Tag: Newport

The Cincinnati Bridge Cost too Much and its Too Slow: There is too much administration these days that slows everything down, and puts unreasonable cost into everything

The groundbreaking ceremony for the new companion bridge alongside the aging Brent Spence Bridge, connecting Cincinnati, Ohio, to Covington, Kentucky, took place on May 8, 2026, leaving me shaking my head in a mix of cautious optimism and deep-seated irritation. For decades, this project has been the poster child for everything wrong with how America builds critical infrastructure these days. The price tag now sits at around $4.4 billion for the first major phase—including the new cable-stayed companion span, approach work, and some reconfiguration of the existing bridge—with the new structure slated to open to traffic in 2031. That is more than a decade since the groundbreaking and nearly thirty years since serious planning began in earnest back in the early 2000s. I remember pushing for better river crossings when I was politically active downtown in the 1990s, attending City Hall meetings day after day under multiple mayors and city council members. Back then, the Brent Spence was already showing its age, functionally obsolete, and choking on traffic that far exceeded its original design capacity from when it opened in 1963 at a mere $10 million cost. Kentucky’s commercial development folks in Newport and across the river were eager partners, seeing the economic spillover that a modernized crossing would bring to real estate and business growth on both sides. Yet here we are, decades later, finally breaking ground amid fanfare from governors Mike DeWine and Andy Beshear, former Senator Rob Portman, and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who all showed up to take credit for finally moving shovels after securing over $1.6 billion in federal grants from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. It is pathetic, really. There was zero excuse for this kind of delay, and the cost escalation driven by inflation, regulatory hurdles, and bureaucratic inertia is nothing short of irresponsible. 

I have spent a lot of time in that Cincinnati-Kentucky corridor over the years, and I can tell you from firsthand experience that the need for this bridge upgrade has been glaringly obvious since at least the 1990s. Traffic volumes on the Brent Spence now routinely exceed 150,000 vehicles per day, double what it was engineered to handle, creating bottlenecks that ripple through the economies of southern Ohio and northern Kentucky. When I was down in the region talking to Kentucky development people before Newport became the revitalized hotspot it is today, the conversation always circled back to the idea that a reliable, high-capacity crossing was essential for commercial flow, tourism, and residential expansion. Real estate deals hinged on it. Business relocation decisions depended on it. Yet politicians on both sides of the river dithered, studied, and deferred while the bridge aged into a liability. The groundbreaking feels like a hollow victory because it should have happened twenty years ago. Mitch McConnell himself noted the decades of headaches, and he played a role in finally unlocking federal dollars alongside Portman. But let us be honest: high-level dealmakers in public office should have cut through the red tape far sooner. Claiming credit now for something that was critically needed in the 1990s and 2000s rings hollow. The same crowd that delayed action is now patting itself on the back while everyday drivers and businesses foot the bill through higher taxes and lost productivity. 

What makes this saga even more galling is how it stacks up against other bridge projects I have seen or studied across the country. Consider the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge in Charleston, South Carolina, which replaced the old Cooper River spans. Groundbreaking occurred in 2001, and the cable-stayed beauty opened in July 2005—one full year ahead of schedule and under its roughly $700 million budget. Construction took about four years, and it delivered a magnificent structure that enhanced the historic district’s connectivity without the endless delays or ballooning costs we see today. Or look at the Mackinac Bridge up in northern Michigan, spanning the Straits of Mackinac to the Upper Peninsula. Built between 1954 and 1957 in just three and a half years at a total cost of about $100 million (in 1950s dollars), it remains a marvel of efficiency and engineering grace. Tolls helped pay it off, but the project moved with purpose and minimal bureaucratic interference. Even the old Cooper River Bridge that preceded the Ravenel was completed in just seventeen months back in the 1920s for around $6 million. These examples prove that America once knew how to build big things quickly and relatively affordably when the focus was on results rather than process. 

