The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 160,000 times in 2013. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 7 days for that many people to see it.
A good friend of mine who sometimes opines here grew a long beard like the Duck Dynasty guys during an age when it was really unpopular. He was only 25 years old at the time so he looked oddly out-of-place everywhere he went—which was fine with me. I enjoyed his brand of rebellion, so the odd looks suited my entertainment. We’d go out to eat at a Wendy’s or McDonald’s, I’d have my hat on, he’d have his long flowing beard and people thought we stepped out of the Appalachian mountains while other people our age were dressing in the latest campus fashions. During the 90s nobody who lived near a city grew beards like that—only motorcycle riders, and mountain men. That guy was a genius level personality who wanted desperately to be a mountain man—but too many social entanglements prevented it at the time. So he grew a beard that would have made ZZ Top jealous. But after a while, he moved through that phase and decided to shave it off and go clean shaven—so he cut the thing off and hung it on a wall in his bathroom, fully intact. It was all woven together like someone had knitted it, and hung it in a mask like form on the wall next to his sink. My daughters were scared of using the restroom at his home because of that beard. They didn’t want to be in the same room with it.
So I have a little history with the type of people who are in the Duck Dynasty show. There are quite a few of them who live from Appalachia to Utah. They are quite common around Bristol, Tennessee, and can often be seen living in trailers in the middle of Idaho—living debt free and seeking no human entanglements. If a person were to go to the Sturgis motorcycle rally in South Dakota, a lot of those beards would be seen. They are as common as air in a place like that. But in New York and Los Angeles they are an anomaly. In those progressive cities, the European sensibilities have taken root from across both ponds, and people just don’t do those kinds of things. Rugged individualism is a concept of wonder that they cannot grasp, which is why a progressive cable channel like A&E put the Robertson family on television to begin with—as a kind of eccentric fascination that the folks on Brand, and Wilshire Blvd could gawk at and feel good about themselves. They had no idea they were tapping into a reservoir of unrepresented frustration experienced throughout the rest of the country. So I can see how they would be upset when A&E had to run up against the comments of Phil Robertson’s GQ interview about homosexual behavior—which represents most of the country’s opinion. The LGBT (lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transvestites) community represents around 3% of the total American population, but as a lobby force—since they have made themselves the squeaky wheels—they have captured the interests of major corporations terrified of activism lawsuits, if discrimination is shown toward gay oriented people. So to prove corporations are open to all forms of living—so to avoid parasitic social shaping lawsuits, most corporations have come out in open acceptance of gay behavior—which was the reason for the aggressive action by the LGBT community regarding Phi Robertson.
Most corporate types lack any personal convictions—so they see no problem yielding to the LGBT community. It is good business to show acceptance to all lifestyles. Unfortunately for them, they are not very good at predicting content that the American people want—so they often happen across success by accident—which clearly was the case with the Duck Dynasty people. They are used to celebrities who have found fame and fortune bending to their will to keep the money train humming along—and that includes yielding to special interest advocates like the LGBT community. They are not used to celebrities like Phil Robertson who are functioning from an authenticity that is not for sale. People like Phil Robertson are who they are whether or not they are being paid millions of dollars for it—and at the heart of the recent controversy where Phil Robertson made his feelings about gay sex quite clear—is the collision of progressive politics, and authenticity—the kind of honesty that has made the popular A&E television show so fashionable among a very hungry public.
I know a bit about what Phil is going through. I know what’s it’s like to come across a progressive perception of things, and when told by the establishment to “apologize” and you don’t—but stick by your guns—which I will sum up at the end of this article. The reason Robertson is in trouble is because of the kind of beliefs he has expressed below. All of these issues are common observations from people in the flyover states, on the farms, the factories, and barber shops all across Middle America. It is for that reason that they tune in to watch Duck Dynasty, because to them somebody finally put on a show that speaks to them—instead of some coastal crap about hippie free love, reckless religious conviction, and overly emotional despots. The progressive establishment has worked hard to change the beliefs of people with an opposite message, which Phil Robertson exposed on episodes of their television show well before the recent gay remarks.
The below comments are excerpts from one of those insulted progressive types. Check them out:
Robertson thinks black Americans were treated just fine in the Jim Crow-era South, and that they were happy there. “I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field…. They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!… Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.”
- Robertson thinks the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor because they didn’t believe in Jesus. “All you have to do is look at any society where there is no Jesus. I’ll give you four: Nazis, no Jesus. Look at their record. Uh, Shintos? They started this thing in Pearl Harbor. Any Jesus among them? None. Communists? None. Islamists? Zero. That’s eighty years of ideologies that have popped up where no Jesus was allowed among those four groups. Just look at the records as far as murder goes among those four groups.”
Robertson hates gay people. Robertson in 2010: “Women with women, men with men, they committed indecent acts with one another, and they received in themselves the due penalty for their perversions. They’re full of murder, envy, strife, hatred. They are insolent, arrogant, God-haters. They are heartless, they are faithless, they are senseless, they are ruthless. They invent ways of doing evil.” Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/when-you-defend-phil-robertson-heres-what-youre-really-defending-2013-12#ixzz2oCcXh1Rk
But more specifically, based on the GQ article, Phil said:
“It seems like, to me, a vagina — as a man — would be more desirable than a man’s anus,” he said. “That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying?
http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2013/12/duck-dynasty-gay-gq-phil-robertson-homophobe-homosexual/
What’s wrong with that? It’s an opinion based on years of experience? Yet the LGBT community believes this kind of opinion should be attacked because it goes against their social agenda which is the erosion of traditional values. However, for a guy like me—that is an insult—when they attack traditional relationships with traditional sexual practices they are attacking me. Yet I don’t protest Madonna who was a major advocate of the LGBT community, or Hillary Clinton who does the same—even though they only represent a very small portion of the population. When Phil Robertson speaks, he’s stating what a guy like me is already thinking.
When the film Broke Back Mountain came out and those two mainstream actors had anal sex in a tent far away from their wives, then fell in love with each other, I tried to watch and accept the story because it was so critically appraised. But the unrealistic nature of the whole thing was inescapable. I’ve been on many camping trips and on those kinds of endeavors with other guys—those kinds of activities are not desirable. My wife and I never pass gas in front of each other, there is no belching at the Hoffman dinner table, and there are never, and I mean never, “toot jokes” in my home, or around me. Human gas is a part of the digestion process, but it is also disgusting. It belongs with the rest of human feces, somewhere out of site so that intellectual pursuits can be established. The sex engaged in during Broke Back Mountain is unrealistic. That would have made such a mess that the filth afterwards would have made their back country trip unbearably uncomfortable. Without a shower immediately afterwards the smell would be disgusting. When Phil Robertson was talking about a vagina over an anus he’s talking about this kind of thing. With a woman, you can make love on a beach, in the woods, on top of your house, and when you’re done you don’t have to take a shower or even change the sheets. You can just go to sleep. With anal sex, absolutely no way—somebody will be taking a shower as feces would be everywhere. For a gay couple to do such a thing then go to sleep afterwards it would be like having a dog that rolled in feces out in the yard jump in your bed in the middle of the night and leave behind all the yard waste into the sheets of slumber. It would not be a good thing. Human beings have perverted the sex act and used such an orifice with the assistance of modern lubricants that are very unnatural. Without access to such things, anal sex would be impossible unlike with a woman where once the engine is running, it takes care of itself.
I don’t even like to use the restroom on camping trips because it makes me feel dirty. Fecal matter is not an attractive attribute of human existence. The appeal of it is contrived, not natural—and for more people to experiment with it, the LGBT community needs people to participate in such sex out of rebellion against the establishment. What Phil Robertson did was expose what everyone else is already thinking—and when they heard it; it got them off the hook of guilt that the gay community tries to invoke in order to promote their life style. Many years ago I worked with a sexual deviant who shared a story with the same friend whom I referred to who grew the beard. We were salesman at a dealership and between sales there was a lot of time to talk. This guy and his wife were very adventurous sexually, and he’d tell us all about his latest escapades. (My friend will remember the guy—his name was Perry.) One thing he had done the previous night was have is wife defecate onto a sheet of glass that he put over his face so he could watch it drop out and plop against the barrier between him and his wife. I told him he was insanely disgusting and he’d laugh and say, “To each, his own.” He had a twisted sense of erotic behavior. For me the smell alone would have been it, let alone watching such a thing. For a gay couple, they would have to accept that kind of odor, and the byproducts of engagement. A small percentage of the population likely has their wires crossed like that guy and his wife—where like dogs, they like fecal matter. They have a right to like what they want, but I don’t want to know about it. It is their dysfunctional behavior, not mine—and that is my general feeling about the whole LGBT population.
The gay pride people are afraid of people coming to these logical conclusions because it will end their spread of the social relationships between a man and a woman in a traditional family which they seek to destroy. They have the same level of deceit that public schools have over their funding issues, or government has over its spending. Being typical Kant trained Keynesian economic theorists they believe that as long as they do not speak of evil, hear any evil, or participate in any evil through their own lack of recognition of any value judgment, that there is no evil. The LGBT community has the same approach, they want vagina sex to be equal to anal sex—and they aren’t, one stinks, and one doesn’t. But in order to propel that belief, they need society to remain suppressed, and stupid acting out of rebellion, instead of logic. Logic says that the dudes in Broke Back Mountain would have had to clean off their dip sticks somewhere after the act. They wouldn’t just be able to get on their horses and do a day’s worth of hard riding. Only a gay writer from Santa Monica could even think this was possible as he has countless gels and lotions next to his bed to disguise the odor. But in Broke Back Mountain, such things were not around, only human spittle—nothing else—and that is just gross.
