Tag: Lakota Schools

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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The King Makers of Ur: Why the CIA and Democrats in general want to impeach President Trump

Most of the readers here understand what’s going on, however for the next several months and even years, people will Google this topic looking for context and they’ll find this article, as they often do, and they’ll want to know. The only thing that the impeachment inquiry is for the Democrat Party against President Trump is that they don’t have an answer for him. Their presidential candidates on their side are terrible and they are looking for an equal playing field, so they are opening every box of Pandora to get a chance. Its not that Donald Trump did anything wrong to deserve impeachment, its that the long history of the city state and their creation of gods and kings has, and that journey is coming to an end in the United States and people who have been enriched by that system are upset about it. Particularly in the American intelligence community, which is overwhelmingly trying to point the direction of the United States back to the crusty start-up civilization of Ur in the Mesopotamian Valley dating 3500 BC.

It was along that small band of land that we know of thus so discovered that city states first rose to power starting around Ur and extending east and west into India and north Africa, then up around the northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Suddenly mankind went from a hunting species to an organized state led by a king then managed by various degrees of bureaucracy. Over time institutions, such as education facilities and various governments plotted for ways to best fit the formula of people management devices in these first attempts which persist to this day. Even in modern Washington D.C. the symbols of reverence for this period of human development is unmistakable. And it is to that history that modern Democrats and the various intelligence agencies are loyal, even if terribly outdated.

In America was born something new in relation to the city state and with its birth came the destruction of that old way of thinking. Of course, we can still see the hangers on from that long past, but as we speak it is dying. Even if they did manage to remove Trump from office, which they won’t, but if they did, people have had a taste of the kind of life that can come from divorcing the city state but maintaining the benefit, and they won’t be going back. People in America have no desire to move toward a Hong Kong type of society to win back freedoms we already have. And for them, Trump is the ticket to that level of peace and prosperity.

The “deep state” knows this, those members of the FBI and CIA who desire to overthrow the 2016 American election in the same way that they pick and choose winners and losers around the world for America to deal with. They want to remain the king makers of Ur, because in making or breaking people, that is where the real power is. They want to keep that power but in looking at Trump’s re-election chances for 2020, they must do something to protect themselves from the inevitable reality of their own existence. The city state of Ur was always a failure even if it did bring forth advances in human thought. The idea of a king or a centralized government ruling over the masses is for the feeble minded the ultimate fantasy, and they want it more than life itself.

That is why the CIA has become involved in yet another plot to dislodge President Trump from the office we elected him into. And they think they have history on their side, that people will pick a king over their own self-rule, and that they’ll be happy with it. Unfortunately for them, their understanding of the psychology of history is entirely too shallow, and they are in for some sad realizations. Mankind has been running from Ur since its inception, and America was founded as an ultimate escape from the city states of London, Paris and ultimately Ur. People want freedom, not more managers of their lives, and the gamble that the CIA and FBI have made in revealing their true natures is that they anticipate people will fall back within the city walls for which they are most comfortable. And they’ll behead their President out of self-preservation and fear.

This is the reason I have never really trusted the CIA or the FBI or any of the American intelligence agencies. I trust them even less now, because their understanding of the world is anchored back to those ancient biblical cities of primordial origins which rose up mysteriously from the tents of migrant hunters and thus accepted no further evolutions of thought and philosophy. The most creative of the human species have pondered these mysteries for millennia, but it was only when the United States was founded within the last several hundred years that a new reality of self-government under the miracles of capitalism became known. Then Donald Trump, the ultimate capitalist and free spirit was elected and those dreaming of a return to the city-state of Ur have since boiled in fear and frustration. This was not the world their education institutions instructed them would be coming. They had been lied to and now the very foundations of their entire belief system were now in jeopardy.

That is what is going on with the Trump impeachment, it has nothing to do with him. But everything to do with the previous power structure that has been trying to undo the American experiment since Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson worked out the details in the attic of a small home in New England under the bright sun of a summer day with no air conditioning. It was philosophy which guided their thoughts and a new form of economic theory devised by Adam Smith. Even John Adams was there to refine the thoughts in the context of intelligentsia. But for everyone else it was a slow go and over the many years since, out of a perceived safety of protecting our country, the FBI and CIA have thought of themselves as the king makers which gave them power over everyone. And they liked that power and in so doing had no inspiration to learn what was really on people’s minds, which is why they find themselves in 2020 looking at a second term of Donald Trump. They feel they must do something.

It is that something that we should all be concerned about, because its obvious that the deep state power that we are all witnessing will do anything to keep us all within the city walls of Ur and under their control. A wild and wooly world that is not under the control of the city state is more terrifying to them than death itself, so they will do anything to hold that power, including try to impeach President Trump, and to hell with how it looks. A world without those city walls is far more terrifying to them than the reality of what’s truly in the hearts of the electorate. Ultimately its not Trump they fear, it’s the people who voted for him. And they don’t know how to control that without just taking him away as an option only to limit our voting options to another modern update to Nebuchadnezzar. Yet, what they are learning as we speak and beyond, is that we don’t want a Nebuchadnezzar, we want self-rule and the benefits of a capitalist economy not just within the United States, but around the world. And the trajectory of history shows us that, that is the way the world is heading, in spite of the best efforts of the CIA to take those options away.

