Tag: quantum mechanics

All Health Care is a Scam: The Future Requires Courage and Offers Adventure

I can’t help but think of Atlas Shrugged, the great Ayn Rand novel, when I think of health care issues. Listen to Doc Thompson talk to Bob Hackett on 700 WLW about prescription drug addiction, Medicare fraud and various health care related topics.

In Atlas Shrugged Hank Rearden invents a new metal called Rearden Metal which is stronger, lighter and can be produced in larger quantities much cheaper than traditional steel. It’s so good that the government offers to buy him out to prevent the metal from hitting the market. Their reason is that the metal is too good, and will cost many steel workers their jobs because those companies producing traditional steel will not be able to compete. Sounds like farm subsidies to me, and countless other debacles the government has stuck its nose in to prevent pure completion which embraces technological advancement. Ayn Rand’s book is fiction but written over 50 years ago, it is all coming true almost exactly as she warned us. Case in point, look what the government did with General Motors.

Speaking of a car company like GM, a similar story could be told about Preston Tucker who invented the Tucker Car in the late 40’s. The government sent Senator Ferguson of Michigan, representing the big car companies of Detroit to go after Tucker with legalities, all of which were explored in Ayn’s book, but this wasn’t any fiction. Tucker nearly found himself in jail, and he lost his car company because his car was “too good.” The big three couldn’t keep up with Preston. So the government cut the knees out from under the innovator to protect the status quo. The result of this intervention was predicted by Ayn Rand and can be seen clearly now. The Motor City’s engine is dying. Detroit’s population shrank by more than 25% in the last decade, according to Census statistics reported in the New York Times. The city’s population fell to 713,777 in 2010, a drop of almost 240,000 residents. That’s 100,000 more than Katrina-ravaged New Orleans lost.

See the rest of the Detroit article here:

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/increbile-shrinking-city-detroit-becoming-ghost-town-20110323-095202-383.html

The government should have left Tucker alone and forced the car manufactures of Detroit to compete. But government did what it always does, it corrupted innovation and growth with an attempt to control the manufacturing process. And 60 years later, look at Detroit. But the jobs the senator and his friends were protecting lasted so those people could retire and go fishing for a couple of years, and that’s all that mattered to those people during that time. They didn’t care what would happen to Detroit a half a century later. They only thought of themselves.

Well, the same thing goes on in every industry, most notably the health care industry.

Health care now has its own version of Rearden Metal. It’s called regenerative tissue construction, and DNA engineering. See my article with videos about regenerative medicine here: Well worth your time in investigation.

We have arrived at a time and place where the human being can change what getting older means. We don’t have to take pharmaceutical medicine any longer, or at least we shouldn’t have to. Science has arrived to make such things seem barbaric. Growing new body parts and fixing all illnesses, genetic defects, and even cancer rests within genetic engineering, and will very, very soon be as common to our language as television is now, compared to a person that remembers life without television. The human body can repair itself. It built itself within a mother’s womb and can always regenerate all tissue at any time. Those secrets have begun to be unlocked.

Hospitals except for emergency surgery such as gun shots, car crashes and other traumas will become unnecessary. Doctor visits less needed. And prescription drugs including the thousands of drug stores all over the country are going to become useless.

There won’t be a need for health care such as what we have today. I sat in a recent meeting with my health care provider where they explained that the costs had gone up again this year. I wondered how long any of the people working in that industry think this can continue. The health care industry is where education and other public sector positions are at; at the maximum amount that society can or should be willing to pay for their services. The people working in these fields are in for a shock if they are not prepared to adapt to the changes.

Medicare is a corrupt system that costs all of us a treacherous amount of money.

This kind of thing has to stop. Obama Care will only exacerbate this kind of behavior. We need a lot less of this fraud and abuse, not more. And regenerative science will give us the option. It will allow us to extend the retirement age to perhaps 100 to 150 years old. It will solve our Social Security problems, and it will eliminate much of the expensive abuses that go on in the medical industry. But it will require human beings to think differently. And humans aren’t good at that. Look at these idiots in London today, just because the government wants to cut its costs, which is the responsible thing to do. People like this are parasites to innovation and are incredibly short-sighted and define why I can’t stand unions.

The great moral question of tomorrow will be a religious one, how long should we live? Do we have a right to manipulate the aging process? The answer is that of course we do, because we already do with prescription drugs, that we’ve all come to accept it as a reality. The next natural step in that scientific advancement is regenerative medicine. We have to look at it as the only moral solution to our current funding dilemma and it is the most humane way to deal with handicaps and debilitating illnesses.

Government already knows this, but they will not act on it until the money runs out. They will attempt to not become unpopular with voters working in the medical industry, nurses, doctors, insurance companies, health care providers, pharmacists, drug manufactures, etc. There is so much money generated in health care that government will cling to an old archaic system just to preserve jobs.

The medical industry as we know it will change. New jobs will be created, but they will be different roles, and there will be a lot of resistance to those changes. Drug manufactures will spend billions of dollars to prevent people from trusting new forms of medicine, just as steel lobbyists in Atlas Shrugged tried to keep a new metal from hitting the market. They don’t want the cost of competition. They, just like those in the education profession, cling to the old way of doing things, because their pensions and job security are tied to it.

I’ve changed professions 5 times in my adult life, because I’ve always adapted to change. I have never fallen in love with any position I’ve held, but always viewed them as a way to supply income to my family. I have never thought of retiring with a pension from a job. I will work as long as I feel like doing something for income. I have no intention to wither away into a gradual degradation of my body and spend the rest of my day’s fishing. In fact, I think any human being that views their life as an hourglass is a fool that sets unneeded psychological limits upon themselves. We live in an exciting age that should embrace the entrepreneurial spirit of free enterprise, the way America did leading up to the Civil War, and ironically the introduction of Marxism from Europe around the middle of the 19th century. Government needs to get out of the way of the safety business, the regulation business, the job creation business, in fact, it needs to get out of the way completely. Let everything that will fail, fail, and let innovation solve our problems.

I know what it’s like to lose a job. I’ve had periods of wealth, and periods of complete collapses. I can remember vividly days where I rode my bicycle to work 12 miles each way all year-long to save money on gas. And I’ve worked every job and odd job one can dream up from sales to janitorial work and everything in between. I’ve been on the bottom and have been on top. I know what I’m asking when I tell people to be bold, not to worry, and not to cling too tightly to the job you currently hold, because to do so prevents innovation which is necessary to the growth of our nation, and ultimately beneficial to our everyday lives. What is the point of arguing about retirement and pensions if such things aren’t needed in a future where life expectancy will double or triple within the next two decades? And to those of you reading this that think what I’m saying is science fiction, check it out for yourself. There is only one reason for us to continue dying at age 65 to 85, and that is to protect the jobs of those in the health care industry. That’s the only reason, because science is bringing us new options that many people would forgo in favor of security. Think what an absurd notion it is to consider that someone would trade a life of limitless adventure and unknown excitement for one that is certain to end about 10 years after retirement. Yet those in government that seek to suppress these new scientific discoveries will do just that, because they are short-sighted puppets to lobbies sent by pharmaceutical companies to stifle the creativity of our nation, and are themselves cancers to our inventive spirit.

I see those pharmaceutical lobbyists as corrosive and foolish as the typical labor union, which also cleaves like idiots to the mundane existence of life between the break bells and an eye toward retirement where they can finally live their own life, just as it is ending.

The question is do you have what it takes to say yes to life? Because in saying yes, you say you have the courage to reinvent yourself as many times as needed to always look with an eye toward the rising sun and leave the false security to those seeking sunsets.

And in saying yes, the world may crumble, but it will be rebuilt with something much better and stronger than would have otherwise been possible.

Rich Hoffman

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

The Space Race is Just Beginning: As the Space Shuttles End.

Darryl Parks of 700 WLW hit on something sensitive with me on his March 10, 2011 show. He was reminiscing about the recent Space Shuttle landing with just two more shuttle missions to go. Listen to that broadcast here.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I think NASA in Florida and Epcot Center also in Florida are two of my favorite places on Earth. I am very supportive of massive cuts to the federal budget. But of all the programs that I think the government has done right it’s the work done at NASA that is the best. For NASA, I do not regret the tax money spent at all. It gives me a tremendous amount of pride to walk the NASA facility.

The work done at NASA directly propels our science and does create jobs making America much of what it has been regarding a technological powerhouse in the world marketplace. And it is a sign of the times that funding to our space work was one of the first things cut, well before the entitlement culture, which is a terrible shame. It will be a sad day when over 6,000 NASA employees are laid-off in the Florida facility and I will be deeply touched to watch one of the next two space shuttles land at Wright Patterson Air Force Base within the next couple of months.

So the obvious question that Darryl asks, and I’m asking and tens of thousands of aviation enthusiasts are asking is, “What’s next? What’s the plan?”

