Tag: Politics

People are innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around: The media often helps the real villains get away with crime while the innocent are prosecuted

One thing I have no tolerance for is bullies. I’ve never looked away from bullies when they show their ugliness in the world, and I’m not going to start now. When people wonder why I get up at 4:30 AM in the morning every day to write on this site and do the number of news stories I do, its because I have a lot of experience with the courts, I have known a lot of judges, lawyers, and media people, and I know how the game of law and order works from all sides of it. So to answer the question that I have heard from dozens of people over the last few weeks when they say that they have noticed that I have been supporting a lot of people who are accused of pretty serious crimes, I say to them, I don’t support criminal activity or law-breaking. If I come out in support of someone in some way, it is because I think them to be good people who are victims of bullying, and when I see it or even hear about it, I will help them at every opportunity. Not to the point where it leads to a trap, but where applicable. And when it comes to Steve Bannon from the Warroom and the false prosecution against him from the Biden Department of Justice, or the Darbi Boddy drama at Lakota schools in my neighborhood, or the Roger Reynolds case of corruption in Butler County, Ohio by the Sheriff’s department, if I come out in support of them, its because I think they are victims of abuse of authority by political bullies, and that is not something I am willing to tolerate. That is the reason I run my own news service in the form of this blog. I have learned over the years that the media is too lazy or lacks the philosophical parameters to explain things the way they need to be stated for the general public to understand, so I just do the job myself. So if I come out in support of some controversy, there is a really good reason why. 

The Steve Bannon case is self-explanatory. I know firsthand how the law can be used as a weapon to destroy people, and that’s clearly what is happening with Bannon. I like Steve; I have corresponded with him on occasion. We both have busy lives and work in different spheres of influence, but I greatly sympathize with him. The Biden DOJ is clearly abusing its authority in prosecuting him, just as Congress has abused its authority in the two impeachments of Trump, and this phony January 6th commission to attack Trump allies on popular podcasts to attempt to scare off a second Trump term. The law is being manipulated and used purely for political theater, and people’s lives are being threatened to be destroyed because of it. I would point to the local George Lang case of purgery several years ago where the very good man in the now Senator Lang was drug through the courts purely to attack him for knowing John Boehner. The target was Boehner, who was poised to be Speaker of the House in the not too distant future, and his political enemies wanted to get to him through his friends. It was one of the most disgusting court cases I had ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of them. If I live another hundred years, I still would not have exceeded my many personal court appearances and ridiculous entanglements with the law. Just because you are accused of something doesn’t make you guilty. We are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, but in cases like the one against Steve Bannon, and others like him over the years, who are convicted just because they know someone who is the real target, political assassinations through twisted concepts of law and order are not acceptable and must be punished. In the end, that will be what happens coming from Steve Bannon. The bad guys will get it in the end because tolerating the kind of society that would convict him is not acceptable. 

Darbi Boddy at my home school district of Lakota has made national news over essentially being attacked as soon as she was sworn in after she had just won an election. I understand that not all the school members like her or like each other. I get that the administrators did not like the newly elected school board member who asked too many questions and didn’t seem to respect the administrative red tape that they hide so many bad things behind. For instance, the attempt to vote her off the board over a minor incident and to make a media circus out of it was reprehensible. It showed a willingness by the board to undo a person the voters had just assigned to do a job. Then to make matters worse, the school superintendent added fuel to the fire by citing her with trespassing in two of the schools as Darbi went to them unannounced as part of an official investigation into CRT, which other board members were dragging their feet on. What makes this case so bad is that the superintendent, Matt Miller is not a person of high moral integrity. Based on things he has done, he should not have a job, and he only does because other school board members have helped him keep it. I haven’t said much about it because I have not wanted to destroy Lakota schools. I have wanted to see this new school board work. But some people are really afraid of Matt Miller and what he did to Darbi Boddy; based on what I know about him was a classic case of transference, where a guilty party will assign blame to other people for actions for which they are really guilty of. That kind of behavior is a classic problem of liberalism when they abuse law and order to hide crimes they are actually guilty of. But Darbi is not a danger to student populations. There are many more accusers of Matt Miller who would say that he is the dangerous one. I have been willing to look beyond accusations in his case for the benefit of the school and the school board in general. But it disgusts me to see someone attempt to put crimes of trespassing and other bad conduct out to a predatory media intent to destroy Darbi just to protect all the other bad things that I know are going on behind the scenes; that probably should be the focus of everyone’s attention. With all that said, I am very happy with Darbi Boddy and would like to see many more like her on the school board at Lakota. She is doing a great job.

Then there is the case of corruption thrown at Roger Reynolds. I’ve known Roger for a long time. I think he and I both love Liberty Township and remember how it used to be. I think Roger, an auditor for Butler County, has done a great job. I’d go on to say that I think he is one of the best auditors in the country for any county. I think the charges against him are politically motivated, and the Sheriff’s office could not hold up to the same scrutiny they have put on Roger. When evidence is presented to a grand jury the way it has been, they have no choice but to advance the cause. But if the tables were turned, I could think of dozens and dozens and dozens of people who would happily come forward and accuse Sheriff Jones of abuse of authority and unlawful interest in public contracts. That wouldn’t mean he’s guilty of those accusations, but there are plenty of people who would accuse him of it, and that would be enough to present to a grand jury. The media has pretty much thrown Roger Reynolds to the wolves with a play-by-play narrative that clearly is trying to destroy him as a person. I haven’t wanted to see the same applied to Jones; he’s been a good sheriff. Ending a career with so many black marks would not be good. It wouldn’t be good for Butler County. But the case would be much worse if the same investigations leveled at Roger Reynolds were applied to Sheriff Jones. So in that context, I support Roger Reynolds, he is being bullied for personal reasons, and the law is being used as a weapon to make it happen. If the law were equally applied, we’d lose a lot of public servants. Maybe it should be. But this picking and choosing of law and order to take out political rivals, there is no place for that in any society. And it’s a case of bullying that is reprehensible whenever it’s done and is unforgivable. 

Just because people are accused of something doesn’t make them guilty. Often, what it means is that the accusers are up to far worse and hope to divert their crimes to the innocent. Unfortunately, this is a common practice dramatically under-covered by a complicit media that has helped perpetuate it to the doom of our culture ostentatiously. And when I see it, I have never accepted it and never will. We have a very corrupt society because law and order are not respected by those most in their care. And if we ever want that to change, we must see through the smoke screens and the media hype at the real villains who are often the most vicious accusers because what they are attempting to hide is often far worse.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Trump Can’t Ride Off Into the Sunset: There is a reason for all the political anger, and it must be expressed

I generally like Elon Musk, but his comments about Trump and how he should ride off into the sunset were misguided and foolish. I hope Elon Musk accomplishes his goals with Space X. But I think Tesla will be headed for rough waters mainly because of how government has tampered with the electric car market. They are saturating the industry with assets that nobody wants, creating competition where there wasn’t demand, and making buying regular gas cars a taboo that will last for decades. Before the Biden administration stuck its nose into the electric car market, Tesla was a pretty cool option for people looking for a vehicle alternative. Tesla could support its own network infrastructure, complete with charging stations. They didn’t need government. But government has now interrupted that market and made electric cars something people hate. So Elon Musk has some trouble coming because of government tampering. And with that said, without government, Elon Musk would not be so wealthy and gained so much prestige. Elon Musk’s place in the world is very much a creation of government. Like most people who strike it big, Elon Musk made a good bet, and in his case, several, and he became wealthy. He’s not a magnificent genius beyond our comprehension that knows a bunch of things that we don’t as a species. He played with house money and came up big. But in his case, that house money was from the government. Without government subsidies, Elon Musk would be just another computer geek trying to buy expensive coffee at Starbucks. So his comments about Trump have been extremely misplaced. His political advice is worthless because he has too many government tentacles in him and foreign nations to have a proper opinion on the matter. I hope he has continued success. But his political advice is worthless. If anything, we don’t have enough drama from Trump. The world is angry, and for a good reason. The last thing we need is a tool from China telling us what to think, and because Elon Musk needs China so much, we can’t trust a thing that he says about political opinion.