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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For a Stupid “B”: The solution to Lakota’s budget problems

I’d like to take the high road and not do a series of stories about school board members who go to hotel conferences and drink so much that they pass out face down in the bathroom with their underwear nowhere to be found. That might be embarrassing to the whole district and damaging during a political campaign. Rather, I’d like to discuss the facts and that it is clear to me that in the very large Lakota school district with over 16,000 students that the spending by the liberal school board is out of control and needs some common sense applied. Due to their reckless handling of the radical teacher’s union throwing most of the money from the 2013 tax increase toward teacher salaries, they are poised to do it again. Lucky for the Lakota school district, we have an election coming up, and we have a potential third vote solution to the spending problem, James Hahn.

Listening to the many problems uttered at the Lakota school board, if we were doing a business analysis of their problem it’s that they are overspending on their budget. We are paying extraordinary six figure salaries to too many employees and they simply aren’t worth the money. From the measure of the state, Lakota received a report card of a “B” which simply isn’t acceptable. For all the cheerleading that Julie Shaffer and Brad Lovell, who has a wife working as an administrator, have illustrated, that if only we gave teachers a raise, that we could maintain our A+ excellent ratings–people buying homes in the area and investing in businesses would have nothing to worry about. But they have failed and failed miserably. As elected officials they have enjoyed too much the drinks at those seminars more than doing the business of the district and now the failing grades are starting to show, even as declining enrollment if managed properly could have kept more tax increases off the ballot.

When they ask as a school board for a tax levy they are essentially saying that they have no desire to manage their employees. They would of course say that their collective bargaining agreements are what drive up the costs. They would then say that the reason they want to overpay teachers and yield to their threats for strikes if they don’t get even more ridiculous raises is that Lakota wants to retain their employees so they can get the good grades from the state. But guess what, that isn’t happening. A grade of a “B” isn’t good enough for our district especially for what we are paying.

To have average salaries of $70K to $80K per employee one might argue that its worth it to give kids the best opportunity for success. The trouble is, in comparison, other schools that are competing with Lakota who also have high rates of teacher salary, supposedly the best in the business are getting As on their report card. Lakota is paying for mediocrity. What obviously needs to happen is that Lakota needs to cut away their overpriced teachers who care more about gender neutrality and other leftist causes and bring in new talent that can flip the pay scale. What is there to lose if Lakota is already getting a “B” in its grade rating? Why wouldn’t we dump half of the teaching staff and start over with fresh young talent to balance the books?

Well, that is called management and currently three of the two school board members just aren’t willing to do that hard work. Currently Lynda O’Connor and Todd Parnell are functioning as conservatives trying to implement some management controls, and they are feeling the heat from it. What they need is a third vote on the Board, in this case James Hahn. I had the opportunity to meet James recently and he is a sharp, business guy. He understands how things should work and functioning in a three-vote majority, he could do some good, especially partnered with Lynda. I have known Lynda for a long time and at first, I was skeptical of her. But over time she has proven herself to be a solid conservative who wants to do the right thing. What she has needed and continues to need is that critical third vote.

Before we burn down the district with another levy vote and do all the television, radio and newspaper coverage that could be very hard on our district regarding its reputation, we have a chance to vote for James Hahn to actually manage the district at the Board of Education for the first real time in my lifetime, and I’ve been around Lakota for decades. This is a rare opportunity and the Republican Party is backing Jim and Lynda for this very important race during the upcoming election. But it won’t be easy. The levy activists and unionized radicals who hide behind children and declare that great harm will come to their minds if we don’t just throw endless amounts of money at them forever will do whatever they can to prop up Julie. She will get a lot of votes just because she is perceived as a lay down candidate for the teacher’s union who want their money at the expense of the rest of us.

This particular election is one of the most important in Butler County because it’s a chance not only to put fiscal responsibility in charge of one of the largest public budgets in the state, but that the failure to do so could easily cost most of us many more thousands and thousands of dollars a year for nothing. And by nothing, I mean a report card of a “B.” An average at best rating for a top level pay level that is detrimental to our future development. The big scam was to pay the teachers so we could keep our school system at a high grade so that people would continue to move in and buy homes and invest in businesses. But what we are seeing is the opposite, businesses are concerned about the high taxation and who wants to invest in a home in Lakota for a “B” when they can go to Mason with the same dollars and get an “A?”

Of course, Julie and her liberals on the school board want to keep things as they are, they are for big union contracts and the same old teacher problems, like wasting time and money on entertaining transgender bathrooms. And when their treasurer says that they are operating at a budget surplus they don’t think that’s a sign for them to tighten up their budget and spend better. For them it only means they must seek a tax increase and that their energy goes into how to make voters pass it rather than doing their jobs of managing the budget they do have, drive away the expensive teachers and bring in the new. For the grade of a “B,” why not? I personally am happy that finally we have a candidate in James Hahn who thinks correctly about these matters. And if only we could get him elected, we may finally solve many of the problems at Lakota. Hopefully we can, before the politics of the matter get truly nasty. I’d rather talk about budgets and not about the stories of bad conduct that easily could be justified.

Rich Hoffman

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An old picture, its much worse now. 

