Tag: Lakota Schools

‘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.

What Comments can Teach Us: The changing tide of public education sentimate

Since the Enquirer has picked through my material to help boost its readership at times, I’m sure they won’t mind if I use their comment section from a recent article about Lakota teachers to explore some of the back and forth that has been going on, which is important to capture for analysis.  Back in the day I’d sometimes participate in these comments like my friend Sharon Poe below does, but since the Enquirer has moved to requiring Facebook log ins, it excludes me.  I don’t do Facebook.  There are a couple of generic accounts that were created for my professional endeavors, which I don’t even log in to—so I have no Facebook account and I never will.  I do not agree with the terms of service at Facebook, so the Enquirer system doesn’t work for me.  But there is some use in watching what other people have to say which can be seen below.  In essence, the following comment stream is regarding the recent teacher protests before and after school activities over the merit pay issue.

Really there are two types of people who participate in these forums.  It used to be all union people until a few years ago when they began to be challenged out in the open by reformers.  Then the standard answers about how hard the teaching profession is, or how much money they make, or how much they sacrifice for the “children” was unchecked, but not anymore.  More than ever, everyday people participate in these forums to advance thought, and opinions have changed.  It should be noticed that one commenter castigated my friend Sharon who is from a neighboring district of Mason for sticking her nose into Lakota business, but nothing is said to the teacher from Sandusky schools which is about as far away in the state of Ohio that anyone could get.  That is just one example of the bi-polar relationship that public school teachers and their supporters have with the outside world.  What’s good for them is acceptable 100% of the time.  But if someone from the other side of opinion utilizes the same—they kick and scream like babies with a rash during a diaper change.   The rampant union supporter is one type of participant—and they have largely been neutered from what they used to be.  They are very careful about their comments compared to five years ago.  This is because of the other type, the reformer—who is growing in number year by year and has been present to debate the very premise of pubic education.  Have a look at the basis for their discussions.

Joe Shooner ·

Cincinnati, Ohio

I’m a Lakota parent, and I fully support the idea of paying our teachers well. My kids are relying on that education, I consider it money well spent to retain and attract good teachers. I know my kids teachers. I see the cars they drive, I learn where they live. On paper, some district employees are doing very well – especially since most cost estimates I’ve seen include ALL benefits. As a person in a small business, I can tell you that a 40K salary can EASILY have a total cost of $60K if you factor in taxes, healthcare, etc. The majority of teachers are not getting rich off of this job. If yo…See More

Like · Reply · 7 · Apr 24, 2015 9:44am

Joe Doerger

The whole merit pay issue is specious. Mainly because it’s unsustainable and will actually cost districts MORE in the long run which means MORE and HIGHER taxes MORE often.

Every merit pay scheme has been used to keep down some salaries by giving more to others. The pool of money has to grow larger to pay everymore teachers more merit pay. Without a reliable source of new money, merit pay will result in unfair discrepancies in teacher pay. You can’t give all the money to a math teacher when you also need English and Social Studies teachers.

Think about it, if EVERY teacher qualifies for “mer…See More

Like · Reply · 3 · Apr 24, 2015 10:14am

Emily Cottingham

This is very unfair for the teachers. How would you like to be judged on the performance of others? Some students do not have the capacity or the desire to learn, and why should a teacher be judged on that? Also, some of the worst teachers teach the smartest kids, who are self driven. Why should that teacher be rewarded because their students perform well? Basing a teacher’s pay off of a students work is unjust, and will just encourage teachers to only teach to the tests and nothing else. Learning in school is a made up of much more than learning how to pass stupid assessments designed by those not teaching the class.

Like · Reply · 3 · Apr 24, 2015 8:27am

Nicol Neate

sorry, too many are just glorified babysitters, and if they have a student who has no desire to learn, or is struggling it is THEIR JOB to get through some how.

Like · Reply · Apr 24, 2015 8:49am

Joe Doerger

Nicol Neate sorry, but you are a very uninformed citizen. They’re TEACHERS. 

Now if you suggest that some of their students (and their parents) are glorified babies, you might be on to something

Like · Reply · 6 · Apr 24, 2015 9:09am

Emily Cottingham

There’s only so much teachers can do. In the real world, if an employee does nothing, they get fired. In school, the most that can happen is the student can get a detention, and gets failed. But they are still supposed to learn the material, and the teacher gets evaluated based on that. The teacher can’t follow the student home and make them do the work. They can’t keep them after and force them to do it. And they can’t sacrifice class time to teach that student individually, and sacrifice the learning of the other students. Often, the parents aren’t making their kids accountable and don’t force their kids to do homework. But if the student isn’t learning, the teachers automatically get blamed.

Like · Reply · 3 · Apr 24, 2015 9:46am

Show 4 more replies in this thread

Jackie Conrad ·

Teacher at Sandusky City Schools

The Constitution. Read it. Those teachers are exercising their rights. Judge not.

Like · Reply · 2 · 17 hrs

Alex Daniel ·

Cincinnati, Ohio

Yes and using their positions to unduly influence their pupils into supporting their backwards political beliefs….I guess tax payers shouldn’t be allowed to preside in judgement over that right?

Like · Reply · 16 hrs

Michael Smith ·

Cincinnati, Ohio

What people do not seem to understand is that the evaluation system mandated by the Ohio State Legislature is horrifically flawed. The American Statistical Association has even stated that it has zero value in determining teacher merit.

The fundamental issue is that the state mandates the use of test scores but the calculation that translates these scores into merit is no more reliable than flipping a coin. They take each child’s score at the beginning of the year on their grade-level test, then project what the child would have to score at the “end” of the year (in reality a month or two b…See More

Like · Reply · 2 · Apr 24, 2015 11:41am

Sharon Constable Poe ·

Loveland High School

Until Ohio becomes a Right to Work state unions will control our schools! These people have no idea what it is like to have to sacrifice. Disgusting and shame on you Lakota teachers!

Like · Reply · 1 · Apr 24, 2015 8:18am

Joe Doerger

Yeah! Shame on you teachers for exercising your right to assemble peacefully according to the 1st Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America!

How DARE you?

Quick! Let’s pass some laws so they can’t do that. After all, LIBERTY, is only for someone else! And not teachers.

