Tag: philosophy

Do You Believe in Spies: Review of the film SALT and how sleeper cells have corrupted America

A society’s mythology is absolutely essential to the sustainability of any culture. And in American culture, it is our movies that communicate the concerns of our population. Love stories tell the stories of the heart, comedies tickle the social taboos not realized in everyday life, and adventure films take us to places most of our mundane lives cannot transport us to without wrecking ourselves. Within that genre of action-adventure films comes spy stories, which are attempts by the creative community to ease the tensions we all feel when dealing with a globe of competing enemies seeking to undermine each other in the eternal quest for victory. For the free world, James Bond, the master spy set the standard for millions of men who looked to the ultimate man, who never panicked while trying to defend the free world from world domineering elites seeking to enslave the world. For me the start of Moonraker is one of the best openings of a James Bond film.

Since the golden age of Bond, at the height of the cold war in the late 70’s and early 80’s, James Bond has become softer, more progressively complex and has lost much of what made him the gem of Ian Fleming’s books. Daniel Craig’s version of Bond in the last two films presents a guy that is ultimately more realistic, but destroys much of the mythology of what the character of James Bond represents.

I have not enjoyed many spy films for about a decade, including the Borne Identity films until my wife coaxed me into watching Salt with Angelina Jolie. If there is one actor in Hollywood that my wife likes the most, it’s Angelina Jolie. So for her sake I agreed to watch it. By the end of the movie, I was glad I did.

Not only were the car crashes and action scenes fantastic, but the story was extremely compelling. It’s a topic that I had been thinking about a lot lately, since I have learned that labor unions were founded by communists, and many layers of our current government seem to be working against constitutional principles. In fact, it seems George Soros reminded me of almost every James Bond villain as I was growing up, but in real society saying such a thing is ridiculous, because in our culture, our myths tell our stories, but in politics, we put a layer of cake icing over the reality and avoid talking about the obvious. In such places the villains of our age hide in plain sight. When we see movies, we dare to ask the questions, but when the movie is over, we return back to our political reality and stop daring to ask the hard questions. However, in the film Salt, the uncomfortable question is addressed; are there sleeper cells in the United States, and are they at our highest levels of government? I think they are based on the videos I’ll show you below. In fact, there’s overwhelming evidence that American culture has been penetrated by many enemies from many countries since World War II when America proved to the world that beating America in a war with technology is too costly, and unpredictable. America is too good at thinking outside the box so a war with America needs to happen from within, using sleeper cells of spies to not just attempt to gain intelligence, but to undermine the foundations of emotional strength America stands upon.

Sleeper cells like the group recently busted in the United States have been operating for decades in plain sight. They hide behind issues of racism, gay rights advocates, feminism, and many other liberal positions. One good way to spot the beginning of a sleeper cell is to look for groups that advocate the “Peace” sign.

Sleeper cells from the Soviet Union hid their true intentions behind the hippie movement where KGB agents became leaders of the hippie movement and advocated communism, but hid their sinister intentions behind the sign of peace. This isn’t a new strategy. Pirates of the Caribbean (not the movie, the real pirates) used to fly the flags of whatever nations ship they were attempting to attack, and once they were close enough to fire their cannons, they’d run up the “Jolly Roger.” The Trojan Horse strategy is not a unique strategy when one attacker that is inferior in power attempts to overthrow a power of superior strength.

Just like the woman at the beginning of this article, where James Bond is making out with the woman on a plane and the woman turns out to be a spy, the mythology of that scene is one we all recognize. Women make particularly dangerous spies because even intelligent men who are masters of every part of their lives tend to be vulnerable to sex. Meet Anna Chapman, real life Russian spy every bit as active as Marta Hari was.

She is considered so dangerous that she is imprisoned under solitary confinement.

Here is Anna Chapman before she was caught; it’s interesting to hear about her impression of America. There are no opportunities for a woman like her in Russia. She admits as much. In America all she has to do is use sex and she can get next to the most powerful men in American culture.

These are modern spies, but this game has been going on for a long time. Here is a former KGB agent who gives an interview in 1983 about ideological subversion and how it was installed in public schools. This is an actual KGB agent from the 60’s and 70’s who defected from the Soviet Union in favor of the freedom offered in America and the conclusion that the Soviet Union would fall under its own power. Meet Yuri Bezmenov:

Here Yuri Bezmenov teaches a class how the process of subversion is implemented to undermine America. What’s important to understand is that our local government, our school boards, councilmember’s, trustees, etc are not KGB spies. But what they often are the plants that spring from the seeds that were planted in the college courses they studied, thus the strategy is revealed. Yuri will explain the process.

Yet when such an accusation is brought up by someone like me, those in positions of authority will scorn such a statement because they will say, “that’s crazy, I was not trained by a Soviet spy! I was taught by my professors in college.” What Yuri explains is that the way to reach a majority of America’s population was to get them in school, where their parents were not around to protect the children.

Subversion of a culture is far less expensive to fight than open warfare. It’s less costly than nuclear war for sure. So, under the sign of peace, of avoiding nuclear disaster, agents penetrated American culture to eliminate the threat in a long-term strategy designed to eliminate the will to fight in the future. The Soviet Union was planning on keeping military pace with America until the generations they had infiltrated in public school had grown up and lost the will to fight. That was their goal. What they didn’t count on was that Reagan would force them to go bankrupt well before their plan could be fully realized. Yet the “Peace” sign is the direct result of Soviet sleeper agents operating in the United States and using college campuses as their pawns in the great chess game.

The Peace Sign is one of the most widely known symbols in the world, in Britain it is recognized as standing for nuclear disarmament —and in particular as the logo of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). In the United States and much of the rest of the world it is known more broadly as the peace symbol. It was designed in 1958 by Gerald Holtom, a professional designer and artist and a graduate of the Royal College of Arts. He showed his preliminary sketches to a small group of people in the Peace News office in North London and to the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War, one of several smaller organizations that came together to set up CND.

Source article
http://www.docspopuli.org/articles/PeaceSymbolArticle.html

In the film Salt it is a great movie that explores the role of sleeper agents in America and does it in an entertaining way. The character of Salt is very contemporary because she is not necessarily loyal to the United States or the Soviet Union. In the end she stands for what is right, which is very, very difficult to see in a world of espionage, corruption, power grabs, and normal politics. I found the story very intriguing. I thought it was one of Jolie’s boldest performances. The film left me thinking for days after I saw it.

This next video shows that Russian spies wanted to work for the CIA. It’s the plot of SALT, but for real. The goal of spies is most often not just to uncover secrets but to undermine a culture from within.

Now, in this article I’ve focused on Russian spies because that was the plot of the film Salt. But consider that America has many enemies, all every bit as dangerous as Russia. China has spies; Iran has spies, in fact just think of how many radical Muslim elements are already functioning from within our country. That’s how 911 happened. Every major country is doing the same thing to each other, and the United Nations is absolutely unable to do anything about it, and they never will. This is because treachery is part of the human race. War will always be a part of our existence. There will always be a threat to the security of a peaceful people. Greed cannot be socially engineered out of mankind.