Public Education was Free for a Reason: The communist and socialist agenda that was their goal all along

I suppose that its refreshing now to hear so many people finally get what public education has been all about, all along. I’ve never been a fan and something that has bothered me for a long time going way back to the first time I went on WLW radio to discuss the Lakota school finance problems the issue was raised and at the time I was the only one talking about it. Back then the pro tax advocates that are always in every school system cheering on tax increases to pay the bounty on that the teacher’s union demands routinely from contract to contract were pointing out that I wasn’t just anti-tax, I was anti public education and that I shouldn’t be given a legitimate platform to speak from. Well, I was also good for ratings and was willing to publicly take on people like Julie Shaffer, the current pro tax school board member with debate that was embarrassing for the pro tax advocates, because normally nobody ever challenged them. But it was true, the money was always one part of it. My concern has always been, its not that education isn’t offered, but that its what was taught that mattered, in the entire education system that I had experienced in America from first grade to the higher degrees of college was socialism and communism. Not the skills of capitalism that were needed for our society. However, that is changing, many more people are coming to realize decades later what I have been saying all along and they are talking about it much more openly. Videos like the one below is no longer fringe but are part of the mainstream understanding of what public education really is.

Education has always been important to me and continues to be. But I’ve never considered what is offered these days to be education, I’d just call it propaganda. We talk about teachers as if they are “heroes” because they baby sit our kids while we are off working, then we are perplexed when they grow up with all these crazy ideas about “fairness,” gender roles, and economic theory. Lately it has been shocking to the mainstream news that most millennials support socialism over capitalism and are now voting that way for open communists like Bernie Sanders who clearly wants to turn America into China. To the many people who have begged me to be a school board member at that same school of Lakota I have had to explain that my position has always been to dismantle the public education system, not to support it with further ruined minds. I am of the belief that it would be better for parents to pay for their children’s education out of pocket then to get the free public park version that the government offers. I’d be miserable trying to defend a system that clearly wasn’t working and shouldn’t work because the intent all along was to make compliant socialist kids, not free-thinking capitalists.

I do admire people who do care about these education topics and fight to make it better, but clearly the only way that change can happen is from the top, from a presidential administration that then flows down through congress their strategy to finally get their hands around these issues. The philosophy of education must be dealt with. Dealing with the cost can make people assess whether or not the education system is valuable to them, but if they think that they are going to send their kids to public school to make geniuses out of them like Albert Einstein, they have another thing coming. Its not that there are lots of smart kids biologically gifted toward a tendency to succeed, its that they have been taught to push all that deep inside into a repressed state for the socialist goals of the education system itself. After all, a government of any kind wants to stay in power and the best way to do that is to dumb down the future participants that elect them to that power. Not free-thinking people.

I think my kids and now grandkids have a much better shot at a balanced life than I did going through the public-school system. I feel that as an influence leader in the lives of the people I care about that I must overcome the brain washing they get in the public-school system. That in the competitive field of thought, that my ideas needed to be judged better than what they were getting from their social influences. For whatever reason I figured out the public education game early in my life, while I was still there. I had a terrible kindergarten teacher which was probably a blessing and did set the stage for the rest of my life. Later that crazy old lady reportedly had major mental problems which surprised nobody. But she was considered at the time one of those heroic teachers that everyone is always talking about, and I had to somehow survive.

I would say I had above average intelligence, everything came quick to me in school, I always knew the answers before most of the questions were asked, but it was clear to me that the focus of the public school experience wasn’t in developing individualized thought, it was in learning to get along with the other kids and to fall into some invisible category of social behavior for which the school system seemed obsessed with developing. This trend was eased into over the beginning grade school years but seemed poised to exacerbate itself especially during the puberty years once the need for mating was aligned with the government’s need to control ambition and human focus. If the public schools could get kids thinking about their sexual natures, they could lower their aims for bigger things in life and thus keep them comfortably under the thumb of a powerful all needing government that consumes resources like a chocolate obsessed candy lover popping M&Ms like they were going out of style. Most people reading this understand what I’m saying whether or not they are 60 years old or 10. The obvious damage is quite apparent in our adult population.

Its not that these problems could be solved at the local level because everything was set regarding curriculum at the federal level and enforced by an international labor union which beholds the standards across the world. In that way the same basic things taught to some kid in France is the same one taught to a kid in Alabama, regional considerations thus being minimal. And in that way, a path toward global communism, that has been a fantasy of Karl Marx supporters from the very beginning, might be realized.

It has been a challenge to get people to look beyond the “free” nature of education and to accept that you are getting what you paid for. It has always been difficult to convince people that they couldn’t purchase their way into a high paying job by trading away free thought for a college education that for most people has been entirely too expensive and was teaching all the wrong things. I was particularly disappointed to learn when I went to my first year of college, and friends of mine joined fraternities with their hazing rituals that all the intimidating standards that high school teachers had been warning about simply weren’t true. College was all about partying and losing. It was about sexual conquests and puking on the sidewalk after getting shitfaced at one of the many bars. And if you skipped all your classes, nobody cared. The colleges just wanted your tuition money and for you to show up at their sports games that were televised so that they could recruit more financial contributors and run them through the communist meat grinder. Lucky for me, I read a lot of books on my own and had pursued my own education all of my life outside of the public school and college system and I was able to arrive as an adult fully intact. But most people are not so lucky or committed, and the results are obvious.

The solution to the public education problem is not more school levies, or even hiring more teachers. It’s changing the very nature of the education into something that is actually useful. And that education system needs to be specifically American, something that prepares students for life in America, not some global communist community. Until that happens, kids and their minds will continue to be wasted and they will spend most of their lives trying to unlearn everything they have learned. Because if they want to be good contributors to society, and to have good lives of their own, they need to get as far away from public education and the current college experience as possible, if they really want to be smart and functioning under free will. We have a long way to go as a society, but its good to see that more and more, people are asking those questions on their own and finally accepting that what I’ve been saying for four decades was true all along.

