Tag: Public Schools

CPS and their Lazy Employees Closed for 3 Days: Teaching kids to be wimps and to hide everything behind “safety”

The recent winter storm that struck the Greater Cincinnati region in late January 2026—often dubbed “Snowmageddon” or the “snow apocalypse” by locals and media alike—delivered a significant punch, blanketing the area with record-breaking snowfall. On January 25, 2026, Cincinnati logged 9.2 inches at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, shattering the previous single-day record for that date (5.8 inches in 2004) and ranking among the top one-day totals in city history.[^1] Storm totals across the Tri-State reached 10 to 16 inches in many spots, with some neighborhoods seeing even higher accumulations, marking the heaviest snowfall since events like February 1998.[^2] The storm arrived over the weekend, with heavy snow falling primarily on Sunday, January 25, followed by frigid temperatures dipping near or below zero, icy conditions, and lingering drifts that made travel challenging for days.

In response, Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS)—serving approximately 35,000 students and 6,500 staff across 66 schools—closed for three consecutive days: Monday, January 26; Tuesday, January 27; and Wednesday, January 28, 2026. Classes resumed on Thursday, January 29, after Superintendent Shauna Murphy announced the reopening, emphasizing safety as the top priority while calling on the community to clear sidewalks, salt icy patches, and ensure safe access to bus stops and crosswalks.[^3] Murphy’s statement highlighted the district’s eagerness to welcome students back but underscored the need for collective effort: “We are eager to welcome our students back, and we need the community’s help to make their commute safer.”[^4] This three-day shutdown drew sharp criticism from some residents, who argued that roads were passable relatively quickly, with many areas shoveled or plowed by Monday morning, and that the closure exemplified broader societal trends toward excessive caution.

Ohio’s snow emergency levels provide context for the decisions. Hamilton County, encompassing Cincinnati, declared a Level 3 snow emergency starting at 6 p.m. on Sunday, January 25, restricting roads to emergency personnel only due to heavy accumulation, ice, and extreme cold.[^5] By Monday, it downgraded to Level 2 before rush hour, and further to Level 1 by Tuesday or Wednesday in many areas, signaling improving but still hazardous conditions.[^6] Neighboring counties like Butler, Clermont, and Warren followed similar patterns, starting high and reducing as plowing progressed. These levels guide travel restrictions but leave school closure calls to superintendents, who weigh factors like bus safety, sidewalk accessibility, building conditions, staff availability, and liability risks.

The critique centers not on the storm’s severity—undeniably substantial—but on the response, particularly the extended closure of public schools like CPS. By Monday, much of the snow had been cleared from major roads, and personal observations from driving across Cincinnati showed navigable conditions despite piled snowbanks and side-street challenges. Trash collection continued in many areas, albeit with difficulties, and businesses operated, albeit with some disruptions. In northern states like Minnesota, the Dakotas, or the Northeast, similar or heavier snowfalls prompt adaptation rather than widespread shutdowns—plows run continuously, residents clear driveways, and life proceeds with gritted determination. Human tenacity historically overcomes such obstacles without paralyzing entire systems.

Yet in Cincinnati, the three-day closure extended beyond what many deemed necessary. An hour delay or two on Monday might have sufficed, allowing students and staff to resume routines while addressing residual hazards. Instead, the decision reinforced a pattern: prioritize “safety” above all, even when it borders on overcaution. Critics argue this hides administrative convenience—avoiding liability from potential accidents, bus delays, or injuries—and teacher/staff reluctance to brave conditions. Union influences and bureaucratic inertia play roles; it’s easier to close than coordinate amid risks. The superintendent’s plea for community help clearing sidewalks subtly shifts responsibility outward while justifying the delay.

This mentality extends far beyond one storm. Modern society increasingly hides behind “safety” to mask laziness, lack of fortitude, or aversion to discomfort. Public education, meant to prepare children for adulthood, instead teaches yielding to challenges. When schools close at the first sign of trouble—snow, cold, rain—children learn that crises warrant retreat, not resilience. They absorb that excuses like “it’s too dangerous” or “liability concerns” trump duty. This coddling produces adults unprepared for reality: drivers who panic on slightly slippery roads despite modern vehicles with traction control and front-wheel drive; workers who demand remote setups post-COVID or call off for minor inconveniences; individuals who turn to substances like legalized marijuana to “mellow out” stress rather than confront it.

The generational shift is stark. Older generations fought through blizzards, building character through adversity—shoveling without complaint, driving cautiously but confidently, showing up regardless. Today’s youth, shaped by administrative-heavy systems, learn the opposite: safety trumps effort, government coddles, and challenges are avoided. Public schools, funded by taxpayer dollars, bear particular responsibility. CPS, like many districts, emphasizes emotional well-being, equity, and risk aversion over grit and productivity. When closures occur, lost instructional time compounds—though Ohio’s flexible calamity day rules and built-in hours often prevent make-up days, as CPS’s 2025-2026 calendar allows significant buffer before extensions.[^7]

The economic ripple is profound. Extended closures disrupt families—parents miss work or juggle childcare—while signaling to the workforce that productivity yields to comfort. In large corporations, remote work persists as a “safety” holdover, eroding collaboration and output. In education, unions and administrators prioritize protection over performance, facilitating below-average effort. When 80% of society adopts this mindset, productivity plummets, innovation stalls, and resilience erodes.

Add legalized marijuana to the mix, and problems compound. Drivers already slow-reacting under optimal conditions—mellowed, delayed starts from stops, hesitant turns—face amplified hazards in snow. Untrained in crisis navigation due to school-taught avoidance, they crawl at 20-25 mph on 45-50 mph roads, causing backups and accidents. This isn’t mere anecdote; it’s observable in rush-hour chaos post-storm, where inexperience met residual ice.

The root lies in public education’s philosophical shift. Once emphasizing arithmetic, reading, citizenship, and perseverance, it now prioritizes social dynamics, safety protocols, and emotional shielding. Kids learn popularity contests and group norms but not how to dominate adversity—change a tire, shovel efficiently, drive in snow, or push through discomfort. They grow into adults who fear everything: cold feet, back strain, minor slips. Liberals, often dominating urban administrations like Hamilton County’s, amplify this by framing caution as compassion, using “safety” to justify inaction.

Contrast with private enterprise: businesses stayed open where possible, adapting because survival demands it. Taxpayer-funded entities like CPS face less pressure, hiding behind bureaucracy. The result? A softer society, less productive, more dependent. One storm exposes it: three days off for what could have been managed with delays teaches surrender, not strength.

This isn’t compassion—it’s detriment. True care prepares people to thrive amid hardship, not hide from it. Future generations will inherit adults ill-equipped for crises—marital, financial, or meteorological—because schools modeled yielding. It’s embarrassing, pathetic even, when paid services fail to model fortitude.

West Chester and surrounding areas, with their Republican-leaning success, resist some of this, but urban cores like Cincinnati succumb. The lesson: vigilance preserves excellence. Yielding to every flake erodes it gradually. Snowmageddon 2026 wasn’t apocalyptic in scale but in implication—society’s softening, starting in classrooms.

Shame on those who hide laziness behind safety. Fight through, show up, dominate the crisis. That’s how good communities—and people—endure.

