Tag: Lakota Schools

The Community Foundation “refuses to accept funds where political statements are attached”: Except when Lakota is involved

You can always tell a lot about a situation by the people who are willing to speak on an issue. Such was the case of a normally calm, mild-mannered Lakota school board meeting on Monday, June 8th 2015 where a number of people spoke out against the Lakota property giveaway of the Old Union School, which many in the community want to see it made into a historic building worthy of preservation. As I reported yesterday, a strong core group of logical community citizens showed up to speak and they made valid arguments which actually ruffled the feathers of the superintendent. The show of support for the old school was enough to cause her to threaten a 10 million dollar bond on a future ballot. The whole meeting will be seen when Lakota publishes the video of the meeting on their website.image

However, the loudest voices at the event where those most silent. Such as the lack of reporting by the local media which would normally salivate over an issue like this—they were noticeably not present. Only Eric Schwartzberg from the Journal was there and he only took one picture—and that was of course the socialite Patti Alderson and her crusade to build a Boys and Girls Club on the site of the Old Union School. That in itself wasn’t shocking, just disappointedly predictable. However it was surprising that Patti’s husband Dick was there and had planned to speak which he eventually declined.

When I was on the Scott Sloan show years ago after calling levy supporters in and around Lakota Latté Sipping Prostitutes—which I chronicled in the latest Cliffhanger installment seen on the sidebar of this article—I was involved in an internal strategy designed to root out subversives in my No Lakota Levy group—and I found them. It was quite an explosive bit of controversy that rooted out many who were playing both sides of a fence, kind of like a two timing man trying to maintain a wife and a mistress by putting down the other when in the presence of either. It was hard to tell who was friend from foe. Patti and Karen Mantia worked together to further cloud the waters which infuriated me to no end—because here was a Republican who has John Kasich’s ear, and who spends a lot of time with the current Speaker of the House who was openly for tax increases using children to hide the obvious liberal behavior. I knew that Dick wasn’t on board with that liberal activity—so it surprised me greatly to hear that he was at the Lakota school board meeting on the arm of his wife. But then again, it didn’t.image

In a similar school board meeting three years ago Patti spoke about me personally. She was head of the Community Foundation and said she refused to accept funds where political statements were attached. I along with several No Lakota Levy leaders started a new Foundation and we presented a check for $10,000 which infuriated levy supporters who were doing just what Patti said she refused to do. The $10,000 was set to be given to poor students to cover their sports fee extortion that Lakota was imposing on tax payers to pass a new levy. Patti attacked me for getting in the way of that extortion racket with a very public assault. Now why would she do such a thing if she really wanted to help children?  Helping kids should be a non-partisan thing. Well, they said things about me and I said things back to them in return and when they had no answer they fell on the typical progressive trick of calling me a sexist and begging the media to stop covering me. They hoped that I would just drift away into seclusion. But that’s not what happened. Speaking of that, just as a reminder be sure to tune into my radio show this upcoming Saturday June 13th 2015 1 PM at the following link. Calls are of course welcome and a local man of power will be my guest. The topic will be guns, guns, and more guns and what to do when you have to shoot someone to defend your property. Tune in and hang on for the ride.

http://www.waamradio.com/

Now, back to the topic at hand–those pro levy people were facing down new foes, this time a whole set of fresh protestors advocating for the same logical approach to a current problem—but a majority of them were females which presents a tactical problem for Mantia and her gang of property tax insurgents to deal with. It’s harder to marginalize women making them more effective in future debates against progressive advocates. So during the June 2015 meeting, Mantia showed a side of herself that people had only read about from my reports. Suddenly she wasn’t the nice Community Conversationalist who tries to justify $40K per year on Jeff Stec as a change agent to advocate on behalf of levy passage. She instead displayed a patronizing, sarcastic, disrespectful, condescending, incompetent overpaid government worker to a group of people who had previously been willing to give her the benefit of doubt. Quite a mistake on her part.image

During a portion of the speech Mantia gave on the matter of the Old Union School she essentially uttered in advocacy of giving Patti the property or investing $10 million dollars as if no other options existed, which is a classic Delphi Technique diatribe. She once did that with me when she presented a couple of options for the declining state revenue coming from Kasich—that the area property owners had an obligation to cover the discrepancy with raised taxes. It never occurred to her that lowering her own costs should come into play. Only that more costs were needed to advance the cause of public education into one big pit of bottomless need was the only thing on her mind. The same holds true over the Old Union School, Mantia and Patti have a deal and every option outside of that deal is non-existent.

But we know those characters; we understand what their motives are—and how they implement their objectives. When Manita was first hired as a superintendent she met with me and a few other key people at No Lakota Levy to feel us out and see how she could go about marginalizing it to make way for her levy attempts. She pretended to tell us secrets as if we’d be in the know and would have information that everyone else would be hungry to get—like her eventual plan to bring merit pay to Lakota—which is a trend happening all across the nation—it’s not specific to anything she’s doing. But we let her talk and were polite with her. When she left I told the other guys what the objective was—and they all agreed. We knew what she was doing—but it appears that Dick didn’t get the memo—or he was powerless to resist it. He’s a very successful person so he doesn’t need to be involved in something as politically charged as this whole Old Union School deal.

imageFor Patti who stated publicly that she refused to take money from any organization that had political statements attached, the Old Union School proves that to be hypocritical. The Old Union School is all about politics.   It’s all about passing levies and giveaways to friends of the district and unifying those normally opposed to tax increases. Patti, one of the wealthiest women of West Chester spoke in support of the Boys and Girls Club wanting money from a district for purely political reasons—as a Republican representative of all things. As a person who respects her husband as a titan of industry—I was just a little embarrassed for him.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

In Defense of Selfishness: Explaining the nature sex and relationships

Peter Schwartz from the Ayn Rand Instituted has been doing good publicity for his latest book released on June 2 titled In Defense of Selfishness: Why Self-Sacrifice is Unjust and Destructive. I thought the title odd as the word selfish has been so mischaracterized in our culture that it comes across as a negative. But Peter knows that and calculated that the opposition cast at him would set the trap for his philosophic argument—which is the point of the book. Schwartz has been successfully collecting the bounty of that trap with many interviews and making his point well.

I am of a mind that something really terrible happened in the pre-Deluge days of human history. What we have been told was sinful and wretched behavior may in fact have been translated by an insurrectionists revising historical perspective in a dominating need to rule over others. Somewhere in that struggle the word selfishness was destroyed of its meaning and the word “altruism” became synonymous with the word—“good.” All the religions that sprung forth from this period embraced altruism while they chastised self-interest forcing human beings to admit by their very birth an inclination to sin as defined by the quantity of self-sacrifice a given human being is willing to make on behalf of the greater good. Later this mentality would evolve into movements of communism and socialism, but the stage was set in religion.

However, for thinking people there are cracks into that façade which allow us to peer back into a time when such philosophic notions were not yet forged in such a destructive way and reveal a more sophisticated approach to pre-Socratic philosophy that has been defaced by the more recent translation in order to protect a desire to control the masses like sheep set to slaughter. It is on this stage that Peter Schwartz released his book described on his website as such:

In Defense of Selfishness is a cultural analysis of a deeply ingrained idea, one that influences our most important personal and political choices. The book makes the case—a sober, meticulous case—against the tenets of altruism. It shows that what altruism demands is not, as many superficially believe, that you respect the rights of your neighbor and refrain from acting like Attila the Hun, but that you subordinate yourself to others. Altruism entails not benevolence and cooperation, but servitude. Whether you are told to sacrifice by liberals in order to provide for the medically uninsured or by conservatives in order to preserve your community’s traditions, the code of altruism insists that the needs of others take precedence over your own interests. It declares that whenever you have something others lack, you have a duty to sacrifice for their sake.

The book asks why the fact that someone needs your money makes him morally entitled to it, while the fact that you’ve earned it, doesn’t. It explains why altruism leads to the opposite of social harmony: continual conflict. It scrupulously demonstrates, in theory and in nuts-and-bolts practice, the injustice and the destructiveness of self-sacrifice. And it offers a rational, non-predatory alternative.

