Storm Clouds Gather over Lakota: S.B.5 forces union concessions that saves millions of dollars

Doc Thompson and I talk about the historic signing between the Lakota Education Association and the Lakota School Board on 700 WLW of the new contract that removes “step increases” from the financing scheme the district has been struggling with. Click here to listen to that detailed conversation that covers everything from storms to Senate Bill 5. This is the first time in Lakota’s 54 year history that such an agreement has been achieved. But for me, it’s too little too late, and too little when much more is needed.

As the storm clouds raged in over the Lakota Administration building around 7:30 pm May 23, 2011 bringing threatening weather with such wind gusts that the windows rattled, the Lakota School Board meeting was postponed while everyone present sought shelter from a would-be tornado. Channel 19 was there filming the event as a musical act was wrapping up, and effort from Ron Spurlock to create a meeting atmosphere that relieved the tension that had festered in a community that feels overly taxed on one hand, and a teachers union that never knows when enough is enough. I admired the work Ron has been doing, and he seemed o me to be functioning as the ideal superintendent for the Lakota district. He understands the way educators think, but he’s not unrealistic to what’s going on in the outside world. He’s a likeable guy and it shows. He is a perfect example of how leaders emerge in crises, and he is what has emerged as the previous superintendent left town during the last levy attempt.

The Channel 19 reporter told his cameraman, who then told a guy back in the tech booth that a dangerous storm cell was coming our way, so Joan evacuated the room to seek shelter stuffed into the back of the building away from the bouncing glass windows. My wife and I looked at the storm outside then at the people who that had forced so much pain on our community with the union contract, and elected to go outside into the storm to watch the fascinating clouds roll in. We joined the TV people wo had already gathered outside to get weather shots for their various stations. It was more dangerous outside for sure, but the breeze felt good and if a tornado touched down, we’d be able to see it hopefully in time to get to some cover.

Much to my surprise Ron Spurlock joined me outside along with Jenni Logan. We had a nice conversation, nothing serious. I purposely wanted to avoid doing a lot of talking. After all, they had a reason to celebrate and I didn’t want to rob them of the experience. The relief on their faces that the LEA actually negotiated a deal in record time with them without discussion of strikes, or other hardships, was nothing short of stunning.

As bits of mulch kicked up in the wind and became dangerous projectiles that the cameraman shielded their cameras with their hands to protect, I saw on Ron’s face a genuine love of the district and a joy of actually having some good news. So I kept the conversation friendly. This was not the day for contention. Even though the storms were spreading over Lakota from above, by an act of nature, it was nothing compared to the storm that had settled psychologically within the members of the community. So Ron and I stood outside with the news crews, joined by Jenni and watched the dangerous storm with the relief similar to those that are enjoying the relief of a hurricane that had move on.

After a half hour, the storm cleared and the meeting resumed. The contract was voted on quickly and the meeting ended. My wife and I left quietly.
On the way home I thought of the teachers union that had held out all this time and nearly bankrupted the district with their refusal to deal with the school board, to act like children to keep asking and asking for more money when the district has already well-compensated them. Then the reality hit me about their actions. They didn’t give up anything. They weren’t suddenly working with the district and the community that must pay their wages. They have their eye on the bigger prize, of repealing S.B.5 from law in November. It is that law that they want to get rid of and the union strategy is to give up these short-term fights for the greater prize of being able to continue to extort excessive wages from the community in the future. S.B.5 will give school boards such as Lakota much more leverage in contract negotiations. It will take away the unions ability to create work stoppages through strikes which is a heavy-handed strategy the union uses often. The LEA has threatened strikes twice in the last 3 years. Once in 2008, which came down t the wire and then a threat of another in March of 2010, both incidents were over wages and benefits. So the union does not want to lose the ability to use such tactics against the community. So the realization hit me hard that while we were all happy and celebrating at Lakota, a more sinister villain loomed on the horizon.

As the clouds parted to reveal a bit of the setting sun, and the cool breeze that follows such storms was refreshing our faces as we drove with the windows down, my wife and I enjoyed the moment for what it was, a moment of relief in a war that would resume tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow over the repeal of S.B.5.

It was S.B.5 that brought both sides to the table. It was the fear of it that forced the union to put on a friendly face and work with the community so they could claim as much during the campaign to repeal. So my mind went to work on what those next steps would be, as I took a breath and enjoyed the moment for all it was worth.

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Don’t Wait for Superman, Look in the Mirror: KASICH HOSTS A STATEWIDE PARTY!

At the Republican Headquarters in Lebanon Thursday May 19, 2011 a unique event occurred. I was skeptical of this event at first, but once concluded, I will admit to a level of enchantment that is unprecedented in these modern times. Concerned citizens looking for options in education funding and content issues gathered to listen to the Governor of Ohio, John Kasich speak from Cleveland at a statewide showing of the film Waiting for Superman.

I wasn’t sure how such a thing would be done. I knew the technology was available. I’ve been involved in many conference calls for business meetings, but what Kasich was trying to do was unique.

I sat down in the lobby of the Republican Headquarters, a small converted house just behind the historic Golden Lamb. It’s an older building unpretentious in it’s nature. Several of my friends were there popping popcorn and eating pizza. At 6 PM a laptop on a desk in the corner played Kasich live over the internet as he introduced the film Waiting For Superman, a film made by the same people who did An Inconvenient Truth which made Al Gore so famous. Kasich spoke about the need for education reform and said that this film, made by liberals, touched him so deeply that he felt compelled to act. He also added that he didn’t like to speak after watching the film but said that we’d all meet back online to have a discussion. Then he said hit play, and enjoy the movie.

There were about 25 of us crammed in the lobby sitting in chairs and watching a widescreen television that was playing the movie, which follows a number of children on their quest for a voucher school. The film explained how devastated public school had become through union influence and kids weren’t learning what they needed to. There were many charts about how America is falling behind the rest of the world in education and there simply isn’t any reason for it. America is nationally spending close to 10K per student, yet the results have not shown up in the kids.

The movie was sad. It’s a film I had wanted to see for a long time, but just didn’t take the time to view. It’s on Netflix, so if you haven’t seen it yet, make it a point to do so. I truly felt sorry for the parents that had children crying because they weren’t able to hit the lottery, which is how kids get into these crowded schools. It’s amazing that these charter schools are so crowded, that there is such a demand for them, because public school is free, and is supposed to take care of this issue without the extra expense. But like anything that’s good, and like everything that’s government run, there are vast discrepancies. What’s good is driven by passionate people who care, and are able to see beyond the headlights, visionaries, and other creative people. Government produces complacency, mediocrity, and sheer dullness. The two different styles and their results are grossly evident in the film.

As I watched the closing moments of the film, the popcorn that was freshly popped just hours before still filled the room with its festive aroma. A screen door that was the threshold to the small building was blowing open and closed in a gentle evening wind as the sun was setting quickly outside. I watched traffic rolling aimlessly down the street outside as the credits ran and nobody spoke for several minutes, computing their emotions. I thought of the people driving those cars, how most of them were so easily manipulated, because they are too busy to think. They are the first type of person that believes the Lakota Administration when they proclaim that their recent contract negotiation with the LEA was done in good faith, and not the threat of S.B.5. Those people driving down the road can’t see the shell game being played against them, not because they are too stupid, but they aren’t willing to deal with the problem. They do like they do most things in their life, they throw money at it and hope the problems go away. Their car breaks down a lot, they throw money at a brand new one. Their neighbor gets new gutters that direct the water away from their homes, so they go buy new gutters. Their neighbor buys a new television, so they buy a new television. They work too much, they are on their second marriages and have step children that need educated, but they don’t truly care for their step children, because the children remind them of a previous spouse, so they avoid the children psychologically. They instead count on the schools to fill the emotional gap so they throw money at the schools.

At the end of the credits Kasich was back on live from Cleveland speaking from the laptop. He went on to perform an hour of questions and answers about his views on education reform. Educators, school board members and other concerned citizens spoke in the town hall-style meeting and I thought Kasich did a great job of opening himself up. I couldn’t recall any governor of any state attempting with such sincerity to do anything close to what Kasich was doing, let alone tackle the controversial issue of education with such direct frankness.

