesture no different than a rain drop in the ocean, but it obviously made the woman feel good to write the check, and it gave the news a nice feel good story about community unity and public education support in the face of grave danger.

I’ll say it again, teacher’s need to carry guns so they can put down attackers like this depressed kid quickly when they make a move to attack. This school shooting didn’t last long, and the targets were obviously selected for a reason. The news outlets won’t say it, but I will, high school is all about peer pressure and what kind of person is formed from that pressure. The social circles that are formed can be quite intense, relationships are complicated among human beings and foundations of betrayal can be quite ominous. And to any 16-year old, a girl who likes this guy and not you, or a girl who is with this friend and not you can be tragic, and even very melodramatic, especially if the adults in their lives aren’t providing the proper level of wisdom to navigate the crises. And ultimately, that’s what we find in this shooting case at Saugus High School.

We need guns because our society is making these types of people who are dangerous. I’m sure people thought of Nathaniel Berhow as a nice kid who would never do such a thing, but in moments of anguish, people do a lot of dumb things without really meaning to. I would say we are a culture of guns which has derived from our cultural need for them. As America evolved to allow individuals to reach the limits of their abilities, there are always parasites who are seeking to claim jump success, and guns are needed to protect the property of the ambitious, so that they will keep trying to try at success. Its our system of civilization and these public education institutions are running against that tide. The woman who gave the $1000 check is likely a nice person, but her belief system is faulty as to what that check represents. I know a few people like her, wealthy people who want to throw money at something like these tragedies because it makes them feel good to do it, like they are helping. But what is always ignored is why the kid thought his 16-year-old birthday was so dire that his only option was to lash out at fellow students before killing himself in the process. There was so much life to live, why cut it short so soon?

That’s where our social system fails. The public education institution has eroded away at the parental role in the lives of these kids then everyone wonders why parents can’t help when things get so bad. The premise, the cause and corrective action that needs to be acknowledged is that the public education system can’t do the job. The teacher’s unions who work in these schools are radical, and lazy. The politicians who set the agenda for what is taught are corrupt and stupid. And while the parents are trusting that system to teach their kids saving them the burden, they are living reckless lives having affairs, getting divorced and indulging in too much lackluster leadership under the roof of their own homes. That is why kids like this Nathaniel Berhow shoot themselves on their birthdays, and desire to go out in a blaze of glory to hurt the people who have hurt them. Hurt of course is a perceptual exchange. What one person considers hurtful, others may not. That’s why adult mentorship is so important to help with biological perception changes that mind steer the teenage mind in the wrong direction.

Removing guns from our society simply ignores the root cause of these greater social problems. It buys time for the society that has helped create this mess to continue believing in the failed system just a bit longer so long as the public focuses on those $1000 checks and not the real problem in public education. Public schools don’t work. They are weak attempts at social engineering that fail often and with these kinds of catastrophic results. And from the media, and the political class, there is no leadership to change what we are seeing openly and with frequent occurrence. Its only a matter of time before another school shooting happens near all of us. Its not the guns that are the problem, it’s the desire to use them to solve these kinds of problems that are. ABC News owned by the Disney Company especially are bad on this topic. Their belief, which is the same as most progressives in this modern age is to take away the temptation, that having so many guns makes these events easier. But Nathaniel Berhow had an unregistered gun. What would ABC like to see, the uninventing of guns? Even if all the gun manufactures in the world were put out of business, any machine shop around could build the parts. The black market will always have guns, so any law created won’t change that fact. Chicago still has more shootings than anyplace in the United States. Guns are illegal there and populations are regulated with liberalism. Yet gun violence is as common as rain in a storm.

