Tag: managment

Meet Russ Loges for Lakota School Board: A great guy to help with some looming challenges

I liked Russ Loges the first time he ran for the Lakota school board.  I came to know of him during the last election as my focus was on the Republican-endorsed candidates in the previous election.  Russ wanted to remain independent as he was getting involved in the school board business then.  However, without any name recognition and much support outside of his efforts, he had an excellent showing, gaining several thousand votes with a noticeably conservative position.  I have since met Russ at a few events here and there, and each time, I found that I liked him quite a lot.  He’s a very likable person who has an excellent temperament.  And now that we are in September with the November election coming up quickly, one that will have a lot of Democrats voting because abortion and marijuana will be on the ballot, so there will be unusually high voter engagement during an off-year election, it’s time to get endorsements.  And Russ has already received an approval from some Central Committees around Butler County.  One of the two that are specific to Lakota schools.  So, he came to a meet the candidate night with the Liberty Township Central Committee to present himself with some questions and answers, which are shown here for those interested.  I’ve been to quite a lot of these over the years, and this one was unique.  I liked Russ Loges before the event, but after, I found my opinion of him had inflated quite a lot.  He answered many tough questions very well and cared a lot about what’s going on in Lakota and the specific challenges that are on the horizon.  Russ Loges is precisely the kind of person that the community would benefit from putting on the school board during the upcoming election, and he will win the support of many more Republicans for a party endorsement due to his excellent conservative positions. 

Yet what Russ Loges is not is a person trapped in ideology.  He’s a very even, measured person getting into the school board business from parental concerns.  We have seen over the years that, typically, the best school board candidates who become board members are passionate parents who want to make things better for everyone.  It’s a generally thankless job that doesn’t pay back any real fiscal compensation, but to play in that game, you must raise a substantial amount of money to become impactful in an election, especially in the Lakota school district, which has around 100,000 people within it.  When Russ ran before, he did it as a concerned parent who wanted to help.  This time, he has a broader approach that makes him well-positioned for much more support.  And given the crowd reaction at the Liberty Township Central Committee event, many more will become very eager to support his run for the Lakota school board.  Based on his answers, Russ is more than prepared for some of the complex challenges that are coming quickly on the horizon, and to deal with those challenges, Lakota will need people who care which was clearly expressed during the questions asked by Matt King during the event.  Russ has kids in the district and a wife who is a teacher.  Currently, he is a nurse and his bedside manner is instantly noticeable.  He’s personable, cares, and wants to help his community, so all those traits were very encouraging and made it easy for everyone who met him to get excited about it. 

On those times that I had met him, I wasn’t sure if he was the real deal.  So often, when it comes to political events and the people filling specific seats, you get images of people but not much knowledge of the person.  When I learned Russ Loges was a nurse, I instantly thought of a smart car driving, COVID mask-wearing big government type.  But I was able to meet Russ outside this event, getting out of a big truck, and he’s a good fit for the conservative base of Butler County, Ohio.  He’s outdoors-oriented and robustly presents himself.  He reminded me of many of my friends in the fast draw community, even down to the jokes.  Good, sincere people who love the American flag and the many who revere it with the pledge of allegiance.  He’s certainly not a political radical but more of an even-balanced family man who is proud of his country and wants to help it improve.  He’s a big guy with a warm personality who comes across as sincere without many pretenses.  As he shook my hand, he seemed ready to go fishing, or hunting more than anything.  He has a very natural leadership ability that is instantly noticeable.  So, it wasn’t a surprise to learn that he has already sat down with the Lakota superintendent to talk about improving test scores for the students and building a successful team that can tackle some of the challenges looming.  You could tell that he wasn’t just a nurse as an occupation, but that he was a leader as well.  He is used to managing other people because he has a balanced approach to communication that has been well-tested by experience. 