Around 9 PM everything wrapped up, I grabbed a handful of popcorn and headed back to the car with my wife. On the way home we talked about the experience. She looked at me as the darkened countryside passed by outside the window. “I understand with clarity what the problem is.”

“You do?” I asked.

“Yes, I felt sorry for those mothers, but the problem is many of those women have forgotten to be mothers. They had other options. Looking to someone else to educate their children is asking for a disaster.”

I thought about it. She was right. She is a woman who took a lot of criticism while we were raising our kids because she took a very active role in their lives. When we were first married we made the decision to have her not work, so when we had kids she would be able to commit herself toward their development. We didn’t want to do daycare. We didn’t want to rely on a family member, because there was a certain vision toward life I wanted them to have, and I wanted a mother there to make sure they got it. We didn’t raise our kids waiting for superman. We decided to be superman. I did the extra work to make sure my wife was free to raise my kids. And she did the extra work to make sure it happened even though society ridiculed her for it. Here was a woman who could have been a professional model, here was a woman who had a load of brains and was book smart, where school was easy for her. But to society, she was wasting her life in sacrifice to her children. She was giving up a career and everything that comes with it so she could be cooped up in a house with a bunch of little kids. To society, that decision was tragic.

My opinions on this matter where settled when I was very young. My mother was the kind of woman everyone wanted for a mom. She did all the things that kids fantasize about in having an ideal mom. She was always there for a little treat. She was always there to hand out a band-aid. Dinner was always ready around at 5:30 pm when Dad came home. She was a room mom in school that would make treats for every kid in my class. She did all the little things that are so important while children are still developing their consciousness from those tender ages of 1 to 12. My mom was the kind of woman who would give me books that she’d write little things in that I still have, and I may not read the book right then, but within the next year or two, I would. She still does things like that, just the other day while my dad and her were vacationing in Hilton Head, she brought me back a new book mark that had pirate skulls all over it in 3D. She wrote a little message on the back for me to remember, which I will.

For me, I was done cooking at age 12, because I had a dedicated mother, and a grandmother that was equally dedicated. I had a stable father, and a good positive family environment. It worked wonderfully. All the kids my mother had turned out well. Nobody has any deep psychological problems. We all handle stress well, and are successful at the art of living, not just financially, but emotionally as well. It’s not a surprise. It’s not a secret formula. All it took was a mom. As a man, I don’t have a single insecurity. Not a single inferiority complex. I don’t have a single doubt, or fear. I didn’t get that by age 12, but the foundation was set. The rest I had to do myself and that didn’t get completed till I raised my own kids. Because when you are raising kids, you may not fear for yourself, but you do fear for them.

I married a woman who wanted to commit herself in the same way to my own kids. That’s what I looked for in a woman, someone who would be dedicated to building a family. Someone that would always be there for my kids, someone who would make actual birthday cakes, and not buy them at Kroger, someone who would buy my kids little treats while they are out shopping, so the children would have something fun to greet them when they came home from school. I wanted a woman who would drive them to school everyday so my kids wouldn’t have to ride a school bus, because I remembered what happened to little girls on the school bus in grade school, and since I had girls, I wasn’t going to put them through the humiliation. I didn’t want them to accept humiliation. When the school system crossed the line and didn’t teach my kids what I thought they should be learning, or they didn’t teach enough, we pulled the kids out of school and taught them ourselves. I wanted a woman that would do that kind of thing, that would buy my kids books and would read to them every night.

As the countryside went black I looked at my wife. She had done all those things over a 20 year period. She endured ridicule from family members and friends that most people never experience, because most people don’t go against the grain as furiously as she did. Only in hind-sight can those same family members see the benefits. Only in hind-sight do we understand what we fought so hard for. Our children are evidence of all the hard work. They are brilliant and good in every way a parent hopes for.

We have occasional disagreements like when I recently argued with my youngest about applying to college in London. I told her those socialists would attempt to reprogram her and she’d be too far away from home to get her grounding again. “Oh, dad, I’m not a weak-minded fool.”

My kids don’t lack courage. They are secure. And there isn’t any problem that they think they can’t handle, at any level. Why is that? Because they had a fantastic mother.

In the movie, Waiting for Superman, I realized my wife had hit the core of the issue. Those mothers, crying to get their children in a charter school and away from the apathy of public school were making a fundamental error in raising their children. They were looking for the school to do the job of the mother. That is the fatal error.

Not everyone reading this can take pride in having such mothers as I describe. We are suffering through a hundred years of progressive brain-washing. I know how hard it was on my wife and me, so I understand why people give up, or don’t even get started on the commitment. However, no amount of money can be thrown at a situation to fix education. It cannot be the job of a school of any kind, especially a government-run entity, to replace the parent. There is no substitute for a mother, especially a good one.

My advice to people is don’t wait for superman to come and save you. Become superman and save yourself. If you really want your kids to have a good life, fight for lower taxes so you children can keep more of the money they make. And spending time with your children is a lot more productive than spending money. There is no substitute as much as lost progressive souls wish upon a star of illusion. Their legacy has left mothers trying to be fathers, fathers trying to be mothers, and fathers divorcing mothers and mothers marrying other fathers of other children while those fathers marry new mothers. Progressives drool over the hope that they can fill the social destruction with a teacher that we are asking too much of, what they don’t see is that it is their policies that created the mess to start with. Progressives are responsible for the whole mess. They are what destroyed the American family. They are what have destroyed education. They are what have left us taxed beyond existence, the blood is on their hands as millions of young people grow less intelligent the older they get.

I know a very bright-eyed young girl of about 7 that is full of hope and dreams. Everyone when they first met her thought “this is a young girl that will be something.” But the closer she gets to junior high, the closer she gets to older kids that are “giving up,” because they see where their lives are going in their messed up parents, the light in this young girl’s eyes is dimming. I told my wife that in a few years, the light will go out all together.

“Why, we must do something,” she said.

“You can’t help her,” I said. “You can only help your own children, your nieces or nephews. You can be kind and offer yourself as a mentor, but ultimately those kids will only be as good as their parents.”

She whiffed in frustration, but she understood what I meant. We both drove into the darkness of Monroe, passed the Hustler of Hollywood store and noticed that it was full on a Thursday night. We both knew what the other was thinking as we continued west back to our home. Government tried to replace the family and they failed, and public school is the evidence of that failure. More money won’t fix that problem until we fix our desire to have strong families again, as a society. Because it all starts with a mom and a dad. And if the mom and a dad don’t make it, the kids will suffer. No amount of money can wash away the guilt of what those parents put their children through, even though countless parents hope and pray that the sins of their lives can be purchased from the souls of their children. We now understand that it is impossible.

Become Superman, don’t wait for him. The greatest gift you can give a child is to give them someone to look up to, to emulate. Money won’t do it. Only what’s in your soul will work, and you can’t hide that with material goods. You have to be superman to the core of your being.

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Who Loves Authority, Not Me: Why it’s considered radical to dislike being told what to do

How much do public officials make? How much are they paid to move paper from one desk to another, to vote on new laws for us to obey, and to assert their authority over us? Find out with this fantastic Channel 9 report.

How much do we pay officials to send out letters like the one described below?

When I opened the envelope from Butler County Court of Common Pleas I was mildly excited, because the letter turned out to be what I thought it was; a notification for Jury Duty.

Now, I don’t mind such things. I see it as a civic obligation and I recognize the service in the spirit it was intended. I enjoy court because of the human theater. I usually learn a lot about human society in such places, so it would not be a difficult thing to ask me to participate.

However, I became infuriated at the wording of the letter: Dear Prospective Juror, You are COMMANDED to be available to appear and serve on the petit jury of the Butler County Common Pleas.

Now, wait a minute. Nobody commands me to do anything. Who do these idiots think they are? They serve me, I don’t serve them. Who has the right or obligation to command me to do anything? Who did I give permission over my sovereignty to command me to do anything? Nobody! I give no authority to any man on the face of this planet to have authority over me. No man, woman, child, spiritual entity, nobody on Earth. I recognize no leader over my family but myself. I seek no services from any resource but my own skill and labor, and I authorize no human being to have authority over me.