Any method of resolution will fail if it does not deal with the true problem of psychological trouble that spawns out of collective education services and the pressures that go with them. The failure in public education is deep and is in need of a complete overhaul and really if you get to the example of the woman who wrote that check and the media that gravitated to it as if it were made of gold and spoke of the good hearts that rose up to meet this tragedy with acts of kindness, the real evil was in writing the check and supporting that school in the first place. In supporting a failed institution that is leaving people so desperate and lost that they cannot solve simple problems as teenagers, and in allowing the parents to reside guilt free of responsibility for raising their children, further danger is assured. When the news tells us that they do not know why a shooter like Nathaniel Bernhow did what he did, what they really mean is that they can’t admit their role in it, and therefor can’t talk about it. Its not so simple as leaving behind a note, or in having some other form of confession. The real villain is in the construction of the minds who can’t deal with the trouble and how public education makes those conditions worse, not better. And that is what we should all be talking about.

Rich Hoffman

Impeachment isn’t an Option: Defending the President with violance if it comes to it

In all parts of my life I would have to say that I am a highly respected person, very highly educated and in all manners of it, an example for everyone to follow. The word influence leader is tossed around a lot in the content of my interactions, and at a high level. Most of my best friends these days are very wealthy and also extremely respected. Yet I would say that my personality that writes these articles on this blog site is every bit me on a plate, and even when the talk turns toward aggressive corrective action, that is certainly not out of character for me. I say all that for context because when it comes to President Trump, I love the guy because he has been willing to take the fight to the enemy in a way that I have for years, and I know it’s a pain for him. He and his family could be enjoying so many other things in their life rather than dealing with the losers of the swamp. And so could I. Prior to these political days I routinely spoke to people in Hollywood working in the business and one of my targeted career tracks was to have my written works published by big time publishers on the shelves of Barnes & Noble. Obviously by my work on this blog, I had planned to write more books than Stephen King, George R.R. Martin, or J. K. Rolling and to be more successful. But I saw where the country was in the years of 2005 to 2010 and I joined the Tea Party movement to fix it, and that is very much my stance today.

The premise of my decision is to fight back against several levels of thought that are essentially trying to destroy America, and that is the notion that other people make you who you are rather than you make yourself. Our education system teaches us that other people make or break you, yet our Constitution is designed to unleash individual talent so that you can be anybody you want to be, and sometimes that means you have to go off the rails in spite of what the social norms allow. Such an example for me was talking to publishers in New York about my second book called Tail of the Dragon. I had been nurturing several large talent agencies toward my work the way many writers did and when they looked up my website at the time and saw that I was a Tea Party supporter—openly, that was the deal breaker. Of course, my response was to point out the many leftists writers such as Stephen King and J.K. Rolling who were openly liberal and why the same rules of social edit didn’t apply to them and the answer I received was obvious. All the big publishing houses and corporate media markets were dedicated to all out global socialism and if I wanted to be in the game, I’d have to adapt. Well, that’s not how or why I do anything. So I turned away from that business I loved so much and went into another direction. I of course still write, but I do it for myself as opposed to the mandates of other people.

So anybody reading can imagine what I might say or do in relation to this impeachment inquiry on President Trump and why some of my writing has turned scary at times. Based on the standards that Democrats are creating for impeachment, essentially because they can’t beat President Trump in an election and all their internal polling says so, this is the only way they can have a shot for the White House for the next 12 years at least. (4 more years of Donald J. Trump, then (8 years of Don Jr. I’d place a bet on that one right now) So Democrats due to their ideas being goofy already are turning to law breaking and true piracy to attempt to get their people in power and I’m not OK with it. I can be successful at anything I put my hands on. What I get and do in life is not up to other people. I could go work at a root beer stand tomorrow and within a few months I could make it all very successful and the people associated with it very wealthy. I have no reservation about protecting the president I elected from an obvious coup by government employees who have rigged our system to their personal advantage and using the Constitution to justify the behavior. What they have been doing, the government employees whether we are talking about our local union ran schoolteachers, or our CIA and FBI agents who have been hostile to our 2016 election and are asking for an ass kicking. I put more value on the ass kicking than in any ass kissing that most of the business community believes they must do just to stay in business due to massive government corruption. I believe in that notion so strongly that I have made life decisions already to follow that line of thought. Nothing anybody says at this point is going to change anything. Trump is my guy, I voted for him to fix this mess, which he has been doing a good job, and I’m not going to sit by and just allow a bunch of losers who did cause a lot of expensive problems for us to deal with get away with it.