Well, the government is getting out of the space business and is turning it over to the private sector, which is the same thing many of us that are education reformers want to see happen with education regarding School Choice. I believe that once the government is out of the space business, private industry will suddenly find the chains cut and a technological leap will ensue.

So to give hope to that possibility read the below article from www.Space.com. This is the future, like School Choice is the future of education. While I am sad to see the great organization of NASA coming to an end as we know it, I am excited to see the unlimited possibilities that the private sector can unleash upon our civilization.

It looks to be a very exciting time. Many of the jobs at NASA should find work within the private industry within the next few years. It may not be as secure as the employment they had at NASA, but it will be filled with adventure!

Link for the below article: http://www.space.com/10548-private-spaceflight-ready-2011.html

The private space industry has long been viewed as fledgling. But this once-pejorative term has taken on new meaning this year, as a roster of successes and fast-paced growth throughout 2010 suggests private spaceflight is ready to take off in 2011.

This year saw the very first launch of commercial space company SpaceX’s Falcon 9 booster, and later the first liftoff of the firm’s Dragon spacecraft, which launched atop a Falcon 9 to Earth orbit and then was recovered from the Pacific Ocean. Another company, Virgin Galactic, achieved some major milestones, including the first glide test of its suborbital spaceliner, SpaceShipTwo. [Gallery: First Solo Flight of SpaceShipTwo]
Multiple private-sector space firms are moving into full power, going well beyond powerpoints and hand-waving. Still, the coming year, according to experts and analysts contacted by SPACE.com, is likely to feature battles between “same old space” and the ascension of “new space.”
Commercial landscape
“The space industry has never seen such a rich and varied commercial landscape,” said Carissa Bryce Christensen, managing partner of consulting firm The Tauri Group in Alexandria, Va. “New markets are emerging and established ones are changing.”
Christensen said that entrepreneurs are testing new launch and on-orbit capabilities in the real world, trying to move beyond development and demonstration and into sustainable, profitable operation. Large firms are changing their game plans in response.
“The successes and setbacks of 2011 are going to make it the most interesting year in the history of commercial space,” Christensen predicted.

Commercial space is finally coming into its own, and 2011 represents a year of enormous potential for this developing industry, said David Livingston, founder and host of the radio/Internet talk show “The Space Show.”

“The key will be to systematically move forward, building success upon success,” Livingston said. “I believe the coming year will reward patience, achievable goals, business fundamentals, reasonable business risks and a safety mindset.”
In terms of trends for the space industry, Livingston foresees a move away from big government programs in favor of economically managed and leaner commercial space ventures and projects.

“I believe this trend will continue through 2011 and beyond. That said, I do not think our space program should be one or the other, government or private,” Livingston said.”I believe we can now, more than ever, effectively create public/private partnerships to guide us into space and our future.”
Squarely in the spotlight

The scheduled retirement of NASA’s three-orbiter space shuttle fleet next year will also likely affect the landscape.
“I think the environment for 2011, although much improved from the religious war in 2010, will still see continued debate about the future direction of NASA with shuttle retirement,” said Brett Alexander, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, an industry group that includes commercial spaceflight developers, operators, spaceports, suppliers and service providers.

Alexander said he thinks commercial space will be “squarely in the spotlight” with an expected ramp-up of both suborbital flight testing and multiple orbital launches and re-entries under NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) partnership agreements with U.S. industry.

NASA’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Program is investing financial and technical resources to stimulate efforts within the private sector to develop and demonstrate safe, reliable and cost-effective space transportation capabilities.
“So, with steady progress on the technical front, it should help to solidify NASA’s new direction to develop commercial capabilities,” Alexander said. Battleground “2010 was the year that war broke out between commercial and cost-plus space,” observed Jim Muncy, president and founder of PoliSpace, an independent space policy consultancy based in Alexandria, Va.

“A rational White House, which nobody can accuse of having an ideological bias in favor of commercial business and privatization, decided that the nation couldn’t do much, let alone everything, the ‘traditional’ way,” Muncy said. “To actually use the International Space Station and explore space, the private sector needed to play a greater role in both.”

Muncy said that as nasty and counterintuitive as the long debate of 2010 was, next year — especially in the context of the new Congress, which has vowed to cut government spending — will see “the rubber hit the road” in several fronts of this war.

For 2011, Muncy forecasts:
• At least two companies that operate suborbital reusable launch vehicles will fly science payloads for NASA, and piloted vehicles will have their first flight tests.
• A SpaceX Dragon will carry a mammal to low Earth orbit and possibly to the International Space Station.
• The effort to build a commercial crew spacecraft will move forward, while overall budget pressure on NASA will slow down Florida Senator Bill Nelson’s grand compromise (which, among other things, gave money to commercial companies and NASA to develop and build new rockets).
• The Commercial Space Launch Amendment Act’s “informed consent” regime for Federal Aviation Administration regulation of commercial human spaceflight will clash with some politicians’ desire to kill commercial crew efforts.
• The fight over human-rating of commercial crew will get heated, as will a scrap for control over this rating between NASA’s Johnson Space Center and the agency’s Kennedy Space Center.
“Not a prediction but a hope,” Muncy said, is that “Republicans will remember they like the private sector and stop mindlessly bashing commercial.”
Fiscal meltdown

Rand Simberg, a space policy and technology consultant and a former aerospace engineer, isn’t optimistic that Republicans will get fully behind commercial space.

“Despite the growing confidence in the ability of the commercial sector to do human spaceflight, the incoming Republicans may continue to wage war on the new NASA direction, in opposition to their usual stated principles of free enterprise and competition, for no reason other than it came from a weakened Obama White House,” Simberg said.
Overall, next year “may be the year that business-as-usual collides with budgetary reality,” he predicted.

Simberg said that “even the most pork-devoted politicians will have to recognize that the only way for NASA to have a viable human spaceflight program going forward is to rely on fixed-price launch contracts from new, more cost-effective providers for the now-mundane task of simply getting astronauts to orbit and back.”

On the suborbital front, Simberg said that 2011 may be the year that regular flights of fully reusable vehicles — both horizontal- and vertical-landing — will take off.

That being the case, Simberg added, such suborbital flights “will start to develop the experience in high-tempo launch operations that will inform the eventual development of cost-effective space transport all the way to orbit.”
Availability and schedule

Likely to be a nexus of private sector space action is Spaceport America, now under construction near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.

Virgin Galactic will run commercial operations from Spaceport America, with billionaire founder Sir Richard Branson recently setting his sights beyond suborbital passenger takeoffs.

“Virgin Galactic has shown in the past few years how private sector investment and innovation can lead to a rapid transformation of stagnant technologies,” Branson said. “We are now very close to making the dream of suborbital space a reality for thousands of people at a cost and level of safety unimaginable even in the recent past.

“We know that many of those same people, including myself, would also love to take an orbital space trip in the future,” Branson added, “so we are putting our weight behind new technologies that could deliver that safely whilst driving down the enormous current costs of manned orbital flight by millions of dollars.”

Earlier this month, Branson revealed that Virgin Galactic will be supporting work done by Sierra Nevada Space Systems (SNC) and Orbital Sciences Corporation (OSC) on commercial space vehicles for NASA’s Commercial Crew Development Program.
Both SNC and OSC are pursuing vehicle designs featuring reusable lifting-wing bodies and runway landings, which Virgin Galactic sees as possibly revolutionizing orbital space flight.

Rick Homans, executive director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, said that the pace of activity continues to pick up throughout the industry — and Spaceport America is no exception.

“In 2011, we expect to be in the midst of our pre-operations phase — hiring contractors, developing policies and procedures and conducting all kinds of tests and drills to ensure we are ready to go operational in 2012,” Homans said.
Homans said that from the inquiries they have received, he anticipates Spaceport America’s vertical launch area should be very busy in 2011. Other companies such as UP Aerospace, Armadillo and other operators have already inquired about availability and schedule, he added.

“I see 2011 as the year to get ready for 2012, when I predict we will have our first commercial launches from Spaceport America,” Homans said.
• Gallery: Photos of the Dragon Space Capsule, Dragon Video
• Top 10 Private Spaceships Becoming Reality
• Photos: SpaceShipTwo’s First Solo Test Flight, Video of the Flight
Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is past editor-in-chief of the National Space Society’s Ad Astra and Space World magazines and has written for SPACE.com since 1999.

_____________________________________________________________________

For those of us that want to see this grand adventure take place, we must support the commercialization of space with the same enthusiasm that we are pushing government budget controls and education reform, because the future is in front of us, if only we can muster the courage to embrace it.

Now, listen to Richard Branson talk about Virgin Galactic.

Rich Hoffman

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

The Sheep and the Lion: How much is public education worth?

There is a term called “going down the rabbit hole” that is used to understand abstract and deep concepts. Depending on how far down the rabbit hole you want to go can determine your resolve for understanding a problem. This article is a “big picture” view of going down a rabbit hole more than some people are willing to go in regard to public education and the value it has for society.