So what fool government worker sitting down at the Butler County Court House shoving paper around each day and getting paid excessively well to do so think in their wildest dreams that they have authority over me and my family?

The answer to this comes from the broadcast of Doc Thompson of 700 WLW about an Indiana Supreme Court issue that enables the police to enter a home without any warrant, under reasonable suspicion. Residents are not allowed to resist any search from the police of their homes.

Now, many will read my comments and think that my view is radical. That’s only because as an American, you are too far gone. Your perspective is skewed too far to the progressive thought process. Now this past week, there was an officer killed in the line of duty by a crazed maniac in Lebanon, Ohio. That is a very sad story. I feel terribly for the officer’s family. After all, the guy was just throwing down stop sticks, and he didn’t deserve to be killed by a lunatic.

But the emotion of the moment doesn’t change my opinion that police have no right to perform as a military device against the citizens. They have no right to sit perched on the sides of roadways like stalking hunters only to pull over random victims to raise revenue for their departments. They have no right to tell me to wear a seat belt. They have no right to impose themselves on me in any way.

I tend to take charge of the situation around me, and I don’t need a police officer to intercede. If I see a wreck on the highway, I’ll stop and help. I may even help direct traffic. If someone tries to rob me, I have the second amendment. I just need the officer to take the statement for my court appearance. About a month ago I was stuck in traffic in front of the Middletown Mall because of a major accident on I-75. The cops at the incident were way above their heads with the issue. They were holding up traffic for miles in front of the mall, while the police diverted highway traffic off the ramp and back onto the wreck up on the highway. I was parked right in front of the police holding up the traffic for over a half hour. People behind me were getting upset and were beeping their horns letting the cops know that they needed to relieve some of the traffic. It’s not the poor decisions of the cops handling the situation that I found offensive, it was the look on the officer’s faces that made me angry. The lead officer on the scene was strutting around arrogantly and was going up to cars and knocking on their windows angrily to tell them not to beep their horns. I saw on their faces the eyes of bullies that didn’t like to have their authority challenged. They were struggling to maintain their control of the situation.

I have a long history with police. When I was younger, I got pulled over all the time. Before my 18th birthday I had been to court more times than I had years on my birthday, just for traffic violations. Every time I went to court, my parents told me to wear my school jacket, because then the judge would go easier on me. Besides the traffic tickets, I had police altercations for fights, for deaths, for trespassing, thefts, just about everything you can imagine. Yet, I was not a bad kid. I didn’t drink. I didn’t do drugs. I didn’t treat people badly. But I did stick up for myself. I did have a hard-line where I refused to concede to authority and that made me a target.

As a man I’ve been to court for all those same issues, but add to those law-suits, various disputes, and employer-employee issues. I’ve watched a judge enter a room dozens and dozens of times to be told by the bailiff, “all rise, the honorable court so-and-so presiding,” only to have everyone in the court room sit back down. Somewhere when I was very young I saw the process as a scam, I lost respect for the whole ceremony, and I stopped wearing my school jacket to court, and instead wore my leather jacket. I learned that the people attracted to the profession of law enforcement in general are attracted to power, so to make a blanket statement that police are all honorable and above criticism is naive and foolish. I have seen these people from every angle, and that is my opinion. I respect whatever oath they chose to take for themselves, and in the context of society, I respect their rules. But my property, my sovereignty, intruding on it is an act of war from a foreign entity. An attack on me in any way, an improper entry to my home, even stepping on my property is an act of war by a domestic enemy. If we are on the highway, “neutral” territory, and they turn on their little lights and pull me over, I pull over. I consider such encounters as getting caught by a tax troll. But I don’t respect their law enforcement because I don’t respect the laws created by corrupt politicians who write those self-serving laws.

I feel so strong about this issue that I wrote an entire book about it that is currently under contract review with a publisher. For those that think my anger at school systems is extreme, or misplaced, it doesn’t hold a candle to my anger at law enforcement. I have a lot of stories I could tell. I have already told some of them at this link, CLICK HERE.

I do not give honor to a uniform blindly. I know police officers personally and they are not the kind of people who I’d trust with making a decision to enter my home because some scumbag politician passed a law that decided I was a threat to the law. Such things are subjective, and I choose to not be included in the little game.

As if my impression toward police officers were not cemented at an early age, I have a rage that continues to this very day over an incident that occurred in Sharonville when my wife, a fashion model at the time worked at her parents business as a receptionist for part-time money. Her and I were newly married. I don’t even think she was 19 years old yet. Well, her parents needed the police to take a statement about something, one was an older guy in his late 40’s, and was very over-weight and had a classic cop mustache. His partner was a skinny young man fresh out of the military, in his mid-twenties. So these cops came into this business and my wife greeted them. “Wow, you’re pretty,” said the older cop smiling at his partner. “And married too. What’s a pretty young girl like you doing married?”

“Oh, I met a great guy, and I’m very happy,” my wife said.

“Would you ever cheat on your husband?” the older guy said as both cops laughed.

“No,” my wife said becoming serious.

“Well,” said the old cop, “would you lay still while I do.” Both cops erupted into laughter.

My wife didn’t know what to do. Her parents had heard this, but feared to say anything, because they didn’t want to be on the bad side of the cops. When I came home from work that day, she was crying, feeling helpless. I called the police station, talked to the supervisors of those officers and let him know how I felt.

“Do you want to file a complaint?” he asked me. “Just come on down and fill it out.”

My wife begged me to drop it, because I had already lost my driver’s license at the time till I was like 26, and I was only 20 at the time. So she wanted no more court appearances and no more trouble. So we had to drop the case. But as I drove around Sharonville I looked for those cops to confront them myself which I never saw around town again. Police are no better than average people. They only have the authority we give them. They are not qualified to make decisions on our behalf. Politicians are not qualified to make decisions on our behalf, obviously. So unless other citizens start questioning these police actions, these police agencies and government officials will continue to encroach themselves into your sanctity.

That lady who wrote me the letter COMMANDING me to appear in court is out of her mind thinking such a statement has any justification in my life. Jury Duty is something I WANT to do. Commanding me to do so makes me to not want to do it.

Just some things to consider in relation to law enforcement. I’m happy to have them around. I think having police is important to keeping the peace. But, I see all too often that they abuse their power, and it goes to their head like everyone else that works in public service. They forget who they work for. And if left to their own devices, these intrusive stories will get worse and worse over time, and we’ll pay for it with our taxes and freedom.

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Lakota Hopes to Freeze your Memory: The LEA and the school board freeze step increases

BRIAN COMBS OF 700 WLW ANNOUNCES A CONTRACT CONCESSION AT LAKOTA SCHOOLS

I’m convinced that today the majority of Americans want what those first Americans wanted: a better life for themselves and their children; a minimum of government authority. Very simply, they want to be left alone in peace and safety to take care of the family by earning an honest dollar and putting away some savings. This may not sound too exciting, but there is something magnificent about it. On the farm, on the street corner, in the factory and in the kitchen, millions of us ask nothing more, but certainly nothing less, than to live our own lives according to our values—at peace with ourselves, our neighbors and the world.

Ronald Reagan, 1976

Matt Mayer of the Buckeye Institute talks to Doc Thompson about union indoctrination in public school. This is a big problem lead by the OEA and the LEA. Listen to that very informative interview here:

The 1,190 member Lakota teacher’s union is set to vote on approving a contract that will eliminate step increases which will be a true “freeze” on wages, which is considered by many to be an unprecedented move. Many consider such a “sacrifice” by the union as a reasonable concession. As I watch the union’s movements closely, what they are doing is showing that government doesn’t need S.B.5 to create an environment of reasonable negotiation. They are using this negotiating strategy to point to in the fall when they are going to attempt to repeal S.B.5, and proclaim that the unions have been reasonable and worked with the school board.

The only reason they are doing this now is because it has now become evident that the unions have pushed things too far. Teachers are only working 9 months a year, 8 hours a day with some take home work on occasion, and they are being paid about 30% more than everyone else who pays their wages and are working longer hours each day and working 12 months out of a year. People are aware of the scam, and now the teachers union knows that S.B.5 could end their grip on local politics, so they are doing the only thing they can do, and that’s attempt to put on a softer face and appear to be “working” with the communities.