Its not unusual for me to lend my thoughts to local issues and people I think will help a situation. And I’m not worried about letting villains know what I think of them. I don’t like being lied to and I certainly don’t take threats to my life in any way lightly. I have come to know that threats of either violence or even social ostracizing is all these enemies of America have to fight with and for that they have come to think they are running the world. I didn’t put up with it when I was a kid, or as I was coming up in life and learning what worked and what didn’t. I certainly saw it in the entertainment industry where they would clamor over every email you send them, and lunch meetings, to complete alienation once they learn that you are a conservative. And it doesn’t work presently in any capacity because the truth is, they don’t make people, they need people who are successful to loot off of, and that is the dirty little secret they are terrified people will discover about them, and I’m not shy to let them know I know it. However, the big national and international issues are what I’m most interested in talking about and this impeachment talk is truly the biggest story that needs to be covered. It is amazingly arrogant to watch Democrats attempt to overthrow an election during an election year and sell it back to us as some kind of legal purity. It’s the biggest farce I’ve ever seen and I am prepared to turn to violence to protect the president I elected, and many others. Getting along with other people isn’t nearly as important to me as in doing right, and right in our “republic,” not some socialist democracy, is determined by elections and without that basic premise, we have nothing anyway. So why not fight for it with spilled blood and a lot of carnage? That’s how we got it in the first place and I’m thinking that in the end, that’s all those insurgents will understand. It wouldn’t be my first choice, but based on my own history, what other outcome would there be if that other side refuses to listen and honor our laws? I’d say they already made their choice.

Rich Hoffman

 

Jorge Masvidal is much more American than Julie Shaffer and Ray Murray: Fighters and good punches in the the face are more honest than politics

It was a little remarkable that President Trump showed up to a UFC fight over the weekend and there was some good things to say by the participants. But then again, maybe not. There is an honesty in fighting that I think is missing a great deal from our modern culture, and the pacifists who have had bad intentions for our country have been critical of. Locally in my school district of Lakota there is a contentious race for school board for instance where the opposition in favor of the teacher’s union is not happy that two of the candidates, Lynda O’Connor and James Hahn are endorsed by the Republican Party. The union activists of course want the board to appear non-partisan—which would of course be a complete lie. The teacher’s union is a very partisan organization. But their intention is to win these fights without having to get bloody. To pretend that there isn’t a fight, when in reality, they are the ones fighting the hardest. It was good to see that President Trump gets it, and he understands it so well that he actually attended a big fight at Madison Square Gardens to support some of his friends from the years before he became president.

As Republicans we have been encouraged to fight with our pinkies out while sipping on tea cups, and to not get bloody, but to participate in “honest” debate, all the while, our opposition has been plotting openly our complete destruction. Fighters like Jorge Masvidal understand much more about politics than what he thinks is a station above his reasoning. As he said, his fists speak better than his mouth, I would say that those fists are more honest than the mouths of thousands and thousands of politicians. That is because there is honesty in the power of being the best and to overtake an opponent. The passive aggressive backstabbing of politics is a much more dishonest business, and its not a surprise that Masvidal is mystified by it. But that he knows enough to be honored by a President who respects his profession enough to attend the event.

As I have been covering all week, for a simple little debate like a school board election there is an amazing amount of deceit that goes on to protect the union candidates for future contract negotiations. Deceitful terminology fills the vocabulary of politics where if we were all honest, warfare would be a better description. That is certainly where I am at on the matter. I have no desire to play the game of politics, even if I may be really good at it. I would rather have the honest fight to find out who has the better idea. May the best person win, not the most dishonest and back stabbing one. In the theater of politics, Trump understood the real nature of winning there than all the passive aggressive losers who have built the entire system around false definitions for things at the expense of truth. And President Trump respects good, honest fights enough to attend a fight to watch young people like Masvidal give it everything in a bloody fight that was literal brutality, but much more truthful than the best of politicians.