Contrast that with the Brent Spence Companion Bridge, where nearly twenty years of planning preceded even this groundbreaking, and the timeline now stretches to 2031 or beyond for full corridor improvements. The existing bridge itself was declared functionally obsolete in the 1990s, yet it took until the Biden administration’s infrastructure package—and McConnell’s bipartisan maneuvering—to secure the federal piece that finally broke the logjam. Inflation alone has driven costs up dramatically; nationwide highway construction expenses rose about 61 percent from 2020 to 2025, according to federal indices, and the Brent Spence price tag jumped from earlier estimates of around $3.6 billion to $4.4 billion for this phase. But inflation is only part of the story. The real culprits are the layers of regulation, environmental reviews, lawsuits, and bureaucratic oversight that have piled up since the 1970s. Laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1970, combined with state equivalents and court rulings that expanded citizen challenges to projects, turned what had once been straightforward engineering into a decade-long permitting gauntlet. Add in the Davis-Bacon prevailing wage requirements, limited competition among contractors, over-reliance on consultants by understaffed state transportation departments, and the tendency for projects to balloon during long design and review phases, and you have a perfect storm of delay and expense. 

I saw this regulatory bloat up close during my time at Cincinnati City Hall in the 1990s. Every proposed river crossing or infrastructure tweak sparked endless studies, public hearings, environmental impact statements, and legal threats from interest groups. Kentucky’s side was eager for development, but Ohio’s processes dragged everything into the mud. It was the same story with other local projects—always more studies, more delays, never faster action. Meanwhile, the Empire State Building in New York was completed in just 410 days back in 1930-1931, rising to 102 stories at a cost of about $40.9 million (roughly $600 million today). Crews added fourteen stories in ten days at peak. Storage was optimized, deliveries were just in time, and the focus was on getting it done—no endless NEPA reviews, no years of lawsuits over every rivet. The Mackinac Bridge faced turbulent waters and harsh winters, yet it was finished on schedule. Today’s projects? They take nine to nineteen years on average from planning to completion for major highways, according to federal estimates, with costs often tripling those in peer nations due to these procedural thickets. 

The toll debate adds another layer of absurdity to all this. Proponents of the Brent Spence project proudly note that it will remain toll-free, unlike the Ohio River Bridges Project in Louisville, where the Abraham Lincoln and Lewis and Clark bridges opened in 2016 as part of a tolled system that continues to collect fees until at least 2053. I find that Louisville’s setup reprehensible—preposterous, really. Drivers already pay high gas taxes that were supposed to fund infrastructure, yet now they face double-dipping through tolls on bridges that should have been built with existing revenue streams. My own recent experiences with toll roads only reinforce this frustration. On a trip to Washington, DC, I racked up about $18 in tolls using Route 66 from Fairfax County, which conveniently dumps you onto Constitution Avenue near the mall and the White House. It was worth it to avoid the nightmare traffic I endured the previous year on the George Washington Parkway along the river. But the system itself is maddening: no booths to pay at the spot, just an AI license plate reader and an online account you have to set up with a transponder, or risk violations. My time is worth far more than $18 an hour spent fiddling with websites and dashboards. Gas taxes are already high—federal at 18.4 cents per gallon since 1993, with many states adding more—and they were never properly indexed for inflation or for efficiency gains from better-mileage vehicles. The result is chronic underfunding that politicians try to patch with tolls or higher property taxes instead of cutting waste elsewhere. 

This addiction to high taxation and spending is the root problem. Government at all levels has become hooked on revenue streams that never quite cover the bloated projects they pursue. Gas tax relief proposals surface occasionally—some good folks in the Ohio Statehouse, like Thomas Hall, have pushed for it—but they rarely go far because the money gets siphoned into unrelated pet projects or administrative bloat. Property taxes in many areas, including around Cincinnati, feel punishingly high, funding schools and services, while infrastructure like bridges languishes. The same crowd that cheers the Brent Spence groundbreaking after years of delay now talks about how the Biden infrastructure plan made it possible, yet they could not get it done faster under previous administrations, either. It is too little, too late, and far too expensive. I drove the region constantly for business and personal reasons, and the traffic snarls around the Brent Spence affect everything from daily commutes to freight hauling worth over $1 billion annually across the river. People flying into Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport from southern Ohio know the pain: that 40-minute buffer you think you have can evaporate in congestion, forcing early departures and lost productivity. I had a client just last week racing for a flight after meeting me, banking on the 275 loop and western routes to beat the clock. The new bridge cannot come soon enough, but 2031 feels like an eternity, especially after we once built an icon like the Empire State in under 14 months. 