Bibliography

•  Cincinnati Enquirer. “How much snow did we get? Yes, we broke records.” January 26, 2026. https://www.cincinnati.com/story/weather/2026/01/26/cincinnati-snow-record-how-much-snow-did-we-get-ohio/88358201007

•  FOX19. “PHOTOS: A blanket of white covers the Tri-State.” January 25, 2026. https://www.fox19.com/2026/01/26/photos-blanket-white-covers-tri-state

•  Cincinnati Public Schools. “CPS to Reopen Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026.” https://www.cps-k12.org/all-news/default-news-page/~board/district-homepage-news/post/cps-to-reopen-thursday-jan-29-2026

•  Cincinnati Enquirer. “Cincinnati schools reopening Jan. 29, other districts remain closed.” January 28, 2026. https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/education/2026/01/28/cincinnati-schools-reopening-jan-29-other-districts-stay-closed/88402584007

•  City of Cheviot. “Hamilton County Level 3 Snow Emergency.” January 25, 2026. https://cheviot.org/hamilton-county-level-3-snow-emergency

•  Cincinnati Enquirer. “Snow emergency levels in Ohio today.” January 27, 2026. https://www.cincinnati.com/story/weather/2026/01/27/snow-emergency-levels-in-ohio-today-updates/88374686007

•  Cincinnati Public Schools Calendar 2025-2026. https://www.cps-k12.org/calendar

[^1]: National Weather Service data cited in Cincinnati Enquirer, Jan. 26, 2026.

[^2]: FOX19 reporting on storm totals, Jan. 25, 2026.

[^3]: CPS official announcement, Jan. 28, 2026.

[^4]: Superintendent Shauna Murphy statement, WLWT and FOX19 coverage.

[^5]: Hamilton County Sheriff’s declaration, Jan. 25, 2026.

[^6]: County downgrades reported in Cincinnati Enquirer, Jan. 27, 2026.

[^7]: CPS calendar and calamity day rules, Cincinnati Enquirer, Feb. 2, 2026.

Rich Hoffman

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

The Lakota Levy of 2025 Goes Down in Flames: How the rest of the country looks ahead of the Midterms

There weren’t too many surprises in the elections of 2025, locally or nationally.  The trend of the country can best be stated in the Lakota school levy of 2025, where their $500 million proposal to tear down a bunch of buildings and replace them with new ones for really no reason told the story of voter sentiment.  While it might seem wise not to get too excited about election results ahead of the midterms, so as not to take the edge off voter engagement, because you want to inspire your side to go and vote, the races around the rest of the country told the story very well.  In areas like New York, Virginia, California, and New Jersey, the never Trumpers were trying to go it alone and win elections without Trump, and we saw where that got everyone.  Predictable losses, and as for Mamdani in the New York mayor race, that is a trend happening in a lot of mature areas where open communism has been taught through the public school system, and people have become complacent to the economic math, and susceptible to free stuff.  That was certainly the case in West Chester where I live regarding the trustee race there.  West Chester has been very successful and people turned to the hard left in what they think is compassion.  But it says more about community cycles than it does the real place voters reside, as an average.  And for that, the Lakota levy, with a very vigilant beat, says where most of the country stands, and the way they will vote in the upcoming Midterms.  As to Trump’s warning that Democrats will win if Republicans don’t learn to play hardball, he’s right.  But voters want to vote for hard-hitting winners, and the Democrats have put the loser label on their own party.

The shutdown by the Democrats tells that whole story of what they know about themselves.  It was a desperate attempt to out-leverage Trump, and they have lost in a big way there, making it Democrats who wouldn’t pay for military troops, or SNAP benefits.  The grotesque nature of giving away free things to desperate or overly comfortable people doesn’t have the appeal that it used to.  People as a whole have shown that they want MAGA Republicans, not Dick Cheney Republicans.  The more MAGA, the better, which paves a clear path for the upcoming Midterms.  In the chess game of redistricting the maps of states to pick up more seats for Republicans, or whether Democrats can do the same in California, or other places, the lesson is, people are people and Democrats can’t win if they don’t cheat.  They just don’t have the numbers.  The final votes for the Lakota levy were 60,81% against, to 39.1% for, which is a good sampling of where the entire country is on the Midterm sweep.  While the Lakota levy is a public school sample that is regional, the assumption of how Democrats might leverage their position is reflective of national politics and the general demographics.  I have said many times that if you take away the cheating, Democrats are likely only 25% of the country.  The rest of the country, 75% of whom agree on most things, just want to see things not get in their way.  Democrats in the Lakota school district assumed that more people were with them because they only speak to their social networks.  So they overestimated their chances.  They are in a state of denial, just as they were over the Schumer Shutdown, that their ability to give away free stuff would get them more votes without the help of election fraud and illegal immigration.  But that hasn’t turned out to be the case.

Welcome to the Doug Horton Lakota School Board

One of the dangers of a thriving community, such as what we have in the Lakota school system, where people from all over the country want to move to it to enjoy its success, it’s the same kind of reason that New York City has a lot of diverse people and when you break things down to a lot of choices, such as what it was for the West Chester trustee race where everyone running only obtained around 20% of the vote it captures in people the indecision that they feel when given a choice based on the spectrum of sentiment that people possess.  But when it’s a single issue where it’s either good or bad, as in the case of the Lakota levy, then the decision is a lot clearer.  People are messy, and when Democrats recruit them to their cause, they have numerous entry points of value.  But even with an infusion of people moving into a region from all over the country, which is certainly the case with the Lakota school district, it’s still the mature residents who have always been in the region that hold the cultural power of maintaining an area’s value.  And that will be the case nationally for the Midterms.  Whatever hopes that Democrats have gained through cheating the system, with illegal immigration, shut down extortion, mail-in voting fraud, any way they could utilize to close the gaps just don’t work when it forces them actually to perform.  When people are given a choice, as in the Lakota levy, there is no playing nice with the other side; people will decisively pick the winner, which is a lesson all Republicans should utilize. 

A big mouth who wants big taxes

Just as in the concessions on the redrawing of the congressional map in Ohio were promoted as a good thing for all sides involved, playing nice isn’t going to win elections.  And playing nice with Democrats in Ohio over the congressional map isn’t going to help win the Midterms.  Trump is right, and Republicans need to learn from him.  When they try to play nice, they lose, to the many ways that Democrats cheat, even if the fraud is in packing high-density areas with demographics that might be inclined to socialism, such as in New York, and even in West Chester, Ohio.  But since the number of actual Democrats isn’t a very high proportion, as shown in the very diverse community of Lakota schools, where a vast amount of the population is represented, and when given a real choice, will pick the winning message, even if it’s not the popular message, but the winning one.  That is how Trump won in 2024, and that is how the Midterms will be won, and voters will pick in favor of the Republicans, if the GOP doesn’t get into all this playing nice stuff.  The only side that benefits from playing nice is the Democrats.  They are always vulnerable because they are the minority in situations involving physical confrontations.  They win when Republicans play fair and friendly.  It’s part of their fraud mechanism.  And if there was anything to learn from this 2025 election, it’s that, where Trump was not on the ticket, Republicans lost.  Where GOP politics ran away from Trump, as they certainly did in Virginia, Republicans didn’t perform well.  Playing nice only feeds Democrats and their chances.  But not playing nice helps give voters an accurate emotional representation in GOP politics.  And that was certainly the case with the Lakota levy of Butler County.  How many times have people told me that the opposition forces need to be nicer to the bad guys?  A lot!  But the opposition forces didn’t listen, and they played hardball, as was deserved.  And the issue wasn’t even close.  That is the model for the rest of the country: play hardball, take away the cheating mechanisms of Democrats, and they can’t win.  The shutdown of the government was a desperate attempt by them to find their footing, and it didn’t work, forcing them to concessions they would rather not admit to.  And going into the midterms, that is the way that Republicans can pick up seats, not just hold their majority.  But don’t play nice; only losers do that.  When you have the means to win, do it, and don’t apologize for it.  Or feel sorry for the other side.  Because when the shoe is on the other foot, they aren’t nice, but ruthless, and they never look back. 