I pointed out the value of Trump’s presidency well before he won office by pointing out his experience with WWE wrestling, even getting into the Hall of Fame. Masvidal was right about Trump, he is a “bad mother f**ker” because he did make a lot of money beating many rivals to the prize. He won in entertainment with is top television show, The Apprentice which earned him a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And he won with his casinos in promoting fights both with Tyson, but with WWE events. Trump has won with championship golf courses. He has won with best selling books. He has done nothing but win most of his life and has beaten everybody who has challenged him. He even won one of the toughest fights that there is, the Presidency of the United States and against all odds. Trump has much more in common with fighters like Jorge Masvidal than he does with some pencil necked lawyer from Washington D.C. And that’s why they hate him in the Beltway, but real fighters love him.

I have watched politics for a long time, and even how business evolution has moved away from capitalist ideas into more of corporate socialism where everybody is equal and fighting is frowned upon, and I have been preaching that conflict is often better than just playing passive aggressive games of getting along for the benefit of appearances, but while true respect is elusive and not part of the conditional decision making process. Its better to fight than to get along when it is good ideas that we need to move forward for a better society. Having a good fight is an honest way of getting everything on the table so we can deal with things rather than playing nice to each other’s faces then turning around and backstabbing each other when really we should be working toward ideas that we all agree on.

Most businesspeople would rather just give a check to a politician to go fight their battles for them so they can focus on conducting business. Trump played that game well when he needed to, but as he learned, it’s not enough, especially if the politicians don’t like to fight, but would rather placate everyone so they can just get elected the next time around. In my district both businesspeople and some of the politicians are learning the value of a good fight. They may not want to do it themselves, but they are starting to understand why I carry a bullwhip around with me everywhere and am never too far from a gun. I personally love to fight and I find that the most honest people there are out there are those who also like to fight. They may not agree with me on everything, but eventually after a good fight, I find more in common with them than anybody else. Trump understands that there is more honesty at that UFC fight than in some Beltway dinner party. And Trump’s supporters are starting to see that comparison for themselves.

Locally, which is no different than any regional political conflict, we have all been tricked into thinking that our fights with extremists like Julie Shaffer, Ray Murray and their mentor Sandy Wheatley were to be debated like respectable contributors to some tea and latte game that was stacked in their favor by misdirection hidden behind politeness. They hide their aggressive political desires behind children and outright lies then wonder why we are so mad at them. But the trend is certainly changing, we now have presidents attending UFC events rather than hob knobbing with members of congress just to suck ass their way into some bill passage that only benefits the lobbyists of K Street instead of the people in rural Idaho. Jorge Masvidal understands America much more than Julie Shaffer and Ray Murray in the Lakota school district. The key is not in getting along while the teacher’s union robs our budget surplus with their easy votes, but in fighting back and telling those with ill intentions what we really think of them. Because they need to know, and so does the rest of the world. We are judged by others based on what we do and think, and I’d rather other countries looking at Jorge Masvidal as an example than the union passivist Julie Shaffer and her pot smoking buddy, Ray Murray.

Rich Hoffman

All Teacher’s Unions are Communist Organizations: Even at Lakota where political endorsments are poised to lift the veil

As it has been covered extensively the teacher strike in Chicago by their labor union has been very disruptive making even the very liberal mayor there appear to have a brain by comparison. What everyone has to come to terms with, is that these teacher unions are outright communist groups advocating the same communism America has been fighting for over a century. Of course they don’t name it with a “C.” Instead when they hold up their signs proclaiming that “This is what Democracy Looks Like” that is essentially their message. They don’t love children, they want to destroy our capitalist society and for anybody who has watched the Chicago teacher’s during their strike, the evidence is more than abundant. And the teachers in these unions are able to hide their true intentions largely due to a community of parents who are too busy to pay attention to their real definitions, which is on full display below for the upcoming election at Lakota, where we are advocating to elect two new “Republican” endorsed school board candidates, Lynda O’Connor and James Hahn. The Facebook page is from a long time tax increase supporter, Sandy Wheatley who used to be the president of the Lakota School Board many years ago and was part of creating the culture of deficit spending that caused a lot of trouble that persists to this day. She is discussing with another person the difference between a union endorsement and an official political party.