There are a lot of challenges on the horizon for Lakota and it will take outstanding leadership to meet them.  There is a teacher’s contract coming up that could be very contentious.  There is a facilities plan also emerging that will require a small fortune.  There are indications that the current school board is planning to seek a tax increase even as property value rate assessments will increase sharply due to state challenges.  So passing a levy will be even more challenging, especially in an environment where school choice will increasingly become the reality of tomorrow, regarding education.  It would be easy to sit on the sidelines and turn away from some of these community problems, especially for those who have grown kids.  But Russ and his wife plan to be in Lakota for a while.  He mentioned that he wanted Lakota to be good for his grandkids, so he’s planning to keep deep roots in the community, so this isn’t a fly-by-night endeavor for him.  He wants to help, and after meeting him, I am sure he is just the kind of person we need to work on some of these very difficult problems that are on the horizon, storm clouds coming in fast that will be painful.  Yet, those problems are manageable with the right kind of people to deal with them, and Russ Loges was very encouraging.  He could have easily won if more people had known him during the last race.  More people will know him this time so he should be able to get votes in the required numbers just by letting people get to know him.  I will certainly be voting for him, and I’ll be excited to do it.  Things don’t always go how you want them to in politics, but sometimes you get to meet good people, and if not for this school board race, I wouldn’t know Russ Loges any other way.  And after meeting him, I’m happy I did. 

Rich Hoffman

Yes, My Wife and I Have Been Married for more than 35 Years: Danger is the key to happiness

On a lighter note, it has come up almost every day since the Nancy Nix fundraiser on Friday, August 4th.  Yes, it’s true; my wife and I have been married for 35 years.  It was at that event because I was sitting right next to the stage where some excellent comedians were performing next to my wife where I was the set-up for a joke that personal details about my life would be discussed in public.  I knew as I sat in a room full of people that I would be the subject of their comedy acts, but that was part of the fun.  After all, I am shy and like to keep a low profile, which helps me come out of my shell a bit.  So the comedian asked me how long my wife and I had been married, assuming we were much younger than we were.  He was working on a joke that poked fun at our conservative nature.  My wife is attractive, and it’s always an assumption that people make when they meet us in person that there must be some interesting story and that premarital sex would likely be involved.  That’s where the comedian was going with the line of questioning.  He asked how long we had been married.  I told him 35 years.  There was a bit of a gasp from the audience and in his face because it blew his set-up.  People don’t think we are that old, but we are.  And the following line of questioning was that we have kids in their 30s, which is also unusual.  Because his joke required us to have children older than our marriage, and in our case, that just wasn’t possible.  So to recover from this mild disappointment, he asked me if we ever argue, assuming that I would say the typical thing for a long-standing marriage, that we get along great and love each other emphatically.  My response was that we argue daily, which drew a laugh because everyone assumes conflict is destructive for a marriage.  But it’s the only way I can have a relationship with anybody, especially a wife. 

Since that nice fundraiser, I have been asked about the length of our marriage and whether it was true that my wife and I argue daily or if it was all just a joke from many of the people there.  No, it’s true; we have been married for 35 years and argue daily.  People wrongly assume that getting along is how you have a good marriage, and spicy conversation is the key, at least for me.  I like to fight; I will fight about anything, anywhere, about anything.  Peace is boring to me.  I would be mind numb if there was no conflict, so for me, conflict is a heavenly device, and the more conflict there is in my life, the happier I am.  However, arguing with someone doesn’t mean that you don’t love them.  It means you care for them; otherwise, you wouldn’t try to convince them of your opinion.  If you didn’t love or care for them, you likely wouldn’t want to convince them over to your position.  In the case of a marriage, through an argument.  And I can say honestly that my wife and I have argued over something passionately nearly every day of those 35 years and likely will for another 30 years.  The reason is that I am a very volatile personality.  And she is a very cautious person.  She gets what she doesn’t naturally have in me: a constant presence of danger and instability.  In her, I get someone to argue with.  It’s a recipe for a great relationship. 

I could tell stories from now until the end of time on a few examples, but a few that come to mind for context is one recently where we were in the mountains of Idaho driving down into Utah from a very high elevation with our RV in tow.  The wind was gusting so severely that there were cautions about going in it.  So we had our RV blowing behind us like a giant sail that felt like it would drag us right off the mountain.  We had much of our family in the car, four adults and a few children, and a dog, and there were very few guard rails.  A wrong move, and we could have easily been swept over a thousand-foot drop to the river below.  My wife was white-knuckling any handhold she could grab and was terrified with each wind gust.  She wanted me to stop immediately and wait out the wind, which would not happen soon.  We were in the middle of nowhere, and going backward was just as dangerous as going forward.  So I did what I did in most of those situations: I went faster and more aggressively and enjoyed the whole thing immensely.  We had another such incident just a year before, where we were outrunning an incoming snowstorm coming out of Colorado into New Mexico.  And the roads were covered with snow and ice drifting across the desert.  It was the same situation; we were hauling our RV at a high rate of speed, trying to outrun the storm after driving 13 straight hours to Roswell, New Mexico.  She wanted me to stop because we were sliding all over the road, and I had to go fast to outrun the cumulous cloud above us that was gaining steam from the setting sun.  It was night, and the lack of a sun fueled the storm into a monstrosity of more cold air, and it was moving across the desert at over 80 miles per hour.  She was furious with me, and I had a giant smile.  Those are what keep marriages together for 35 years. 