People generally view the alternative—“selfishness”—as personified by conniving, murderous brutes, who embrace a do-whatever-you-feel-like-doing philosophy. People believe that our only choice is: sacrifice ourselves to others by being altruistic or sacrifice others to ourselves by being “selfish.” In Defense of Selfishness rejects this false alternative. It rejects the entire premise of sacrifice, under which one person’s gain comes only at the price of another’s loss. Instead, it proposes a true alternative to altruism, whereby people deal with one another not by sacrificing but by offering value for value, to mutual benefit, and by refusing to seek the unearned. This is an alternative, based on Ayn Rand’s ethics of rational self-interest, under which individuals live honest, self-respecting, productive lives. Because the truly selfish person lives by the guidance of reason, not by mindless impulses, he repudiates the unthinking, short-range mentality of the crook, the fly-by-nighter, the drug addict, the playboy, the drifter—all of whom are acting in contradiction to their self- interest.

http://peterschwartz.com/in-defense-of-selfishness/

To prove the merit of Peter’s theory all one needs to do is look toward the human activity of sex to understand. In sex those good at it understand that the selfish needs of their partner must first be met if they would like a return experience. Sex is largely driven by self-interest—it’s something that someone wants to do with—or to—someone else because of their selfish desire driven by animal impulses. Men known as bad lovers are those who do their business with a partner then the moment of their objective are no longer able to continue on. Men known as good lovers will make sure their partner reaches that point before they do so that the partner will want to do it again. The man is making a self-interested investment not only in the present but into the future by ensuring that his lover gets what they want as well.

The modern trend at three-way and group sex—along with the pornographic desensitizing of sex by cheapening it with a barrage of sexual addiction purely focused on imagery is a social attempt at the communal aspects of sex as opposed to the property rights of self-interest. The word “my” in such relationships is replaced with “we” or “us.” Instead of that being “my” wife or girlfriend, it becomes “our,” which then becomes an altruistic self-sacrificing practice. The woman who has miserable sex with a husband who is too busy thinking about other things to see her satisfied is an example of the religious sacrifice to a larger institution above her self-interest to enjoy herself. She will give him what he needs because the Bible tells her to ignoring her needs for the sacrifice of the Biblical laws of conduct. The corrupt man who is the bad lover is then in the power position to take advantage of his dedicated wife in the same way that a congregation might fall to the whims of a church leader of any denomination. The origin of the villainy is in the belief that altruism is the higher moral premise even in spite of the body’s desire for the needs of its terrestrial interests.

A happy couple will acknowledge their needs to one another and will tend to keep those needs within the self-possession of their relationship. Once those needs are met they can resume some other activity freely, and contentedly knowing that they will have another opportunity with a willing partner at their wish. That is because the needs of both parties are met—just like in a free market society. Sex and capitalism are very much applicable to the same moral premise. Orgies and swinging parties are indicative of progressive politics that lead to socialism because their emphasis is on the collective whole, and not their individual needs. The ecstasy of such an experience is on the social assimilation instead of the merit of an individual.

For instance, at a rock concert when a woman flashes her breasts to the stage or to the swarming hoard, she is declaring her sexuality to the group as a kind of sacrifice. When a woman holds the sight of her breasts to her chosen lover, she is giving him a gift intended for his possession in trade for a gratifying sexual experience. If she gives such a sight to many the effort is cheapened when in the privacy of a bedroom—because everyone has seen them. So there is nothing special in the exchange. It could be argued that breasts are breasts and are merrily sacks of fat—but in our culture they have meaning related to sex—so are symbolic of the exchanges made during such physical activity.

It is for this reason that we don’t have open topless beaches in a society that is overtly capitalist. It’s not because of religious origins, it’s because of the value of the one on one exchange with a sexual partner. In France where topless beaches are common, if a woman is topless with a male partner she is still advertising herself as either not in possession of a lover, or open to a new one if one happens by. She is a product of society not her individual sanctity. Society might declare her a liberated woman not afraid to show herself in public—but her sexual power has been marginalized because she will have less erotic capital with her potential mates because their self-interest desires to have a woman worthy of their efforts as individuals—not every guy who has found their way into the woman’s bed. There is nothing special about such a woman—that’s why men call such whores. Men may want first to take care of their needs, but they want the object of their desire to have some value. When sex is shared with many the capital investment of potential suitors is far less.

These are just examples that are easy to understand because everyone has sex who is human. So the correlation is easily assimilated. But the same mentality could be rolled over into virtually everything that involves value—for which money is but a symbol. Yet we have been taught the opposite in our culture, that money represents selfishness, and that communal activity is superior to individual merit.   Thousands of years of communal investments have proven to be wrong at their very core and that this whole mess started sometime after the Biblical Deluge. The entire philosophy of perhaps six thousand or more years has proven to be totally incorrect and in drastic need of revision. It is upon that foundation of thought that Peter Schwartz is making his argument. Selfishness is a dirty word in a culture that has been trained that altruism is far superior. However, to truly understand why altruism is a grand lie, just look to the satisfaction of your sex life and what works and doesn’t and apply those same values to everything else. It will then be discovered that Peter Schwartz is far more correct than Plato or Kant. And that society needs to reset their philosophy to a time before Moses built an ark during a world-wide flood.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

West Chester Will Fight Anything: What makes a good community successful

I’ve discussed this Community Foundation deal set to take place at the location of the old Lakota Union school on Cincinnati Dayton road before. The proposal is to build a Boys & Girls Club at the site offering all day kindergarten for Lakota students—which is a fancy way of saying that it’s a full-time babysitting service funded by the taxpayers for residents of the Lakota schools district. In spite of the $40,000 that Lakota spends each year on the change agent Jeffery Stec to build public support for the union fees the public education employees extract from the tax payers each year, the school board has partnered up with the socialite Patti Alderson and former No Lakota Levy advocates to build a consensus within the community toward future school levies. The next levy is due to take place around 2017. With all the money spent, it just wasn’t enough to hire a progressive cheerleader from Cincinnati—other deals had to be made to keep public opinion in favor of the school system to over 50%. It’s a bit of a shell game going on behind the Boys & Girls Club at the proposed location. Everyone gets something out of the deal, even the tax payers who want to use the free babysitting service—except for a majority of the tax payers who end up paying for the whole enterprise. For them they are supposed to buy into the seemingly good intentions of the Boys & Girls Club mission to replace the parenting of young people with a progressive leaning education centered on altruism.

What is interesting is not that bandits, thieves and social parasites behind the issue, it’s the opinion of some who advocate on their behalf which I couldn’t help but notice in the comments section of the latest Journal News article on the matter, seen below. I’m certainly not one who demonizes builders and developers. I see those occupations as a creative enterprise. I am a fan of the Liberty Way developments and I love the Union Center Blvd developments. But I like to see a resistance that forces those developers to be either better in their presentations, or cleverer in what ends up finally built. Resistance is the key to good management. Those who do resist are not bad people or impediments to progress. Politicians have a tendency to lay down to developers because it is those type of businessmen who tend to contribute to political campaigns hoping that at some time in the future government will get out of their way to allow them to make some money. That leaves the private citizen as the natural counterbalance between these two forces that are needed to maintain good government. It is because of the many private citizens in and around West Chester that there are so many good things happening in one of the most affluent areas of Ohio. Yet the below comment was left on the mentioned article and illustrates a sad belief to the contrary.

You have to love West Chester. They will fight anything. Over the years, the community has fought a community Rec Center, a 1,000,000+ sf upscale Steiner development on Cin-Day (Yes, the same one building in Liberty), a YMCA, the schools, a new Kroger, a Christian school, sidewalks, bike paths and a Boys/Girls Club. Sounds like a great place to live.

http://www.journal-news.com/news/news/group-aims-to-stop-demolition-of-former-school/nmSWq/

In the article Danielle Richardson and the West Chester-Union Twp. Historical Society, essentially propose to the Lakota school district to buy the old school for the cost of $1—to clear it off their books and turn it over to someone else to manage. The Historical Society has an interest in the century old school building to maintain the image of Old West Chester as a hub of tradition to remember the roots of what made the area great to begin with. If everything that is built is new, then the roots will be lost forever of what attracted people to West Chester in the first place. If there is nobody challenging all these projects, such as the commenter above, everything that makes West Chester great would be lost forever—and changed into something else. For Lakota, which is a very progressive government organization—that is their intended goal on a social level—to change the behavior of the community at large, so their actions must be met with resistance. That’s why they hired Jeff Stec at a rather expensive cost to “change” the minds of the public toward support of a tax payer funded institution. New members of West Chester by their own destructive predilections want to change things into what they left behind. If everything is new and there is no sense of history, then they can feel equal to the people who have lived in West Chester for years. It’s a natural weakness that comes from the type of people who transfer to various locations around the nation. They are rootless by nature, so often have a tinge of jealousy toward those who do have a sense of belonging to a community or family.