Rich Hoffman

We’re rebuilding the school board. Good management is the best way to defeat tax increases.

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

Public Schools Were Designed By Dumb People to Make More Dumb People: Dewey always wanted communism

I’ve always been consistent on homeschooling issues; I’ve never thought that the public education system was any good.  In a conversation the other day with some people, they asked me about this, and I always hate answering the question because the essential elements aren’t very complimentary.  The person I was talking to said about themselves, “I’m not very smart, I barely made it through school myself, so I wouldn’t want to harm my kids by teaching them.  I would rather have a professional do it.”  I hate that conversation because it forces you to admit to how stupid most people are, which makes it hard to deal with them willingly.  I don’t have that confidence problem.  I think I can do everything, including working on my car, better than other people and feel better equipped to do it.  Especially teaching my kids.  I think the public education system was set up wrong from the start, and I’ve never been a fan, including in my own school days. I was friends with several honors-type students who were very high-IQ, genius-level students, and I watched how the school leeched off them.  There was nothing for the school to add to their education because all the people teaching those kids were stupid.  And you don’t want to hurt people’s feelings, but usually, people who choose to become school teachers aren’t the best and brightest; otherwise, they would try to make a go of things in the private sector, where they could make a lot of money.  The people who end up teaching are often like the person who was talking to me about public school —they aren’t the brightest our society has to offer.  Neither my wife nor my children finished their senior year of school; they graduated during their junior year.  They did graduate, but they never attended the ceremony, and none of them has ever looked back. 

Government schools are big business. Look how much money was raised by Lakota schools to pass the biggest tax increase in Ohio’s history!

Both of my children spent their senior years traveling Europe to finish their education, and we never sit around wishing they had done anything different.  If anything, we talk about wanting to homeschool them earlier.  A few times during their junior high years, we tried it, but family members really got in the way and were grotesquely unsupportive.  The experience was so bad that we pulled our kids out of school anyway and just finished their education online.  And that was twenty years ago.  There are many more options available now.  We had a close-knit family, so it was hard to ignore their opinions, and back then, those opinions mattered a lot more than they do today.  And, as always, the public school experience —the other kids, the employees, the choice of what to teach—was all constructed by stupid people so that kids can grow up to become more stupid people, and I can’t support that process. Instead, my view of education is that it is far more valuable than the public school system was designed to facilitate.  As I have always said, when John Dewey designed public education, it was made to teach communism.  Not how to teach kids how to think.  And I find it despicable.  I have tried to let other people change my mind, but over time, I have become even more firm in my positions because nobody has ever been able to, even though I have tried to give them the space to do so.  They have never been able to change my mind, even when given more than enough of a fair chance. 

During one of the previous No Lakota Tax campaigns, years ago, the standard teacher’s union complaint has always been classroom sizes, and that was their justification for needing more tax money to hire more teachers to reduce classroom sizes.  I said on the radio, on television, and in public forums that the reason was that the teachers were too lazy to teach a lot of kids, and that all that extra money was essentially to fund laziness.  So they got mad and challenged me to come into the school to teach a class myself so I could find out just how hard it was.  So I went to Lakota East and sat down in one of the classrooms to accept the challenge.  Kids and staff from Spark Magazine, which is a published magazine for the Lakota school system that goes out to a lot of people in a big district full of over 100,000 people, met me to propose the challenge, which they thought I would shy away from at the last minute.  I told them I was ready to teach not just one class, but four at once.  Bring four classrooms into the auditorium, and I would teach them all personally, any subject they wanted to cover, for as long as they could handle.  Now you have to understand that I work an average of 15 hours a day, most days of the week.  And my mind never stops working.  I have been married for more than 37 years and now have grandchildren.  This challenge was about 10 years ago, but I was pretty much the same as I am now.  Teaching a class is something I would call very easy. 

They chickened out because the teachers balked at the proposal.  They didn’t want me to make them look bad, and whenever there has been a public debate on the matter, they never hold up and are easily defeated.  And not to rub salt in the wound, but I have never met a person better equipped to teach any of my children or grandchildren anything, better than me.  And I know a lot of people.  I know a lot of people who think of themselves as brilliant.  And I would say none of them are better at teaching my children anything.  It’s lazy to drop a kid off at school and turn that vital task over to a professional.  So with all that in mind, remember, public schools were designed to teach kids the emerging communism of Karl Marx in those pre-Civil War days.  They were never intended to produce the next generation of geniuses.  And I expect my kids and my grandkids to be the best people they can be.  To elaborate on the point, I will put up some videos here of one of my grandsons and his dad, who have a weekly YouTube channel that I think is pretty neat.   It shows just how important it is to teach a child from a parent, and it’s so much better than the public school experience.  I think that my youngest grandson has a chance to be the next Thomas Edison or Albert Einstein.  The public school system does not make those types of people, and if it were effective, they certainly would.  So if we want people to live up to their full potential, you have to get them as far away from the public school system as possible.  And the truth is, most parents are too lazy to give their kids that chance.  And it’s a shame.  I feel sorry for every kid whose parent is too lazy to homeschool them.  My experience with it is that kids become so much better when they don’t have to endure the corrosive effects of being taught by grown adults to be dumb.  Because public school was designed by communists who wanted to suppress intellect, not expand it, and until we deal with that truth, we will continue to be very disappointed by the results.

Rich Hoffman

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

If you Vote for the Fairfield School Levy, You’re Stupid: What really causes communities to fail

I’ve said it for years, and it’s just as relevant today as it ever was, perhaps more so.  If you vote for a school levy, you’re stupid.  That’s what Darryl Parks and I always said on WLW radio when I was a frequent guest.  Many of our old interviews are still on my YouTube site, where we talked about why in a thousand different ways.  When he was the program director for Clear Channel Radio, we spent many hours discussing what had come true in public education today, well before anybody else realized it, and nobody can’t say that they weren’t told.  It was just an inconvenient truth that nobody wanted to admit to.  When they thought of public school, they thought about school jackets, class rings, homecoming dances, and the social aspects of being around other kids.  But public school designed by socialists, Marxists, and outright communists under John Dewey was never intended to teach anybody anything useful.  It was always about social controls that would last the duration of people’s lives with liberalized sentiment and submission to authority, which served the notion of big centralized governments.  And the entire system has collapsed on itself.  Finally, people have admitted that sending their kids to public schools was something they’d instead not do if they could get away with it. Suppose they could afford a private school or some other alternative.  And that is the state now where there are massive waiting lists for alternative schools to the government school option at the center of everyone’s community.  It’s taken many years, and COVID was the final straw, but people have finally admitted that the public school option is one they’d love to get away from for the benefit of their children.  Based on what we know now, if you are choosing to send your kid to public school, it’s more for your convenience than that you love them.  Nobody would choose to send a kid to a public school and, in the same sentence, mean it when you said to them, “I love you.”  Those things do not go together.