I would be bored out of my mind without experiences like that, and truthfully, she loves having those experiences with me.  I can only tell you how happy she was when we arrived in Roswell, New Mexico alive, or Vernal, Utah, with all our family safe after that scary trip on the mountain tops at over 6000 feet.  Surviving those kinds of things make the microwave popcorn taste a lot better when you get to camp and enjoy the luxuries of home in some distant place, in a favorite foldout chair.  And that’s also why we sat right next to the stage at that comedy event.  Being safe is not fun for me.  And if not for me, my wife would not push herself to expand her boundaries of comfort.  She is rarely comfortable with how I do things, but if she didn’t grab on like she does, cursing at me and all, there are a lot of crazy stories she wouldn’t have in life that have made our life together very interesting.  I could tell of one from Paris recently that is very funny, and it involved a bicycle and a few more of my kids as we were trying to catch a train.  We still joke about it at Thanksgiving dinner, which makes for an exciting life.  And while people make assumptions about safety being the root cause of happiness, I can report the opposite as accurate.  Danger is the best thing for a long marriage; to maintain a long one, comfort zones must be pushed to have a healthy relationship.  And zest is undoubtedly the key ingredient to frequent arguments.  Docile compliance would be disastrous.  Arguing is very beneficial in almost all circumstances in all parts of a life, marriages especially.

Rich Hoffman

The Attack Through Public/Private Partnerships Against Our Constitutions: How the World Economic Forum intends communism through the backdoor of ESG scores

The most valuable takeaway from Glenn Beck’s new book Dark Future is the very detailed understanding of how governments, run by big financial donors, mean to implement socialism and communism in ways they have never been able to before, through the back door of corporate utilization. I have been thinking about this problem for a long time and dealing with it on the front line. Obviously, this corporate/government alliance was planned during Covid when the government had no right to implement a vaccine mandate on a free people because the Constitution prevented it. But yet, the legal assumption is that corporations can violate Constitutional rights as much as they want to; they all exist as sovereign citizens. The constitutions, state and federal, were meant to limit government powers. Not corporate power. So, of course, the government sought to use its control to punish corporations into a partnership so that the government could do what constitutions would never allow them to through associations with corporate governance. That was the core debate I was part of with legislators and corporate heads from the Chamber viewpoint. The Covid attack exploited this loophole and revealed what Beck’s book Dark Future was warning about coming from the World Economic Forum, where they planned to use technology to make the problem much worse, and people weren’t ready to deal with this kind of hostile intention. I propose many ways to fight this trend in my book, based on my experience, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, as it is evident on the corporate fronts, in the many meetings with business leaders, that they have bit from the apple of Marxism, and they seek this alliance with the government for protection. They may be for-profit businesses, but to stay in business, they see that they must appease the government aggressors, and my objective was to teach them how to fight back against those bullies.

Yet this problem of private/public alliances as a back door for socialism to creep into the halls of capitalism and destroy economies from the inside out is a relatively new threat in the world, and it is undoubtedly the foundation of all the plans of Klaus Schwab and his Desecrators of Davos.  I can tell you that this problem is genuine in Ohio, where I know several lofty politicians who want to make the state one of the best destinations for business in the country, as most states would like.  Kristi Noem is doing commercials for her state to utilize this fundamental challenge.  A good economy is the key to having a good state. Money to an economy is like blood to the body, which is a favorite term of mine. With much good blood in the body, it is possible to be healthy as any organization.  So those old Marxists from Socialist International that I have been talking about for over thirty years have found a way through Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset to paralyze corporate power by threatening that blood supply with government power.  They gain control of governments with fake climate change mandates.  Corporations afraid of that government power bend their knee to these new globalist forces.  And before you know it, the World Economic Forum is running the world’s economies, and the governments are helping them do it because they were too stupid to realize that ESG scores were not an accurate measure of real value. After all, they have lost touch with the realities of private industry by default.  Too often, the management types lose touch with the essence of production, making them mindless bureaucrats. 