Gaining an advantage over an opponent is part of the human makeup. Look at what Bill Bilichick did for his team the New England Patriots when he was caught cheating to win football games, the NFL couldn’t protect other teams from a head coach looking for a competitive edge. The United Nations will never be able to stop this activity. The only protection anybody has is mutual respect, and a document like the Constitution that limits the power and reach of a government, because man is prone to corruption and subversion. And the more complicated something is, the more opportunities for spies to attempt to subvert one culture so their culture can thrive.

As for James Bond, I miss the old Bond. The new Bond is too weak, and emotional. The old Bond portrayed by Sean Connery and Roger Moore, and even at times by Pierce Bronson were welcome fantasies in a world gone mad were we could go see a movie and believe that such characters could fight the forces we feel are working against us, and be successful. Movies like the old Bond films are worth more than box office results, because they at least make people ask questions about the world around them, and even if the fictional circumstances seem far-fetched in reality, at least the skepticism is healthily exercised in the mind of the viewer. Because in reality, there is more truth than fiction and society needs to understand the possibilities expressed in popular mythology.

So if you haven’t seen Angelina Jolie’s film Salt, treat yourself to the film and enjoy yourself and the ideas it springs up. Because that is what mythology is tasked to do, is make us think. Think of even the improbable, and painful, and help it go down with a good healthy dose of action.

Rich Hoffman

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

Rich Hart Explains the Strange World of Economics: The Devil is in the details

One of the most perplexing aspects of human culture is economics. Most people do not enjoy economics. Economics is a large, confusing tangle of numbers and obscure facts. This is the reason that thieves, looters and other predatory parasites linger in the midst of economics, because there is money to be made in the obscurity. When the average American would prefer to stand in their garage with their friends or family and watch football or NASCAR on a TV sipping on a beer, they are all too happy to just throw money at the government and hope everything works out. But it doesn’t because waiting in the confusion, in the rules and regulation, are the hands of many devils hoping to pull a fast one over on people everywhere to gain wealth themselves.

Paul Ryan’s economic plan is trying to solve this problem, and save the country from financial ruin. Many like Ryan on the inside understand that the looters who are putting America in the financial situation it is currently in, have little loyalty to the United States. The looters would be just as happy to live under United Nations control on an island in the Bahamas or in Nigeria, so long as they are wealthy. Those are the people who are against Paul Ryan’s economic plan.

I had the pleasure of meeting recently Paul Ryan’s economics professor, Rich Hart of Miami University. I was very impressed with Mr. Hart’s knowledge of Keynesian economics and overall ability to take a very complicated topic and explain it in a relatively simple way. So it was a pleasure to get Mr. Hart on with Doc Thompson to give half a million listeners a basic, free class in economics that some of the brightest in this country could only get by taking Harts class at Miami University, as Paul Ryan had.

In my mind Paul Ryan’s plan doesn’t go far enough. To me, if the goal for a smaller government is desired, then naturally employees of the federal government will be decreased dramatically, which has to happen. As proven with the school budget issues, it is labor costs that are the big budget breaker in public school. Unions took advantage of the housing bubble. But people were willing to vote in favor of higher taxes because the value of their property showed high on paper, so because Americans are generous by nature, they passed their local levies. They didn’t pay attention to the outrageous pay increases the teachers gave themselves, or the police and firefighters. That group of public employee is no different from congressman and city council members that give themselves pay increases. Yet here we are, in a budget crunch, the housing bubble burst so taxpayers have to look at the actual value of their money, and are learning that they’ve been scammed, and the feeling isn’t pleasant.

On top of the high cost of the public employee, there is the cost of corruption. Lobbyists are a major problem. But waste is the worst. Medicare alone costs over $60 billion each year. There is simply no way to balance any kind of budget when so many people are benefiting off the waste and corruption of these major government programs. You can read the source article for the $60 billion in waste here:

 

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/medicare-fraud-costs-taxpayers-60-billion-year/story?id=10126555

 

If you want to know who the thieves are, just listen to the people who criticize any kind of reform such as what Paul Ryan proposed. Paul built his plan based on the sound economics of one of the countries finest economics professors from one of the countries finest universities. Are those critics against Ryan’s plan because the economic theory is wrong? No, it’s because the critics are using Keynesian economics to plunder money for themselves and they want the money train to keep on rolling at tax payer expense.

Keynesian economics also called (Keynesianism and Keynesian theory) is a macroeconomic theory based on the ideas of 20th century English economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynesian economics argues that private sector decisions sometimes lead to inefficient macroeconomic outcomes and therefore advocates active policy responses by the public sector, including monetary policy actions by the central bank and fiscal policy actions by the government to stabilize output over the business cycle.[1] The theories forming the basis of Keynesian economics were first presented in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936; the interpretations of Keynes are contentious, and several schools of thought claim his legacy.
Read the rest of that article here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics

John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was a British economist whose ideas have profoundly affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, as well as the economic policies of governments. He greatly refined earlier work on the causes of business cycles, and advocated the use of fiscal and monetary measures to mitigate the adverse effects of economic recessions and depressions. His ideas are the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian economics, as well as its various offshoots.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes

Keynesian economics does not work as explained by Rich Hart. It can now be officially declared that Keynesian economics is the economics of socialism which Britain was experimenting with under thinkers like Keynes. Public officials like Obama, and those who work in modern government know that Keynesian economics does not work, yet they support it because they either desire the results of a collapsing economy, or they have no stomach for the change in the status quo.

This isn’t hard to imagine. Most people work in an occupation where they know things are wrong, but they proceed on because they don’t want to upset the applecart of their income. In politics, we’ve made public service so lucrative, so highly paid, that politicians will lie, steal, cheat, manipulate, whatever it takes to keep their job. They’ll do this because they tend to be low quality people to begin with, and could not in their wildest dreams perform a private sector job and make as much money as they can in government. Look at Anthony Weiner and how he’s holding onto his job with both hands. He’s doing that because he simply couldn’t work anywhere else. Who’d hire him? A lobbyist? Maybe one of them, but he couldn’t work for any legitimate company. And he knows it. Weiner like the rest of his co-workers in congress and the senate know that Keynesian economics is their ticket to salvation and the good people who pay their salaries don’t want to deal with the complicated nature of economics, so the scam is never dealt with, and the looters know it.

If there is ever to be any real reform in the United States, American’s have to take some interest in economic activity. Citizens need to push to simplify the terminology so they can understand economics, they need to force the budgets to become smaller so waste and corruption cannot be so easily hidden in the details, and this is something that must happen, if any preservation of America is to take place.

So go back and listen to Rich Hart again, and again and begin your economic education so that you can begin to understand the forces that are working against you and why, because it will take more than one or two people to fix this problem. It will take a majority of the nation. This is why the looters fear the Tea Party, because if the nation begins to pay attention, the game is over for them. They’ve already made their bets that people will openly chose to stay asleep. Only time will tell what fate delivers.

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

No Lakota Levy Group Offers Support to a Levy in 2012: Nooooooooooooooooo Waaaaaaaaaayyyy!