And so it goes; knowing all that, my wife and I were shopping at Bridgewater Falls in Fairfield, and we noticed all the yard signs advocating for a new tax levy for Fairfield Schools.  Fairfield is a school district neighboring Lakota, where I live, and they have been flirting with a new levy in Lakota for several years.  Public schools were designed to burden a community, so everyone has to go through a kind of divorce with their government schools where property values are perceived to be directly connected.  For years, it has been thought that people move into or out of a community based on the quality of the schools.  That’s what real estate people will tell you anyway, but that has, too, been a lazy way to manage school districts.  Government schools that are controlled by radical leftist teacher unions with consistently high wage rates in mind have no means to generate more money to pay their staff but ever-increasing burdens on their property taxes.  So the game continued; home values would increase, making more taxable revenue available for the government schools to confiscate.  That money is then used to program the next generation of children into the ways of Democrat politics, anti-God sentiments, transgender bathrooms, and racial politics, making for much of their youth, future Democrat voters.  Public schools are essentially teaching anti-family and a replacement of domestic concerns with obedience to centralized government. 

So the longer a community survives this process, the more burden and expensive those government schools become before there is a collapse, and the following community with the next shiny thing becomes the new destination, leaving the old community behind and used up.  That has been the story of several communities around Butler County, especially Fairfield, where I have much experience.  My wife and I were married and went to church there for many years when it was a destination community for many people all over the country.  I have watched this government school game for a long time, and behind it all is the communist intention to attack private ownership.  We are seeing this trend in Liberty Township, within the Lakota district now, where apartments and lower-cost living seek to attract lower-income people who don’t own so much private property.  It’s not a massive conspiracy; I know all the trustees involved.  They are nice enough guys.  But it’s in the handbook of community development, written by the same dumb people from the United Nations who designed these horrible public schools.  What could go wrong with a community entirely of apartments and people who vote but don’t own property?  Then, people who own property are squeezed out of their homes with high taxes, and before you know it, the tax rates are too high and unmanageable, and people move away once their children grow up and start lives of their own somewhere else.  In the background of all these apartments and condos is the hope that the children will stay in the community when they grow up if only affordable options exist.  But what you end up with is Democrat voters until they grow up and take on more responsibility by starting a family of their own.  So they vote for school levies, but their landlords end up having to pay the taxes, and the schools achieve one of Karl Marx’s goals: the destruction of all private property.  We have seen this cycle everywhere, and Fairfield has suffered from it.  Most of their best companies picked up and left because the taxes were too high, the same story that could be told in every community around Butler County, Ohio, for the last four or five decades.  The Lakota schools are watching if any of these levies pass so they can try independently for their own.  We have managed to keep the taxes low in Lakota because plenty of people have a hostile reaction to the prospect of higher property taxes.  However, the system was built to fail in every way, providing a tempting lure to busy parents, free babysitting while they work, and dual income lives to pay for all this mess. 

However, changes are coming with another Trump administration; serious reforms to public education will happen by eliminating the Department of Education, which should have occurred during the Reagan administration.  But the communists fought to prevent it with the standard fear tactics, which Reagan listened to.  And so we have had this uncompetitive socialist model ever since, and Trump is poised to change it.  And to that point, the most apparent change will be that any federal dollars will follow the child, not the zip code.  That will mean that Fairfield, Lakota, Mason, and several other government schools along the outer loop of I-275 will have to fight to have children in their schools to access the funds that come with them.  And their cost structure will be challenged severely, which would be great.  Many teachers at Lakota schools make over six figures, which is a big part of their quarter of a billion-dollar yearly budget. If you have attended a school event anywhere lately, you will see many of these teachers can afford to miss a sandwich or two.  They are not specimens of excellent health, let’s just put it nicely.  The entire system is poised to fail, whether levies are approved or not.  And knowing all that, if you vote for a school levy, as I have said for several decades, you are stupid.  It’s silly to vote for any public school for more money that they are just going to waste on radical Democrat teachers.  And until we change that, it’s stupid to give them even a penny more. 

Rich Hoffman

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

Isaac Adi Gets Violent Again: An Interview with Darbi Boddy

It has been interesting to watch the trajectory of two school board officeholders who essentially started at the same place but took two different paths upon being elected to satisfy the parameters of accomplishment. Obviously, there is more to the conflict this past week between Isaac Adi and Darbi Boddy on the Lakota school board, where the police investigated a condition of assault, where Isaac, yet again under pressure, lashed out at someone trying to record his public behavior. Darbi is a tough young lady who can handle conflicts just fine. But what’s interesting is how RINOs are created because once elected, Isaac went into an appeasement mode of the very kind of people he was supposed to be engaging with, whereas Darbi has stayed faithful to her campaign promises. I talked to Darbi about all this while we were both at a March for Children rally in downtown Hamilton, Ohio. Darbi never advertised herself as anything but a fighter for children’s rights, whereas the same was expected from Isaac. But once elected, what was witnessed was an instant barrage of influencers who often inject themselves into the newly elected person’s life, and the temptation to appease these new faces is powerful, and most people never develop resistance to it. When I see these clips of Isaac Adi acting violently toward people who put cameras on him to record aggressive behavior, I see that conflict in his actions. Isaac is not alone in this problem. Being authentic has a freedom of its own which was quite apparent when I was able to talk to Darbi on camera about her first few years as a school board member at Lakota. You can see freedom of conscience in her because she has stayed true to herself. But others have not, and that often leads to the kind of obvious frustrations on the face of Isaac Adi in the footage of him lashing out at Darbi.

I worked with both Isaac and Darbi during their campaigns because many of us wanted to help Lynda O’Conner have conservative votes to work with on the Lakota school board. We felt sorry for Lynda and tried to help her. Isaac and Darbi essentially ran together as a package during the campaign, and they won their elections easily. But as soon as the election was over, Lynda started talking about controlling the school board members in ways that didn’t sound very Republican. And immediately, the OSBA (Ohio School Board Association) started to do its work; it’s like a club. They invite new school board members into the warm embrace of friendship, and it doesn’t take much for that type of romance to entice lonely people or people with a natural personality to want to please others. Admittingly, that was a concern I had about Isaac during the campaign; he was so friendly and so outgoing that I was concerned that he would find the desire to appease the other school board members too lucrative when conflict was the best approach. One thing that we did talk about that didn’t make it on camera was Darbi’s support network, with Kelly Kohls at the National Leadership Council (NSBLC), which offers an alternative to the support of the more labor-union-controlled OSBA. Lynda O’Conner and I have talked specifically about the OSBA; she thinks it’s a good organization. I think along the lines of Darbi and Kelly on the matter. But the obvious results are in the influences that led to Darbi doing what voters expected on the Lakota school board and Isaac looking to appease all these new friends, which is the game of politics that happens at every level.

As I explained to Darbi, I am proud of her, as many are. I’ve been doing this kind of thing, supporting candidates in many ways, for many years, and most of the time, it results in a dud. It’s like going to the fireworks store for the Fourth of July and buying a bunch of fireworks that never blow up. You have great expectations, but they just fizzle out when you light the fuse. Whereas with Darbi, she has exploded in all the right ways that were very satisfying and surprising. Every now and then, your hopes and expectations are met, which is the case with Darbi. She was not seduced by all the forces that have taken public education in the wrong direction, and that has been great to see. The ratio for me is about 10 to 1. Of every ten candidates I have worked with over the years, you occasionally get one Darbi. Of course, I knew when such an honest person like Darbi, who simply wanted to do an excellent job as a school board member, confronted a system with so much bad behavior in it, and that bad behavior was hidden from the public through friendships that were designed to conceal it; then there would be conflict. I get emails from people all over the country from people who are political moderates who are jealous that they don’t have someone like Darbi Boddy on their school board. I am very proud of her and would love to have three or four more like her, people who could resist the temptations of group consensus at the expense of voter responsibility.