Rich Hoffman
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Republicans and Democrats will Never Work Together: Above and Below the line thinking

I learned a long time ago when dealing with the Lakota school system, the government school in my home district, that most everything related to government functioned below the line, which is a saying in the private sector especially popular among business consultants. In the private sector such definitions are used to convey troublesome cultures that are unprofitable. Above the line, positive affirmations are often the key to solving financial problems in private sector companies, but in government such things never happen, and the expectation is that they never will. I was told by so many labor union employees within the Lakota government schools system that private sector metrics could not be applied to things like schools, and government in general. That was of course before Republicans elected a businessman like Donald Trump to the White House, which has changed things significantly in how government operates. Trump fires people and is constantly moving people around to find the best fit, which should always have been happening in government. But until recently, it wasn’t even a consideration, which is of course why government tends to operate poorly, too expensively, and always below the line.

When I talk so poorly about Democrats its not political in the way that has become fashionable, it’s by conjecture of the evidence. If I were hired to fix a company I would have to first overcome the issues with the below the line thinkers that are always a part of every organization and use some means to correct that situation, either by terminating them, or changing their mindset to above the line thinking. We have the same problems in families, you can’t have a bunch of positive people who want to make a happy family and mix them with a bunch of below the line negative types who want to be victims at everything just so they can use failure as a shield for their own laziness. So of course we will have such people in our political system that we must vote for in the ballot box. Of those, Democrats certainly represent below the line thinking and the big government approach to everything where Republicans are above the line. President Trump is an excellent example of an above the line thinker, his business background lends itself naturally to that type of person. His popular television show was about teaching young project managers how to think above the line and not be victims, and to be successful. Then of course that is what he has been doing as President and the results to the economy are obvious, just as any company would experience when led by such a person. But Democrats are all about below the line thinking and in the scheme of things, the two just can’t co-exist without one destroying the other.

Examples of above the line thinking would be the ability to make choices, to be personally accountable, to always seek solutions, to take action. Examples of below the line thinking are to blame others, wait for others, to see failure, to see problems as obstacles. No company works well when it is filled with below the line people and it would be the consultant’s task to change that below the line culture into an above the line culture, and there are all kinds of tricks to get there. But the essence of the need is that for success to happen, switching people from below the line thinkers to above the line is not an option. We can’t live with below the line thinkers and expect to ever have success at anything. And that is the lesson for us as a nation politically.

The same holds true in everything we do whether it is trying to hold together a marriage, to build a family, running a business, or running a government. If a government is filled with a lot of below the line people, then there is no chance at success. And in my experience when trying to figure out why a multimillion dollar budget wasn’t enough for the teacher’s union, I learned quickly that there was no way to solve the problem so long as below the line people were the ones doing all the negotiating over budget allocation. You can’t solve problems with below the line people because they use problems to hide their aversion to solutions, because solutions take away excuses which leave those types of people vulnerable in ways, they aren’t comfortable with. And when such people are in control, money is wasted, resources destroyed, and nobody is ever responsible. Thus, problems rule the day.

Its not a matter of people having different opinions about things. It’s a matter of whether or not people want to solve problems or not. Those who don’t will never be able to negotiate better conditions because they need the below the line thinking to hide behind. No amount of negotiation will ever solve anything with such people, as they will constantly try to undo anything that is ever solved. And that is the state of the entire Democrat party, its all about victimhood, its all about excuses, and ultimately hopelessness. When we talk about Republicans and Democrats getting along as they once did, well I don’t know that they ever did. Thinking or John F. Kennedy when he pointed to the moon and proclaimed that we would go there, as a Democrat he was a very above the line thinker in that fashion. And he was also murdered because whether the killing was a lone communist sympathizing gunman or a government conspiracy from the deep state that wanted him out of the White House, a solution based presidency was not wanted. So he was killed.

When it comes to this topic, we can’t just let below the line thinkers rule us from their negative standpoints, and still retain our above the line values. Those things never go together and they never will. Democrats will never play well with Republicans and that is a political reality we must face. So it is not wrong to demonize Democrats for not wanting to be part of any solutions. In any company where the below the line thinkers are standing in the way of solutions, they must be removed. Its not an option. So neither is it when those same types are in the way in politics. There is no such thing as a fair world where all people get to have an equal seat at the table. There is only winning and losing, we are either doing one thing or the other. But both things can’t happen at the same time. We must make a choice. Will it be Republicans above the line or Democrats below the line in what runs a government and everything that spawns off it.

I would say that it is our modern task to figure this out and to apply such concepts to our elected offices. We should expect above the line thinking from our politicians and our government, just as we would from a well run company. If we want to have good Thanksgiving dinners with our families, we should encourage above the line thinking among all the participants. But if some of the grown up children are still mad at their parents for their own lack of success in life and are trying to blame the college they went to, the attention they received from mother, or even who among the siblings had the bigger bed growing up, then there will probably be a lot of backstabbing at family gatherings and Thanksgiving will be miserable. Everyone is either working to solve things in their life or they are using problems as shields to maintain their below the line status. And so long as government schools, judicial buildings, IRS collections, and everything under the umbrella of government is below the line, and supported by Democrats wanting more and more of it, then there will never be solutions to inflated budgets and poor performance. The solutions to those types of things is in changing behavior, not the politics of the individuals. What people call themselves are not nearly as important as to whether or not they are below the line or above the line in their essential thinking.