As reported in the West Chester Buzz at the Cincinnati Enquire website, the No Lakota Group offers to support the Lakota School Levy in 2012.  Clarification must be presented since my site has been flooded by curious readers. 

http://westchesterbuzz.com/2011/06/14/nolakota-offers-to-support-school-levy-in-2012/

For those who don’t know who Mark Sennet is, he’s NOT in any of these clips. As it has been for years, I will still be advocating against higher taxes. Mark’s decision to make some sort of deal with the Lakota School Board is strangely out-of-place. As anyone can see from this video clip, Mark and many others could leave the No Lakota Levy movement, and I could still continue without any problem.

The reality is this…….Mark Sennet, who is a member of the No Lakota Levy Group did speak at the board meeting on June 13th, 2011, and did make such a statement as to offer support of the levy in 2012.  However, Mark was speaking individually, or at a maximum the developers that are in our group who may wish to join him, but for the rest of us, we will still be standing against any proposed levy in the school district of Lakota.

As a businessman, I am surprised by Mark’s comments.  My goals have been to bring down the cost of education, and further tax money toward a school district is simply not in the equation.  However, not everyone is working for the same objective, and obviously, there is some politics involved in this decision by Mark. 

So for those of you who don’t want to see your taxes increase, rest assured.  The No Lakota Levy Group will still function.  Even if all the developers withdrawal their support, there are still many hundreds of people who have volunteered their time and money to help with a campaign.  There will be more than enough resistance to defeat any future  school  levies. 

Some of the stories that are taking place around the Lakota district, such as parents organizing sports in their neighborhood cul-de-sacs and car pooling kids to museums are wonderful stories.  Parents should have been doing that kind of thing all along, and cutting the budget to these activities have brought out the best in our community.  Throwing money at a child’s education is almost the same as throwing money into a fire.  It takes parents that want to be involved in a child’s life.  If a community just tosses money into a bottomless pit of union expectation, which is public education, they can expect that money to be wasted.  That is why Mark’s comments surprise me. 

But many of our members that are from the developing community are sitting on properties that they can’t sell or lease, so their judgment toward levies is that they don’t want to pay an unfair amount of money in taxes for property that isn’t doing what they invested in.  In a good economy they are the first to support a levy, because they built the homes which added to the school population.  So for many of them, the taxes aren’t an issue as long as they can move their property. 
For people like me however, I plan to live in the district for a long time, and the taxes are too high right now, let alone in the future.  The expectation of cost needs to come down, so I will continue to fight that issue as I always have. 

So don’t worry.  We have plenty of supporters against a levy right now.  If Mark and his friends want to cross over to the other side, that’s perfectly fine.  It won’t have an impact on the end result.

Rich Hoffman

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

Tail of the Dragon Coming Soon to a Bookstore Near You: Action, philosophy, romance, and a celebration of America’s roots

It is now official; American Publishing will be bringing my new book Tail of the Dragon to bookstores in 2012 and are committed to giving life to this stunning story. It will now proceed into a phase where their editor and I will work on the final manuscript in the coming months. This process could take up to a year which is why the book is scheduled for a 2012 delivery. It is more fitting for a release during that year because of the presidential election that is coming up.

In the book tentatively called, Tail of the Dragon, the governor in Tennessee is making a presidential run for the White House and he’s putting a lot of police on the street to help his campaign with public perception and the F.O.P union. However, to pay for those police officers, the various districts all over the state have increased their citation rates as a way to generate revenue, to cover the costs the governor has imposed upon the tax payers of Tennessee.

I’ve made it well-known on these pages how I feel about taxes and abuse by authority, so the issues of this story is something I feel very passionate about, more passionate than I do over education issues. I have a long history with law enforcement, much of it not good, and a long history with politicians. Law enforcement imposes the law that politicians create. If you believe as I do, that a majority of the politicians are simply corrupt at heart, lured into office because they lack the confidence to perform private sector work, and attempt to justify their positions by creating more laws, then the process is inherently broken, and it’s wrong to ask a tax payer to pay the salary of an unneeded police officer just so a politician wants to pander to the public’s desire for safety, then use those officers to write citations against those same tax payers as another way to generate money for the state, which turns out to be a disguised tax.

One of the best places in the country where this conflict can be seen is in Tennessee, on the western frontier of the Smoky Mountains in a place known the world over as one of the greatest roads ever built, it’s called, The Tail of the Dragon, it’s 318 curves in an 11 mile stretch of RT 129 that lures every car enthusiast, race car driver, motorcyclist, automotive engineer, and photographer in the country to test their abilities on it.

With speed, tourists, and radical bikers all concentrated in a known area where the law is openly being broken, the temptation of the Tennessee Highway Patrol to gather their citation quotas are too lucrative. Citation abuse is rampant as seen in the following videos.

I set the story of my book in this particular region because I’ve run the Dragon with my wife, daughter and son-in-law and saw the conflict there as a larger metaphor for what is going on in the rest of the country. The south is still refreshingly anti-progressive, so their resistance to progressive legislation is openly hostile. Tennessee is interesting because it is the state of Al Gore, yet they still embrace confederate battle flags at their tourism sites, so a kind of battle is being waged among progressive politicians and the kind of fans that love NASCAR.

The large resort town of Gatlinburg, Tennessee is very close to the Tail of the Dragon, so I set out to tell a romantic story of a couple that goes to that mountain town in order to rekindle their marriage and run the Dragon on their new motorcycle.

Many of the people who run the Dragon view getting pulled over by the cops there as a rite of passage. They figure the fines are worth it, for the chance to run the Dragon. After all, so many people run the Dragon on a Saturday afternoon that the police can’t pull over everyone. So part of the thrill is getting away with speeding on the Dragon and running the gauntlet of police without a fine. In this next video there are a couple of motorcycle riders that were pulled over even though they were driving pretty slow.

The premise behind my new book is this; what would happen if our couple going to the Smoky Mountains to put a spark into their marriage and have a little fun on their motorcycle were pulled over by the aggressive Tennessee Highway Patrol and refused to recognize the authority of the officers and the obvious money scam that is going on. What follows is a remarkable story about the meaning of life; the role of government, the desire for freedom, and the spirit of individuality as the entire reach of law enforcement both local and federal descend upon the couple to force compliance to the law.
Deep in the culture of America, and the south in particular is a love of thumbing their noses at the law, which in my opinion is a healthy system of checks and balances. It is good to dislike too much authority and southern culture still embraces such rebellion.

It is sort of a sad state of our country and its heritage that The Dukes of Hazard, a TV show from the 70’s and early 80’s are still so beloved by millions of Americans, and in the south, the General Lee (car) could run for president and be elected. It’s sad because in the coastal cultures of America, (New York and Los Angeles) the need for this rebellious heritage has been ignored in favor of progressive agendas, so new material has not been produced to fulfill the obvious hunger for this type of entertainment, leaving a large part of America still yearning for such an old TV show.

It is in such shows that the hearts and minds of the young live out their inner desire to be truly free of authority and to live their lives of their own accord, without the government trying to stick their noses into their business. This tendency is still strong in the south because many of the people from that region are the descendents of moonshiners from the prohibition age, where progressives removed alcohol from American culture in the 1920’s. It was the moonshiners that started NASCAR and in Gatlinburg to this very day moonshine is still an important part of the cultural heritage, a heritage that dislikes too much authority.