An example of this is in Danielle Richardson herself, she is the person at the center of the “chicken” controversy which continues to boil in front of West Chester Trustees. Farms and chickens are part of West Chester’s history and some traditional value toward that memory needs to be made to accommodate that vintage sentiment. New money moved into West Chester and wants to think that the entire community is the Weatherington Country Club. It makes for some good back slapping over drinks to brag about pushing all the hillbillies out of West Chester with all their furry creatures. But, in doing so they destroy the nature of their very investments—which makes no sense, because they improperly value the wrong attributes of a society. West Chester attracted all the great investment it has now, chickens, goats, cows and all—and the old Union school is part of that—and they have value. If the image is allowed to change, then West Chester will become just another community that rises to greatness, and then falls once change agents transform the area into something that future generations despise. Because in thirty years when the new Boys & Girls Club building is old, and all the people who constructed it are dead and gone—nobody will want to preserve all the cheap construction that looks new in 2015, but will look out-dated in 2030. And where will that leave West Chester?

When Randy Oppenheimer from Lakota announced in April 2014 that a joint agreement between the district and the club to operate an all-day kindergarten program on the site was evolving and they were seeking public input—Lakota put Jeff Stec on the case in the form of three public Community Conversations that were held in June to garner public input. Pro levy school types showed up to listen to the paid change agent, but anti-tax people generally stayed home knowing what Stec was. His job was not to garner input—it was to change minds. It’s the old Saul Alinsky Delphi Technique trick talked about over the years—only dressed up with some new terminology. Lakota does not want to make a deal to preserve a piece of their history, they need to make a deal that pulls levy supporters and anti-levy supporters together, so they are using the Boys & Girls Club for that reason. Lakota to do the right thing should do as Randy suggested, and that is auction off the property. If the people who want to build the Boys & Girls Club are really interested in developing the property, they should pay for it without an alliance with government assistance to get premium property dirt cheap—and see what the market value the project will garner in the free market. If that happened, minds would change rapidly into a different direction. It would be my guess that the Historical Society would have more value for the property than the proposed Boys & Girls Club, unless Patti wants to cover the costs herself—which she could do. That would be the best way to proceed.

But to the people who think like the commenter in the Journal News article, they are missing many elements to the story. What makes West Chester great is not rubber stamping all the side-walk proposals, the YMCAs, Libraries, and Krogers, its in fighting for a standard of living that makes our community a—brace yourself—“community.” A community is more than a bunch of buildings and socialites who want to be remembered for their charity, or a school that wants to throw money at their out of control labor union, it’s about people, their history, their chickens and the connection to the past that gives a place a sense of grounding—even to those who move from far away seeking something of substance to fill their lives with meaning. West Chester is good because it has a vigilant population that will fight for its history mixed with a nice conservative base of finance that will make new things for people to enjoy. It takes resistance to offer proper management and an honest government that can make the best decisions possible. And in West Chester there are plenty of those types—and we are lucky to have them.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

U.S. Economy Drops 0.7%: The cost of too many rules and regulations

Not surprising the U.S. economy contracted 0.7% in the first quarter of 2015. At least it wasn’t a surprise to those outside of the Beltway, and progressive cities of Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and San Francisco. Everywhere else in the America they saw it coming. Only in the progressive quarters of the nation are the illusions of government tampering not glaringly evident. Unfortunately, most of the surviving newspapers of any merit are still located in those cities, and the reporters there seemed alarmed by the economic retreat into the negative numbers.

No matter where you go in America, there is a big problem. Work ethics are at an all time low. Employees expect higher wages than ever for doing the least amount of work. Yet their competency is dismal. It is actually shocking now when someone does what they are supposed to do in a task, as opposed to doing something incorrectly. Competency is in short supply. But that’s not the worst of it. Government regulations driven by slack-jawed attorneys have crippled American manufacturing methods with stifling rules that prevent common sense in creating productive goods and services. There seems to be this infinite belief that more rules imposed on businesses will not correlate into a lack of productivity. Most companies, even large ones these days will declare that they are late to a schedule because they don’t have the manpower to execute compliance toward all the rules they have to contend with. For most companies compliance to their industry is a majority of their occupational commitment.

Government has imposed itself into virtually every crack of every endeavor in the United States which has destroyed the creative process of producing GDP. The evidence of this trend is actually in our artistic endeavors culturally. After seeing the latest Avengers movie I came away disappointed. It was a pretty good movie, but it was of a quality that was nearly television from the 80s quality—which is saying that it wasn’t new, spectacular, or worthy of a big screen treatment. Sure the special effects were good, but the music, direction and overall plot wasn’t much different from a typical Dukes of Hazard episode. Aside from the new Star Wars movies coming out, the film industry looks to be in desperate trouble. Most of the big movies hitting the silver screen are 1980 retreads, Mad Max, Jurassic Park, Terminator, etc. In the 70s, 80s, and early 90s, a new movie seemed to come out every few weeks, many of which were memorable cultural benchmarks, like the Matrix, Twister, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and so on. But with all the talent and film schools out there, Hollywood is incapable of producing anything new. That is a huge problem.

The music industry is even worse. While at Kings Island recently I couldn’t help but notice that many of the young people were mouthing the words to songs that came out when I was a teenager, and heard while at that very same park. Also, the 80s Store was busy with people of all ages relishing all the great memorable aspects of the 1980s that they remember, or want to remember if they’re too young to have actually been there. The 80s Store features film memorabilia from E.T. to Ghostbusters, which is reportedly another retread coming to screens soon this time with women from Saturday Night Live instead of the original cast. I’ll go see it for fun, but do producers think they can recreate the magic of Ghostbusters just by changing women actors from men and stimulate a new audience? That’s part of the problem. The music they play in that store is a trip down memory lane. Back then every week was a new top 40 song and that went on for the entire decade. It was similar to the 1950 and early 60s where the music industry just hit it out of the ballpark with just about every song released. The art in the songs were about things people care about and reflected a culture of capitalism and freedom that was trying to find its way. There was an underlining sense of optimism in 80s music that was not heard in the late 90s or subsequent decades. The music of today is so hell-bent on political diatribes that the music goes out of fashion within a few months, not even years. Creatively our culture is in trouble, the people in it cannot produce original material, and those that can have been ostracized politically out of those progressive cities to preserve the ideology of those regions and our culture is suffering—clearly.

But those are just the symptoms; the cause is in the heavy-handed regulatory climate of our present government. During the 80s, Reagan gave people the impression that the sky was the limit and that the American dream was obtainable. For a lot of people, it was. For some it wasn’t, and for the undisciplined, they spiraled out of control due to indulgence in excess, whether it was money, drugs, or women. But at least there was a belief that anything could happen in America. The 1950s were similar, it was a post war-time, Americans had a good standard of living and businesses were booming. There was no lack of opportunity for those who wanted it as the world put itself back together after World War II. The music was reflective of the overall culture.

When I came out of Avengers: Age of Ultron movie I told my kids that our culture was headed for real trouble. The movie was average at best, and the filmmakers knew there were high expectations after the first movie did so well. Well, the Avenger movies aren’t a shiny penny anymore. There is a level of expectation that the public has and the franchise is slipping. I first noticed it during the latest Captain America movie, which was good-but not as great as it should have been.   With all the resources available from Disney, Age of Ultron was the best that they could do with a comic series that came out in the 60s and 70s? It should be expected that a movie like Frozen should come out every year instead of the occasional hit that it was. Again, with all the resources at Disney, that’s the best that they can do?

While watching Avengers II, the prescreening stuff was obsessed with progressive causes, such as the new ABC Family channel “Becoming Us,” which features a transgender family dealing with a dad who wants to become a woman. Really? Who thinks that thirty years from now in the Kings Island 2015 store that anybody is going to want to buy a t-shirt or hat with the logo “Becoming Us” on it? Progressives are more interested in being a change agent for an extreme minority rather than giving people what they really want in entertainment. Two or three more people might want to have a sex change operation because of “Becoming Us” but the vast majority of people will just tune out because the subject matter turns them off.

Then there is the ACLU case accusing Hollywood of hiring only men for big projects like Avengers instead of women. They ask questions like “why are all the directors of big blockbuster movies all men?” In fact Melissa Goodman, director of the L.G.B.T Gender and Reproductive Justice Project of the ACLU of Southern California said, “Women directors aren’t working on an even playing field and aren’t getting a fair opportunity to succeed.” Goodman doesn’t see the reality on the wall, she assumes that if a woman is cast in some below the line job or as a director that people will rush to the multiplex to see whatever they put up on the screen and it just doesn’t work that way. Transgender issues are not an issue. Boy George in the 80s had great success and people bought his music. But he wasn’t in everyone’s face about it every 15 minutes reminding people of his rights. He just made decent music that people wanted to hear. These days everything is about fairness and regulating an industry into making things fair. To that effect, in order to make something fair the good must give way to the bad, the strong to the weak, and the brilliant to the stupid, which of course waters down the end product in favor of stylish sentimentality. Yet the net result is a blasé commitment to the final product by a customer base indifferent to the consumer drive to participate.