The human and economic costs of these delays are real. Businesses lose money idling in traffic. Families waste hours that could be spent productively. Emergency responders face longer response times. And the politicians who finally show up for the photo op act as if they have achieved something heroic rather than merely catching up to what should have been routine maintenance of critical national infrastructure. The Brent Spence Corridor is not some luxury—it is essential for the tri-state region’s economy, linking Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana in ways that affect supply chains nationwide. Yet the project’s slow pace mirrors a broader national malaise where soft costs—permitting, legal fights, consultant fees—now dominate budgets. State departments of transportation have shrunk in capacity over decades, outsourcing expertise and driving up prices through limited bidder pools. Procurement rules meant to ensure fairness often reduce competition, and the litigious environment lets anyone with a complaint tie things up in court for years. Inflation compounds the problem, but the underlying issue is that we no longer prioritize speed and efficiency. We prioritize process, equity checkboxes, and avoiding any possible offense to environmental or community interests, even when the overall public good screams for action. 

I have traveled enough to see magnificent bridges done right. The Ravenel Bridge stands as a graceful gateway to Charleston’s historic district, completed efficiently and beautifully. The Mackinac Bridge, with its soaring suspension design, opened the Upper Peninsula without bankrupting the state or dragging on forever. Even older projects like the original Cooper River spans showed what focused effort could achieve. America built the interstate system in the 1950s and 1960s with purpose, using dedicated gas tax revenue, before diversions and inflation eroded it. Today’s approach—layer upon layer of federal mandates, state reviews, and endless stakeholder input—has turned infrastructure into a jobs program for lawyers, consultants, and bureaucrats rather than a means of connecting people and moving goods. The result is projects that cost three times as much as they do in other developed nations and take far longer. For the Brent Spence, that means drivers will endure construction disruptions and detours for years, while costs climb further for the remaining corridor work, which remains unfunded in full. 

None of this is inevitable. Other countries manage complex builds faster and more cheaply by streamlining reviews, limiting frivolous lawsuits, and maintaining in-house expertise within their transportation agencies. Here, we could index gas taxes to inflation and usage, phase out inefficient tolling on essential crossings, and reform NEPA to focus on genuine environmental protection rather than indefinite delay. Cut the regulatory thicket that ballooned after the 1970s, restore competitive bidding without excessive reliance on consultants, and demand accountability from politicians who treat infrastructure as a campaign prop rather than a governing priority. I have seen the contrast in my own travels: toll roads in Virginia that work but sting because they supplement already-high gas taxes, versus free bridges that should be the norm. The Louisville tolls remain a cautionary tale of how users end up paying twice—once at the pump, again at the gantry—while politicians congratulate themselves for “innovative financing.” The Brent Spence team wisely avoided tolls this time, but the underlying addiction to funding persists. Property taxes remain too high in many jurisdictions, siphoning money that could have accelerated this very project years ago. 

As someone who has watched this region evolve from the inside—navigating City Hall debates, Kentucky commerce meetings, and endless traffic on I-71/I-75—I am glad the shovels are finally in the ground. The new companion bridge will be a cable-stayed marvel, easing congestion, supporting economic growth, and providing a safer, more reliable link for generations. But the pride politicians express at the ceremony rings false when you consider how long it took and how much more it costs than it should. This was not a triumph of vision; it was the bare minimum delivered far too late after years of inaction. The Empire State Building taught us that America could once build audaciously and rapidly. The Mackinaw and Ravenel bridges exemplified modern efficiency, even with environmental considerations. We can reclaim that spirit if we stop treating every project as an opportunity for endless process and start demanding results. Relief on gas taxes, smarter use of existing revenues, and slashing bureaucratic delays are not radical ideas—they are common sense. Until then, projects like the Brent Spence will continue to exemplify government at its most sluggish: too expensive, too late, and always promising better days that arrive only after the public has paid the price in time, treasure, and frustration.

The broader lesson here extends beyond one bridge. Across the nation, infrastructure decay and project bloat threaten competitiveness. The Highway Trust Fund, once robustly supported by gas taxes established during the Depression and expanded for the interstate era, now struggles because the levy has not kept pace with needs or economic reality. The federal gas tax, at 18.4 cents per gallon since 1993 and unadjusted for inflation or fuel-efficiency gains, leaves states scrambling with sales taxes, bonds, or tolls. Proposals for vehicle-miles-traveled fees or higher taxes surface regularly, but without spending discipline, they merely feed the beast. I support targeted relief—temporary gas tax pauses or rollbacks where feasible—because families and businesses already bear enough. The addiction to spending shows in unrelated boondoggles, administrative overhead, and failure to prioritize true needs like the Brent Spence. Politicians from both parties share blame: decades of gridlock until a big federal bill provided the excuse to act. Even then, costs rose, and timelines stretched. 