Like · Reply · 5 · Apr 24, 2015 9:03am

Don DeLotell ·

Miami University

Shame on you Sharon Poe for sticking your nose into Lakota Schools just like you did for so many of those years with Mason schools–you are from the Party of No and to think teachers haven’t sacrificed indicates how clueless of what a teacher actually does speaks volumes. If being a teacher is so good I would suggest you go get a college degree with a major in Education and after 4 years apply for the “dream job”.

Like · Reply · 3 · 23 hrs

Michael Croy

@Sharon- Can you share some examples of how teachers have no idea about what it is like to sacrifice?

Like · Reply · 1 hr

Ryan Pride ·

Front Ensemble Technician at Phantom Regiment

If you think basing pay off of merit (I.e. Test scores) holds teachers accountable, then you are ignorant on the subject. All tests do is measure how well a kid takes a test, not if they actually understood the information. Good teachers are being punished by standardized testing and are leaving the profession in droves. Would you trust someone to make a car seat for your child, but then argue that they’re paid too much to make a quality and safe product to protect your child? No? Well guess what, your child’s EDUCATOR (as in the person who provides information for them to use the rest of thei…See More

Like · Reply · 1 · 20 hrs

Alex Daniel ·

Cincinnati, Ohio

Let’s see:
-Irrationally equating the purchasing choice of a commercial commodity to the pay scale of a public sector worker….check. 

-blindly accusing parents of being absent from their child’s lives and pawning their education off on strangers…check.

-and presenting the boilerplate, ready-made response to the idea of actually having standards in performance evaluations for teachers….check. 

Seems you’ve hit all the bases of being a stooge for teacher’s unions. Congratulations.

Like · Reply · 16 hrs

Ryan Pride ·

Front Ensemble Technician at Phantom Regiment

Not being able to negate any of my points? Check. Mindlessly joining the ranks of critics who probably have zero teaching experience? Check. Attempting to belittle someone though intellectual masterbation? Double check. Being a “stooge” doesn’t make me wrong.

Like · Reply · 2 · 14 hrs

Kevin Lee Austin ·

System Administrator at Wright State University

Here is some interesting reading from 2011.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/…/pay-rate-for…/

Like · Reply · Apr 24, 2015 10:48am

Joe Shooner ·

Cincinnati, Ohio

I would guess, and this is truly a guess, that those numbers do not reflect their actual salary, but their cost to the disctrict. While they are related, it’s important to realize that any legitimate employer who pays taxes, medicare, and especially any type of health insurance, will incur a much higher “cost” for an employee than what that employee receives on their paycheck, even their gross wages. It varies, but an employer can easily have a cost of 25-40% haigher than the salary alone.

Like · Reply · Apr 24, 2015 11:08am

Joe Doerger

Sow what’s your point? Is it too much? Is it too little? Compared to what?

What do YOU make and why don’t YOU list it along with your name and other personal information? What are you afraid of?

Like · Reply · Apr 24, 2015 11:11am

Kevin Lee Austin ·

System Administrator at Wright State University

Joe Shooner Those are salaries, not salary plus benefits.

Like · Reply · Apr 24, 2015 11:12am

Show 2 more replies in this thread

Kevin Lee Austin ·

System Administrator at Wright State University

Must be a weekday. More grumbling from the Lakota teacher’s union.

Like · Reply · Apr 24, 2015 7:51am

Joe Doerger

I think it’s call “freedom of assembly.”

Like · Reply · 3 · Apr 24, 2015 10:16am

Alex Daniel ·

Cincinnati, Ohio

Joe Doerger; It’s called stealing tax payer dollars.

Like · Reply · 16 hrs

Nicol Neate

Golly, don’t the teachers use this in their own classes? You have to earn things in life, including raises. ~rolls eyes~ Our teachers are becoming priviledged group who think they dont have to answer to anyone. Well, our failing schools show they need to earn their check, like anyone else. Quit whining like you’d tell your students.

Like · Reply · Apr 24, 2015 8:22am

Joe Doerger

Oh those “privileged” teachers. With their desks and their tests. And their rooms with chairs. I guess that’s why EVERYONE is chucking their careers on Wall St. to get into classrooms as soon as possible. After all, THAT’S where the money is, right?

Like · Reply · 5 · Apr 24, 2015 9:07am

Michelle Langlois Wagner ·

West Chester Township, Butler County, Ohio

Even using your extremely flawed logic, Nicol, the schools in Lakota have repeatedly been identified as excellent with distinction-the very opposite of failing. You are simply demanding that teachers work hard for less pay, based on a system (merit pay) that has never been shown to work. Ever.

Like · Reply · 2 · Apr 24, 2015 11:53am

Maureen Basedow ·

10th grade science teacher at Cincinnati Public Schools

Michelle Langlois Wagner, I was a college professor before teaching high school. The absolute best local students at Miami and Xavier came from Lakota. Lakota was doing it right. The best local suburban high school by far, Nicol Neate. Now who should be paid for that?

Like · Reply · 17 hrs

 

 

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2015/04/24/lakota-teachers-demonstrate-front-schools/26293313/

Probably the most common argument in favor of the public education system and the infinite pay the employees demand was from the Shooner person: “I’m a Lakota parent, and I fully support the idea of paying our teachers well. My kids are relying on that education, I consider it money well spent to retain and attract good teachers. I know my kids teachers. I see the cars they drive, I learn where they live. On paper, some district employees are doing very well – especially since most cost estimates I’ve seen include ALL benefits. As a person in a small business, I can tell you that a 40K salary can EASILY have a total cost of $60K if you factor in taxes, healthcare, etc. The majority of teachers are not getting rich off of this job.”  That guy thinks he has all the bases covered, he identifies himself as a person who understands the economics of the situation—he asserts the value the public education service has to him, then attempts to justify the value without any real substantial equity being used to balance out that value.  On the surface these people sound reasonable until you consider the implication of what they are putting forth.  40K per year is above the average wage rate in the United States—let alone 60K—so how much is a teacher worth?  That depends on whether or not you have school aged kids.  Youthful parents tend to be more neurotic on the issue whereas older people have learned the value of money and are more stringent.

