Tag: Mike DeWine

The Lockdown Lady: Amy Acton should have stayed under her rock

This is going to be fun, the governor’s race in Ohio.  Not that I think it will be close, but it will serve as a cherry on top for a vast evil that transpired, which was never settled.  Because she resigned from her job before the full wrath of anger came down on her for what she did during COVID in Ohio.  We’re talking about Amy Acton, the stringy-haired hippy chick who ran the Health Department in Ohio for Mike DeWine.  She hilariously tried to claim this past week that she was statistically tied with Vivek Ramaswamy in the race for governor, which I find laughable.  However, she’s trying to create excitement among a Democrat base that is flatlining.  Democrats across the country are trying to generate enthusiasm for their campaigns, and in her case, they hope people have forgotten.  After all, she was a media darling for most of 2020 as she reported daily from Columbus on the latest lockdown procedures, which she perfected to an extreme.  And the media loved having a mom telling them to go to bed and telling them what to do about everything.  Amy Acton’s tenure as Director of Health in Ohio was a disaster, but she did reveal what Democrats have in mind for government.  All the metaphorical masks came off during COVID, literally, and in many cases, by putting actual masks on we learned a lot.  However, we learned a great deal about ourselves during that period, despite it being so scary.  We came to know the differences between Republicans and Democrats beyond polite discourse over salary fairness and race relations.  Amy Acton led the nation in lockdown procedures that were statistically insane, essentially stopping the Ohio economy until a virus, created in China and released by very sinister forces, would stop spreading through a crazy strategy of separating people from each other until the case infections stopped. 

I didn’t discuss it at the time, but a couple of the most prominent con artists I have ever known started a company that conducted COVID-19 tests because they thought that was going to be the future.  They were radical lefty types and were dumb as rocks.  However, they had significant, essential jobs that paid them far too much money.  And they left those jobs thinking Covid tests in Ohio were going to be big business.  I explained to them that Amy Acton was not going to last, that Ohio was breaking the law by violating the Constitution, and that COVID was one of the biggest scams in the history of the world.  And I said all this because they tried to recruit me to their cause, wanting me to sell their new COVID-19 testing lab to the political world, and wanted to pay me a lot of money to use my voice to validate their existence.  (a lot of money)  Which anybody who knew me back then should have known better.  I was dressed every day like Mad Max, ready for a fight at any moment with anybody.  I was prepared for a showdown with the tyrannical forces of Amy Acton’s health direction at the drop of a dime. The Government was way out of control and getting worse by the day, and Governor Mike DeWine lost control of his government over fear of the stupid Covid virus, which was killing people who got it left and right.  And that same government was basing all their statistics on these COVID-19 tests, which people ran, like I mentioned, who were essentially designed to give false positives, and that Amy Acton would use those results to grab for more government overreach, as if to justify their actions. 

Of course, I proved to be right.  Those guys ended up out of a job, Amy Acton resigned.  The court challenges to the lockdown procedures all went against the DeWine administration, and he quickly had to start backtracking once he realized his abortion loving Health Director had screwed up Ohio detrimentally over a government power grab to use a health crisis to control every part of people’s lives.  And every conspiracy that I had talked about regarding the entire process turned out to be exactly as I said it was during that horrible period.  But the lessons learned were extremely valuable, even if a lot of innocent people died in the process, and the mandatory vaccines of the Biden administration damaged many.  It was a bad time, and Amy Acton was the queen of it all.  So I think it is pretty hilarious that she is going to climb out from under a rock and run for governor.  And, that she believes she can run against Vivek Ramaswamy, one of the most intelligent people on planet earth, who can talk the ears off a donkey.  I don’t think so.  If Amy Acton is the best that Democrats have, then they have next to nothing.  However, there is good in all this. I believe that a lot of what was unsettled needs to be settled as a result of that terrible period.  What can, or should, the government do for people?  And that will be a great debate where Vivek Ramaswamy will have many opportunities to discuss during this gubernatorial race in Ohio. I think it will get further worse for Amy Acton with the upcoming race, as Sherrod Brown wants to return to the Senate by challenging the incumbent, Jon Husted, who was Lieutenant Governor at the time Amy Acton was Health Director.  He was on TV with her every day, and there was a lot to discuss regarding the day-to-day operations of COVID management in Ohio, which serves as a warning for all about the power of big government.  And it’s going to get a lot of attention during these campaigns. 

I think it’s crazy for Amy Acton to stick her head out of the ground from which she has been hiding to run for Governor, which is going to expose her in ways she can’t imagine.  However, it’s not her failures as a person that will be so detrimental, but rather the lessons of letting a government, run by people like her, take over the day-to-day management of our lives from the utopian fantasy of communist/Democrat politics.  Amy Acton was among the worst, leading all states with her lockdown approach to managing the virus.  And because she did, she empowered a lot of con artists like those Covid testing people I mentioned, to profit off the demise of Ohio, and the nation, in ways that no fiction writer prior would have dared to put forth a plot because nobody would believe it.  And I think she is going to be destroyed politically by Vivek Ramaswamy, and to a greater extent, the Trump administration that has never been right with Mike DeWine since those many Covid mistakes.  People are going to get a chance to get revenge on Amy Acton for what she did to them, and the wrath will be harsh.  People generally left her alone because she stepped away from politics.  But now she’s climbing right back in, and I don’t think she, nor any of her advisors, know what they are getting into.  This won’t be a friendly election about ideas.  This will be a way for people to take their anger out on Amy Acton, as a result of what she did to their lives.  Amy Acton will, for the rest of her life, be known as the Lockdown Lady.  And people will never let her live it down, especially once they learn that she was the one responsible, which will be the centerpiece of this upcoming election.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

DeWine’s State of the State Speech: Lakota schools plots their own demise

Oddly enough, while I was in Columbus to attend the Governor’s State of the State speech, it was Lakota schools that everyone was talking about, and they wanted to join the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding lawsuit.  But in many ways, that wasn’t surprising, and it was confirmed again in Mike DeWine’s speech that day.  Years and years of kicking the can down the road in all these public schools were catching up to them, and the bill was due, and nobody knew what to do about it.  Governors like DeWine have done for decades what they were now doing at Lakota schools around 91 miles to the south in Butler County, Ohio, they were writing tax payer checks for a product and service that fewer and fewer people wanted, and now with Trump in the White House, the warnings I have been giving everyone about what was going to happen are coming true.  Instead of getting out in front of these funding problems, Lakota schools dug in and became more woke.  Senator Lang tried to tell them on a call later that day after the Governor’s speech, but the school system had dug in the opposite direction.  Others and I have tried to give Lakota conservative board members a chance to deal with this issue, and their response as a school board was to run them all off, and that extends beyond Darbi Boddy, the most recent that they found some way to push out of management.  And like things are where liberal types run things, everything costs too much money, and now Trump was cutting back the Department of Education and gubernatorial candidates like Vivek Ramaswamy was talking about significant reforms in education with merit pay, leaving schools like Lakota to join lawsuits with other schools having the same problem, hoping that some sixties flowerchild protest might recover for them a silly little 9 million dollar loss that has come out of their budget due to students utilizing Ed Choice vouchers that are now expanding under the Trump administration and flowing down through the states.  For perspective, Lakota schools in Butler County, Ohio, has a quarter of a billion dollar budget, and that’s still not enough money to fund education the way they want to.