My opinion on the step increase removal from the contract is that it is a nice gesture that is about a year and a half too late in Lakota. It’s probably about 5 years too late in economic reality all across the state. Teachers showed no restraint in negotiating their contracts with lap-dog school board members, leaving the average wage at Lakota to be over 63K per year. About half of that 1,190 member organization makes over 65K per year going as high as six figures for a teacher. (For a review of what step increases are listen to this broadcasts between Darryl Parks and I from way back in September of 2010.)

The trouble is that these teachers believe they are entitled to this amount of money because they have, “seniority,” “specialty certifications,” and various degrees. They have the same mentality as those that have grown to accept Medicare and Social Security as “entitlements” instead of calling them what they really are, and that’s welfare programs for the elderly. Politicians for years have been successful in convincing Americans that they have a “right” to other people’s money regardless of how much they’ve paid into the system. And history shows, especially in regard to Medicare that if the money is on the table, coming from the invisible hands of tax payers, then there is no shortage of people willing to over-charge for services, or to go to the doctor for every ailment, because they can. And doctors are all too willing to prescribe medication to a patient to help out the pharmacist, and to help his patient. After all, all it takes is a doctor’s note to get out of work, so the doctor wins both ways. He helps a colleague make a few bucks, and he gets to get the patient out of some work so everybody wins. That’s what you get out of Medicare. It’s a big pot of money that everyone wants to stick their hand in and fill their pockets. Being human nature, it’s all too tempting to take more than is needed, because it’s there. So the more you put in front of people, the more they’ll want to take. Using Medicare and Social Security as an example, of the $31,406 Washington has spent per household in 2010 $9,949 will go to just Social Security and Medicare. And it was like that from the very beginning. This quote from the Harford Courant, July 2nd 1969. “Social Security officials conceded Tuesday that the cost of Medicare and Medicaid are running way over original estimates.” The more we put in, the more thieves there are to take it out.

This is what teachers have done. Communities have put a lot of money in their community pots by way of property taxes, and teachers using tenure, step up and have taken as much as they could carry. The newer teachers are all too happy to wait in line behind those with seniority because their leaders in the unions have made good on their promise that if the money ever gets too low, they’ll just go back to the community and refill the pot. They do this because they believe they are entitled to the money. They believe that their degrees, or their years of service make them “qualified” for a certain amount of money. Well, their degrees don’t mean anything to me. Why do we need a teacher with a doctorate, or even a masters to teach 1st or 2nd grade. I’ve seen home-school moms do a better job in their kitchens. So why should a school district have to pay wages that are excessively high for a teacher that is over-qualified? The teacher with their hand in the pot will say they “earned” the “right” to that amount of money because they did the work at college. Well, I didn’t ask those teachers to go to college. I didn’t ask them to get a master’s degree. Those types of deals were made by crooked politicians with OEA lobbyists to create laws that allowed those classifications of teachers to take more of the pot away quicker. It’s a little scam they’ve worked out in Columbus. I didn’t agree to be robbed of my property tax to participate in such a foolish system. That kind of deal was done behind my back and I don’t like it!

In the private sector the teacher would be paid based on the value of their service, not some arbitrary figure come up by politicians from 30,000 feet that haven’t a clue what education is supposed to be. They are only in office so they can take from another pot provided by the tax payer. These people with their hands in the pots, teachers unions, politicians and the like are simply moochers. They rely on a producer, such as myself, and most likely a majority of the people reading this article, to put money into that pot. I have no respect for a moocher.

Is moocher too strong of a word? What other word is there? That’s what they are. The OEA is doing what kids do when they play house, they are coming up with a set of rules that they negotiated with themselves, and values that they created for the confined little world that exists only to them in their bedrooms. They are moochers because they don’t contribute anything useful to society. Parents are paying these people to watch their kids while the parents work. And the moochers have invented all kinds of titles and regulations to make their little game seem relevant. They are doing the job that parents are too busy to do themselves.

When my kids were going to school, my rule was that if the teacher cared enough about teaching as I did, I let my kids listen to that teacher. There were a few teachers that my kids had that were very passionate, and I admired those people. Not because they had a degree, a title, or tenure. But because they had passion for life. For the rest, the majority, that just lived an idealized life, just waiting for school to let out for the summer, that took every personal day they could, and was just doing their time waiting by the pot of taxpayer money to come available so they could reach in and take all they could, I told my kids to watch out for people like that. Watch out for sinners dressed as “saints” I’d tell them. Be careful of the con artist with the smile on their face waving you into someplace they want you to go. I warned them about such teachers with the same caution that I’d warn them of a strange old man trying to get a young girl into their car. Whether the danger is physical or mental makes little difference to me. “Watch out what people try to pour into your minds. For every negative that someone tries to give you, you must off-set it with four positives. If someone tries to give you an ignorant thought, cleanse yourself with a book before you go to sleep. The process of reading will help your mind work out corrupt thoughts the same as water assists in the digestion of food.” That’s the kind of talk I had with my own kids. And my advice to parents and children everywhere is the same. “Be careful what you let people tell you, especially moochers like the OEA that are only out to build a financial empire for themselves with money from the pot we created.”

So what are the teachers at Lakota giving up in voting away their “step increases?” They are agreeing to not take away money the community hasn’t even put into the pot yet. They are agreeing to keep all they’ve taken already, but not to take too much of what we put in next time, since the pot is empty again, after the community just filled it.

We all know the answer to this. We’d tell our children who drank too much Kool-Aid and came back to the kitchen crying after the pitcher was emptied, “I want more.” We’d say to them as reassuring as possible, “You should have thought about that before you drank it all up.”

What the Lakota teacher’s union is essentially saying is “we’ll keep drinking just as much Kool-Aid as we always have, but we won’t ask for more, so long as you keep the pitcher full” Now it’s our responsibility to tell the children, “we can’t afford to give you so much Kool-Aid. You need to drink less.”

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Shoudn’t Superintendents Go To Jail for the Crimes Against the Tax Payer: Yes, according to George W. Bush

With all the discussion about corruption in public education there are options that the tax payer can participate in. One of those options Representative Bill Coley talked about with Doc Thompson on 700 WLW. Click this link to listen to that broadcast. It’s the ability to expand education opportunities for both students and teachers in the future, and to emerge from the scandalous behavior that we are seeing more and more in public education. It’s not that these corruption problems weren’t always there, they have been for years, but now there are people who are willing to look at them. After Representative Coley came on to speak to Doc, I provided further testimony to the benefits of Coley’s congressional bill. But, it is obvious that something must be done to protect our schools from the kind of social reform that is being imposed on our kids, such as what was revealed at this Tuscan School Board meeting on Tuesday May 10, 2011

As parents learn that they have options, it is by using those options that they can be most instrumental in bringing about change. By voting down school levies, by using other forms of education to teach your kids, by taking advantage of every opportunity available, the parent of a child will go a long way to ending these massive public education debacles that are making a joke of education in the United States.

Keynesian economists like Barrack Obama believe that the more money you pour into a program, the better it is. Well, that’s not true, and Barrack reveals his inexperience at life by subscribing to a popular theory that circulates around universities all across the county. It circulates through academia because that’s the only place it works, because in academia tax payers and tuition increases cover the cost of such foolishness. In reality the more money you throw into a situation, the more corrupt it becomes. As shown in Brendan Keefe’s I-Team report, (click here to view) when a lot of money is supplied by the tax payers, there is no shortage of thieves that will line up to take that money for everything they can. We live in a culture that has learned to “game” the system, and our educators are teaching our children by example, and we are teaching our children its ok, because we continue to pass levies and feeding the corruption with our apathy. People like this woman are perfect examples of Keynesian economics. They just don’t understand how things work. They are a lost group of people who have been lied to by the kind of people who taught them in public education. She obviously learned from the same kind of people who put together the text-book in Tuscan.