We are living in a world where Hunter Biden has put so much of himself on video with known prostitutes smoking crack that it’s beyond comprehension. This is the President’s son, who is seen by the world committing serious crimes, and nothing is being done about it. Forget for a moment the many other scandals that are out there or what anybody might think about Joe Biden as a person politically. To have a direct member of the President behaving so badly is enough to justify profound anger at the world’s injustice. If there were never a Trump, never a Tea Party, never any opposition from political parties, the behavior of Hunter Biden would be enough to justify a revolt of the American population against the Biden administration for the embarrassment that it has brought to our nation. But then consider all the crimes of Covid by government imposed on the American people. Consider the inflation rate. The war on fossil fuels that have pushed up the cost of gas to unforgivable standards. The impact of the stolen election in 2020 which is now apparent. After the Wisconsin Supreme Court decision on drop boxes, it’s clear that there is a trend in America that is finally figuring out that Joe Biden should have never even been inaugurated. People have a right. Actually, they are obligated to be upset about the crimes committed in 2020 between the government-created Covid pandemic and the election fraud that followed. If people weren’t outraged, it would be weird. It’s perfectly justifiable for people to express themselves with anger at the Biden government, the people who put him in power, and the governments of the world that have imposed themselves on everyone’s lives in such destructive ways. Trump represents that anger in a manageable way, and everyone should be happy that there is a Trump out there to discharge all pent-up anger.

This anger in the world, in general, didn’t just happen during the Trump administration. The Trump administration was a creation of that anger. The lead-up to it occurred for many decades. Most noticeably during the 90s, when the political left tried to cram down America’s throats a liberal view of the world that was revenge for the eight good years of Ronald Reagan. Reaganomics was revenge for what America saw during the Carter administration. Ford was destroyed because of his association with Richard Nixon. Nixon was destroyed because he was a threat to the administrative state. Kennedy was killed because he was a threat to that same administrative state. Bobby Kennedy was killed because he was a disruption to that partnership with the administrative state and the façade of organized crime that ultimately could be traced back to government. This has been a political fight that has gone on for a long time, and it was evident to conservatives that after 2003 the media would not give George Bush a fair shake. Bush was hated, and the political left pushed that anger to launch Barack Obama, a terrorist candidate from Bill Ayers launched in the living room of a Weather Underground radical. They lied about it to our face even though we had the evidence. They lied about his birth certificate. They lied about Benghazi. They lied about everything, and those stories mounted to the point where people lost trust in everything. Mitt Romney in 2012 was another loss for conservatives who had been burnt by losers like John McCain over the years, moderates who wanted to play by the rules while the political left broke the law and rubbed our faces in it. By the time Trump offered himself in 2015, people were ready to fight back, and they elected him despite the administrative state’s goals to stop it. 

Things were good under Trump; the country worked. We discovered that a lot could be fixed in the world if only we had someone in the White House who wanted to solve problems. The administrative state wants perpetual problems because that’s how their funding works. They never wanted to fix anything, and Trump showed what a scam everything they said really was. Then they took Trump away and expected people to just put up with it. No, that’s not how it works. All that has happened was that the political left represented in America by the Democrats stole away the natural sentiments of what America wanted and imposed on them the desires of an administrative state they didn’t want or support. In more polite times, they might have held their nose and put up with it, but after all the years of disrespect by the left toward the right, things finally broke. Trump was the discharge of that anger, but now that anger is far greater than it was just a few years ago. America is not a centrist nation. The media has all the wrong terms for left and right. When they talk about the political left, they are talking about communists and socialists.

Nazis were socialists; they were not the “far right.” America has its own definitions for conservative thought, and most of the nation is conservative. They are not “centralists” as the Beltway defines them. The way America is was always determined by the flyover states, not the crazy lunatics who live on the coasts. So the more crimes the left commits, the more lies they impose on America, and the more bad behavior disrespecting America will only lead to more anger. That anger isn’t going to go away. It’s only growing; until it is dealt with, there will be lots of “drama” in politics. And that drama will continue until respect is given to those who actually run the country, Trump supporters, and the person they picked for President, President Trump.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Lakota is Teaching Children to be Street Walkers: Darbi Boddy pulls back the veil to reveal what has been hidden from the public, thanks to Channel 5 News

I suppose we should thank Channel 5 news in Cincinnati and the attempts by Karin Johnson to help the mad moms of Lakota build a case against the new school board member, Darbi Boddy, for showing us something we did not previously know. We keep hearing from the actual people committing all the vile acts in Lakota about how innocent they are, how CRT isn’t being taught and how mean Darbi Boddy is and how several parents are circulating a petition to get Darbi removed, even though the voters just picked her to do the job she has been doing. Darbi represents a large portion of the Lakota school district just north of Cincinnati, Ohio. She has been asking many questions, mainly about what kids are being taught and how radicalized it is toward progressive political goals that are nationwide and very dangerous to a healthy society. Darbi didn’t believe the people who were saying there was no CRT in Lakota and that the transexual agenda wasn’t a problem. So Darbi showed up at a couple of Lakota’s schools unannounced and took some pictures. This outraged parents, so they pulled security footage of where Darbi went, and Karin Johnson from Channel 5 put some of the results up on a television report. In one of the clips, they are accusing Darbi of taking a picture of a student, even though she said she didn’t take any pictures of any of the kids. Based on what was shown, it’s an irrelevant point. The student that Darbi took notice of in the hallways and that the mother of the Karin Johnson news report pulled back the veil just enough to give voters a real glimpse into what is really going on at Lakota, away from the sustained eyes of the public and hidden behind polite theatrics at school board meetings. We saw in the video a young girl dressed essentially as a street walker on par with some of the worst in Washington D.C.’s K-Street.  And it shows that Lakota has some big problems.