In my travels to Washington, DC, the toll experience crystallized the inefficiency. Route 66’s convenience came at a price, but the lack of easy payment options and the AI enforcement felt more like revenue capture than a fair user fee. Compare that to the free-flowing vision we should have for essential crossings. The Charleston and Michigan bridges stand as testaments to what is possible when focus replaces process. The Louisville toll bridges warn what happens when it does not. For Cincinnati and Kentucky, the new bridge will finally deliver relief, but only after unnecessary years of waiting and billions in inflated costs. I have seen the politics firsthand, the development potential squandered, and the traffic endured. It did not have to be this way. With smarter governance—less regulation, more accountability, and honest use of revenue—we could build the infrastructure our economy demands without the endless delays and overruns. The groundbreaking is a step forward, but it should have been taken long ago, cheaper, and faster. That is the real story behind why these bridges cost so much and take so long: not engineering limits, but human and governmental ones. And until we address those, the next critical project will follow the same predictable, expensive path. 

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Footnotes

1.  WCPO Cincinnati reporting on Brent Spence Companion Bridge cost and timeline, March 2026 updates.

2.  Official project timeline from BrentSpenceBridgeCorridor.com, including 2022 federal grant award.

3.  Kentucky Transportation Cabinet announcement, March 16, 2026.

4.  ENR and Business Courier coverage of cost escalation to $4.4 billion, April 2026.

5.  WLWT and AASHTO Journal on May 8, 2026, groundbreaking attendees and statements.

6.  Wikipedia and historical records on the Brent Spence original 1963 construction.

7.  Ohio River Bridges Project history via Wikipedia and RiverLink.org.

8.  Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge details from Wikipedia and South Carolina historical sources.

9.  Mackinac Bridge Authority historical records and construction timeline.

10.  Cato Institute analysis of 1970s regulatory changes impacting infrastructure costs.

11.  Pew Charitable Trusts report on factors inflating road and bridge maintenance costs, April 2026.

12.  Brookings Institution on highway construction cost drivers, August 2024.

13.  Empire State Building construction history from The B1M and historical accounts.

14.  PBS NewsHour on gas tax history and infrastructure funding challenges.

15.  Additional sources drawn from FHWA data, GAO reports, and state DOT analyses referenced in search results.

Bibliography for Further Reading and Research

•  Brent Spence Bridge Corridor Project Official Site. https://brentspencebridgecorridor.com/timeline/

•  WCPO Cincinnati. “What we know about the Brent Spence Companion Bridge cost and timeline.” March 2026.

•  Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. “Gov. Beshear: Brent Spence Bridge Companion Bridge Set To Begin.” March 16, 2026.

•  ENR. “Path Cleared for $4.5B Brent Spence Bridge Project as Costs Mount.” April 10, 2026.

•  Wikipedia. “Brent Spence Bridge” and “Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge” entries (accessed 2026).

•  Mackinac Bridge Authority. “History of the Bridge.” https://www.mackinacbridge.org/history/

•  Cato Institute. “Why Does American Infrastructure Cost More and Take Longer?” March 25, 2021.

•  Pew Charitable Trusts. “5 Factors Inflate Costs of Maintaining Roads and Bridges.” April 8, 2026.

•  Brookings Institution. “Why does building and maintaining highways in the US cost so much?” August 5, 2024.

•  The B1M. “Why can’t we build as fast as the Empire State Building?” February 14, 2023.

•  PBS NewsHour. “The gas tax’s tortured history shows how hard it is to fund new infrastructure.” June 22, 2021.

•  Ohio River Bridges / RiverLink. Project history and tolling details. https://riverlink.com/about/history/

•  Federal Highway Administration. National Highway Construction Cost Index data.

•  U.S. Government Accountability Office. Reports on environmental review timelines for transportation projects.

•  Additional economic analyses from Statecraft.pub and Practical Engineering on infrastructure cost overruns.