And you know what makes me the angriest about all this? I didn’t get any of Fran’s cookies this year. Fran is Mike DeWine’s long-time and very dedicated wife, who typically gives them out to attendees of her husband’s speech in the rotunda.  This year, activists were there chanting for more money as they felt the pinch from a social disconnect from the standard old traditional funding model of public education.  To avoid the activists, DeWine was ushered away underground to safety, leaving the rest of us to watch their bizarre and out-of-touch rituals with curiosity. The Lakota situation was the topic of conversation because they are one of the largest districts in Ohio, and so went them, so went everyone.  And that was kind of a proper metaphor for DeWine’s State of the State speech.  A do-gooder Governor tosses money at public education and hopes that everything will work well for the kids.  But its these crazy labor unions with woke politics that have screwed up the funding model because people don’t like the product.  And school vouchers, much less restricted these days and growing more so, are giving parents the choice away from their zip code schools where they pay enormous property taxes to fund a political movement they hate essentially.  And Lakota schools were right in the middle of the spectacle leaving DeWine to give just another empty speech about the value of education, and sending books in the mail to students to help with literacy, when the real problem was significant and ominous, and far beyond at this point just passing out cookies in the Statehouse Rotunda to ease tempers.  Legislators were in the middle of the budgeting process for public education at the time of this speech, but the government unions want to cry and protest for money that just isn’t there and aren’t willing to deal with the reality of the coming changes.  And those legislators were mad at what Lakota was thinking of doing then, which they did later that evening.  So it wasn’t a good move by the Lakota School Board.  But I tried to warn everyone, and they didn’t listen.  Much more on that to come.

The main thing in DeWine’s speech was that the Governor came to the speech like an old grandpa that went out to dinner the night before to eat barbeque ribs and still had on a bib from that experience the next day when he thought he was showing up for dinner in a nice suit and tie.  DeWine was out of step and slightly behind the rest of the world for his sixth year in office, most of which had not been very good, especially during the COVID-19 years.  But watching him speak, I thought of him as a nice guy who has been constantly suckered by the same kind of losers who protest education funding, like the people who greeted him upon leaving the State of the State peech.  The old flowerchild strategy of crying like some baby bird until mother government drops a worm in its mouth has long been exhausted, and DeWine never understood it.  He’s a good man from a political generation that caused all these problems and doesn’t know what to do about it.  We have to wait another year or so before we get Vivek Ramaswamy and tackle some of these key issues because just throwing money at problems is not what voters will do in the future. 

The best thing about DeWine’s State of the State speech was the expansion of business enterprise in Ohio, specifically the Andruil factory just south of Columbus and the Intel facility to the north.  There was a lot to talk about, and for DeWine’s credit, many people have been working in the background to make Ohio a much more business-friendly state.  At least DeWine hasn’t stood in the way of those efforts; he’s been willing to tag along.  We’ll get a lot more with Vivek Ramaswamy as Governor, but since DeWine was able to part ways with Amy Acton, the stringy haired hippie who used to be the Health Director during Covid, Ohio has grown more business friendly to make up for their position of lockdown politics that so crippled just about everyone.  Over the last couple of years, DeWine has at least not shut the door to companies like Intel, even though it has largely been members of the Senate that paved the way.  That’s how government works, and it’s very fascinating.  But once the good news was talked about regarding Ohio and DeWine’s speech, the topic went back to the tired old view of the world, and the chants outside could be heard in the chamber, and the reality of places like Lakota schools was coming to fruition.  The days of easy money stolen from taxpayers to fund woke causes were over.  And many people at the State of the State speech in the Ohio Statehouse were struggling with the ramifications of decades of trying to appease the screams of the teacher union types.  But reality has a lot more in store for them than they realize.  The result will be more anger at the people running public education and politicians like Mike DeWine ending their terms dismayed while much more innovative people replace them with reforms that will change all the rules.  The Lakota School Board, in its current form, is just not prepared to deal with it.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Sam Randazzo Committed Suicide: When a corrupt FBI, Marxist Democrats, and radical anti-America terrorists are after you, don’t run away, fight them

I hated to hear that Sam Randazzo had committed suicide the day before the State of the State speech of 2024, apparently connected to his upcoming court cases attached straight to the Governor over H.B. 6 and all the drama around FirstEnergy.  Sam was appointed as utilities director for the Governor’s office and got caught up by default into defending FirstEnergy, which the communists were after, and like many Republicans who got caught up in that entirely legitimate business relationship, they retreated from the fight by activists courts, an FBI that was weaponized for progressive administrations, and an Obama administration that had set terrorist motions forward before President Trump entered the White House, that was intended to destroy the energy grid of Ohio and convert the entire industry to solar and wind power.  Yeah, I’m not a believer that the FirstEnergy bribery scandal in Ohio was nothing more than Democrats who did not have a majority in Columbus crying about how unfair it was that FirstEnergy had no choice but to try to get members of government from the Republican Party, to build their majorities with campaign donations so that they as a company could stay open for business.  The radical left had attacked two nuclear power plants for closure in Ohio, and FirstEnergy was trying to keep them open.  As I received the news in the dome with Mike DeWine standing about 8 feet from me taking pictures with people, I had a new perspective on why the Governor’s speech was so flat that day.  This was the second recent suicide from someone involved in H.B.6.  The first guy, Nick Clark, had recently shot himself in the head while wearing a DeWine for Governor shirt in Florida, awaiting his trial over the same fundamental issues.  And supposedly, in a warehouse just down the road from the Statehouse down Mound Street, Sam hung himself, leaving behind a phone number for his wife and concern for his family’s well-being.  But he couldn’t deal with the pressure.  Pressure that he shouldn’t have had to deal with in the first place.  This was the same case over FirstEnergy, where the former Speaker of the House, Larry Householder, was rotting away in jail for essentially doing what all politicians have to do, especially in his position: make sure the party holds power with campaign donations to expand majorities.  If the Democrats could, they would do the same thing, but they aren’t very well-liked in Ohio.  But that hasn’t stopped progressive politics and outside influences from trying to rot Columbus from the inside out, which is essentially what H.B.6 was all about, starting with destroying Ohio’s power by attacking FirstEnergy with Marxist climate change policies that were extraordinarily expensive to force them into wind and solar, and to abandon fossil fuels.

Before they pulled all his information off the internet, I looked up what Sam was saying about himself as a professional who was listed as retired.  So, I put it here to counter what has been said about him.  Does this sound like the kind of guy who would want to kill himself by hanging in a lonely warehouse just a few hours before Governor DeWine’s 2024 State of the State speech?  Listen to his own words: “For more than four decades, I helped businesses on both sides of the meter, elected officials, associations, and regulators identify and thoughtfully address issues that affect the delivered price and availability of energy, communication, and other goods and services essential to a well-functioning and forward-looking economy. In doing so, I was often recognized as one of the best lawyers in America, and I combined my legal skills with a deep understanding of how accounting, finance, economics, and engineering principles must be appreciated and integrated to effectively navigate (often in a political context) towards a sustainable and practical solution. After retiring from the practice of law at the end of 2018, Governor Mike DeWine appointed me to the post of Commissioner and eventually Chair of the PUCO, and on April 11, 2019, I returned to the agency where I started. As Chair of the PUCO, I was Chair of the Ohio Power Siting Board. During the COVID pandemic, I also served as Chair of the Stay at Home Order Dispute Advisory Commission and on the Governor’s business advisory task force. On November 20, 2020, I resigned from government service for reasons expressed in my resignation letter. Since retiring, I have been blessed to have the love and support of my family and friends.”