To hide the issue, the mad moms, the complicit administrators, and the rival school board members, the fuel behind the Channel 5 continued story, felt Darbi shouldn’t have been there. She didn’t have “permission” to visit the school in such an unofficial capacity. Yet legally, Darbi Boddy was elected to do exactly what she has been doing, so the debate is over technique, and as I say all the time to everyone, the rules are not meant for winners. The losers write rules to protect them from the winners in life. And rules are often used to conceal crimes, not reveal them. The administrators and members of the teacher’s union do not want management just showing up unannounced. So they have all kinds of unwritten rules to protect them from judgment. But if you really want to know what’s happening somewhere, especially where you are expected to manage the employee resources, you need to show up when they least expect it and see things for yourself. Within that framework, Darbi considers such an investigation “official business.” The school board might think they need a vote from the board to do such things, but it’s behind that kind of bureaucracy that the real crimes get committed. So I think Darbi is right to show up unannounced to take some pictures and stir things up a bit. Because if she hadn’t, we wouldn’t be talking about this story in the middle of summer 2022 when very few people are thinking about public school business. 

There has been a lot of frustration about CRT at Lakota and across the country. Polite school board members playing by the unofficial rules of conduct are hoping that people will be honest and reveal their clandestine radicalism while they are in possession of the community’s children. So they keep hoping a whistleblower will step forward and reveal all the evidence needed to conclude a case, and action can then be taken. But as I have also been saying for a long time, you can tell all you need to know by the kind of students and what views they express just from the safety of a school board meeting. But if that weren’t enough, my attention was directed to a Spark article about dress codes that came up over this overly sexualized student in the Channel 5 report, which clearly shows how radical the student population has become. Spark is the student-run newspaper. In the December 28th, 2021 edition titled “Back to the Drawing Board,” students are seeking to reform the school’s dress code to reflect anti-racist sentiments, which specifically include do-rags and sexually “expressive” attire that is directly tied to rape culture. Yeah, that’s really in the article. Strangely, Karin Johnson didn’t report about that even when there was evidence of it right in front of her. The point of the Channel 5 report was to talk about how “dangerous” Darbi Boddy is as a school board member and not following some written or unwritten rules. And that the kid dressed as a streetwalker in the school in front of other children and administrators was the victim. The Spark article goes on to say, “regulating students’ bodies is also another way of perpetuating white, heterosexual, middle-class values, as most dress codes conform to a certain kind of femininity and masculinity that does not take into account cultural, racial, religious, gender, and sexual differences among students.” Many people likely don’t know about the Spark article and otherwise wouldn’t know what students think about dress codes if this Channel 5 report had not shown us the alarming student who thought she needed to express herself as a K-Street applicant to a purple-hatted pimp on the street corner. We used to call them ladies of the night, but these days, the streetwalkers are on the streets at 6 AM. So it’s an expanding market looking for more Lakota applicants, by the way, things look. 

Essentially, the inmates are running the asylum. The administrators allow this bad behavior to continue in the schools and look for overly restrictive school board rules to protect them from administrative judgment. If Darbi Boddy had not gone to see what was going on for herself, we wouldn’t know a lot of what we do about the culture that is clearly driving CRT teaching and making everyday classroom environments highly sexualized.   When the school newspaper thinks that dress codes impose white, middle-class values on them, what the heck are we wasting all this money on an education for? If kids are learning this kind of garbage, and there are mothers like this mom of the girl in the Karin Johnson report who will expose their child on national television just to use her as leverage to get rid of Darbi Boddy off the school board, then is any of the public education at Lakota worth anything?   My question to that mom is, “why would you let your kid go to school dressed the way she was?” To be fearful that Darbi Boddy took pictures of her kid when she was more than willing to exploit that kid to push an obvious political agenda that feeds the kind of maniacal subculture reflected in the Spark article about dress codes…………….we have much bigger problems than just CRT. The public education environment is rotten to the very core of its purpose and is a problem that cannot be ignored. But thankfully, in their hate of Darbi Boddy, all these characters, the mom, Karin Johnson, teachers, administrators, purple-haired people eaters who complain at all the school board meetings about fairness as they push for openly sexual lifestyles have let us peek into their tainted world in reaction. And what we see is very ugly, dangerous, and expensive. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Transvestites in the American Military: Why the Second Amendment is more important than a government-run organization

At this point, it should be obvious that the woke policies that have come to Americans through their corporations, border policy, environmental rules and regulations, and especially the military have all been part of the attack by our enemies. And yes, we do have enemies; the ideas of globalism where America would be in charge of the Liberal World Order was always a fantasy designed to lure stupid people to the cause of America’s antagonists. Laura Ingraham actually did a good piece on this exact issue a few days ago when she reflected back on what we all think of our military in the kinds of recruitment ads that we remember from the 80s and 90s, the “be all that you can be” ads that were very catchy, and very popular. No, we don’t have that military anymore. We have woke generals who like to dress up in skirts on the weekends. Who has as priorities all the same ESG priorities that our corporations are mired down with. They consider diversity conditions far more critical than crushing the enemy at the gates of aggression. And we are all being told to like it, or else. Or else, what? It’s time to admit to ourselves that we no longer have control of our military, it has been captured by the progressive priorities of the United Nations, and our inserted Biden administration has given the keys to the car only to provoke our enemies to wreck America on purpose. And they are doing it with smiles on their faces. They have taken our military from us and intend to use it against us whenever possible. 

You can’t blame our enemies. They would never try to attack America with the kind of military that we’ve had and the technical abilities that are possible with it. Everyone would be a fool to take on the American military at face value; it’s been the best in the world. So rather than fight us on the battlefield, they have turned to elite capture to destroy and manipulate us from within. That is most obvious from China and their TikTok platform, which set algorithms that show American audiences much different information than their own people. TikTok directs content to their young people in China by showing interesting, thoughtful things. In America, it’s sex, drugs, and low-level thinking of every kind, and in its own way, is a poison injected into our culture to destroy any opposition to them that might exist. China doesn’t worry about America anymore, nor does Russia. They know. Our military is more worried about what lipstick our generals will wear to the latest press conference than in kicking the snot out of antagonizers. We have become used to just sending in an air raid to bomb a target remotely rather than facing off against terrorists in the streets of a major city. Look what happened in Uvalde, Texas, when there was a shooter in the school; the police were more interested in hand sanitizer for their soft little hands than in engaging the target to end the threat. That is the cost of wokeness and social emasculation in our American culture and is a problem across all our armed forces, from police to even the most elite military troops. It’s not just local news that saw that coverage of police afraid to engage one threatening kid shooting kids in a public school; China was watching, Iran was watching, and Russia was watching. North Korea was too. Think how many terrorists crossing over from the Mexican border witnessed those police in Uvalde terrified to engage a threat. Without question, it encourages their priorities of malice and chaos. 

I’ve heard it countless times when I say to people, “Hey, we don’t need the military in America. We can do the job ourselves.” The first thing people say is, “but they have rocket launchers, and airplanes, tanks; we could never fight an enemy like that.” Joe Biden often repeats those sentiments. The progressives assume that our “assault weapons” would not match a fully trained military. Well, I would beg to differ. We aren’t dealing with a military of Rambos that we might see in the movies. These are not the Top Gun: Maverick types. Most of the world’s military forces, the United Nations-controlled losers that sign up for these modern military tasks, are like those cops in Uvalde, more concerned with hand sanitizer than putting a bullet into a hostile character. It’s evident from me whenever I go to patriotic events, and the military is there doing ceremonies showing strength and reverence, even at NFL games, I am never very gushy about the military. I have never been, even in the good ol’ days of Ronald Reagan. I always looked at the American military as a luxury if it worked. But they would be the first possible enemy if we lost the leadership of America to foreign influence, which is obviously the case today. So I’ve never been a “thank you for your sacrifice” kind of person. I respect people who get into the military and try to do something productive with their lives. But I always have a wary eye on them. Because if they are willing to follow orders to a fault, they will follow the orders of the enemy if the enemy captures the leadership and will turn them on Americans without hesitation.