I brought this up during our talk, how one player for the Reds inspired many others to get better. In many ways, Darbi has been that person for Lakota

We don’t elect people into politics to get along, which is becoming more evident in national politics. We don’t expect physical altercations either, but one of the problems that lead to so much corruption is the appeasement of peers, which is at the heart of the problem at every level. At Lakota, at the fundamental community level, we can see two people who started in the same place and quickly went in entirely different directions. From both perspectives, they had good intentions, yet during our talk, Darbi hit the nail on the head; much of the evil that starts in the world of politics doesn’t come from some pitch-forked devil; it’s often the friendly face who wants to buy you dinner and treat you like a king or princess. Of course, they expect something in return. But it’s often hard to see because it feels good to be liked. Some people will do anything to be liked; once others know that about you, they own you. And at that point, elected representatives often go bad when they fall in love with being loved because, just like a manipulative spouse, once they start jerking around your feelings, you lose the authenticity of why people voted for you in the first place. And at the heart of the conflict between Darbi and Isaac, two people who ran for office together and had been friends, is this villain of appeasement. The lucrative nature of being accepted in the warm embrace of friendship within institutional confinement is a nector all its own. And thankfully, in our community, Darbi didn’t fall for it, much to the frustration of those who wanted to seduce her into it. That’s why people tell me they are jealous of us in Lakota because they see the clear value in elected representatives like Darbi Boddy. The controversy only comes from those who want to steer her in a different direction. But she has stayed with the voters authentically, and people appreciate that, as they do with all people who do so. And with Isaac, it’s frustrating when you can’t please everyone, and that comes out in these outbursts caught on camera twice now. As Darbi said to me, she gets tired of how people talk behind closed doors and speak in public. That duality is the source of the problem because an honest person would be the same in any format. 

Rich Hoffman

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Why Would Julie Shaffer Launch her Re-election Campaign in a Wine Bar: Bad Decisions, bad behavior, and bad politics hiding behind kids

You would think that a person running for re-election to the school board of Lakota would launch her campaign somewhere smart, like a library or even at the local Barnes and Noble bookstore. But no, Julie Shaffer is running for her fourth term, and from all that vast experience, she picked a wine bar to launch her campaign, which was mentioned in a Journal News puff piece by her long-time associate in the media, Michael Clark. I have a long history with these people, so the irony could never be more obvious. Considering what everyone knows about Julie Shaffer, you’d think she would have known better. There was a National School Board Conference a few years ago where she and others got a lot crazy, and she ended up disgracing herself in many ways. I learned about it from people who were with her and tried to help her clean up after the event. But it goes much further than that. All the local politicians know about it and confirmed it in the aftermath. So, I was never much of a fan of Julie Shaffer, but I treated her fairly in the beginning until she showed herself to be quite a left-winged radical with vicious political intentions that, of course, like they all do, hide it behind the smiling faces of kids. However, the more I learned about her over the years, the more she showed herself to be one of the big problems at Lakota as she intends to bring progressive mindsets to the students. She was one of the first to support genderless bathrooms at Lakota before the alphabet sexual deviancies were announced on the news every day as they are now. 

Let’s just be polite about it: Julie’s condition at that National School Board Conference with other Lakota representatives was not pleasant. It involved severe intoxication and various states of undress, according to witnesses who were there and tried to help her. But there’s more, which came out during the latest drama with the former Lakota superintendent who apparently let people know that he had video of it all on his phone, and people were enjoying it. And knowing what everyone now knows about him; apparently, even he was embarrassed by the behavior of the Lakota leadership at that conference. I personally didn’t see the video; I had no desire to, even though it was an option from those close to the superintendent. We’re not talking about a “Girls Gone Wild” video in the sense that everyone was young and beautiful. These are middle-aged, beat-up potato sacks getting way too crazy when they should have been representing the Lakota district as proper education representatives. So just drinking too much would have been too much. Anything after that, which was a lot, was simply unforgivable. The whole video issue came up as many who had heard this story were wondering why Julie was so willing to give a free pass to what we learned about the former school superintendent. The belief was that she couldn’t afford to cast any opinions about his behavior because she had done equally disreputable acts. With all that in mind, it was baffling that she would launch her campaign at a wine bar to remind everyone of this embarrassing event. She’s a seasoned politician now, so she should have known better. But obviously not. 

This raises the real issue; deviant behavior is often more than what you see on the surface. Over the years, Julie has been one of the biggest cheerleaders for progressive changes while hiding the effort behind a non-partisan school board. School boards are very partisan, often filled with radical democrats with big government ideas about everything and an eye toward spending to match it. And we see how she arrives at these thoughts when you learn about her personal lifestyle. Like many progressive big government people, Julie is attracted to an extensive social safety net because she has problems controlling herself. If you want to be taken seriously as a leader of anything, you just never conduct yourself like she was caught doing at a National School Board Conference. When she says in that Michael Clark “puff piece” that “I believe that this is a fight for the heart and soul of a district that has been a destination district for many years but is being harmed by extremism, politics, and divisiveness.” She’s running in a very conservative district with people who care about things like drunkenness, overt sexual displays of disgrace, and lousy judgment. And like a lot of Democrats, she has been hiding her political tendencies behind the unspoken rules of bipartisanship. These public schools are not for the kids, as people like her claim; it’s for the adults to have free babysitting and to act like a bunch of teenagers when left alone in a hotel lobby while traveling out of town. In that article, she said that “this election will be a decision by our community about what they want Lakota to represent in the future.” 

And that’s why her behavior at school board conferences matters to the rest of us, although we may not want to disgust ourselves with the details. While Julie has worked to attack conservative voices in passive-aggressive ways for years, it’s evident that she has been fighting for the disgrace of children, not the preservation of them. And it shows up in her private actions. Then, like a lot of people who are so inclined to Democrat politics, they seek to hide their bad behavior behind big government mechanisms, which then shield them from reality. And there is a cost to all those big government ideas which Democrats use like a mask to hide what bad people they really are when they think nobody is looking. So, of course, they hate people who judge them for what they are. I wouldn’t call it “right-winged politics” as much as I would call it common sense. Anybody who wants to be a leader of anything should know that even at the late hours of the night when the alcohol with friends is flowing freely, it’s best not to participate and to lead by a higher example. I know many people who travel a lot, and they don’t end up in the compromised state that Julie was, where she had to be put back together by fellow school board members after disgrace had already chronicled the event for posterity. What’s even more stunning than all is that she would bring attention to it even during her campaign announcement. Talk about being tone-deaf. This will be a tough campaign for her, but she can only blame herself. She is offering herself as a leader of Lakota schools and is attempting to say that anybody who judges her behavior is a “right-winged radical.” But to the rest of the world, it’s just the rantings of people who can’t control themselves when they leave home. And the same can be said about her budget decisions as a school board member, where the same rationalization comes into play. And the track record is not a good one at all.