Rich Hoffman

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I’ll Take The Art of the Deal over The Art of War: China has already lost the trade war

You can go back a long ways, even to the time where Doc Thompson and I talked about the China problem on WLW radio frequently. You can Google me or him on the topic of China and discover that this issue is not a new one. Long before there was a President Trump, people like us were trying to wake people up to the fact that modern warfare was not in tanks, guns and troops, it was economies and China was seeking to knock America off the ladder and to become the dominate player in the world as a communist country of everything financial. And they almost got away with it. I would vote for Donald Trump again, and again, and again if only to get out of his entire presidency this one thing, taking on China and halting the incursion into our lives that was well at play before his election. What people don’t seem to realize is that China was sucking out of the American economy over $500 billion per year in trade deficits. When we talk about the United States operating at a trillion dollars per year deficit, that is where half the money is going. If Trump hadn’t come along when he did, we’d all be in big trouble right now, Obama and Bush were all in on the deal. China was going to rule the world as a communist power, and even members of our own government were seeking to make it happen.

I was pretty furious that the public school in my home district of Lakota was sending teachers to China in exchange programs intent to learn how we could be more like them, because as an education institution, it should have been the other way around. I was even more furious when visiting the Children’s Museum in Indianapolis that they had an entire exhibit dedicated to learning about the Chinese way of doing things, as if preparing American students for the inevitable takeover. The United States was poised by a lot of dumb politicians prior to President Trump to give away American wealth to the Chinese and they were going to be handed the keys to the world just for showing up as a global communist power that leftist economists wanted to breathe to being since the same experiment in Russia, and Vietnam had failed.

China was never as powerful as authorities told us. As a communist tyranny their society naturally lacks imagination and deep philosophic thinking, and that is clear in their culture, as it is in every communist society. That is not a political statement, it’s a human one. It doesn’t matter if the subject is the sad housewife who spent her entire life serving her family only to see them all grow up and away giving her little back in return or the business professional that has poured their entire life into their company serving their bosses then dying one year after retirement, people are happiest when they are free to act and think what they want when they want to. Capitalism allows for more of this behavior than centralized controlled societies. That society may be the contents of a marriage between two people where one clearly dominates the other, and the other is a miserable wreck of a person, or a company and its employees, where top down authority is more important than horizontal harmony. China as a power is too centralized for their billion plus people to think for themselves. They have the workers, but they don’t think freely which is a huge impediment to an expanding economy built off wealth production.

The whole trick worked so long as America could be coaxed into giving away their wealth so that China could have it. So long as America followed green agenda points with over regulation while China could do anything to the environment and nobody would say anything—especially the climate science activists who secretly knew the name of the game was and will always be for them, global communism. They want a welfare state so they can sit around collecting a government check while their lazy asses play video games all day, and they vote accordingly. But they do not represent the intellect of America, that’s why we voted for Trump. To avoid this downward spiral.

Its time to say all this because this issue as I said has been around a long time. My friend Doc Thompson was recently killed by an Amtrack train, which I still find uncharacteristically odd, but whatever. He’s not around any more, but this China problem is exactly as he and I said it would be nearly ten years ago. And I for one am extremely happy with how President Trump is playing the situation for American advantage. The Chinese are exposed. The American economy will start to see plus revenue as the money flows out of China and back into the United States. That isn’t to say that we don’t have to solve our spending problem in America, but Trump isn’t president to do that. He’s there to put money back in the jar. We’ll fight later about how to spend it. His job is to stop the bleeding and he is certainly doing that.

There are a few YouTube videos confirming what I’m saying, and a few business analysist types on cable news who agree with me, but I have found it shocking that with all the great intellect that we have in America that more people just don’t understand the problem with China and what they have been up to. However, I did spend about ten years of my life reading The Art of War not just in the words that were printed on the page, but in soaking up their meaning in the way that the Chinese think. The book itself dates back to around 500 BC to the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu and clearly that has been the way that the Chinese not only came to power after World War II where America did all the fighting for them only to lose the entire East to communism, in Korea and Vietnam. Was it on purpose, I think so. Our government wanted communism in the East and it looks now that FDR and his partners in government wanted communism, not to hinder it. One of the people I most admire in the world was Claire Lee Chennault, the leader of the Flying Tigers who was tasked with defending China from the Japanese. After reading his book, the Way of the Fighter its clear to me that the United States military only wanted him to preserve China for the obvious communist invasion coming out of the Soviet Union. People disliked Ronald Reagan for standing up to Russia in the same way that they hate Trump for standing up to China, because they wanted communism to rule the world, and that has always been the fight. Its not new, but is to those who don’t read books, and haven’t been screaming about this issue from the rooftops on national radio shows for years, or writing about it as extensively, and solitarily, as I have.

For a change America has its own book on strategy, The Art of the Deal and the author of that book is the guy in the White House. The Chinese wish they had back Sun Tzu but all they can do is read his words. For America, the sequel to The Art of the Deal is applying those tactics to real life as we speak, and the result will be an end to Chinese communism. Trump knows that the financial status of China is all paper tigers and shadows on the wall made to look bigger than they really are. The reality is that they are going to collapse the longer they fight, and that is why these protests in Hong Kong are happening now. The people there know that this is their best shot at freedom so they are taking it. And I am so proud to have Trump in the White House fighting this fight even though many of the people around him in Washington D.C. are cheering on the Chinese. Their betrayal tells us who they were all along.