This is why the typical past time among many young men and hot-blooded women on a Saturday afternoon is a NASCAR race, or a trip to the local drag strip to race the cars they’ve spent all week working on.

This is why riders on the Tail of the Dragon are so willing to risk themselves, and financial penalties on a quest for thrills and freedom, sometimes to tragic results.

Even big named celebrities make frequent runs to the Dragon. Here is a charity run organized by Kyle Petty. Such sites are common at the Dragon. Thousands of motorcycles and cars run that stretch of road every day.

One of the reasons places like Gatlinburg are so popular and relaxing is similar to Key West, Florida. There is an open distaste for the law and people can get away from the politics of their jobs, their communities, their states, and their nation, and relish in a place where honesty is embraced and common sense rules.

I look forward to delivering to America a book that will embrace everything shown here and more, in a book that needed to be written because nobody else has done it. It is a book that is uniquely about American culture and its true desires.

So start looking forward to a unique literary experience that will take you on a journey that only a madman would seek. On that journey essential truths will be revealed about the nature and character of the American spirit, and it all starts by simply refusing to submit to authority and the chain reaction of events that are destined to follow.

2012 is not that far away………………………..I promise. Soon you will be able to read, Tail of the Dragon at a book store near you.

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

Photographic Genius at Newport on the Levee: The art of an adventurous soul

My daughter, Brooke did a marvelous thing, she is one of the featured artists who is displaying their work at the Stonebrook Winery at Newport on the Levee. They put her photography work on a wall there and she wanted to bring her mom and me down to have a look.

It wasn’t difficult. As I’ve discussed, my wife and I love Newport on the Levee. We love the Irish Pub there, and we love Mitchell’s Fish Market. In fact, one of the best dishes my wife makes is Voodoo Shrimp that the cook at Mitchell’s in Newport gave her personally. We love the view of the city from Newport on the Levee, so it is with great pleasure that I learned that my daughter was a featured artist.

Here’s her website:

http://www.brooketownsendphotography.com/

My daughter is a tenacious photographer. The world is her playground and everything is a subject of her art. In fact, she and her sister are excessively creative people who have a unique perspective on the world, and they capture those perspectives in their work.

My son-in-law, my wife, and my two daughters hit the levee in the sporadic rain as frequent lightning sizzled across the sky. This created some unusually wonderful light over the cityscape of Cincinnati while along the river was an Italian Festival complete with funhouses, Ferris wheels and Italian food of every kind mixed with the fresh rain and persistent fragrance of the Ohio River.

While walking through the winery, it was a pleasure to see patrons looking over my daughters work while sipping from their glasses of wine. I sat in a rocking chair hand-made by a retired engineer and relished it’s comfort as I watched my daughter answer questions about her work and discuss the aesthetic relationships between her nature photography and her self-portraits. Naturally her political photography is stunning, and her Washington D.C. pictures are unlike any I and many others have ever seen.

One of the greatest pleasures in life is to create something that wasn’t there before you made it and then share that with people to enjoy. Among those of us present, my youngest daughter is an excellent illustrator, web designer and photographer in her own right, of course my daughter being featured, my son-in-law a social network guru and entrepreneur. My wife has made a blanket for every child and married couple brought into our family for almost two decades, and I’ve written books, designed t-shirts, been a Wild West performer, a screen writer, an independent filmmaker, and I’ve started and ran several businesses, so among us we’ve had a lot of experience. Every endeavor doesn’t work out, in fact most don’t, but it never gets old to start a new venture and study the dazzle on customer’s faces when they experience something they never would have felt if the artist had not brought those emotions about through some form of art.

If you are looking for that special something to put on your wall that needs some life and energy injected there, go down to the Newport on the Levee Stonebrook Winery and Art Gallery and look up Brooke Townsend. She’ll be the most spectacular photography at the exhibit, so you won’t miss it, and do yourself a favor, and get yourself a gift of vision that will give back to you each time you look at it. And enjoy the journey of getting there, because Newport on the Levee is always a fun place to visit.

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

Public Housing Nightmare: But a dream for socialist looters and social reformers

The Federal government is threatening to cut off federal money to communities that do not accept the spread of public housing development. Listen to Doc Thompson cover this fatal issue on 700 WLW.

This move is a progressive agenda item, the idea of public housing, loss of identification of towns and boundaries. The progressives are implementing the strategy of the 10 Planks of Communism which is like their Ten Commandments. They follow those 10 Planks of Communism very closely. Public housing is a progressive platform. Click here to see those Ten Planks of Communism if you are not aware of what they are.

The reality of public housing is it brings about the worst in human nature. Progressives have a fundamental lack of understanding of human nature and believe as many of the college professors who advocate the progressive platform do, that human nature can be engineered, and that the actions of the human being are not innate. They believe that through education that they provide they can control those innate desires.

History proves otherwise. Everywhere that there is public housing, there is failure. There are out-of-wedlock child births, welfare is endemic among the public welfare culture, drugs are a major problem, crime is up in almost every category, public housing is a dismal failure in public policy. That is unless that public policy is to weaken the human state of the participants to bring them down to the level of the rest of the world, which appears to be the desire.

As this video will show, public housing is filled with looters, not in the people who inhabit the homes, but in the people who run them.

This move by public housing advocates is precisely the same as that of the proposed health care bill otherwise known as Obama Care. They are the type that has been abusing the “commerce clause” of the 10th Amendment to impose congressional will on states and cities for decades. These are also the same people who claim there is a “supremacy clause” in the Constitution that claims a foreign treaty supersedes the wording of the United States Constitution. The threat to cut federal money to communities that resist the spread of public housing is a threat by the federal government to impose its socialist will on its citizens.

All governments by their nature will tend to flow toward socialism. This isn’t out of some sinister design by them, but simply out of survival. The government worker just like any worker just wants to work and get paid, like anybody else. The problem with government is that it is often unproductive and draws the weaker personality types that society has to offer. Without management controls, and given power, these people will vote themselves unlimited increases, unrestricted budgets and easy responsibilities and they’ll pay themselves top dollar to perform the task.

To feed this monster government will always be on a continuous push to justify their existence. They will over dramatize the jobs they perform. They’ll ask for more employees, and they will work as slow as possible in order to make their jobs seem more difficult. And politicians since they too are government workers are quick to give the tax money we send their way away to programs that expand government. They do it for survival, to increase their bloc voting ability.

Public housing is all about bloc voting and fulfilling the goals of the 10 Planks of Communism. It is strictly for the benefit of government. Not for the rest of us. Nobody wants to live near public housing. Public housing brings down home values. The people who live in those places tend to vote for higher taxes because they don’t have to pay as much tax as the rest of us, so they can only benefit from more handouts which politicians must take from the taxpayer to give to the politician in order to buy their votes in the next election.

For those of us that take care of our property, mow our grass, paint our homes, fix our decks, we don’t want public housing anywhere near us. But government doesn’t care because one of the 10 Planks of communism is to remove private property, so to their view, we’ll get used to it. They don’t care if we maintain our property or not because left to them, they’d hire government workers to do it for us. All we have to do is give up our property and turn it over to them.

