Tag: Nancy Nix

Open Ohio Rally in Hamilton: George Lang, Mark Welch, and Nancy Nix join others with a hard truth

It was great to see so many friends in one place as was at the Open Ohio Rally on the steps of the Hamilton Court House on 5/9/20. I wasn’t sure what to expect, there was a similar rally in West Chester at the Voice of America Park, but I wanted to hear George Lang talk, so I went to the one in Hamilton. These freedom events were actually happening all across the state upset at the draconian measures that occurred under the Mike DeWine administration over its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Additionally, I was impressed with the media coverage. Most of the television media was there to cover the event as was the various newspapers and it appears they gave it a fair shake, as was obvious by the Channel 5 broadcast. But I really thought Mark Welch, Nancy Nix and George Lang did a great job speaking about why the lockdown measures needed to be lifted faster than they were and what the true impact of the government reaction to the coronavirus locally truly has been.

Even more impressive to me were the many people who drove by and honked in support. If you believe the polling most people are terrified to return to normal after two months of nothing but coronavirus discussion everyday on the news. Government has used these polls to justify this slow reopening of Ohio and other states around the country and the point of this rally was to demand that government move faster. I was moving around a lot and didn’t get much coverage of Nancy’s speech and Mark’s but I did get all of George’s and you can hear a lady in the background getting pretty rambunctious. She was mad at George because as a member of government she didn’t feel he was doing enough to get things moving, and she was even angrier that he wasn’t ready to cut off Amy Acton’s head and stick it on a pike. After his speech George did seek the woman out to talk to her. As it turned out, she wasn’t even in George’s district, she had a different rep whom she didn’t know. What she did know was that she was angry and she wanted someone to pay for what had happened to her and her country.

But it was in the little acts of rebellion that caught my attention, the many burnouts that were occurring there in front of the courthouse, the revved up engines, the hollering that was emitting from many open car windows as they drove by, people were pretty upset and it got the attention of the news. Going to the event I wasn’t sure how many people would turn out on a chilly May day, but it was an impressive gathering even though Governor DeWine had already announced the reopening schedule of Ohio—for many people it wasn’t fast enough. The main problem was that government had stuck itself in between people and their lives to a point where very uncomfortable truths were obvious, and the protesters at the rally understood those truths. They were an educated group who understood what was at stake and the politicians there to give their speeches were smarter than the average bear.

Normally at these kinds of things, the protestors are viewed as a little too extreme, but that wasn’t the case this time. If anything, the feeling was “why didn’t we do this sooner?” Well, people want to trust their government and part of the hurt in the protestors at this event was that they felt let down by people they wanted to trust, but found out they couldn’t. Its kind of like finding out that a spouse cheated on you. You still love them but they broke your heart and you’ll never feel the same way about them again. That was what was obvious at this Hamilton rally that I hadn’t seen before. These were established Butler County politicians who are very much mainstream Republicans who were heartbroken that the DeWine administration had screwed up so badly with the coronavirus outbreak that personal liberties were not respected in any context and that subtle disappointment was the theme of the day. The protestors understood that Amy Acton and her boss, Mike DeWine had really screwed the pooch on Ohio’s lockdowns, and had led the country to their own version of doom. DeWine’s Ohio went well beyond where Trump had started under the CDC guidelines and it went on for way too long, and now people were ready for a fight. By the way it looked to me, the people at that event were nice, normal people who would rather be thinking about baseball and backyard cookouts for Mother’s Day. Instead, they were a few weeks away from creating a militia and taking over Ohio government at gunpoint. The lockdowns couldn’t end any faster.

I wasn’t sure how people would feel about masks, social distancing, and other CDC countermeasures that had been talked about everyday for the last several months, but I’ll say it was nice to shake hands with people again. Most of the people didn’t bring masks, had no regard for social distancing at all and were more than ready to get back to a normal life. Professionally I have to be very aware of people’s feelings about those kinds of things since the government has scared everyone to death daily about the Covid-19 being a death sentence. But at the rally, people were done with that garbage and that was the best part of the day. The voodoo science of Doctor Doom Fauci from the CDC was in the rear-view mirror for those participants and they aren’t stupid people just being reckless. They are sick of the government lying to them to save their own ass from the terrible decisions they made to shut down our economy and ruin our lives these past several months. It was good to hear so many people utter common sense once again and regain their courage in the light of day.

Regardless of the intentions, the answer was never more clear. Government doesn’t work when it tries to rule the world through collective aristocracy and kingdom rule, which is what Mike DeWine naturally assumed under a crisis. He being a timid person himself put our state, nation, and culture under care based on his level of comfort regarding risk, and that was a disaster. Mark Welch, Nancy Nix, and George Lang all understand how dangerous that is and the results were all around us, and they were able to articulate the problem with clarity, which is a new thing in this age of Trump. Even with all the problems, the best thing about all this is that it has given people a real appreciation for their freedoms which they might have overlooked if not for the lockdowns. And now they were far more vigilant. This crowd at the Open Ohio Rally was not an anti-government Tea Party crowd, they were normal people pissed off at the intrusion of their personal liberties and that is a change. These were people who would have rather been doing anything else but attending a political rally, yet there they were. The DeWine lockdowns had inspired in them a new appreciation for their freedoms and a yearning for liberty that had otherwise been stuck in a closet like an unused toy, only rediscovered after years of neglect. And the results were inspiring and showed a hope for the future that otherwise might have never been.