Rich Hoffman

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There is a Storm Coming: Lakota better have a boat

I think the best thing that could happen is that Julie Shaffer would lose her seat to a new school board candidate in this upcoming fall 2019 election. Jim Hahn is a potential for that, he’s running and is a business guy, and if the Lakota school board could pick him up and keep Todd Parnell, and Lynda O’Conner, there would finally be a three vote conservative presence that could avert the current levy plans that are in place for attempts beginning as early as 2020. If there is another tax attempt, I will say right now that I am all on board to resume the fight against it, and I understand that others are also interested. A gentle message to Lakota and all the real estate agents that spawn off the school system, there is a storm coming, so I hope you have built a boat, because the next levy attempt will be a bloodbath. The liberal activities of Brad Lovell Kelley Casper and of course Julie Shaffer along with the very disappointing sentiments that have evolved from the new superintendent Matt Miller, they have squandered a very good opportunity, a great budget with declining enrollment that has even further inflated the payroll for teachers who clearly aren’t worth the money, and they have been caught in gross mismanagement. The two conservative school board members have shown a bit of hope in properly managing the district, but the school board itself hasn’t gone far enough—the liberal activism is still a problem in the management of the government school.

I have no love for Julie Shaffer, we have a history together. When she couldn’t defeat my arguments back in 2012 she had to turn to identity politics to separate the No Lakota Levy group I represented for their 2013 attempt which they ended up winning by a very narrow margin. But it wasn’t Lakota who did anything to turn the tide, it was Sheriff Jones who wanted to put armed cops in the schools to protect them from mass shooters, or the potential. As it turned out, just as I said it would be, the whole thing was a scam, the money from the levy wasn’t used to cover cops or even security. Lakota did do those things, but ultimately the money was only to give teachers raises for their very high wages. My argument back then was that it didn’t bother me that Lakota had several teachers with six figure salaries, but that through collective bargaining the labor union wanted everyone to have those extraordinary salaries and back then the average wage was over 70K per year. We always hear stories about how low teachers are paid, well that’s not the case at Lakota, the teachers are well paid and the union props them all up and makes it nearly impossible to fire problem employees like the recent drama witnessed by the ex-Lakota employee, the transgender activist Emily Osterling. She sued the district for her proposed termination, and she won a settlement of $175,000 which the tax payers had to cough up ultimately.

Lakota is in my back yard so I want them to do well, but only until they become a pain in the ass in asking for too much money. I am proud of Lakota as long as they aren’t asking for money and by looking at their annual budget of over $220 million per year it is clear that the school board has not managed the money correctly. Now to their defense, the collective bargaining agreements by the union make normal value stream assessments nearly impossible. It takes three solid votes to really manage a district when there are five board members. It has taken a long time to get the two good ones that we have now and a lot of pushing and shoving. I have been asked many, many times to take on the job, but for my part, I have no desire to negotiate with a labor union all the time and I think the education system should be completely dismantled and recreated with a school choice competitive option. So its not a job for me, but we do need smart people who understand value creation to do the job. In that regard, there is an option in Jim Hahn.

However, the union vote will come out for their own preservation and they will vote this November for Julie Shaffer, so it will be a tough climb for Jim Hahn. He’s going to need some help and a good turnout. The union will not want him on the school board because they are against anything that does not stop the upward mismanagement of financial resources that are set to run out by 2023. Most of that $220 million budget is all in teacher salaries and that is just ridiculous. In an age where kids are learning more from hand held devices such as smart phones and personal computers, physical teachers are going the way of the drive-in. The test results just do not show that a teacher in the classroom make or break much in a student’s life. Most of the feel good stories are propaganda by the unions which young people are prone to be sucked in to, but are shallow in credibility at best. Just take a look at the Lakota website and their reported financials. They are short on substance but are flashy with surface points and comparisons to other districts who are every bit as much of a disaster as they are—because they are all driven by unionized employees hungry for inflated wages and as little work to do as possible.

The bloodbath that I am promising will be simple value stream analysis of what Lakota really does for our community, which is very little. The high school football games are only important to the students and their families, the other 100,000 people who live in the Lakota school system could care less and people like me without kids in the school system go through our daily days not even noticing the school buildings or their occupants. Life is busy and there is a lot for people like me to do that has nothing to do with the school system, and people like me are in the majority. All it takes is to get them to show up to vote, and they can easily out vote the union radicals which is why it takes Lakota an average of three levy attempts to get a tax increase passed. And to do that they have to resort to guerrilla warfare, not the goodness of people’s hearts. I would personally rather have the bloodbath rather than harm future business growth in our region with another Lakota tax increase, and argued that way, the way all businesses are measured, the story is quite clear. Lakota is not a value to our community, but a hindrance and the product they produce is failing and will continue to fail until the unions no longer run the government schools. That is, unless a third conservative is elected to the school board, and the budget crises that is coming can be averted. The value of the district won’t change but the bad reputation that will put Lakota through a lot of pain could be averted. And I would think that to be a good thing.