The following radio broadcast from Doc Thompson is very good, and comfortably sits on the edge of that rabbit hole, where even this much people are unwilling to go. But I offer it as an alternative to the text that follows. Or I offer it to help the rest of the text go down more easily. But beware, if you want to maintain any illusions about education, then turn away from this page immediately. I talk about some of my personal experiences again, partly because there has been much speculation. But the opinions will not be comfortable for the reader wanting to continue “not seeing.”

The first thing that teachers assume of school reformers is that they must not have done very well in school, or that they had a hard time in college, or that they are simply social outcasts that have some vendetta against public education. What they fail to consider, because such a thought is outside of their “bubble” of experience is that there is a portion of society that think for themselves and have seen the scam for what it is, deciding to not take part in the whole process.

In my case, I decided long ago that the system didn’t work. It never worked for me because I’ve never been happy in a follower position. I’ve always questioned authority, my entire life. In fact, in kindergarten, I missed several of my recesses for arguing with the teachers. It became apparent to me early on that education wasn’t so much about learning arithmetic, language, and art, as it was about learning how to take direction.

I have had great success in life by being a leader. To date, the only thing I’ve received from family, friends or “others” is a workbench vice I inherited from my grandfather when he died. Money, or money gained from property sales passed down through my family have never found their way to me, and on purpose. I resist any relationships where I take a passive role and where a gift can be used as leverage against me down the road.

Now to many people who may seem extreme. However, if you want freedom, you must have freedom of such predatory relationships. And, unfortunately teachers, by design, form a predatory relationship with their students the way the system is currently set up.

When I was younger, I will admit that there was a blood bath that followed in my wake. I spent a lot of time in court, in fights with other students, and in general trouble with officials in school. Much of that trouble came simply because I refused to submit to an authority figure. That’s it. I never looked for trouble. I just didn’t like authority figures and since socially, submission of some kind to authority is required, I was in for a constant barrage of trouble which found me.

It has never occurred to me that I was in the wrong for taking this position. It doesn’t take a brilliant mind to sit in one of the many parties that I attended and see the failure of public education. Many of the kids back then when speaking of Pink Floyd would proclaim, “Man, you have to be wasted to understand The Wall.” At those parties stoned classmates would watch MTV with awe as “We Don’t Need No Education” played displaying a bunch of kids being processed in a factory, faceless and being cast into a meat grinder. Such a metaphor was very similar to my own thoughts, but I never did drugs and I certainly wasn’t wasted. I went to parties back then to pick up girls that were, but I did not partake in that behavior.

If you want to understand a culture, study its music, and you will learn a lot.

You would think that many parents would have wanted their kids to spend their time with me. After all, I didn’t drink, I didn’t smoke, I didn’t use curse words, I helped people when I could, I was polite and well spoken. But I was also defiant, inquisitive, and perpetually skeptical. In fact there were two rules that people riding in my car had to live with when I was 16.  (And note that I did not have a shortage of people wanting to spend time with me.  It was the parents that didn’t want their kids around me.)  First, there was no smoking allowed. Second, we would not play Pink Floyd on my car stereo, because I understood the stuff all too well and thought it was depressing to meditate on such things, where many of the youth back then did. One of my best friends back then was told by his mother and father to stay away from Rich Hoffman. He’s not the kind of kid I want you to be friends with.

His mother’s preferences were the drug induced kids from the neighborhood, whose parents she knew. My friend became addicted to drugs and was lost eventually, but not because he was friends with me. If he had been friends with me, he wouldn’t have done drugs, or stolen from people. He wouldn’t have contracted a variety of STD’s and probably would have entered adulthood with his head on straight.

My head has always been on straight, even when authority figures wanted me to believe otherwise.

The next question that arrives is that why would authority figures wish to convince a person that they are in need of care. The answer to that is easy. Authority figures are perpetually in need of justifying their existence. Since their lives and careers are embedded in the lives of others, they are terribly insecure of people who don’t need them.

College wasn’t any different. When I was there, young people were more interested in the social aspects of college life than the scholastic and the whole thing seemed like a money pit to me. Professors were seeking to drag out studies that could be done in weeks into events that went on for months so they could charge $10 per credit hour or more. The charge alone for books was an obvious scam. That’s how it appeared to me, and I still feel that way.

I’ve lived a life full of education, but also free of authority figures. And I’ve had success in life when I became old enough to be sought after as a leader, because that is my natural impulse. I don’t wake up in the morning looking for power or influence. But when I’m in a collaborative effort with others, I am only comfortable in a leadership role. That’s my nature and I understand it.

So I understand the frustration people who have committed, and submitted their lives to such things as to my motives and their speculation of my back ground. The idea of cutting all ties into their lives that are corrosive and manipulative is a completely foreign concept to them and something they cannot fathom.

Even knowing that the public education system was seriously flawed, I sent my kids anyway. My wife always liked school, until she met me, and she felt our children should have school in their lives. I argued that the kids could learn faster if they took a more independent route, but I listened to her opinion on the matter. The result, my kids breezed through school. I taught them not to take the whole thing too serious and not to submit to any authority and they navigated through the experience very well without all the pitfalls that most kids go through regarding peer pressure and social-climbing.

The reason for this explanation is that there is a story in mythology that I learned a long time ago that I think about a lot. It goes something like this; a lion was separated from his parents and was discovered by a herd of sheep. The sheep took the lion in and raised it for many years.

The lion grew to full size and was roaming around in the herd with the other sheep where a pack of lions hunting the sheep saw the lion and called him over whispering.  “Hey, what are you doing? You’re roaming around with the sheep.”

All the Sheep trained Lion could say was, “Baaaaahaaahaaa.” Because his instruction came from the sheep all his life, he didn’t know any better.

The lions took the Sheep/Lion to the river and said, “Look at your reflection. You’re one of us. You’re not a sheep. You’re supposed to eat those creatures.”

The story goes on where the Sheep/Lion rediscovers his true identity and becomes in the end what he was meant to be.

Human beings are no different. We all are lions in sheep’s clothing. It’s a cultural phenomenon indicative of authoritarian culture created when humans moved from a nomad society to an agricultural society. Europe and all its problems are derived from attempting to maintain human beings in an agricultural society, including their attempt at education.

Those that settled the United States left that behavior behind in Europe in favor of a Lion’s life in the New World and it was so important to them that they’d risk their life to have it.

My oldest daughter and I had a long talk under the stars till about 3 AM one night a few years ago and she asked me what she was supposed to do with all the stuff I taught her. After all, it’s a fine line between enlightenment and insanity. The slopes to insanity are steep if you are not within the safety of the herd. It’s not that she questioned the truth of it, but co-existence with others becomes difficult when you insist on living awake when the people around you insist on being asleep.

I told her that most of the people who think in such a way as I do, end up going insane by their early 40’s, or they become abusers of drugs in order to maintain that reality to themselves against the current of sheep, that secretly wish the safety of the herd, so they turn to chemical abuse to numb them.

“How do you keep from going crazy?”

I smiled at her, “You have to start with being grounded to begin with. You read a lot and study other Lion’s that have lived full lives and witness how they did it. You don’t abuse alcohol or drugs or sub come to other human weaknesses. But you have to not compare yourself to the sheep around you, because relative to them, you will seem crazy. The life of a sheep and the life of a lion are completely different. The sheep grazes in the field, and travels in a pack. They mate and give birth occasionally. They run away when a predator comes near and if they live to old age, they die eventually as their bodies break away. The Loin travels in a pack when they find hunting that way more convenient, but they stay solitary animals most of the time. Like most cats, they are happiest when they are alone.”

That took the conversation into a different direction, the difference between dogs and cats.

I personally like dogs. They are always happy to see you. They are intensely loyal, even when you abuse them. Cats, they only come around when they want a lap to lay in. If they get mad at you, they’ll avoid you. They never seem to sink deep roots in their owner. They seem to choose their loyalty carefully and that loyalty leaves quickly if the relationship is strained. Those types of differences can be found in people too. Society expects dogs and the loyalty of them. But some people are just cats. We might sub consciously call those types a “cool cat.” I would make the psychological argument that what the nation is experiencing with Charlie Sheen right now is that very complex. It’s no secret that public characters like Snoop Dog, Charlie Sheen and Dennis Rodman are dear to the deep recesses of the human condition. Socially those characters are rejected, but when the doors are closed and the arms of a woman are wrapped around them, the truth is revealed.

To my observation of public education is that it fails at a fundamental level. It teaches our youth to be sheep and not lions. My view is taken in the context of philosophy, and I understand that many people in our society aren’t ready for that line of thought. They want to be sheep, and they want their kids to be sheep.

So the argument then becomes one of business. Can we afford the current form of public education? No. The way the unions have structured their contracts have turned the whole funding of education into a Ponzi scheme much like Social Security. The step increases that were negotiated require higher and higher taxes to maintain the funding, and we’ve hit the wall.