•  Historical texts on 1930s skyscraper construction and 1950s interstate-era projects for comparative context.

Rich Hoffman

More about me

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

About the Author: Rich Hoffman

Rich Hoffman is an aerospace executive, political strategist, systems thinker, and independent researcher of ancient history, the paranormal, and the Dead Sea Scrolls tradition. His life in high‑stakes manufacturing, high‑level politics, and cross‑functional crisis management gives him a field‑tested understanding of power — both human and unseen.

He has advised candidates, executives, and public leaders, while conducting deep, hands‑on exploration of archaeological and supernatural hotspots across the world.

Hoffman writes with the credibility of a problem-solver, the curiosity of an archaeologist, and the courage of a frontline witness who has gone to very scary places and reported what lurked there. Hoffman has authored books including The Symposium of Justice, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, and Tail of the Dragon, often exploring themes of freedom, individual will, and societal structures through a lens influenced by philosophy (e.g., Nietzschean overman concepts) and current events

The New Mob is No Different than the Old Mob: The bigger the government, the more mobsters there are to exploit it

Organized crime never went away; it just moved into the globalist movement. The old mobsters like Moe Dalitz from Cleveland and Screw Andrews from Cincinnati are now Larry Fink, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerburg. When people get a lot of money and use it to buy our government, it’s all the same game of corruption.  What we have witnessed with the advent of technology is that the lazy, the corrupt, the malicious, and outright evil people of the world still rally together to use mass to exploit easy living for themselves through crime and jeopardy.  Just as during western expansion, Jesse James and the gang would gather with force to rob a bank or hold up a train and steal the wealth from the inhabitants.  Mobsters always sought ways to profit off sin to exploit an endeavor, and what we see happening now globally is no different.  Technology and travel allowed them to do so on larger scales, along with centralized banking.  In other words, the bigger the government and the more organized it is, the more tempting the target is to exploit to acquire wealth as quickly as possible.  So, of course, governments would be targets for mobster activities.  Why would you hold up victims on a train when you can use the power of the government to do it for you?  All you have to do is control the government, and that is the easy part because there are always whores of some kind looking for an easy buck.  Living in Cincinnati, I have had a front-row seat to some of this mobster behavior.  Some of the biggest mobsters of their time spent a lot of time in Cincinnati and Newport, Kentucky, because it was such a centralized hub within the country.  Like anywhere where there is a lot of money; of course, organized crime elements would grow to exploit it as much as possible, which they did. 

I think it was very fortunate that I grew up the way I did.  I have always had a bold personality, and there was never a part of my life where I faced some ramifications for having it.  Instead, I have lived a vibrant life full of massive experiences.  And when danger and dollars were put before me to see if I dared take them, I was always yearning for the opportunities that came with both.  Not so good for the crime, and of course, that caused rifts that led to violence.  Which I was always perfectly fine with.  I enjoyed it.  If I could be said to have an addiction of some kind, it would be danger and it took me many years to find good ways to satisfy that part of my nature.  It’s a topic that came up in a conversation I had where someone asked me how many times I have had a gun pulled on me because they expected the answer to be zero.  Instead, I had to think about it and realized I couldn’t count them all.  It’s not like it was every day, but it was so often that I couldn’t think of them all, even after several days.  Whenever I came up with a number over twenty, I thought of new times.  And for me, it was never a regrettable experience but an excellent opportunity that made my life better as a result.  So, I don’t look back on those experiences with apprehension, but conquerable moments that made me better.  I learned firsthand that mobsters were not as brutal or scary as portrayed in the movies. Instead, at their core, they relied on group affiliation to fill in insecurities in their public lives that led to easy money because they were essentially lazy.  Their only power was fear and the ability to manipulate other people with even less courage than they had.  People sell themselves to the “take” way too easily, and often.   