Smiling for the camera is just another way of hiding from the real villains of our power grid

I’m not a fan of many of these Republicans; some of them, such as Matt Borges, I think are complete idiots, and I’d have no problem telling him that to his face for his anti-Trump activity within the Republican Party trying to keep losers like John Kasich in power.  But those are party disagreements on strategy.  Republicans should have never taken the bait by Democrats even to allow for any donations from FirstEnergy to be construed in any way other than what they were.  To let an activist FBI make it all a case of corruption and bribery hoping to erode Republican control in Columbus was ridiculous for a problem Democrats caused in the first place: an attack on Ohio’s energy grid.  Republicans should have stood their ground, fought and beat these losers in court, and made other people want to hang themselves in empty warehouses.  Not simi-retired lawyers like Sam Randazzo.  He should be taking his family to some nice vacation resort instead of preparing for a funeral.  It wasn’t fair to his family.  But as I say, politics is a blood sport, and the Democrats love blood, and Republicans never match the intensity because they are too nice.  They shouldn’t be. 

After hearing all this about Sam, I watched Governor DeWine, who caught my eye a few times.  Part of me felt terrible for him.  He’s a nice guy trying to play this blood sport the only way he knows how with Yellow Springs hippie liberalism and extensive government control over the levers of power.  He has learned over the years to appease these vile forces rather than fight them directly, and in the State of the State speech, he sought to appease those monsters on 3rd Street by making the whole speech about children and nothing else.  Governor DeWine signed H.B.6, which was talked about by Marxist media as a 1.3 billion dollar bailout of FirstEnergy.  Well, of course, Democrats were upset about it because they wanted to sink FirstEnergy and force them to go all in on windmills and solar panels.  They tried to kill Ohio’s energy policy, so yes, they were upset that Republicans were helping out FirstEnergy.  That is how Sam Randazzo got wrapped up in the scandal, as he found 4.3 million dollars coming at him from FirstEnergy.  But what was FirstEnergy supposed to do?  Sit around and be destroyed by climate activists and Marxist, America-hating despots?  Because that’s the real issue on the table that DeWine didn’t want to tackle, and his inability to defend Columbus Republicans left them hanging.  It’s that kind of classic Republican run-and-hide technique that has so many people supporting Trump.  And to answer a question Matt Borges brought up after the Access Hollywood tape about Trump trying to disparage him, was that locker room talk?  Yes.  That’s how people speak; if he didn’t know that, he should have.  Republican voters are going for Trump and not Mike DeWine types.  They want to see FirstEnergy thrive; they want nuclear power and fossil fuels to provide cheap electricity.  And they want the government to leave them alone.  And they certainly don’t want to see their representatives going to jail and hanging themselves in warehouses as the only option left to them in an activist, Marxist-controlled court system led by a corrupt FBI working for the Biden administration, and before them, the radical terrorist Obama.  If we’re going to play this blood sport, let the Democrats feel the pressure.  Not good people trying to stand up for the industry and Ohio’s power grid.  They knew what they were doing; when the government is prosecuting you, and it’s run by radicals who have endless money to throw at you, and you have to pay for parasite lawyers and are still facing jail time in your retirement years, what was old Sam supposed to do?  Who was going to defend him when all the other Republicans were running for the hills, trying not to be accused of bribery?  This is the same garbage they have been trying to do with Trump.  But he didn’t run away.  Mike DeWine and many others have, and that has only fed the desire for blood by the ruthless Democrats and their communist supporters at the expense of our great state. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Ding Dongs in Columbus: A Review of Governor DeWine’s State of the State speech

Before I get into the obvious homeless guy on 3rd Street in Columbus who was standing on the corner a block south of the Statehouse, completely nude, with his ding dong and buttocks clear for all the world to see, as if he were getting ready to shower at a YMCA, I have to talk about the fantastic book I bought from the Statehouse gift shop that I have had my eye on for several years now, The Art and Artistry of the Ohio Statehouse by Dayna Jalkanen.  Every time I go to the Statehouse, I think about getting it, but time is always short, so I never do.  I love the Statehouse and the intentions of the work that is supposed to be done there, of republic-style representative government, and I had just told a story to similar people about my thoughts on Governor DeWine’s speech where I stood in the rotunda with DeWine giving out pictures with a lunch buffet set up in the middle of the room where senators, representatives, lawyers, lobbyists, cutthroats and even media personalities were at work saving the world from their perspective.  Even the “Rooster” was there dressed in his backpack and poorly attired shorts, deliberately showing disrespect for the process as he runs a government blog checking the antics of the powerful with a kind of Marxist mentality of “bringing them all down.  During this visit, I had a little more time to make it to the bookstore, where I was there with Jennifer Gross, the Ohio Representative from the 47th District, and her son, a brilliant young man.  I explained to many people that DeWine’s speech this year was horrible, worse than usual, and uninspiring.  And there was a thick blanket over the whole State of the State address as Columbus conspiracies were awash in speculation and scandal.  But as I have said before, the Statehouse is there, grand and has deep roots in history.  It intends to inspire people to greatness even if they fall short, as was apparent under this current flock of politicians.  So, I wanted to get the book to remind myself of the worth of it all.

As I checked out the book at the counter and spoke to Jennifer about all the perils of progress during legislative proceedings, I reflected on what I had just said about DeWine’s speech and why it was so bad.  Governor DeWine was clearly in a lame-duck stage of his term.  He was on the outs with the Trump campaign over several controversies.  But the biggest one is that DeWine isn’t a Republican, especially not a Trump Republican.  He’s a product of FDR’s New Deal and some Johnson version of a Great Society where the government was there to do what parents couldn’t or wouldn’t.  And that was the entirety of DeWine’s speech on the State of the State on 4.10.24.  The whole thing was about how the state of Ohio could take care of children in ways their parents would fall short of, and everything he mentioned required more legislation and tax money spent without scrutiny on the next generation without any real expectation of success.  As I had just said in the rotunda, everyone in that room thought they were doing the right things, including DeWine.  They all had the best of intentions.  Nobody thought of themselves as evil.  Yet there was evil everywhere, and why?  It’s a challenging game where you must go to Columbus to work with others to make things happen.  You have to build relationships and get things done.  But in compromising with other people to get things passed, most people find themselves changed forever in the process, and they aren’t the same people who were elected, and they don’t survive the meat grinder of politics intact. 