The reason for the beard and the popularity of the Duck Dynasty is that the characters are speaking the language of a part of society that has been suppressed deeply. The explosion of popularity seen by the A&E show is the untapped potential that Hollywood has been trying to avoid so to propel a progressive agenda. Duck Dynasty is about authenticity, and little else. And that traditional authentic behavior is something that America is very hungry for. What happened after Phil Robertson made his comments was that the LGBT community saw a sleeping giant come to Phil’s defense, and that scares them. A&E thought a token suspension until everything cooled off would suffice, but it didn’t. The LGBT community tried to force the issue, Phil Robertson didn’t back down, and lines in the sand were drawn. Forty years of public relations work likely went out the window in the period of one week as a majority of America found themselves supporting Robertson, and rejecting the arguments of the LGBT community. What will be one of the most common Christmas presents in 2013? Likely, Duck Dynasty material. What will be the number one topic around Christmas dinner tables—likely the stand Phil Robertson took against the LGBT community. Without question, many people who try that whole back-door approach with their spouses find the whole thing a lot less appealing than the vagina. The LGBT community has sold the whole thing in such a way that it makes people want to try it—but the reality is disgusting. Phil Robertson just gave people who feel that way a pass to not try it—and that is what the LGBT community is terrified of. Their peer pressure has folded because the Duck Dynasty guys refused to back off their position against anal sex. Like the act itself, the concept has more appeal than the reality. In the end, everything comes out smelling bad—just like the movement by the LGBT community. And Americans don’t like things that stink.
Rich Hoffman
Who plans a trip to Kansas or Iowa for a vibrant family vacation that they’ve saved up for a year to embark on? Almost nobody. The only people who do visit these places do so primarily to visit family members. Most would consider a vacation to destinations like Disney World, Atlantis in the Bahamas, or Hawaii to be……….good, respectable, and worth the effort. When people decide to take a vacation to a luxurious destination, there is a promise of goods and services that are beyond the scope of every day life which is the aim of their experience. A vacation to Kansas, Iowa or any other Midwestern state lacking such luxuries just isn’t very attractive—certainly not worth saving up large sums of money to experience. Well the same could be said when the government says that they want to bring more people into the “middle-class.” When government oriented people, and union leaders say people should strive to be in the middle class, they are essentially saying that people should strive to vacation in Kansas instead of reaching for the stars in Hawaii. The middle class is not a destination worth pursuing—it is simply a settlement—a concession to the life dreams of youth—and it is appalling.
The middle class is not something people should strive to become. They should in America strive to become upper-class—or to live their lives beyond a class system all together. They should live life beyond judgments of any kind—but if such things are required, the opinion that should be pursued is to have “class” and work to elevate their lives and the families who depend on them to heights of respectability. To state that one wishes to become a member of the “middle class” is essentially declaring that they are taking their family to Kansas for vacation to look at large fields of farming that extend to the edge of the world. Kansas is a wonderful place for grain production, and family value—but not exactly a vacation destination for anyone who has their eyes on something more exotic. For people who would settle on such a vacation they are purposely avoiding the scope and culture of a world beyond those fields.
When government states that they want to expand the “middle class” they are saying that people should not strive to become members of the “elite” which is how they often see themselves. They want a middle class because they want a voting population that is willing to settle into being comfortably numb and subservient to them. The term middle class is the desire of the upper class—so-called—to rule over someone, and the desire is exclusively created to set a target for people’s lives which do not challenge the established peaking order of the political class—who wish to believe they rule over everyone else.
I dare anybody to produce a name to this website of a very wealthy person not involved in politics to some extent. I’m sure there are some, but there are not many. The reason is that wealthy people from the upper class are expected to contribute to political campaigns to keep politicians from looting their lifestyle in other ways. This activity gives politicians the illusion that they are members of the upper class—because they tend to associate with members of society who are wealthy. They don’t often speak to the common middle class people—until they want votes—and when they want those votes, they want to know who the middle class people are, what their ambitions are, and where they want to go for vacation. It helps the cause of the politician if the members of the middle class don’t expect too much in life so it is easier for them to provide government services to meet their desires. So they encourage people into the “middle class” with the same reasoning that a lazy, no good father takes his family to Kansas to watch plants grow on a farm because they are too cheap to take their family to Disney World. So politicians lower the expectations so it is easier to fulfill the parameters of a good vacation.
Calling someone a member of the “middle class” is like calling them a cheap suit, a fast food restaurant, or in more equitable terms a Ford Focus as opposed to Lamborghini. You make do if that’s all you can accomplish, but you certainly would not consider “aspiring” to such a thing. To accept a Ford Focus is to settle, but one should always work in their life to drive a Lamborghini………..they may never get there, but their life will be better because they at least tried. Being in the “middle class” is to settle for a life that one is not in charge of—that is always subservient to a “ruling class” where ironically the people who are most vocal about a middle class speak the loudest.
Any education system which trains citizens to be “middle class” is deliberately stunting the economic growth of its society. Any politician who promotes the middle class is seeking to rule over the minds of the masses. Any citizen happy to be one of the middle class is a lazy antithesis to the dreamers born of freedom. They are disingenuous to their nation and to themselves for setting the bar so low that they hold down everyone connected intellectually with them just a little bit—enough to have catastrophic consequences on human development.
The middle class is not something to aspire to, it is an insult—and politicians routinely utilize that dialogue so that it has become common place—so common that it doesn’t even come across as an insult. For those who are content to say—I’m just a simple man of simple means—and am happy to be in the middle of the pack—then being in the middle class is where they belong. But there are those who are like Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, and many others who are not content to stand in line behind the rules politicians have outlined for mankind, and be content to stay in the middle class. They reach for the stars and sometimes snag one—and all of society is better for it. But to catch a star someone has to reach for them, and in the middle class, most are fat, dumb, and happy to just have their average car, their average wife, their average children, their average education, their average house, their average mind, their average cloths, their average intellect and measure themselves not against the best in society but their neighbor and what kind of lawn mower they have, what vehicle they drive, and dress they way they dress. Politicians love those types of people because they do what they are told and do not question anything that might make them stand apart from the crowd. They are the middle class and when someone declares that they are of that “class” the term is an insult—not a credit.
No child would admire a parent who grants their family a trip to Kansas when they had Disney World as an alternative. The reason trips to exotic places are more rewarding than those to common—easy destinations that are far cheaper, and more practical is because the expensive, hard to reach objective means more, and yields better. It is not admirable to just be average—but trying to be exceptional is commendable—and that is a trait that cannot be engineered from the human mind. It is attempted with modern education, but it has not been successful. People deep down inside share a love for the exceptional, and they yearn to reach for the stars themselves. But most fall victim to the old scam from politics declaring that the middle class is a destination worthy of lifelong endowment. Yet it’s not, being in the middle class is just an announcement that they are not a threat to the powers who crave to live in the upper class—the class where the wealthy give financial donations to parasites called politicians, and those same politicians gain the illusion of power because their associates are donors trying to buy government off their back. Such people need someone to rule over—so they call those people “middle class” and insist that if everyone stays in that category—then the government will care for them like a nice and noble king. It is the unsaid rule to the class system inherited by the debauchery of Europe—that the middle class exists, and is a term that should have no place in the language of America.
Rich Hoffman
His guest came on Sloan’s show expecting to speak to a conservative audience understanding why they were outraged at the Kinky Boots presence on a family program. I was watching the Macy’s Parade and was enjoying it until the Kinky Boots bit. My wife and I turned it off once it came on because we thought it was bad. I watched the Macy’s Parade to see the SpongeBob float, the Mickey Mouse tributes and other popular culture references. The Kinky Boots thing was too much—it reminded me of The Rocky Horror Picture Show which I despise because both are progressive productions intent to erode away family value. I don’t believe there should be some protest to Kinky Boots or Macy’s, I believe in freedom of speech and I voted by turning off the television—just like I turn off Scott Sloan’s Show these days. I vote for things with my participation in them. But listening to Sloan’s articulation of the Kinky Boots defense was astonishing. In the cartoon Family Guy Peter Griffin is the dunce of modern fatherhood. He’s not very thoughtful about anything, and is perpetually accident prone. Yet because of his intellectual handicaps, he often imposes on the world his brand of stupidity which ruins things for everyone around him—and that was what I thought about listening to Sloan’s analysis of Kinky Boots.