Rich Hoffman

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Lakota Wants Another Tax Increase to Pay for their Progressive, Radical, anti-American Teachers: The lawsuit of Emily Osterling

A little bird landed on my shoulder recently to tell me that my local school system of Lakota was thinking about attempting another tax increase on property owners after years of declining enrollment, and poor performance, and it sent my blood into a boil. My position on school levies is pretty clear, especially these days. When I’ve been against them before it was largely a cost thing, public schools were just too much of a burden in their communities and they weighed them down needlessly. But now, we have seen that not even the extraordinary costs were even worth the trouble as the kids coming out of these schools are just a mess. Little birds have a way of always coming back and what’s more, its not just one, no matter how much time passes. What they whisper is the kind of things that are truly things to be angry at, because the audacity is something to behold, because if you really do care about kids and their futures, which I do, then this public school scam of sucking so much money out of tax revenue for poor management by the school boards is something that we all must deal with.

For instance, that same school board which is proposing to put another tax increase on the ballot perhaps as early as 2020 also is trying to get transgender policies enacted for the sheer progressive intention of social theatrics. A school like Lakota which is one of the largest in Ohio and has many thousands of students, only has a handful of students who would lay claim to any kind of transgender policy. While a person like me would argue that transgender anything has nothing to do with education and is purely a creation of the progressive political movement, accommodations are made at Lakota for that very specific minority. So there is no need for costly modifications or even the wasted effort by management (the school board) to embark on any kind of transgender diatribe. It’s not even something that a school board should be discussing in relation to budgetary considerations. In any kind of world that type of cause and effect proposal is completely non value added to the end use customer, the children and their families and really is at the heart of all public schools. They simply don’t produce anything of any real value to the world and have worn out their welcome.

In business, it is common no matter what the size for management to ponder how to squeeze cost out of everything so that a company can make money and survive. One of the ways that is done is to determine what elements of a company create value for their end use customer while putting all the other efforts to a category of waste to be eliminated from their processes. When a school system like Lakota is in the mode of thinking that transgender issues are a value to their end use customer, the tax paying public, then there is a big problem and it becomes an even bigger problem when they consider any proposal that increases taxes on a future ballot.

I am clearly aware of the Emily Osterling case who sued Lakota for transgender issues which cost $175,000, $75,000 coming directly out of board funds. Osterling was a long time teacher, one of those employees that I have said for years was overpaid for the kind of work that she was doing. The school board had determined that her activism into transgender rights was cutting into her actual duties, so the activist was put on administrative leave. The school board was trying to do the right thing and get rid of a troubling, and expensive employee that was pushing off progressive causes onto a learning environment that was supposed to be teaching kids. A few years prior in a close vote that Julie Shaffer was pushing on creating a transgender policy at Lakota the issue was narrowly defeated not in a small part due to the two conservatives that sit on the Lakota school board in Lynda O’Connor and Todd Parnell. The progressive activist Osterling wouldn’t let the matter stand and continued to push the agenda which eventually forced the board to settle with her such an extraordinary sum of money over something that most people can agree was not a value to the end use customer, the students and their tax paying parents.

And that is where the real problem is, that the employees of Lakota and every other public school are runaway activists intent to perpetually run up their labor costs and to ultimately turn our children into progressive advocates of liberalism and launch them into a life of confusion and turmoil. On the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati Osterling cited that her administrative leave in September of 2018 to begin termination proceedings based on “flimsy and retaliatory allegations” was somehow out of step with the actual needs of the community, and it is in those kinds of employees that jack up the extraordinary costs of the employees at Lakota which cause the need for ever more tax money to be wasted on them for the basic luxury as acting as glorified babysitters.

Osterling was a prominent Lakota teacher’s union official and a National Education Association board member, and co-chair of the NEA’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender caucus—otherwise as an employee, she was a nightmare—expensive and underperforming toward what the value of an education to children really needed. As part of the settlement Osterling had to submit a letter of resignation on March 26th of 2019. The problem is, she is just one employee at Lakota which has many hundreds just like her, only not quite as vocal. Even when it was obvious that Osterling had to go, it took moving mountains to get her out, and it was expensive.

I didn’t say much on the matter because I felt the school board, at least a few of them, was doing a good job. Julie Shaffer continues to be the entry point for activism allowing people like Osterling to feel they even have a platform to speak from. My history with Julie goes back a long time, our debates can still be found by Googling them which were aired on WLW radio some years back. Of course when she and her board members back then couldn’t win a school levy three times in a row because they couldn’t make a good argument for the money the board was wasting, she turned to identity politics to try and bring great harm to me personally which remains to this day an issue of contention. I offered to put the matter to rest by supporting a tax increase which I knew Lakota wanted to propose soon, but only if they allowed teachers to arm themselves in the classrooms to protect against a mass shooting. Of course, they ignored my proposal which pulled my support of any levy off the table. I’m willing to pay teachers to get gun training and to protect kids from bad people, but I’m not willing to support progressive union activists like Emily Osterling. The school isn’t there for the employees, its there for the kids, pure and simple.

Due to the lack of management, again, not by all the school board members, but there is still a three to two vote against logic in Lakota. If that ratio could be turned around, and activists like Julie Shaffer who obviously has serious problems and is aligned with the radical elements of the employment base, money management might occur. But under the current leadership, Lakota plans to consider another tax increase soon and we’ll be back to all the same old tricks and nonsense again. I don’t think any of us want that. I don’t want expensive employees and lawsuits that are non value added to the end use customer working at Lakota. I thought it was wise for the board to try to get rid of her, which they did eventually. But when members of the board are encouraging the Emily Osterling types along, that expense is on them, not the taxpayer.