Whenever I attend a State of the State speech, I always like to sit in the gallery where all the lawyers, aides, and lobbyists sit because I want to hear how they talk to each other.  They all have some specific thing that concerns them most about the government.  It might be renewable energy, social programs, or even Rob Portman’s retirement status, and how many boards he is sitting on for advice.  I was sitting next to one of his former aides who went on and on about how much influence the former senator still had in the business world, which I had to snicker about.  I’ve known Rob Portman for a long time, especially at the beginning of his political career when he was in his 20s.  Rob Portman shouldn’t be advising businesses about anything; he doesn’t have the horsepower to understand the field or how it works.  But in that gallery, I heard many stories about things those people wanted to impress upon each other as they were caught up in the moment.  All dressed up to listen to the Governor give a speech about saving children from their parents.  I explained it later by identifying the problem for what it is: all those people at the speech had the power of government at their fingertips, and they had to decide how to use it to help people.  And that’s where the evil comes in: when people don’t have the right thoughts about things, how can they decide to use government the way it’s supposed to, not how their feeble minds interpret it?  DeWine intended his speech well, as everyone listening did.  But where can they apply government power to the right purposes?  That’s what I wanted to think about as I bought that book and why I took a little extra time talking with Jennifer about those kinds of challenges this time. 

But the answer to that question was at the corner of 3rd Street, just one block south of the Statehouse as I was leaving.  There was security everywhere around the Statehouse because of the governor.  I was leaving the Senate, and there were plenty of police.  But then there was this 6’ 6 man of color standing there with his pants pulled down around his ankles, underwear, and all oblivious to the world around him.  I don’t think he knew his ding dong was hanging out in full view to all the cars and pedestrians moving by him.  I’ve seen homeless people all over the world, and they are caused by too much government destroying the personal initiative of individual people.  And here was this guy, an apparent creation of a nanny state government rotting away in full view of everyone just a block from where all the rules of Ohio were made.  And nobody was doing anything about it.  He was violating public decency standards.  He was probably violating many drug laws.  But he was a person of color, and nobody wanted to be called a racist for pointing out his bad behavior.  So, everyone just ignored him and went about their way.   No doubt, several children that day had their lives ruined by seeing that naked guy on the street corner on a sunny April day in 2024.  With all the grand ideas proposed by many governors over the years, the reality is that the quality of life for people only gets worse the more that the government tries to replace good personal conduct with more laws, which aren’t even enforced a block from where DeWine gave his speech.  And all the people talking about big, fancy ideas in the gallery were already in their cars on their way home, driving past all the problems none had the guts to deal with.  Which is how evil works in those kinds of gatherings.  Well-intended people who use the power of government to do what they lack as people, and it migrated into society to show itself in that homeless guy so disconnected from reality he was nude on a street corner in the capital of Ohio, which should be a showpiece of excellence.  The Statehouse certainly lives up to the lofty expectations.  But the people in it, inhabiting it, don’t.  And they hide their lack of courage behind procedures and fancy speeches.  Yet they always fall short because their minds aren’t up to the task, and they don’t have the guts to increase their intellect where they can help people like that guy instead of making more of them by default. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Mike DeWine, has lost Trump’s Support: Why did the Ohio Governor veto HB68 and what happens now

There has been a lot of confusion about Mike DeWine from the national media after he vetoed HB 68, which would have banned gender neutrality involving minors. As a conservative governor, supposedly, people were mystified. How could he do such a thing? What was he thinking? He’s listed as a Republican, and this is a serious, Democrat issue, Rocky Horror Picture Show nonsense. Well, I must remind everyone that this is the same governor who was horrendous during COVID-19 and was one of the first and most aggressive governors for locking down our economy, following precisely what the World Health Organization wanted us to do. My nickname for him during this time was Dummy DeWine because of his excessive and radical anti-constitutional attitudes during a health crisis, which the Ohio Senate had to rip away from him because he was so abusive and would not give back the power he had taken during that artificial crises, because we now know where Covid came from. As is proven beyond reasonable doubt, COVID-19 was manufactured through gain of function research under the direction of Dr. Fauci and let loose from a lab in Wuhan, China. And Bill Gates and many others conspired with World Economic Forum characters to suppress a cure for the outbreak for all kinds of nefarious reasons. This is all established with lots of evidence in The Wuhan Cover-up by Robert F Kennedy, a fabulous book everyone should read. And Governors like DeWine played right into their hands in horrendously destructive ways. DeWine gave these tyrants power over us in a similar way that he vetoed this bill, showing that he has an excessive weakness for medical personalities who advise him of dangers that might cause people death, no matter how irrational the statement may be.

Why centralized authority never works

Ohio House Bill 68 was comprised of two acts: the “Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act,” which would ban transgender minors from receiving gender-affirming medical care, and the “Save Women’s Sports Act,” which would prevent transgender girls from taking part in girls’ and women’s sports. DeWine said at a press conference, “I truly believe that we can address several goals in House Bill 68 by administrative rules that will likely have a better chance of surviving judicial review and being adopted,” Meanwhile, the world contemplated his actions as stunning. In talking to some people on the matter in the aftermath of the veto, there are efforts to override his veto with a majority vote, which is unlikely given that the Speaker of the House is essentially a Democrat. Or that the sports ban portion of the bill can at least be saved since DeWine has now stepped into it severely. Politically, this was a dumb thing to do. But it just reminded me of the guy who shut down Ohio over COVID-19 as his very liberal Health Director, Amy Acton, essentially ruined the world as an Obama-supporting abortion activist. DeWine has a soft spot for healthcare people in a dangerous way, and some of the testimony against HB 68 talked about suicide potential for some of the kids involved. The governor loses all perspective in those conversations and develops a god complex where he considers it a fault of his personality that he can save people with government power. That is how they suckered him during COVID-19 and how progressives won him over on this gender neutrality bill that became a national story within moments of his veto. For progressives, it was a massive victory in a state that now had some of the lowest abortion laws in the country and has now legalized marijuana. And now it wouldn’t take a stand on gender neutrality, which is a major assault against the Christian right, who view the issue of gender mutilation literally as a desecration of God’s temple, the human body.

DeWine has lost Trump’s support

Since COVID-19, by some nudging of some of my friends, I have had a chance to meet Mike DeWine a bit, and I can say he’s a nice guy.  His wife makes excellent cookies.  And I do not doubt that their intentions are good.  But in essence, they are Yellow Springs hippies from one of the most liberal parts of Ohio.  At best, Mike DeWine is a Democrat, and it’s always been that way, even before COVID came along and made such a mess out of his tenure as governor in Ohio.  Many people held their noses and voted for him as governor; essentially, this is what you get.  The warning signs were all there.  DeWine has been good on gun issues over the last several years, but only because he needed to be re-elected coming out of COVID-19, and he had gotten himself into a lot of political trouble, especially with the other legislative bodies.  He was on his best behavior.  But as I’ve said to many people during all this, Mike DeWine should never be given power over the masses in any way because he can’t handle that power and will always abuse it. 