Naturally, as our world grew smaller with technology and transportation, those types of people sought to exploit more people easily with a centralized government.  The old mob guys, and I met several of them in Cincinnati, mainly when I worked as a busboy at the Mike Fink restaurant on the Ohio River, was no different from the billionaires and manipulators of the world today, such as Larry Fink, Bill Gates, and Klause Schwab.  People who met Moe Dalitz from the Cleveland Four would think of him as a very charitable person involved in many front groups that everyone would recognize.  He was a trendy guy who would essentially become Mr. Las Vegas.  But he was still a thug, just as Larry Fink of BlackRock is today.  They run front organizations that give them the appearance of legitimacy.  But they made their money off the crimes of their mobster behavior, organized crime.  The activity of washing money through Ukraine by starting wars and profiting off the misery would classify as a classic mobster endeavor.  The only reason they used to be regional is that the technology and transportation at the time kept them from getting too far from a central location.  Back in the period known as the golden age of mob behavior, from the 1920s through the 1960s, planes were more challenging to get around the earth as fast as they can today, and cars were big and slow.  There weren’t highways like we have these days where you can be in another state within five hours of traveling all day, seven days a week.  Now, mobster types can hide in the mountains of Davos with all the other international gangs, such as the Khazarian Mafia, the Knights of Malta, The Jesuits, and the World Economic Forum.  Because of technology, those people have found each other easier and aligned for their crimes against humanity, which is in their nature to do.  I only mentioned my experience because I know better and understand the thinking that attracts those people to do what they do.  And why they point guns at people, hoping to use force to gain compliance. 

I also learned that the only thing those people understand is force.  They don’t respect sympathy or pleading.  They only understand force.  I’m still around to tell some of these stories because of force.  The secret to understanding this realization is that they join mobs for the same reason people join labor unions: they hope to collectively bargain for an easier life that pays them the most.  They want as much money as possible by doing as little as they can get by earning it.  And joining a mob, whether the racket is hustling girls, gambling, or bootlegging, or whether it’s drug trafficking, stealing tax money through front group organizations that get sizable grants from the government, and the kickbacks flow into the pockets of those granting the money.  Wherever there is a lot of money and access, there will be some organized crime element to exploit it and the people in the way of getting it. And there is no appeal to their “better” natures.  They will do anything to acquire easy money.  And demonizing cash doesn’t stop the behavior.  Only force manages such thugs.  There is no way to use bigger government to protect yourself from their attempts at organized crime, which Big Pharma is only a modern version of the kind of businesses that Moe Dalitz used to run.  The bigger and more powerful government only makes it easier for more mob types to exploit innocent people for their desires to gain power and money as quickly as possible, which is at the core of everything BlackRock does in the world from a money management standpoint.  And they are no different than what the old mobsters of memory did every day.  The only difference is that technology allows them to do it on a bigger scale, and our understanding of those scales is just catching up to reality.   

Rich Hoffman

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

The Modern Mobsters: When the crimes of the Kennedy Assassinations and the Arson at the Beverly Hills Supper Club were never punished, they expanded their attacks

Someone will have to explain to me what the difference is between organized crime bosses like Moe Dalitz, Frank Costello, Screw Andrews, and Red Masterson and current personalities like George Soros and his boy Alex, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerman, and Larry Fink of BlackRock, are.  Because, like those old gangsters, these modern names use power and money to buy up “cops on the take” and use that power and leverage for organized crime.  In the mob tradition, they were after money, women, and regional power.  In the most recent, it’s ideological, their version of how a society should function, but the methods are the same.  The power gained and how it is used are  no different.  And the way to beat them is the same way that the mob was beaten and prosecuted into hiding underground.  This leads me to discuss a remarkable book by Peter Bronson, a former writer and editor at the Cincinnati Enquirer and a person I personally very much respect.  A few years ago, about the time that the insurrection of Trump occurred when Biden was put in the White House by many of these modern mobsters who have bought their way into controlling our government, I heard Peter doing media rounds for one of his books, Forbidden Fruit: Sin City’s Underworld and the Supper Club Inferno.  I picked it up and read it, but at that time, I wasn’t sure how to tie it into everything we were experiencing.  However, now that some time has passed, and we have the benefit of hindsight, it’s quite clear just how important this book is and needs to be to a lot of shell-shocked voters out there.  Any doubts I might have about talking about how the mob moved from the organized crime of gambling and bootlegging into all other aspects of government activity are now long gone.  I don’t think Peter meant to write the pretty crazy book he did, ending with a serious discussion about ghost hauntings on the hill that looks over Southgate, Kentucky up into Newport and Cincinnati.  But it starts with the history of the mob in Newport, why they were there, and how powerful they were. 

