Tag: overmanwarrior

The West Chester Township Trustees Play the Shell Game: Meet the pinball of Beckett Ridge

Step right up—gather around—the West Chester Township Trustees of Ohio under the presidential leadership of Catherine Stoker and initiated by Lee Wong are giving away $4,690.00 to anyone who can claim they have been hit by a car at intersections like the one at the corner of Eagleridge Drive and Eaglet in the community of Beckett Ridge. If an example of why government fails time and time again at all levels requires proof, the new crosswalk which now crosses Eagleridge Drive is the perfect example. It shows how good intentions end up consuming tax payer resources because the parties involved are functioning from a failed philosophy of collectivism as opposed to individualism. In the case described below it would appear that Trustee Lee Wong colluded with a Mr. Cho to arrange before a West Chester Trustee meeting to have a crosswalk built at tax payer expense and Trustee Stoker was in agreement. The two trustees used the West Chester Township meeting simply as a formality to play out their intentions and within 19 business days the concrete was poured and the lines painted for yet another cross walk in the community of West Chester.  The Township paid Jackson Construction, Inc., $4,690.00 for the job. 

The problem with projects like this crosswalk is that no matter how it’s looked at from any angle, whether it is from the politicians, the residents, the taxpayers, or to eyes from outside the community the situation appears to be well justified. During the meeting where Mr. Cho made his case to the trustees, he stood before them claiming to be blind from diabetes, desiring to live a full life by being allowed to walk around his community but couldn’t because he is was getting hit by cars all the time. He claimed he could not walk on the grass to arrive at the sidewalk on the west side of Eagleridge for some unknown peril, and that even if he did attempt such a thing the cars driving up and down the road would mow him down without concern. So he asked for speed bumps or some other measure to ensure his “safety.” The suspicion of the entire speech manifested when Mr. Cho showed up late for the public comment portion of the meeting and Trustee Wong personally identified Mr. Cho. Trustee Wong and Stoker then put Trustee Lang on the spot to ask for an exception that Mr. Cho be allowed to speak, which no fair-minded person could turn down. But after Mr. Cho spoke a woman who came with him also took to the podium which according to Trustee Stoker was very unprecedented, yet she encouraged it happily as though she already knew the content of the speech—which of course she did. The woman’s name was Ms. Bentley and she has children who attend Freedom Elementary at the top of Eagleridge which is one of the Lakota Schools in the area that has suffered from the busing cuts made by that school district to cover their extraordinary salaries leaving many children walking to and from school. Ms. Bentley stated that she was worried for the safety of her children—and who can argue that?

After listening to all the comments made by Mr. Cho, Ms. Bentley and Trustee Wong it painted a picture in my mind that Mr. Cho was simply a pinball in the dangerous pinball machine of Beckett Ridge, West Chester. Every time he stepped into the street he was being run down by vigilante motorists. Trustee Wong even stated that at times Mr. Cho had been hit by cars so hard that he ended up on the hoods of the cars that ran him over. As the proceedings went on during that first meeting occurring on April 24th of 2012 it became obvious to me that Trustee Stoker knew all the facts before the meeting even started and simply used the trustee meeting to build official consensus for a project she planned to use later as a bullet point to her work as a trustee. Building a crosswalk is simply too tempting for a politician who can spend $5000 of tax payer money on a blind man like Mr. Cho. Politicians after all must appear to have compassion for members of the community, which I believe Wong and Stoker do, but for all the wrong reasons. The problem here is not the compassion; it’s the obvious attempt by Trustee Wong to use his influence as a trustee to help his friend Mr. Cho with a personal problem that is the responsibility of the private citizen.

There are many options available to Mr. Cho. The street he lives on is a quiet boulevard. He should be able to walk down it with no problem. And when it comes to crossing the perilous Eagleridge Drive I sat at that intersection on my motorcycle during rush hour and counted 7 cars in a 15 minute period. Mr. Cho volunteered to paint the lines on the road himself so he can see well enough to paint; he should be able to cross Eagleridge Drive without any trouble. But then on the other side there would be a problem for Mr. Cho. Eagleridge has a tremendous curb that rises about 4 inches and would require Mr. Cho to step up and over onto the treacherous grass extending a few feet to the sidewalk beyond. God forbid he be forced to walk in the grass, for he might slip and fall, and get a boo-boo upon his elbow. Then he might sue the township for not providing adequate safety for him every time he leaves his home.

When I drive from my home to the Tri County area which is a ten-mile stretch of road I pass no fewer than 10 traffic lights on my way. Most of those traffic lights are the result of situations just like this crosswalk issue where a minority of public speakers came forward and spoke about how dangerous a particular intersection was, then over dramatized the situation for theatrics on behalf of the politicians involved. The politicians looking for easy political points and a pile of tax payer money at their fingertips often can’t resist the temptation to capitalize on such requests and over time, these parasitic politicians have given our society an overly regulated world with stop lights, stop signs, and cross walks at virtually every turn. The situation in Butler County is so extreme that it is now impossible to travel from west to east or east to west intersecting the very long road of By-pass 4 since the engineers of that redeveloped thoroughfare have taken a page from the progressive California playbook in trying to eliminate left turns completely—to save driver side impacts from crashes. The situation is insane on By-pass 4 as a result of pandering politicians and the safety addicts who speak at these public meetings. Little by little, these timid creatures of suburbia destroy the world around them with their requests to be insulated from all danger, which the pandering politicians are more than happy to oblige so they can pat themselves on the back with money they consumed from the public treasury to paint some lines on a road, and pour a little concrete so people like Mr. Cho don’t have to walk in the grass.

The crime here is in the politicians themselves looking to use township money to show off for their neighborhood friends exploiting handicaps so that they can be heroes at the expense of the unfortunate. The deal with Mr. Cho had already been worked out by Mr. Wong and Stoker before the trustee meeting even took place. The speech at the meeting was just the formality of building public consensus. The same behavior goes on in school board meetings where the decisions are already made by the board before the meetings ever take place. The public meetings are only designed to give the illusion of public transparency. That’s what is called in Washington politics a “back room deal.” And nobody ever questions it because it would be political suicide to draw attention to a blind man who simply wants the “freedom” to walk about his community and is just asking the local politicians to help him. But that’s not what is going on. Not only was the political process compromised in the creation of the crosswalk at the corner of Eagleridge and Eaglet by pandering to the few at the expense of the many, but the message to the community itself is wrong. Yet again a few, weak and feeble individuals have been allowed to dictate the shape and pace of our community, using compassion to disguise narcissism. Politicians use the weak and feeble to advance their social status with tax money to do the deed. In government, nothing happens as fast as this crosswalk did. The speed is the indicator that it was Trustee Wong and Trustee Stoker who desired to exploit Mr. Cho so that they could score political points not just with the community at large, but with themselves. Building the crosswalk to them is just the form of social justice that may open the gates of heaven using $5000 of tax payer money to purchase the ticket—and that is why the newest crosswalk in the community of Becket Ridge is one more example of tyranny migrating like a blob across the individual lives of West Chester citizens everywhere who surrendered a subtle freedom they didn’t even know they had till it has been erased forever.