The Ohio legislature is not done with this gender neutrality issue.  While Mike DeWine was suckered by progressive testimony over emphasizing suicide among young people who are confused about their gender status, the truth is a much more systemic issue about social psychology, and leadership must be established, especially with the number of conservative losses that have now occurred during DeWine’s lame duck term, since he can’t run again and doesn’t have to appease anybody to stay in office.  But this is the danger of letting politicians have too much power because their bad judgment can destroy and harm many people.  Even if their intentions are good, that is undoubtedly true in DeWine’s case.  But his nightmares become everyone else’s reality because, through the power of government, he can become a tyrant through lousy judgment.  DeWine has suffered personal losses that he has never gotten over, which leaves him particularly vulnerable to healthcare workers and their testimonies.  As he says often, if he could save one life, then something should be done.  The trouble is, the bad guys then disguise ill intentions behind that threat, giving them emotional control over someone like DeWine, who can then ruin a state with his neurosis.  And this is all a problem because DeWine was never a conservative; he was always a wishy-washy Democrat who ran as a Republican to gain power but has always leaned toward big government solutions, no matter what they cost, to fill that empty void he has in him that has never recovered from personal tragedies.  That is how tyrants gain power and a good lesson for everyone to remember how DeWine was during Covid and now won’t take a stand on a controversial issue of gender mutilation that has as a wind in its sails an apparent evil driven by radically progressive politics and a desecration of our entire culture.  Yes, Mike DeWine is an embarrassment to Ohio and has been since the first day he was in office.  He may be a crafty politician who can tell you what you want to hear while his wife passes out cookies in the Statehouse.  But when it comes to leadership, he is a big government guy who punts policy to health tyrants who we now know tend toward maliciousness and even murder if it achieves their strategic objectives, which are more of a military assault on our culture than a concern over the suicide of confused kids who became that way due to bad parenting.  There are a lot of kids suffering under such conditions, and the best thing that would help most of them is good, solid, conservative politics.  A lot more lives would be saved if Republicans managed the world much more.  But in the world of Mike DeWine, that is too big of an idea for his tiny mind to grasp.  So he trusts the health experts, who have been the source of most of the trouble.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

What’s Most Wrong in Politics: Consensus building and “getting along”

It was a national embarrassment to have Joe Biden come to Cincinnati and give a speech on bipartisan support to waste 1.4 billion dollars building a new bridge for the vital I-75/71 corridor, bringing with him a whole parade of RINOs and Democrats. That bridge should have been built long ago for a lot less money. The speech by the illegally elected Joe Biden was too late and about all the wrong subjects. I happen to know several of the characters who were with Biden that day in January 2023, well, so I have some perspective on what “bipartisanship” means when Biden says it. Essentially, Biden is in trouble politically. His son is a disaster. The Chinese who have put him in place through election fraud are struggling to put behind them the scam of Covid which they manufactured, distributed, and perpetuated to gain power in the world far more effectively than any military would have, and of course, there’s a new Congress controlled by Republicans who are going to have a chance to conduct many new investigations into Biden’s criminal family and all the sins of the past now that a “Trump Standard” has been set, which no Democrat will be able to live up to. Biden has no other choice but to show up in Ohio with a bunch of boot lickers and try to take the edge off things by showing something that needed to be done, finally getting done. And it was not impressive. To do it, Biden had to sign another 550-billion-dollar infrastructure bill with all kinds of progressive garbage in it. This project is projected to cost another 3.6 billion dollars in the end, likely more, as union cost overruns take a toll and the bureaucrats realize how much they left out of their projections. Instead of being something positive, it was a gross display of everything that was wrong in government. And everyone there looked just pathetic. 

I couldn’t help but think of the irony, and I’ve spoken about Rob Portman quite a lot this year, especially concerning the campaign of J.D. Vance who was just elected to be his replacement. I’ve been hard on Mike DeWine, who was there and I have said the only thing good about him is his wife’s cookies, who, upon meeting them earlier in 2022, she is hard to dislike. And Mitch McConnell from Kentucky has been shown to be a RINO anti-Trumper from the beginning. Sherrod Brown, the other senator from Ohio, is a joke, and another cover-up from the media regarding his messy divorce, which I became involved with while campaigning for Jim Renacci. I had a chance to meet Brown during that story at Miami University, which the media helped him get through, much like they have covered up so many stories with Joe Biden. And then there is Andy Beshear, governor of Kentucky, his election was so close that what we know about election fraud and the methods of his election was very similar to what happened in Arizona this year with Kari Lake. The Democrat Machine cheated to get him elected; only an eternity ago, in this very real war, we didn’t ask those kinds of questions because we didn’t know we needed to. Biden put up on that stage a collection of political misfits on the Ohio River banks across from Longworth Hall, where the popular bridge edges past, and it brought back distinct memories of my life with Rob Portman as he was starting his political career, just how far people fall in life. And knowing all the dreams of Portman from his beginnings, the only thing I could see standing with Biden were political failures using massive amounts of money to save a government that had grown too corrupt to trust. 

During the early 90s, I was very active in Ross Perot’s Reform Party, and Rob Portman was campaigning for a suddenly open congressional seat that had come up in Cincinnati. He was a little older than me at the time, but we got along well and I wanted to help him, so I set up a Sunday night debate on 700 WLW with Portman and a bunch of other candidates for people to hear, which Portman clearly won.  During that campaign, I spent a lot of time with Rob Portman talking about all the reasons he wanted to get into politics and how he wanted to emulate Ross Perot in the Republican Party. Many of our meetings and events occurred across the river from where Biden spoke at Longworth Hall. I could tell many stories about those days involving a reformed Penthouse model married to a wealthy developer and a rag-tag group of political activists who would eventually become the Tea Party 15-16 years later. Along with some of my friends, there are still people who talk about the giant American flag that we hung from the top of Longworth Hall to all who could see it traveling southbound across the Brent Spence Bridge that hung all the way to the ground from the top. Rob Portman was a part of that group of reformers, so I have had high hopes for him over the years. But to see him broken and beaten over the years was sad and pathetic. For him to end his political career essentially sucking air for Joe Biden tells you everything wrong with politics. 

And what is wrong with politics? Well, it’s consensus-building. Once people like Rob Portman accept that getting along with bad people like Joe Biden, Sharrod Brown, Andy Breshear, and China Mitch, rather than actually standing for things, is the start toward expensive political destruction. And Joe Biden, on that day, was actually supporting that flawed premise by showing off all the losers who had been politically beaten and were “working together” in wasting money that should have gone to a project twenty years earlier. The only reason they were all there on that day was that a major political storm was brewing. With all their attempts to get rid of Trump, people still loved and supported Trump, just as people loved Ross Perot many years earlier. And back then, Rob Portman at least said he understood. But once he got to congress for a few terms and then ran for the Senate, the values of Washington D.C. clearly changed Portman. He went from that bright-eyed political reformer who would hang around my rag-tag friends on many political adventures to this washed-out husk of the flesh who propped himself up to an illegal president, showing support for him because the institution of the Senate was more significant than the value of any of them, and that’s where things always go wrong. And it starts with the value of consensus building, with concessions of value where people of good value and bad value compromise with each other, and what people end up with is watered-down, expensive garbage that comes too late and not often enough. All that was on display regarding the bridge announcement in Cincinnati is how corrupt, and costly everything is that a government of criminals can provide only when people are about to throw them all out of power with pitchforks. Ironically, it all started for Rob Portman across the river from where he ended it. And in the end, he was a shell of the person he once had been, and it was very sad but revealing to see it up close, as I had. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Trying to Find Something Nice to Say About Mike DeWine: Are Fran’s cookies enough?