So that’s the plan. That is what we are dealing with regarding public housing. Like public education, it is a big government plan to expand the role of government in everyday life, secure their livelihoods, drive up taxes to pay for everything and achieve the aims envisioned by Karl Marx which many, many academics adore. Many of those academics and experts that end up advising government are those Marx types, because they would not survive in a private sector economy not run by government. Government employees tend to be failures at life, so the products of their labor fail repeatedly. We see it in public education, we see it in public housing, we see it in every branch of government, every township, school board, and city council. Government fails at everything they do. Everything!

So why do we want more of it? Why would we allow government to dictate to us that we will have public housing in our communities? Why do we even need the federal money?

Forget socialism and their stupid square homes with corrupt politicians running them. Every American should embrace capitalism, because in America every person that works, saves their money and has an idea can strive for a home like the one in this next clip. If you want to see what democracy looks like, look at the riots of the poor looking for a hand out. If you want to see what a republic looks like, talk to someone who lives in a home like this one.

My answer to that is the same that I say for public education. If government at the federal level and the state level cuts the money to the schools, then we must cut the wages and number of government employees to balance the budget. We don’t raise taxes. And with public housing, we need less of it, not more, and all the people who support it should be removed from office. Because they are perpetuating a bad program that cost society in many more ways than just money. And if federal money is cut, then that means government jobs must be cut to balance the budget. That’s the only way to play this game, and that’s the answer to a domineering government that wants all the things that are bad for the rest of us, even if it is only for the naive desire of their own survival. Let the government workers perish so to save what is left of America, because like a cancer cell, government will always try to grow if allowed to impose themselves upon the taxpayer, because they feed off of what is healthy and thrive in what is broken and dying. That is why they fail.

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

What a Nasty Little Weiner: Why progressives support polygamy, power, religion, and the sexual playground

It is really up to Huma Abedin how much of Congressman Anthony Weiner she wants to put up with. Abedin who is married to Weiner is a practicing Muslim and a very close aid to Hillary Clinton, so it is entirely possible that she doesn’t care about all the pictures of Weiner’s weiner that is all over the internet. It is possible that while she seeks counsel with Hillary she might say, “What should I do?” Hillary will probably say something like, “Huma, I love you very much and trust me, all men are pigs………just accept it. Men just can’t keep their pants on so don’t even worry about it. The important thing would be to ask yourself, what do I want. Can Anthony help you achieve your professional goals and the answer is yes. So stay with him. Let the media drive the story into the ground, and within a couple of months, everyone will forget about it. In the meantime, stay traveling with me, don’t appear in public with your husband and leave him hanging out to dry. It’ll serve him right.”

At that point Abedin might say, “But it’s embarrassing, everywhere we go together, people will think I’m not a good lover. Or they’ll think I’m weak because I let him get away with it.”

Then Hillary will say, as she looks out the window of her plane while it’s en route over the Atlantic Ocean to the United Arab Emirates in Africa, “No they won’t. People don’t think like that. They’ll be jealous that it is you that holds the title to power while the other women are just concubines to your man’s wishes. That’s what counts. It’s the title, Huma that is important. That’s what people will see when they look at you in public standing with your husband. This Christian notion of monogamy is outdated and proven problematic. Believe me, I have years of experience. Men will cheat on you no matter how much sex you give them, no matter how attractive you are. Many cultures accept this, superior cultures, such as your Muslim faith, and even in Japan it is quite common for the wife to arrange pleasure with other women for her husband. Think of it as a way of appeasement, such as you might do for your cat when you give it some cat-nip to play with and roll all over it’s body. You do it to keep your man coming home to you every night, to keep the title of wife in your court where you have control over it. At heart, Americans are evolving beyond this silly Christian notion of monogamy, so all will be forgiven if you’ll just let it play out.”

Now I wasn’t on the plane with Hillary Clinton flying over the Atlantic on our way to Africa listening to what she told Huma Abedin as the young woman greaves over the embarrassment of dealing with her husbands sexting exploits revealed on Monday the first full week of June 2011. Progressives, like all these people are, do not think like the rest of us. They might as well exist from some other planet, because that’s just the way their mind processes data. I know the content of that conversation because I’ve heard it before from progressives. I’ve watched their behavior for years, and I understand how they think. So I have no problem providing the details of that conversation, because it is so predictable the contents aren’t difficult to witness even without being there.

The deeper, much more problematic issue is that Anthony Weiner was so arrogant in his ability to deceive the public that he lied to the face of America without any trace of shame. Over the last week, as this story was breaking, he stood before all members of the media and lied to them. He lied to us all, claiming that his Twitter account had been “hacked.” He used his office equipment for much of this, equipment we all pay for as tax payers, and he thought he’d get away with it. Even as the story was breaking, he continued to push the issue by contacting more women with erotic pictures of himself. He was literally speaking to members of the media claiming that some hacker broke into his account, then turned around and engaged in the kind of activity he was trying to hide.

This is entirely too reminiscent of Bill Clinton who openly lied to the public then tried to turn the whole argument around and claim that his private life was off-limits, in no way reflective of his professional life. That led to the famous quote, “It’s just sex.” Spoken like a true progressive.

Weiner has already tried to make that distinction; it’s just my private life. “I made a mistake. I will not step down because I can still perform my professional job.”

So here’s the deal, and I’ll say this only once. This is why this guy is a supreme scum bag that I wouldn’t hire to hand me a towel in the bathroom, every interview that Weiner gave about Health Care, or the time he attacked Glenn Beck about supporting gold on his Fox News show, and every debate that Weiner had with every media personality or fellow congressman, now has to be discounted. We know now that you can’t believe a thing this guy says. Nothing he says on the floor of the House can be believed. Nothing he says on behalf of the White House can be believed, because we have all seen that he is more than willing to lie, about virtually nothing, in order to meet his personal agenda. What would he lie about if the issue actually mattered, like issues of National Security, or the true intentions of the Progressive Party, disguised behind the Democratic Party. What would he lie about when there is really a risk? Because if just taking naked pictures of himself and talking dirty to a bunch of women online is really a nothing issue, then why did he lie about it? Why did he stand before the world and talk to everyone like they were the idiots and he was the only person right in the world.

Anthony Weiner is a dangerous man because he has no moral compass. He is a power-hungry little man who will undermine anyone over anything. If he wants government Health Care, he’ll say and do anything to get it. If he wants to smear a Republican, he’ll say and do anything to perform the task. If he wants to take down a media personality that stands in the way of the progressive agenda, he’ll utter any word needed to manipulate those around him to commit his purpose. That is why Weiner is the arrogant embodiment of pure evil. He should receive not one fraction of a cent that I send to Washington in tax money. Anthony Weiner makes at least $174,000 a year for his work in Congress, that’s the money I know about. As an American Tax Payer I don’t want to pay his salary one day more. We could hire anyone to lie to us. We could hire a con man from prison to fill the American media with lies. He has no authority and should not serve one more day in congress.

Doc Thompson of 700 WLW hits the nail on the head really well here. Click to listen to a collection of clips about Weiner’s history of contention.