I wouldn’t go to see the play Kinky Boots if someone gave me tickets and back stage passes. It is not art I support, it is not representative of traditional America, and I have little interest in ever wasting a few hours of my life watching a play about a topic of drag dressing guys exploring alternate lifestyles. The progressive movement uses this kind of entertainment to advance their political platform and within that platform is the acceptance of alternate forms of raising families—which does not work. Many of the failures we are seeing socially in 2013 come from the infestation of progressive value where traditional beliefs were perfectly adequate. When progressive film makers, financiers and actors made the film—The Rocky Horror Picture Show with catchy songs and sexual deviancy which was an easy sell, the plot of the film was the break down of the main protagonists who were straight average Americans. Over the course of the movie the young traditional couple newly married are converted by the end into gay loving, lesbian kissing Susan Sarandon’s. The film was a cult classic that still plays on many college campuses with special midnight showings where attendees dress up in drag and throw popcorn at each other and yell at the top of their lungs with mass celebrations of collectivism. The Rocky Horror Picture Show was designed to sell progressive ideas by ridiculing conservative ideas—and I hate it. I don’t support it—although I have seen it to understand what all the fuss was. My reaction to the movie was that it is one of the worst films ever made, although it has catchy songs designed to get people humming the tune. The result of the film is to plant seeds of sexual deviancy into traditional America and destroy the concept of the family unit as the strength behind individuals. For proof, just speak to the producers of the film and it becomes clear. The producers intended the film to be a gay rights activism endeavor—and were openly blatant about it.
Kinky Boots is just a modern spin to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and the intentions are the same—the desensitizing of Americans from conservative values to progressive beliefs—namely sexual tendencies—sexual equality, and an anything goes mentality. I watched about half of the Kinky Boots Macy’s Parade segment, and found the images grotesque—so I turned it off. I didn’t think it was funny. I didn’t see any social value in it. And I saw it as an attack on my way of life in the same way that progressives would find it repulsive if I paraded my lifestyle in front of them—where my wife brings dinner to my chair every day, cooks all our meals, does all the shopping, changes all the diapers, and makes crafts for all the family members throughout the year–blankets, sweaters, and country decorations. She gets out of the arrangements a man who puts her on a pedestal, frees her of producing income, and takes care of any trouble that might come toward her family. People like the producers of The Rocky Horror Picture Show are very intolerant of the way my wife and I live our lives—so it’s only fair that I show the same intolerance for theirs. This live and let live crap is for pussies, and it hasn’t worked. It never has, and it never will.
I expected a lot of the trouble I had when I called the levy supporters of Lakota Latté sipping prostitutes………….I knew there would be push back, and I laughed about it with Scott Sloan and his producer off the air the night before I was set to go on the air and talk about it with him. I had worked with 700 WLW for a few years on school levy issues and had thought Sloan was a man’s man, and actually valued his man card. After the position he took with me not just on our interview, but later that day, I had the feeling that I had misjudged Sloanie. He wasn’t a tough guy who was willing to take on the teacher unions with me—like he sold himself—he was just another guy trying to appease the women in his life hoping to keep peace in his household by any means necessary—and I was very disappointed in him. Like Peter Griffin from The Family Guy, Sloanie put his finger to the wind and took the position he thought the majority of people believed. I tried not to hold the incident against him and continued to speak to him through email for months after. But over time it became obvious that we were two different kind of men, and people can’t be friends or otherwise if they don’t share common values. The same person who calls me a sexist for distinguishing that there are dramatic differences between men and women and that traditional America had more right than wrong on the matter is the same person attacking a conservative advocate who found Kinky Boots appalling. Sloan took what he thought was a libertarian approach to the Kinky Boots issue stating that it was harmless entertainment that people can take or leave. But when it shows up on a public street, on a public broadcast, or on a largely watched family holiday program during Thanksgiving, it’s not just about fun and promotion of a Broadway play. It’s about advancing a progressive agenda—and in the defense of traditional value—men are needed, and there are too few of those these days to do the job. Men these days think it’s better to be open-minded and slap-stick stupid like Peter Griffin than rugged tough and rooted in conviction like John Wayne—and that is disappointing.
During Halloween this year a kid was dressed in drag, he had on very high heels, a super short skirt and a long blond wig. From a distance he looked like he belonged in a Whitesnake video played by a Victoria Secret model. He passed as an attractive woman until we came closer to him and heard his voice. He was very disruptive going door to door pretending to be a woman and giggling about the negative reaction he had from the homeowners after they had closed the door. He obviously lacked a strong father figure in his life and as a result filled his thoughts with progressive influence, like The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Kinky Boots. What kind of father would this kid grow up to be—what honor is there in such a life where pictures of him will show up many years from now dressed in drag as he is trying to raise a family? The answer is not a very good one—and that is the real cost of this kind of recklessness. When a man or confused boy dresses in drag, they are surrendering their man card, and in doing so; they surrender their authority to ever be a “father knows best” type of family man. Any off-spring he may have will want “a father knows best” type of person in their life. Daughters grow up and almost always have reverence for their fathers, and sons almost always grow up to become like their fathers and if that kid has two or three kids of their own later—those children will be denied a person in their life who sets the bench marks of acceptable behavior high enough to be proud of. And that is the cost of living a life lacking conviction. The cost of being a Peter Griffin dad is that you get a lot of laughs, often they are the life of a party—but when it really matters, they are a let down to their families and to themselves—and will end their lives being embarrassing disappointments to their off-spring.
Men like it or not are the pillars that hold up a family. Women often provide the love and nurturing that is needed, but men provide the needed reliability that gives a family roots to grow in. Progressives despise this ideal, as they wish to make the world need government services to equalize the world of the inequalities that exist. Not all moms are good ones and not all dads are honorable, so the progressive solution was to destroy all good dads and good moms so that everyone is equally penalized and let public schools do the child-raising. What productions like Kinky Boots are really up to is letting men know it’s OK to be a floor tile inside a family home instead of a pillar of strength that holds it up—walked on and discarded as useless. Dads are belittled routinely in popular media, and the effects are starting to show in mainstream attitudes. People like Scott Sloan have bought into this concept and many others who have grown up watching shows like The Family Guy featuring Peter Griffin as the bumbling fool of a dad setting the bar so low for their ambitions that they are walked on by society instead of holding it up. Kinky Boots is about finding your passion, overcoming prejudice and transcending stereotypes—and one of those stereotypes is that a man must be straight-laced, strong, and a pillar of strength in their family. And when a man can’t live up to that lofty height and stand by a set of convictions that their family can honor, and depend on—they call those traditional types of men a sexist—and hope their wife gives them a piece of ass two weeks after their last period, and consider themselves lucky for getting it. And in the quiet moments when they think nobody is looking, they dress in their wife’s clothing and pretend to be the authority of the house by wearing her pants—then they by a ticket to Kinky Boots.
You want to see hypocrisy, let a traditional family group put a float in the Macy’s Parade full of house wives and home schooled children……………and wait for the violent storms of rage from the gay community, and other progressive groups……….and the result of all their strategies will become very, very clear.
Rich Hoffman
There is a good reason that I stand with Roger Reynolds and David Kern over the recent controversy surrounding Butler County Commissioner, Don Dixon. Before I tell this story remember that I’d rather deal with Republicans who are fighting each other over what’s right than a bunch of collectivist Democrats. But then again, Don Dixon was a Democrat all through the 80’s and 90’s and only decided to become a Republican in the year 2000, when it was obvious that conservative politics ruled Butler County. When politicians use their public office in an abusive way—to obtain benefits for their friends, family, and political allies, right is right—and its not always easy to tell who is telling the truth, or even what “right” is. In the recent case of Don Dixon, he obviously gave his son Brent benefits from his political holdings over the years—to the direct benefit of his family. Don’s angry because Kern and Reynolds called him out on it—finally. Here is the story from the newspaper.
Two board of election employees – including the son of a county commissioner – resigned in the wake of allegations that they were receiving full-time benefits for working part-time jobs.
The county made about $200,000 contributions toward their medical and dental insurance and also paid toward their pensions.
Republican Brent Dixon, 44, and Democrat Garry Hicks, 61, resigned this month after Butler County Prosecutor Michael Gmoser became involved and issued a “cease and desist” letter to the board of elections.
Brent Dixon was hired 22 years ago during the tenure of retired elections director Betty McGary, who has had a long-time relationship with Don Dixon. McGary quit in 2011 after 33 years.
“That’s the most lowdown sleazy, nasty comment I’ve ever heard. If you want to talk about me and you want to talk about my political history that’s one thing. Stay out of my life, out of my personal life. Roger Reynolds doesn’t have a millionth of the integrity she’s got,” he said. “I don’t pick on his wife.”
He threatened to sue Reynolds and Kern.
Don Dixon, who has led a crackdown on county spending since the economic downturn, was outraged that Reynolds had dragged McGary into the flap. He referred to McGary as his wife. He said the allegations were politically motivated.
Don Dixon said county commissioners have no control over the board of elections even though county commissioners approve the board’s annual budget.
Reynolds said Butler County contributed more than $156,000 towards Brent Dixon’s medical insurance over the years. Hicks was hired in 2001 and the county contributed about $35,000 toward his medical insurance premiums. Hicks recently was only taking the county’s dental insurance. Reynolds did not have figures for how much the county contributed toward their pensions.
With changes in the state pension effective Jan. 1, 2014, the 14 percent raises put Dixon’s and Hicks’ monthly wages over the $600 benchmark that enabled them to continue to earn a full month of credit for pension benefits. Before the changes, employees had to earn a minimum monthly salary of $250 to receive one full month of pension credit.