Obviously, I’m not a Mike DeWine fan. He blew it during Covid by leading the nations into the lockdowns and open tyranny that the rest of the blue-state Democrats followed to ruin our lives. I know people who had their lives utterly ruined during the Mike DeWine lockdowns and even died. The social isolation, the separation of family members, and the attempts to shut down social gatherings such as churches over some ridiculous government tampering with the medical industry were reprehensible, and Mike DeWine led the way. My kids absolutely hate Mike DeWine; his dumb behavior set back their lives by likely seven years at least and personally cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars. So it was no small feat when a person I know who is very close to the DeWine administration asked me if I could think of something nice to say about the guy ahead of the Midterm elections on November 8th, 2022. I can usually think of something nice to say about anybody. But on Mike DeWine, he has essentially been a Democrat, and I don’t like anything about Democrats. Just because he put an “R” next to his name doesn’t make him a Republican. As we have seen at many levels of politics, an “R” isn’t enough. Suppose a politician doesn’t act like a Republican. In that case, I think worse of them than if we are just dealing with a Democrat because we are dealing with another level of dishonesty, and DeWine sold himself dishonestly when he proposed that he was a Republican. Yet the person running against Mike DeWine for this 2022 governor race is even worse as a Democrat, so the question is, do you vote for the Democrat who is pretending to be a Republican, or do you deal with the radical socialist who calls herself a Democrat but might as well be the secretary of Karl Marx? These are tough choices and not very good for a world of free and fair elections. 

So I have been digging deep, trying to find something I like about Mike DeWine. My friend knows I represent a lot of Republican voters who just will never put their name next to Mike DeWine because of how he behaved during his first term. But a few nice words from me might encourage others who feel the same way to maybe hold their nose and vote for DeWine anyway, for the good of the party. So this has been a tough one for me, and I have had to work hard at it for several weeks now, trying to find anything good about Mike DeWine, and the thing that jumped out most to me was that his wife, Fran, makes good cookies. I had a chance to meet with Mike DeWine a few months ago at an event, and his wife gave me some cookies, and they were really good. Were they good enough to elect him governor again? Well, maybe. Ruin people’s lives, kill them with lockdowns by putting the liberal disaster Amy Acton in charge of Ohio Health Care, but Fran’s cookies…………………… it’s kind of like weighing an Egyptian heart against a feather to see if you can pass into the Duat during death. 

But then I had to think of some more things if I could, and I can say with a straight face that during the last two years of Mike DeWine’s term, he has worked well with the Republican Reps and Senate on gun legislation. DeWine has been good on gun control measures and pro-Second Amendment concerns. He even signed H.B. 99, which my local state rep, Thomas Hall, sponsored, which provided standards for teacher training to be armed in public schools to fight back against the risk of school shootings. So, those are a few real things that Mike DeWine has done in his first term that was very positive. Sure, he wouldn’t have done them at all unless he was way underwater with Republican voters because of what he did during Covid. But it’s way better than what we would have had under Nan Whaley. Mike DeWine has signed real law proposed by the Ohio legislature that provided constitutional carry and Stand your Ground law that has undoubtedly made Ohio much better from a Second Amendment perspective. And that’s kind of what politics is, a give and take, and if it took so many people to hate Mike DeWine to make him strong on Second Amendment issues, then maybe that’s a good thing.

Then there is an issue that I care about quite a lot, and that is the election of Sharon Kennedy to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. I know Sharon, and she is fantastic. I would love to see her become the Chief Justice, which is very possible. The Supreme Court, for a long time now, has been in a balancing act between liberalism and conservative value. If Sharon wins the Chief Justice position, then her replacement would then be appointed by Mike DeWine. And in that way, like the gun control legislation, DeWine would pick a strong conservative, which would certainly help secure the Supreme Court with much more conservative representation. Ultimately, we must have a conservative Supreme Court. We have a strong presence of conservatives among the State Reps and the Senate, but the Supreme Court has been weak. A lot of people have called themselves “Rs,” but in reality, they have been very liberal by their voting record. DeWine, in other years, might have picked a liberal for the Supreme Court nomination, but he’s not dumb. He sees where things are going in this MAGA Republican Party, so he would be very inclined to appease Republicans with a strong pick.

So there are three things I thought of nice to say about Mike DeWine. See, I can find something nice to say about anybody, even him. He has been good for the last two years on Second Amendment issues. He has a good chance of doing very well on the Supreme Court by picking a conservative replacement for the Chief Justice. Based on what DeWine has done with gun rights, this particular year would likely be a more conservative choice than in other years. Then there are the cookies. Should we vote for Mike DeWine because of his wife’s cookies? Maybe it does all come down to that.

Sometimes you get governors who are so out of touch that you can’t even talk to them when you see them. Fran was always so personable when I was at that event with the DeWines. Mike asked me if I wanted a picture; I, of course, said that I was good. I didn’t want a picture. He didn’t make any strange faces; he just moved on to the next person. But Fran made sure I had some cookies, and they were very good. Even though I think of the DeWine family as a bunch of Democrats, I can at least say that they mean well. That was DeWine’s excuse after Covid; he thought he was doing the right things and just following the orders of the CDC. And that is always the danger of following government; they usually don’t know what’s best. But they have the power to impose their view of reality on people, which makes them dangerous. But Fran DeWine’s cookies were good. All voters will have to make that hard choice on November 8th. Are Fran’s cookies enough? 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Thank Goodness Ohio Has Thomas Hall: Gun rights are the only things keeping us safe in a Democrat-run government intent to destroy America

I continue to be proud of State Representative Thomas Hall for his bill that Governor DeWine signed on Monday, June 13th providing minimum training requirements for teachers to arm themselves in public schools and to act as first responders should a tragic event occur. It was the kind of bill that was controversial in the face of an aggressive anti-gun lobby, so it took a lot of political skill for Representative Hall to move his bill through the House and Senate and go through all the revisions that it took to get it onto Governor DeWine’s desk. The bill was signed on the same day that Constitutional Carry went into effect in Ohio, so after a few rough years with Mike DeWine, particularly on Covid, we are seeing an administration that has been very good on Second Amendment issues. DeWine was eager to sign Thomas’ bill and rebuild some bridges that were lost over the Covid lockdowns. A few years ago, I would have never thought that Governor DeWine would become one of the most pro-Second Amendment governors in the country, but with the signing of House Bill 99 sponsored by Thomas Hall, that’s what he has become. It’s interesting to see how DeWine has evolved on gun rights over the last four years, which I think says more about the conditions of society than anything. It goes beyond him looking to repair his relationship with Republicans over Covid lockdowns. It was only a few years ago that DeWine was showing support for Red Flag Laws. Yet now, DeWine is one of the most pro-gun governors in the country, and that is great to see.

Meanwhile, there is a hard push from progressives who have managed to snag some GOP senators to ride some gun control legislation to give Biden a token win using recent mass shootings as a driver for more government control over gun rights. The Biden administration, which Texas has been one of the first to admit the illegitimacy due to the election questions that have been increasing with each day, wants to get more progressive gun control legislation on the books before they lose all their power. The Republican Party of Texas is starting to say that quiet part out loud, and as I have been saying for a while now, that quiet part will only get louder as more join the chorus. More centralized control over the American population is why there is an election fraud scandal. Would the government attempt to seize power through election fraud to disarm American society? Well, obviously so. And they are aggressive about it. The Biden administration is already trying to leverage Winchester ammunition with government contracts to alter its sales to the public, hoping to drive up the price of ammunition just as they have been doing with gas prices, to alter the behavior of the consumer. If they can’t ban guns, the Biden administration hopes to discourage through supply chain problems the flow of ammunition that shooters can get access to. The illegitimate Biden administration will be forever known in history as the government force that attacked America through supply chains. If you consider the terrorism that is obviously happening at food processing plants, again to alter supply chains with a radical Weather Underground sabotage of them under the Biden watch, a real menace to society is revealing itself. And it is within that climate that the government is pushing for more gun control. 