That is why the Second Amendment is so important and also why it’s important that private people can get access to large weapons and advanced technology. Because if we lose our military, which I would argue based on the transexual priorities they have, we already have, then we must be able to raise a militia to do what is needed to protect our homes and country without the help of the government military. But honestly, I’m not worried about a military run by a bunch of progressive wokesters going door to door for the illegal Biden regime to enforce lockdowns, conduct gun confiscation, or impose authoritarian rule. Even though they have access to the best technology on planet earth, you can beat those kinds of militaries by putting some hand sanitizer out and watching them coalesce around it. These are not the military of Patton or even General Jackson. We might want to think of them that way, and the ultimate insult to us all is that the enemy has taken that image away from us and given us the woke generals of today in their place. But the plan was for us to salute our way to them to our own detriment and eventual destruction. And that’s just not going to happen. Just as in the supply chain problems that we have everywhere as a direct result of progressive politics, the solution is just to do the jobs ourselves. To turn away from the luxuries of institutionalism and make those priorities decentralized and under the control of competent people. Not progressive government losers. All the technology in the world can’t make them good or dangerous. But the world needs to see that with or without a military, the people of America are bold and strong, and it truly is the home of the brave. That isn’t obvious by watching footage of the Uvalde police under pressure. But door to door across the USA, it’s there around the kitchen tables and in the garages. That American spirit is still there. We just don’t see it through the woke corporate media and government propaganda that is too busy trying to get transvestites to shower with hard-boiled Americans than in winning a global war on terror.

I know what my plan is if they ever come to my house looking for a fight; I’ll throw some hand sanitizer out to the end of my driveway and watch them kill each other over cleaning their hands. A military of woke losers is easy to beat, even with the best weapons in the world. If they work for the government and are more concerned about getting the jab, wearing a mask to avoid Covid, and taking showers with pronoun gender troops, I’m not worried about anything they might try to do that is aggressive. They’ll be easy to beat. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Abuse of Power in Butler County: And it’s not Roger Reynolds doing it

I’ve talked about it before; I sympathize with the Steve Bannon contempt of congress case that is happening at the end of July 2022 more than other cases because it’s personal for me. I don’t communicate with him a lot, be we occasionally do. He has shared some of my articles on social media, and we have exchanged text messages on occasion, so it’s more personal to me to see what is happening to him than it would be if I didn’t know something about the person himself. As I watch him go to federal court every day and the judge lecture the defense about not making a circus out of the case, it is bewildering to think that Eric Holder was found in contempt of Congress in 2012, yet no punishment ever came his way. But because Bannon is a member of the Trump White House, he is being treated like a criminal, guilty before proven innocent, just by association. And all this has made me think of the case of George Lang several years ago, who was facing jail time just for knowing John Boehner, who was poised to be speaker of the house, and the Democrats wanted to sink him through his friends. George, of course, was found innocent, but it was scary for sure. We could all point to misconduct in court proceedings that were purely politically motivated and shake our heads. But we often don’t say much about it because we fear that injustice being turned in our own direction, so we just move along and try to ignore it. Yet, I see the same thing happening to Roger Reynolds in Butler County, where political rivals are accusing him of corruption in his office. And I just don’t see it in any of the indictments, for which a 6th came out just recently to add to the pile, intent on knocking him out of office. It’s an election year, some rivals want Roger out as a political character, and they’ll do what they must do to sink him. 

Believe me; I’d rather talk about a million other things than this case, which I’ve discussed in detail. I’d prefer to leave all this mess to the courts to decide but based on a ridiculous article by Jennifer Edwards Baker from Fox 19 about the details of the 6th indictment against Roger Reynolds, which now involves Lakota schools, the issue is so preposterous that we just can’t ignore it. Obviously, the prosecution in the case against Roger, much like the case against Steve Bannon, doesn’t have much to go on, so they are prosecuting the case in the court of public opinion through reporters who might sway public sentiment ahead of upcoming elections. And that is the entire goal of the proceedings. And we can’t ignore the case because it could be any of us falsely accused. It’s not that I love Roger Reynolds. I think he has been an excellent auditor. But he’s made political enemies over the years, which is all part of the blood sport of politics. I think he could handle many things better regarding social interactions, but I recognize that he’s an A-Type personality, as is Sheriff Jones, and a clash among those types of people is bound to happen. I see it as more of a human resource problem than a legal one. If those two people have problems, they should resolve them in some other way than in political tricks ahead of elections and wasting the time of courts for personal vendettas, which is clearly the case with this indictment against Roger involving Lakota schools.   

The Fox 19 article says many things that could easily be misconstrued, leaving out all the relevant factors, such as all the axes to grind among public employees, especially those who handle money. The indictment indicates that Lakota schools were due to get back $750,000 from the auditor’s office. Roger suggested to the treasurer Jenni Logan that they spend that money on the Four Bridges Golf Course in a partnership. A whole series of emails between Jenni and the school attorney show an interest in Roger’s proposal. Ultimately, they decided it probably wasn’t a good idea, so the concept was rejected. That was back in 2017, a long time ago. So why is this story coming out now? Jenni is retiring on August 1st, 2022, and this is something for the road that fits into the motivations of Sheriff Jones and his political needs regarding putting someone else in the seat of the Butler County Auditor. So, they completely made up the word “coercion” in the indictment and tried to build a case that forced Roger to prove he wasn’t guilty of it due to pressure from public opinion, rather than proving that Roger actually used coercion in any way during the proposed spending of the money. When people see $750,000, they might think that’s a lot of money, but in reality, within the budget of Lakota, it’s much less than 1% of their expenditures and is actually about 11 or 12 teachers. Teachers make a lot of money, despite what the unions say about compensation. I can easily see how Roger would suggest that Jenni spend the money on something more useful, like an elevated lifestyle for the students of Lakota, rather than just blowing it on more activist teachers. Jenni must have thought the idea a good one because she pursued it through emails which are part of the case. But she did so voluntarily. That is not coercion; it’s a discussion among professional adults. 

All this doesn’t change my opinion of Roger Reynolds. As I indicated, I could tell stories all day long about court cases that were purely intended to destroy a political rival and had nothing to do with actual justice. I mentioned a few here based on personal experience. But it’s quite common as a practice. I’m all for law and order, but justice should be blind. What is going on with Roger Reynolds is that laws are being applied against a political rival instead of uniformly applied. It’s an abuse of authority, but it’s not Roger doing the abuse. It’s the accusers, not the recipient. I’ll still be voting for Roger Reynolds in the upcoming election. All the people participating in the investigation against him should be trying to work with Roger instead of getting rid of him over their personal problems they might have. Destroying people’s lives is not the way to solve a problem. It might be common, but it’s certainly not right.