“There’s a lot of questions related to how Betty McGary would go along with this and authorized this as a director when it directly impacted Don Dixon’s son,” Reynolds said.
http://westchesterbuzz.com/2013/11/18/commissioners-son-got-pension-benefits-for-part-time-work/
Don Dixon can cry foul all he wants, but the bottom line is that his son was given help by government through his father which is an abuse of power. It doesn’t mean that Dixon is a bad person, but has simply done what many politicians fall victim to, they abuse their power for personal benefit which ultimately cost tax payers a lot of money. When there are many tens of thousands of people like Don Dixon doing for his son Brent what he did, the cost to tax payers is catastrophically high.
I have some experience with the Dixons that is a bit of a precursor to this kind of behavior which I have never forgotten. Way back in 1979, I was in a Soup Box Derby race with Brent in the finales of the Hamilton Jaycees sponsored event held behind Fort Hamilton Hospital. Back then, the race was a big deal in the Hamilton/Fairfield area and my car The Beast, seen in the picture above dominated the event. CLICK HERE FOR A REVIEW OF HOW “THE BEAST” CAME TO BE. Brent and I raced in what was one of the closest races ever done in that event. We raced three times in the finals which was a climatic centerpiece that had a good part of Hamilton on the edge of their seats. I won the first race convincingly. During the second race it was so close that nobody could agree whether or not Brent won or I did. So we raced a third time. Many believe that the results were much closer the third time than the second—but by rule, they couldn’t declare a tie, so somebody had to make a decision. After 15 minutes of grueling review, Brent was declared the winner to the roar of a cheering crowd. The Dixons were well-known around Hamilton and very politically powerful—so people knew their name. I was an unknown living on a country road in obscurity.
I wasn’t unhappy with the results. I was proud of my efforts. Brent had a slick car that many people believe was built by his father’s people. Brent had a car that was built to win. My car was one that my dad and I built-in our basement and back yard over many months. A lot of sweat and love went into my car and it showed. Brent’s looked professional, mine looked like it was made by an 11-year-old—which it was. But even so, I had won 9 out of 11 races including the final—which wasn’t bad. But my dad swore that I had won both photo finishes as he had placed himself on the sight line. He was outraged.
Naturally, I thought that my dad was just cheering for his son the way all proud parents do who believes that their children are the best at everything. Brent’s dad Don was near my father with his entourage of ass-kissers and of course Don believed that his son had won. The two dads were looking at the situation from opposing positions. I didn’t care. I was happy to have done well, but my dad was furious on the way home. The entire time we loaded my car onto the trailer and drove home he talked about Butler County politics and declared that the race was so close that politically the officials gave the win to Brent because of who his dad was. I wasn’t so sure, but what he was saying made sense.
Afterwards, the media seemed more interested in my story than Brent’s including the Journal News story seen above—because I was the underdog and as the reporter declared, people like the underdog. People liked my car, they like the David and Goliath story, they liked reading about Hoffman versus Dixon—where obviously Dixon was Goliath. As the reporter concluded his interview with me and took his pictures at a spot that is now a sports bar where my home used to be located, he winked at me and said…………”you won kid. I was there………I saw it with my own eyes. But politics is more powerful than heart. You have a lot of heart, just not enough politics.”
I watched that reporter leave and thought hard about what he said, and it likely sent me on a journey that has been over 30 years in the making. I value my heart and the products of my mind over the connections that I could make kissing ass through politics. I have avoided politics my entire life, likely because of my experiences against Brent Dixon at the Hamilton Soap Box Derby in 1979. I’ve watched Brent grow up in the shadows of his father his entire life and I would never trade positions with him. Brent has to look in the mirror every day and know that much of what he has obtained in life he gained through his father—whether it was the decision of a photo finish victory against me, or a cute little job with the Board of Elections and all the perks that came with it. If I live a hundred more years I would never wish to trade places with Brent Dixon.
When I was 11 years old and my soap box derby car was parked next to Brent’s slick black and gray professionally constructed Dixon winning machine I wouldn’t have traded him my car for his—even though they were both equally as fast. The reason is that I built mine with my dad with a lot of hard work and that made my victories that day much more cherished. Brent won in the end, but like many things in his life, he won with the help of politics, which cheapens such victories to the point where they’re worthless.
Now many years later, on the fallout of a Lakota levy election loss where the politically connected won over the rag-tag efforts of those standing against tax increases, I wouldn’t trade places with those people for the same reason that I wouldn’t trade with Brent. Dixon the son won at many things in life because politics helped him get over the top. I have watched this happen to many people, and I have fought against it as I always will. It didn’t surprise me at all to see that Brent had eventually found himself in trouble over such a thing because it wasn’t the first time. What did surprise me is that David and Roger stood up to a respected Republican Commissioner who has his roots going back decades into Butler County politics. The fact that they did speak out against Dixon speaks volumes about a wave of politics that is about to hit Butler County in the years to come—a political system that the levy supporters will not like, and the power brokers like Dixon who have spent a life-time nurturing their name so that they could help their loved ones with looted money and resources gained through government offices.
I have been in many photo finishes, and many of them were lost the same way that my rendezvous with Brent Dixon ended—with politics defeating raw heart. But………..in the end, even after all these years the results of two lives shaped by a Soup Box Derby race proved drastically different because one found their life shaped by who their dad was and the other shaped by the kind of man their dad allowed them to be. That subtle difference leads to winning a war by letting the battles go to the politically connected and otherwise manipulative causing a result that always ends with self-destruction over a span of decades. A war won is more valuable than battles shaped by political influence, not for what the spoils of victory can give to pad a bank account, but for what it brings out truly in a heart and soul. Battles are won by people like the Dixons. Wars are won by those with heart…………..and a mind that still feeds it. In confronting Dixon, Reynolds and Kern showed a lot of heart, and I admire them for it. David Kern specifically has spent a life-like the biblical David, overlooked and quietly residing in the background for the most part. Commissioner Dixon represents all the high-profile prestige of the Biblical Goliath, who expects to use his power and prestige collected over many years to crush his enemies. What happened over the board of elections scandal is that an actual David named Kern cast a single stone against Goliath, and the results were predictably epic. Because the David of Butler County—Kern and Roger Reynolds are out to win a war—as they have for years endured the battles won by Don Dixon. And if Goliath was not guilty to begin with, the single stone would have had no effect.
In the end, heart crushes politics. Sometimes it just takes decades to achieve victory. Most of the time, it takes more than a photo finish, but enough time provided for Goliath to overlook a single stone that could bring him down, and the will to cast it when the rest of the world believes it to be unwise. That is what I learned in my race with Brent Dixon in 1979 and the lives of two people who moved from there into radically different directions.
Here’s more on Don Dixon and a good indication of the deeper politics involved. CLICK HERE.
Rich Hoffman
It’s not like Lakota won by a large margin in the election of 2013. With the narrow margin of just a few hundred votes out of 26,000 cast, the begging needy levy supporters of Lakota earned through government force the legal ability to steal more money from the pockets of property owners. Leading up to the election Lakota had spent over $100,000 to create reports they used for their campaign, Delphi Technique community conversations by Jeffery Stec, and funneled money through PTA groups to fund a fourth levy attempt. They captured the media having virtually everyone in town eating out of their hand. CLICK HERE FOR AN EXAMPLE, AND BE SURE TO WATCH THE VIDEO. Scott Sloan and Bill Cunningham from 700 WLW helped Lakota with a ridiculous argument about property values, which we will deal with in greater detail in the coming days. Rick Jones, the Butler County Sheriff came out in favor of the levy, and all the television news outlets carried the story framed exactly as Lakota framed it, “the school hadn’t passed a levy since 2005.” Reporters didn’t consider if the money was needed at Lakota, they didn’t explore the graphs shown by No Lakota Levy as to why; they simply formed their reports based on the press releases given by Lakota.
Cunningham and Jones are both either married or directly employed by government so their defense of Lakota’s government employees wasn’t unforeseen. But Scott Sloan had shifted his view of support for No Lakota Levy from before in an obvious attempt to give his wife some business as a Realtor. Sloan wouldn’t be the first guy to form his political beliefs around peace in the bedroom, based on the last interview I did with him back in 2012, its obvious something along those lines is going on, even though he would probably never admit it. He called me a sexist several times after our interview and certainly turned on me when he knew damn well that what was going on was a hit piece by Lakota. Sloan played along willingly. I didn’t understand what happened between Scott and me until I spoke to Doc Thompson about the inner politics of Clear Channel, and learned things about Scott personally. I left it alone and we pretty much parted ways after that—which is what Lakota was after anyway. Part of the rush to place this latest levy attempt on the ballot was to have the election during an off-year election, where there were no congressional or presidential races. The ballot was primarily all regional issues, which typically have a low voter turnout. The media ignored the multiple sex scandals at Lakota over the last couple of weeks and the many other negatives which were covered only at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom. Everything was slanted toward Lakota and they still only won the election by a few hundred votes. It was hardly a landslide victory provoking a pompous celebration lap on their behalf. Lakota’s victory was executed with deceit, manipulation, and elements of terrorism performed to use the mob of democracy to steal more money from the entire community. Listen to Scott Sloan the day before the election:
When Sloan asked me nearly two years ago why I was churning up the “angry vote” I couldn’t answer it at the time because I couldn’t give away our strategy. But now it doesn’t matter, the reason was to keep voters focused on the upcoming Lakota strategy to hold an election in an off-season attempt. At the time it was a summer 2012 attempt, but the school wanted to make a deal to let everything cool off so they could rebuild their image, so we let them.