The other argument that didn’t come up much in these comments, but ultimately are the last resort in such exchanges is that public schools should be appeased because our property values magically go up every year and that we should be willing to donate some of that value back into the schools so that these unionized employees can have the jackpot.  There are two problems with that situation, realtors—who are always some of the most vocal school levy advocates—use public schools to attract those lily pad hoppers who move to a district for the schools, then move away when the next fad hits—or they move in their career wanting to cash in on the increased value of their homes.  So using schools as a way to increase the value of a district’s real estate value is like taking a drug—the fix might be immediate and benefit the people who stay in a home for 5 to 7 years—but it penalizes investors who stick around for a decade or two—because the cycle of growth doesn’t sustain itself over time.  The other problem is that home values do not really increase—it is only through inflation that they appear to grow.  In the short run that money can be taxed, and loans can be taken out against that value, but it will not sustain itself for a decade or two.  Homes only increase in value if there are more people who want to buy that house in the future then the market will allow.  If everyone who wants a house can get one in the area of their choice, values won’t hold.  For instance, values hold in Indian Hill because there are limited homes per re-sale opportunity.  For every home that goes up for sale, there may be four buyers—hypothetically speaking.  However, in Lakota there are plenty of homes.  Builders have placed them under every tree, stream and school cross walk.  Currently there are a reasonable number of people who want to live in the Lakota district and it helps that there is commercial growth—but within the decade that will change.  There will be so many homes priced at the upper end of the market value that there might only be one or two buyers per home—putting the sales leverage on the buyer—not the seller.   Even though a home may be valued and taxed by the Lakota school system at $280,000 a buyer may only be willing to pay $210,000 for it.  If you don’t come down on that price the buyer will walk.  How does that cover a perceived investment?

I had a couple of sets of friends who lived in Four Bridges.  Their kids grew up; graduated from Lakota—then they moved away.  Their $300,000 to $500,000 homes sat on the market for over a year each and when they did sell; it was about 15% less than they wanted.  They had hoped to make money on those homes, but instead took a loss to move the units.  There just aren’t that many buyers out there who can buy a quarter million dollar home in the first place—let alone one in an area with a lot of competition.  If a potential buyer wants to move to an area to send their kids to Lakota schools—or Mason for that matter and a seller doesn’t come down on their price—there is a cookie cutter home down the road from a seller who will—so the leverage is gone from the homeowner leaving them to support every school levy that comes along hoping that more potential buyers in the future will maintain their increases in property value.  But most of the time it won’t.

Most parents who blindly support public school levies and the teachers who baby sit their kids fall in this category—only they never admit to it.  They hope and pray to make 20K to 30K on their home so they can downsize into a condo at some point in the future once their kids are grown, and live off the gains.  But it doesn’t work that way for most people.  If there are gains made, they are either absorbed by inflation, or taxes.  Or they are lost due to other circumstances leaving these current school levy supporters angry with themselves for supporting a levy a decade ago.

And that’s the situation that is coming to Lakota and Mason schools—and is why there are fewer people commenting these days on behalf of the greedy out-of-touch teachers.  Even with the growth of commercial enterprises—such as the new Liberty Center—there will be declining enrollment at Lakota as kids grow up and move away, but their parents stick around burnt by that same school plaguing them with buyer’s remorse.  Since the gains in property value will not be what those former supporters had hoped for, they will stay at Lakota and hold their properties and won’t want to support the schools because they won’t have kids in the school any longer.  That is the situation that the Lakota teachers are protesting as they expect to receive a higher than average wage in a community where the children are leaving, the parents are staying—and are bitter that their investment yield wasn’t what they had dreamed of.  And they will vote with their wallets—like people always do.  School supporters know they can get cheaper babysitting through the public school, so to them it’s a bargain.  But for those who don’t have kids in school, they want nothing to do with Lakota, or the taxes that spawn from it.

Those are just some things to consider.  I have watched this issue for a long time and its course is set and certain.  Yet in the comment section of the Enquirer are the same old tired diatribes that sound silly and out-dated now that there is more information to consider.  And that trend will only increase in subsequent years.  These are not the times of old where the teacher unions controlled the boards of newspapers and captured public opinion through guilt.  People are sick of these spoiled brats and the difference now from then is that they are willing to say it, just as Dan Varney did in the Enquirer article.  Nobody used to talk like that—but they do now—and that does not add up to success for the labor union position.  They are losing ground—quickly.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Fire Lakota’s Teachers: Protest over merit pay bad example to kids

I have written and said so much on this topic you’d think that the ridiculously arrogant teachers in the Lakota school system would have learned by now.  However, they apparently have the memory span of Dory from the Finding Nemo movie, and about the same politics—and they can’t remember anything from five minutes ago, let alone five years.  Like a bunch of children they protested in front of various Lakota schools over the implementation of merit pay—which is something that’s happening all over the nation, not just in Ohio—and is certainly not limited to Lakota.  I’ve said it before, I don’t mind paying a teacher $200,000 a year if they are really good, but I don’t want to pay a slug $65K per year just because they showed up and fulfilled a step schedule established by the labor union.  I want to see management deciding who gets paid what for an expected criterion.  I do not want to pay for collective bargaining which favors the lazy at the expense of the hard-working.

Of course the impact of these entire teacher antics in attempting to wreck the budget at Lakota will provoke another levy attempt, which I have been saying all along will happen right around the 2017 mark—if not sooner—since the school board knows it will likely meet resistance and may take a few years to pass.  What they are asking us to pay for is the same ridiculousness they have in the past—out-of-control employee costs that are directly linked to this kind of teacher behavior.  Because the union is protected by state and federal law management often caves under the collective pressure of protests like this recent one at Lakota and the tax payers are stuck with the bill—which means an increase in property taxes.  People new to the district don’t mind paying a bit more on taxes until they live in the area for a few years and are stuck with excessively high taxes.  It is then that they get buyer’s remorse—meanwhile all these radical union employees retire and move away leaving the mess to the rest of us to clean up.  I let the Pulse Journal know my thoughts about the Lakota protests with the following Letter to the Editor.