Rich Hoffman

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Yes, Lakota Schools Are Letting Boys Use the Girls’ Bathrooms: Why liberals hate Darbi Boddy

I think the only reason many anti-Darbi Boddy people hate her with so much conviction is that she does not look like the bottom of a foot, as most other education types do. Most people who do work in the field of education are not what you might call attractive. Instead, they look like potatoes that have been left in the basement too long on one side and are in a perpetual state of rot. That thought came to my mind as I saw Darbi Boddy, the second-year school board member from Lakota, at the Republican Lincoln Day Dinner, a glamorous event celebrating conservative values each April with Ron DeSantis speaking about his education reforms in Florida. Darbi was dressed well, and a long line of people wanted to take their pictures with her. There was quite a crowd, but we did get a chance to talk about how things were going and what she had in mind for the future as one of the most important political offices that any property owner could vote on. We send so much money to these public schools only to have them used against us as a backdoor for extreme liberalism distributed like a weed into our community with the intent to rot the minds of our youth. When you get a chance to meet Darbi, it would be hard to understand why so many people hate her. But it becomes apparent when you look at the line of people waiting to shake her hand and take a picture with her. Fellow school board members Kelley Casper and Julie Shaffer could never get a reception like that, and jealousy is undoubtedly a factor in the way that women get jealous of other women for obvious insecurities.

For all those reasons and more, Darbi Boddy is one of the most controversial figures in Cincinnati politics; she is a Butler County version of Marjorie Taylor Greene, only with a softer presentation. She and I did get a chance to talk about a few Lakota problems, and one was the transgender radicalism that is exploding in all public schools across America as a clear strategy by progressives that was unfolding. Darbi, unlike me, thinks that public education can be fixed or at least improved. Where I tend to think all elements of public education are ready for the junk pile, I am happy to see at least that people like Darbi want to try and make it work, especially considering how much money gets wasted on it in our community. And to that point, she told me about some of the challenges regarding boys and girls’ bathrooms that were trying to emerge again. Listening to her talk, she sounded very reasonable, leaving it clear to the mind of any decent person the precise point of view that people hated Darbi for purely cosmetic purposes and because she was a conservative more than any other reason. I was impressed with her statement that her main reason for dealing with many of the problems she has become wrapped up in is because she wants kids to have a stable environment to work in. And the liberal politics was intrusive to them, especially the trans bathroom issue where boys were using it as a means to get into the girl’s bathroom. Of course, at a recent school board meeting, the rest of the board stated clearly that they didn’t think that was happening. But then, after the meeting where Darbi brought the issue up for a vote to put the issue to rest, Lakota spokesperson Betsy Fuller stated that only under exceptional circumstances were boys being let into the girl’s bathroom and that the issue was distracting for students who would rather not think about those kinds of things.

After speaking with Darbi, I always leave with the thought about how bat-crap crazy women can be with other women, just over cosmetic looks, and how nuts Democrats are who are so full of hate, they want to protest the sun coming up. Darbi’s argument about removing political radicalism from kids so they can just be kids makes a lot of sense. But then again, Lakota schools are filled with radical, progressive liberals, from the school board down to the class-to-class teachers who are teaching CRT and are supporting trans activism, and those people, if left unchecked, are looking for a co-parenting relationship with the community’s kids, and to teach them all the wrong kinds of things. If Darbi wasn’t there to protect them, who would? The radicals would say that the best way to protect the kids would be to get rid of Darbi because she is the center of political controversy. But without Darbi, these people would have unhindered access to children, which is a terrifying thought, when you find out how radical some of these people really are. Darbi, in person, behaves very professionally and has genuine sincerity for the betterment of children in the classrooms. And the people who hate her hate that she’s a conservative who is not afraid to express it in public. And they hate her because of what they intend to do to innocent kids, which Darbi stands in the way of. 

You always have to watch it when the public relations people are controlling the message, and Betsy Fuller made it clear without trying, that boys were being allowed in the girl’s bathroom under unique conditions, as expressed in an email to the media after Darbi proposed a ban on the entire idea, for the safety of all kids. At a fundamental level, boys are dirtier than girls, and if they don’t sit down while using the restroom, they tend to make a mess of the seat, making it very inconvenient for the girls who have to use it after them and it’s just not fair to the girls. The other school board members were a bit outraged by Darbi, for all the reasons stated that they would be, but that didn’t change the fact that Lakota is supporting transgender radicalism, which is more of a religious issue than one of political inclusion, which is an entire problem of its own under a separation of church and state argument. Public schools have made it clear that religious references such as the Ten Commandments were not allowed to be displayed, but then they are very supportive of the rainbow flags of the Pride movement, which is a direct correlation to the Cult of Ishtar. That support was evident in Betsey’s statement to the press; they prioritize inclusion among kids that identify with gender questions, which are purely political in their progressive push culturally. And as Darbi made it clear to me, kids just want to be kids. Adults are trying to push all this sex agenda radicalism onto them, abusing that innocence between the child and adult relationship that is often detrimental to the child’s development. When you really peel back the layers of hate that have been applied to Darbi just for existing, it becomes clear that it’s not because she’s a bad school board member. Quite the opposite, I think she is the best out of the current four, and Lakota would do well to get four more just like her.   And if they did, at that point, Lakota schools might actually serve the community well and spend the vast amounts of money that are sent to them by the community wisely. And kids might be able to have one thing less to worry about than adults with radical political agendas who want to pervert children sexually for their own maniacal purposes. 

Rich Hoffman

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The Public Relations Scam at Lakota: Somehow, a story about reckless sex became about getting rid of Darbi Boddy on the school board

Despite all the terrible news in such great abundance these days, I see a lot of positives worth talking about because people are becoming smarter every day.  Many people are oblivious to how much public relations firms run everything in their lives.  For instance, it has been quite clear that our own government has become a public relations firm for Big Pharma and that the entire notion of government medicine was simply guaranteed product sales using the government to enforce market stability for the firm they represent.  And if you want representation, you don’t get it with votes; you hire lobbyists, you pay to play, and only then can you get the power that government offers.   But it does all start locally, and now that so many discussions about government schools are on the top of everyone’s mind, a recent example at Lakota schools in my home district of Butler County, Ohio, showed the story better than any other means.  Here we had a school superintendent involved in a messy divorce who admitted in a police report that he had fantasies of drugging, molesting, and video recording three students with whom he was in charge, but the media in town would not move on the story.  They pretended it never happened and that the whistleblowers were the villains.  It was a bizarre case that shows just how deeply public relations firms shape the reality that a voting public understands.  And at Lakota schools, we had a wild example of the worst that could be learned about a public administrator, and they spun the story through public relations in a way to cover it up.  And most of the news media in Cincinnati, print and television, worked hard to suppress the story to the favor of the public relations representatives at Lakota, who insisted to the public that the story was not real and that the whistleblowers were simply political activists who wanted to get rid of the superintendent. 

Those same public relations personalities then tried to spin everything around on the first-year school board member, Darbi Boddy, whom the community has rallied around to uphold a standard of morality in the crazy government school, and school systems, in general, to provoke her into being removed from the school board.  This was all before the superintendent had to resign due to his actions, leaving the standard teacher union thugs irate and looking for revenge.   On the way to record the video for this article, I had heard on the radio’s top-of-the-hour news report that the community was seeking signatures to remove Darbi Boddy from Lakota schools because having her on the school board was going to make it difficult, if not impossible, to find a new superintendent.  That was on a big Clear Channel radio station in Cincinnati reading essentially off a press release directly as it was given to them, and that was out of all the topics in Cincinnati media, a news story.  Ironically I had at that moment in my hand a report from Channel 12 news, Cincinnati, talking about the challenges of finding a good superintendent in the very contentious environment of Lakota schools.  All of that was the work of just a few public relations people hired by Lakota schools to manage the district and the voting public.  And none of it was real as we would consider facts part of reality.  Rather, the reality was being completely shaped by public relations right in front of everyone’s faces who knew better. 