One of the benefits of being a leader type is that I don’t have the burden of appeasing any group. So I can look objectively at the situation and name the problems for what they are, because I’m not looking at any part of the problem with emotion. I already think the system is broken; I am not looking for ways to justify the behavior. And I have no illusion that by throwing more money at the situation that it will solve anything. All it does is push the wall a bit to delay the crash that’s happening. It’s hard for many people to see the wall because they don’t want to believe it’s there, because public education has become for them much more than basic education services. Sports provide the possibility of college scholarships, and school social events provide opportunities for young people to “interact” and discover themselves.

Teachers that truly believe they are the saviors of society are particularly arrogant in their thinking on this issue. But much of their work can be replaced with a computer in this new century, where the computer is ironically much more personable. I don’t say that out of a dislike of teachers, which I’ve admitted that I personally don’t like authority figures, but the idea of a solitary figure speaking to a class where the weakest link of the class sets the pace is archaic.

In truth, my dislike of public education was based on that one principle. I couldn’t stand the pace of the learning. I’m a person that enjoys doing things at a fast pace. And the classroom was always just too slow for me. Now I may be the exception, but it is apparent that it doesn’t work very well for other students either. The difference is other students were content to learn how to “game” the system, get their passing grades and move on to the next grade. Most of the time they forgot what they learned by the next semester because their goal was not to learn the material, it was to get a passing grade and advance to the next level.

When you learn to be a lion, a leader in the world, you will find that your services are always in high demand, because such people are rare when they are in great need. So career worries go away, where the sheep of the world are always concerned if the farmer will feed them, or if a predator will attempt to hunt them down and kill them, the lion doesn’t concern themselves with such matters. And thinking like a lion does not mean that I automatically support a sports team like the Cincinnati Bengals.

My favorite football team is the Tampa Bay Buccaneers so when my wife and I want to go to a football game, we fly down to Tampa to watch them play. It is more practical to me to fly 1000 miles to see a good team than to drive 20 miles to see a bad one. If I’m going to pay for the NFL experience, I’m going to enjoy it, and not just do what’s convenient. A few years ago, when we were waiting for a night game to start, we were killing some time at The International Mall, which is within walking distance to Raymond James Stadium, one of my favorite places in the world. We spent half an afternoon needlessly shopping and still had some time to kill before the gates opened, so we stopped by a very elaborate booth for Rosetta Stone Software located in the middle of the mall.

The attendant at the booth gave me a head set and computer and let my wife and I play with the foreign language software for several hours. When I finished, and we headed over to the game, I realized that the way we are currently learning foreign language and just about everything in public education is outdated. That Rosetta Stone Software had made learning much more practical and interactive, and that the only reason public school did not leap into this style of learning was because the teacher unions would stand in the way of that innovation.

They’d stand in the way because public education had become more about creating jobs than actually learning. The current focus was maintaining the system along the same fashion that education had been embarking on since schools were a one room building. The only thing that’s changed is the school became larger, but the teacher at the front of the room is the same, and it is no longer as necessary.

One of the arguments for this big system is that poor students don’t have access to computers and they need a teacher to help them, because they don’t have a family to take care of them at home. This is the way the unions sell their service now and why they insist on the current costly form of education. It has more to do with social structure and social ills, than actual educational performance, which shows in the students.

It’s easy for me to see all this because I wasn’t happy with the system to begin with. But I’m happy to pay my taxes and participate if the rest of the members of my community want it. And we do pay a lot in property taxes. But when I hear schools lie to people, and I see teacher unions manipulating the situation and attacking people for questioning their motives, then it changes the argument.

To participate in a system blindly costs money, not to mention social consequences. My view of those social consequences might be extreme to many, even though privately most people agree with me once they close their eyes at night and can read their thoughts across the backs of their eye lids. But the financial burden of the public education system needs to be broken down and restructured, and unions stand in the way of that, so that is the reason for the adversarial relationship. The more hate mail and comments I receive, the more convinced I am of the lack of merit in public education.

The intent behind the name calling, and the attempt to silence any critics are to continue to ask for more money to keep a broken system functioning. As I’ve established, I am an employer, and I’ve heard every possible justification and excuse from employees over the years that wish to convince me that they are special, and that they and only they can do a particular job. After several hundred of those statements you learn to see what truth is and what fiction is. As an employer you must have an understanding of the job you are asking people to do, otherwise you are guilty of not being able to make a proper assessment, and are 100% reliant on your employees to tell you how valuable they are. And they will try, and if you don’t know, they will take advantage of you 99% of the time.

With public education, I’ve been there and done that. I learned a lot more when I finally got out of public education because the barriers to learning were removed, and I was able to attack it at the fast pace I enjoy. I have had to provide instruction to people myself, and teach, lead and assess talent, so I understand what works and what doesn’t. And I’ve had success outside the classroom. Many of the professors and teachers that I’ve known over the years fit the description, “those that can’t do, teach,” meaning that people who can do are in the world working and producing, those who aren’t comfortable with producing stay in the safe world of academia, and they teach, or they attempt to be professional students. I have known more than a few of those types and have actually given a few of them jobs much to my frustration, because they are so timid. They tend to be the type of person that will stand at the side of a pool and stick their foot in to see how cold the water is. I’m the type that will jump in regardless of the temperature so they frustrate me to no end. But it takes all kinds of people to make the world go around, so I put up with them. The question is not whether or not those people have worth. They do somewhere. The question is are they worth six figures? No!

Public education if we look at it for what it is it’s for many people an opportunity for their kid to get a scholarship for higher education. For others it’s a day care facility, because parents are busy with their lives and don’t have anywhere to put their kids while they are at work. Let’s face it and call the situation what it is.

My goal is to see kids actually learn something. I think the whole idea needs to be turned upside down and rebuilt, because as I look around, the people functioning in the world around me are failing. The divorce rate is too high. The moral standards are too low. People’s understanding of politics is abysmal. Their understanding of geography is pathetic, some people actually don’t even know where India is! Their confidence in themselves is terrible and they pass that along to their children, which raises more insecure children. All these are social failures which to me start with a failure of public education, and more money does not solve it. We’ve poured a lot of money into the situation, and it has not worked.

It is easy to attempt to maintain the status quo by proclaiming that its critics “don’t like” education, or some other loose term. It would be expected for sheep to make vicious proclamations of the lion, because deep down inside, the sheep wish they had the courage to be lions, but they don’t. All that’s left is to hurl insults in an attempt to cover the fat life of the herd animal that just seeks more and more feed to provide nourishment to its virulent existence within the confines of the barn yard. My concern is the larger issue of actual performance as a primary concern, and secondly, of the financial stability, which is proven to be not well thought out.

The old games are no longer effective because the sheep in the barn yard have noisily protested for years and now we see that they are all fat and need to be sheered. And it is my hope that once we start doing the sheering that we will find beneath all the hair that some of those sheep are actually lions, and can return to their natural state and teach others to be lions and return the nation to what it started as, and avoid a fate of a depleted, crushed Europe full of glory from some ancient time while the future leaves it behind.

Unfortunately only leader types are able to see that far ahead. The sheep are only looking at their next meal, but the big cats, the lions lay perched in trees and look out over the savanna to what is far off and they will be the first to see what is invisible to everyone else.

Education needs reformed for more reasons than one and we will have it, because it’s what’s good for America, not just those that have built lives off it.

Rich Hoffman

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

The Communist Manifesto: SEIU ATTACKS OHIO SENATORS WHILE THEY EAT!

 

Isn’t this a great quote?  Guess where it’s from, The Communist Manifesto. 

My wife and I have a secret hideaway that we like to dine at, hidden from the world and its worries.  Friday March 4th, 2011 was a glorious spring like evening complete with pouring rain, as we sat together in a cantina like setting waiting for our food to arrive.

She had been reading much about quantum mechanics and the latest theories of universal theory rejecting some of the work most recently proposed by Stephen Hawking and was discussing the topic vigorously as the aroma of our food cooking in the kitchen was overtaking our senses.  My mind however was on a discussion I heard on the radio between Bill Cunningham and Sheriff Jones earlier in the day where they were critical of Senator Jones and Governor Kasich for their aggressive support of S.B.5.   Their position is of the old Republican guard view of “gaming” the system as greedily as the Democrats over the years ever had and it is hard for some of those guys to admit it to themselves.  They are uncomfortable with this “new conservativism” and spent much of their discussion belittling the lack of political understanding of Kasich and the aggressive nature of Senator Jones, as if they hoped that they could somehow turn the tide of anger that has been building for a long time back into some manageable form. 

My mind was also on the Easy Street Café from Wednesday night where Senator Niehaus, Senator LaRose, Senator Bacon  along with several others were harassed by members of SEIU District 1199 led by Monica Moran for passage of the S.B.5 bill just hours before.   Monica stepped into that restaurant with 10 other SEIU members and began chanting at the Senators until the police had to arrive with a helicopter to whisk away the protesters. 