In a fair world every teacher who took part in the Friday April 24th demonstrations in front of the students at twenty of Lakota’s schools protesting merit pay, should have been terminated immediately.  However, we don’t live in a fair world and are currently stuck with an out-of-touch teacher’s union culture in these schools that feel they are entitled to district resources without the judgment of their job performance being established through a merit pay system. 

Defenders of the action will declare that their gathering was a “peaceful demonstration” and they (the teachers) have the right under the First Amendment to “assemble.”  Yet the protesters in this case are district employees who consciously made a decision to impose their viewpoints in front of the same children they are supposed to be teaching which should be considered a breach of contract by attempting to radicalize students against value assessment—merit pay.  It is insulting that they’d even contemplate the protest at Lakota after that district spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to repair their image after the last few years.  Talk about short memories—and a lack of gratitude.  The school board went to great measure to improve Lakota’s image and the teachers decided “collectively” to perform this task—in front of their students–amazingly short-sighted.

I’m looking forward to the further antics of the Lakota teachers over the coming summer.  Since we can’t fire them, they will make fighting the next levy attempt that much easier. 

Thanks,

Rich Hoffman

The judgment was so bad that all those employees should have been relieved of their duties and sent home on the spot.  But we don’t live in a fair world—but one where public employees like these people are used to getting what they want, when they want it.  They are spoiled brats—and that is putting it mildly.  The Lakota teachers participating in this demonstration are easily replaceable, and should have been treated justly.  They expect too much money for doing entirely too little—then they have the arrogance to be a disruptive force within the school.

It should be quite clear by now why I still think it was a teacher who left the note in the bathroom just days before the last election in Lakota threatening a shooting spree if voters didn’t pass a levy.  Even though the levy was to throw money at these same teachers as appeasement for maintaining a wage freeze at the time, the levy was sold as a way to keep our “kids” safe in school.  Conveniently, just days before the election a threatening note was left behind promising a shooting spree.  The FBI and Butler County Sheriff’s office offered no leads, no hand writing analysis, no arrests in their “investigation” because they knew what I did—that the investigation would have taken them to the classroom of one of these radical teachers instead of some disgruntled kid.  Heck, Sheriff Jones even put his name behind the passage of the levy.  But if it was a kid, where could we place the blame for learning the behavior—look at their teachers?

Much is said about the millennial generation and how bad they are regarding work ethic—how pretentious they are relative to generations from the past.  Granted, the parents are largely to blame for these screwed up kids.  But the public schools have sold themselves as an option to parenting—as a viable substitute.  Well, here is the proof of what kind of things those mentors are teaching kids.  No wonder kids grow up expecting the world to be handed to them on a silver platter; they learn it from their teachers.

Until Ohio becomes a Right-to-Work state these radical nutcases will have all the leverage against tax payers—because management of them is simply not possible—if teachers will protest merit pay—where good teachers get paid based on how good they are—they’ll protest a turtle crossing the street.  Their argument becomes so ridiculous that it’s almost science fiction.  What’s encouraging is that these Lakota teachers have shown so early in the game that they are willing to behave like a bunch of Saul Alinskey radicals just as they did in 2008 with a strike threat, which I brought up continuously in 2010 through the first three levy attempts, caused the budget problems at Lakota.  These latest actions by them will just give those of us willing to fight these idiots cannon fodder—so I welcome more of these antics.  But there is a bit of me that feels sorry for the management of the Lakota school system—which is an entity I have been very critical of—because of their willingness to stay away from the hard decisions like this merit pay issue.  They tried so hard and spent so much money extracting money from the community and this is how the teachers show their thanks.  It has to hurt.  But nobody can say they weren’t warned.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Great Copper Kingdom: What is behind the veil of government sponsored history

 

I was never a fan of public education. When attending, I did alright. I looked at it as a prison sentence, had discipline problems with the teachers, but had more friends than I wanted and often excelled at public speeches and athletics. I never took what they were trying to teach me too seriously. Most of what I learned I did on my own. However I did a lot of exploring as a youth and some things just didn’t match up with what they taught us in 4th grade Ohio History. I generally accepted that the Hopewell and Adena Indians built the mounds at Fort Ancient and the purpose of the earthworks were for burial. End of story. I also generally accepted that in 6 grade history class, the pyramids of Egypt were intended for the burial of Khufu. End of story. But as I moved into high school and took anthropology in my senior year—after I had been reading books on the subject for nearly a decade at that point—I knew something was wrong—somebody wasn’t tell the whole truth, nothing but the truth—so help them. Something was fishy about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the whole Nebuchadnezzar issue. Further, in college I was even more suspicious when my philosophy professor was hell-bent on teaching about Lao-Tze author of Tao Te Ching so to pave the way to incorporating Maoism into Western Culture. No, that didn’t work for me. So my education turned to the famed scholar Joseph Campbell and many late nights at Waffle House reading lots and lots of books for about 10 years looking for a fresh look at the mythologies of the world and the real history of the human race incorrectly documented by impatient scholars trying to satisfy their federal grants with all too convenient papers that supported the Catholic version of European expansion.

The next step for me came in reading the Allen Eckert books starting with The Frontiersman. I had lived in the Cincinnati area all of my life and I was learning things in those books that simply shocked me—which should have been covered in the 4th grade way back in Ohio History. I was learning for the first time about the Chief Logan incidents, the fact that Pittsburg was built on the ruins of Fort Duquesne, how Cincinnati was founded and all about the life and times of Simon Kenton. I certainly didn’t know about the massacre in Piqua, Ohio or the Shawnee silver treasure hidden in Xenia, all these were topics new to my adult mind which should have been introduced in grade school. That’s when I realized that historians were too quick to settle on very shallow historic points when thinking of history. For instance in grade school most of the history was focused on the various wars—World War II seemed like ancient history so anything before that was irrelevant and useless. If you really dug into history the Revolutionary War was studied. And of course the Civil War was taught to bring up discussions of slavery and equality without digging any further into the past.