Letting Lakota off the ropes had more value than putting the community through another levy request, so I agreed. I avoided telling stories about specific employees like the high school chemistry teacher who had a student texting his mother at home to help with his in-class assignment because the teacher was too busy playing Minecraft on the school computer. I avoided those kinds of stories so not to further embarrass Lakota as part of our agreement. Once they announced the levy, that deal was off. In 2013 Lakota came out in their new campaign with a strategy of kindness and avoided the mud slinging because they knew their numbers would show up on Election Day with poor voter turn-out from the other side, and they didn’t want the enraged voters into showing up against them. For the No Levy side, voter turn out was always the challenge, and the best way to get it was to get people motivated up off the couch and vote when the only issue in front of them was a school levy and a few trustees. Most people feel that elections do not represent them, so they don’t participate—much to everyone’s peril.
When I first started all this levy business I didn’t hate public education or the system of government schools. I didn’t like it, I didn’t think it was effective, and I wanted to see competitive options, but I didn’t despise the people involved. When I went to school board meetings, I sort of liked the people involved. But the more I learned about the levy passage process, the angrier I became. I’m not an angry person by nature. I like to live well and leave others to live as they see fit. I don’t impose myself on others, and I don’t expect them to impose upon me. But the more I learned about public education the more I learned that the whole system was a terrible scam against innocent people, so it wasn’t hard to get angry. What started as a bit of political theater in the beginning turned out for me to be very real resulting in the present day where the very word public education disgusts me.
After the election I couldn’t help but think of Lakota as a typical relationship that begins between a man and a woman–or a man and a man if you’re an Obama supporter—that starts with nice dinners and genuine joy and ends in a violent divorce where both parties hate each other and can’t wait to be legally separated. Lakota like a typical jealous spouse demands that nobody else be in our children’s life—they have a government guaranteed monopoly of our attention as there isn’t any other choice. Property owners must through government coercion support the public school planted in their community whether they want to or not. They do not have a choice and behave in the same way as the spouse who questions their partners as to everywhere they’ve been and everyone they’ve spoken to. When it becomes obvious that the relationship is corrosive to a healthy dialogue, the guilt driving spouse then tells their partner “we must stay together for our children” using their kids as a bargaining chip to maintain the monopoly status of an unhealthy marriage. Lakota is in an unhealthy marriage with roughly 50% of the community, and they were only able to keep the unity together through manipulation, lies, and open extortion. Like a spouse that knows their partner wants a divorce Lakota was kind during this campaign so to hopefully appease the tempers and keep the discussion of community divorce off the table.
Sheriff Jones, Bill Cunningham, Scott Sloan, Michael Clark, and dozens of other reporters covering the Lakota levy behaved like intrusive family members who were seeking to keep a family marriage together by ignoring the complaints of the abused spouse and taking the side of the school. But the day after the election, all that really occurred was that Lakota managed to entangle more money out of those who want a divorce and kept the tax payers coming back home to maintain the illusion of harmony one more day. Lakota only was able to maintain this illusion of a marriage by playing every trick of coercion known, taking away all options and hoping that enough people voted in favor of keeping a marriage together. What they did was the same as tying up a spouse bound and gagged to a dinner table against their will then sitting across from them declaring how much they are loved. The tied up spouse having no other option must sit there and listen, and they are obligated by law to continue paying Lakota more money, even though all they want is to be free of the coercion, the dysfunction, and the imposition of a government school.
I love every day of my life. I care deeply about a number of people in my life—so many in fact that I often do not have time for everyone. But I hate Lakota, and I want a divorce from them forever. I can’t stand them. I think they are an unhealthy entity that I want no relationship with, and I can’t stand that I am forced to pay them my hard earned money for causes I do not support. I dread my interaction with them the way one might dread having to speak to a person they know they want to end a relationship with. Once it’s over in their mind—it’s over, and for me, and Lakota……..it’s over. I am not proud that I attended there as a kid. I am not proud that my children attended there. I don’t give a damn about their stupid sports scores, their band awards, or their buildings. I hate virtually everything about them the way I’d hate an attractive spouse who looks good from a distance until they open their mouth, because now I have gotten to know them—and have determined that I want them out of my life.
The day after the election they are patting themselves on the back and breathing a sigh of relief because they have the No Voters chained up in their bedroom and the door and windows are locked up tight. They own us through the chains of marriage arranged through politics as match makers of spouses who have no business being in the same room, let alone in a relationship. The tears the levy supporters shed at BW3’s once the votes were counted are equivalent to the spouse in denial of the condition of their marriage knows that they have their marriage partner safely in chains once again, but yet they also fear what might happen if they forget to lock the door, or leave the chains too loose.
Immediately I could feel the shackles of Lakota reaching into my pocket to steal away roughly $40 dollars a month the way a pick pocket might rob an innocent on a lonely sidewalk. Being in a forced marriage the looter Lakota can steal my money while I am chained to them, because government has placed us together. The relationship is good for Lakota, because they need me. The relationship is bad for me, because Lakota sucks as a spouse. They don’t have my values, they don’t have my passion, and they don’t have my love of life. Lakota can steal my money because labor unions in bed with politicians gave the school that right against my will. But Lakota can’t make me love them no matter how many chains and games they wish to play. The right to hate them is the one freedom I truly have, and I will feel that way till the marriage is ended and I am successfully divorced from them forever.
If I am forced into a relationship with Lakota, make note that I will be a royal pain in the ass. When they give themselves raises next year, I will be there two and three years down the road to show on graphs what Lakota has done. I will be there to point out every lie told even ten years from now, and I will name the names of the advocates, and I will make their life a royal hell. I will not move from the community under any circumstances and I have a long memory, and I have a worse temper than any collection of levy advocates, and I will be there with each mistake, lie, and deception they make to chronicle my case for divorce, and eventual freedom from Lakota and the money they seek to steal from me and many others for their own cause. Because the only real freedom we have in these arrangements is the right to hate the advocates, and to that extent, I reserve that right with glorious indignation, and the inner joy of a rebellion that only an abused spouse understands. What Lakota won in the election of 2013 was not for children, or the community—but for their own façade of maintaining a forced marriage with those who despise them, and wanted freedom from the theft of money that can only be obtained in a legal union. And they did it with only 214 votes–less than 1% of the vote. For Lakota, they are breathing a sigh of relief because it gives them the illusion of a sustained marriage. But they better beware of the unlocked doors, and loose chains, because the minute they let their guard down, they will find themselves single and very lonely.
Rich Hoffman
Over the weekend Matt Clark asked me to do a radio segment based my blog series dedicated to The Naked Communist. CLICK HERE TO READ THE LATEST. Of course I agreed even though I was traveling, specifically in the heart of labor union country–Wisconsin. It was the perfect platform personally for me to do a radio interview as I had been thinking voraciously what the cost of communism brought to America through the labor union movement had been. The evidence was very easy to see in the blue-collar towns of Wisconsin. While traveling, a woman sat next to me and told me her life story even though it was quite clear to her that I was trying to read. She complained about air travel and how cramped the seats were, even as her girth was spilling over into my side. She complained that the airline companies just wanted to make “profits” by cramming as many people into the plane as they could—that it would make more sense to have more flights per day so people didn’t have to be so cramped. She then proceeded to declare that automotive travel wasn’t any better. Modern cars broke down too often and the car companies were greedy and only wanted “profits” and they were evil. I asked her what companies were supposed to stand for if not for profit, and she said that they should stand behind the people who work for them. I asked her where she was from, and she stated proudly with a bold Wisconsin accent…………..Madison—the birthplace of the labor movement and progressive party in America. I said, ah-ha, I understand now. She smiled a bit wondering what my reference indicated. I then asked her how she felt about communism—and she went on a half hour tirade about how her father fought against it in Vietnam, and she hung an American flag from her porch every day and was happy to see the communists fail in Russia. I listened with sadness as she had no idea that the roots of her thinking were fashioned from communism, and that she was a functioning collectivist shaped by progressive Wisconsin politics over the last century. It was in this context that I gave a very animated interview from my hotel room to Matt Clark during his Saturday radio show on WAAM in Ann Arbor. Watch and listen:
Wisconsin politics during the 20th Century was shaped by Robert Marion “Fighting Bob”[1] La Follette, Sr. (June 14, 1855 – June 18, 1925) He was an American Republican (and later a Progressive) politician. He served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, was the Governor of Wisconsin, and was also a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin (1906 to 1925). He ran for President of the United States as the nominee of his own Progressive Party in1924, carrying Wisconsin and 17% of the national popular vote.
His wife Belle Case La Follette and sons Robert M. La Follette, Jr. and Philip La Follette led his political faction in Wisconsin into the 1940s. La Follette has been called “arguably the most important and recognized leader of the opposition to the growing dominance of corporations over the Government”[2] and is one of the key figures pointed to in Wisconsin‘s long history of political liberalism.