The same ridiculous laws have migrated out of entertainment and into mainstream occupations. It is more important to government regulators to have a company hire minorities, women, or immigrants than the best people for a job who can make the best product. If companies don’t show an interest in bending to the will of government sentiment, then a government audit of some kind will come in for a shake down forcing the company to either shut down or pay extraordinary fines as a “payoff.” While all this is going on of course the company is less productive and not making whatever it’s supposed to be good at. The energy of the company is on compliance, not productivity.

Then of course comes the most intrusive element of all, taxation. There is a belief that a corporation should be willing to pay infinite amounts of tax just to operate within the United States. Well, that’s not how it works. Companies exists for one reason, to make money. Not to lose money. If they have to pay too much in taxes, they have to cover their margins somehow, and usually that means either relocating their business to a region that has low taxation—or they will just decide to shut down. There is no moral case for paying taxes to support government programs invented by politicians who know nothing about running a business. Companies will either not produce their product, or they’ll leave the country.

So when it’s wondered why there was a 0.7% drop in GDP during the first quarter of 2015, now you know why. Regulations are too intrusive, taxes are too high, and the political climate is more interested in all the wrong social issues than in actually making things people want. That has created a stifling atmosphere that is quickly evident in our arts, which directly translate over into our more productive sectors of society. Regulations and rules kill GDP. They do not enhance productivity, they hurt it, and in American society there are too many rules. That is why there is a retreat in productive output. Government has intruded itself into the affairs of the American people and the net result is less of what makes us good. Why is that so hard for progressives to understand? More rules don’t work in sports, why does anybody think they would work in business?

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Treasures of Brownells: A gift to the American shooter

Even though I felt at the time that I had lived five lifetimes before I ever hit 20 years of age and had some college under my belt along with two yeas of gunsmithing school, that a fresh-faced kid from Southern Ohio was going to struggle financially under that chosen profession.  Customers after all like seasoned veterans for that kind of work and I hadn’t been around the block much in the shooting world—not officially anyway.  So as a young gunsmith in a little shed behind our home, I was getting work—but it wasn’t the type of high-priced work I’d need to care for a growing family while keeping my wife home so that she could care properly for our children.  The other issue was that clients who would give me a shot as such a young face were the type of people who were in trouble with the law and did not want the older, and orthodox Federal Firearms License holders to handle their needs.  I couldn’t bring those types of people around the house with a one and two-year old children running around.  The other issue was that I needed more experience on the craftsmanship end.  So I took my acquired skills learned through gunsmithing and took professional jobs that required frequent measurements of .001 of an inch reading micrometers and calipers so that I’d develop all the hand skills of the gunsmithing trade.  Along the way I’d write books, get more involved with bullwhip work and spend another five lifetimes over the next twenty-five years getting lots, and lots of experience using many of the gunsmithing skills I had to do work for various companies.  Whereas I made the money to take care of my family in lots of unusual ways my love of gunsmithing never really went away. And one of the great memories from my past during the early days of my marriage to my wife before we started a family was the constant books and catalogues from Brownells which populated our home with huge stacks of shooting literature.

My love for America was shaped during my youth by a gradual introduction to Brownells through my gunsmithing school and our frequent trips to Gatlinburg, Tennessee.  I loved the common sense of rural Americans who found the popular Smoky Mountain resort town such a destination of choosing.  And under that culture was a love of guns, and the people at Brownells even more than the NRA loved the business side of firearms to a point that I found it easy to connect to.  They are such a great organization who unselfishly taught so many neat tricks that they preserved in a way I thought greatly beneficial an aspect of American life that I could see vanishing before my eyes.  Only in the gun circles of companies like Brownells was the true nature of American life being preserved in the way the Constitution always intended.  The videos shown here are just a small example of how Brownells approach the business as they teach how to clean and repair a basic single action revolver.  They additionally break down the care of AR-15s and SIGs with the same patient instruction and they do a lot of this for free.  Also on their website is a section that offers schematics for just about every gun in production so that if you need a little sear for some obscure gun you found at a trade show, you can order it by part number and get a replacement.

When I finally bought my .500 magnum recently after many years and miles of contemplation dividing up my busy life, I took a little more time to admire the vast stock that Bass Pro Shop had to provide materials to the shooting sportsman.  I told my wife that having a place like Bass Pro around would have been very helpful in my early days of gunsmithing because there was nothing like that back then.  You had to go to Gatlinburg or some other exotic place to get that type of positive American atmosphere, let alone the unequivocal support.  But I also told her that Bass Pro had good stuff on their shelves, but that they were no Brownells.  That’s when I realized that I hadn’t visited their site since I stopped performing gunsmithing, so I pulled them up on my iPad and reconnected with an old friend.

I was so happy to see that Brownells was still going strong. They still offer their gigantic full color catalogue which was very expensive back in 1989—it must be ungodly today—but they still ship them to their customers.  They offer hundreds of how-to videos on YouTube completely free of charge and have that same American enthusiasm for the shooting profession they have always been known for, which was a relief.  So it didn’t take me long to reconnect with them after two decades.  As foreign as it sounds, a few decades can get away from you if you don’t watch your time carefully.  I am very selfish with my time because I always have so much going on.  Shooting was only a part of my life, so when you get busy with other things like philosophy, politics, legalisms, economics, and raising a family the proper way, months and years fly by like lightning across the sky.  But it’s never too late to come back to an old project which for me began with the purchase of my .500 magnum from Smith and Wesson.

Another thing that came up when I was younger was the stigma of shooting. I certainly felt it during the late 80s into 90s as the Clinton administration looked like it would be successful in banning military style firearms after the Brady Bill.  I didn’t know at the time if the shooting profession itself was going to be banned all together—it looked that way at the time.  I wasn’t sure how long a company like Brownells would be able to continue doing what they were doing.  When it comes to gunsmithing, they are the primary supplier.  They are the backbone to keeping the shooting industry humming along.  As progressive political activists like George Soros attempt to buy up American gun manufacturers to strategically end the supply of guns in America to private residence, it is the many years of commitment to building a client base of gunsmiths all across the United States that will ensure that shooting never dies out in the only free nation on earth—at least free in principle.  So long as there is a Brownells, there is a gunsmith somewhere who can build a gun from scratch.  Gun manufacturers are not necessarily needed.  But gunsmiths are—and because of Brownells, there are still a healthy number of them around who can keep the sport alive.

It’s easy to forget what America was always supposed to be when you watch the nightly news and read from its newspapers—particularly those from New York and Los Angeles.  But America is quite alive and well in the stores of Bass Pro and the pages of Brownells.  Of that later, Brownells is in a class by itself, and if you are a shooter, it would be a good idea to know who and what they are.  They are a tremendous resource for the modern American shooter—which is a unique company specific to the United States.  You won’t find an equivalent company anywhere else in the world.  Sweden can make tables and chairs for their IKEA stores, Germans can make their cars, France can breed women with unshaved armpits, and the Chinese can continue to make the stuff that Americans want to buy at Wal-Mart but there is nothing like a Brownells in Mexico, Brazil or Australia.  They are specific to the culture of Americana that we all know and love and are the backbone of our lifestyle of freedom.

My return back to my roots is the awareness that strategically progressive activists have sought to end businesses like Brownells and its customer base.  After what I’ve learned in all the other aspects of my life which has filled these pages with so much color and candor is that the best way to defeat that strategy is with an unapologetic embrace of the American art of shooting and caring for our guns.  And when it comes to caring for guns, Brownells as a company are the experts.  A look through their catalogue is enough to make a grown man weep.  There has never been a better collection of tools and gadgets anywhere between the covers of a big catalog.  Brownells does everything right and are a treasure from my past that I am happy to see just as strong today as they were then.  Brownells is the blood behind the body of the shooting profession.  They are what helps keep an interest in the NRA and other shooting organizations so robust, because Brownells keeps guns working and passed down from one generation to another constantly building a client base that has not be snuffed out by activists hell-bent on making America into a restricted nation like Europe.  Brownells keeps the gunsmithing profession alive and is the best source out there for keeping those family treasures functioning and robust.  And if you didn’t know about them dear reader, well, now you do.

http://www.brownells.com/

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The .500 Magnum: A story of strategy and understanding

I don’t talk about it much but one of my very first occupations, for which I spent two years of education gearing up for, was a professional gunsmith. I was newly married and my wife and I wanted to have a little gunsmith shop in the back of our home. I had a Federal Firearms License and had made several investments to build our life in that direction. However, I grew weary of some of the customers that came to my residence and having little children of mine running around decided that it probably wasn’t bestimage to do that kind of work with my family nearby. Some of the people who solicited my work were not the kind of people I considered upright, and I wasn’t willing to put up with them until my client list allowed me to be more selective. So I gave it up in favor of new horizons. But I never stopped enjoying the sport of shooting or following the new developments in the firearms field. To my mind a well machined firearm capable of controlled explosions sending a lead projectile into a small target many yards away is a fascinating achievement in human endeavor. With that said, I have always been a revolver guy as opposed to a semi-automatic gun user. There are less moving parts in a revolver making them more reliable. Of the recent developments in revolvers there has not been anything more spectacular than the Smith & Wesson X Frame models leading up to the .500 Magnum. I fell in love with the gun when it first came out in 2003. For the bachelor party of one of my daughters we skipped the strippers and instead rented out Target World firing off the .500 magnum they had until the small hours of the evening. But I never found justification to buy one—until now.