The ignorance presented is staggering. Sandy isn’t as stupid as she sounds here, but she has to play dumb to sell the sausage to Lakota parents, something she has a lot of experience doing. And I promise, Sandy is not the reason that her good friend Julie Shaffer is in support of transgender bathrooms. Sandy is actually a girl. I promise contrary to what you might think by some of her pictures. There is a reason her Facebook picture is Julie Shaffer’s campaign sign. However, Sandy is attempting to sell to all who will listen that the Lakota school board is a “non-partisan” position and that all members should not be political. The reason she wants that is so that the labor union, which is just as communist as the Chicago teacher’s union needs to change the name of their intentions so that they can pull off a scam against the voters so they can remain in power.

All the evidence you need can be found in the labor walkouts all across the country, whether we are talking about Arizona, Los Angeles, Chicago or even the one just to the west of Lakota schools at Ross Township, the mantra from the teachers is “red for ed,” or otherwise, the red of communism to control public education. Sandy and the gang within the Lakota school system has had to dress up their public perception largely because in our community there has been considerable pushback against them for which they have had to put on a happy face and attempt to present denials. But make no mistake about it, the Lakota Education Association is just as communist as the Chicago teacher’s union and they are extremely political. What’s dangerous is that they don’t say what their politics is. As Chairman Wheatley says on her Facebook post, she considers the labor union endorsement to be similar to the “Girl Scouts.” But providing an elusive definition for what they stand for, the labor unions have been able to gain great control over our public education system and in Lakota we are looking to stop that with official party endorsements to the contrary. People know what Republicans are, so it provides a clear distinction between the endorsed candidates of Lynda O’Connor and James Hahn, as opposed to the union stooges Julie Shaffer and Ray Murray.

Sandy knows how the game works, she has been at the center of destruction for several decades now. Back when she was on the Lakota school board the big news was that the district had grown to the point where it needed to have two new high schools. They made a huge mistake under her watch, the district financially should have split into two districts, one in each township for which Lakota resides. One school district should have been in Liberty Township and the other in West Chester Township, because one community overloaded itself with terrible zoning that placed too many residential voters to the polls to vote in favor of Lakota schools, while West Chester was able to diversify the heavy needs of the burdensome school district with more businesses. When it comes time to vote, West Chester tends to vote down tax increases while the new residents of Liberty Township vote in favor. Sandy was part of tying the two together forcing West Chester to support Lakota East while Liberty Township does very little to support Lakota West.

One of the goals of communism was always to attack private property and that is precisely what all public schools do, they force property owners in their districts to pay for their property to a school that is hell bent on teaching children not about capitalism, but about all manners of socialist and communist ideas—things that Republicans don’t support. But all that effort is hidden behind “children” and the real names of the activity are avoided and actually deferred by willing little soldiers like Lakota’s Sandy Wheatley so that voters don’t really understand what’s going on, only that they need to drop their kid off somewhere for somebody to watch while they go to work. So they start off by wanting to believe in the system, which people like Chairman Wheatley are all too happy to provide them with some definition they can believe in, “labor unions aren’t political, they are just like the Girl Scouts.” When in reality, they are more political than actual political parties.