But digging a bit beyond the Revolution I learned that the pirate Henry Morgan had a lot to do with the Jefferson version of America through the philosopher John Locke and that the United States and capitalism in general was invented during the raiding of Spanish galleons looting the desperate Mayans and Aztecs in Central America. Studying those ancient cultures it quickly became clear that there were even more ancient roots settling those societies, especially in Central Mexico before the Aztecs in the city of Tenochititlan. That city had advanced canals and a social structure that obviously came from a history not recorded, which is completely buried under modern-day Mexico City—which seems intentional. Cortez could have started a Spanish city anywhere, but he chose to build on top of a “pagan Holy spot, which was common, and still is.” None of that was taught in my public education and I felt cheated—and angry.

I now largely disregard most things taught in government schools as a smokescreen to reality. I don’t believe the intentions of public education are good or even attempting to have an accurate investigation into reality. They are simply concerned with shaping public perception to the goals of the state.  The truth is that Christopher Columbus was not the first to arrive in America—far from it. When Columbus arrived under a Spanish flag and a Catholic religion behind him, a great North American culture that had already been participating in global trade had risen and fallen over the 10,000 years prior. A vast portion of the historic puzzle had been erased from our memory and revised around the popular religions of the day ignoring archaeological evidence that was pouring in from thousands of wanna’ be Indiana Jones’ wanting to find their own Ark of the Covenant. A flood of archaeology was sweeping our culture and it was discovering that the previous documented history shaped largely by the government supported Smithsonian Institute was wrong and nothing could be trusted that they said. Some could, but you just can’t tell how much of it—so most has to be completely thrown out, which is a shame.

The evidence was clear. I had been visiting mound sites all over Ohio for most of my life, and seldom did I ever see excavation going on to further investigate the strange formations. Why was that? Well, it’s obvious that nobody wants to dig up anything that might rattle the cage of previous reports. For instance, at Serpent Mound, which is a frequent favorite of mine, they dug up a few bones, put them into a museum and called it a day even though its one of the world’s most intriguing mysteries.   Government institutions around the globe are involved in a massive cover-up and are well aware of the danger of further finds confirming the truth—which is currently hidden behind the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act—which has little to do with actual history. The typical “Indian” who was running around as nomads when Columbus arrived were the remnants of a civilization that had already fallen from grace centuries before—and had lost their way. The NAGPRA gave a segment of the population wronged by previous governments nearly complete control of archaeology in North America not to protect their interests, but to keep the past truly hidden.

But it’s not working, the evidence is pouring in with overwhelming abundance. Armchair archaeologists are doing better work more quickly than the college institution backed scientists and this is problematic for maintaining the future of the cover-up. For instance, the below paragraph is from Richard Dewhurst who wrote an interesting book titled The Ancient Giants Who Ruled America. In it he talks about “The Great Copper Kingdom”:

When reconstructing the true history of the mound builders in America, there is no more important place than Isle Royal, situated in Lake Superior, just off the Keweenaw Peninsula in northern Michigan. Because of a freak volcanic event that twisted the copper-bearing bedrock above the water line, thus allowing all the sulphur impurities to burn away in the open air, the copper found at Isle Royal is the purest found anywhere in the world. The entire region is scarred by ancient mine pits and trenches up to 20 feet deep. Carbon-dating testing of wood remains found in sockets of copper artifacts indicates that some are at least 5700 years old, while other open digs around the area have been dated to 8-10,000 years old. The most conservative estimates calculate that during a ten thousand-year period, over 500,000 tons of copper was taken from the mines. At the other end of the spectrum in “Prehistoric Copper Mining in the Lake Superior Region,” published in 1961, Drier and Du Temple estimated that over 1.5 billion pounds of copper had been mined from the region. Since traditional researchers refuse to analyze European copper for its probable Michigan signature, no one has been able to account for where all this copper ended up. That it was traded and used extensively across the United States by the Mound Builders there is no question. But this is no way can account for the magnitude of copper taken out of these unique mines. What researchers have determined is a continuous history mining activity that begun in 8,000 B.C. and then abruptly ended around 1500 B.C., contemporaneous with the volcanic explosion on Cretan Thera (Santorini). Since rock-cut pictures of Cretan trading vessels have been found in the area, this lends credence to the Cretan connection in North America at a very early date. In addition, researchers have also determined that copper mining activity resumed again around 900 A.D. This date corresponds perfectly with related evidence of a Viking presence in the area around that same date.

 

http://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/DewhurstR1.php

 

Imagine the implication of this statement—how much European copper could be traced back to this Michigan mine? If any could be it would destroy the premise that Columbus discovered America which would be a really deep nail in the coffin of Catholic history and domination after the Roman Empire. Essentially the last claims of greatness of that same Roman Empire would be swept away as they had previously attempted to erase evidence of any culture that came before them having any level of sophistication. But it appears quite obvious that Western Civilization wishes to believe that all human thought, science, philosophy, and history started around 450 BC with Socrates—which is simply not true. It looks as though thought, science, and philosophy in a fairly advanced state existed in frequent trade from America to Europe for over 10,000 years before Socrates—and this is something that the religions of Europe simply can’t deal with.

Yet the facts are the facts, they are there in front of us to pick up and look at, yet nobody dares to look from the established sciences—because they are afraid of the answer. They don’t want to know, and they don’t want anybody digging it up—which at this point is beyond their scope of control. Archaeology is flourishing on the History and Travel Channel—it is being suppressed in the education institutions to fulfill a government backed agenda to preserve grant funding. And that is why we don’t know more than we do, which should anger everyone. It does me. There is no Columbus Day because he didn’t discover America—he simply had a hand in naming it. Likely the Hopi Indians of Northern Arizona are stranded Chinese who mixed with the Aztec cultures and are likely older versions of other Chinese people who settled or traded in a global trade network that reaches back to the time of the Great Pyramid of Khufu. We have been mislead dear reader, and we celebrate all the wrong holidays and pay reverence to historic origins that are as fictitious as a Star Wars movie. The real history is much more interesting and has yet to be uncovered. But with the new breed of armchair archaeologists doing such good work out there—it’s only a matter of time. But regarding public education, we all have good reason to despise it for the roll it has played in hiding history from the minds that deserve to know better.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Kind of People Public Education Makes: Reasons not to fund government school

Every now and again I get a very revealing comment from some dissident who expects the collective hive of humanity to finance their personal whims. Such a comment can be seen below which has three main topics contained within it worth note regarding my video on the upcoming 2017 Lakota levy proposal. The commenter makes some very concise progressive arguments that require extensive examination, but first, let’s have a look at their opinion not just for its entertainment value, but for its essential argument.