He is best remembered as a proponent of progressivism and a vocal opponent of railroad trusts, bossism, World War I, and the League of Nations. In 1957, a Senate Committee selected La Follette as one of the five greatest U.S. Senators, along with Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, and Robert Taft. A 1982 survey asking historians to rank the “ten greatest Senators in the nation’s history” based on “accomplishments in office” and “long-range impact on American history,” placed La Follette first, tied with Henry Clay.[3]Robert La Follette is one of five outstanding senators memorialized by portraits in the Senate reception room in US Capitol. One of America’s top schools for public affairs, located at the University of Wisconsin-Madison bears his name.
From 1901 until 1906, La Follette served as Governor of Wisconsin. During his first term, he proposed to set up a railroad commission, imposed an ad valorem tax on the railroad companies, and established a direct primary system. The Stalwarts blocked his agenda, and he refused to compromise with them.
During the 1904 elections, the Stalwarts organized to oppose La Follette’s nomination and moved to block any reform legislation. La Follette began working to unite insurgent Democrats to form a broad coalition. He did manage to secure the passage of the primary bill and some revision to the railroad tax structure.[2]
When the legislative session concluded, La Follette traveled throughout Wisconsin reading the “roll call”; that is, he read the votes of Stalwart Republicans to the people in an effort to elect Progressives. During this campaign, La Follette gained national attention when muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens began to cover his campaign.
With the press coverage and his successful re-election, La Follette rose to become a national figure. His message against “vast corporate combinations”[2] attracted more journalists and more progressives.
As governor, La Follette championed numerous progressive reforms, including the first workers’ compensation system, railroad rate reform, direct legislation, municipal home rule, open government, the minimum wage, non-partisan elections, the open primary system, direct election of U.S. Senators, women’s suffrage, and progressive taxation. He created an atmosphere of close cooperation between the state government and the University of Wisconsin in the development of progressive policy, which became known as the Wisconsin Idea. The goals of his policy included the recall, referendum, direct primary, and initiative. All of these were aimed at giving citizens a more direct role in government. The Wisconsin Idea promoted the idea of grounding legislation on thorough research and expert involvement. To implement this program, La Follette began working with University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty. This made Wisconsin a “laboratory for democracy” and “the most important state for the development of progressive legislation”.[2] As governor, La Follette signed legislation that created the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Library (now Bureau) to ensure that a research agency would be available for the development of legislation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._La_Follette,_Sr.
In 1911, La Follette set up a campaign to mobilize the progressive elements in the Republican Party behind his presidential bid. He made a disastrous speech in February 1912 before a gathering of leading magazine editors that caused many to doubt his stability.[12] Most of his supporters deserted him for Theodore Roosevelt[citation needed].
Embittered, La Follette opposed both Roosevelt and William Howard Taft in the 1912 election. When his former ally, Governor Francis E. McGovern, supported Roosevelt, La Follette broke with him, allowing the conservative Republicans under Emanuel Philipp to take control of Wisconsin in the decisive 1914 election. La Follette’s forces were out of power in the state from 1912 to 1920.[13]
In 1924, the Federated Farmer-Labor Party (FF-LP) sought to nominate La Follette as its candidate. The FF-LP sought to unite all progressive parties into a single national Labor Party.
However, after a bitter convention in 1923, the Communist-controlled Workers Party gained control of the national organization’s structure. Just prior to its 1924 convention in St. Paul, La Follette denounced the Communists and refused to be considered for the FF-LP endorsement. With La Follette’s snub, the FF-LP disintegrated, leaving only the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party.
Instead, La Follette formed an independent Progressive Party and accepted its nomination in Cleveland with Democratic Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana as his running mate. The American Federation of Labor, the Socialist Party of America, the Conference for Progressive Political Action and most of the former supporters of the FF-LP along with various former “Bull Moose” Progressives and Midwestern Progressive movement activists then joined La Follette and supported the Progressive Party. Many who today call themselves “progressives” sincerely trace their political roots to the Progressive Parties of Teddy Roosevelt, Henry Wallace or Robert La Follette, Sr. But many others on the left nowadays call themselves “progressives” as a deceptive euphemism for more precise, less popular words that describe their real political objectives and ideology – words such as “socialist,” “Marxist,” or “Communist.” Even through La Follette denounced the communists during the 1924 convention it was only politically that he separated from them, not ideologically. He did however attract the softer version of communism to his party affiliation in the American socialists.
Wisconsin as I traveled around it emitted the classic hope of the early 20th Century progressives—vast spans of middle-class residences, labor unions, and a generally anti-corporation mentality. Socialism was everywhere, even in the Green Bay Packer paraphernalia at the airport the only NFL team that is owned by “the people,” not a corporate owner. All money earned goes back into the club.
The Packers are deeply rooted in the Wisconsin city where they were founded in 1919. They were named after a local meat processing plant, the Indian Packing Company, which paid for the first uniforms. Starting in the 1920s, the Green Bay Football Corp. made a series of public stock offerings. In 1950, 1,900 local residents each put up $25 a share to buy the team.
From the Packers’ web site:
“Green Bay Packers, Inc., has been a publicly owned, non-profit corporation since Aug. 18, 1923, when original articles of incorporation were filed with Wisconsin’s secretary of state.
A total of 4,750,937 shares are owned by 112,120 stockholders — none of whom receives any dividend on the initial investment.
The corporation is governed by a board of directors and a seven-member executive committee.
One of the more remarkable business stories in American history, the team is kept viable by its shareholders — its unselfish fans. Even more incredible, the Packers have survived during the current era, permeated by free agency and the NFL salary cap. And, thanks in large part to Brown County’s passage of the 2000 Lambeau Field referendum, the club will remain solvent and highly competitive well into the future due to its redeveloped stadium.
Fans have come to the team’s financial rescue on several occasions, including four previous stock sales: 1923, 1935, 1950 and 1997.
To protect against someone taking control of the team, the articles of incorporation prohibit any person from owning more than 200,000 shares.”
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_owns_the_Green_Bay_Packer_team
Silently, many who profess to see communism work in America look at teams like the Green Bay Packers and the progressivism of Wisconsin as hope that socialism and communism will still work. Not long after my radio interview with Matt, which became quite animated at times, I had the profound desire to return to Florida and bask in the capitalism of the Disney World complex. Wisconsin and the people there were too bleak and small-minded for me. They were friendly, but dramatically philosophically limited which was evident in gross abundance by the small town cafes and general business climate. If not for their dependence on the federal government, their social experiments into communism through the mask of progressivism would have failed long ago. Suddenly I am a massive Scott Walker fan as it gives me hope that Wisconsin residents are just now pushing away their history of communist acceptance through Robert La Follette, Sr’s progressive party. As for the woman on the plane with me, she was the kind of person that Matt and I spoke about……..her foundation beliefs were rooted in communism, only she didn’t know it. She believed falsely, just like the union brothers of Wisconsin, home of the Harley Davidson motorcycle and the dream quest of traveling to Sturgis every August on a freedom driven pilgrimage. The labor unions and collective ownership the unions, and Harley riders generally subscribe to are experiments in communism advocated by 20th Century politics implemented before the Cold War with the Soviet Union.
There was almost nothing I liked about Wisconsin. I was never so happy to board an airplane as I was upon leaving. When the wheels left the runway, and the plane moved into the sky, I could feel the oppressive pull of socialism drifting away beneath my feet. As I looked through the window down at the rows and rows of middle-class homes stacked in rows of uniformity I could have been looking down upon a small European town also infected with socialism—soft core communism. The persistence of that socialism doesn’t dissipate until just south of Chicago where Indiana is now a right-to-work state and Ohio at least outside of Cleveland still embraces capitalism. I didn’t argue with the woman, I just listened to her while trying to read my book. She was a mixed up concoction of many political ideologies given to her by years of public education, left-winged controlled media empires, and unionized neighbors who falsely believe they are American patriots just because they stick a flag on the back of their Harley Davidson motorcycle—built in Wisconsin by union workers supporting their publicly owned football team, the Green Bay Packers. Wisconsin is the result of what The Naked Communist warned about, the continued experiment into socialism at the expense of capitalism and a state I am eager to see turn away eventually from the communism of the labor movement and an embrace into the kind of capitalism that drives the rest of America. It is time to close the book on the dark days of communism in America so to save the mind of the poor people of Wisconsin from a doomed philosophy that has left them ignorantly blissful from their lowered expectations and contorted patriotism.
Rich Hoffman
Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE. CLICK HERE!
Over this past week, there were a couple of public debates allowing the current West Chester trustees Catherine Stoker and Lee Wong to defend their records against the challengers Mark Welch and Matt King. I support Mark and Matt and you dear reader will too after watching the video shown below. Clearly Mark and Matt are much more competent as potential trustees. Just listen to them. There really isn’t any question.