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/03/03/union-supporters-disrupt-gop-senators-restaurant-meal.html?sid=101

The owner of the restaurant had to endure pushing and shoving until the police came, and Moran was not apologetic.  In fact she was quite defiant saying, “The moment of discomfort Senate Republicans may have felt as a result of my expressing my opinion pales in comparison to the extreme discomfort and financial hardships that public employees will endure as a result of SB5.”

My wife and I ate our own food I thought about Moran’s statement.  I have absolutely no tolerance for bullying, and I couldn’t help but wonder how anyone brought up in America couldn’t see that the public workers using such strong-arm tactics for nearly three decades have painted themselves in this corner they find themselves in.   I find it amazing that so many Republicans are weak kneed, including Cunningham and the Sheriff when it comes to taking a hard-line on this issue, insisting on more collaboration, more political procedures, and really more of the same behavior that has delivered our nation to the precipice of destruction.

When Nancy Pelosi and her Congress under the urging of President Obama, where former SEIU head Andy Stern visited the White House several times a week, pushed through the Health Care Bill, and Net Neutrality, and the bail outs, etc, there were many in America that decided that a push back was in order.  That the bullying that had been going on for a long time had gone on for too long, and it’s time to set things straight. 

Senator Jones and John Kasich are doing what many people, me included, want.  I don’t want any collaboration with the type of people who will barge into a restaurant and shout profanity at Senators in an attempt to scare them into “proper legislation.”  That kind of behavior has no place in the American landscape.  It will take the bold actions of Kasich and Senator Jones to do the job. 

Senator Niehaus had to display boldness for removing Senator Sietz who was stalling the vote under the guise of “compromise” and many other measures to undo much of the damage that has already been done by the actions and influence of SEIU and the politicians they control.  The time for negotiation is long over; it’s been a one way street against the American tax payer from the inception of Executive Order 10988 under President Kennedy in 1962.  Since then, the unions functioning with authority have behaved like an organized crime element in our society.  And if politicians don’t fall in line they are intimidated and harassed until they change their views and therefore their votes.   Monica Moran was just reading from the company handbook and her followers truly believe they are wrapped in the flag of the United States fighting for worker rights. 

After the food was done, and our drinks were drained into our bellies, our date was far from over.  Check paid, tipped placed on the table, we left our cantina and proceeded to our other favorite spot, the most romantic place on the face of the planet………the book store. 

We usually spend two or three hours picking out our supply of books for the week, and my wife was intent to find more information on her quantum mechanical theories.  So I went to one of my favorite sections, philosophy.  There wasn’t anything new, I’ve read them all.  They did have the little blue book, The Coming Insurrection in stock which I read and despised as tripe from a bunch of French fools lost in their own elitism.   I saw a copy of my favorite book from Nietzche Thus Spoke Zarathustra which Hitler would distort under the assistance of Nietzche’s power hungry sister while her brother suffered from insanity shortly after the book was completed.   There was also a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, also written by someone who suffered a major intellectual breakdown enduring electro shock treatment to “cure” him of his thoughts.  Zen was written about 5 years later.  Great book, but nothing new there for me, so I headed to the Social Science section. 

In the Social Science section, again I have read many of them.  There is of course all of the Glenn Beck books.  Wonder why they are so popular?  They are right next to all the liberal books; in fact Ed Shultz’s book was right next to Glenn’s.  There was one copy of Ed’s book with 7 of Glenn’s book Broke.  I asked the attendant if the reason was because Ed’s book was selling like “hot cakes.” 

She said, “No, we’ve had that copy since August.” 

I asked her about Glenn’s book.

“We just got those in on Monday.  Can’t keep them.” 

I took a mental note and continued to look over the titles looking for something new.  There are all the Fox people, Bill O’Rielly, the Judge, Morris, Ingraham, all of them selling well.  They must be doing something right.  I saw some liberal books, The Audacity of Hope was there, the cover was torn and looked like it had been looked through a lot, but not purchased, and had experienced another lengthy shelf life.   What becomes clear when traveling through a book store when all the covers are slickly done by professional book publishers and editors is that Americans vote with their wallet.  Once the message gets out in the world of competition the better argument will win, and people will buy that product.  People bought President Obama’s Audacity of Hope when they thought they were reading the book of American’s first black president.  Not someone who was a mouth piece to powerful union interests.  They rejected the idea and the sales have dropped off.  Compare that to Glenn Beck’s An Inconvenient Book,published in 2007, a year before Obama’s book. 

“How often do you order this book?” I asked the attendant.  I noticed there were five of them on the shelf. 

“Once a month,” she said.  “We usually order about 10 at a time. 

My wife found me in the isle and informed me she was going to be a while.  She was having a tough time with her selections. 

I told her to take her time, that there wasn’t any hurry.  As she left my eyes fell on a book of evil, one I read years ago and there it was on the shelf with a new, hip cover designed to entice young hippie impersonators, The Communist Manifesto. 

This version of The Communist Manifesto was just over a hundred pages by the time you read through the forwards and introductions.  So I stood and read the book again while I waited for my wife over the next hour and a half.  And when I got to that last page I thought it was particularly revealing the line they chose to place there, “forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.  Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution.  The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.  They have the world to win!  Working men of all countries unite!”

Suddenly the behavior of Monica Moran doesn’t seem so out of place, if you take it in the context of The Communist Manifesto.

I put the book back on the shelf and thought about what I had just read. 

The attendant came around and asked me, “Are you going to buy it?”

I gave her a disgusted look.  “Hell, no.  I have to go home and take a shower now that I’ve touched it,” I said half-joking.  The girl was a younger girl in her early twenties.  “Tell me something, does this book have any appeal to you?”

She looked at it and said, “The cover is pretty cool.  I’ve heard it talked about by my literature professor in college.  I don’t know.  I think I probably would read it if I was pressed for time and had to do a report on a book.  It’s short and would probably get me some points with the professor because of the subject matter.”

I smiled and nodded knowingly.

The girl looked self conscious.  “Did I say the wrong thing?”

“No, you answered perfectly.” 

My wife was back with an arm full of books.  “I couldn’t make up my mind.”

I just smiled as we proceeded to the counter; my mind was on what the attendant had said. 

The Communist Manifesto is a book for fools and lazy minded youth that lack true worldliness.  It’s designed for the masses because the intent is to create an insect like response to arms, to overthrow the establishment and create a communist world draped in fairness.  It’s a naïve notion born first from Plato’s Republic then glorified in Sir Thomas More’s Utopia written in 1516.  The book has power because it does two things, it’s easy to read because it’s so short, and it appeals to the lazy. 

Capitalism is for competition, but for it to work everyone needs to have a hunger for competition.  Competition brings out the best of the best, and gives those who aren’t the best something to reach for.  It is obvious that one of the imperfections of capitalism is that it leaves behind the lazy, because the lazy do not wish to work in order to better themselves and compete.  To the lazy, the corporations will always be evil entities, because they represent difficulty in competing with others that are “competitive.”  To those lazy citizens communism will always be attractive because it is far easier to hide in the masses under a collective association than to stand as an individual which is how America was founded. 

The Tea Party shows that groups that associate themselves with individuality can come together and work as a unit and function socially as the Constitution intended.  The philosophy that produced The Constitution has produced a successful country, the United States, where we have such a rich and diverse society that it is the only place in the world where all the races of the world actually work together without tribal warfare and even our poor are well off compared to the rest of the world.  The American system works better than anywhere in the world with no exceptions. 

Communism has only produced misery everywhere it’s been implemented.  Everywhere!  It is a half cocked idea created by a mad man soaked in poverty.   He pulled together information from the British Museum to construct his theory along with Friedrich Engels study on the working class struggles.  Marx was hardly a popular person.  You can tell a lot about a person based on who comes to their funeral.  Well, Marx had 11 people at his funeral.

When unions discovered that Marx’s short little book could unite the sectors of society that didn’t read much and tended to have the hobby of drinking, eating and pursuing women, the simplicity of The Communist Manifesto had a great deal of power.   This helped give rise to the Labour Party in England by the 1920’s which destroyed England as an imperial power, which was the goal. 

It should be remembered that the United States broke away from England to avoid imperial control, and our capitalism worked were England was an imperial tyrant.  The United States never sought to become an empire, which is the system Marx studied.  There wasn’t enough data in the mid 1850s to provide any data on capitalism in the United States without empire status. 

But what did the Labour Party in England do to their country?  Well, I have friends in England so I know firsthand.  Also, my son-in-law is from England, and when he found out what kind of opportunities were available to him in American, he wasted no time coming here and working his butt off so he could provide my daughter with a good life.  In England, there weren’t any opportunities for a kid his age.   The townhouses in the country are incredibly expensive.  They aren’t creating any new jobs because nobody is locating there.  It was a big deal to him to see a McDonald’s so close to our house.  He had to go to London to see one.   But they aren’t producing anything and exporting anything.  The Democratic Socialist Party, (the Labour Party) shut down the country and created the kind of European socialism that President Obama and others want to bring to the United States. 