The courts are not private playgrounds to bully people into fight resolution that might have been settled on a playground when everyone was kids. As adults, judges, attorneys, and media bottom feeders are not replacements for fists to the face. When the courts are abused, as they are clearly being abused in this Roger Reynolds case and the case of Steve Bannon, that gives politics and our justice system a bad name, and everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves, as far as I’m concerned, all six of these indictments against Roger Reynolds are political witch hunts. If I had been Roger, I would have handled things differently, where there was no question as to blurred lines. But social mistakes aren’t against the law. Intent to commit a crime is, and to assume intent where there clearly isn’t any evidence, just for the political theater of altering an election is despicable at best and gross abuse of authority at the very least. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

What Makes George Lang So Good: Leadership and one of the reasons Butler County is Debt Free

George Lang, whenever he gives a public speech, especially in Butler County, Ohio, where he is the Senator of the 4th District, will quickly remind everyone that Butler County is the only county in Ohio operating debt-free. It is one of the best-run counties in the entire nation, fiscally speaking, and that is to the credit of Nancy Nix and many others who work as the treasurer and support staff. It’s also a credit to the Republican Party of Butler County, and you will always find George Lang somewhere near someone who has been successful behind many of the success stories. George Lang is the kind of person who builds people up wherever he goes, and his best work is often in the background. He’s not very ostentatious about letting everyone know about the good work he does, but given the trend of pointing out every flaw people in politics have that there are, I thought it was an excellent idea to let people know of one of the best examples of what a good politician is that I know, and point out some of the traits that make him that way. While it’s true, I consider George a friend, I’ve known him since the early Tea Party days, and I like his family quite a lot. But I’ll also say that we don’t always agree on everything or support the same kind of people in every situation. Yet, as I always say, there is only one correct answer, and I can say that in the context of our relationship, George is a tireless advocate for whatever that right answer is, and he pursues it aggressively. And if new information comes up along the way that might change his view on the right answer, he doesn’t let anything get in the way of modifying his thought process to accommodate it. And that might be his best trait and why he is so successful, not just in the things he does, but in how he builds people up around him toward the ultimate correct answer. 

I was at a few events recently and heard the same kind of stories, that George Lang is an establishment Republican and that he is part of the problem, not a solution. In the context of those sentiments, I can say that they are common among anybody who has had success and are not rooted in reality. One of the reasons I’ve been able to be friends with George Lang for so long is because he is a high-quality person who can handle the heat in the kitchen well. So, if he were anything less than great, I wouldn’t have maintained a friendship with him all this time. Usually, when we talk, it’s not about politics ironically, but the big things, like ancient civilizations and what lessons we could learn from them that could improve the legislative agenda of America as a republic. We never get hung up on the small stuff, the whims of political tides that come and go like an ocean current.   From my perspective in knowing how George is every day, I know the things some people say about him are because he’s been successful. All successful people get hen-pecked behind their backs. The critics are primarily built on jealousy or to hide their own ineffectiveness in the world and would rather blame a corrupt system that never listens to their own failures. George is the kind of person who can sit down with anyone under any type of contentious condition and work with them. And he stays honest during it all and can go home to his family with a clean mind because everything he does is done with good sentiment on his part. I’ve watched many people attempt this in life, and they usually get beaten down into an unrecognizable person within a few years. But George has managed to keep himself great for many years, working as a trustee, then a State Representative, until this most recent position as a State Senator.   George could do anything politically that he wanted, which would always draw criticism from the fans in the stands. Yet when it comes to wins, George is always nearby those victories even if he isn’t the one who takes the heroic shot in the end but was the person who set all the success up behind the scenes. 

This came to my mind because I have been getting asked many questions about what might happen in the fourth quarter, during the next election in America, if the Democrats try to use another version of Covid to implement shutdowns and change voting rules as they did in 2020. In Ohio, DeWine was terrible with Covid, and it cost the state a lot. Well, George all along worked behind the scenes to ensure that what happened in 2020 would never happen again in Ohio. George has a business-first political platform that understands that if there is no business in Ohio, then there aren’t jobs and things to do with a good economy. So George puts his political efforts into ensuring that the economy of Ohio is outstanding so that all other good things will follow. And over the last several years, George has passed legislation that greatly limited what a governor can do under emergency conditions. For instance, if there were another pandemic, a governor would be unable to shut down small businesses while keeping the large ones open. Everyone would have to follow the same safety protocols, but the government would not pick winners and losers as they did during Covid 2020. Also, the Senate led an effort with George among the leaders to drive the issue that would keep any governor from overreacting and taking authority control over the entire state. So those days are gone forever, and George Lang is the one to thank for it. 

A lot of the best legislation that gets done in Columbus isn’t very sexy. It doesn’t make great splashes on the nightly news. Few likely know about S.B. 246, which allows for small businesses to utilize similar tax advantages that large companies have access to, which might not sound like a big thing, but if you are a business of any size, tax burdens are one of the most significant concerns that there is. With George’s bill, it will attract investment to Ohio which is desperately needed. Ohio has been suffering from a depopulation crisis for a long time. It’s been so bad that it only has 15 congressional representatives due to that condition. As jobs have fled the state due to previous bad government policy, there wasn’t anywhere for the kids of previous generations to work, so they left for places that looked more attractive.   George is working to rebuild that business base of Ohio and is looking to turn that all around, and so far, he’s been very successful. Like the example George gives about the great Butler County treasurer Nancy Nix and how it is operating as the only county that is debt free, it takes a lot of leadership behind the scenes to manage everything correctly, and it also takes a willingness not always to be the point person where a single point failure can significantly limit what good leadership can do. But to build up others in ways that the public never sees. And if someone didn’t point out that good work every now and then, nobody would ever know. And that is why I value George Lang so much and think despite the negative news stories that we hear every day on the news, there are some great politicians out there doing outstanding work. And George Lang is one of them for sure. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

They Have Already Eaten the Pie: Steve Bannon and Titus Andronicus

“It’s too late; the bad guys have already eaten the pie.” That’s the message I left for Steve Bannon, whom I like, respect, and have been talking to a bit through text messages and on Gettr.  Steve had been reposting some of my contributions, and we have had discussions about the ground game of the populist movement. As he gets raked over the coals for the phony trial in Washington D.C., intent on destroying the populism that put Trump in the White House the first time, I am proud of what he has done. And happy to say publicly I support him and still would despite the mudslinging from CNN, who published a documentary about Bannon at 8 PM on the 17th in an obvious attempt to taint the jury in the case against the popular Warroom host. I thought the documentary fascinating. I often pay a lot of attention to the enemy’s thoughts and where they get their information. I try to see the world from the enemy’s perspective, walk in their shoes metaphorically, and understand their motivations. And with CNN, they were clearly lost as to why Steve Bannon was so popular. They were looking desperately for some way to stop Trump from running again in 2024, and their obvious hope was that perhaps if they took out Bannon, that Trump would be left dead in the water. But, the situation is much bigger than that, much bigger than Steve Bannon. And as the Bannon case for contempt of Congress goes to court and the Biden Justice Department attempts to stop the strategy of the populist movement across the world, it looks like the light is going out of their eyes as they begin to realize that Steve was just a tiny drop of water in a massive ocean of red that is coming at them from all directions. The rejection of the administrative state, the Liberal World Order, and the dreams of progressivism most expressly conveyed in the 1988 book Looking Backward were coming apart. And there was nobody to blame but themselves. 