Because of Democrats, we are looking at a much more dangerous and unstable world. And the Biden administration has been laughing about it, even mocking Republicans, daring them to fight. It’s the same type of attitude that was revealed when members of the Colbert Show were caught and arrested in the U.S. Capitol after hours harassing families of the J6 defendants. NBC tried to downplay the incident, but the radicalism couldn’t be more obvious. We are dealing with an outright Marxist political move in America from the political left, and they are taking their talking points straight out of the book The Communist Manifesto. Now, I’ve been saying all this for a long time that the political left is communist in nature, using socialism as a soft door to enter through. Many people didn’t want to think of their fellow Democrats in such a way, but after four years of Trump, which I have also been saying would happen for a long time, their masks were ripped off. Now they are showing themselves for what they always were, America hating Marxists who are intent on destroying our country no matter what it takes. When members of popular media like those from the Colbert Show are so desperate and audacious in their actions, you can see the level of desperation; they mean to kill the country behind their actions. Would these same people commit election fraud and attempt to cover it up with everything they have in them? You bet they would. 

We are now in a world of liberal lunacy gone terribly wrong; crime is up because of Democrats. Concerns over the power grid because of BlackRock’s control over American energy policy leading straight to the World Economic Forum Marxists in Europe have people worried about constant brownouts and other mass grid failures. We have been closing coal plants and not replacing them with real viable energy generators. Gas prices are artificially high; it’s as if the Biden administration has an obsession with the Mad Max films and is trying to make them come true. We are seeing a plot designed outside the United States that has entered American life through politics and finance that intends to destroy everything we are. And even Mike DeWine sees it as governor of Ohio and has modified his position on gun control to reflect it. Truly, the First and Second Amendments are the only things keeping America alive at the moment. Gun ownership is the only thing that has kept this out-of-control society from completely destroying the American idea and keeps families somewhat safe in their homes. We are witnessing a progressive nightmare created by the Biden administration for the ultimate destruction of America while they still have the power to do it. And they can tell that the window for their attempts is closing, and their desperation level reflects that knowledge. They only have a few months to destroy the country, and they are picking up the pace of their attacks.

Their guiding manual, The Communist Manifesto, will tell us what they plan to do next. And for that reason, we must be happy to live in a state where State Representatives like Thomas Hall represent Ohio politics to head that aggression off at the pass and do good work for the people. To sign H.B. 99 on the same day that Ohio moved to Constitutional Carry says much more about the actual state of our country. While the gun grabbers are the same type of people reflected in the arrests of the Cobert staff at the Capitol, the only defense anybody has against that aggression, and the progressive, globalist activism of the Biden administration, is to be armed with guns. Preferably lots of guns. Because the enemy is among us, and they mean to destroy everything we represent, and they have no intentions of holding back. The only thing keeping them in check is our guns. They have no respect for our laws. They have no respect for our country. The only thing they do respect is force, and that force for us comes from our gun rights and our ability to always have them with us. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Ohio is Now a Blue State: Thanks to Joe Blystone, Republicans have lost the executive branch

First of all, regarding the Ohio governor’s race, the primary, Joe Blystone should feel ashamed of himself for staying in the race and splitting the vote the way he did. I may like the platform of Blystone; he might be my kind of guy. But he never had a chance to win in the primary, and he knew it going into election day. Only Jim Renacci had an opportunity to beat DeWine, and everyone knew it. Even Ron Hood should have stepped out of the race and supported Renacci. Mike DeWine, a sitting governor running for his second term, only had 48% of roughly a million Republican primary voters supporting him in this 2022 election. Renacci pulled in around 28%, while Blystone had 21%. A Trump endorsement would have put Renacci over the top, but I can hear Trump saying right now, “Renacci isn’t a closer. Nice guy, but he can’t close.” What should have happened was Renacci’s task, which they tried several times, was to pull the other candidates under the Renacci ticket. Only on a united front were they going to beat Mike DeWine’s establishment machine. And because everyone didn’t unite, now Republicans have a real problem holding the governor’s seat. Nan Whaley, the former gun-grabbing mayor of Dayton, won her race easily and will now go up against DeWine. So we end up with a Democrat and a Democrat, even though DeWine calls himself a Republican. We have seen enough of him to know he’s no Republican, and to all those conservatives who voted for him, you might as well have voted for Nan Whaley.   DeWine is a criminal, and he must be punished for what he did to Ohio over Covid. He did not win with any kind of mandate; he had less than half the total vote count for an incumbent, which is horrendous. Like me, many conservatives will never punch a ticket for DeWine. I will leave his space blank when it comes time to vote because I will never vote for the criminal Mike DeWine. And there will be many people like me who will do the same thing, which will only help the treacherous liberal Nan Whaley. If she wins, it’s on all those people who voted for Mike DeWine. 

I talked to many people on election day, and I was amazed at how many people were going to the polls uncertain who they were going to vote for in the senate race. Even with Trump’s endorsement of J.D. Vance, I still voted for Josh Mandel. I endorsed him early, and I liked some of the fights he got into. That’s what I think the senate needs, so I stuck with Josh Mandel. I liked J.D. Vance more and more as the race went on. I will have no problem voting for him in the senate race in November, and I’ll enjoy doing it. My wife liked so many of them and personally met the candidates that she struggled with the final decision. I spoke to people that election day who I would say are “extreme” political insiders, who should know their stuff, even if they were last-minute decisions on that race. The critical reason is that come in November, when these same people will have to choose between Mike DeWine, even with a Trump endorsement, they will likely struggle whether or not to actually put a check next to his name or to leave it blank. And I think as high as 20% of the 51% who voted for other people besides DeWine will not cast a decision for governor one way or another. The general convention in politics is that the Republican party will unite behind one candidate. But that is not possible with DeWine. Many of us held our noses and voted for him the first time. But he let us down, and we won’t be suckers again. So, where does that leave the party for that position? In big trouble. 

Of course, liberals are happy about this. They now have a real shot at putting a Democrat into an executive seat in an intensely red Trump state. It’s a lot like playing Fortnite’s Battle Royale and waiting in a bush until the end letting everyone else kill each other off. That is how DeWine won in the primary by hiding in a bush while Blystone attacked Renacci. Then Nan Whaley will do the same to DeWine. All she must do is show up; while in the Republican party, there is an obvious civil war, the squishy establishment types up against the MAGA movement. MAGA rallied behind DeWine the first time, but the Club For Growth types assumes that the same will happen again. Well, no, it won’t. The hatred of DeWine is deep. I think his wife makes good cookies; I’ve had a few. I think Mike DeWine is a nice guy. But he’s a criminal, and he must be punished for breaking our constitutional laws and hurting so many people with bad government policy. Nobody of a reasonable mind could vote for Mike DeWine, meaning many will just not vote this November due to their uncertainty about how to behave. If people struggled on who to vote for in the Senate primary, they would undoubtedly struggle over DeWine.