I have to credit West Clermont that put their levy down in a spectacular way last week. The residents there are demanding change, yet their superintendent is defiant and toeing the line. (You can see that story by clicking here.) What’s happening is that Governor Kasich is trying to give districts like West Clermont the tools they need to manage their costs, but S.B.5 will have to withstand the repeal attempt by the type of people in the protest speech, well-intentioned people who have simply been taught incorrectly virtually everything the foundations of their lives are built on.

The solution to this kind of nonsense is in programs like what Bill Coley spoke about. When people start using them, the thugs that are embedded in public education can begin to be filtered out of the process. So take charge of your child’s education. Don’t just drop them off for baby-sitting convenience while you’re at work. The tools are available to you right now that give your children options to avoid the kind of bottom-feeders that are attracted to the lucrative business of public education. All people need to do is use them.

But doing nothing will only make the situation worse.

If you’re a CEO and you think you can fudge the books in order to make yourself look better, we’re going to find you, we’re going to arrest you, and we’re going to hold you to account.
–President George W. Bush, 2002

That’s tough talk for a president, but it’s only talk. Under his watch, corruption in public education exploded because he threw money at it. It looks like every superintendent in Ohio is guilty of doing exactly what President Bush declared CEO’s are doing. If superintendents want to be considered as CEO’s shouldn’t they go to jail when they get caught “cooking the books” commit “fraud” or participate in out-right “cover-ups?” Because it looks like the jails in Ohio would fill beyond capacity with those committing the crimes.

So why send children to such places, where criminals reside and pretend to be authority figures? Why do it when there are options such as the Online Options Bill Coley speaks about, or School Choice which is coming along under Governor Kasich’s reforms. By endorsing these criminals with your tax money, you are making the situation worse and are partially guilty of crimes against our society. By participating in competition you will force the best to survive and the crooked to be cast out, and that needs to happen quickly.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

The Most Important Broadcast You’ll Ever Hear: The Crises in West Clermont School Distict and every public school in Ohio

If you do anything, listen to this broadcast between Doc Thompson of 700 WLW and Brendan Keefe of Channel 9 discuss the I-Team Report on school superintendents abusing the tax payer. This is a report that I worked with Brendan on along with Jennifer Miller and Sharon Poe and I’m very proud of the outcome. The report is as honest and hard-hitting as any report I’ve ever heard on this issue and it is a gift to tax payers everywhere to understand how the system has been stacked against them. Take this information and use it to understand what is happening. It may be the most important broadcast you’ll ever listen to. And to view that television broadcast again click here:

All over the United States state and local debt is up 138 percent since 1990 levels. What that means is that state governments, which include school boards and county commissioners, have become spend-happy and corrupt by federal money. The more money that they have received, the more they spent, without any increase in services. It is just wasted money. At some point, there must be a conscious decision to cut back dramatically the amount of money we spend on all services, and we must by necessity begin with education.

We have covered a lot of arrogance at this site regarding public education. Usually after the defeat of a levy the school board and superintendent are cautious about how they deal with the public, however, after the defeat of the West Clermont School System Levy Superintendent Gary Brooks was unusually arrogant toward the residents of the community that voted his levy down. Immediately the district is cutting art, and music teachers and there will be no more dedicated specialists to teach gifted specialists, there will be fewer elective courses in both their high schools. This was in reaction to a levy defeat that was 61 percent against, to 39 percent for. Listen Gary Brooks in his own words.

While this meeting was going on, Brendan Keefe was doing his epic report on superintendents that are milking the tax payers for everything they can, while services to parents are being reduced dramatically. Click here to see that report.

The crowd that showed up at the school board meeting in West Clermont was upset, saying “This board has done a pathetic job. You’ve been gilding the lily, and now we’re paying for it.”

Then with great shock, the school board president, Dan Krueger said “If you don’t like what we’re doing, vote us out, but whoever you put up here is going to find the same things we found.” He went on to say the board is not there to serve the tax payer, but to serve the children. (Brace yourself before you watch this video. You may want to act lash out in anger)

This was a shocking statement from a school board president that reveals how these people think. What we’re finding is that school districts all over Ohio are mimicking the same types of behavior. We are learning now under financial stress that there is a certain type of person that is attracted to become a school board member, and those types are particularly vulnerable to the seduction that goes into play every November when all school boards meet in Columbus at the OSBA conference. That is when these people become members of the fraternity, and the rules of that fraternity are set by the Ohio Education Association. This is why these school boards function the same way no matter what the district, because they receive centralized training from Columbus.

The Ohio Education Association also can be blamed for the unified behavior of the school superintendents. It is the teachers union that publishes the book which shows superintendents how to game the system. Again refer to the broadcast above, listen to Brendan Keefe explain the process to Doc Thompson on 700 WLW.

I know many school board members that get elected and are forced to make the choice to play ball, or are they going to try and do the job they “think” they were elected for. This is why the board president’s comments are so shocking because he reveals the true problem. Those board members that elect not to “play ball” are pushed out, which is the story of Jennifer Miller from Mason, shown in the I-Team Report with Brendan Keefe. That’s her story, and she’s not alone in the state. Most board members prove to be lifeless oafs and power hungry types that would trade their soul for a name-plate in brass to sit upon their desk. And those are the types of people that the OEA wants to compete against in contract talks, because it allows their union presidents to preside over those that have already lost. And the superintendents are bought off by the union in the spoils of the system. Superintendents are well-compensated and have their egos inflated to believe they are running a major organization, when the true hands on the strings are the union leaders. And the school boards know that their hands are tied, and that they are only tokens of ceremony to preside over decisions that are already in motion before the announcements are ever public knowledge.

The whole process is a scam sold to us by sports and local patriotism, which causes us to overlook what we all know to be wrong, to view the world with our eyes wide shut, leaving us to just throw money at the corrupt system and lie to ourselves that we are doing everything we can for our children.

These crooked low-lifes know what they are doing; they are robbing us with law, and using our children to perpetrate the scam. And we are letting it happen. The scam is created by radical big-government types and they get average, ordinary people to buy into their scheme by garnering excessively high wages in trade for their silence. And that’s the crime that is being committed with audacious arrogance by thieves without guns, fists, or armies.

The only weapon they use is guilt.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

THX-1138 A GREAT MOVIE: Where our current education system is taking us

“Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: if it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

Ronald Reagan August 1986.

Politicians have to have something to do. They have been elected to a job, and to their small minds, small because they crave the power of a position, but in order to perform that job they pass laws and regulation so people hopefully see through the smoke screen they create to hide their true intentions. Rules and regulations are created to prove that politicians are doing something valuable or at least perceived to be important. And when they don’t have rules to create, they attempt to change American ideology.

A free society cannot endure this type of corruption and history proves it. Creative people, like George Lucas, George Orwell, and Ayn Rand have taken history and projected the results into the future. That’s been done in books like Atlas Shrugged and Brave New World, and in films like THX-1138.

If you haven’t seen THX-1138 you have missed a great film. It’s available on Netflix under Science Fiction. The film directed by George Lucas well before Star Wars hit the screen is a great look at a future that we will have if we leave our fate in the hands of politicians and avoid the responsibility of handling our own lives. If our society trades freedom for security we will see a society very much like THX-1138.

Most people know THX as the sound system that is a Lucas property, and yes, the origin of that name comes from that epic, break-through film. Here’s a trip down memory lane for movie lovers.

When the film came out, Warner Brothers hated it. They had no idea how to market the picture. It was a strangely dark film that involved thinking so it was a bit too cerebral for Warner Brother executives back then, which is a usual story for any project that is forward thinking. The creative mind creating something new is often on a lonely island of understanding and it may take years for people to gain an understanding of what the visionary was trying to say. That’s the case with this film. Released in 1971 it was taken away of Lucas’s control out of sheer anger from Warner Brothers who proceeded to cut 5 minutes from the film just to show Lucas that they could. The experience was so bad that Lucas started Lucasfilm so he wouldn’t have to rely on Hollywood to make the movies he wanted to make. Thank goodness he did, because we would have never had Star Wars and Indian Jones. Hollywood is incapable of making films like that on their own for all the reasons they cut 5 minutes of film from THX-1138. It was all about politics and control.