Many of the people who had been involved in the school superintendent’s story and found his sexual lifestyle learned about in the wake of his divorce reprehensible, were stunned that for over six months prior, the public school denied the existence of reality and stuck completely to their tactic of shaping their image completely around public relations tools, the media, press releases denying what was learned even when police testimony was quite clear, and using legal firms to establish a fake precedent with bizarre interpretations of legal definitions as to what moral behavior was and criminal intent.  Even the law from the level of the police was shown to fit into the public relations game completely, playing along as the story was shaped not by truth but by PR statements given to the press, for which they ran with completely.  And during that entire time, from when the public learned about the police report admission from the superintendent to the time he resigned, around six months, the media was cold on the story to the point where they could get away with it.  They had to cover what the public was outraged about, but their tactic was to take the edge off the story hoping that people would forget about it and those telling the story would be terrified by legal threats to their very lives.  It was all very ominous and corrupt beyond reason.  Yet the moment the superintendent resigned, suddenly, there was an avalanche of stories from all the news outlets about the Lakota school’s situation.  Even Channel 9 was doing Lakota stories suddenly on a variety of topics.  It was stunning; all the news stations were reporting the events of Lakota and, of course, the newspapers.  But their subject wasn’t the exploits of the superintendent and the danger it might pose sexually to the student population like rational people might expect; rather, the entire efforts were to get rid of Darbi Boddy as the school board member the community had rallied around to stand up to the public relations efforts. 

Prior to this Lakota story, people had a kind of perception of this hidden menace.  But only when the machine had been turned on to such a ridiculous level with such stark contrasts could anybody see what the problem always has been.  Lakota schools didn’t have a leg to stand on in defending their very progressive pick for superintendent with such rock-solid evidence that did exist, and so many people knew about it.  And the story got out to the public through all the methods that public relations couldn’t manipulate, citizen journalism, social media, and a billboard campaign in the community.  But all the places where public relations could touch with their press releases, we saw a news culture that essentially read the statements without any investigation and carried the message to an unsuspecting public.  The example was perfect, and it shows a deeper problem in many government endeavors at all levels, from local to national to international.  The same game was being played everywhere and for the same reasons.  Somehow at Lakota schools, a story about a superintendent of the student population having fantasies about kids in a sexual way was turned completely around to the danger of the school board member who represented the community in showing disdain for that information.  It was a clear case of morality that anybody should have been able to agree with.  Yet the public relations machine dug in and tried to defend the absurd, and the desperation of their lack of effectiveness forced them to go way over the top and reveal their hidden manipulations in a very educational way.  And in so doing, we all learned how this business is done everywhere else, from election fraud to Covid vaccination status to the inflation numbers of an economy that has obviously been in recession.  The same methods were applied in all those cases, and reality was shaped not by facts but by public relations mechanisms to the detriment of all representation and disrespect of all people in a society of free voters. 

Rich Hoffman

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Yes, I love “My Darlings”: The Rise of Kristi Ertel and the benefits of being a “Crazy Cowboy”

Suppose you listen carefully to the pro-Matt Miller faction of Lakota schools. In that case, you’ll hear from their diatribes of insanity a proclamation of no accountability, which is the cornerstone of liberalism and the most destructive element of any public school. After all, that is at the heart of the case with the former Lakota Superintendent who threw the Lakota school board under the bus, who had been defending him as he resigned from the public school under tremendous pressure as of this writing, the 31st of January 2023. Even with all that has been revealed about his bizarre personal lifestyle, he was recently at the Kona Grill at Liberty Center parading around his new girlfriend even as he was in charge of her compensation and benefits, daring school board members who were there to say something about it. On his way out the door, he was clearly setting up a lawsuit to extract more money from the district in the hope of a settlement since the school board always tends to settle cases rather than fight them in court. It would be smart in this case for them to fight this one because there is a lot that would be in their favor; as one of my good friends in all of this effort said in a few good interviews on radio and podcasts recently, Kristi Ertel, attached here for your convenience. For instance, the housekeeper story would be something that would not hold up well in an actual courtroom. Kristi was also one of the speakers at a very contentious school board meeting that took place on 1.23.23, just a week before. At that meeting, things were getting out of control as the pro-union, pro-Matt Miller faction came ready to openly harass the community for passing any kind of judgment on their lives or that of their leader, the outgoing superintendent.

But to drive home the point, I saw lots of feedback in the aftermath from what critics call “my darlings” as the pro-Matt Miller faction revealed their innermost thoughts for analysis. A few of those “darlings,” who don’t mind the title in the least, were Justin and Vanessa Wells, who were drug into this story from the start and are the community members Kristi Ertel mentioned during her interviews, especially on 55 KRC with Brian Thomas. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I’ve seen every bit of the ugly from the pro-union, pro-big government schools for several decades. But under pressure, they are revealing their weaknesses more blatantly than ever before, which is the feature of a Facebook posting by one of them who showed a lot regarding their mentality of panic at a government education world that is falling apart in front of their faces, an expectation of no accountability for any administrators and staff, and ultimately what they hope kids learn which masks all the bad decisions they’ve made in their own lives. It’s quite a fascinating thing to witness. Vanessa has been the flytrap that has been the soundboard for much of the worst because the assumption has been that if not for Justin and Vanessa, that Matt Miller would still be the superintendent of Lakota schools. There would be no Darbi on the school board, there would be no Tea Party, and they would still have their shield in the superintendent position, hiding so much that is wrong behavior-wise among the employee staff; that is obviously only the tip of the iceberg. 

I can understand why the writer of the Facebook post was so upset with Justin and why he referred to me as a “crazy cowboy.” He also indicated that I was “little Richie,” and he said similar things about Justin. In private meetings, the Facebook guy would find out that we’re not so little, but it’s not what he said that reflects reality, but the mind of the liberal in general that is so interesting. Sure, these radicals are upset that there is a vast network of supporters at Lakota schools that runs all up and down the hierarchy of society, and they are supporting Darbi Boddy as there have been organized efforts to remove her from the school board. They are not used to anybody fighting back against them and are upset about it. And how they express that frustration is like some drunken loser at a football game who thinks they could play better as an armchair quarterback as they stuff beer and hot dogs down their throats trying to shape reality to their limited sentiment. The attempt to paint their enemies as “little” is to help them build up the courage to say anything at all because the position they are defending is indefensible. And to fit it into their minds, they must diminish the concept of opposition into something they believe they can manage until reality confirms otherwise. So long as it’s just a Facebook posting, they can easily believe they have a fighting chance. But also with such rantings is fear of the opposition’s significance. Yes, I have a lot of “darlings” in the Butler County community, especially on Lakota issues. And I am proud of them all. I’ve been laying out the game plan for beating these antagonizers in public schools for years, and it has really taken until recently for people to start listening and fighting back.   And now that people have seen what Darbi Boddy is doing on the school board, they are seeing how to do the right things as a school board member. If people like these Matt Miller supporters are upset, that’s great because it means that the real need in public schools is getting addressed. 