Oh—and for those reading this who think this is like the Shakespeare play Much Ado About Nothing, let me direct your attention to one final fact that reveals the strings of manipulation and who pulls them–the request by Mr. Wong for the crosswalk at Eagleridge and Eaglet in front of the West Chester Trustees took place on April 24th as stated. Yet six weeks prior there was communication with Greg Wilkens of the Butler Country Engineer’s office which said:

Greg, Thank you for the returned call re: crosswalk at Eaglet and Eagleridge, I understand the situation.

I asked Tim Franck to contact Matt and see what a crosswalk would look like with all its approach requirements and about how much it would cost. I know your staff is so busy so I hope you don’t mind me asking. If Matt can’t, no problem, please just let me know.

I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner, but we took a long weekend and we are down in Clearwater, FL.

That communication was written by Judi Boyko West Chester Township Administrator.  Here is the actual email, just so it cannot be said that what has been stated is a fiction. 

 

Now, with what you have seen here, go back and watch the collection of videos above so you can listen to the West Chester Trustees for yourself.  Notice how Trustee Wong uses the standard progressive mode of class warfare when he can’t answer Trustee Lang’s questions.  Anyone who lives outside of West Chester would find it absolutely laughable that Wong would even attempt to describe Beckett Ridge as a community of less economic statues.  But, these are the standard progressive arguments no matter what the situation, and the facts speak for themselves. 

Mr. Cho in the end got his crosswalk. The cement was dry before the final meeting was concluded. It is my opinion that all the trustees were extremely nice about the entire ordeal, especially Trustee Lang. I can’t say I would have been so sympathetic. My suggestion to Mr. Cho, the self-professed pinball of the treacherous Beckett Ridge pinball machine would have been to wrap him in bubble wrap for his own protection so he could bounce off all those cars without causing injury to himself, or the cars.

  ____________________________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!

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

American Families Lost 40% of their Wealth: The little bits of socialism in West Chester

I received a Twitter feed the other day indicating American families had lost 40% of their wealth during the recession (depression) that occurred from 2007 to 2010. The same people who are scratching their heads now wondering how this has happened are still not talking about the obvious problem in Europe where similar numbers are being reported. The common problem that permeates all the economies involved in this world-wide recession is a global commitment to socialism that has caused these losses, yet nobody will call it out by name.

The depression of 2007 to present has been caused by socialism and the commitment to Keynesian economics. For the same reason that academics have been reluctant to reveal scientific discoveries that shatter their previously published studies, academics have been very reluctant to take responsibility for their commitment to socialism and communism in our public schools. Millions of college students have went through communism basic training in college, and are now expected to function in a capitalist economy, and they don’t know how—so the American economy is failing, because education failed The United States population, just as it has the people of Europe. European socialists actually expect to retire at age 55 only to become leeches for the second half of their lives off their collective societies.

To provide an example of how socialism has impacted our local economy I’ll repeat a story I heard from a business owner while having lunch the other day. The owner complained to me that he had advertised for his business in his parking lot on Sundays, just like many of his neighboring businesses have; only he was stunned to find that one of the zoning employees for the Township of West Chester cited him for the infraction. The owner asked why he was being picked on instead of the other businesses, and there wasn’t a good answer, because it is a commitment to socialism that the young zoning employees are committed to, not capitalism, and this particular business was being targeted because two of the three trustees of West Chester do not like the kind of people who come to this particular business, so regulation is used to make the act of doing business difficult. The politicians involved hope that the owner will eventually give up and go out of business. So in this way, local politics can pick winners and losers and those who want to stay in business learn that if they want to play ball, they have to grease some squeaky wheels in politics.

There are 5 zoning employees in West Chester, most of them hired during the building boom of the last decade. Many of them are no longer needed, but because they are government employees, they are nearly impossible to get rid of, so now they have nothing to do but create needless regulation and enforce those regulations on the businesses they see their bosses—the trustees—do not approve of, so they can maintain their jobs and appear to be effective. In this case none of the individual players are evil. But the system they are functioning under is socialism, and the collective nature of that philosophy is evil, because it allows a hierarchy class to pick winners and losers. In the case of the business owner I was having lunch with, he was being punished for being the “wrong” kind of business as determined by the hierarchy of two out of three West Chester trustees and the zoning employees were using regulation to decide what kind of business succeeds or fails in West Chester.

http://www.westchesteroh.org/CDPlanning.cfm

This isn’t just isolated to West Chester where zoning employees use regulation to control the flow of business. Just to the north in Liberty Twp, a Frisch’s restaurant that is due to open in August of 2012 experienced similar harassment. That restaurant almost didn’t happen because the builders were at odds with the zoning employee in Liberty Twp over whether or not that particular restaurant could have the famous Big Boy statue in front of their store. A regulation created by Jonathan West who is heavily petitioned against by several builders to be removed from power because of his open abuse of building investment in the region prevented the construction of the new Frisch’s for well over a year basically due to the issue of the famous statue. This same Liberty Twp zoning employee has went to great trouble going around the township harassing businesses in the same way that West Chester zoning employees have.

I’ve spoke to non business residents about these zoning issues and they almost always say to me, “but if it wasn’t for zoning, those greedy builders could do whatever they want and would only get richer.” And there you have it. That is the cause of the 40% loss in American wealth—the American people have been taught to distrust businessmen and business women, corporations, builders, developers, inventors, anyone who is rich—they are all targets from all the little socialists who seek government jobs and a lifetime of justifying their jobs with coercion sucking up to the political class. In the case of the zoning employees, it is the majority rule on the Township trustee boards who decides what businesses will be heavily regulated and which will not just like cops pull over sports cars with young 25-year-old men more often than the middle-aged tax payer in a “family car,” because the regulation is a “nudge” created by the collective to help shape society into the vision of the political class. The trustees have to show the community that they are doing tasks the voters can see, so they use regulation to give themselves performance measures and they use those same regulations to pick successful businesses and failed businesses. The zoning people just like the police “enforce” the law of politicians so that socialism can grow.