Rich Hoffman

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Why Nancy Nix of Butler County is one of the Best: EdChoice and how Ohio needs a better funding model

I just want to say after seeing her at a number of political events recently, especially at places where George Lang and Mark Welch are present that Butler County is very lucky to have such a great treasurer in Nancy Nix on her third term. She is so good at what she does that I’d like to see her on her 100th term in the future. It is always wonderful to meet competent people who understand the details and Nancy Nix does. She is part of the puzzle that has come together so nicely in Butler County Ohio politics where a really good management team has risen to the occasion of our times to bring residents the best services possible that government could hope ever to provide. She has been on my mind a lot lately not just because she is a supporter of George Lang and Mark Welch, but because of something she said a few years ago about public school levies that are very relevant to the current challenge of EdChoice forcing local school systems to change the way they look at their funding.

Let’s face it, the whole progressive concept of attaching state money to a school located in a physical real estate concept was dumb from the beginning. It was just another brick in the road that has led to a pathway to hell. A lot of older people, like Bill Cunningham on WLW radio are struggling with this whole EdChoice concept because they only know of school systems being attached as the center of a community complete with sports programs and sentiments of school days long ago ended. These are the types of people where class reunions mean something, so it is painful for them to even consider that a child might want to pick up and move to another school across town and to take their state funding with them if that school isn’t very good. So far the focus of the argument is that the state report cards are unfair, but the bottom line is really in consumer confidence, do parents want to send their children to that particular school and how can the school market themselves in a way to make whatever the state report card says be the destination of hope for a parent and their child. In the future of education, it will take more than winning football programs, kids will actually have to learn things and be places that are good. A good school should not be determined by good real estate, it should be because the school managed itself well, spent their money wisely, and produced a superior product in a free market fashion.

Nancy has experience both at US Bank and as a Plant Controller so she gets money and how it’s a measure of value. I have worked with a lot of controllers and they are normally very boring personally, but beautiful people because their minds are very mathematical. Nancy has all the traits of the best of controllers, but she isn’t boring. She has a real passion for accounting and it radiates from her in such positive ways, so it surprised me when she came out publicly taking a position against several local government schools on their attempts to pass another school levy for what they were saying were, “safety needs.” Nancy stated, “Our homeowners are already heavily taxed, and its very difficult for many residents to make ends meet. My office receives handwritten letters daily from taxpayers needing help keeping up with their real estate taxes. Those who get too far behind can lose their home. Our county has passed 40 or so levies in the last 10 years and I’d argue some were for far more than they needed.” I found that very refreshing coming from a county treasurer who was looking at the big picture for a change and I’ve loved her ever since.

Her statements on that levy issue have come back to me now that all these lazy superintendents of some of the major government schools in the area, like Mason and Lakota have been complaining about losing their state funding due to EdChoice. What do they think is going to happen, that they are going to ask for more levies to cover their ridiculously bad management? Every controller I’ve ever dealt with would look at the way ANY public school is ran and demand an instant layoff to balance the books because the income is not conducive to proper balancing of the books. In fact, if Lakota had a proper accounting “controller” they’d have a shit fit on their hands due to the insane perception of what value is for the scope of the product, the education of the students based on state and local tax revenue chained to them like some masochist in a bondage chamber. The relationship with the community is about as dysfunctional financially as is conceivably possible and whenever it gets questioned the school hides behind the children imprisoned there due to their lack of choice in the matter—because the system gives money to the school, not the student. Government schools as Nancy pointed out, ask for too much too often. And I would add that they do it not because they need the money but because they know they are so inefficient that they take more money from people to manage their inefficiencies. Nancy has seen the backend of that problem when people write her to say their taxes are too high, and in too many cases, they lose their homes because the taxes are so terrible.

At the center of the problem is the perception of what the state should be giving to students, which is why Bill Cunningham’s troubles over the EdChoice issue is so comedic. The value of the education is just assumed as it has been set by the chaos of the government schools joined together by their collective bargaining agreements and the state is supposed to come up with a model that just rubber stamps that sum—whether its $6000 per student or $12,000. The numbers are inflated by these school districts to cover the high cost of their government employees and not the needs of the child. This is because of Parkinsen’s Law which states that the sum of needed money fills to the supply of funds. If a school levy passes and there is a cash infusion, then the union contracts will fill to consume the entire amount. Yet the kids are still coming out as bad as if they went to a third rate school, they can’t read, they can’t think, and they take on too many social beliefs rooted in liberalism. That’s not what we should be paying for. I would argue that if the state supplied only $2000 and schools had to compete for business that is in the marketplace, that the price to educate children would go down dramatically. That is when the state could provide a proper, constitutional, funding model.

Its just good to know that there are people like Nancy out there supporting other good Republicans like George Lang and Mark Welch, and many, many others. Good people tend to gravitate toward each other and she is one of the great ones. I appreciate that she is the treasurer of my county, and that our finances are in as good of hands as they could be. Most accounting types are alike in that they see beauty in numbers and can utilize that talent where needed. But Nancy has a different gear where she doesn’t just get lost behind some wire rimmed glasses and a big desk separating her from the world. She is connected and approachable, but more than anything, she does her work for all the right reasons and I’m glad she’s around.

Rich Hoffman