These guys are scum bags. Bill Clinton is because he’s a manipulative liar too. And Weiner and his wife have more in common with Bill and Hillary than they do with the average American. As I’ve stated on this site, these people don’t give a care about American life. They are aiming for a world government ran by the United Nations, of which they are all polarizing for their own grabs for power in that not yet formed power of world affairs. They don’t care about affairs, sexting or even monogamy. They don’t care about the United States Constitution because they are all lawyer types that seek to bend the law to suit their needs at the expense of everyone that pays their wages. They are crooks and thieves with no moral compass or care. People like Weiner are no different from the weiner’s they take pictures of. They simply rise to the occasion to screw the taxpayer for their selfish pleasure. At all other times they are simply limp collections of flesh that just hang around and are only useful for disposing of bodily waste. In other words they are virtually worthless appendages intended for only one function of human endeavor, and that is to penetrate something else with the intention of pleasure and self-gratification. An entity of pure biology and no mind what-so-ever.

I think now we understand why there is such a push among progressives to embrace the Muslim faith, because the men want to practice polygamy, and the women don’t want to feel alone in public when their men sleep around on them.

http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/720291-The-Truth-About-Polygamy-In-Islam

 

It certainly seems to be the desire of Bill Clinton, and the king progressive thinker himself, Congressman Weiner and his multiple online sex partners. There’s always more to the story than what you see on the surface.


Good luck with that progressive lifestyle. If you’d ask me Abedin, I’d say find a real man to be the father of that baby, and not a weiner. But it’s your life.

Rich Hoffman

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

Just Earn Less Money: The history of progressive insurance and power grabs

One of the things that has come up over the Obama Care debate, particularly in Ohio is that since the state requires mandatory automobile insurance for drivers in the state, than isn’t it natural for the state, and the government to force residents to purchase health care.

Anyone who wishes to argue the merit of Ayn Rand’s classic novel Atlas Shrugged will feel betrayed when the representative for the government arguing the constitutionality of Obama Care in front of Ohio’s 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati will find the shocking revelation admitted confidently that the way to get out of the mandate of buying insurance is to simply make less money. Doc Thompson explores this devastating view into the minds of a government looter in these action packed clips from the floor of the debate. Listen to that clip here:

The looters of the government, and to my view, most every employee in government is a looter, because they take from producers, so their entire value is contingent upon those of the producers, including those in law enforcement, have progressively robbed us all of freedoms in order to fill themselves over a long period of time. When in the late 1980’s Ohio made it mandatory to have automotive insurance in order to drive a car, people didn’t understand why I was so upset.

Making it a law to have every driver in Ohio have insurance seemed like a good idea. After all, it made sense from a legal point of view. If you wanted to drive a car, then you must show responsibility for the damage you could do on the road. This was an idea that started in Massachusetts in 1927 and progressively moved to most every state in the nation. To date, New Hampshire is the only state to not have compulsory auto liability insurance. Every other state has adopted the mandate.

The reason this was a bad thing is it created an oligopoly in the insurance industry, meaning insurance companies were guaranteed that out of every driver in the state of Ohio, the insurance companies were assured that all they’d have to do by way of competition was simply divide up all the residents in the state and compete with each other for those people. All drivers had to have insurance so choice was no longer an option. This of course drove up costs and was the intended goal of the insurance lobby in the state and nation. Under the umbrella of safety, a powerful organization used law enforcement to obtain for the insurance industry revenue literally under the force of law. The power behind the force of the law is imprisonment or the barrel of the gun so this was quite tyrannical legislation, which is why it upset me so much.

A few years later it became mandatory to wear a seat belt. At first it was only a finable offense if a driver were pulled over for another driving violation. But just a few years later, it became law that all an officer had to do was pull over a driver for not wearing a seat belt. It’s called the “Click it or ticket,” campaign. I discussed this in great detail in an article I wrote about Memorial Day weekend where there were driving check points that were citing specifically for seat belt violations.

It takes time, but since the very first person in the nation purchased auto insurance in Dayton Ohio in 1897 progressives and government looters have used such devices as insurance to propel their grabs for power.

Now, we see the same thing happening with Obama Care where the government is making a huge grab for power in dictating what people must and must not do. It is the ultimate first step to a complete loss of any kind of freedom envisioned by the architects of America. Obama Care was created on the backs of all the other progressive legal movements, such as the auto insurance mandates. And it’s all summed up in the words spoke on the floor of the testimony. “If you don’t want the manadate, then make less money.” In other words, produce less so you can qualify for assistance.

It’s no wonder welfare doesn’t work because like all government programs the philosophy is just the same, make everything affordable for the poor and do nothing to reward the producers. And if the government imposition is too great, then become a dependent. The failure is that government never seems to consider that if they create a society of dependents, who will do the producing?

Obama Care is laced with these infantile thinkers and looters of productive resources, and the truth is difficult to hear even among those with ears experienced enough to hear it. It is truly shocking to consider that the very people we employee to run the government are so devastatingly stupid that it is contemptible to even fathom as relevant behavior, yet it is.

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

Revenue Enhancement Equation: The Great Police Scam, safety = money + POWER

I heard a story this morning that was deeply disturbing, a guy I know was harassed by a cop from Trenton last night because that particular cop is in a fight with his brother-in-law. The cop came to the home of this guy I know, walked into his garage and flashed his flashlight into the eyes of the guy and his wife, openly harassing them, but walking the thin blue line of the law. The harassment is that the brother-in-law had told the cop the night before, “don’t you have anything to do but harass us for a speeding ticket my wife got. Last week you pulled over an ice cream truck that rolled through a stop sign. Why don’t you arrest those drug dealers over by the factory? We all know what is going on over there. You know it, we know it, yet here you are, harassing the very people who pay your salary, because you know you can.”

Apparently the brother-in-law hit too close to the mark, so the cop chose to step up his harassment, instead of doing less of it, and now he chose to harass members of the brother-in-law’s family, to put peer pressure on the brother-in-law to cease the behavior of resistance. After all, in the eyes of the law, resistance is futile.

Darryl Parks of 700 WLW deals with a bit of this police tyranny during the Memorial Day weekend when police all around Cincinnati make the announcement of the “Click it or tick it” campaign. The only reason for those cops to pull over drivers for the seat belt campaign is to raise money. Listen to that broadcast here:

There is much evil in the world that is done under the disguise of “safety.” There are DUI checkpoints set up to make the rest of us “safe.” There are cops stationed along road ways all across this country to keep speed down, so we will all be “safe.” This is the same mentality we see in our schools where teachers proclaim that they are needed to keep our kids, “safe.” Administrators are needed to keep teachers “safe,” so that teachers can keep our kids, “safe.” Safety is the key word for tyranny. Give up your freedom for the safety we provide.

When you question this process, especially with police officers, they get very angry. Stories like the one this brother-in-law tells are not uncommon. There are officers like this dirty cop in every single community. Their superiors are very limited in what they can do because just like in the teachers union, the Fraternal Order of Police protects its members with a mob like presence. Not every cop is bad, but the bad ones just like in any group tend to be the leaders. It’s always the most aggressive that set the policies for the group, and aggressive cops set the standard.