None of this is intentional. Human beings do what they are taught, and unfortunately for more than 40 years, socialism has been taught to the American people, and they have accepted it thinking they were being patriotic American citizens. They did not see the red flag of the Soviet Union, or China, so they did not think they were advocating socialism on a clear path to communism when they embraced the tyrannical polices of township trustees and their zoning employees. But it is socialism that makes the cost of doing business either prohibitive or conducive, and if a business is out of favor with the “political class” even in a conservative area like West Chester or Liberty Twp they will be put out of business with excessive court costs and fines. There is simply too much government that have their hands in too many businesses, and there are too many people who believe that regulation protects them from “greedy” rich people who just want to make money.

Schools have taught generations of young people who “making money” is a bad, evil act. Yet the world is shocked when they learn that socialism in Europe is bankrupting the Eurozone and America has lost 40% of it’s wealth in just 4 short years. Lack of wealth creation is the natural byproduct of having an anti-wealth creation mentality in society, and most Americans are just a little bit guilty of accepting socialism without realizing they are accepting a parasitic political philosophy that is inadvertently destroying their lives. But the guiltiest of this serious crime are those who know better, but advance socialism anyway because they consider themselves good little Democrats, progressives, ex-hippies, or civil rights crusaders. They refuse to admit to themselves that it is their political philosophy that is ruining the world, and they deny the fact to themselves. They are no different from the overweight person who claims to be on a diet and orders a tremendous amount of fattening food at a restaurant but justifies their diet by ordering a “diet” soda. Those same types of people claim they are committed to capitalism, yet they want huge government employee expansion, wonderful federal pensions, and short—nonproductive work hours—then they wonder why no wealth has been created and businesses are failing. They also wonder why nobody is stepping forward to start a business when they have zoned land to attract such development. The reason is socialism. More often than not, the zoning administrator who drives around on a Sunday afternoon picking on businesses who break their zoning regulations are making more money than the owners of such businesses by the time the business owner follows all the federal regulations, state regulations, and community regulations, then pays for their accountants, their attorney fees and pads the pockets of the local politicians by donating tremendous amounts of money to the charities in fashion at the time. It is the little socialist government zoning worker who sits at their desk all day maintaining their Facebook accounts and little else who make much more money at the end of the day while the business owner worries each night before he goes to bed how he can stay open for one more day, or one more week.

Hmmmmm, I wonder why America is losing its wealth?

____________________________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!

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

The Moai of Easter Island HAVE BODIES: More unlocked mysteries for the human race

For many years the mysterious statues of Easter Island have been shrouded in secrecy. Over 1000 Easter Island statues litter the tiny island completely devoid of trees and life. These statues have been best known to be giant heads sitting on the surface of the island and defied logic because many of them were so large they would have required thousands of human beings to maneuver the giant statues.

The pictures shown here are from the Easter Island Statue Project website, www.eisp.org where they have managed to excavate two of those giant statues and discovered that the only part of the statues seen were not just heads sitting haphazardly across the surface of Easter Island, but that the heads had bodies with torsos over 7 m tall. This is an astonishing archeological discovery. It is further evidence that life in the ancient South Pacific was not a primitive one, but a very sophisticated society capable of great technology, sophisticated religion, and multicultural cooperation. For more information see my article on Malden Island. CLICK HERE.

As archeologists excavated these giant statues they found that the tall bodies actually rested on a kind of pavement many feet below the earth’s surface, and many theories of the Eastern Island people were shattered. We were to believe that a primitive people left South America in canoes traveling 2,300 miles off the coast of Chile across the Pacific Ocean to arrive at a tiny island that could be missed easily with an airplane. To find such an island with a boat is an extraordinary feat, but to find it and begin erecting these giant statues for no particular reason defies logic. The revelation that most of these statues have been buried beneath more than 15 feet of soil indicates a truly spectacular geological disaster that would have covered the island with sediment on a scale that was epic. But in so doing, it preserved a lifestyle that might have otherwise been wiped away from the earth forever with natural erosion.

This archeological discovery is just more proof that much of what we believe we have achieved in human science, has not yet began to scratch the surface. The statues on Easter Island have been available for study for over 100 years, yet it is only now that we have discovered that they have these vast complicated bodies submerged below the ground of the island. The question begs to be answered, if such large statues were ignored for over 100 years under heavy scientific scrutiny, and the terrain was so easily altered upon which the sculpture of the Eastern Island statues existed, then what lost relics exist upon the earth that are completely lost to human eyes and have yet to be discovered?

As I look at the photos of these statues that I have gazed upon all my life, and I note that what I saw was only a fraction of the overall statue, as most existed under the surface it serves as a metaphor for our infantile science that is only scratching the possibilities of understanding that await mankind. The statues themselves are situated on the triangular-shaped island upon the rim of a volcano of which the island has three, Rano Kau, Maunga Terevaka and Katiki. Easter Island once bestowed lush vegetation and timber, but today that is all but gone. Seeing how the statues are buried now makes me think that one of the three volcanoes erupted violently killing all life on the island including the vegetation. The soil compositions burying the statues so deeply are probably the result of many volcanic eruptions and tsunamis that rushed into the craters of the dead volcanoes and flooded them.

Now that archeologists have dug to the bottom of these statues to the original plaza of these temples which apparently housed these statues geologists should be able to properly date the Easter Island culture, which I predict will now be several thousand years old instead of the original date somewhere between AD 400 to AD 690. The statues were called moai and range in weight from 20 tons to 90 tons. Some are up to 32 ft tall. The complexity of the statues are odd for such a remote island, but if taken in the context of the nearby Malden Island appear to be a part of a very vast and complicated network of Polynesian societies that were far more advanced than previously thought.

Once the Eastern Island culture was destroyed centuries of new settlers made the island home, some of which were cannibals, and it would appear that European travelers encountering Easter Island for the first time assumed that it was a version of the cannibals who had built the Easter Island statues. The statues seen in the photographs here are from the quarry at Rano Raraku. It cannot be ignored how these seemingly primitive groups of human beings were so obsessed with moving vast stone works. Such a mystery was difficult to imagine before it was revealed that the statues were much larger than originally thought. Now the prospect is simply mind bending.

A similar assumption was made at Serpent Mound, Ohio where early archeology quick to report findings for their universities, and thus validate their scientific funding determined that it was the Adena Indians who had built the strange mound structure on the rim of a cryptoexplosion dating 248 million to 286 million years ago. Cryptoexplosions are extremely rare on planet earth and are debated to be caused by meteor impacts or volcanic forces from under the earth’s crust. The builders of Serpent Mound appeared to understand in a primitive time where no society could have known what happened more than 200 million years ago, that the ground upon which mound was built was very unique. More archeological research has been conducted over the last couple of decades and Serpent Mound appears to be much older than originally thought, well into the thousands of years ago. The Adena Indians simply did as apparently the cannibals of Easter Island did, they settled the area long after the original builders had left or been destroyed and were given credit for being the descendents of the original culture.