I don’t want that in my country.  I want NOTHING to do with it.  And I want NOTHING to do with ANY unions.  Period.  They were created with socialist intent, and socialism does not work. 

Now, for those that don’t understand how I went from talking about communism to socialism, it’s because socialism is the gateway to communism.  Here are the definitions provided by http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_difference_between_socialism_and_communism

” Socialism is the idea that the working class, the class that produces the profits, the wealth, the cars, houses, planes, steel, should take over and run things collectively, democratically, for the benefit of the majority (who also “just happen” to be workers too).

Communism is the idea that society should not have classes – exploiters and exploited oppressors and oppressed, and so on. ”

  • Socialism generally refers to an economic system, while communism refers to both an economic and political system.
  • Socialism seeks to manage the economy through deliberate and collective social control.
  • Communism seeks to manage both the economy and the society by ensuring that property is owned collectively, and that control over the distribution of property is centralized in order to achieve both classlessness and statelessness.
  • Both socialism and communism are based on the principle that the goods and services produced in an economy should be owned publicly, and controlled and planned by a centralized organization. Socialism says that the distribution should take place according to the amount of an individual’s production efforts, whilst communism asserts that goods and services should be distributed among the populace according to individuals’ needs.

Collective bargaining is a form of socialism that has been perpetuated by communist sympathizers.  That’s not anybody on Fox News saying that.  It’s not Glenn Beck, or Rush Limbaugh or anyone else.  They are just stating the facts and history that is available to everyone.   For too many years we’ve allowed these parasites of philosophy to attempt“European Style” socialism to America and we’ve all just let it happen.  We haven’t taken pride in ourselves and defended our way of life properly so those groups that want to bring about socialist ideas took us for granted. 

Republicans are traditionally as I mentioned regarding Bill Cunningham and Sheriff Jones, conservatives that align themselves with other conservatives and built business and helped create laws.  They tended to be nice, God-fearing people.  But on their watch, these parasites which hold The Communist Manifesto in such high regard have reigned free from impunity.   Many of those Republicans are guilty of what they are accused of, being out of touch and spending too much time on the golf course, and they are partially guilty of letting these labor unions get out of control.  So it’s not just the labor unions fault.  Unions are made up of common, everyday people who are more interested in what Charlie Sheen is doing, or whether or not Lindsey Lohan has on any panties when she gets out of a car.  Such minds are easy to fool and they have been fooled by power-hungry manipulators like SEIU, and the AFL-CIO and the NEA .  Those unions made pay good through collective bargaining which allowed the lazy of our culture to continue to be lazy.  It allowed them to get what they wouldn’t get in normal competition.   And Republicans, the same Republicans that took a soft stance on S.B.5 let them do it because they didn’t want to think about the larger problem.  Those Republicans were lazy themselves taking for granted that the United States would always be here, and that threats to our way of life existed on foreign shores.  They took the labor movement as pests that had to be appeased and went back to their golf game.  So they are guilty too, and still are!

But the urgency we are seeing now comes from a new group of conservatives that are not looking at long political careers, golf games, and fancy dinners with powerful people.  In many cases like Kasich in Ohio, and Christie in New Jersey they are already successful and are not looking at being two term governors, and that’s how it’s supposed to be.  Be bold, and fix our problems.  If the people don’t like it, let them change things with a vote in the next election. 

S.B.5 is not Health Care Reform.  It’s actually the opposite.  S.B.5 is about ripping control from the state and putting it in the hands of communities where it belongs.  It’s not creating more central control like Health Care did.  If the passage of S.B.5. seems aggressive, well that’s because it is.  Time is running out.  There isn’t time to sit down with a bunch of labor leaders and “collaborate.”  That is how things were done in the past and it hasn’t worked.   The union strategy is to just stretch out the negotiation process until public opinion turns against the Republicans.  That’s how Democrats and unions have beaten the crap out of Republicans for years.  That’s why those idiots in Wisconsin fled to the border, because it’s their “mode of operation.”  By delaying the Wisconsin vote, the unions hope to turn the public against Scott Walker, only this time Scott Walker isn’t putting his finger in the air and checking the wind direction.   He’s doing what he thinks is right. 

So of course when Shannon Jones introduced S.B.5, and there was three weeks of testimony, Kasich knew he needed to implement his changes quickly so he can fix all the holes in Ohio.  Everyone played fair and by the process, but they didn’t allow themselves to get bogged down, deliberately.  And Senator Sietz, the rock solid Republican that asked Strickland to lead last year, was one of the Republicans from yesteryear that helped create the problem.  He helped legitimize the labor movement that is intent on implementing a new social order.  Not the rank and file members, they just want a pay check.  But the leadership is certainly after a larger political agenda and that is not acceptable.  So I am deeply proud of Senator Niehaus for not allowing Sietz to stall the vote and play politics with S.B.5. 

Timing is important.  All across this state school levies are threatening to break the backs of property owners everywhere, and once S.B.5 is signed into law, school boards will have a tremendous amount of ability to control their costs and take those levies off the ballots.  Schools like Little Miami can renegotiate contracts and become solvent again, and that’s just the beginning.

Kasich’s motto is moving at the speed of business, and that’s what he’s doing.  Let the unions put the issue on a ballot in November.  Because Kasich will have by then put Ohio on a successful path and if the voters decide to go backwards, so be it.  It won’t be because our Governor didn’t do the job.  It’ll be because Ohioans failed to recognize a threat and take responsibility for the condition of their state.   There won’t be any slack-jawed politicians to blame this time, only a preference for the status quo. 

My wife and I closed out our evening with details I won’t reveal on these pages.  But I personally stayed up till the small hours of the morning reading and thinking. 

This is a battle not between left and right, young and old, rich or poor, but of those that truly want the American way of life, and those that simply want a “kick back.”  And both sides are guilty of playing that game. 

Rich Hoffman

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

The Overton Window and The Jonestown Tragedy: Richard Trumka’s Progressive Push

I’ve said it many times, I read a lot. A whole lot. And over 2010 one of the books that most jumped out at me was Glenn Beck’s The Overton Window. My daughter had bought it for me for Father’s Day and I read it in one day.

I hear people like Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO talk about the “RIGHT WING” and you hear what comes out of his mouth and you have to wonder about his sanity. As far as a union leader, and a person close to the White House, which he says he speaks to daily, I would be ashamed if that guy where my boss or leader. He clearly doesn’t understand basic economics and its people like him that create the message that millions of union workers chant.

Here is Trumka speaking in March of 2009. He has no idea how the bill he’s speaking about will “expand” the middle class, and he doesn’t have any idea how this will drive up the labor costs. He just makes statements that people seem to blindly following without question. Something he accuses Beck and other people primarily on the political right of doing.

You can read here how he believes the best way to expand the middle class is through further taxation. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/afl-cio-boss-raising-taxes-is-best-way-to-create-jobs/

America is supposed to be a group of individuals, not a unified collective sum like Trumka speaks about. The Federalist Papers, which went on to become The Constitution were written to protect American from people like Trumka, and Obama. Those people and people like them taken by themselves are not bad people, but they have a dangerous ideology and they disguise it with a message the masses can understand. So it is not a far stretch to say that when I saw Trumka speak on February 26, 2011 that the best way to create jobs was to raise taxes, which I know from economics is false, yet people chant and cheer in approval, and I witnessed the union protests all across the country, it reminded me of Jim Jones, of the Jonestown massacre from 1978. Jones had several thousand supporters that followed him from Indianapolis Indiana, to San Francisco, then to Guyana South America. Jones was an admirer of Marx, Lenin, and Mao. That’s why they chanted this song at their church rallies in the early 70’s.

Jim Jones is a tough story to swallow. Because it is the extreme example of what collectivism can inflict on people. Jones was a proud socialist. What you are about to hear is the actual death tape from the Jonestown Massacre. Jones turned on a tape recorder and gave a final speech while his thousands of followers drank poisoned drink to their deaths. He calls it “revolutionary suicide” to an inhuman world. You will actually hear people perishing in the background, so if you have a soft stomach, don’t listen to this. This behavior is far from a joke. If you listen you will hear several people step forward and speak about the greatness of Jim Jones, their “Daddy,” and of the merits of socialism and communism.
The following clip is from the film The Guyana Tragedy and is a reenactment of what you will hear below.

Here is the actual death tapes. Now consider as you listen to this, these people speaking are just moments from their death. They know it. Listen to their thoughts and what they intend.



So what is the lesson here? Well, madmen have a way of lying to themselves and distorting the reality of the world around them. And such people are attracted to socialism, communism, progressivism and all those collective “ism’s.” At that point it no longer becomes a simple argument about economics and the best way to handle economic issues. It evolves into a struggle between good and evil.