I know personally two officers in Hamilton that were demanding sexual favors from women they pulled over. They offered the girls and women a warning in exchange for getting out of the ticket. The cops resigned before the investigation got underway which is a standard FOP trick which allows the officer to get another job later once the stories cool down. How do I know about it? I know one of the guys. After he resigned he called me to ask me for a job, hoping I didn’t know why he left the force. These are not isolated stories. They are epidemic. The power of the position invites corruption of that power. And when you have too many police, which politicians prop up and pander to so they can get the support of the powerful FOP for elections, the police are bored while on the job, so the weak ones tend to abuse their power. They pull over attractive woman because they can. They pull over speeders, especially speeders in nice cars, because they have nothing else to do, and they have to raise the proper amount of revenue to justify their existence. And they exist for purely political reasons, because the sheer numbers of officers provide the FOP with the political clout to influence elections. It’s a big scam, and just one more imposition on the tax payer. Again, we pay for our own demise, harassment, and erosion of freedom.

Every time I see a check-point set up by police officers I achieve new levels of rage. For the most part, DUI laws were created by politicians under the guise of “protection” to prop up the insurance industry and to give their FOP supporters something to do. It provides business for the courts and all the employees of the court. Meanwhile, DUI incidents still occur, because we have a drinking culture. Politicians know it. News reporters know it, we all know it, but yet we don’t do anything about it, because they are the “authority.”

The cops know it too, that’s why they think it OK to walk into a man’s garage and harass him and his wife only because they are related to a man the cop has a personal issue with. That’s abuse of power and it’s time to call it what it is. Not to hide the contemptible behavior behind the guise of “safety,” “protection,” and “public well-being.”

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

Laura Sanders: My answer to your waltz of words in The Pulse Journal

Just like many people didn’t want to believe that anything was wrong with Ohio State football, Jim Tressel resigned amid a wave of controversy.  Our statewide school funding issue isn’t far off from the Jim Tressel controversy where little white lies that is in the context of the program, insignificant, the evil is in the cover-up.  And with school budgets, the cover-up is in the contracts extorted by the teachers unions. 

The apologists were out again in this past week’s Pulse Journal.  Another letter attacking me was placed in that paper proving the vast intellectual deficiencies of a certain percentage of the population.  When reading these things I almost feel sorry for those people.  I mean how do they live?  How do they make decisions?  Surely they aren’t so mentally challenged, because if you read letters from apologists like the author of the editorial below, that is the only conclusion a person that can actually think would conclude. 

Before I tear this letter to pieces, read it for yourself.  It isn’t my intention to make these people feel bad, but they do it to themselves.  They vote after all, and it is through apologists like the author of this letter that the teachers union uses to propel their strategy, which has worked because people like me couldn’t believe that there are actually people who can’t think critically enough to see through the façade of deceit. 

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Teachers aren’t just educators

Dear Richard Hoffman: You can rejoice now that Lakota’s teachers have agreed to a three-year freeze in step raises and a much less comprehensive health care plan. Or, is that not going far enough? Oh, that’s right…you believe our teachers are overpaid, even though 100 percent have bachelor’s degrees, and 68 percent of those have master’s degrees. I guess with six-hour workdays and summers off, they really aren’t deserving, huh? Those daily lesson plans and graded papers must magically appear on their desks each morning. 

I have friends who are teachers, and let me tell you, they are worth every penny they earn. Not only are they educators; they are counselors, role models, mediators, chaperones and disciplinarians. They perform a balancing act every day in the classroom, having to be assertive yet compassionate; formidable yet sensitive; strict yet respectful.

Instead of recognizing the commitments to our children put forth by Lakota staff members, you, Mr. Hoffman, are spending all of your time blaming unions, threatening school board members and charging “overpaid” teachers with taxpayer abuse. Your arguments are weak at best, accusing school administrators and board members of mismanaging school funds when it is well-documented that Lakota only spent $9,806 per pupil during the 2009-10 school year — less than most other comparable statewide districts. As a matter of fact,Westervilleschool Superintendent Dan Good was quoted in a February 2011 article as saying, “We’re going to be looking at what’s going on in those communities (Lakota and Fairfield) that’s allowing them to keep those high ratings along with such a low-cost per pupil.”

Our school system relies solely on levies being passed so that our teachers can be compensated. The reason for Lakota’s continued success is because of our teachers. They should be lauded, not punished.    

Laura Sanders

LibertyTwp.

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Ok, where to start? There are so many problems with this letter.  First off, I am not spending all my time blaming the unions.  I spend about 2% of my time fighting taxes, which began about 9 months ago.  The other 98% percent of my time is quite productive.  Of the 2% of my time I do spend on fighting higher taxes, it is the reasonable conclusion that unions are to blame for the overall funding problems.  They didn’t give themselves any budget limits.  Unions aren’t any different from teenagers, if you give them a $100 dollars, they’ll want $200.  You can never give enough because the teenager hasn’t learned the value of money. They don’t value what comes easily.  And neither do union members.  As a producer, and a capitalist, I don’t like unions.  I don’t want my money supporting them.  I’m fine if they can exist in the free market, but they can’t.  They have succeeded in driving up wages to the point that China,India, and Indonesia are now doing jobs that used to be done in the United States.  I blame the unions for that.  Labor costs are the unifying factor in the overall manufacturing problems our country is facing.  I think people should be paid a fair wage, but if it’s excessive, and drives up the cost of the product to where the consumer won’t buy it, or simply can’t afford it, then the victor of that wage level negotiation is not the union that extorted the higher wage, because the union killed the job in the long run. 

This is what the teachers union has done to the cost of education.  They have driven up the cost without a care in the world to the end result.  Their solution to everything is simply to raise more taxes, which isn’t a successful formula for prosperity.  That mentality has run the Norwood General Motors plant out-of-town, it shut down Fisher Body in Hamilton.  In fact it has practically decimated the economy of Hamilton.  It drove up the costs at Cincinnati Milacron down in Oakley.  The list goes on and on and on.  Those were all production jobs, and most of that work is now out of the county. 

I’ve employed people who worked for AK Steel in Middletown, several of them that wanted jobs while they were on strike during their labor dispute that went on for over a year back in 2006-2007.  I learned a great deal about the hard union mentality from those employees, since AK Steel is one of those mob type unions where they actually beat-up people who crossed the picket line during labor disputes.  A lot of my local motorcycle friends in and around town are big time union types.  I have made my feelings known to these guys.  I have told them, “You wouldn’t have a boat, and you wouldn’t have a Harley Davidson parked in the garage if not for the union, because you guys are too stupid to earn that kind of money on your own.”

“We ain’t got those head smarts like you do, brother,” is what they say to me.  “Thank God for the union.”

“You’re working yourself out of a job with the wages you guys demand.”

“Just so long as it don’t happen till after I retire.”  (they typically laugh at this point.)

Teachers are absolutely no different.  They are like anyone else.  They believe their job is the most important job on the face of the planet.  It’s up to someone like me, (in management) to let them know that their job isn’t quite so important, that someone else can do their job, and the show will go on without them if need be.  It’s my job in management to not be liked, because nobody likes to be told they aren’t that valuable. 