It’s an expensive gun to own and shoot. It costs over $3.00 per shot just to fire off the ammunition but what you get is a weapon that will penetrate about anything you aim it at. It’s really quite an achievement in raw power that you can hold in your hand. It is one of the most intimidating weapons on the market from both sides of the trigger. It’s not the most practical thing to use and takes some getting used to. I kept putting off buying one, until one day this past Saturday when I got off the live radio show with Matt Clark’s WAAM broadcast and decided that it was time to make the plunge. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.

The topic of our show was why there was a left-leaning media bias and we flew through a lot of topics in the hour-long broadcast. But we did it in such a way that it put in perspective to me that our nation is in a lot of trouble. Not in trouble in the way where the government is going to show up and take all our guns, or involve themselves in vast conspiracies against the American people. We are in trouble due to the sheer mismanagement of our nation by really terrible people, like the Clintons, the Obamas, and the offshoots of the Clinton Foundation. There are real thugs in these groups associated with these people who have mismanaged our nation with an agenda based assumption that the American presidency is to be eclipsed in favor of a United Nations coalition not organized politically so much as it is through charitable organizations. The writing is clearly on the wall, the Clintons are selling influence, Obama is planning on being a multimillionaire community activist that will take the Clinton Foundation to the next level making whoever sits in the White House more of a token figure than they are now. Deals will be made outside of our political system by donors organized through charitable organizations, and nobody will say anything about it because the evil is being hidden behind altruistic purposes. Meanwhile the failures of progressivism is becoming rapidly evident. The Ferguson and Baltimore riots are just the tip of a powder keg intentionally set to explode in our current time. The poor have been deliberately fed socialism as a means to equality and they will riot to steal what they think they deserve from those who have things as the Obama and Clinton types stoke the fires from behind the scenes.   Additionally over the weekend Obama showed that he intends to prohibit the federal government from providing military-style equipment to local departments putting stricter controls on other weapons and gear distributed to law enforcement. Clearly that is a decision meant to embolden city protestors into continuing their riots and destruction—but in the long run is to fulfill the Obama desire to have a more Justice Department controlled police force at a national level. It is quite clear that these are errors in management of government resources that will become very problematic in the future. So it is up to each of us to decide how we want to deal with the ramifications of that mismanagement.

After I left the air with Matt my wife and I talked about it seriously—what to do at the family level with all these national faux pas. It can be debated as to whether those faux pas are motivated by progressive strategies, or whether they are driven by sheer stupidity—but the fact remains, that it will be up to the sane of us to put things right. We certainly won’t look for the fight, but the fight is certainly coming to our doors whether or not we like it—and this isn’t even considering the problems from foreign radicals flowing across an unguarded U.S. border. Idiots or insurgents are in charge of our nation and the ramifications of their behavior will have an impact on our lives. So, what are we supposed to do about it except use the tools available to us such as this blog, or radio shows like Matt’s to stop the encroachment of progressive politics and the results of its many failures? Well, I thought about my old days as a gunsmith and my three decades as a Wild West preservationist and realized that I needed to get more behind the Second Amendment not only as a plot device, but as a strategic counterpunch to the villainy that is sprouting up around us like dandelions on a spring day.

It was really my wife’s idea to buy the .500 Magnum. I was ready for it, I have been for years, but she needed to be ready for that. So we talked about it, and she clearly was. I have other guns, but nothing on the scale of that S&W .500 X Frame. It is the most powerful production handgun in the world and will remain so for many years in the future. The sheer power of that gun in anything bigger would likely shatter the wrist of a shooter. It is right at the top end of what a human body can legitimately handle. We decided we wanted the gun before the Memorial Day holiday so we pretty much got in the car and headed to the store. Our first stop was Right 2 Arms which is basically at the end of my street in Liberty Township. I like supporting area businesses so I wanted to give him the kind of business that would allow him to close early on a weekend. When I told the owner what I was looking for he laughed as if such a large gun on his shelves was something that just wasn’t feasible. But he offered to find me one within a few days. His price was less than the one I had been eyeing for several years at Bass Pro Shop also near my home, but I didn’t want to wait. We thanked him and went to Bass Pro to find the gun.

The .500 Magnum was where I expected it to be. It was an older model X Frame that had the standard compensator at the end of the barrel. It was the same exact style of gun that I had shot at Target World many years earlier, so we bought it on the spot. After thinking about the progressive intrusions on our lives so evident in the nightly news, I was happy that I had bought the gun nicknamed by all the workers as the “hand cannon” from the popular outdoor store because it was so refreshingly American—the way it was always intended. After completing a quick form for the background check, they gave me the gun, sold me the ammunition as my wife and I then went shopping for other items carrying the gun around with us as we grabbed some food. Nobody looked sideways at the big gun as I carried it around the store like a normal purchase. In the world of Bass Pro guns were not demonized, they were flying off the shelves at a rapid rate and the people selling them were helpful, and excited. It was a very positive experience.

Back in the old days when I first registered for my Federal Firearms License there was always a kind of regulation heavy taboo associated with guns that was wonderfully not present at Bass Pro. I understand Cabelas has the same general approach. I would expect openness at typical gun shops, but those types of stores have a higher profile and are geared more toward retail shopping. Walmart and Dicks offers ammunition, but more and more buying them feels socially like it’s some kind of pornography, which is completely wrong. That was not the experience at Bass Pro. I bought my .500 Magnum and all the staff was excessively helpful. It was exactly what I needed to feel when buying the long-awaited S&W X Frame—it restored my hope just a bit in America and the kind of people who are more and more living in the cracks running from the mismanagement of the cities and their left-leaning governments within whatever unfortunate county those cities reside in. The suburbs, where I live are filled with people shopping at Bass Pro Shops buying guns, ammunition, and fishing gear the way Americans always have. If they watch the news it’s usually Fox—if they listen to the radio, its likely talk radio like Rush Limbaugh—and they are under assault by the mismanaged resources of the federal government.

It occurred to me as I thought about buying that gun and the experience of purchasing it that if every American did something similar that the act alone would go a long way to defeating many of the progressive failures that are coming. It’s nice to have a military and a police department to sweep away bad guys without our direct involvement, but more often than not, they are getting their orders from knuckle-dragging slugs that have the intellect of a hard-boiled egg. They really are not qualified to protect our homes and our property. With that in mind it is fully my intention to dust off my old gunsmithing days and get involved in more promotional activity that will make other people want to go to Bass Pro Shops or Cabelas and buy themselves a new gun just for the pleasure of having it. Because if they do, that action goes a long way to eroding away the hopes and dreams of progressive insurgents who want to disarm America into a European type of colony firmly under the guidance of the United Nations. And the United Nations will largely be shaped by people like those involved in the Clinton Foundation crimes. That’s not acceptable to me, and my family isn’t going to suffer because of people like them. It’s not that shooting people is the solution either, but sometimes just having guns is enough to keep the bad guys in the bad areas when all hell breaks loose, which looks like an inevitable destination for our current culture. When hell does get loose it helps to unleash some hell of your own and for me that answer is the .500 Magnum—a wonderful treasure from Smith & Wesson. The best way to fight back against progressives is to buy a gun—and Bass Pro Shops makes it wonderfully easy. Better than it used to be in the early days of gunsmithing. Some things do get better with time.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

‘Fury Road’: Rebelling against Giambattista Vico

I have a general assumption about mankind that is quite opposite of typical academia. Civilizations rise on the backs of innovative individuals and flourishing capitalism. They decline with more centralized control and absorption of individual achievement into the fabric of a collective society. When an unworthy king or bureaucratic democracy takes over the direction of economic enterprise and invention, a society is in decline. It is due to the hard wiring of human beings trained from their infancy to follow the Giambattista Vico cycle always witnessing societies fall only to be born again in a much regimented pattern. This holds true no matter what the society, whether it be the Mayan people, the Inca, the Mongol, the Roman Empire—all societies so far have followed the Giambattista cycle. This is why anybody with any honesty looks at George Miller’s Mad Max films and declares him a genius. It’s also why it was more than symbolic that Mel Gibson showed up at the premier of Fury Road, the latest Mad Max film now staring Tom Hardy. Studios didn’t want Gibson in the film as the Vico cycle declares that what’s old must be recycled to make way for the young and new. But Gibson showed up to give the young Hardy a bit of support because any Mad Max fan knows that Mel Gibson will always be the iconic Road Warrior. It all started with this movie.