One of the reasons it took so long to get Covid legislation done in Ohio, for instance, was that the Chamber types, who don’t want to impose on corporations and businesses of all kinds mandates that would keep them from doing their work.  Whenever employees didn’t want to wear some form of PPE to perform the job, they couldn’t turn to the Bill of Rights and claim that the company violated their Constitution.  So corporations have been allowed in America to function without constitutional considerations because the thinking was that if people didn’t like their employer, they could vote with their feet and go to the next employer that didn’t have such restrictions.  But as Glenn Beck revealed in Dark Future, when all jobs made under various corporations are united in their socialist tyranny by ESG scores, then there is suddenly nowhere for people to go.  This was the case with the vaccine mandates that the Biden administration understood when it tried to exploit all companies, which are most, with some form of government contract to fall under a completely illegal executive order.  It took various states months of debate to figure out the legal positions.  The courts struck down the executive order, and the legislature eventually caught up to the problem.  But the paralysis revealed this globalist threat to the American economy and the many corporations that were more concerned about global positions than domestic value.  So that presented the problem to legislators and Chambers of Commerce, how could a state attract business and still live up to the expectations of individual rights?

I don’t have that problem; I could employ thousands of people and not have this constitutional issue come up because it essentially takes the skill of excellent management to offset.  But not everybody feels so comfortable, so they turn to the rules of human resources to be their mall cops, stuck between the politics of corporate order and the individual rights of workers.  While that debate has been raging in an increasingly technical world where everyone is more and more connected with the internet, making them more susceptible to communist ideas attached to globalism intentions, the World Economic Forum and their billionaire political radicals, people like Larry Fink, Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Mark Zuckerbucks, and many, many others are taking advantage of the chaos for their own radical beliefs that are purely political.  And that way, they can get entire countries to bend to their will without casting a vote in favor of an issue or a rejection.  And when you see a threat to that order, such as President Trump presents, you see that the public/private partnership globally rallied for its self-preservation in terrifying ways.  The benefit has been to see the full effects of their weaponized political order.  So, we are far better off seeing it while there is still time to do something about it. But the point of Beck’s book is that through technology, these maniacal forces are looking to gain more power over individual lives when the real solution is that we should be heading more toward individual rights worldwide.  Corporate governance needs to utilize personal autonomy more fully, not to seek protection from their incompetencies by eating from the fruit of Marxism to appease those hostile globalist forces without a country that can destroy the blood in their bodies through the ever-evolving ESG scores of artificial value created by political radicals from the far left.  I happen to know how this story will end because history tells us.  Personal autonomy is the ultimate act of all government, and power is too difficult to maintain over generations of implementation.  So, the World Economic Forum plots will fail; they don’t know it yet, and their technology will not do everything they fantasize about for them.  But the pain will come from them trying and all the people who must deal with their imposition, creating many hostilities in the coming years.

  

Rich Hoffman

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Vote For Mark Welch: Shooting guns, solving problems and making the world a better place

Vote for Mark Welch

If West Chester wasn’t one of the best places in the world which demonstrates what small government looks like and how much prosperity can occur when proper management at the level of government is applied, I can’t imagine what it would be.  West Chester, Ohio, has the population density to make it a city, but over the years, it has stayed small, where just Trustees run the community’s needs, and it has flourished.  What started as a kind of Tea Party dream, with two members getting elected to the Board of Trustees and applying fiscal responsibility and limited government concepts to the day-to-day business, George Lang and Mark Welch, West Chester has been proof of what good government looks like.  Even during the government-induced pandemic over coronavirus.  Even as many businesses struggled to stay open all across the country or find employees to fill their vacancies, West Chester has managed to see astonishing growth in some ways.  Much of that points back at the policy set by the conservative trustees who have been running things in West Chester for over a decade.  Lowering the cost of doing business, reducing bureaucracy so that things can happen, West Chester would be, for me, the example of what good governments everywhere in the world should look like.  When we debate about government so much, we could always offer West Chester an example of where the government goes right.   