There is a yearning to display the learned power and command over natural resources that just is not evident in primitive, collective societies at the Easter Island archeological site at Rano Raraku. The ability to find a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and build these tremendous standing statues is the work of more than nomads or hunters and gatherers. The recent discoveries at Easter Island is further proof that we are simply on page one in understanding the vast history of the human race that has been hidden by education monopolies, religious insistence, and human impatience to quickly smash the world’s facts into the meat grinder of domestic understanding. Ultimately the answer was always right in front of us, as it usually is. But it took someone to actually do some digging to get “to the bottom of it” so to speak, and discover that there is much more to the story than we ever thought, or conceived.

____________________________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!

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

What Mitt Romney Should Do in Cincinnati: Visit the “Grand Ole Pub”

Members of Mitt Romney’s team were out ahead of the his visit to Cincinnati looking for spots to present his platform to Southern Ohio voters.  They wisely stopped by the Grand Ole Pub in West Chester, Ohio checking that wonderful establishment as a possible stop on the Romney campaign trail.  I heard this while dining with friends for lunch at the Grand Ole Pub and admired that it showed some real understanding of West Chester politics from the Romeny team.  For those who don’t know about the Grand Ole Pub, here is their website.

http://www.grandolepub.com/

So a note to team Romney, if your schedule doesn’t allow for a trip to the Grand Ole Pub on this most recent June trip, you will want to make a visit there on an upcoming stop in Ohio.  It is well known throughout the entire country that the south eastern corner of Butler County is one of the most conservative and constitutionally hungry voting districts in the entire nation and the Grand Ole Pub is one of the favorite dining establishments of the two major Cincinnati Tea Party groups that are only seperated by 5 miles. 

If Mitt Romney wants to touch the pulse of Southern Ohio politics, he must stop by the Grand Ole Pub.  His potential voters love the Grand Ole Pub and he will too!

____________________________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!

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

Teacher’s Threaten to Strike in Chicago: The big labor union show with a puppet mayor

Does anyone remember when President Obama told America right after his election in 2008 that The United States had a lot to learn from Europe, and that we should strive to be more like them as a nation? Now, as Spain is begging for a financial bailout, Greece is locked in a civil war in the it’s streets between the communists and Nazi parties, France is collapsing under it’s newly elected socialist president and Italy is failing especially in their economy and is not far behind Spain. When President Obama pointed at Europe and stated that The United States should be more like them, he was saying that it was socialism that America needed to emulate, and within four years of open socialism from the start of Obama’s presidency to the end of it, Europe is collapsing under economic failures directly created by the small little book called The Communist Manifesto. Those who followed the economic policies of Karl Marx have led their nations to financial ruin.

In America, thankfully not quite too late, some are beginning to see the socialist tendencies being taught in our schools and openly advocated by our government. Some in the Tea Party movements and other liberty groups are beginning to fight back in an attempt to save the capitalism that built America from the encroachment of communism. Most notably, the recall election in Wisconsin to remove Scott Walker as governor was the grand attempt by socialist labor unions to maintain their grip on economic power and dedication to expand socialism to every corner of the world.

Yet in the city of Chicago, President Obama’s favorite city, it is socialism that rules still as the teachers union for the Chicago Public School system voted by a margin of more than 75% of it’s members to impose a potential strike in mid-August 2012 if the CPS management cannot come to contract terms with the Chicago Teacher’s Union which expires on June 30th 2012. You can read the announcement of this strike at the website of Progress Illinois seen below, which is Illinois version of Progress Ohio. (Special note, all such “progress” groups are essentially socialist/communist advocates. They use the name “progress” to hide their real intentions, which is to follow the path of Europe. So beware of them all. They are anti-capitalist—and therefore anti-American.)

http://progressillinois.com/posts/content/2012/06/11/whats-next-after-ctu-strike-authorization-vote

It is clear in this proposed Chicago teachers strike why the unions are against voucher schools and privately run schools, because under capitalism, if free enterprise were involved in education, the government schools would not be able to maintain a monopoly and tactics like these massive teacher strikes would not work, because parents would have options in case their children’s school teachers did strike.

The issues that the CTU wish to strike over are of course wages. Currently, the average wage rate for CTU teachers is $69,000 and under the new contract the CTU wants a 29% increase over that amount. Another stipulation is the teachers of the CTU are upset that the teacher work day will increase by ten percent from 420 minutes to 460 minutes a day. At 460 minutes of contracted work, that comes out to a work day of 7.6 hours. The audacity of such expectations is that those CTU employees are so incredibly out of touch from what the average American is experiencing that they don’t see that such an expectation is ridiculously foolish. The CTU employees are suffering from the same inflated viewpoint that citizens in Europe expect which is bankrupting the entire Euro zone.

The first thing any rational person would ask when listening to the CTU demands is how on earth could they expect in this day and age to succeed with this insane, and unprecedented strike attempt. Well, the answer is in whom the mayor of Chicago is, the former White House Obama heel licker Rahm Emanuel, who at his heart is a big time progressive, pro union advocate. The union leaders of the CTU would like the public to believe they are locked in a mortal battle with the Mayor Emanuel, but I will declare this—that the whole thing is a political stunt and the Mayor is in on the act.

Emanuel and the labor leaders of the CTU plan to allow the threat of a strike to percolate and gain media attention during the summer of 2012, and at the last-minute, Emanuel and the union leaders will strike a deal, and both parties will declare victory over the charade imposed upon the tax payers of Chicago. Their combined hopes, along with the White House are that unions all over America will use Chicago as an example of strength and follow with the same type of strike attempts in every city in the nation. The unions desire a victory after the paralyzing loss in Wisconsin so they are staging one in Chicago with the progressive Mayor Emanuel to prove that the extortion attempts of old still work, before the unions lose all their members due to ineffectiveness.

The goal for all involved is not to bring relief to the tax payers of Chicago or even to help one single child, but to spread the socialism which is crushing Europe all over America. The unions realize that they must move fast, or they will be completely out of power within a few years, so they need to radicalize their base with a victory in Chicago, which Rahm Emanuel is poised to give them.

The fight in Chicago is nothing more than a WWF wrestling match. The victors are already determined, and are simply staging a fight on behalf of the American people. The staged fight is designed to breathe life into unions bent over with defeat as tax payers everywhere are beginning to fight back. Progressive know that if they don’t rally their troops now, it will be over for them in America very soon, because Europe is failing miserably under socialism/communism and the dream of a communist worldwide utopia so fantasized by the political left for so many years is quickly evaporating like a puddle of water on a sidewalk in Columbia, South America. It is communism that these progressives on both sides of the Chicago labor dispute desire, only they won’t tell the taxpayers that. What they show is a mayor who must come to the negotiating table with the CTU, forced there by the threat of a strike, to negotiate a collective-bargaining agreement and preserve the union way of life into the future. Their attempt is as futile as the fools of Europe marching in the streets and setting police officers on fire to protest free government support for their lazy, unproductive lives. And such a description is the antithesis of your local school teacher who complains that $69,000 a year is not enough money for only working 7.8 hours a day.