Listening and watching Wong and Stoker defending their records, Stoker came across as a career, 20 year politician. Her comments were political, polished, and non-committal, the way long time politicians always are. Wong on the other hand declared that the reason he should be trustee again was because “people like bike paths, they like to talk to one another, and he rides his bicycle all over West Chester.” Serious! He must have said it 7 times during the debate. The most telling aspects of the debate are the things that Stoker and Wong took credit for and the things they said were out of their control. A couple of those things were: “zoning regulations were voted on by citizens.” We are not supposed to blame the trustees who had final approval of these regulations, because it was the will of the people. “The land use plan was put together by a citizens committee.” In other words, voters cannot blame trustees who had final approval of the plan, because a citizen committee of ass kissing Agenda 21 loving statists created it under their subtle nudges. “Zoning review committee is manned by citizens.”—whom Trustees appointed and Trustees will have final approval of their work. “The citizens voted for the aggregation program(s)”—(so trustees who voted for approval are off the hook). See how it works? Listen carefully to the way the current trustees try to shrug off any responsibility for anything that might be unpleasant.
Stoker blamed the withholding of legal expenses from inclusion in the trustee agenda on staff not being able to pay a vendor, a vendor billing at the current rate of $290 per hour that could not be contacted for longer terms, a vendor whose billings were included in over half a million dollars of legal expenses to the township during 2012? In defending the Wong and Stoker exclusion of Fiscal Officer from executive sessions, Stoker cast doubt on the integrity of the Fiscal Officer without cause. But yet, as trustees, Wong and Stoker claim all the credit for the successful operations of the township and the growth of commerce and industry. No credit to the developers, investors, merchants, donors, etc.—the visionaries who really made it work—or the staff and employees of the township who helped enable it. Bet you didn’t know that video was so exciting did you? Watch it again with “educated eyes.”
If this debate doesn’t clear things up about who the people are behind the campaign signs, then it needs to be watched until it does—because the differences are incredibly obvious. The decision is basically does West Chester want a couple of long-term career politicians who have little idea how to run the community, or do they want a couple of highly competent businessmen who have more than two cents to apply to the various problems of community management.
For me it is easy to decide. I wouldn’t vote for Wong because he’s certainly not competent. He is a nice enough guy, but there is more to running a community’s finances than riding a bicycle around West Chester. And with Stoker, she is too politically savy to actually do the will of the people. She is a typical politician, and that alone makes her unqualified. The only real answer is Welch and King. Those two guys represent opportunity. The other two represent stagnation, complacency, and a slide backwards toward the business cycle of so many Cincinnati communities that have had their day in the sun, then fallen to decline due to corrosive politicians.
Rich Hoffman
Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE. CLICK HERE!
If you are a Frito eating, couch sitting, pill popping insecure parent who is seeking a free education for your children off the backs of residents in the Lakota school district I want to help you with an announcement. The school principals working with the various PTO groups at Lakota are frustrated that there aren’t more social degenerates to join their ranks in this election of 2013. They are concerned that there doesn’t seem to be the same “passion” for helping to pass a devastating tax increase this time around. At least that is the word from within their pro levy ranks. Outwardly, it is business as usual—apply socialist leaning tax increases to brainwash children into mass collectivism—and lie, cheat and steal to accomplish the task.
So just to make this election a little more balanced, I want to help those enemies of intelligence by distributing their advertisement for a Pro Levy rally that is being organized by the Endeavor PTO group—the type of people I called “latte sipping prostitutes” during the last election. CLICK HERE TO READ THAT ENQUIRER ARTICLE AND REVIEW MY OPINION OF THESE PEOPLE. They are at it again, but this time fewer people seem interested in helping the school principals dodge Ohio state law working in favor of tax increases with brain-dead, neurotic levy supporters as their foot soldiers of social destruction. So for those who are stupid enough to vote for a school levy and secretly seek a baby sitter to watch their children because they are too lazy to care for them personally, below is an event you will want to attend, to be around like-minded pro tax supporters. As for the rest, here is a glimpse into the mind of social menaces disguised as smiling community patriots. In reality most of them are simply latte sipping prostitutes with asses………………..well you know the rest.
Hello Endeavor Staff and PTO!
Thank you for sharing your personal emails with me so I can efficiently communicate levy campaign information. (A couple of the staff emails I received are not valid, so please communicate this information with your colleagues. Jen and Kym, please forward to everyone you can!) We have two important events coming up as we head into the home stretch of the campaign and we need our Endeavor community to help us make them successful!
October 26th Caravan and Rally!
Join us at Endeavor at 9:00 am for this fun event to generate excitement and encourage early voting!
We will dress up our cars and caravan through the community on our way to Plains where we will meet up with the rest of LAKOTA at 10:00 am for a brief rally, celebration and prizes. We will have decorating supplies on hand along with donuts and coffee to fuel our spirits. (Feel free to bring your own decorations as well! You can print “For Lakota” logos at forlakota.com.)
Following the program, join the group as we head to the Board of Elections to cast our ballots and be counted!
Bring your friends, bring your neighbors and LET’S GET OUT THE VOTE!!!!
Please let me know if you are able to join us so I know how many supplies to purchase. Let’s make Endeavor’s caravan the most impressive!!!
October 30th Canvassing!
I PROMISE it won’t be as bad as it sounds! Endeavor already filled a phone banking session back in September and made HUNDREDS of calls in less than 2 hours – and everyone came out alive! 🙂 Now it’s time to fill a canvassing session to get people out to VOTE! As the people who participated in the phone banking can tell you, we are not trying to convince “no” voters to change their minds. We are simply getting information out and reminding people of the importance of actually casting their ballots. The levy committee will provide training, including a script and materials. We will travel in teams of 2 so you don’t have to go alone!
We are sharing a session with Heritage on Wednesday, October 30th. Endeavor is committed to filling 20 spots (10 teams of 2). We will all meet at Heritage at 4:30 pm for training and then head out from there. Missy (Heritage’s principal) and I will provide pizza for our awesome volunteers before we hit the pavement. Please consider volunteering about 3 hours on this evening to help get the “yes” votes to the polls! Research proves that door to door communication is absolutely critical to winning any campaign.
Please let me know if you are able to support this effort so I can let the committee know how many routes to prepare. Thanks!
If you cannot participate on the 30th, but would like to help another day, please follow the link below to Sign-Up Genius.
http://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0C4CACAD2CA2FB6-canvassing1
Thanks so much! Please let me know if you have any questions!
Joanna
As it can be seen, the principals of several Lakota schools are behind this effort and there are scripts, phone banks and all out attempts to turn NO voters into Yes voters. They are supposedly doing this on their own time, to avoid violating Ohio law which states that school employees cannot support levy activity. It doesn’t matter to anybody that many of these plans, emails and phone calls do occur during work hours. But when it comes to what a lot of these school principals get paid at Lakota, a few weekends of time volunteered is worth it to them. Look at what they get paid, seen on the No Lakota Levy website.
2012 Salary Analysis: Lakota School District
Click here to see for yourself!
http://www.nolakotalevy.com/salaries.html
It becomes clear quickly what’s in it for the school administrators at Lakota. It’s all about money, and they need enough mindless supporters to jump on board and support their financial scam. Unfortunately, because of the efforts over the years of educating the public, more people than ever know what is behind these types of games. It gives me great pride to see that No Lakota Levy has evolved into such a respectable organization that provides so much wonderful content. It has come a long way from a website that my daughter and I put together on a shoe string budget. Some of the smartest minds of the Lakota business community are behind the website, and it shows. I am very proud and happy to share a community with those people as they have taken No Lakota Levy to new levels of competency.
Without groups like No Lakota Levy, there is no defense against the kind of school sponsored activities described in the literature above from the PTO group. No Lakota Levy today is a kinder, gentler version of a tax fighting organization than when I was with them, but that doesn’t reduce their effectiveness. I feel more passionately over the wrong doings that occur within the education industry than most people do, so my attitude over public education has reflected that social position. I obviously do not like supporters and employees of public education for philosophical reasons that I see detrimental to the human race—and capitalism. The current members of No Lakota Levy are good community minded people who simply wish the facts of the education nightmare currently going on in the Lakota school district be known, and on their new website, they let the facts tell the whole story without a lot of emotion to drive the temperament—which is very good.
The reason for this upcoming Lakota levy, for the proposed impact on businesses, residents barely scraping by, and all the tax payers about to be rampaged with 20% increases in their health care costs due to Obamacare, is to support the salary structure shown above, from the No Lakota Levy website. The reason that the principals of the schools mentioned are hard at work building a network of levy supporting zombies to do their dirty ground work of tax increase promotion is to protect their wage structure with perceived value hidden behind layers of emotion. They are protecting their jobs which pay outrageously high benefits for being simply glorified baby sitters, and they need the levy to continue their corrosive pillaging of the Lakota community.
The reason the numbers of people volunteering for these PTO rally events is declining is because more people than ever know why Lakota is financially strapped. It’s not for lack of money, in the same way that Washington politicians just approved a debt ceiling increase over $17 trillion while tax payers are paying more money to the government than at any point in American history, the government is still spending more money than they are taking in—Lakota plans to spend more money than they take in because of poor management choices—which become glaringly clear when the salary structure is shown.
I’m normally not a person who calls other people names. I actually do listen to people who think differently than I do. However, I have learned with these levy supporters that they are fanatically ignorant to the facts of reality and they truly wish to hurt other people with their misguided world view—and neurotic sentiments. I find them despicable, detrimental to the furtherance of human evolution, and woefully destructive as thinking sentient beings. I have grown to despise them for their desire to harm entire communities with high taxes based on no fact driven analysis which stays with every single property owner of Liberty and West Chester Townships for most of their lives. The short-sightedness of the levy supporter angers me greatly.