In my mind, Republicans surrendered the governor’s seat in 2022. I don’t think DeWine can win re-election. Not because Nan Whaley is a good candidate, but she will get her 45% by nature. Republicans could have 10% to 20% of their 55% who just leave DeWine blank on the ballot, as many did in this year’s senate race because they couldn’t make up their minds. But even if DeWine did manage to get re-elected, he still governs like a Democrat. So, Republicans lose either way. And if Joe Blystone were such a cowboy hat-wearing patriot, like he says he is, he would have seen what his name on the ballot was going to do to Ohio. By presenting a “rebel” vote, he just managed to get Democrats into a position to run the state. Hey, I’ve been through this before with Ross Perot. I worked on that campaign back in 1992, and I remember how it felt. It was a gut punch I will never forget; that is how the Clinton dynasty started, with less than 50% of the vote electing the president.  Joe Blystone knew where his polling was a week before the election. If he wanted to defeat DeWine, he should have joined Renacci.

Renacci should have been able to make that happen with a deal of some kind also. But their failure to unite and beat DeWine essentially just ruined the chance of Republicans running the governor’s seat and the media is loving it. Like the campers in Fortnite, they have just lurked in the bushes waiting for everyone else to kill each other off. And just like that, to the national media, Ohio is a very blue state, when in reality, it’s far from it. That is what happens when a political party is in a civil war and assumes that everyone will unite behind the eventual winner. These are not conventional times. And when there is a MAGA rebellion, failure to join the efforts will elect the establishment every single time. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Todd Minniear Seeks to Protect Liberty Township: When progressives are angry it means that the right thing is happening

I said it when he was overwhelmingly elected in November of 2021, and I’m still saying it, I love Todd Minniear as the new trustee of Liberty Township, Ohio. He ran on a freedom platform, and he’s living up to it by proposing a resolution at the May 3rd, 2022, trustee meeting to make Liberty Township a “constitutional township,” with a written promise. However, for some reason, the sweat bees of Lakota are going crazy over the idea, which is very interesting.   When I first heard about the resolution, I thought it was a great idea but wondered why it was needed. After all, isn’t all townships supposed to be “constitutional townships?” Well, yeah, of course. So why was something like this proposal needed at all? In 2020, when the government made lots of mistakes over Covid, it was up to the local governments to step in and challenge the governor’s actions. In this case, the governor took on emergency powers and bypassed the legislature to assume powers that Governor DeWine did not have. The lockdowns and mask mandates that destroyed so many businesses were unconstitutional. None of them could be defended in court, and so far, all the cases have been lost and looking back on what went wrong, it’s clear that local trustees should have pushed back against the governor. One person can’t be allowed to ruin the lives of so many people with a bad decision. That’s why we have a republic and not some flea-bitten democracy in America. We have a local government that is accountable to the people instead of some top-down kingship, which is how Mike DeWine behaved. Joe Biden crossed those same lines with vaccine mandates and mask requirements, built entirely off misinformation and science in the pocket of big pharma. 

Yet, the same people who have been giving Darbi Boddy of the Lakota school board a hard time for trying to remove the mask mandates in the school as one of her first official duties newly elected are now going after Todd. Notice how arrogant they are and how condescending in their online postings. These are the same people who think that mask mandates should be forever, that sexual indoctrination of our kids in grade school should be normalized and that Joe Biden should be president. These people have had control of the political process for far too long because they make so much noise, but they are actually a small minority. In a community like Liberty Township, they can find a few thousand people who think the way they do. But Todd Minniear and Darbi Boddy were elected by many more thousands, both gaining the most vote totals in the last election. So plenty of people want to see these kinds of challenges to federal and state power. People did not like the way things happened with Covid and how vulnerable they were to an out-of-control government, and they wanted to see these new politicians representing their interests. Of course, these progressive lunatics don’t want to lose control of the process. They love to harass people into doing what they want to see done with threats and public attacks, which is why it’s so wonderful that we finally have some politicians who are willing to do the hard work. When I heard Todd wanted to make this resolution, I didn’t think it was a big deal at all. But he knew that there would be those same opposing voices who would come armed with their name-calling and arrogant slanders. 

So why is something like this resolution for a “constitutional township” needed. Investors in the community, including homeowners, need to know that the trustees can provide a stable environment from intrusive government. Mike DeWine wasn’t accountable to people in Ohio, but their local representatives were. When a governor like DeWine takes action on his own to cut out our elected representatives in the legislature, we must have some mechanisms to resist the intrusion. For Todd Minniear, he looks to the great book The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates for how our constitutional republic is supposed to function. The book is a proper resistance to tyranny and a repudiation of unlimited obedience to civil government. The example given in the book is about a church leader who is taking money from the collection plate and should expect their congregation to question them should they skim from the pot. Human beings can fail, especially in intellect, and the purpose of our government is to keep innocent people free of those mistakes as much as possible. And as a trustee, Todd ran on a platform to keep Liberty Township free of those kinds of failures in government. Such a declaration like what Todd proposed is necessary so that the people of Liberty Township can feel some sense of protection from the government by their local representatives since our state and federal governments have failed us so obviously. 

The sweat bee progressives of Liberty Township are so upset because they have in mind the complete desecration of our republic and a merge into the chaos of a democracy which would then propel us into the Vico Cycle, which has destroyed so many civilizations over the years. The Vico Cycle is a theocracy, aristocracy, democracy, then anarchy. So if they are upset by this “constitutional township” resolution, that means it’s a great thing. When these people hate what you are doing, you know you are on the right side of history and doing what voters elected people like Todd Minniear to do. Traditionally, they have attacked people like Todd and Darbi, who have only been on the job for a few months. In Lakota, they already have a petition to get rid of her because she pushed for removing the mask mandates. And you see by their comments about this “constitutional township” resolution that they find it a threat to go back against centralized control. Because as liberals, that’s what they want, and for far too many years, politicians have given them the benefit of the doubt.   But we’ve seen where that takes us, and Covid showed us too much of what we didn’t want to know. Those same people felt the power of a centralized government that was out of control, and they liked it. They never want it to stop. And now that people are returning to normal and are electing people like Todd Minniear to represent them, instead of the classic politician of least resistance, they are worried about losing their power. 

All the noise aside, our task in Liberty Township is to provide stability for business investment and residential ownership. And to give that stability, we must remove the intrusive elements of government from some faraway land that is not accountable to us, who can then destroy our community with just the swipe of a pen. A mask mandate here, a lockdown there, a created crisis to hide bad inflation numbers, Liberty Township deserves to be free of the kinds of corruption we always see in centralized governments because accountability is often missing. Todd Minniear and the other Liberty Township trustees are accountable to their neighbors, which is how it should be. And the next time some government overreach occurs, we need to know that our trustees will follow the Ohio and federal constitutions. They didn’t in 2020. Nobody knew what to do because we had never seen such a thing before. But now we do know. We know all about Covid and how the government made it and managed it. And we saw what it did to all our lives. So, we deserve to be free of those intrusions in the future. And the more that the political left screams about it, the more of that kind of thing we should do because it just validates why it was so important in the first place. 

Rich Hoffman

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