The THX-1138 hatred from Warner Brothers pushed Francis Ford Coppola into financial ruin because he produced the film. It also put the production of Apocalypse Now in jeopardy, which eventually got ironed out to become the classic Vietnam era film. Coppola revived his reputation with the Godfather series. Lucas saved his image with American Graffiti and Star Wars, so it wasn’t talent that was the problem. The people involved in THX-1138 were the best that the field of filmmakers had to offer then and even to this very day.

THX-1138 had problems because it hit too close to the fears people have about the culture of spoils and looting that goes on in politics. It makes people inwardly who participate in this diabolical behavior feel guilt. That’s why the Warner Brothers executives didn’t like the movie. That’s why the audiences didn’t like the movie, initially. It’s not a movie that desires to make people feel good and eat popcorn. It’s a warning of a possible future of which we are quickly heading.

It is a warning that if America continues to trade away our freedoms, as we have been…if we continue to tax ourselves heavily which is the same as regulating our freedoms….if we continue to hold back our business development because each and every politician wants to include their “two meaningless cents” on every matter available trading their integrity for a vote, we will become what is shown in vivid detail the life of THX-1138. That is the future that we seem unwilling to prevent in a mindless pursuit of security and laziness.

We’re not all fighting for the same thing in America. Whoever wins decides the future.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Still the MOST POWERFUL WEAPON IN THE WORLD: Vote on Tuesday May 3rd to avoid further taxation

“Our problem is not merely to help the students to adjust themselves to world life, but to make them as unlike their fathers as we can. While we are followers of Jefferson, there is one principle of Jefferson’s which no longer can obtain in the practical politics of America. You know that it was Jefferson who said that the best government is that which does as little governing as possible…but that time has passed. America is not now and cannot in the future be a place for unrestricted individual enterprise. The people of the United States do not wish to curtail the activities of this Government; they wish, rather, to enlarge them and with every enlargement, with the mere growth, indeed of the country itself, there must come, of course, the inevitable increase of expense…It is not expenditure but extravagance that we should fear being criticized for.”

That is a quote from the father of modern education and president of progressive policy who along with Social Gospel soldiers such as John Dewey created the situation you see on the below chart. The quotes are from Woodrow Wilson.

Check out the source article of this chart at: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/the-charts-that-show-why-the-u-s-is-screwed/

The new strategy among school systems to pass levies is to not advertise them in the traditional way, to not put out signs, to not send out mailers, and to attempt to keep things quiet so that majorities of the voting people don’t show up. Those who do show up are usually the employees of the school system, or those radical parents that are hoping to use the school to mold their children into miracles of future productivity, which they as parents lack the ability to accomplish on their own. Listen to Darryl Parks of 700 WLW cover this warning along with the pressing coming from extremely high gas prices.

Government, and schools are part of the government, are in a perpetual state of attempted growth. This is why government officials are often concerned with unemployment numbers. Government, especially progressive government, seeks to create a job to be filled by a living body. The focus is not on the productivity of that employee, but simply on creating a position and filling that position with a warm body. This is why government is so extraordinarily inefficient. And schools are no different. They are heavily staffed with senseless positions so that the school system can flaunt the numbers as if the number of employees a district carries is a proper measure of productivity. It’s not. Schools carry too many assistants at the administration level; there are too many councilors, and media specialists. And the invisible culprits to a school budget are substitute teachers where the normal teacher takes one of their many personal days (3) at Lakota and 15 sick days and must hire a substitute teacher so the district is not only paying the teacher for not being in the classroom, but must hire a substitute teacher to fill in. Now remember that teachers are only in the classroom for 9 months out of a year, so every calendar year a teacher is able to take 18 days off with pay, which requires a substitute teacher. Consider that the average month on a 5 day work week is approximately 20 days.

For a better investigation of these numbers listen to Scott Sloan break down the teacher’s contract for Lakota on the air with some levy campaign supporters. Most school systems in Ohio have comparable contracts, because the standards are set by the Ohio Education Association.

Yes Lebanon, you are in the same boat. Your superintendent rushed through a new contract prior to signing S.B.5 so that the wages and contracts were secure for the teachers union. Mark North proved where his loyalty was and how little respect he had for the tax payers that employee him. What are you going to do about it on Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011?

Government is a corrosive, corruptible creature, and teachers are a reflection of everything that’s wrong with it. They take too much and do too little. Tocqueville proclaimed in 1840 “Having thus taken each citizen in turn in the powerful grasp and shaped him to its will, government then extends its embrace to include the whole of society. It covers the whole of social life with a network of petty, complicated rules that are both minute and uniform, through which even men of the greatest originality and the most vigorous temperament cannot force their heads above the crowd. It does not break men’s will, but softens, bends, and guides it; it seldom enjoins, but often inhibits, action; it does not destroy anything, but prevents much from being born; it is not at all tyrannical, but in hinders, restrains, enervates, stifles, and stultifies so much that in the end each nation is no more than a flock of timid and hardworking animals with the government as its shepherd.”

That’s what is coming out of our schools where the kids coming out of this public education system being taught by teachers that take 18 days off over a 9 month period and are off over the summer averaging a yearly salary of 55K in Ohio to 62K in some of the wealthier districts. Kids are being raised in this environment and they expect to be given a job like this when they graduate from college someday. Tocqueville was 100% correct in his assessment, the seduction of the weak, to become herded by a government shepherd in exchange for a good wage to perform in a mediocre way. This is what our tax money is funding, and essentially why schools continue to ask for more and more money in taxes.

Few tax payers ever really consider how much they actually pay in taxes, which robs them of money for themselves and gives it them to the mediocre only to feed a government monster with a big appetite.

If you listened to Darryl’s radio broadcast he also covered gas prices. There are two reasons for the dramatic increase at the pumps; one is that the Fed as driven up inflation, by printing too much money, and the second is that there are a lot of hidden taxes in our gas. In Ohio it’s between .47-.48 cents per gallon. This is why states like Tennessee and Georgia are .30 cents cheaper per gallon, because of the tax allocation between the states. Where is all that money going? What about all the sales tax we send to the state? And the federal tax. We are taxed on everything, and schools want to continue to tax our property to fund mediocrity when they’ve irresponsibly spent the money. All they know to do is to ask for more!

We have allowed ourselves to be herded around by the meek of society, people who are not the best we have to offer, but are the flocks of mediocrity that will bring a nation to its knees in lack of competition. We have thrown countless dollars at these flocks and they eat them mindlessly like cows eating straw from our hands with nothing to do with the energy the food gives but to convert it to fat.

Meanwhile the rest of us struggle to even fill up our cars to drive to work, to make a living so 57% of everything we make can go to taxes to pay these flocks of animals just grazing in a field while government proudly announces the unemployment rates without even considering if the job created has any real merit and adds to the productivity of the nation.

I’ve changed my primary job 6 times over my lifetime so far and I’ve never taken an unemployment check. Every time I’ve ever lost a job it was not from anything that was my fault. Yet it never occurred to me to file for unemployment. Heck, I’ve actually been impelled by sharp metal rods that went into one side of my hand and came out the other, I’ve had the skin ripped off the end of my fingers and pulled completely off, fingernail and all. I simply picked up the skin, cleaned it, and slid everything back in place, got my stitches and reported back to work by the time to leave for the day, and I never missed work for such things, and I never took a workman’s compensation payment. The people those Senate Democrats are talking to are those flocks of helpless little animals that just want a friendly hand to reach into the fence to feed them.

Compassion costs money, other people’s money and robs the people who receive the money the benefit of self-reliance. In this clip, Reid wants desperately to be a shepherd of the people because it gives him power over the meek. His secret desire is to be a manager of people and a hero to the less fortunate.

All he accomplishes in his ignorant grasp on society and history is a weakening of the resolve in the human spirit. He robs a man, or a woman, of their honor by placating their basic necessities.

How is what Harry is saying any different from what this farmer is saying?

To make this easy for all the teachers out there, the Senate Democrats, the progressives and media types looking for their next award covering “humanitarian stories” let’s go back to the basics and let Earnie explain to us all what happened to our tax money from these flocks of mindless animals that ate it.

And that’s where your tax money is going ladies and gentlemen. Remember, if you vote for a school levy, a social welfare levy, a tax increase of any kind…………………………..you’re stupid!