To understand Steve Bannon, you would have to understand the Shakespeare play Titus Andronicus. It is by far my favorite play by the famous English playwright, and Steve translated it to movie screens in the 90s with his Anthony Hopkins effort, Titus, which featured a whole cast of Hollywood heavyweights who told what many consider the bloodiest of Shakespeare’s plays. I loved the movie when I first saw it and when I found out that Steve Bannon had been the executive producer, I was a fan of him, even when he took over at Breitbart before the first Trump term. Bannon would have to really understand the role of Titus to do what he is now in the world, and I would argue that he is the real-life embodiment of the famous character. For a quick review, Titus Andronicus was known throughout Rome as their hero general. He brings to the emperor the captured queen of the Goths, whom Titus had killed her son. The emperor then marries the captured queen making her superior to Titus now as a head of state. She vows revenge against Titus. She uses her remaining sons to torture and rape the daughter of the great general.  Titus falls into despair and goes mad. The emperor gives him a job in the court kitchen out of respect for his depleted condition. But Titus was only pretending to be crazy. He traps the queen’s sons, hangs them upside down in the kitchen, and slits their throats in front of his disgraced daughter. Then he slices up the boys and makes a pie out of them. Then he invites the emperor, the queen, and the rest of the court to a fine dinner he has prepared for them and feeds them the pie, which they eat happily. Revenge is a wonderful dish served cold. 

CNN was very upset that Steve Bannon’s Warroom has connections to populist movements worldwide. Bannon has been involved in Brexit, the uprisings in Hong Kong, the populist revolts in Europe, and of course, the Ulta-Maga posse in America that is poised to put Trump back in office with even more votes than he had in 2020, which officially was 75 million. He likely had much more than that, and the election fraud story just won’t go away from those who committed the biggest crime in the history of the world. Now, after two years of a failing Biden administration, the fantasy from the insurgents, who gained the power of the White House through illegal activity, believe that if they can shut down people like Bannon, they just might get away with it. And in so doing, they might send a message to the rest of the populist movements around the world to put away their mechanisms of rebellion and to fall in line. They intend a crucifixion of Bannon on the largest stage possible. And many of the same people involved in the election fraud scandal are involved in this attack against Bannon. The crime is one thing, the coverup is far worse, and we are into the coverup now. That’s what the contempt of Congress charge is all about, and only about that. 

Yet like the queen in the great Titus story, they have already eaten their own. Bannon has already made the pies with over a decade of leadup to the present day. And if Bannon hadn’t done it, someone else would have. There is a vast network of freedom fighters out there who will always refuse the tyranny of the globalists. The only reason this fight hadn’t happened sooner was that those attackers of America were hiding their intentions behind charities and tax shelter foundations with globalist intentions. And with his crazy hair and disheveled appearance, Bannon has been playing the cook, Titus, and has been busy making pies in the kitchen to feed to the globalists the flesh of their own kind. And they have been eating it with smiles on their faces. They thought he was crazy. They thought he was done and destroyed politically when Trump released him as the White House strategist. But now you know the rest of the story. Steve Bannon is the real-life Titus Andronicus, and to do what he needed to, with the forces that were against him and the MAGA movement, he put the sword away and went into the kitchen to fight the battle in a way that the enemy would never suspect. And now that they are at the table and presented with fine pies to eat, they had no way of knowing that all their progressives’ schemes from the last century were cooked within it. And now they have eaten it and turned the whole thing into digestive interest. And now comes the time when Titus gets to tell the world what was in the pie.

The midterms are coming; the red wave can’t be stopped now. Europe is turning to populism. So is Hong Kong against China. Japan will strengthen its constitution to take the passivism out of it. And Brexit is such a real thing that Boris had to step down because he failed to stand up to globalism. And to the Desecrators of Davos, they are learning that they aren’t safe in the mountain town any longer. The world is on to them, and they want their scheming antics in the next pie they intend to eat. The sentiment goes way beyond Steve Bannon. He was just the cook. The hunger for pie was already there.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Younger Dryas Calamity: Climate Change is not about science. It’s all about control, and its a scam in every way

The next time you interact with a climate change zealot, just mention the Younger Dryas cataclysm to them and ask them to explain it to you. Ask them why 12,800 years ago the earth went from a reasonably mild climate coming out of the Ice Age to suddenly being plunged back to the height of that period of 18,000 years ago with freezing temperatures. Then ask them why, over the next several thousand years, temperatures rose to where we are today. There were no coal plants during that period, no known effects of human-driven climate change, yet the oceans rose over a fairly short period of time, over 400 feet. There are tremendous ocean fronts from that period where humans settled which are deep underwater, erasing the cultures of their existence forever, never to be known again. Ask those climate crazies at the United Nations what caused all that when humans were supposedly not even a factor possessing any technology to invoke climate change of any kind. Of course, they won’t have an answer for you because their climate change religion isn’t based on science; it’s all purely on speculation that I increasingly refer to as a religion, not a scientific concern. The science they use to articulate their position is the same nonsense that drove Covid into our culture; all meant to create fear which would change governing policies. Made up statistics, phony alarmism, all the same methods that caused the world to shut itself down economically over a cold virus converted to a bioweapon in China to cause economic wealth redistribution from a western-based economy to one in which China would become the world’s leader of monetary value.  Just ask Larry Fink from BlackRock.  And it’s the same lunatics who have been saying that climate change is something we need to address with the same flimsy science. 

About 12,800 years ago, it looks like a massive piece of a comet hit the earth in several places around the world. But most notably, it struck Michigan while glacial ice covered the area into what would become the Great Lakes. The sudden impact was so intense that it created Saginaw Bay and launched debris all over North America, sending chunks of ice and rock into Nebraska and the Carolinas. The craters from these impacts and the trajectory of their origin are clearly seen today by air. The elongated oval shape of the impact craters giveaway the impact’s original location, and they all point to Saginaw Bay, Michigan. When the comet struck, it brought with it so much heat that the glaciers there melted instantly, and flood waters raced for the oceans. No wonder there are so many myths around the world of sudden floods. In a very short time after this Younger Dryas cataclysm, the world’s oceans instantly rose 6 feet to 13 ft, a massive amount due to the global impact of so much water suddenly filling the oceans simultaneously. But as such a colossal object hit the earth, it punched a hole in the atmosphere that brought all that frigid space air with it. Hence, as massive forest fires erupted worldwide simultaneously, a massive deep freeze suddenly froze everything in its tracks, leaving some animals frozen solid into a block of ice while they were eating. It was an extinction event for most life on planet earth, which appears to happen much more frequently than science has previously admitted to. The earth goes through its cycles, which have nothing to do with human beings, or any other form of life. Life happens despite these cataclysms. They certainly aren’t caused by the local coal plant. 