____________________________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!

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

No Lakota Tax Levy in 2012: The Channel 19 Interview

Cory Stark from Channel 19 came to see me for what will most likely be my last interview over the Lakota school system for quite some time.  Lakota has agreed not to put a levy on the ballot in 2012 so I gave Cory my final thoughts on the matter.  Click to see the article and video interview. 

http://www.fox19.com/story/18770790/no-levy-on-the-november-ballot-for-lakota

Now I am free to help other districts defeat their school levies. 

____________________________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!

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

The Film Industry Bubble: Mello Yello pays me a visit before “Prometheus”

After my article a few weeks ago on the soft drink, Mello Yello the marketing team noticed and contacted me to let me know they appreciated my dedication to their product. You can see their comments from that first contact at the bottom of that posting.I have only ever drank one kind of soft drink, and that is Mello Yello, so I was particularly impressed to come home on Friday to a box from the Coca Cola company in Atlanta, Georgia. Inside the box were a number of Mello Yello marketing items that the company had sent me that made a good day even better.

They sent me a T-shirt, a long sleeve shirt, a hat, a pen, a notebook, and a thank you note, which meant a lot coming from a company that I have silently been very loyal to for a number of years. I had just enough time to open the box and scan through the items before getting ready to take my kids and their significant others out to the movie theater to see the long-awaited Prometheus. So I put on my new Mello Yello T-shirt, and my Mello Yello hat, and I grabbed the Mello Yello notebook with pen to give to my oldest daughter, and we left for the movie.

Of course I looked like a walking billboard for Mello Yello when my daughter let me into their townhouse where I gave her the notebook. She tends to write almost as much as I do, so I knew she would put it to good use. I also knew my kids would get a kick out of seeing all the Mello Yello gear, because in our family, it’s well known my love of Mello Yello. We don’t all get together as easily as we used to because we all have busy lives, so getting the Mello Yello clothing in time for our long-planned movie was a nice addition to a wonderful evening.

For Prometheus my wife wanted to see it on the IMAX screen at Showcase Cinemas in Springdale, which I think is the best movie screen in the Cincinnati area. Of course the film was in 3D like they all are these days, just like film producers promised when they flew me out to Los Angeles a few years ago to do a fire whip sequence and prove out the use of a 3D camera system for Real D 3D with Peter Facinelli. I had at that time a lot of skepticism that audiences would flock to theaters to put on 3D glasses and watch a movie with just a little extra thrill factor. Women who go out on dates spending a lot of time fixing up their hair just right I didn’t think would be interested in putting on glasses that would smear their make-up. People who naturally wear glasses have to now look through two glasses to see anything in a 3D movie, which is a pain in the neck. But Hollywood was committed to the idea of 3D just prior to Obama becoming president because they were pushed by theaters owners all over the United States to justify their investments in state of the art projection systems, giant theaters, and comfortable seating.

Hollywood like the education industry is facing the same kind of economic bubble that the housing industry has already experienced, and it’s bursting. In Hollywood, it was the films of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg in the 1980’s that set the modern idea of what a “blockbuster” was. Every year since the release of E.T. and the last of the original Star Wars films Hollywood has tried to copy the box office numbers of those films by pushing for larger stunts, larger and louder explosions, and faster paced film techniques driven largely by the music video generation created by MTV. Most of the films Hollywood produce each year falls short of executive expectations, but the pressure has been on for quite some time to get larger box office totals as the entertainment unions have driven up the financial expectations higher and higher. Leading actors now for a picture make between $20 million to $30 million, so budgets for a typical summer blockbuster are now up over $150 million dollars routinely. Hollywood has increasingly had to rely on overseas sales to complement their box office take domestically in order to justify their massive up front investments. Revenue streams are changing for the industry as well, as ticket prices have went up to compensate the increasingly high budgets for films, technology has made it so people can often watch films at home more comfortably than at a movie theater. Just the other day I was at Wal-Mart where I looked at a beautiful 70” big screen LCD television that was just over $2,000 dollars. Hollywood now has to find a way to give people an experience at the theater that they can’t get at home, so 3D is their solution. And it’s failing.

I say 3D is failing not with pleasure in my voice, but sadness. I love the movie theater experience, which is why I made a tremendous ritual of taking all my kids to a movie and spending $100 on tickets that cost over $15 each to see Prometheus with my Mello Yello gear on to create memories that will last a lifetime. I wanted them to have a great night out at the movies where going to the theater is like going to a sacred mythic temple as modern mythology is bestowed upon the moviegoer.

Prior to our film beginning I watched the previews for the newest rendition of Spiderman, and Batman, and half a dozen 3D extravaganzas that I could see will end up in the same scrap heap as Battleship and John Carter. It’s not to say that those films are bad, or don’t have a market niche to fill, but studios are forced to spend over $100 million to make those films because of expectations, and ticket prices are simply too high, most people will wait to watch those films on video, or Netflix. Every movie cannot be Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Pirates of the Caribbean, or The Avengers. Most Hollywood producers are fearful to attempt these days to develop original material because the risk is simply too great. Even a popular book like John Carter may not be enough to guarantee success. As I watched the previews prior to Prometheus, I knew that 75% of those films would be box office disappointments. They were dead before they have even arrived, because of the laws of quality described in Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The Hollywood producers and entertainment agents more than ever are chasing dreams like the founders of California’s gold rush. They are digging for gold where it’s been discovered instead of looking where nobody has discovered it yet, because they are functioning in the back of the “train” so to speak.

Needless to say the film I took my family to Prometheus was spectacular, and it should have been for $100 bucks. I had no regrets in seeing that movie especially since everyone enjoyed the film tremendously. But as I stood in the lobby of Showcase Cinemas afterward in my bright yellow Mello Yello gear a wave of sadness swept over me realizing that the financial structure that made the whole movie theater business run was about to bust. Prometheus represented the best that Hollywood had to offer, and at $15 dollars a ticket, it barely seemed worth it. I can’t image paying that kind of price for a lesser movie, yet the movie industry is counting on it, and they will be disappointed.