Sean Robinson

7 hours ago

 

I know you thrive on people like me commenting, but if you are that miserable living in this district find somewhere else to go. Or run for the school board. Your consistent attack on schools shows you didn’t have a good time in school growing up. That isn’t the case for everybody. Being this negative all the time has got to feel miserable for you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZR0ob708q8&feature=youtu.be

The first assumption is that as a long time resident in the Lakota district that I should be willing to move just because a bunch of tax increase supporters moved in from progressive regions of the country—like the East Coast, and brought with them the mentality of their homeland. The same flood of ideology is actually behind the argument of amnesty where Democrats support bringing in voters from south of the border in socialist and communist countries so that they will vote in favor of measures that favor progressive advancements. The same happens with housing developments. Government schools see alliances with increased housing development as a change agent for community relations. I liked my community before those people showed up. I put up with them when I have to see them around town. But I find it intolerable that their lifestyle choices dictate that I pay them more money. There isn’t anywhere on earth where you can run from these second-hander type people, because they seek to consume everything and everyone in their path as they must consume the essence of others to sustain themselves—like any typical parasite. There is a reason that most levy supporters have in their ranks a host of real estate agents who use school levies to make easy sales to cultural dissidents looking for the latest and greatest new thing. Currently my community is that latest and greatest thing. In two decades people like that commenter will be off to the next place leaving the Lakota district an empty husk like a plate after a meal. They will have consumed everything they could and moved on to something else leaving someone else to clean up the mess. At that time, I will likely still be involved in the area and that will be people like me. They’ll be long gone and their kids will be saying the same stupid stuff to somebody else who moved deep into the country to get away from idiots like that, only to have a new generation of saps sucking off the efforts of others.

The next question is that if I know so much about education management of resources then why don’t I run for school board and solve the problem from the inside. Well, I have been approached about this before and many thought that during the Lakota campaigns in the past that my eventual angle was to be a school board member. Actually, I just didn’t want to pay higher taxes for something I think is inefficient and in desperate need of a reboot. Public education to me is one of the dumbest and most out-dated concepts in our modern society. I don’t think there’s anything effective on a substantive level, about public education let alone enough to support justification of the money forced from property owners to continue financing. My management method as a school board member would be to shut the whole thing down, not to find a way to preserve it. If pretentious people like that commenter want a free baby sitting service for their children, then they should pay for it. There are much, much better ways of getting an education in modern America and if parents really cared about their children, they’d pull them out of a public class and teach them in a private school or at home with the vast resources available today. Loving a kid does not mean sending them to school. It requires a lot more than that. Supporting children in educational opportunities is important, but restricting children to a government education system that is obviously not working is not the answer.

One of the things that Scott Sloan from 700 WLW wanted me to do during the Lakota campaign was to join with the pro levy people to argue at the state level a proper allocation of state funding, which is currently considered unconstitutional. His wife is a real estate agent and put up with our school levy rants only so long, until it became problematic and evident that I wasn’t buying into the state funding solution. I wasn’t going to argue toward the state to send more money to Lakota because the money would just be lost in inflated wages driven too high by collective bargaining agreements. So long as there is a labor union in charge of Lakota or any public education institution, management is not possible. My answer is to just de-fund it, shut it down, make the labor unions illegal, then and only then can there be some measure of management and reform of public education. Otherwise, it’s a waste of time. Any discussion of money, funding, or taxes to support failure is just stupid.

I have said recently in another article, which is probably why this guy brought it up, that I didn’t enjoy my school years. I thought of it as a waste of time. I was ready to graduate in the third grade and was miserable every single year thereafter until I graduated. I looked at the school as a prison and on my graduation day, I was released and I never looked back. I had lots of friends and I still do. I’m far from an anti-social hermit. In fact, I have so many people who I correspond with that I don’t have hours in a given day to spend with all of them. I couldn’t in a hundred lifetimes. My school years were not as this commenter alluded, miserable because of some social status whereas people like them had fun in school—within the social structure of a government backed entity. Some people love that kind of structure and I see those people as huge contributors to many of the modern problems facing our world today. It is not my job to fund people’s good experiences, which is what the commenter expects. Because they are the feeble type that like functioning within the structure of government schools they expect everyone to pay for their sustenance. I think government schools make people like that commenter worse and more neurotic as people, so paying them more money to create more of that behavior makes no sense to me. I couldn’t wait to leave school. I sure as hell don’t want to spend the rest of my life paying for other people to attend such a place. That is also just stupid.

As to being a miserable person or feeling miserable because of always thinking about such negativity—nothing could be further from the truth. Naturally, I’m a positive person—actually excessively so. I can endure large amounts of negativity without being encumbered by misery. I am also self-sustaining meaning that I don’t live through other people the way a lot have been taught to. So there is a spill over effect to my optimism which many enjoy, and depend on. It is no problem for me to deal with really complex and sorrowful issues without personally becoming miserable as a result. I can write long articles like this one every day for the rest of my life and then immediately turn around and do something fun with my wife and kids at the drop of a hat. Life is something meant to be approached the way children play. You have to extract some level of joy out of all situations otherwise you are doing something wrong. The mere fact that this commenter brought this issue up dictates that they are subject to misery, depression, and other forms of mental illness derived from living an incorrect life lacking intellectual mechanism for navigation through day-to-day activity. That is not a problem for me and it never will be. That is why I take these issues on, because other people seem to have trouble staying on course and still maintain their sanity. The utterance of a miserable condition is not applicable. Public school helps create neurosis which leads to mental illness of various degrees, and it would appear the commenter is prone to such things based on their perceptual reality. They shouldn’t assume that everyone in the world is prone to the same weaknesses.