More specifically, Peter’s book Forbidden Fruit is about the ways that the mob plotted to kill the Kennedys as president and attorney general because they were messing around with the mob ownership in Newport, Kentucky, which a lot of people don’t know much about.  Well, I do because I worked for some of these characters in Newport and Covington on the riverboats The Islands, which was owned by Dick Schilling, who was the former owner of the Beverly Hills Supper Club, and Mike Finks as a busboy.  Dick Schilling, as the book confirms, was burnt out of his club, based on testimony that was never collected by the governor of Kentucky, who was under mob control, to get to the truth of why one of the biggest tragedies in the history of America occurred in 1977 when the club was burnt to the ground.  The official story was that it was an electrical fire.  But nobody ever proved it, because they didn’t want to know, that it was sabotage of the wiring meant to cause an overload on the circuits and start a fire that would burn Schilling out of the property because the mob wanted it back.  Dick had made the place profitable after years of stagnation, and the mob wanted a cut.   But Schilling wouldn’t sell, so the mob sent a few goons in to overload the wiring in the Zebra room disguised as air conditioner repairmen.  But the dummies messed up the detonation time to PM instead of AM, and the fire started while the place was full of people, killing 165 of them tragically. 

For a while, I lived next to the site of the Supper Club and was fascinated with the hauntings in the area, including Bobby Mackey’s down the hill where, in another life, I had bought a mechanical bull with some friends for a business enterprise we were involved in.  It was in the basement where all the haunted activity was at its highest.  As Peter alluded to in his book, I tend to think that hauntings like there are presently at the Beverly Hills site in Newport, which are older than the buildings on the site and predate Indian occupation of the land, are a source of a lot of psychological trouble in people over a long period of time.  I could point to a similar haunting spot in Lindenwald near Hamilton, Ohio, across the river from Fort Hill, which I say, based on evidence, is part of a mound complex of large giant people who lived in the region more than five thousand years ago.  Their ghostly presence was captured in the Bible as the giant people referred to them in the land of Canaan.  Whatever the case, the minds of humanity are still haunted and manipulated by such places, Newport was built and the people haunted to the point where, in the pre-Vegas days, the mob ran it as the sin city of the world.  And the Supper Club represented the height of that greatness before the mob came along and killed off the Kennedys and burnt out Dick Schilling, who eventually moved his operations down to Louisiana to start the first of the legalized gambling operations that now permeate the country. 

Many people don’t know just how much Governor Rhodes of Ohio was involved with the mobsters of his time, especially the Moe Dalitz-controlled Cleveland Four.  Understanding how these mob bosses owned politicians and worked against the Constitutional protections we are all supposed to be functioning from explains a lot about what we are seeing today, where even larger crimes than the Kennedy assassinations and the Beverly Hills Supper Club were covered up by law enforcement and the media culture terrified that the mob would make them their next target for killing.  Since they got away with it over many decades, these mobster types have moved into government to run attorney generals and regional district attornies, as we see applied to Trump.  And the people who directly control the strings are figures of modern crime like the Soros family, Bill Gates, and the whole Epstein Island entourage of movers and shakers.  Their most recent crimes, such as election fraud in 2020 and the creation of the Covid bioweapon that was released from China to suspend constitutional protections and commit even larger mass crimes, were purposely positioned to overwhelm our legal system.  And many of those tactics were learned from these mobsters in Newport, Kentucky.  The crimes they got away with created the playbook we are seeing now.  What’s astonishing about the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire was that it was a very high visibility target that involved a lot of money and political entanglement.  And it took everyone over 40 years to piece together the evidence, which is only now being talked about rationally.  It took many of the mob characters to die off and their sins to be buried with them before people could discuss the issue of the truth that was concealed.  Just as the mob killed JFK in a joint venture with the CIA and FBI to contain a plot to kill Castro.  And the FBI played along because J. Edgar Hoover was a transvestite, and the mob had dirt on him, and they controlled the FBI.  And why did Governor Carroll adopt the mob position against Schilling? Well, he was a closet homosexual, and at that time, there was quite a stigma about it.  And that is how the mob controls people; they provide the sin, they take pictures for extortion, and they bypass our constitutional protections because they own the politicians that are supposed to represent us in a Republic.  But what we have today are crimes on top of crimes loaded with compromised people now controlled by the same kind of money as it was in the past.  But the motives are all the same. 

Rich Hoffman

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