The same holds true in the movie industry as it does with President Obama not understanding that European economic models built around socialism is the cause of their failure, and The United States allowing for a mixed economy of a little socialism here and there sprinkled with bits of capitalism is what has caused Obama’s failed economy during his presidency. He’s as clueless as the typical film executive who will find themselves out of a job in a couple of years because their films failed to meet the market expectations. Hollywood is looking for the Justice League to fill the market void of George Lucas retiring. That was on my mind because just a few days before Mello Yello sent me all that merchandise I received a press release from Lucasfilm stating Lucas was officially retiring, and that Kathleen Kennedy was stepping in to help fill the void at that billion dollar film company. Kennedy is a long time assistant to many Spielberg films and now she’s going to work full-time at Lucasfilm. This is a serious indication that Hollywood’s creative core is aging, and moving on to other things, and the next generations of Hollywood filmmakers and other above-the-line talent are functioning from the back of Pirsig’s quality train, and will fail under the heavy expectations.

I thought it was appropriate that I was wearing a Mello Yello T-shirt on a night when I was having all these thoughts. Way back in 1994 and 1995 I wanted to buy a Mello Yello T-shirt, but then frustrated executives at Coca Cola were upset that the soft drink did not perform equivalent to Mountain Dew, so they pulled the drink for a bit and changed it to the soft drink “Serge,” so I didn’t get my Mello Yello shirt. This went on for a while until executives at the Coca Cola Company realized that this would not boost their sales, so they had sacrificed a very good drink just because it arrived late to the marketing gate, and if they had held strong, they might have made real gains through the late 90’s into the next century. Mello Yello made its triumphant return slowly, and is just now beginning to be purchased in the northern states of America. The same day I went to Wal-Mart to see the big screen television, they had three 12 packs of Mello Yello on their shelf. My wife bought all three of them. A couple of years ago, Wal-Mart in Ohio did not carry Mello Yello at all.

Mello Yello has always been a great drink, but it was judged based on the blockbuster success of Mountain Dew, and it suffered as a result. The same thing is about to happen in the film industry. Many films will suffer as film executives lose their jobs in the years to come due to the entertainment bubble collapsing under the enormous weight of expectation. And like Mello Yello, I have my brands of filmmakers that I support valiantly, and Ridley Scott is one of them. When my “brands” make a film that I know they poured their heart and soul into it, I go and see them. The next film I feel passionate about will be Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit. I will pay top dollar to see that movie as a kind of vote for what I think success in a movie should be, to help curb the disappointment from an industry that expects too much, and is collapsing under inflated opinions. Twenty years from now, like my previous twenty years of supporting Mello Yello, I’m sure some of these very good film studios will re-emerge from the wreckage that is about to become of the film industry, and I’ll be there to support them as I was to see the great film Prometheus and one of the great offerings of the year from 20th Century Fox.

I proudly put my Mello Yello gear away when I got home that night and contemplated all that you read here today. And because of that, it means more to me than the moment that I opened it. In capitalism, whether it’s a movie, or a soft drink, the idea came from the mind of a capitalist, and millions of people enjoy the results of those thoughts—and every instance is a thing of beauty. I cherish Mello Yello because it’s been through so much as a company and even with all that, they still have the swagger about them to send me a box full of Mello Yello fun on the eve of taking my family to see the film Prometheus. It was an evening of ideas, and capitalism, and crushing expectations. But at the end of the day, it is the ideas that burn not so much brightest, but longest that survive. And Mello Yello survives, in the same way that many others will endure as great minds who think at the front of the train emerge to give great ideas a place to materialize. Each time I wear my Mello Yello T-shirt, it will not be out of blind devotion to a soft drink, but out of reverence to a company that I cherish because it makes a great product, and has had the tenacity to weather the storms of economic betrayal to arrive at a day when it can please the taste buds of millions.

____________________________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!

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

No Levy for Lakota in 2012: Rich Hoffman agrees with the Lakota School Board?

For the first time in over a year, I agree with the Lakota School Board. They should not put a levy on the ballot this November for the 2012 election. At this time, the current board president Ben Dibble is giving indications that they will not pursue a levy request on the fall ballot. This is a good thing in that it respects the wishes of the voters in the last three elections, and recognizes the economic conditions of the community. To put the community through another dog fight in a year when weary home buyers might not wish to purchase a home in the Lakota district because our campaign fight has been on the radio and in the papers both locally and nationally each week would not be wise.

http://westchesterbuzz.com/2012/06/07/enquirer-exclusive-report-lakota-levy-is-very-unlikely/

It was nearly a year ago when I attended a school board meeting and everyone was getting along for the first time in a long time. I spoke openly with several members of the board, and key administrators prior to their last levy attempt. Lakota seemed to be on the mend, and a new superintendent was coming to help balance the budget.

When Superintendent Mantia came from Pickerington, she sat down with me and the members of No Lakota Levy and attempted to tell us what we wanted to hear, which kept the peace for a few weeks. But behind the scenes, there was scheming going on, which of course got back to me.  Another election came and the proposed tax increase was defeated by over 18,000 votes. Some of the credit for that loss could certainly be given to those of us who brought information to the public about how ridiculous much of the current Lakota spending was. But much of the loss can be attributed to the declining housing market. Residents used to be generous with levy increases because the values of their homes were well outpacing the taxes. Now that taxes are high, and prices are falling, people don’t have the extra money to throw away at a public school, and many businesses are barely hanging on by a thread. A tax increase just might do many of them in, with an economic climate that by all indications in hindsight will be called a great depression.

After that November 2011 defeat a small band of pro levy supporters decided they were going to get me back for “hurting” their children’s lives by denying more tax money to the school. The belief was that if No Lakota Levy could be talked out of working with me, the tax opposition would be removed. What these agents of seduction did not know was that it was the members of No Lakota Levy who approached me after I did my own independent work in fighting the levy in the spring of 2010 to join forces and help them. My behavior was the same as it had always been, I brought my supporters with me and expanded their efforts. When Superintendent Mantia and other board members attempted to befriend members of No Lakota Levy who they assumed were the leaders, they left me out of those conversation because they rationalized that I was just the radical “hired” lobbyist that could be fired if the leaders of No Lakota Levy could be convinced.

While this politicking was going on behind closed doors, and through emails and phone calls, several of the radical pro levy supporters still upset at me due to the November 2011 election began a smear campaign against me, some of them going to the Kroger Store on Cincinnati-Dayton road during Saturdays in February and conducting a survey against my name, attempting to slander me publicly in the doorway as people went into the store. Some of my anti-levy friends were giving me word that this was going on publicly and within the school itself and that Mantia was stoking the fires personally. Politically I could see why she would do such a thing. After all, she was paid a quarter of a million dollars a year to come to Lakota from Pickerington to pass a school levy and I was her primary opposition. So she figured that by removing my credibility through constant attacks, and trying to divide and conquer my friends in the No Lakota Levy, that she could remove the tax opposition since she knew that many of the property owners in No Lakota Levy were very concerned about another public battle over a levy.