Our current world is not very far from the world of the first Mad Max movie. Police are now being openly murdered and Vico’s final phase of anarchy is fully at hand. What happens next is the rise of a theocratic society followed again by aristocratic, then democratic rule, followed by chaos once again. In the film Fury Road we find that in the period between the first Mad Max film society has devolved into the rise of theocratic civilization. No longer is society concerned with missions to Mars or inventing a new iWatch—now the primary concern as it has been in the past is to establish a new deity figure for the society at large.

I have always loved the Mad Max character because he maintains himself throughout the entire cycle as a constant reminder into the phase of the Gambattista cycle from which everything was taken from him, his wife, child, friend, career—everything he cherished from that time. Unlike the rest of the world he finds himself standing up against the tide of regression. He is a representation in these Mad Max films as Nietzsche’s ubermensch-otherwise translated as the overman. Nietzsche’s ubermensch is one who has graduated from mankind and stepped away from the Gambattista cycle all together—and has decided to advance their life based on individual creativity.   But this is a dangerous road, Hitler tried to take Nietzsche’s ubermensch and advance Germany, but failed in his interpretation and instead moved his country into a Karl Marx inspired socialist democracy—followed by war defined anarchy, then back to a theocratic/democratic existence where it currently finds itself in a European Union—otherwise a democracy that is once again plunging into anarchy now inspired by the failing economies of Greece.   Mad Max is the figure who refuses to submit to these tides of the world.

I have no doubt that George Miller would agree with this assessment. He knows all too well what he’s doing. He’s not just making a popcorn action thriller with great car stunts and bizarre characters. He’s making a rejection statement against Gambattista’s famed cycle. He may not have set out to be conscious about that statement but rather let his intellect drive those elements of the story along as evolution of the various aspects of the story evolved, but based on the presentation of Fury Road, it is clear he understands what he’s doing all too well. It’s also clear why so many people are excited to see such an apocalyptic story and why after all these years it’s so close to the hearts of so many people. This is not a typical summer blockbuster film.

So, how excited am I for the upcoming Fury Road? Well, let me tell you, I have dedicated this upcoming Friday to seeing it. I will certainly be one of the first, and I will likely see it several times. I love the action, I love Mad Max and all that he stands for, but more than anything I love seeing the Gambattista cycle challenged. The world may have went crazy in relation to the advanced days of invention when oil was being produced to propel cars from city to city, to instigate the growth of economies of various trade. All that can and will fall apart within just a few decades of human development—just like the Maya abandoned their cities apparently very fast—as if they just evaporated. It’s not that such people abandoned their cities because they left earth for alien destinations, the people of Ur did not suddenly become equivalent to the Neanderthal after building hanging gardens and massive temples—they regressed because they emerged into war then reinvented theocracy starting the Vico cycle fresh again losing all that they had gained before. Mad Max is that personality in these George Miller movies who in spite of everything that he has lost and continues to lose, refuses to give up on his heroic past and be the last representation of a time when mankind was truly great.

How many people do you know who would at the drop of a hat become one of the mindless followers of some future attempt at theocratic rule? The current Muslim obsession is but the latest. How many maniacs would kill the masses for a chance at everlasting life in the hereafter because some slug of a wanna’ be king dictated that such a thing would bring redemption to the soul? The answer is probably everyone that you know. Most of the people shopping at the grocery and working in a corner cubical would gladly trade in their suits and ties for a thong and Mohawk if some skull inspired death cult instructed them that through worship of his heavenly presence that someday they too might rise up to greatness if only they adhere to the tenets of collectivism.   Miller’s brilliance is that he was able to see such a clear vision from our present age. It’s not easy to see that overweight school levy supporter buying meat at the grocery as a future sex slave to a blood thirsty cult fighting over the worship of water—but Miller does, and with a grand design. It’s not easy to see that corrupt politician kissing babies and whatever else as the skull wearing Immortan Joe hunting down the wives who are desperate to leave him. But in Miller’s films, it is quickly recognizable that most people we know under similar conditions would find themselves as some character in that wasteland. It doesn’t take much to forgo everything we have ever been and throw it away in exchange for basic human necessities, like food, water, and sex.

I am excited for Fury Road, but for reasons that go well beyond the visual spectacle. I love it for the rebellion against Vico. On one hand the Vico cycle is shown in all its brutal honesty, but through the character of Max—using almost no dialogue—Miller beholds the ubermensch—a character that launched the career of Mel Gibson who in almost every movie refused to buckle under the pressure of Vico to decline—but always to advance. Whether it was Riggs from Lethal Weapon or William Wallace from Braveheart, Mel Gibson started as Mad Max, that hero from the past who punched through the Vico cycle with the throttle down and the skill of a Road Warrior as the rest of the world attempted to drag him back into the Stone Age. That’s why Fury Road is more important than a four-year degree in college studying history and the Vico cycle. Because Fury Road shows through art the results of that path—and how treacherously close we always are to falling off the edge of reality into an abyss controlled by maniacs like Immortan Joe—or the Toe Cutter.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Progressives Against Good Families: Not reading to kids, Miley Cyrus Happy Hippies, and Genie in a Bikini

For the rest of the world who have allowed themselves to be deliberately naïve to the actions of those who want to control it, the ABC report out of Australia and carried by United Kingdom media might be surprising. Essentially progressive philosophers using Plato as an example are unveiling their desire to destroy families in favor of centralized control by the state—all in the name of equality. For instance, some kids are fortunate enough to be born into good families giving them an unfair advantage in life over those not born into good families. It is well documented that children who have loving parents who read to them and care for them in a mentoring way produce decent minded children and those relationships usually last a lifetime. Kids who are born into chaos and unloving, selfish parents take those static patterns into their adulthoods to become emotional wrecks. Well, for my wife and me we know all too well that there is great truth to the ABC article out of the UK seen below. We have always strived to work very hard at being good parents to our children and we have seen firsthand the wrath of progressive society that wanted desperately to move in this parentless direction—starting in public schools. Still, it is shocking when you hear progressives talk about this insurrection against logic so openly. Rush Limbaugh covered the issue on his May 5th radio show which can be heard below as well.

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/philosopherszone/new-family-values/6437058

You really can’t make this stuff up. If you want to have a traditional family in this country of America or anywhere else, you are under assault and withering under the strain will not save your children. As I write this Miley Cyrus is launching a foundation for homeless, and LGBT youth called the Happy Hippie Foundation. Millions of young people who like Cyrus are prone to listening to the openly political musings of that particular musical artist where the obvious objective is the destruction of family structure. The obvious strategic goal is to directly transfer the raising of children to control by the state. It is an obvious attempt, and fulfillment of the old Plato notion outlined in his Republic to centralize the youth behind common bonds, and before that can occur, individual family influence has to be destroyed. For the youth culture, that is being achieved through entertainment influences. If there wasn’t politics behind artists like Cyrus and Ariana Grande they would not make the kind of money they do within the music industry. The message behind their “art” is overtly a progressive message designed to destroy family bonds. Their “art” is a tactical objective in favor of progressivism.

Coming on Memorial Day 2015 on the Nickelodeon network is a show called Genie in a Bikini. It features a cross dressing guy who is a magical genie granting kids wishes. Clearly this is an attempt to normalize LGBT behavior on a network intended for children. So this is a very widespread assault on family oriented behavior. The executives at Nickelodeon and the producers of the various shows on that network are simply putting their finger to the wind and measuring what they think the public wants, and that is largely shaped by pop culture—artists like Cyrus, or before her, Madonna, Cher and many others who routinely pushed the limits of acceptability selling sex as a way to deface family structure as a foundation for individual development. But once a show like Genie in a Bikini hits the airwaves, the path to normalization is upon us.

I’m not one to declare that there needs to be censorship. I hate drugs, but I’m not crazy about the police either, so more laws are not the way I prefer to go. And in the case of censoring shows like Genie in a Bikini, I wouldn’t advocate that. But those types of people are imposing their beliefs on the rest of us—they are a minority and expect the rest of the world that enjoys family life to bend to their desires. This march toward equality for all essentially means that those of high quality need to reduce themselves to meet the inability of a majority to live up to a high example and that is not acceptable. I don’t accept these progressive ideas and I am more than willing to vocalize my dislike of their intentions to cram their beliefs down my throat. Anger is a nice way to put the emotions I feel toward the enemies of family—because family is very important to me. Those who are against it, I consider to be against me, so there are ramifications to that strategy.