You can learn a lot from the type of comments that people make, and over time you can build up quite a data base of behavioral conditions which invoke them. When it comes to public education the most successful products of government seem to be the greatest menaces to modern freedom and righteous thinking. The obvious conclusion is to eliminate that corrosive element which is my position on public education. As a government backed entity its exclusive product is to create second-handers–people who live through others for their personal sustenance. The commenter is clearly one of those types of people and he assumes that the entire world should think the way he does. And his ultimate presumption to the comment provided is that if you don’t like the way he thinks, then it is your obligation to leave. That is not how the world works. The fault is his in allowing himself to think incorrectly about things and to be taught such ridiculous concepts that are completely stupid, and irrelevant to logic.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Labor Unions are a form of Terrorism: Scott Walker was right

The scum bag old hippies from the labor movement sent me one of their propaganda pieces over the weekend still upset at Scott Walker for successfully making Wisconsin a right-to-work state. Their argument was an implied insult made by Walker during a speech poising himself for a presidential run saying, “If I can take on 100,000 protestors, I can do the same with Islamic terrorists.”  The labor unions of Wisconsin and within the Democratic Party felt that the comparison of labor union workers protesting the reforms that Walker was implementing were inaccurately being compared to terrorists as if such a thing was a radical departure from reality. But the truth is, any labor union that uses force, coercion, or fear of any kind to make their point is an act of terror. They may not go to the extra level of killing people to make their point, but they certainly did try to damage Walker politically and personally on several occasions and their motives were to invoke terror upon the governor with the same tactical aims in mind as the terrorists of Islam are seeking to achieve through their actions.

Just because the terrorists in this case aren’t wearing towels on their heads and cutting the throat of so-called infidels on a beach in the Mediterranean, if the intention is to make a point against a rival position by using fear instead of logic—the action is one of terrorism. The labor unions have been conducting themselves in such a manner for years, and they don’t get a free pass just because they are American citizens, or members of the Democratic Party backed by laws created by the Department of Labor. Terrorism is anything that invokes fear to accelerate acceptance of the perpetrator’s point of view.

And while we’re at clarifying definitions, let’s also look at the type of language used by labor unions to describe themselves. In the propaganda piece the labor union described their position as such, “Scott Walker compared Wisconsin workers to terrorists. He wants to be president, STOP HIM.” From there they have a little link you can click that takes you to a petition page so you can sign your name to their plight as if some collective mass of ignorance could stop the reality of their foolishness. Workers in the way that labor unions and members of the Democratic Party machine use it, is a term utilized by the philosophy of Karl Marx in his various articulations on the merits of communism, such as in the Communist Manifesto where he ends the book “workers of the world unite.” In the manner that Marx indicated he was calling for an act of terrorism against the management of labor in capitalist enterprises. When “workers” strike and don’t perform tasks of labor, they are no longer “working” they are denying labor to an employer—so they require a different technical classification. A worker in a capitalist country is someone who conducts productive enterprise. A worker in communist and socialist endeavors is a protestor who uses terrorism to extort money they did not earn through collective bargaining agreements by threatening to destroy productivity or the profit margins of their employer through a strike.

Recently the labor unions of the west coast port workers managed to wrestle a contract negotiation settlement for themselves by slowing down work for a number of months costing many millions of dollars in profit. That was economic terrorism where the employers were forced to take the lesser of two evils, they could not operate their business due to the back log in work the labor union “workers” were imposing on them, or they could agree to the labor demands of their protestors and at least collect enough money to stay in business. With average wages of $147,000 per year the ILWU union deliberately brought the management of the west coast ports to their knees with drag-assing techniques designed to hurt their employer so to wrestle away more money from them. That was and is an act of terrorism.

In my home school district of Lakota in 2013 when they wanted to pass a tax increase which they had been unsuccessful three prior times due to arguments that I posed to the public which they could not overcome, they resorted to terrorism through labor union radicalism. The district wanted to give overpaid government employees more money so they needed a tax increase on property values to do it. They used the recent school shooting at Sandy Hook to swing voters about 5% into their direction as they promised to spend the money on “safety and security.” Lakota as a district was doing what public schools do all across the nation when they want more money for their teacher unions—they make parents afraid that something might happen to their children if something isn’t done in their favor. To help drive the point home just a few days before the election a death threat was found in the girls bathroom promising a shooting spree which of course made all the papers and news outlets. Enough parents were scared to vote in favor of the tax increase and Lakota received their money. They didn’t get the money in a straight up and down vote on logic. Lakota had to utilize some form of terror to provoke people into voting for their cause making it an act of terrorism. Of course they didn’t cross the line to become actual killers like the ISIS terrorists have, but they did use fear to achieve their objectives.

And in Wisconsin, against Scott Walker, there were death threats, political maneuvers designed to invoke fear in the population, threats that the economy of the state would be wrecked if Walker got his way—none of which actually happened. The labor unions were using fear to preserve their grip on the state’s economy and under Walker’s leadership, they failed. So out of all the presidential candidates seeking a run for the office in 2016, Walker is the most experienced in dealing with terrorism. He did successfully battle it among the various labor unions in his state. Those labor unions did sometimes threaten to kill him, but unlike ISIS, they didn’t actually try to carry it out. But the threats were made—and those threats are considered to be terrorism with the same intentions as the ISIS terrorist—to achieve a tactical objective through the means of inflicting some form of terror to move an opponent off their position.

The word “worker” is not sacred in American politics. To people who create work the term indicates the potential for some radicalized protest that will cost money and a huge amount of damage to the public relations of any endeavor. Labor unions don’t get to live under different rules by the shadows of reality just because they are Americans. If they desire to inflict fear because they can’t win an argument through logic, they are in fact a form of terrorist. Any time coercion is utilized to achieve a political objective; it is an act of terrorism.   Obama conducted himself as a terrorist when he sent a picture to congress with his pen promising executive orders if they did not do as he demanded. When they refused, such as in the amnesty issue, Obama signed an executive order that ended up as a rider to the Department of Homeland Security bill which is presently being voted upon in the House. Those against the DHS funding bill are upset at Obama’s executive order for amnesty which is really just another way for Democrats to buy votes for future elections. They make up lots of fancy terms for things, but at the heart of the reality, they are behaving as terrorists, because they use fear to drive policy implementation. And of the potential candidates in 2016, Scott Walker has the right kind of mind to deal with the type of domestic terrorism that has so crippled the American economy for years in the labor unions. It’s quite clear that he has the ability to deal with terrorists who don’t even try to hide their actions behind suits and ties—and Washington lobbyists. Walker’s track record and statement was correct. And the labor unions know it—that’s why they’re afraid of him.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

 

A Case in Favor of the Kroger Marketplace: Sometimes the way to save something old is with something new

I was very much against the proposed Kroger Marketplace at the corner of 747 and Taylorsville Road in West Chester, Ohio. The opposition was because the people around the community didn’t want it and the developer didn’t seem to want to construct the buffer zone that was needed to appease the community according to news reports. The Kroger store was supposed to be a service to the community in a positive way, but the people who had moved in and around the area obviously didn’t want anything to do with it. So the trustees listened to the voters instead of laying down flat for the developers and the project halted, which I applauded. Now a different developer wants to build a Marketplace literally at the end of my street, and I am quite happy about it. So what’s the difference?