But even I have a little compassion for them when they try to host a rally, and nobody wants to show up because everyone thinks they are idiots. They’ll have the usual levy fanatics—the kind of people who still think they are high school cheerleaders and feel so guilty over what crappy parents they are, that they think by passing a levy with all their volunteerism they can show their kids how much they care. But a vast majority of the people will sit on the sidelines and resent the bastions of greed which the pro levy supporters at Lakota represent because they understand the end game. The sum of the entire ordeal is in the extraordinary wages the school employees make, and their willingness to use children as emotional hostages in order to secure even more money for themselves at the expense of everyone. For that reason I think these levy supporters are the most disgusting people I have ever met, and deserve to feel the pain of reality with a NO vote on November 5th.
Rich Hoffman
Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE. CLICK HERE!
Leadership contrary to 4000 years of military action is not defined by how dependent a force of any kind is upon a solitary commander, but how well that force functions without direct input. Many years ago a rival attempted to place doubt about my beliefs on leadership with the simple question—“how do you know you are a great leader?” My response was, “if an organization can function without my input, then I know I’ve been a good leader.” This of course set off the rival into a downward spiral of anger that precipitated his immediate demise—and rivalry with me. Little did he know that my thoughts on leadership were shaped by many years of studying Bruce Lee’s martial art concept Jeet Kun Do where the primary function of adaptability is to behave in martial combat like water—taking the shape of whatever the battlefield conditions present, and using that form to defeat the enemy maintaining continuous evolutions driven by circumstance.
With all that said, I am very proud of No Lakota Levy. They have a wonderful presence in 2013 and as all the tax levy supporters around Lakota have come to see, especially once they read Today’s Pulse this week and see all the wonderful graphs that are coming out—the same ones seen here—they are a stronger group now than they have ever been. Without question this will leave the pro levy factions of Lakota schools mystified, as they thought they had the strategy all figured out. But where they failed is that they identified what they thought was the battlefield generals and attempted to remove them with traditional politics—but traditional politics were not the strategy being implemented—and their tactics have solidified the voting base against them, not weakened it.
This begs the question that I’m sure Lakota is asking after seeing the signs beginning to roll out, the advertising presence in the newspapers, and the endless supply of commentators who are available to answer questions to the media—and the new website that has just been professionally updated for this new campaign. Who is No Lakota Levy?
No Lakota Levy is not one person that will show up on a donor list in the newspaper allowing political opponents to target them with extortion. Most of the No Lakota Levy people are under the radar and wish to stay that way because they have to rub shoulders publically with many of the levy supporters—so they wish to keep their involvement quiet. They support the foundation of No Lakota Levy in other ways that are not traditional, to save themselves of the grief that levy supporters aim to inflict against them for not voting for higher taxes.
The design of No Lakota Levy was built on the strategy of Jeet Kune Do. I don’t mind revealing this because I hope that both sides of political engagement will learn something from it. For the school levy fighters out there who have allowed themselves to be picked to pieces by the statist controls of the labor movement, I hope that Jeet Kune Do will allow them to learn how to defeat their enemies. Because if they do, they will save me a lot of time, and effort. The number one failure that levy fighters fall victim to is that they allow the levy fight to become all about them—as they fall in love with the attention they get when being on the front line. If they learn the ways of Jeet Kune Do, they will learn how to become like water, and defeat their enemies without actually fighting. Bruce Lee built his philosophy based on Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and this is the pinnacle concept explored in that marvelous book on strategy. For my enemies, I don’t mind letting them know something of my strategy because if they study Jeet Kune Do, they have a chance at becoming better people, and then—and only then—they may cease being my enemies.
Jeet Kune Do (also “Jeet Kun Do“, or simply “JKD“) is an eclectic/hybrid style of no style and philosophy of life founded by martial artist Bruce Lee[2] with direct, non-classical, and straightforward movements. Due to the way his style works, Jeet Kune Do practitioners believe in minimal movement with maximum effect and extreme speed. The system works on the use of different ‘tools’ for different situations. These situations are broken down into ranges (kicking, punching, trapping and grappling), with techniques flowing smoothly between them. It is referred to as a “style without style” or “the art of fighting without fighting” as said by Lee himself. Unlike more traditional martial arts, Jeet Kune Do is not fixed or patterned, and is a philosophy with guiding thoughts. It was named for the concept of interception, or attacking your opponent while he is about to attack. However, the name Jeet Kune Do was often said by Lee to be just a name. He himself often referred to it as “The art of expressing the human body” in his writings and in interviews. Through his studies Lee came to believe that styles had become too rigid, and unrealistic. He called martial art competitions of the day “Dry land swimming”. He believed that combat was spontaneous, and that a martial artist cannot predict it, only react to it, and that a good martial artist should “Be like water” and move fluidly without hesitation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeet_Kune_Do
I learned about Jeet Kune Do though my studies of mythology and philosophy of the East. Although I do not agree with the collective tendencies of the East, I do admire their work ethic, and ability to deal with catastrophe. Shinto Buddhism is particularly effective as a religious and personal philosophy for overcoming personal travesties. Out of all modern martial artists, Bruce Lee was one of the most spectacular. I studied him in developing my own techniques to be used with the use of the bullwhip.
Martial art weapons such as nunchukas, knives and swords are traditional with Eastern study, but for my interest firmly placed in the West, it is the bullwhip, which is far superior to all Eastern weapons that placed me at the door of Jeet Kune Do. As all martial art masters understand, it is best to win fights before the other side even knows there is a conflict—and the mastery of such methods requires an ability to understand how to project targets before anybody else is aware of them. The key to Jeet Kune Do is winning the fight before the other side knows that there was an attack. Practicing with bullwhips has trained my mind to see targets and project their trajectories physically, and metaphorically.
Unlike the Saul Alinsky methods used by the levy radicals of big government which uses mobster tactics of mass, and fear to invoke change, Jeet Kune Do is a method of martial art that leaves Saul Alingsky’s radicalism defenseless. With No Lakota Levy it is not Rich Hoffman that carries the movement; it is not Mark Sennet, or a group of business developers who don’t want to pay higher taxes. No Lakota Levy strategically has been set up on the premise of Jeet Kune Do as opposed to Saul Alinsky, which guides the Pro Levy Movement. No Lakota Levy still exists even after pro levy supporters attempted to use traditional methods to destroy the leadership base. No Lakota Levy still exists even after a two-year cease-fire where pro levy supporters hoped that time would curb tensions and nurse the community back to sleep. No Lakota Levy is the actual spirit of the Lakota community that remembers the area when it was founded on post Revolutionary War sentiment, and was settled by rugged individualist, farmers, and hell-raisers who do not care for the recent progressive oriented New Englanders who migrated here to work at large businesses sent by transfers from the coasts. No Lakota Levy is as old and mature as the ghosts of ScreamingBridge, reminding the entire community of the principles that founded the area and it will rise up in any form to defend itself from statist scum bags and communist trained minds shaped by Cold War politics.
I am proud to see No Lakota Levy rise formless and deeply supported with a structure that resembles Jeet Kune Do’s martial style. It is like water that fills whatever glass that is there to hold it. It does not need top down leadership because it is the actual spirit of Liberty Township and West Chester which drives it—and it will be around long after Lakota, county commissioners, trustees, presidents, or congressmen have come and gone many times over. No Lakota Levy will still exist in a formless void to attack ghostlike any threat to the freedom of the community which decides to present itself. The people who support No Lakota Levy know and understand that. CLICK HERE FOR AN EXAMPLE.
Victory is won before the fight ever happens most of the time. And this victory is already won. All people need to do now is show up and fight by casting their ballot on Election Day and the rest will take care of itself. Formlessness is the key to victory, and the way to destroy the methods of Saul Alinsky and his levy whores of statism. No Lakota Levy will continue to be a force as a rotation of many different names will circulate through it to keep it fluid and effective depending on the strategic needs of the martial action. Without getting too formal on my current and future plans it should be noted that The Blaze as a news source has nearly 19 million unique visitors and is utilizing a strategy very similar to Jeet Kune Do. Glenn Beck has been the power behind that growth, yet over time many more voices have stepped in to carry The Blaze to levels of social and political influence that will pave the way for all news in the world of tomorrow. The reason that is significant is because I’m friends with one of those voices, and we have plans that involve a great deal of Jeet Kune Do. Nobody will be able to stop it because it will hit with the force of a tsunami that starts deep in the ocean and isn’t detected until it hits a land mass. Meanwhile, No Lakota Levy will still be there to protect the Lakota residents from the ominous tentacles of government employees who wish to crush property ownership and destroy the minds of all its children. To know that, it is needed to understand Jeet Kune Do and the power of being “fluid” like water. And I do not concern myself with worry revealing to my enemies my strategy………….because they have already lost…………so it’s already too late. The metaphorical tsunami is coming…………and they won’t vote in favor of school levies.
Rich Hoffman
Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE. CLICK HERE!
The Overmanwarrior 