As Kristi Ertel indicated in her great interviews, the reason for all this is to protect kids. I think of these government schools as dangerous and expensive. But they produce way too many employees within their system like Matt Miller, and it is under pressure like we have seen over the release of his divorce records that reveal just how bad it is. And the anger at “my darlings” tells us so much about what those real dangers are. The position among the left-leaning supporters of public education, to begin with, is to fight for no accountability, no judgment, and no consequences for bad behavior. What the supporters of Matt Miller are advocating for, and are frustrated with, is that the public, the Darbi Boddy supporters, the team behind the website Protect Lakota Kids.com, and even vast political support that has taken a stand in ways nobody is used to, have come together at the joint opportunity to protect kids from the dangers of adults who want no consequence lives, then expect to teach that to our children. Then there is the fear of expectation that their jobs may not be so secure after all and that personal choices might make them unemployable. Because if you really dig behind the façade of all the tough talk, you see a group of people who know they are in the extreme minority who puff themselves up like peacocks to look much more extensive than they really are, which are why they fantasize that their enemies are so much smaller than they are in real life, to fit their world view, who worry that everything they ever believed about employment and social safety nets might be wrong, and irrelevant. And to maintain that fantasy, Matt Miller had to resign, as all those followers will have to follow to maintain the same illusion. And they are mad that there are people out there judging them. But of course, they will because after all the smoke clears, a parent’s fundamental task is to provide children with the best opportunities for a decent future. And they won’t get that opportunity if what they learn in public schools, which is a reality we can’t ignore, to live life with no accountability, then we have destroyed those poor kids before they ever get a chance at life. And that would be the worst crime of all. 

Rich Hoffman

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The Darbi Boddy Playbook: Breaking free of the invisible fence that has always held back Republicans

I’ve always watched dogs confined behind an invisible fence and thought of them as Republicans. Why don’t the dogs just run through the zapper when they get near the parameter of the fence? There is no physical barrier to hold them back, just an emotional one set off by a little physical pain that they learn occurs by a wire buried under the ground that gives off a bit of pain when they get near it. When you first set up an invisible fence, you put little flags in the ground so the dogs know where the limits are. Then once they learn the limits, the flags can be removed, the dogs will stay behind their “invisible fence,” and the yard can look like an open space when really there are barriers only the dog knows about. In a liberal society, that is what Democrats call bipartisan relationships. That’s how it looks to the outside world. But really, the deal is that only Democrats get to run free across an open yard. Republicans get zapped if they get too close to the edge and dare cross a line. My advice to Republicans for over three decades is to ignore the silly zappers liberals have set up to contain Republicans. Put up with a bit of pain, ignore the signal of woke limits they have politically imposed on everyone, and just go beyond those barriers because they have nothing else in the playbook. Either the dog stops with the invisible fence, or they have nothing else. And when we say stop, we mean the little fears of pain and social castigation that Democrats apply with name-calling to keep Republicans behind their own version of an invisible fence. And after three decades of watching this ridiculous behavior, I am very proud to say that the first conservative politician I have ever seen prove this point is Darbi Boddy, the first-year school board member at Lakota schools. She has broken through their barrier and is loose, and all the liberals are lost as to what to do. 

Ultimately, that forced Matt Miller’s resignation, the very controversial superintendent of Lakota schools. Liberals expect to live a life of no accountability for their social life, and conservatives hope for accountability for everything. Those relationships just don’t go together. For many years, conservatives have been stuck behind an invisible fence of social parameters that Democrats controlled, and the relationship of free expression was clearly one-sided. It remained that way in national politics until President Trump came along and showed politicians that they could just step through that stupid invisible fence and there wasn’t anything that Democrats could do to convince everyone to stay within the barriers they created through social rules they controlled, the kinds of things you can say, the topics you could cover, the way things were communicated to the public. But with Trump, it was experience from show business that he brought with him into politics. With Darbi Boddy, a local school board member for Lakota schools, she has brought that same kind of effort to ground up politics, and the results are obvious. On Monday, the 23rd of January, 2023, I saw one of the best school board meetings I’ve ever seen; there were plenty of community members and supporters of Darbi Boddy who voiced their opinions and did some really good, articulate work that showed the liberals of that progressive government school that the dogs had broken free of the liberal invisible fence, and were now just as free to roam around in society as Democrats always have been. Pay particular attention to the public comments around the 55-minute mark included on this article.

For those who want to know, or need to know, this is where the future of education is going. Darbi represents that effort at Lakota. But this is a national movement that is not going away. It was caused by years of abuse by teacher unions, and taxpayers have had it. Public schools cost too much, they teach all the wrong things, and they bring liberal politics to our homes and we don’t want them around.

I would call what happened at Lakota schools the Darbi Boddy playbook. At the start of her term as a school board member, essentially the moment she was sworn in by my good friend, Senator George Lang, the radical progressives of Lakota schools, the kind of people who are always causing all the trouble, and making everything too expensive, tried to get rid of her.   In just four months on the job, the alignment of the school board, Matt Miller’s radicalism, and their media partners, the Michael Clarks and the Karin Johnsons, turned up the heat on that invisible fence to keep Darbi contained from investigating CRT in Lakota. And they pushed her hard to force a resignation. But Darbi kept plowing forward; she did not resign, she did not play by the liberal woke rules, and she stayed tough in the pocket under a lot of pressure. More pressure than most people could ever hope to handle. And the result has been a complete collapse of that liberal invisible fence network. And now that one Republican has survived it, others are seeing how to do it themselves, which led to a parade of protestors speaking in support of Darbi at the school board in front of a very messy crowd that isn’t used to people beating them with their liberal playbook. There were radicals there with t-shirts trying to inspire people to sign a petition online to remove Darbi from the board, and they were pretty vicious at the meeting away from the microphones. But essentially, they were like those owners of the dogs who yelled and screamed at the escaped animals hoping to terrify them into submission. Meanwhile, the freed dogs are just jumping around and playing like nothing in the world matters because now that they know they can escape the invisible fence, nothing in the world does. They are just as free to communicate as the radical Democrats who run all government schools. 

If this were indeed a debate over what’s good for kids or not, we might call all this effort “childish.” For instance, many who spoke against Darbi Boddy at that school board meeting want to convince themselves that the people who support Darbi are only 30% of the community. They want to believe that they are the ones in control and that there are more of them than Republicans who care about these matters. They keep saying to the escaped dogs, “let’s just get back to teaching the kids. Let’s get back to meetings where nobody shows up, and we just give out awards and happy stuff that makes education fun.” They really intend to get the dogs back behind the invisible fence with a treat or a dog toy; then they plan to turn up the zapper to keep anything like this from ever happening again, where they lose control. But the truth of the matter, and I’ve told this to Lynda O’Conner, the school board president at Lakota, many times, most people in the community support Darbi. They don’t like liberalism and are upset that Democrats have been running the public schools for years and are looking for something to rally their minds to the problem. And for them, Darbi is that person, that rally point they can believe in. They have watched her escape from the clutches of the invisible fence that Democrats have always controlled, and they now have someone to cheer on. And now more people are joining Darbi, which was on full display at the Lakota school board meeting. The best one I have seen yet after all these years. And now that Republicans can see from the Darbi Boddy playbook how to fight back against those invisible fences they are always confined to, maybe they can do some good work in the world as well.  And remember the most important thing, it’s not that we just say we are teaching kids that matters.  But it’s what we teach them.  If what we intend to teach is liberal behavior, then that’s a no go on all fronts. 

Rich Hoffman

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