The family haters who migrate to government like herding animals stuck on the Serengeti during a drought suddenly finding water are implementing a strategy that is several decades old. The American family funded by capitalist endeavors is their ultimate target and is the reason for much of this anti-family behavior. The target has always been capitalism—from the very beginning. The best way to advance socialism is to take away the ideal of a parent/child relationship—so I view this strategy as an open attack on my way of life. Its one thing to be tolerant of a couple of girls kissing in front of me in line at Kings Island, it’s quite another for them to expect me to put up with it in every aspect of my life and to bend my values to theirs. That’s simply not going to happen no matter how much Miley Cyrus sings about it.

I don’t like Miley Cyrus—I didn’t like her before this Happy Hippie Foundation thing she’s doing now. She looks like she smells like spit and I’m not found of saliva in the form of a human being. She’s the latest tool of progressive advocates in the record industry to advance their family killing strategy by using the tender minds of youth as a weapon against traditional culture. But worse than my dislike of Cyrus personally, is the name of her group—I dispise hippies. Hippies are anti-family, anti-capitalist, and anti-good. They are against everything that I’m for so that leads immovable forces toward a collision course. The mistake that is made by the other side, the side of the anti-family types, is that they believe in democracy to the point that they assume that majority rules minorities—if they have a greater number of opinion who are against the family position. They believe their sheer numbers will out vote people in the minority like me. What they forget is that they are susceptible to the same tactics they have used to destroy the family. When they came onto the scene as young hippies driven by the communist movement, they were in the minority against traditional value. Their rebellion was against tradition who at the time held the majority opinion. People like me understand that, and will turn that strategy around against them. We will not yield to the pressure, the world will not wake up tomorrow and just accept the disgusting behavior of the typical progressive—the lifestyle of sickness that people like Miley Cyrus represents. To think otherwise is insane.

For many years, as strange as it sounds, I have considered it an act of rebellion to be in a classic traditional family. Having a traditional family is my rebel with a cause position. I am proud of it, and will continue to have pride in it. For my part in everything I do, I will represent traditional values, because they work, and I appreciate them. A free pass will never be given to slugs like the Miley Cyrus followers who are worshiping the latest progressive spokesman—which is all she is. There may be millions of them, but to me they are like the walking dead zombies of modern fiction—brain dead and half rotten—and worth as much as a penny mashed into hot pavement after it has been trampled underfoot from many careless patrons. Pennies like that are not even worth digging out to spend, because they aren’t even worth that much effort. It may not be their fault that they have grown into worthless human beings, but it is the result of having bad parents who in many cases didn’t read to them as innocent children. I may feel sorry for them, but I’m not about to change what I do for one half of a second—just to make family destroyers like Miley Cyrus feel better about the bad decisions they have made in life as justification for being vile human beings.

However, now you know dear reader what the progressive left has always been up to. The only difference is now they believe they have the numbers to drive the rest of us to the edge of insanity in silent outrage. They enjoy attacking our sensibilities with their outrageous behavior as agents of evil against the American family. And for that, they deserve all that they will get. One thing that I will promise if I am the only person in the world doing it—I will never give these idiots the relief on a measuring stick showing good against evil, or a good family against a bad one. I know the difference and will continue to advocate in favor of the good—in everything that I do. And that’s bad news for the Happy Hippies, because so long as just one person refuses to join their ranks, they will always look like the dirty, smelly, skanks that they are—who from day one sought to destroy the family structure of the human race in a vile revenge against crappy parents who simply didn’t read to them when they were kids. The concept of family is openly under attack and I will promise this much even if the rest of the world falls into the darkness of following after those attackers—I will always stand with the concept of family and will view anything that threatens that unity as a vile, and despicable endeavor. Even if I am completely alone, it will be my goal in life to make those happy hippies gradually—extremely miserable.

Looks like Miley Cyrus gave up, she dropped her belief in her purity ring and from there fell hard. She’ll never get back what she lost. She ruined her chances at having a good family because no child born of her could possibly look up to her because of the many mistakes she has made in just the last couple of years. And now that Cyrus has fallen she wants validation that others are just as bad as she is. So she started the Happy Hippie Foundation to bring like minds together in the misery of their insolence. Misery loves company and they hate good families.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Socialist Bernie Sanders: Why public schools want the Nordic Model

Many snickered when I stated emphatically that it was versions of communism and socialism that was being taught in public schools. They really didn’t want to deal with that reality. Others snickered when I said that Democrats like Obama and Clinton were functional socialists—that their political ideology was driven by Karl Marx and that liberalism in general had the goal of socialism. Well, the times are what they are—drug abusers want legalized pot, the lazy want great pay for little work, and two decades of children have been raised on liberal causes like global warming, Keynesian economics, and philosophies of collectivism. And now they are ready for socialism in America—openly. That is why Bernie Sanders feels that he now has a platform for a presidential run. Old Democrats like George Stephanopulous are used to hiding their love of socialism behind cocktail parties and racist issues so to deflect attention away from their intentions. But Sanders is one of the only open socialists in the U.S. government. To his credit, at least he’s honest about his intentions. His open embrace of socialism made Stephanopulous cringe a bit in the following interview. While watching, remember I have been saying this kind of stuff for a long time—longer than Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh or any other modern pundit. What follows is a bit of an article from a millennial website obviously proud of Sanders. This is what we are up against. These are not the Democrats of the 1990s. These are no longer ashamed of their socialism. These Democrats are openly advocating it—and because the youth has already been trained in socialism from their public schools, they are likely to vote in favor of it.

After raising more in 24 hours than each of the declared GOP candidates individually, Vermont senator and self-described democratic socialist Bernie Sanders went on ABC’s This Week to let America—and the D.C. pundit class that has already written him off—know he’s a real player in 2016.

 

“For 30 years I’ve been standing up for workers of this country and I think I’m the only candidate who is prepared to take on the billionaire class which now controls our economy and increasingly controls the political life in this country. We need a political revolution in this country.”

After a bit of half-snark from Stephanopulous over his embrace of the “S” word, Sanders went on to defend democratic socialism and explain, in detail, why America should be trying to emulate Northern European countries rather than belittle them. The ABC host and former Bill Clinton advisor tried to pin the Vermont senator down, musing aloud, “I can hear the Republican attack ad now: [Sanders] wants America to look like Scandinavia,” to which Sanders deadpanned in response, “That’s right. And what’s wrong with that?”

http://www.alternet.org/dont-underestimate-me-after-shocking-fundraising-totals-bernie-sanders-defends-european-style

The Nordic Model that Sanders likes so much is a joke; the GDP of those Nordic countries is like comparing a fly to an elephant. They may both be creatures of biological design, but that is the end of their similarities. The United States has a GDP of over $17 trillion per year, Sweden only has $570 billion, Denmark $340 billion, Finland $271 billion, and Norway $500,000. Most of that GDP is exports from companies Ikea, but other than that, there’s not much going on economically. Yet this is what socialists like Sanders are advocating for.

The Nordic Model – Embracing globalization and sharing risks” characterizes the system as follows:[15]