I would doubt that Sandy Wheatley has a copy of the Communist Manifesto in her home. What is disgusting about her is that she used to be a school board member yet she is clearly in support of the labor union over the needs of the voters, and Julie Shaffer is a carbon copy of Sandy. They support the union over the voters and when it comes time to negotiate a contract on behalf of the voters, the voters don’t have any representatives. But the union does, on both sides of the table. That is how costs ran out of control at Lakota and Sandy Wheatley was at the heart of the whole mistake, and she is campaigning for Julie Shaffer to do the same presently. And the labor union doesn’t just want a piece of that $100 million surplus that Lakota has right now, they want political activism, such as transgender bathrooms which Julie Shaffer supports. That is how the union keeps its members placated and focused on their communist agenda. Where else would those stupid people make the kind of money that they do in public education? Listening to the Chicago teacher’s talk, who could disagree with me as to their intellect? Contrary to what they say, teacher’s are well paid for their silly little work schedule and their all summer’s off. It’s a good gig that these stupid people wouldn’t get anywhere else, so they will support the communism of public education to get that pay check. Just as parents are willing to overlook the same so they can have the free babysitting. But what is actually happening is very sinister, and expensive. At least with good Republican people on the Lakota school board we can deal with the cost. While time and knowledge will bring people to the other problems by calling them by name, instead of elusive terminology meant to maintain the illusion that all this has been a good thing all along. Taxpayers need representatives on the school board. The Lakota teacher’s union already has their representatives. They don’t need more with Julie Shaffer and Ray Murray.

Rich Hoffman

Its all about Guns in Lakota Schools: Remember to vote for Lynda O’Connor and Jim Hahn for School Board on November 5th

From the beginning it was always about guns for me regarding the school board candidates at the Lakota school district which we are voting for on November 5th, 2019. Not so much as we use guns to shoot people, but that they sustain ourselves from people who would like to shoot us. The political philosophy being embraced or not really, points to the essential differences of the management system that is up for debate. Julie Shaffer and Ray Murray represent anti-guns on teacher’s points of view, exactly the same position as the teacher’s union and Democrats nationally. The roots of their belief system is that we should all depend on each other, flaws and all for the betterment of a utopian society lacking individual identity and trusting in the system we have invented to sustain us. As opposed to Lynda O’Connor and James Hahn who believe guns should be worn by teachers as first responders in the moment of a hostile crises and that individuals, not systems, are the keys to solving many of the social ills starting with the ownership of firearms in general.

To further break down this parody Julie and Ray want voters to trust their very flawed personalities with the lives of our children, and that also is the position of the progressive teacher’s union politically. Once anybody admits to themselves that guns are in American society, and should be in all American schools, to protect the acquisition of individual possession then the formula for all public education to teach contrary realizations is exposed and ruined forever. So of course, Julie and Ray don’t want guns on teachers, they want everyone to trust the system they represent, and to their specific roles, are terribly underqualified. However, qualification is an individual assessment, so for them, so long as they can blend into the background, their personal faults ethically, financially, and morally can be ignored.

This interpretation of guns is a heady matter that is not conducive to the lazy thinkers and mass collectivists that have transcended from the deserts of the Middle East and migrated along the coasts of the Indian Ocean during the evolution of the many oriental religions of sacrifice and collective salvation. The gun has no place in those cultures because the aim of life is not to acquire individual traits, but to get rid of them. If you study the modern liberal, that is the roots that you will find dear reader, and that is the foundation of all teacher unions and government schools. Every single one of them. And when it comes to managing those school boards with like minded people, Julie and Ray are just the kind of people they want running things, easy to beat, flawed personalities, and not very smart.

In fact, at the core of education as we all assume is the individual attainment of intelligence, after all that is the purpose of education, to acquire knowledge. But that is not the goal of government schools led by these sinister, oriental style forces. They want a breakdown of individualism and an advocacy of social collectivism where the institution is worshipped itself, not the participants. You can see that at any Friday Night Football game at Lakota. The parents in the audience watching their kids play games under the lights of an October sky will say, “we won,” or “we lost.” By attending the game, they feel they are part of the game and therefor, the institution represented on the scoreboard. Individual touchdowns by heroics are lost to the next day news so long as the school gets the credit for individual behavior. And that is the way it is with these people, and it always has been.