Climate change, as it has been politicized today, is all about imposing the religion of earth worship to our modern means of administrative management. The science has been manipulated to satisfy the cult-like desires for mass sacrifice to the pagan gods of the primordial world, and for all the dumb reasons they always have attempted such things. Climate change has nothing to do with science, its 100% the religion of a cult that believes in sacrifice to those same primordial gods and is just another form of cataclysm that inflicts the human race with tragedy after tragedy during all human existence, no matter how long that span of time has been. I would argue that humans have used this brief 10,000-year window to claw at the edges of space, but this hasn’t been the first time. Based on the behavior of life historically and the rate of erosion that occurs on all civilized impulses, much of which is buried under that 400 feet of ocean front today, this nonsense has been going on for many hundreds of thousands of years. I always point to my old friend Giambattista Vico and his great book, New Science from 1744, to talk about the Vico Cycle so wonderfully put to imaginative practice in the great James Joyce literary classic, Finnigan’s Wake, when we say that humanity always reverts back to primitive assumptions over and over again. It’s a cataclysmic force, much like the Yellowstone volcano erupts every 600,000 years. I just recently visited there with my family, and it’s quite clear that it is poised for yet another explosion that could end the world instantly, at least the life on earth. The earth will continue to do what the earth has always done, following the forces that drive the solar system, the galaxy of the Milkey Way, and the universe in general, or the many universes that exist outside the one we live in now. The earth is not concerned with human invention; it is driven by its own cycles, and cataclysms are part of its geological cycle; you could set your watch to them every 10,000 years or so. That might sound like a lot to the soccer mom trying to run her kids all over town in a busy human life, but geologically, it’s nothing. Humanity gets a small window to escape earth, and usually, if a global cataclysm doesn’t wipe them out, they do it to themselves politically following the Vico Cycle to their own modern demise and cling to the rocks of their origin stories, once again. 

That’s what we are talking about when we discuss climate change with the radical crazies from the United Nations. It’s a religion to them to fill some psychological impediment that is in their own minds built on timid natures and flawed views of reality, for which they have attempted to hide behind science with the same flimsy data points that they used to sell the deadly effects of Covid, which the governments of the world manufactured to gain more control over their populations from an administrative state perspective. Climate change is the same kind of lie that those same governments have created to gain control over the human race, which is now poised once again in history to flee earth for destinations beyond the control of terrestrial influences. There will be more comets, more Yellowstone volcanos, there will be more Ice Ages, and mass warming periods, even if we all crawl back into a tent and cook our food over a campfire and achieve a zero-emission existence, which the insanity of the World Economic Forum losers have been stating is the goal. It’s a dumb goal and one that has nothing to do with science but 100% about controlling the world’s population for a lazy and stupid administrative state that wants to be in charge without doing the work of earning the right. And when you run into one of these fools, just ask them about the Younger Dryas calamity and watch their eyes go blank, just as they do when hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin are brought up regarding Covid. They don’t have an answer because their beliefs are not based on science but on control. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Butler County’s Version of Liz Cheney: As Thomas Hall said of Sheriff Jones, “he’s a bully, using his office for political motives until people stand up to him”

When I first heard about this sixth charge from the Butler County Sheriff’s Department, as they have been investigating Roger Reynolds as the auditor for several accusations of corruption, I thought it was ridiculous before. But now, it had become just as much of a kangaroo court as the January 6th Commission for which Liz Cheney was leading in an attempt to keep President Trump off the 2024 presidential ticket. Roger Reynolds has been an excellent auditor in Butler County for a long time, and he has a political rival in Sheriff Jones who wants to show him how much political power he has, and the two have been at it for well over a year now. And instead of fighting in a parking lot somewhere, this is how modern bullies fight; they use the legal system as a weapon against their political opponents. I watched in bewilderment how a grown man like Sherrif Jones could have such a press conference announcing so much of nothing as he did with this latest stack of accusations against Roger, declaring that this latest one on the pile was some kind of big crime of corruption in line with the recent case of P.G. Sittenfeld from Cincinnati who was just found guilty of similar charges. In Roger’s case, he is nothing like the dirty politicians like P.G. Sittenfeld or the very dirty politics that occurred in the FirstEnergy case in Columbus, which isn’t about money at all. The FirstEnergy controversy is an attack by the political left against the Ohio energy grid and using political infighting among Republicans to hide it. When you see cases like this, where a Sheriff is so personally involved in finding anything to knock off a political rival within the Republican Party, you can tell easily that it’s not a case about the crime but about power and control over other people.

I know the characters involved in the new indictment, such as Jenni Logan, the treasurer from Lakota schools. She stated she thought Roger Reynolds was asking Lakota to invest money owed back to the District into a golf academy at Four Bridges. Ben Dibble, who was president of the school board around that time in 2017, was involved as well, according to the liberal activist from Fox 19, Jennifer Edwards Baker, who would love to erode away the very good Republican Party of Butler County any way possible. She’s been at it for a while, and area Republicans have been targeted for anything resembling impropriety. Of course, that’s tough because many of the modern Republicans are not like they were back in the Michael Fox days or when Bob Shelley was a trustee in Liberty Township. Lakota has their own problems, and if there was some incidental conversation about a golf academy from money coming back out of the auditor’s office, which Roger Reynolds represents, it was likely out of polite conversation. I’ve seen the lunch circuit Jenni Logan has been a part of for a long time, and I understand how talk can be made. For a while, especially before Covid, almost everywhere I went to lunch, I saw Jenni Logan and Matt Miller, the Lakota superintendent, there talking with other people. I can easily see in such meetings how talk about how money should be spent would occur. Is that legal or illegal? Well, suppose we start picking pepper out of fly droppings like this over legal issues meant to show the sheriff’s department’s power over things people say and go from there. In that case, we will likely create a business and political environment where nobody can talk to anybody about anything anywhere. Knowing the characters involved in this latest indictment, it didn’t change a thing about my opinion about Roger Reynolds. I will still happily vote for him and support him in the upcoming elections. I care more about what good of a job he has done for my community than what kind of political enemies he has made along the way. And after that press conference by Jones, I could only conclude that he has now become Butler County’s own version of Liz Cheney, who hates President Trump so much that she would attempt to bend the law and waste endless amounts of money in investigations just to keep him out of the political theater.

The level of ridiculousness really overflowed when Sheriff Jones tried to bring up Thomas Hall, who is a current State Rep running for the 46th District, which now includes Liberty Township.   Jones indicated he was continuing to investigate Thomas Hall for conflicts of interest even though a recent Keith Faber report from way back in 2018 and 2019 failed to show anything wrong, even under a microscope of a state audit generated based on what people “say.” Those old-style political hits aren’t going to work in this new world where people have seen so much done against President Trump. The public is much more savvy about these things than they used to be. In reaction to Sheriff Jones indicating he was going to continue investigating Thomas Hall, whom Jones is supporting a rival to run against Hall in the primary on August 2nd, Hall simply called Jones a “bully.” Hall said specifically to the Journal News, “this whole thing is ridiculous, for the sheriff to want an investigation I think is wrong, using his office for political motives when there’s an election 19 days from today. (when the statement was made and referring to the August 2nd primary race)  The sheriff is a bully and will continue to do what he wants until people stand up to him.” That’s one of the reasons I’m supporting Thomas Hall; he’s a good, sharp young man who can handle the heat in the kitchen and make a wonderful meal with it. And the sheriff doesn’t like him because he won’t kiss the ring and allow Jones to be a token kingmaker. 