But for a manager to know the value of a job, they need to know something about the job.  I’ve worked in just about every endeavor someone could imagine and I know how difficult teaching is.  To me, teaching is worth a range of about 40K to 60K tops, because it is a degree position.  But a master’s degree has no value to me.  A doctorate has no value to me, not in public education.  I just want kids to be able to read, write and be productive citizens.  If parents want all that other stuff they can hire a private tutor, or a private school, and make sure that kid gets to college.  It’s an insane law to pay 68% of the teachers at Lakota more money because they have a master’s degree.  What’s the value in that?  Does it make them better?  The union will tell you it does, so where are the results?  Where are the test results that prove otherwise?  There aren’t any, its pure speculation.  What do a master’s and doctorate degree do to justify higher labor costs? 

I know a woman who is going for her doctorate.  I asked her, “why is that so important to you?” 

She said to me, “I’m a professional student.”  At least she was honest.  This particular woman is the really cautious type.  She is the kind that will put her kids in a helmet when they are riding their bicycles, and in her professional life, she doesn’t care much for competition, so she enjoys the security and pace of academia.  I know personally, as I look down the list of the top 625 highly paid teachers at Lakota that many of those teachers fit the same description.  Only in government does their vision for reality work, because the tax payer picks up the bill. 

The only reason a lot of the laws that school boards are constrained with regarding school budgets exists, like the run-a-way labor costs mentioned with the master’s degree ratio are because the OEA lobbied to get laws passed that completely benefited them. 

It is insane to create policies that drive up your labor costs then turn around and continue to ask for more money from tax payers to fund them.  With as much money as I spend in taxes, I expect Lakota to be the greatest districts in the state.  But don’t be a fool and ask me to pay for infinite amounts of money for it.  That doesn’t make any sense.  At some point there’s a diminishing marginal return and we’ve hit that point. 

As to grading papers, what?  A teacher is under contract for 7.5 hours.  Grading papers if a teacher has to do it every single day shouldn’t take more than 4 hours per day.  So that’s a 11.5 hour day.  So what.  Why was such a statement spoke about as though it were something special?  I average a lot more than that per day. I’m on call 24 hours a day, and most of the time 6 days a week, or 7 if I have people working all weekend.  And I don’t have summers off.  I would expect any employee that I hired for over 40K per year to do everything said in that letter and more.  I don’t understand the emotion.  Is all that money needed to pay these employees and a pat on the back too required?  What kind of fragile people are these teachers that think such talking points even dictate special merit?  It’s expected! 

It is well-documented that Lakota only spent $9,806 per pupil, but so what.  That’s too high. How do I know it’s too high?  What criteria?  Well, if the district asks for more money for a levy, that means they aren’t working within their budget.  When the average tax bill in the Lakota School District is between $3000 to $4000 per year and the district is still asking for more money which does not mean Lakota has done a good job.  It doesn’t change anything if another district in the state thinks Lakota is doing well.  All that tells me is that education costs everywhere are too high.  The teachers union and the school board need to find a way to bring that number down to $8,000 per student, or even $6,000 per student.  If it were up to me, and I were running the district I wouldn’t be happy till the cost per pupil was under $5000.  We’re talking simply about labor costs here.  Not helping children. 

The union is solely responsible for pricing themselves out of the market.  It is unreasonable to ask tax payers to fund this ridiculous perception that these radical teachers union members have about their value.  Are teachers valuable, sure.  But they aren’t more important than the kid’s parents, and many of the traits listed are not the job of the teacher.   If they wish to be mentors, that’s the teacher’s choice.  If they chose to be counselors, role models, mediators, chaperones and disciplinarians, that’s fine. But they are paid to teach the basics.  I don’t want to hear about all those other traits, because those are the aspects of living that kids should be getting from their parents.  The union types will say that the parents are not doing the job.  Well, who are they to say?  Who are they to take it upon themselves?  Who are they to impose on the sanctity of a family?  Is it their job to impose on every parent the policing that only a fraction of truly bad parents deserve?  Is it justice to extend those traits outside the classroom, which is what a lot of teachers mistakenly believe they have an obligation to indulge in.  No, because all those tasks cost money, money that is inflated for a role that is overly dramatized in order to justify the money spent. 

So to answer the question, am I happy?  No, because the contract was a ploy to gain an edge with the public to over-turn Senate Bill 5.  It was not genuine; otherwise the union would look at the financial situation with more intelligence.  It would have advised its members to reduce their cost to the district.  They would have sought to make themselves more marketable. 

I was happy to see the superintendent and school board members happy for a change.  It was nice to see them feeling good about their jobs.  I did like that.  But I know what they don’t want to admit to themselves, because they are stuck dealing with that crazy union every day, that this concession is just another manipulative scheme orchestrated by the union. 

I see through this labor debate.  I have employees that constantly lobby for more overtime, raises, less work hours, you name it.  I’ve heard every over dramatized excuse in the human vocabulary for why an employee thinks they are valuable.  The trick is knowing which ones are telling the truth, and which ones aren’t. 

I hope to God that the author of this letter about me is not a teacher, but is in fact just another neurotic mother that is overly emotional about all topics in her life.  I really hope that’s the case.  Because if this person represents the kind of employees that we are paying over 60K per year, which is the average wage at Lakota, then we are wasting our money much worse than even I have pointed out. 

 I see from experience that the labor situation at Lakota needs to be dealt with, in order for Lakota to remain excellent.  Labor does not make a school great.  Management of resources does.  Lakota has shown that it can manage resources better than other schools, but that’s not enough if it is asking for more money.  If the state cuts it’s funding, if the federal government cuts its money, and there’s less money to go around, then the school needs to find a way to do more with even less.  It’s insane, and highly ignorant to assume that the tax payer will shoulder that responsibility directly.  I’ve heard it said that Lakota needs new sources of revenue.  Well, how’s it going to do that when it doesn’t produce anything?  The product is the education of children, and the results of that education have not placed the United States in first place in the world, so why would we spend more than what we’ve spent at this point?  Why should personal property taxes go up over $4000 per property, what is the value?  So a public teacher can take a 5K vacation on their 3 months off?  Isn’t that what it really comes down to?  Because if it wasn’t, the union would have been more responsible in what they demanded, and we are where we are because of the demands on the community.  When the school levy passed, it wasn’t asked for, it was demanded. 

In 2005 I fought the school levy back then too.  For all the same reasons.  The money kicked in during 2006.  As soon as the money hit the district, and the union knew the receipts were in from assessed property value, after owners paid their taxes, they threatened to strike in 2008.  The teachers union pushed its members to strike, to walk off the job.  I will never forget that.  The strike was over money.  As soon as positive cash flow was shown to the district because of the levy passing, the union went after the excess money.  That is the path that brought us to the financial situation we’re currently in.  It’s my money they want, and it’s my money they squandered away like drunken sailors. 

Unlike a lot of people who live in the district, I have lived in the Lakota district for a long time, and I plan to stick around.  And I have a great memory.  I know that these are people who are attempting to scam my neighbors and children that I genuinely care for.  And that’s bullying, it makes me very, very angry.  And I will not stand for it!

So you apologists can figure out where you want to be on this position, but remember, there isn’t any negotiation.  There is right and wrong.  I’m right, and those asking for more money are wrong.  And that’s the end of the story.  Live with it……get an education and learn a couple of things, then talk to me when you figure out that you agree with me.

 

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