“If we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.” Thomas Jefferson.

See, this isn’t a new problem. And here we are, the government is wasting the labor of the people both in unnecessary expansion of government programs and filling those jobs with warm bodies so it can claim a job creation statistic, and then wasting the money that the tax payer generates by robbing them of their labor and taking their money to spend carelessly on foolishness.

And to perform the scam this time, on this election on Tuesday, school systems, labor leaders, and bureaucrats everywhere are prying that nobody shows up to vote. Voting is still the most powerful weapon we have over the thieves that seek to rob us. Have the courage to use it and take the time to protect yourself from further tax increases on Tuesday. Only by cutting the revenue that feeds the monster which is government, can you hope to restrict the power it has to inflict itself upon your life.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Lakota Tossed Away Good Money on Gary Hudepohl: Why people who don’t value themselves don’t understand the value of money.

Who are those vacant souls that cleave to chaos on a quest to control everyone from their self-important temples behind the desk top nameplate? Doc Thompson explores how a double-standard of racism is making Cincinnati Public Schools a maze of malice that masks the true conduct behind a school superintendent.

Superintendents are a mysterious species and within the Lakota School System Gary Hudepohl of Hudepohl and Associates made an abysmal statement in his assessment of what it is going to cost Lakota to hire a new superintendent that is business minded, and reflect the values expressed by the business community within the Lakota School District. His audacious statement, after the school board paid his firm 40K for just a search of candidates, is that the community will have to pay over 300K per year for the position of a qualified superintendent.

What?????????? Why?

http://westchesterbuzz.com/2011/03/28/lakota-superintendent-search-presented-at-board-meeting/

This tells me that Lakota wasted its money on Hudepohl. This guy is as clueless as the people who threw the community to the wolves by agreeing to teacher contracts that blew the budget with no management cost controls. Hudepohl clearly doesn’t have his mind around the type of superintendent that Lakota needs, and the school board paid 40K for that bit of information, that we’re just supposed to throw more money at the problem. And wasn’t it said by one of Lakota’s school board members who protested the spending of the 40K on a superintendent search that 40K would pay for two teachers? No, it won’t. 40K will only get you one teacher at Lakota. How can they manage their costs if they don’t understand what they are?

The next question I have is why does it take months and months to find a superintendent? If I were paid 40K for a search, I would have delivered within the week. Why is Gary Hudepohl so inefficient? If our school system has to pay his fee, why hasn’t he performed? Does he think speeches to the board and to community’s business leaders earn his money? And why do we even need a superintendent. Lakota has effectively been without a superintendent for two business quarters now. It appears that Ron Spurlock who is an assistant superintendent and filling in the role has done a good job so far, and he’s cheaper. Why not give him the job? I’d say he deserves it assuming he can stick up to the union in that role instead of caving to it because he is a former member of it.

I know that West Chester Trustee George Lang was asked by Hudepohl, “who should be the next superintendent at Lakota?” George called me and told me what he told Hudepohl, “Call Rich Hoffman. He knows what you should be looking for.” Of course Gary didn’t call me, so instead, he is choosing the same old expensive, big government type that he believes will come in and be able to get control of the situation and sell the status quo to the community. That’s why he thinks it should cost 300K, because the new superintendent will have to be able to campaign against people like me, who can go on the radio and debate false facts and make people believe them, in other words, a union stooge that can maintain order.

Well, Gary, you are going to be looking a long time because the person you’re looking for doesn’t exist. You’re looking for a big government school type when schools need to be downsizing. As seen in the below article, Oklahoma just voted in favor of a major bill that will expand School Choice. Ohio is marching in the same direction. And when that happens, Lakota will have to become 500 times more efficient than it is now in order to survive. They think they do more with less now, and they do, compared to the massive inefficiency of the public school system. But the cost per pupil needs to be driven down to less than 6000K per student. And Lakota isn’t even considering how to achieve anything close to those kinds of numbers. And Gary’s 300K superintendent won’t be able to do that job so the 40K we’ve spent on Gary’s firm was as predicted, a tremendous waste of money that has delivered nothing, and won’t.

Oklahoma House Passes School Choice Program with Broad Student Eligibility

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OKLAHOMA CITY, OK — More Oklahoma families will be able to send their children to the schools of their choosing, following today’s passage of the Oklahoma Equal Opportunity Education Scholarship Act. The bill will provide partial tax credits to individuals and businesses that donate to nonprofits that distribute private-school scholarships to eligible families.
By a vote of 64-43, the Oklahoma House of Representatives approved the measure, which previously passed the Senate chamber by a vote of 30-14.
“This is another step in the direction of choice for Oklahoma’s parents and children,” Robert Enlow, president and CEO of the Foundation for Educational Choice, said. “We look forward to seeing school choice continue to flourish in the Sooner State, and we are eager to watch other states follow Oklahoma’s lead.”
The Oklahoma Equal Opportunity Education Scholarship Act, sponsored by Rep. Lee Denney (R) and Sen. Dan Newberry (R), would make families with incomes up to 300 percent of the income needed to qualify for the federal Free and Reduced-Price Lunch program eligible to receive scholarships; however, scholarship-giving nonprofits must spend a portion of their expenditures for low-income students in an amount equal to or greater than the percentage of low-income students in the state.
Eligible students, 50 percent of whom must be enrolled currently in public schools, can receive scholarships worth up to $5,000 or 80 percent of the average per-pupil expenditures in the school districts where they reside. With a “cap” of tax credits allowed set at $1.75 million—and with the tax credit itself being worth 50 percent of the donation—the program will provide potentially $3.5 million toward scholarships. The program also provides a separate $1.5 million in tax credits for donations made to nonprofits that distribute “educational improvement grants” to public schools, which is similar to a 10-year-old program in Pennsylvania.
If the Senate agrees to the changes made in the House, the bill will proceed to Gov. Mary Fallin.

The Foundation for Educational Choice is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and nonpartisan organization, solely dedicated to advancing Milton and Rose Friedman’s vision of school choice for all children. First established as the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation in 1996, the foundation continues to promote school choice as the most effective and equitable way to improve the quality of K-12 education in America. The foundation is dedicated to research, education, and outreach on the vital issues and implications related to choice and competition in K-12 education.

_____________________________________________________________________________

School Choice is the future of education. Not big expensive superintendents. Schools will have to shrink in size, not expand larger. And those are the facts of life.

Gary Hudepohl is out of his mind and is too expensive in his thinking. He’s looking for the wrong candidate and this disappoints me greatly and here’s why. Money’s value is equal the person that makes it. The formula gets skewed when you give money to people who don’t value that money, because they are people in and of themselves of little value. You can’t give a fool money and expect them to know what to do with it, which is evident in the exploding school budgets in all school systems. And in this case Hudepohl was thrown money by fools that don’t value the effort it took to earn the money. When you work in government, this is a common tendency because the money spent is seldom earned. 50K or 100K is all the same to a fool. It’s just a number. And only a fool thinks it’s appropriate to throw 300K at a position that an assistant making a third of that money is currently doing. Because to the fool, 300K or a million is all the same value, because they know very little about value, because as people they lack value in themselves.

Oh, I heard what you said in your mind. You said how can I make such negative assessments on people? Who am I to make such an assertion?

Well, I’m a person who knows people. And people who are attracted to board of education positions that are supposed to be a donation of their time, and very little, if any, financial compensation is provided for such jobs, are attracted to those jobs because those people are looking for value in their lives, because they lack value in themselves. They look at a public position to give them respect, and power. That’s why they crave these jobs for very little money because the money isn’t important to them. Because they have no value of it to begin with, they seek the approval of others to obtain the value in their lives that they are missing. This is why education is so expensive. It is run by fools that are missing much in their lives and pass themselves off as authority figures. That is the tragedy that has revealed itself and the answer to the riddle posed at the beginning of this article.

That is why those of us that do value money won’t just blindly throw money at fools.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

We Are Ohio and we’re Sick of Unions: The terrible cost of repealing S.B.5

We Are Ohio and sick of Unions. That’s what I was thinking as I watched the news reports of the various unions all over Ohio gathering up signatures to repeal S.B.5. Utter foolishness is what came to my mind while watching them carry their signs indicating that collective bargaining is a “right.” That “teachers are not the enemy.” That “they are the middle-class.”