Rich Hoffman

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Don’t Worry about the 10-Year Treasury Bonds: There won’t be a recession during the Trump Presidency

There are lots of ways to control people, and the flow of information that they arrive at to make decisions. Advertisers do it all the time with product placement in movies and commercials which ultimately lead a consumer to a purchase. So it’s not a conspiracy theory to suggest that all the anti-Trump forces that are out there, which also means the “establishment” from both political parties have been planting seeds for the 20/20 election that would hurt Trump. One fine example is the so called “dog whistle” that Democrats are always talking about where “agents” of our law enforcement work the message boards of chat rooms where pot smoking losers are gathering to talk politics in the “other” category for violent video games where future terrorists are recruited by pushing them over the edge in a nick of time to change a national narrative on gun control, just as Trump may be gaining momentum on the aftereffects of the Mueller investigation. People can argue whether or not these things are organized behavior, or that they are the results of carefully placed “product placement” into our news cycles which a liberal media then keys off of to discuss on all broadcast networks, even down to the entertainment press like Inside Edition, Entertainment Tonight, and the various programs that still play on MTV. It would be ignorant to assume that the smart, and very manipulative people of the human race who are not quite smart enough to be Republicans, are out there in the world trying to make things hard for President Trump to win re-election. And if they could, they would love to wreck the economy in America so that Trump couldn’t use it to win in 20/20, which is of course the origin of the story that came out this past week regarding the first inverted yield curve on 10-year Treasury bonds.

Even the Federal Reserve is in on the action, their roots into international banking that would love to see an end to Trump are slow to adjust interest rates to the market needs of the red hot American economy as many of them hope with all hope that something will sink President Trump. The stock market has done nothing but rise like a rocket since the day he was elected, and it has stayed that way since. When he was elected Dow averages were in the 18,000 range. It was considered unheard of to be in the 25-27,000 range where it is now with all the market volatility that we are experiencing as a tariff war with China is in full swing. The sad truth there is that China had been running the world as a communist nation and their hooks were in our American media because they had bought up interest on our massive debts and purchased much of it. So nobody was talking about what a mess China really was, and the American economy was supposed to be overtaken by them by now, which of course stopped the moment we elected President Trump who did not play by the rules everyone expected of him, and is the root of all the Deep State activity, and so on. America was supposed to be economically torpedoed and we averted it by electing Trump and many people behind the torpedo attempt are furious about it and want one last crack.

With the same intention that authorities wanted to see mass shootings from their liberal base, such as that loser from Dayton who heard the dog whistle from liberals on the channel that drug users all listen to subconsciously, “economists” are doing the same with reports on the 10-year treasury bonds trying to get people to pull their money out of the markets out of fears of recession as stoked by those same people. If they can convince people that there is a recession on the horizon and that they can tank the economy, they think they can stop a Trump re-election. Essentially a group called FactSet stated that the 2-year yield had dropped 4.1 basis points at 1.628 percent. Such an inversion has preceded the last seven recessions. Further they have stated that the equity market is on borrowed time after the yield curve inverts where 2-year bonds are paying more than the longer term 10-year bonds. And for that, markets should panic and move their money into a holding pattern, so they don’t get burnt as they did in 2007 ahead of the 2008 collapse. The control here is in using fear in “what ifs” to actually manipulate market conditions that instigate a self-fulfilled prophesy. Did you get all that dear reader?

The great thing about President Trump which I think will likely stick deep into this new century is that he’s rich. He made a lot of money the old-fashioned way, through brick and mortar real estate, which isn’t easy, even with a head start from his father who had already been in the business. And like most rich people he knows how wealth is created and how it is discharged through the world. Often very rich people who want to buy up something will poo poo it to the gullible public so that their price will be lowered, or they will go somewhere else to put their money so that the rich person can acquire it without a lot of fanfare giving them leverage on the purchase. For instance, someone buying a new car might do the same to a sentimental owner that wants to be paid above market value due to their attachment to the property. So the smart investor will point out all the little dents and scratches in the paint, the torn seats and the sputter on the tachometer curve over 3000 to lower the owners impression of their own asset so that a lower price can be found. By pushing all the weak investors out of the market and having the potential of getting rid of President Trump, a lot of wealthy people stand to gain a lot by driving down values and then buying them back up once sold. It’s a win win for them and not much of a conspiracy, such as the FBI working with the Democrats to elect Hillary Clinton in the last election. The same forces are at work with this economic news. But its not true.

The reason that market inversions like this are even reported is because they do cause recessions as a panicked public often responds predictably by pulling their money out of markets so that the very wealthy can then buy up assets at a low price only to sell them later at a high price. That is how rich people get rich—by either capitalizing off of value or by creating it in the first place. Fortunately for all the rest of us we decided to elect our own rich person to finally run the country who understands all these games and suddenly they aren’t working. And that is the lesson here. This is a last-ditch effort by the deep state, whatever you want to call them, to stop President Trump before the 20/20 election. But China is on a downward spiral. The Hong Kong protests are signs of their sinking ship and a lot of American companies are pulling out of the communist nation. That growth is coming back into the United States just as the rest of the world is struggling due to the strings being cut from them into North America. And now America is once again the top energy producer in the world. The effects of that are just hitting, so no, we are not going to have a recession. The forces that cause panic and the aftereffects of recession are going to find that they are helpless in their efforts, and that everything is going to be just fine. And Trump will be re-elected not just easily, but dominantly. The head to head matchups in the early polling are of the same nature as these market watch forecasts, purely politically driven in hopes of eroding away hopes and dreams. Only this time, its not going to work. The game is over.

Rich Hoffman

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