So to come to such thoughts is a very individualized process, and for that people arriving at such a state need guns to protect themselves from the advocates of institutionalism, whether the attackers are crazed pot smoking lunatics or Manchurian candidates seeking actual assassination to preserve the status quo. You would be surprised to what extent lazy, dull; people will fight to avoid more work and real thinking. They would truly rather kill you than to step up to the level of thought you might introduce them to with a little effort. To that proof I would offer Socrates as an example, who was poisoned for corrupting the youth of Greek society. Today instead of killing Socrates as a middle-aged man they just kill them before they ever hatch out of kindergarten. The public schools don’t want the next great philosophers, and great thinkers and innovators. They want boring people that they can control easily, and they certainly don’t want them to have guns to defend themselves with.

Ultimately that is why teachers in school must have guns and why we need school board members who support education curriculums that advocate individualized learning and will push back against the tide of state and federal mandates to the contrary. We want kids to learn in school and we want guns to protect what they have learned from villains of old oriental philosophies from eradicating that possession from their minds with the threat of death. Guns protect all individualized possessions, even knowledge. Anyone who knows history well could think quickly of five or six situations where governments, kings, or anarchists have shown up on the doorsteps of a great thinker and killed them so that society would not advance beyond the intellectual reach of the worst and most wicked. For that is the true intention of evil and the reason it is bad.

Guns are about preserving what we teach to individual students so that they can live and carry out the products of their understanding. Not in just saving their lives for the sake of one more statistic sitting in the stands of a football game cheering for the institution when they could be at home reading a book and getting smarter. The goal of a school should not be to accept the perverted sexual understanding of the most obsessed mind with the basic functions of reproduction, but to teach them to think beyond such primitive cravings, to the point where we don’t even think about being transgender, but what is the state of life outside of the universe, or multiverse. It is up to the education system to teach to think beyond limits, not to hold everyone under them.

And that is the subtle message of this election, Lynda O’Conner and James Hahn stand for guns and the protection of individual possession of knowledge, Julie Shaffer and Ray Murray aren’t even smart enough to ask such a question, so they don’t want to be left behind by smarter people than they are, rather they want to keep guns out of the schools, and instead keep the topics of conversation on transgender bathrooms and how to blow $100 million by paying teachers countless amounts of money then asking taxpayers to subsidize their failure at some future time. By voting against guns in schools and in society, anti-gun personalities like Ray and Julie stand with the original masses in disregarding individual behavior in favor of collectivism. And when you see how Ray and Julie have led their lives, you can understand why they are so eager for such a position.

Rich Hoffman

Shakedowns at Lakota: The trolls robbing openly the business community

It’s not often easy to understand the many veiled ways that a school system, any school system, extorts the business community for extra cash in the pay to play scheme that is what has become of government schools. When anybody talks about the teacher unions as a negative radical force, it goes far beyond the wages that destroy budgets that school boards are constantly having to deal with. It actually seeps into the management of the school system itself flowing over into zoning and finance. When we see these radicals in action they usually present themselves as nice cordial people, perhaps with too much jewelry and perfume–even the guys. Their pant suits would make Hillary Clinton proud as they profess to be “all about the children,” which nobody would argue with because they don’t understand the details. But when the lights are dimmed a bit, or these union radicals are sipping their lattés at Starbucks, their true intentions become much clearer and a hatred for the rich and industrious comes sharply into focus, even as they make plans to strike against a school system over more money such as what seems always to be happening in Chicago. And from the letter presented below, this practice of harassing businesses isn’t just happening in my home district of Lakota, it’s pretty much everywhere that labor unions operate with taxpayer funds.

What makes stories like this hard for people to understand is that its not the direct action that progressive teacher unions create themselves, it’s the results that they instigate as a radicalized political entity. Anybody who has the endorsement of a labor union and is running for school board is playing the game and do the bidding of that radical element. This example is within Lakota, but the same story could be told in Mason, Monroe, or any government school. The foundation for this particular practice at Lakota goes back to the severe mismanagement of the school board that went on when Joan Powell was running things. To a large degree Julie Shaffer has carried on the tradition along with Ray Murray and Brad Lovell. Ray lost his seat a few years ago to Todd Parnell. Lynda O’Connor and Todd have been two votes toward solutions and are both business friendly. For this upcoming election, Jim Hahn is poised to join the school board and like Todd and Lynda, is a pro-business candidate and would be part of the solution. But before we can talk about that we must define the problem that is expressed in the letter presented.