Seeing all this going on, and hearing the kinds of things that were being said infuriated me and I went on my now famous rant which I fully intended to weed out the instigators who were causing me so much trouble. I had my suspicions, but I had to know for sure who was responsible for what in the smear campaign against me and how they all connected. Sure enough, after I put up a tempting post here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom it was Julie Schafer the Vice President of the Lakota School Board and my political rival over the tax increases who posted my comments on her Facebook page to enrage the fires, as predicted. Behind the scenes the superintendent solicited community support from big time liberals like West Chester Trustee Cathy Stoker in an attempt to bring down the wrath of the community on me. But in essence it was only about 70 to 80 hard core levy supporters and they had come out by name in their online comments in the Enquirer and Facebook pages giving me the information I needed to use in the next levy fight.

Predictably, my friends in the No Lakota Levy wanted political distance from me, because for years they had been victims of threatened boycotts from those same 70-80 hard core levy supporters who profess to speak for over 100,000 Lakota school district residents. The backlash in the media was considerable and conventional politics would have dictated that I was finished. If I had a conventional life, I might have lost my job, my family, even my nerve with the offensive that the pro levy group at Lakota attempted. But I do not have a conventional life, and my reputation is so well known and respected that my core supporters never wavered from me for a second. The desired hope was that by removing me from No Lakota Levy the websites I ran would all be shut down, and I would drift off into obscurity. What the levy supporters did not know was that my support base had only increased as a result of their actions, not decreased. In the chess game of politics, you might call that a “checkmate.” I’ve played a lot of chess, so most of these moves were planned way back in August of 2011, anticipating the move of the opposition, even baiting them to make the moves desired.  Sometimes it’s one thing to consider the strategic options, it’s another to actually see them do it, and once they did, it did infuriate me into a rage that I still feel.

It is sad that the whole ordeal must be looked upon as a game of winning and losing. Sadly, the losers of this game have managed to punish the parents of the district with extremely high fees for extracurricular activities and busing costs which should all be included with the high taxes we already pay. Ben is right that the budget from the state is not yet set, so there are unknowns. And it’s difficult to tell how much more homes in the Lakota district will lose in further value as a result of the economic conditions. Finally, some Lakota administrators are starting to learn that they can save tremendous amounts of money by combining jobs. This summer there are two assistant superintendents who are retiring, and Lakota is only planning to replace one, which will save a six figure salary, which is significant. If they did that 10 more times to 10 other positions they would save a million dollars. If they did it 20 times, they would save 2 million dollars, then Lakota could afford to have busing, free sports and many other things just by asking the employees to do more, which is quite appropriate under the conditions.

But ultimately, not putting a levy on the ballot in 2012 prevents me from unleashing the mountain of bad PR I am holding to unleash during the next levy attempt. I have not done it yet because I don’t want to scare away potential home buyers. But I also don’t want to see a levy increase ruin community businesses and push people out of their homes. For those in the Lakota district who brag about their $5,500 property tax bill each year and their ability to pay it, they do not understand that $20 or $30 extra in monthly taxes will end many property owners mortgages, because many don’t have the extra money to pay higher taxes due to many economic factors.

The people who have written to me, and campaigned against me who do brag about their ability to pay $5,500 tax bills are typically young. They typically have young children and have been fortunate enough to have good jobs that pay salaries which enable them to have a lifestyle that disregards such a high tax. Since they are young parents they are chemically induced to give “everything” to their children without question, so their decision making skills are greatly lacking and they have a lot of growing up to do. For the rest of us in Lakota, the “old timers” the people who have raised children and understand the costs, and appreciate the value of things, we know that a higher tax will destroy our community, so we are opposed. We also know that circumstances do change in the course of a long life, and many of those $5,500 property tax payers will lose their jobs within the decade and will find they are not so well positioned in the future to pay such a high tax. The radicals of further taxation do not have a blank check to attack those of us with logic. They cannot dish out such aggressive advances without expecting to be attacked back. That is simply not how the game is played. Most of the people I know who have been around for a while think such well paid young parents are fools because they are tossing their money away cheaply, without consideration, and we know there will come a time within the next couple of decades that they will pay dearly for their lack of vision. Such people will not be allowed to destroy our community with their short-sightedness.

But I am personally glad that at least Ben sees the logic of the situation, and it is my hope that the school board will finally begin to manage the money we give them, and not put the community through another bloody levy battle, because there are homes that need to be sold, and leases that need to be signed. Lakota just graduated a lot of students, and there are not more students coming in behind those, so Lakota is looking at a whole decade of declining enrollment and the layoff of hundreds of future employees. A new tax will not be needed for many, many years. Hopefully, the school board will now listen to the 18,000 who voted against the last levy attempt and not the 80 crazy radicals who make a lot of noise, but not much sense. Because the fate of our community will be determined by what happens in 2012 and 2013, and a tax increase would send our district into the category of Princeton, and Evandale, instead of Indian Hill. The choice is always structured around tax rates, because that is the blood of an economy. And it takes leadership to see that blood flow, and be willing to do the hard things to preserve the future with the least restriction to the economy as possible.

There is of course more to the story, which will be revealed soon.  But for now, there may be a small period of peace before Lakota seeks again to ask for higher taxes in the form of a levy.   If Lakota does good things, I’m happy to report those here as well as the bad things.  But Lakota has to give me good things to report, like turning two six figure salary positions into one, to help balance the budget as they did with the assistant superintendent positions.  So we’ll see what the future holds, but it’s a good start to hear Lakota talking about managing the money they already have instead of trying to solve their management problems with higher taxes.  

____________________________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!

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

Mt. Healthy’s Class of 2012: Punishing parents for loving their children

When a Mt. Healthy star football player recently graduated his family cheered extensively, according to the Mt. Healthy superintendent. The young man’s family cheered so much that the ceremony was held up by the superintendent untill the cheering stopped. You can see in the clip below how the superintendent purposely stopped the next name from being read off till the arena was once again silent as she had instructed prior to the graduation ceremony. The Mt. Healthy superintendent was working from a political agenda that is spreading across the country in 2012 and the threat of keeping the student’s graduation certification for not following the school rules is not an isolated case in Mt Healthy, Ohio. The superintendent could have allowed the next name to be read, and everyone would have heard, but she purposely stopped the ceremony so she could enforce the nationwide agenda circulating around Department of Education under the leadership of Emperor Obama.