I’ve talked to Roger Reynolds, and I know why Jones doesn’t like him, at least from Roger’s perspective. Roger runs a great auditor’s office in Butler County. People say all kinds of things, and if the roles were reversed, Sheriff Jones could easily find himself on an indictment list based on “what people say.” People could say that Jones is a bully because he wants to put the fear of the law into local trustees who vote on budgets from which his family and friends benefit. Jones has family and friends employed all over Butler County, and he doesn’t like it when they get laid off for not showing up for work. I know Roger pushed for more transparency on how money gets shown to the public, and Jones wasn’t a fan. And from there, their relationship, which had been a good one, fell apart. Those things happen; I see it as a human resource issue of county employees fighting over power and prestige. But when that hatred escalates to the level where a sheriff is willing to abuse his power to the extent he has with Roger Reynolds and Thomas Hall, purely over political power within the Republican Party, then it becomes a big problem. What we really have is a Butler County version of Liz Chaney. This name used to have significant meaning in the Republican Party until she was revealed to be a liberal hack by the Trump administration. And the phony hearings happening now in Washington D.C. are the same phony hearings that have been thrown at Roger Reynolds because he has pushed for more transparency and accountability for public officials. Not less. And for all the reasons that the political establishment hates Trump, they hate people like Roger Reynolds and Thomas Hall. And when it comes time to vote for them, I will happily pick Roger and Thomas every time over the opinions of Sheriff Jones. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Thomas Hall Comes Out Squeaky Clean: Ohio Ethics Investigation by Keith Faber shows a great track record and no wrongdoing

It’s a few weeks away from the August 2nd primary for the Ohio Representative election between the incumbent Thomas Hall for the newly drawn up 46th District seat and his challenger Matt King.  And it wouldn’t be a typical election cycle if there wasn’t some kind of dirt being thrown by somebody.  After all, a lot of money gets tossed into the ring from numerous contributors, and they all want to see their pick win the election, and the belief that people can be significantly influenced by finance and sentiment perpetuates a lot of malice.   That is how the typical blood sport of politics works, and what we usually end up with in office, if done well, is the best possible candidate that we can get because of the grueling process.  But when you see bad behavior in that election process, we must talk about it because it shows where the real cracks of a campaign genuinely emerge.  And in the case of Thomas Hall, he is so squeaky clean that any attempts to say otherwise about him come out sounding ridiculously overinflated.  And that’s what emerged from a shot of desperation coming not so much from the challenger for the 46th District, Matt King, but certainly from those who want to use Matt to knock out Thomas from the very high bar he has set because many in politics simply don’t want to live up to that level of measure.  There was some controversy coming out of a group “Ohio News Hotline” that was trying to stir up trouble for Thomas, and an Ohio Ethics Investigation was discussed based on the years 2018 and 2019, hoping that they could dig up something to make Thomas look bad.  In short, there was nothing there, but the elements who wanted to knock off Thomas Hall were trying to stir up trouble, so setting the record straight is mandated.

It had been a good week for Representative Hall, the week after the 4th of July 2022.  I had just reported on how great he did at a local Tea Party meeting where he made an excellent case for why he should be re-elected to a somewhat hostile crowd.  Then on Thursday, he spoke at Lakota schools and did a fantastic job there as well.  Probably too well because Democrats and RINO Republicans who are very uncomfortable with Thomas Hall moving his influence into Liberty Township as the new 46th District is mapped out aren’t comfortable with the strong record of conservative politics Hall represents.  He’s rock-solid in every Republican measure based on his track record, and the NRA just came out with a glowing endorsement of Hall, so plenty of political enemies were stirred up by those two public speeches.  Then on Friday, there was a fund-raiser with several Democrats involved, and they were more than energized to support Matt King, hoping to take down the very conservative Thomas Hall.  Now that’s not unusual.  I know Matt and the King family, and they tend to be solid conservatives.  But Matt is unknown as a politician, so obviously, Democrats are hoping for that variable to help them, so they support King for obvious reasons.  Thomas is a known threat to them as opposed to gaining leverage over someone they might be able to call in favors later because they helped with the campaign.  Sheriff Jones has been working against Thomas because he doesn’t like the strong voting record of Hall, so there some inner Republican theatrics going on as well that have been fueling Democrats to help King gain some steam, much the way Democrats got involved in the governor primary helping put DeWine over the top in that recent election. 

That’s when the timing of the ethics report, done by Keith Faber, became an inflated issue and an anonymous tip attempted to stir up trouble through the Ohio News Hotline, prompting a media hit piece against Thomas Hall.  I also know Keith; I think he’s a good guy too.  Investigations like what his office does, I think, are great because they keep politicians clean.  It’s a good check on the balance of power, and without the Auditors Office from the State there to investigate, there would be much more corruption in politics than there is.  While all this talk was going on, P.G. Sittenfeld in Cincinnati was found guilty of bribery, so these topics were fresh on the minds of the desperate when the contents of the Ohio Ethics Investigation on Hall were made available.  Now here’s where unethical behavior starts to really show itself.  I’ve read the report on Thomas Hall from Keith’s office, which is squeaky clean.  There is nothing bad or disingenuous there at all.  But the radical elements and Democrats who want Hall gone tried to take things out of context to at least create doubt in people who haven’t read the report and never plan to.  Just the mention of an ethics report might be enough to inspire them to make a change from Thomas to King on August 2nd.  As mentioned, the report covered 2018-2019, but it wasn’t released to the public until June 16th, 2022, just a month and a half before the election.  That in itself is more than a bit suspicious. 

The report states that Thomas did not recuse himself as a trustee on matters involving the fire department in Madison Township, where his father, a hero who stopped the school shooting at the school there, was the fire chief.  In those instances, Thomas sought legal counsel on the matter and provided the proper distance required when dealing with financial matters.  But on voting for equipment and supplies for the fire department, he participated with the other trustees under explicit direction from that legal advice.  The report from the auditor simply mentions that it was unusual.  Not that it was inappropriate.  Then the report shows that Madison Township had some late tax filings and negative balances during Thomas’ term.  This was a problem with the fiscal officer they had at the time and was a common problem many trustees face.  Nothing improper, just commonplace management problems.  And with all the digging that the vast resources of Keith Faber’s office could utilize over a lengthy period of time and sit on a desk somewhere for three years until just before the August 2nd election, there turned out to be nothing to see regarding anything improper done by Thomas Hall.  I would propose that the timing of the report’s release and distribution to the public was meant to create doubt in the public to affect the election.  By the time people learned that the report contained no wrongdoing by Thomas Hall, the election would be over, and from the Democrat perspective, hopefully, King would win the election.   For the enemies of Thomas Hall, all they need to do is create doubt which was where the tip to the Ohio News Hotline went out to stir up enough buzz in the final two weeks of the campaign to push some voters maybe away.  The report was and is a last-ditch effort by a political class, both Republicans and Democrats, who don’t want the high measure Thomas Hall has forced them all to live up to.  Very few could go through a Keith Faber Ohio Ethics Investigation and come out as clean as Thomas did.  And that truly scares them.   Another term of Thomas Hall may make it so they can’t compete in the political world ever in the future.  And for voters, that’s very good news indeed.

Rich Hoffman

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