For several decades now the RT 4 corridor that runs a short way through Liberty Township, Ohio has been an optimal area for commercial and business development. When I arrive home after a long trip I cherish my hometown intersection of RT 4 and Liberty Fairfield Road which includes a traditional Kroger store that has been swelling over the years to a breaking point. Often my wife and I go to the strip mall where the Kroger currently exists and eat Chinese food at the little place there which I think is some of the finest in the country. On a Saturday, traffic is terrible because that Kroger is so swelled making further quests into the surrounding businesses unattractive.

The prospect of a 133,868 square foot Kroger Marketplace being built just up the road and diagonally across from the Elk Run golf course to replace the current one is very attractive just because the business at the old one is so robust that it demands an expansion. I purposely don’t like going to Kroger because it’s just too cramped. We typically get our Chinese food and go home because driving through and around the Kroger parking lot is just too cramped that it’s not worth it. One of the benefits of that particular intersection and the developments there is that everything is so spread out, so traffic is typically handled well. I’m happy to see a new Waffle House being erected next to the Taco Bell and LaRosa’s which is across from the McDonald’s and Skyline Chili. There are so many dining options at that intersection that it looks deceptively rural. But, I can get just about everything I need there. I can get my car repaired. I can purchase advanced firearms. I can get all my household maintenance needs between Tractor Supply and Ace Hardware. My wife and I frequently eat at the Frisch’s. Our banking is there, there’s a Hallmark. A Beverage Barn is run by a wonderful Indian family and were among the first in the area to special order Mello Yello for me directly, before the Coke Company resumed distribution back to the Cincinnati area a few years ago. There are so many positive developments that allow my family to do virtually everything we need to do within two miles of our home and I love it.   But the grocery experience is just too inconvenient.

http://www.journal-news.com/news/news/public-hearing-for-new-butler-county-kroger-resche/njmb4/

The wealth of the area is conducive to the type of grocery experience that a Kroger Marketplace offers. I like the options offered in the other Liberty Township Kroger store which is a Marketplace—but it’s too far away to be considered convenient. So for me the Kroger Marketplace offers a fix to my present dilemma and the zoning for years has wanted to move in that direction at that particular location, the corner of Kyles Station and RT. 4. There are of course people who enjoy the view of an empty field, including myself. I still enjoy the sight of the occasional farming that takes place on that high hill which looks down into Trenton within the valley of the Great Miami River. But for business development, that particular location is one of the best in the area and is needed due to the value of the developments surrounding it.

There are homes around my property that are in the half million dollar range. The Elk Run Golf course I think is one of the nicest in the city—as it is very picturesque and classy. It’s a bit dated, but is due for an update which will only come if people continue to see the value in it. In a lot of ways the new Kroger will do a lot to bring the proper demographic of financial value to the area directly across from the golf course to appreciate what Elk Run offers as an asset of Liberty Township. Of that new demographic is the residents of the new Carriage Hill development which featured Homarama two consecutive years with homes upward of a million dollars in value. People who have homes like that don’t want to be cramped into a box full of dated architecture and limited shelf space. They want options, high-end cooking ingredients, and a shopping experience that is professional, and free of neurosis. The proposed Kroger Marketplace in Liberty Township is poised to provide all those options and more because the location, view, and proximity to so many family dwellings is just phenomenal.

The West Chester location was nothing like the Liberty Township location as far as placement and overall community impact. The West Chester location needed a developer that understood what the community was weary of. That particular intersection along 747 is very busy already as the Lakota school down the road really mounts up the traffic in the morning and afternoons. The homes in the immediate area already have to contend with a great deal of traffic on crowded roads. But in Liberty Township along RT 4, the road infrastructure is already built; it just needs the construction to begin.

As for the complaints, local residents won’t want to trade their view of a grassy field for a parking lot full of cars. I will be impacted as my wife and I enjoy evenings in our hot tub looking at the stars. The lights from the new Kroger will add to the light pollution which will dilute out more stars from our view.   But it’s a small price to pay for the types of high-end food offerings that are typical of a Kroger Marketplace. I will gladly welcome the new development as it will greatly enhance my life and does what new creations are supposed to—it will improve life in the community. It will bring a fresh new awareness not just to the area, but to the legacy items currently already there and in a state of decline.

To this day the Western Row golf course is an empty field. The course died years ago before the spur of development along Mason-Montgomery Rd occurred and there are no takers to develop such a large plot of highly expensive real-estate now that the prices are through the roof. The property is too expensive for a golf course, and too large for more restaurants and small stores.  So it sits in limbo. I would like to not see the same thing happen to Elk Run. I love the Elk Run property. I love the golf course. But because taxes are so high, it would be too expensive to privately own if the golf course fails in the future. And it’s too big to fill with business. It has taken twenty years to fill what has been built along that span of RT 4—so it’s not logical to expect Elk Run to fill with anything but more homes at some point. So for those who love green space and the scenery on top of the big hill in Liberty Township the best way to preserve it is to fully support the new Kroger Marketplace in Liberty Township. What’s wrong with a round of golf before a grocery shopping trip? Nothing at all. At the proposed location I would hope that the Elk Run golf course would enjoy new life from a new demographic support system instead of fading away into the sunset as an older generation moves on to greener pastures and a new generation perpetually looks for something new. Sometimes it takes something new to keep the old alive—and in this case, the new Kroger Marketplace will do just the trick.

Rich Hoffman

Visit Cliffhanger Research and Development