If they are not the enemy, who is? A look at this chart shows why the teachers are fighting to get rid of S.B.5. Look how much more teacher’s make than the rest of labor in Ohio. Even people who have difficulty reading charts can see that Ohio Education Association employees make a lot more than the average middle class employee working in Ohio. And teaching is a theoretical part-time job. They have a real scam going at tax payer expense, that’s what we’re fighting, so are they the enemy? Yes, because they are taking money from our pockets! They are an enemy just as a thief that robs us in an ally. It happens in education, it happens in Medicare, in fact in virtually everything that has the word GOVERNMENT attached to it. Listen to Bill Cunningham discuss with a doctor the cost of the Obama health care plan to begin to understand what we’re facing just in the medical industry.

I listened to a speech at the Ohio capital steps where a man spoke “who runs to danger when we run away, Police, who teaches our children while we are working, teachers, who runs into fires when we run away, fireman. So let’s support them.” Fine, let’s support them. But that doesn’t mean writing them a blank check of infinite amounts of money. Those groups are taking too much money and mismanaged their funds raking up huge drains on tax payer supplied revenue. If they stopped doing their jobs, I’d form a militia to do the policing of my community. If the fireman stopped answering calls, I’d form a volunteer department to do the job. If teachers stopped working, I’d teach my kids at home. Those jobs are not as needed as they pretend. School Choice would allow children to get education anywhere. In fact, this is why teachers unions are against S.B.5, and school vouchers, because they’ll lose their monopoly on education, which is exactly what they have now.

I remember when the government went after Microsoft for their monopoly status in the 90’s. I remember when Teddy Roosevelt went after the railroads for their monopolies at the turn of the century. Well, who is going after the teachers unions for their monopoly? Nobody. Obama? No, he’s trying to build monopolies of union labor, not reducing them. That’s the situation we’re in. Ironically, Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, knew that we were in trouble and dissolved collective bargaining for federal employees. And Mr. Big government himself, FDR, warned us in the 40’s that unions should never be attached to the taxpayer. Yet that’s what’s happened.

There is only one place where the “rights” of the worker states the words that are listed on the signs of these people seeking to repeal S.B.5., and that’s the Communist Manifesto. Check out the 10 Planks of communism from that book and you will see where those people think their rights come from. But those rights did not come from the United States Constitution and certainly not the Ohio Constitution. They come from the Communist Manifesto and only there.

I don’t want my tax money to pay for communist thought. That’s what they have been doing, and that’s what they want to continue. When this issue goes to the ballot in November that’s what we’re all fighting is an attempt by these groups to preserve a communist cause in the United States.

That doesn’t mean that your average teacher, cop or firefighter is aware of the fact. After all they are waving the flag of patriotism in these rallies and they truly believe that they are fighting for an American right. But ignorance is not an excuse, and they are ignorant of the issue. Because many of them don’t read, they don’t know the facts. They only know what they are told by their leaders, and their leaders are open communists and they do read. They read the Communist Manifesto, they read the Coming Insurrection, they read Rules for Radicals, in fact the OEA puts out literature that quotes Alinsky. So while the fools carrying the signs and screaming about “rights” they have no idea that they are the pawns of socialism that is embedding itself in American culture the same way it has in Europe.

When my son-in-law first came to America I took him to the top of Carew Tower in downtown Cincinnati and we went to the top and had a look. He couldn’t believe that America had such large buildings. This is a kid that went to London every other weekend, one of the largest and most prestigious cities in the world. He told me that no city in Europe had such things.

I had always thought that Cincinnati was a pretty small town for American standards, and Carew Tower is hardly worth mentioning when compared to the sky scrapers of New York and Chicago. It was fun to see my son-in-law’s parents come to visit him in the United States and to drive them around to all the things that the United States has that Europe does not. His parents were even more thrilled than he was when they first went to the top of that tower. Baffled was more like it. They found it hard to believe that we had a building at Kings Island that was taller than what they had in London, and Kings Island is just an amusement park. Socialism is what the Labor Party in England is. They just call it a different name. And in the United States, Democrats are socialists. And Progressives are Communists. That is their shared ideology even if they don’t name it so.

I had a teacher that actually sent me an email telling me that I thought McCarthyism was an acceptable practice. Well, it was. Joseph McCarthy wasn’t doing some frivolous endeavor. He knew that communists had penetrated the United States, and Hollywood was swarming with them. Ronald Reagan was leaning in that direction when he was a man in his twenties. It was only after he did a film at Elstree Studio’s in England that socialism scared the crap out of him and he became a spokesman for Capitalism. It was this change in political ideology that drove him and his wife Jane apart. That’s how advanced socialism was in Hollywood. Ayn Rand, fresh from leaving Russia to escape socialism was working in Hollywood during this era, and it was among her friends and associates that she was speaking to in Atlas Shrugged. She had been there when socialism ruined Russia, and she was warning them of the danger. So the McCarthy hearings were not a waste of time. There was a lack of “political will” to follow through with the information the hearings produced. That lack of political will is the same as the lack of will to force Obama to deal with the birth certificate issue. Anyone that questions the issue is called a “birther” by the media and the whole thing is chalked up as a conspiracy, just like the McCarthy hearings. When Bush was president in the first decade of the 21st century we heard story after story about his draft dodging, drug and alcohol use, and anything that could discredit him. But when Clinton was president and wouldn’t produce his medical records, which appear to be to cover up his syphilis problems, nobody questioned it. And now Obama appears to be a completely illegal president, which should be of great concern. I mean, Obama isn’t spending 10 million dollars for nothing to hide the issue. Even if he was born in Hawaii, he probably claimed a foreign status to get into college, so somebody lied somewhere about something, and nobody cares.

The reason there is a lack of political will to follow-up on these kinds of stories, or even to call these public unions what they are, which are communist organizations that grow with tax money, is because half the nation is taking part in some form of government program and they vote in favor of big government types for their own selfish reasons, because of what they expect to get from that government. With all the problems with Obama, the Republicans are having a hard time finding a candidate that can beat him, because everyone knows that the various voting blocs, Hispanics, blacks, women, the youth, unions and all those types of voters will tend to vote for the Obama regardless of what is wrong with him. Why, because those voters are looking for government to do something for them and those same demographics tend to be emotional voters that don’t use critical thinking in casting their ballots.

That’s why there is a danger in overturning S.B.5., because those public workers, which are well over 300,000, which isn’t that many compared to the 11 million that live in the state, it is that same demographic of voter that the unions are reaching out to, the mindless, the uneducated, the lazy, the emotional, and all those who are weak-willed and have their hand out for government to fill it, with our tax dollars. The risk as I see it is have we gone too far now, are there simply too many of the weak ones, the people who are attracted to communism, to actually do anything to save ourselves and capitalism in the United States? Is this it? If Ohio does not show up for this election in November it could literally mean the end of America.

That is not an inflated statement. If the unions are allowed to continue to rob us all blind it will take at least a whole year to arrive back to the point where another bill like S.B.5 could be a law again. And without S.B.5, our education system will go bankrupt because the communist leaning teachers unions do not understand finance. All they know is that they need to continue to make extraordinary amounts of money for the common service they provide. And another year will be too late.

Those among us out there that still think with logic still outnumber the mindless and if we all show up and vote, we’ll defeat their attempt at repeal easily. But on their side, the losers, malcontents, needy, weak, and outright thieves among them will come out in great numbers, and their wives and parents will vote too, to protect their hook into our lives.

The right that public sector unions are fighting for is their right to rob us, their right to stick their invisible hands into our property and take our money without our consent and spend it on destroying our country to fulfill their communist dream like a disease upon the flesh of mankind.

Vote and vote wisely come November. This is a fight between the life and death of our country from the thieves of capitalism. We are at war, logic against stupidity, capitalists against communist, small government against large government. Be thankful at this point you don’t need a gun or even violence to fight them. All you have to do is vote. The vote can still beat them, so use it before we have to resort to the other.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

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