The school for that small display of fanfare from the graduating student’s family felt it had the community authority to enforce twenty hours of community service for not following the school rules. The superintendent of Mt. Healthy and her staff are of course insane in their beliefs, and way out of line. The school even if they did have students sign a document before the ceremony taking responsibility for any outlandish behavior do not have the right to enforce such a measure. The school of Mt. Healthy has forgotten that they are but employees of the parents and students, not a governmental ENFORCER of bureaucratic policies! The effort of the Mt. Healthy superintendent is further proof that public schools are progressive institutions intent on destroying individuality with subtle messages of communism. The Mt. Healthy school district has no authority to force the young graduate or his family to perform any community service as reported by Channel 9 News, yet they did anyway and audaciously proclaimed themselves judge, jury, and executioner.

This behavior exhibits how far reaching public schools see their roles in the modern family, and the intention is to prevent exhibitions of this kind that highlight the efforts of individuals. All the students as mandated by the Obama Department of Education are to be treated equally whether they are black or white, boys or girls, tall or short, skinny or fat, straight or gay, fast or slow, all sounds wonderful taken at face value. But the real intention is not “equality” and “fairness,” but rather selling collectivism by stamping out individuals by discouraging solitary endeavors. This is the same policy that allows progressive politicians to use the so-called “civil rights” movement or “war on woman” to manipulate mass groups of voting blocs to achieve communist aims that are revealed behind the proclamations if looked upon closely. Individual praise is frowned upon in these crusades. It is only sacrifice of the individual for the sake of the collective that they highlight for the good of the masses.

The message sent to the Class of 2012 at Mt. Healthy is not fairness for the next student to be called after all the cheering, but to let every member of the arena know that individual Excepetionalism will not be tolerated. I listened to the Mt. Healthy superintendent give a few interviews defending her position, and the reporters of course pandered to her crimes, but attempting to sell the far-reaching authority of the Mt. Healthy school district on behalf of fairness and maintaining order for future graduations is rather pathetic. This action by the school district of Mt. Healthy is simply a disguise for the real intention, destruction of individual endeavor. At the Mt. Healthy graduation ceremony cheers for the collective Class of 2012 was acceptable. Cheers for individuals as regulated by the Gestapo superintendent of Mt. Healthy are not.

This trend in public education advocated by the teachers and administrators, many of whom function under socialist leaning philosophy to begin with, is to show that individualism is to be scorned, and collectivism embraced. The message that no one child is special is the common mantra of our day–it is the essence of public education. Educators are less concerned about math scores and knowledge of history. Their primary concern is to make sure that students do not believe they are special in any way unless they play a sport that unites the pride of the school in the community. Individuals are not embraced unless they serve the collective institution. Public education through their government monopoly status and big labor unions are pursuing progressive policies at the cost of the local tax payers. In Mt. Healthy the superintendent there attempted to obtain a tax increase the day after a recent failure by sending a message to the community that they will continue to see tax increases bi-annually forever unless they break down and approve the tax hike. School districts like Mt. Healthy behave like this because they do not view individual families as sacred, but simply as part of the collective blob that makes up their district. So they see no reason why everyone should not support their efforts with tax increases as it is the school district that sets the law in communities. That’s why the Mt. Healthy superintendent thinks she has a right to enforce “community service” on the parents of a graduate if the student doesn’t wish to do it.

Tax payers were always told that if they loved their child, they’d vote for a school levy, because public education is essential to creating a well rounded adult. But what we we’re learning is that public education is truly a process of destroying individual identities so that adults will cast away any notions they may have of growing up uniquely. For the proof and a very audacious example of this public education strategy listen to this administrator tell his class of 2012 that the students in the ceremony are “not special” but are in fact much the same. If you take the time to watch through the first couple of minutes you’ll hear this educrat profess that there is a reason all the student’s caps and gowns make them all uniform—because the intent is for them all to be seen collectively, not individually.

The push for collectivism comes from governments desire to live. So long as society is made up of a collective whole, and not a bunch of free thinking individuals, school teachers, tax auditors, and Washington educrats will have jobs serving the collective blob of people lacking individual identity. Individuals who can do for themselves may find they have no use for government, or the silly socialist schools of public education. Government workers at all levels find themselves promoting collectivism instead of the American principles of individualism because that’s the only way they can keep their very lucrative jobs under the monopoly of government schools, is by keeping people from asking any questions and blindly following orders no matter how ridiculous.

The situation in Mt. Healthy is not the only one of its kind, but it deserves special notice, as the parents of the popular student have refused to do the “community service” demanded by the school. The school revealed too much of their real intentions at the graduation ceremony for the Mt. Healthy Class of 2012. And thank goodness they did, so tax payers can really see what they are paying for. Public schools no matter what the community are teaching open socialism with tax payer dollars, and they will continue to do so until communities demand to put a stop to it. These teaching methods come from the Federal Department of Education, so are not alone the work of the Mt Healthy superintendent. But the responsibility to refuse unjust mandates does fall on the individual families who find themselves attacked by these government schools as they attempt to hold the diploma hostage from students in order to force social change upon the community. This tactic by the superintendent at Mt. Healthy is no different than creating pay-for-play sports to push for levy increases, or cutting busing to punish parents for failing a school levy. Or teachers who march on their school boards with threats of strikes to drive up their wage costs. This time, it is the superintendent who seeks to carry out the Obama platform of progressive education which if given the proper name would be called red communism in full bloom. Communism is all about destroying the individual in favor of the collective, and this is what is going on at graduations all over The United States in 2012. And it will continue until communities stop taking it, and decide to push back, like the parents of the student in Mt. Healthy have done. It is parents like those that make America the greatest country on earth. The rest of the world would take the punishment without question, but not in America. And not in Mt. Healthy. As long as parents like that produce children like that star football player, America will be just fine—and the socialism that the schools intend will perish, one school at a time by simply saying “NO” to the authority of the school, “NO” to the mandates from the DOE, and “NO” to more tax increases which promise to bring more of this behavior with more socialist teachers and their ideologies of individual destruction.

____________________________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!

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

Unions Spent $63 Million in Wisconsin: Cutting off the head of a snake

This Glenn Beck clip was actually done before the recall election attempt in Wisconsin of Scott Walker but has some wonderful facts that need to be remembered. Now that the unions have lost the election and spent $63 million dollars on a losing effort, and membership is declining fast the progressive left is getting desperate. But their old tricks are now seen and understood by generations who have paved over the thuggish tactics, and they are no longer working.

Be sure to send this to a friend to ensure that the methods of union rule finally come to an end. If a snake comes onto your property or slithers near a loved one, you would not let it go to bite them later. The head of the snake must come off to allow the tail to swing about aimlessly to eventually die, because the snake of labor unions are communism in a capitalist America, and they cannot be allowed to live on. They have shown they cannot coexist without being predators on capitalism, so they leave no choice.

____________________________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE!

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