  • An elaborate social safety net in addition to public services such as free education and universal healthcare.[15]
  • Strong property rights, contract enforcement, and overall ease of doing business.[16]
  • Public pension plans.[15]
  • Low barriers to free trade.[17] This is combined with collective risk sharing (social programs, labour market institutions) which has provided a form of protection against the risks associated with economic openness.[15]
  • Little product market regulation. Nordic countries rank very high in product market freedom according to OECD rankings.[15]
  • Low levels of corruption.[15] In Transparency International’s 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index all five Nordic countries were ranked among the 12 least corrupt of 176 evaluated countries, and Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway all ranked within top 5.[18]
  • High percentage of workers belonging to a labour union. In 2010, labour union density was 69.9% in Finland, 68.3% in Sweden, and 54.8% in Norway. In comparison, labour union density was 12.9% in Mexico and 11.3% in the United States.[19] The lower union density in Norway is mainly explained by the absence of a Ghent system since 1938. In contrast, Denmark, Finland and Sweden all have union-run unemployment funds.[20]
  • A partnership between employers, trade unions and the government, whereby these social partners negotiate the terms to regulating the workplace among themselves, rather than the terms being imposed by law.[21] Sweden has decentralised wage co-ordination, while Finland is ranked the least flexible.[15] The changing economic conditions have given rise to fear among workers as well as resistance by trade unions in regards to reforms.[15] At the same time, reforms and favorable economic development seem to have reduced unemployment, which has traditionally been higher. Denmark’s Social Democrats managed to push through reforms in 1994 and 1996 (see flexicurity).
  • Sweden at 56.6% of GDP, Denmark at 51.7%, and Finland at 48.6% reflects very high public spending.[17] One key reason for public spending is the large number of public employees. These employees work in various fields including education, healthcare, and for the government itself. They often have lifelong job security and make up around a third of the workforce (more than 38% in Denmark). Public spending in social transfers such as unemployment benefits and early-retirement programs is high. In 2001, the wage-based unemployment benefits were around 90% of wage in Denmark and 80% in Sweden, compared to 75% in the Netherlands and 60% in Germany. The unemployed were also able to receive benefits several years before reductions, compared to quick benefit reduction in other countries.
  • Public expenditure for health and education is significantly higher in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway in comparison to the OECD average.[22]
  • Overall tax burdens (as a percentage of GDP) are among the world’s highest; Sweden (51.1%), Denmark (46% in 2011),[23] and Finland (43.3%), compared to non-Nordic countries like Germany (34.7%), Canada (33.5%), and Ireland (30.5%).
  • The United Nations World Happiness Report 2013 shows that the happiest nations are concentrated in Northern Europe, with Denmark topping the list. The Nordics ranked highest on the metrics of real GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on, perceived freedom to make life choices, generosity and freedom from corruption.[24]
  • The Nordic countries received the highest ranking for protecting workers rights on the International Trade Union Confederation’s 2014 Global Rights Index, with Denmark being the only nation to receive a perfect score.[25]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model

Even though per capita income is high in these Nordic Model countries their average tax rates are hovering around 50%. So a $50,000 a year income is only $25,000 a year in useable income. Socialists like Sanders will tell supporters about the nice quiet life in Scandinavia, how happy people are, how long their vacations are—how all their educations were paid for—but what they don’t talk about is how they are not a people creating much of anything new, and that their economic power is largely dependent on their exports from markets that are rich because of capitalism. The Nordic Model is like socialism itself, a bunch of smoke and mirrors—and in the end all its really good for is some cheap meatballs at Ikea along with a table that breaks the first time a child falls into it.

Yet the point of this particular article isn’t to show what an embarrassment the Nordic Model is compared to the United States, or even a country of comparable landmass, such as Japan—it is to show that all along socialists were advocating these Democratic values intending always to advance socialism as a socially acceptable means of political and economic approach. Bernie Sanders in all his ignorance and naiveté is at war with billionaires because he assumes that they have an obligation to share their wealth—as if wealth is a finite resource that all people are born into. He does not know or understand that wealth is created, and that rich people make wealth because of the prospect of profit. When you take away the motivation to elevate oneself by giving them free education, free housing, long vacations and free health care, that you get a population of cattle that is happy to just graze in the field living off the efforts of others. Of course they’ll be happy to eat when someone puts food in their trough, and sleep in the provided shelter. But don’t ask them to invent anything new, or to advance the state of life in the world—because their minds are turned off—fat, dumb and happy. And that is what Democrats like Bernie Sanders always intended with their love of socialism.

It is that brand of socialism that our kids are learning in public schools at this very moment, and is also why Bernie Sanders thinks he can actually be president in this 2015 America. I’ve only been talking about it for around 30 years. They used to say it was crazy, but now Bernie has come clean with it, which for me is a justified poke in declaring that “I told you so.”

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Don Quixote and the LEA Union: Laughably out-of-touch in Lakota

The Lakota Education Association (LEA) continue their strikingly ridiculous revolt against the suggested merit pay portion of a new contract with the blind stupidity of Don Quixote from the rhetorical knighthood epic attempting to revive chivalry against a skyline of windmills. The world had moved on against Don Quixote, just as it has from the LEA, yet both are stuck in the past painting themselves as comic caricatures against reality. In Don Quixote’s neurosis, at least his reverence was filled with a clamoring for honor, and justice. The LEA nutcases with their black t-shirts and school protests come across as just greedy and out-of-touch. Like Don Quixote they are poised in a fight against technology represented by an unyielding and unemotional windmill which they attack as the rest of the world goes about their business unconcerned.

I’ve already been quite public about my opinion. All the participating teachers in these demonstrations against merit pay should be terminated from the Lakota school district. What the school board is trying to do is apply some management to the outrageous wages and benefits that the current employees enjoy—which puts way too much imposition on tax payers as one of Butler County’s largest employers. If Lakota were a private business, a corporation, or any other creation of the world the rest of us live in, the school would be out of business. But, since they are government employees and part of a government employment union which is a terribly out-dated model of doing business fed entirely by tax payer extracted funds they sustain themselves with the furtherance of levies faking effectiveness. The collective bargaining that they are fighting so mindlessly for is also a concept that will soon be extinct—which has started in the United States in Wisconsin where Scott Walker has successfully implemented many of these new concepts in the heart of the most progressive state in the union. All other states will have to follow, including Ohio leaving these black clad LEA teachers looking foolishly irrelevant.

Perhaps more stunning was the comment president Sharon Mays made to her members and the flyer which emerged from one of the recent protests. Mays stated to the school newspaper, Today’s Pulse that “In no way are we at a standstill here. We are continuing to meet and collaborate to reach an agreement.” Then there was the flyer which stated, “It has become clear that Lakota needs a different perspective on our board of education. Please see Constant Contact for a notice about searching for supportive, positive community members who may be running as a candidate this November.” True to the flyer, there are two seats coming open on the school board this upcoming fall of 2015, but those seats are not currently held by bastions of conservatism. Julie Shafer has worked on behalf of the labor union about as aggressively as these LEA types could dream of.  What the union is talking about is a return to the good ol’ days in Lakota where union lapdogs were sitting on the school board behaving against the community to stuff the pockets of the union members with confiscated wealth from the district. Those days are over—forever. Lakota is too conservative of an area to put up with that kind of behavior leaving the type of current board members to adequately represent the most liberal aspects of the Lakota district. What the LEA has now is about as good as its going to get for them. And if that’s not good enough, they need to stop charging those windmills and hang it up.

Soon it will be summer and people will care even less about Lakota schools. And as the union pushes this whole thing into the fall, people will care even less as the new Liberty Center shopping complex will bring lots of nice stories to the district. Nobody is going to want to see a bunch of spoiled brat teachers dressed in black projecting unfairness when most people in the district are individually successful and know what it takes to make a dollar. Areas like Mt. Healthy or Over-the Rhine might have a more sympathetic public opinion for the LEA members, but they aren’t the ones who will vote for new school board members or future levies to pay for all these collective bargaining agreements. Those who do want to throw money at Lakota really just want to throw money at the school to take the burden of baby sitting their kids off their minds. These protests are reminders to them that their baby sitters aren’t so stable and might threaten to walk off the job at any time—which will only piss them off. Nobody with a sane mind thinks these Lakota teachers are “under compensated” or that they have a critical effect on their children’s future. Only idiots think that today. Everyone else understands that Lakota is just a baby sitting service.

To say it’s an insult to consider the highly degreed government employees at Lakota as mere baby sitters is to not be in touch with reality.  Only in public work these days are those degrees of any real use, because only there can any value be provided that is equitable to the perception of importance.  Schools like Lakota can only maintain that perception with looted wealth from property owners who do have value.  Just like the bad teachers will cry out for the best teachers to share with them the net value of their hard work through collective bargaining and a lack of merit pay to hide their lackluster effort—government schools do the same allowing organizations like this LEA to charge those windmills with the illusion that they are fighting monsters of great importance.  But they aren’t.  They are only fighting rotten wood in a vacant field as the rest of the world does their own work oblivious to the lunatics on horseback fighting illusions of a threat that doesn’t exist.

Public schools if they were effective would be producing lots of little Einsteins, but all they make are over sexed children bored with life and lacking the basic work ethics to conduct their lives in a successful fashion.  It is taking most public education graduates these days until age 35 to actually mature away from the nonsense they learned in government schools if they ever do.  That is not a success story worthy of black t-shirts and protests against merit pay.  My vote would be to shut down every public school and give every child in America a Leap Frog tablet replacing all these ungrateful teachers sending them to the unemployment line.  The kids would be much better off and get a far superior education.  So it’s quite humorous to watch them gallop about as if their work was somehow more important than it really is.  The LEA should feel lucky that they have a current school board who will actually talk to them. I’d simply let their contracts run out and begin hiring replacements.  Ohio will be a right-to-work state soon.  Lakota will then be able to hire teachers for a fraction of the current cost. So fire all the protesting teachers at Lakota and let reality finally catch up to them.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.