That’s where I start seeing startling comparisons from people in the modern labor movement. What they are saying are simply the words their leaders speak.  Richard Trumka is a powerful union leader and in this recent case involving these labor protests, what he says in public, over a microphone, ends up coming out of the mouths of his followers.

Trumka, like many people attracted to those “collective ideologies” are prone to climb for power. History shows that it happens in every case. I don’t know of a single instance of a collective society that survives outside of a tribal village. The individuality inherit in the human being seems to break down true collectivism, and social experiments to water this tendency down in our youth have failed with terrible results. This is the reason the Tea Party has risen as a permanent movement, because many people are just tired of the “social experiments.” Many want to return to the original blue print that paved the way for the greatest nation on earth.

The Tea Party is a push back against the tendency of “collectivism” that has gotten out of control.

Whether or not he is aware of it or not, Trumka’s actions show that he is power-hungry and idealistic, and is essentially no different from someone like Jim Jones. It is quite possible that if that congressman from California had not went to Jonestown and been killed, Jim Jones and his followers would have lived for years without a mass suicide. But the scary thing about it is that Jones had to retreat to South America to have his utopian society. And the congressman was doing in that society much of what the Tea Party is trying to do in American Society. They are intervening and attempting to break up the dangerous collectivism that is consuming the nation.

Progressives are insistent in the modern age to not leave the country for their utopian society. They instead are intent to change the country itself. Here Trumka reveals what he is all about, which concerns me a great deal. It concerns me because watching his followers on Saturday; they seem to think he truly believes in this whole “middle class” protection. Yet he states otherwise.

Now this doesn’t mean Trumka is just like Jim Jones. Jones when he was in Indiana seemed like a reasonable guy. Thousands and thousands of people wouldn’t have followed him if they thought the path would take them to their sweaty deaths in a South American jungle within a decade. But Trumka’s followers behave almost identically to the congregation of Jim Jones, and that is what is troublesome.

Watch and listen to these clips from the Saturday Protests. And compare the behavior to what you heard from Jim Jones’s Congregation.







This brings me back to the Overton window concept introduced in Beck’s book. People can say what they want about Glenn Beck, but from what I know about the guy, he genuinely wants to get at the truth. His agenda is the truth. And that’s why he wrote his book, The Overton Window.

As I was reading The Overton Window, I realized that here is a guy that Time Magazine called the most dangerous man in American. Here is a guy hated by all these various progressive groups. Here is a guy that has become massively popular in a very short period of time. Here is a guy that has an agent that is very liberal. Here is a guy that knows a few rich people yet has not forgotten his humanity. Here is a guy that has hit the bottom, and realizes that it’s the little things in life that makes things precious. Here is a guy that would never, ever, under any circumstances be a Jim Jones. He might have the power to be, but he would not sub come to it. Glenn Beck is the kind of man who you could put a pile of gold in his lap, ask him to watch it for you till you come back, and when you returned 2 years later, he’d give it back without anything missing. Since he has a unique insight to how the game is played at the level he’s at now, the book, The Overton Window is a particularly rare opportunity for a reader. And I found the book and its concepts uniquely rich. It may not be the most profound literary work in history. But it is very bold in its attempt and it succeeds. What it is successful in doing is capturing the confusing political landscape that we are currently involved with revealing through a cleaver story what drives all the groups involved in creating their own Overton window that will pull society in their desired direction.
Here is the definition and description of what a Overton Window is as described in Wikipedia.

The Overton window, in political theory, describes a “window” in the range of public reactions to ideas in public discourse, in a spectrum of all possible options on a particular issue. It is named after its originator, Joseph P. Overton.

At any given moment, the “window” includes a range of policies considered to be politically acceptable in the current climate of public opinion, which a politician can recommend without being considered too “extreme” or outside the mainstream to gain or keep public office. Overton arranged the spectrum on a vertical axis of “more free” and “less free” in regards to government intervention. When the window moves or expands, ideas can accordingly become more or less politically acceptable. The degrees of acceptance of public ideas can be described roughly as:

• Unthinkable
• Radical
• Acceptable
• Sensible
• Popular
• Policy

The Overton Window is a means of visualizing which ideas define that range of acceptance by where they fall in it. Proponents of policies outside the window seek to persuade or educate the public so that the window either “moves” or expands to encompass them. Opponents of current policies, or similar ones currently within the window, likewise seek to convince people who these should be considered unacceptable.

Other formulations of the process created after Overton’s death add the concept of moving the window, such as deliberately promoting ideas even less acceptable than the previous “outer fringe” ideas, with the intention of making the current fringe ideas acceptable by comparison.
__________________________________________________

This site has an interesting twist on The Overton Window by describing it in four planes instead of just left and right, which I like.
http://www.correntewire.com/the_overton_window_has_four_panes

What these extreme left groups have done over time is they pulled the Overton window radically to the left with key phrases like, “workers’ rights” and “tax the rich.” Or “all conservatives are Hitler.” 100 years ago at the start of the progressive movement these ideas were considered radical. But in the election of 1912, Eugene V.Debs had doubled the Socialist vote from 500,000 in 1908 to 1 million in 1912. This wasn’t some guy from Europe; he was born in Terre Haute, Indiana. In fact, the Socialists had their 1912 Convention in Indianapolis; the same place Jim Jones started his socialist church. Ronald Reagan toyed with joining the socialist party when he was a young man in Hollywood. It was after he traveled to England and witnessed what socialism had done to England through the Labor Party that he turned far to the right, out of fear for his country. But those people, those 1 million people who voted socialist in 1912 are out there, and they attached themselves to progressive ideas, they had children, raised families and found themselves drawn to the Labor Movement in America on the backs of the unions. Now many of those people aren’t bad people, but they are attracted to the collectivism of socialist concepts by their family culture and genetic make-up, because let’s face it, some people are more comfortable hiding in the masses and are not inclined to stand on their own.

Those poor, unfortunate souls are the people who end up following someone like Jim Jones in the extreme circumstance. And to a lesser degree, they find themselves repeating word for word what someone like Richard Trumka utters, without any care as to the relevance of his words. Trumka knows he can’t talk to an economist about how he represents the “middle class” or how “increasing taxes on the rich,” “creates jobs.” Those are just buzz words to stir up the followers. What Trumka is really after is moving the Overton window far to the left as was the trend during the entire 20th century. It happened because people weren’t aware of the threat and it just crept into our culture subtly. Trumka said it himself; he’s not in the labor movement for wages and benefits. He’s using the labor movement as a platform to change society, and that isn’t any different from Jim Jones who wanted to change the world through religion.

The Tea Party wants none of that non-sense. The Tea Party wants people like Trumka off our back, and wants to pull the Overton window back to the far right so that the recoil will leave the political spectrum back in the middle where it belongs. The caution is there because half the nation isn’t drinking the cool-aid of Trumka. Half is, roughly. The problem is that other half are made up of people who have evolved to expect an entitlement culture, so those aren’t the kind of people who will carry a nation by themselves. They’ll need a fanatical leader to lead them. The Tea Party has no such leader. Glenn Beck could disappear tomorrow and someone like Doc Thompson in Cincinnati would just take his place, or maybe the young man in the radio broadcast above. The movement is essentially leaderless, because it is built upon the ideas of self-reliance, which was what America was intended to be.

The real threat and real money being poured into politics isn’t coming from Rupert Murdoch, or the Koch Brothers. George Soros, and all the Hollywood left has poured far more money into political manipulation so there isn’t any room to talk. Yet if Trumka says “the conservative right is for the rich, and we are for the working man!” Look at all these contributors to the radical left! Yet all these people point to the right and say it’s “Wall Street, the rich, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, all are blamed for manipulating the American people when in fact it is these people that have committed the act of their accusations.

“The working man” is another false premise captured by the labor movement and placed into the minds of Americans by the Overton window. In Ohio 655,000 people work for a union, both public and private. That’s only 13.7 percent of the 4,787,000 million people who are employed in the state. That leaves over 4 million people not represented by a union, and don’t particularly want to be represented by a union. And most of those people are not in management. Most of those people are the real workers, and is proof that such extreme rhetoric as exhibited by people like Trumka to an army of people built on entitlement. Yet, because of the Overton window, the media, and the regular everyday people accept that “workers’ rights” represents union work, because that’s how the term was marketed.

The times we live in have these two ideologies colliding before us. And unlike in the past, people will have to choose. One side is the side of life, and one side is the side of doom. So we must choose and choose wisely. Because the time has passed where both sides can’t coexist together now that the radicals have made a move and shown their intentions.

Rich Hoffman

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

Who is Rich Hoffman: Journey toward the Road of Death

Who is Rich Hoffman? That’s been the question I’ve been asked a lot lately from angry email senders that have looked over these pages and wondered of what authority I speak from. Well, I’ve so far lived a very full life, too much to sum up in a few paragraphs. But due to that full life, I learned a lot, and my world view reflects that.