The names were blacked out to protect the innocent on the letter shown here. Even though I have permission to use the letter in its raw form it’s not really necessary for the story. The story is that a real-estate investment by an enterprising opportunity has been trying to gather up the funds to initiate the endeavor and they are being told in this letter that the common practice in public schools operating in this region are demanding even more money to leverage control over the project before a shovel ever hits the ground. And that threat will continue until the owner or prospector of the property makes a payment to the school for the increased value assessed by the legal entity who is also part of the game. Essentially that means that any investment coming into an area doesn’t just have to look at the costs of the project itself, but the amount of extortion money that the local school system applies to them. Of course, if they don’t play then as the letter says, they will be “blacklisted” and will have trouble elsewhere.

Such as in the case of Lakota, this is why incoming projects, shopping centers, home developments either move to some friendlier district without the kind of leverage that Lakota has or they just buck up and shut up so they can do business in our community. The teacher’s union create the false narrative that their employment makes a great school which attracts investment by developers. They have the media platform to get a sympathetic ear from both print and television news because the kids are used as a shield to advance the topic. But the chaos is driven by the insatiable need for ever more money that is always increased by the labor demand for unreasonably high wages, which must be paid for by the “rich,” property owners. Those property owners are of course the general taxpayers who own real estate—they are all looked at as soft targets by the teacher’s union out for progressive changes to society in general. But it is the business owners who take the biggest hit, just as this letter explains. If they want to do business in Lakota, or any school district through Ohio and Pennsylvania, they will have to pay the troll living under the bridge between finance and the local school system.

The worst part of all this is that it is the crazy labor costs that are driving the activism. Business owners typically don’t want to get involved in contentious disputes because the teacher’s union will threaten quite openly to boycott their work, which to any business could mean complete destruction. Its hard enough to come into a community with a business plan to get funding for the project, but then to survive a shakedown by the local school that might put 7% to 10% extra cost into the project. Then to have it all threatened with bad press and a bunch of angry latté sippers from the teacher’s union is often a “not worth it” decision. People may look around Lakota’s district and declare that everything is great, there are lots of businesses and lots of residents. But what isn’t talked about is that there could be more if the school system wasn’t such a negative impact on potential investors. When it is wondered why Lakota has had declining enrollment, this is one of the contributing factors. Or why young people move out of the area once they graduate. Or why Liberty Center still hasn’t leased out all its available space in spite of all the wonderful things it has to offer to the community, the cost of doing business is too high for most, so it limits our opportunities as a community.

Meanwhile the demand for such high cost appropriations does come from the teacher’s unions who are always threatening the school district with increased costs which pushes not so bright school board members like Ray Murray, Brad Lovell and Julie Shaffer into participating in these shakedowns to keep from having to go to the voters every couple of years to get more levy money to pay the unending appetites of the radical Lakota teacher’s union. The businesspeople are easy targets because they often can’t afford to defend themselves once they have sunk a lot of money into a project, then are stuck holding to it once the bleeding starts. Sure, the labor radicals are nice to them and are not shy to ask for more shakedown money any way they can get it with cordial conversation at public events, but make no mistake about it, the practice is vile and is just as criminal as any thief looking to rob a bank. It’s the same thing, only the school districts wait for some investor to come along with bright ideas to do all the work, then once they are too far along to turn back, find they have to secure more revenue to appease the trolls in the school district. And that is just disgusting. It is certainly happening at Lakota in abundance, but to be honest, it is happening everywhere. The reality is that nobody has the guts to cover it which is why it continues to happen on and on and on.

Rich Hoffman