A lot of that credit goes to Mark Welch, who has been with the trustees in West Chester for a while now, a few terms. He’s been that critical second vote when George Lang set the stage for much of West Chester’s success.  Then as George moved on to a position in the Senate, Mark carried the torch for the next generation and continued the policies that made West Chester wonderful.  Mark has been great at the significant and minor issues, so much so that often you never even hear about the things he is doing.  I often say, especially in management positions, that if you are good people won’t even know you are there doing a good job.  Its when managers in government make themselves part of the story that things start going wrong.  Then, the more people you add to a process, the worse it gets.  And thus, that’s how you get a bad government.  The federal government that we are always talking about is just such an example.  It’s big, nobody takes responsibility for anything, and they always make themselves part of the story on everything.  Their goals are usually to make themselves known by looting off the efforts of others, while Mark has always been a facilitator of other people’s dreams and needs.  He doesn’t get in the way of some big project that wants to come into West Chester.  Instead, he finds a way to get rid of the obstacles so that something new could be born.  Whether the project is a significant new company or a hot new entertainment venue, West Chester has thrived because Mark and other conservatives have created an environment where productive output wasn’t penalized but rather encouraged. I’ve been all over the United States, and you’d be hard-pressed anywhere to see four highway exits that are better than the ones in West Chester with a diversity of options, per capita income, and future opportunities.

Shooting with Mark Welch

Mark Welch is up for re-election this year, which he should have no problem with.  But for many of the new residents of West Chester who don’t hear much drama from their trustees, especially with a community with such a high population density, they wouldn’t know about it because the government isn’t in their face about every little thing.  Yet I think it would only be wise to pull back the curtain a bit and share with everyone what I know of Mark Welch, a guy who goes shooting with me often at Premier in West Chester, a great gun range at Port Union off RT 747.  Included here are a few video clips of our last trip just to let people be a bit of a fly on the wall.  I go to Premier often to shoot various guns and to blow off some steam.  I enjoy almost everything in West Chester, from the steaks at Jags to the fine dining and shopping options at Voice of America.  And I love Voice of America Park, another great story that we could write books about.  But commercially, I spend most of my time at Premier, and often Mark is there too where we manage stress at the gun range and often contemplate the origin of the universe.  The other day, it occurred to me that people don’t get to see that side of Mark, and they should because it’s what makes him unique in government. 

When Premier Shooting first opened, Mark and I were there for the grand tour, which was very special.  To have a classy gun range in such an elegant town with so many business and residential options was such a treat, and we’ve enjoyed it now for several years.  They have added a nice walking trail around the big fishing lake and turned the whole property into a country club setting that is great for escaping from business during a lunch break. That’s how I use Premier Shooting as a place of stress management.  And now, primarily because of the policies Mark has nurtured and a small government approach, Harley Davidson is building a new superstore next to Premier.  Adding this business to the rest of the options in that area is an incredible achievement. It is just another example of what can be done when the government doesn’t make itself the story but gets out of the way.  Mark likes to see new things being built as much as I do, but he’s as far away from the type of intrusive politician who always wants to stick their nose in everyone’s business.  That is precisely why Harley Davidson is building such a large store that will be a great gift to the community. 

Shooting the Colt .45

Talking to Mark the other day while we were up at Premier shooting the guns in the videos shown here, we talked about the new Harley Davidson store as we watched an excavation team work machinery leveling the site for a foundation.  Mark was like a kid brimming with excitement at what such a place would mean, and I sort of thought for a moment how unusual it was for a politician to have that kind of attitude. I’ve been around many politicians over the years who would look at a situation like that and find some way to insert themselves into the story and try to take credit for all Harley Davidson’s efforts.  But not Mark.  In an actual small government, conservative fashion, he likes seeing things happen.  If he can help them along, he’s happy to do it.  Yet, it never crosses his mind to loot off the efforts of others.  He wants to help make things happen, which is one of the premier ways in which West Chester has remained one of the best places to live in the world, even as economic downturns have hurt communities elsewhere.  West Chester is lucky to have Mark Welch.  But to Mark’s mind, he truly wants what is best for West Chester in the ways good management always does, by getting out of the way of those who make things happen in the world.

Rich Hoffman

The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business
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