The video below is something I put together for a project I’m working on. The trip I describe in that video is the kind of thing I consider to be successful. Success to me cannot be obtained in business, even though I’ve had plenty of success. Success is not in knowing celebrities, politicians or other powerful people. Success is in doing what is uniquely you.

I am working on a motorcycle journey from Alaska to the bottom of South America. It will cost a lot of money, so I have to find a way to assemble some investors and a documentary crew so there can be a return on the investment. But I’m planning the trip as a grand adventure of endurance. I assembled this video to show what a trip like that might look like, so I put a year of my life into a roughly 15 minute video.

The gun in that video is what I consider the greatest handgun in the world, the Smith and Weston .500 Magnum. And the tunnel my family was rappelling from is haunted and very spooky. Some of the pictures from that clip are in my description blog site. But as you can see, I spend a lot of time on motorcycles and hiking. I enjoy working with my friends in western arts, reading books, shooting with my wife and kids. I work with bullwhips because it’s good exercise and it helps me spiritually. So when Glenn Beck made his E4 Project announcement in Wilmington, I understood what he was talking about, and thought it was a good idea.

You see, that’s why I get so frustrated with this whole Progressive Movement, because those people are stuck psychologically and emotionally. When you get a taste of freedom, and enlightenment, it’s natural to want to share that with other people, but all too often you find out that people aren’t able to understand what you’re trying to tell them.

But you can’t help people who don’t know what they’re missing as they cleave to some ancient tradition which lacks some sense of spirituality and self-discovery. And that is the personal tragedy of progressivism and the primary failure of modern society. When you rob a person of their initiative, you rob them of a fulfilling life, and the entitlement culture created from progressivism has eroded initiative from millions of Americans, many of them seek refuge on the left of the political spectrum blind to the rest of the world.

I can state clearly that when I wake up in the morning and look at myself in the mirror, I love the person that looks back. And that is what success is. That success doesn’t come from the money given by a job, or a check issued by government. Success comes from saying yes to life and having the courage look in the mirror and liking what looks back.

Rich Hoffman

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

Epcot’s The Land and the Celebrity Farmer: A Look at the wonderful and important world of horticulture

The primary reason I started this site back in August was because I caught a group of union members working a local message forum in order to apply “peer” pressure on potential Anti-Lakota Levy advocates to keep their opinions to themselves. I thought the comments I was reading were “thuggish” and inexcusable toward good people who were just trying to voice their opinion.

In March of 2010 the Pulse Journal published in a special edition the wages of all the teachers and administrators of all the local schools. And it amazed me how quickly people forgot, and how shallow the waters of our collective memories really were. Local TV news, newspapers and other media were doing the stories but people forget. 6 months later when that information was needed it was lost when those decisions were needed, such as during an election.

So I saw a need to create a site that would make it easy for people to remember where we were, and watch over time how we got where we’re going. I have a conservative opinion and a literature background and enough business training to break down issues as well as any reporter. I also have a background in video editing and visualization technique, so I set out to use all the assets of a web-based site, video, sound, and literature to create a unique web-based news service that does not have any commercial ties, political affiliation, or otherwise special interest that might taint the content of my posts. They would simply be my opinions that I have found many, many other people share.

That’s why this site has been successful, because it utilizes all the benefits of what a web site can offer. And it would be noted by now that I have a lot of radio clips up here, mostly from Doc Thompson. Well, there’s a reason for that. Since Doc came to town, I have found that I like the man. He has similar views as I do, so I enjoy his program. I’ve met him and I like him personally too. He has a deep sincerity in what he is doing, and I respect that. There are parts of his shows that I think deserve to live on in a sense of permanence instead of reaching people’s ears over the 50,000 Watts of the Big One, and then becoming lost among the millions of radio waves that emanate around the globe. I have found that many people miss a lot of the good stuff he broadcasts because they have busy lives themselves, and could benefit from listening to his show at their convenience. And the things he talks about are very similar to the things I’m writing about, and as I mentioned in my About Me section, I like to write these blogs in two ways, with the typical literary style, then again with the assistance of video and audio. I have put thousands of videos on this site to help bring depth to the discussions expressed here. So it is only natural to use Doc’s show to assist my topics and let the reader get more from these articles than just text.

That’s why when Doc had on the Celebrity Gardner it had coincided with many thoughts I had been dealing with, and that’s how the progressive and liberal movements have captured the environmental movement. If you’re a conservative, you hate trees, you hate rivers and streams, you hate green space, and you hate animals. That’s how the left has painted the right, and it has always bothered me.

A few years ago when I was touring The Land Exhibit at the Epcot Center, I was intrigued by their horticultural activity and thought the work at Epcot was way out ahead of the rest of the nation. It brought to my mind, “why is it that the farmers in our country aren’t producing with the techniques at the Epcot Center?”

The Celebrity Gardner had sent Doc some great vegetables grown from a farm in Northern Ohio using innovative techniques that led to a great discussion from a man on the fore-front of innovative horticulture. Listen to that interview here:

As usual, progressive government with its farm subsidies and other intrusions have created a status quo environment that is actually preventing the beneficial evolution of horticulture evolution. It is a shame now that many of today’s youth won’t have a grandma or grandpa that run a farm. Growing up, both of my grandparents ran farms. Farm life was a fact of life, and was part of the community experience. Many kids today have to go out of their way to see a farm, let alone know somebody that runs one. Heck, most kids are lucky to have contact with two biological sets of grandparents, or even parents, another wonderful legacy of progressivism.

That’s a sad fact, and another sign of weakness in our American Society. Everyone wants to be lawyers, and doctors, and politicians, but nobody wants to be a farmer. Just some of the comments leveled at me, because I love my background, and the backgrounds of my family, that I’m some kind of “hillbilly” or country “hick” of “low intelligence” because I wear a cowboy hat yet live in a “professional” community. Those opinions come from women with rear ends the size of busses and men that surrendered their manhood to dominating women long ago, so I weigh them properly in perspective. Those types of people are shallow in their understanding of how things work, and it’s because of people like that which allow politicians to think we’re all stupid, because those people behave foolishly. They are the first ones to put down a hunter for skinning a deer, because they buy their meat in a grocery store, and they are the first to call a farmer a “hick.”

My wife and I went to Amish Acers up in Indiana one day just for the fun of it. Amish Acers is a really cool community located just on the fringe of the Chicago Skyline, which you can just barely see over the horizon of the Earth. Amish Acres is like the amusement park of everything Amish.

Think what you want about the Amish. They have their religious beliefs, but they have a culture that decided not to follow down a progressive path, and people flock in large herds to Amish Acres to buy “authentic” Amish goods, watch “Amish” plays, and in general experience a much simpler life where things make sense.

What does that say about the American consciousness? American’s deep down inside love quality. We love independence. And we love the simplicity of a straight approach to religion, life, and family. And American’s see in the Amish what they used to be. That’s why they drive to Amish communities to buy items of “quality.”

Horticulture is yet another victim of Progressive ideology, and it is the progressive oriented government that is hindering the wonderful technology that is currently available.

What a shame, because like everything else in our lives, we could have better food and a higher quality of life, if only we had the courage to have it.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

The Majestic Adventure of Space

A sure way to clear your mind is to think from high places. Two of my favorite places on planet earth are the Kennedy Space Center and the Epcot Center because both of those places are about ideas, and perspective.

That’s why this video is a thing of beauty. It is a fine example of the best and brightest that the human mind has yet produced.

The following video is a collection of Space Shuttle launches from 1981 to 2010. I first fell in love with the shuttle program when I was able to stand in one at the Kennedy Space Center. And I will never forget the 3D Imax film they showed at the Center of a shuttle docking with the International Space Station. This video is of the same caliber and is a true thing of marvel.

And here is a camera view from the booster rockets during launch and decent when ejected after the stage 1 process. Enjoy the ride to space and back to the Atlantic Ocean again. When you see the splash down, the rockets will be approximately 150 miles northeast of the Kennedy Space Center.

Once in space there are many questions that transcend the things we think are important back on earth. Perspective is relative. The definitions of what we consider to be time changes subtly at first, then radically.

Ironically, we discover when studying the very large reaches of space that it is the very, very small that affects everything we experience.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Fly A SkyCar Today: The Future of Transportation

So how does America become a primary manufacturer again, where we are exporting something the rest of the world wants, instead of being a primary importer? It seems like a daunting task, after all, we’ve lost the car market to the East, the computer age was born here, but now is developing in the East, and we are no longer pushing the space race in America. In order to recapture the technological lead on the world stage, America would have to invent something dramatically, and radically new, that every person on the face of the planet would want.

Let me introduce the M400 Skycar. It’s a personal Skycar with a top speed of 350 MPH and has a range of 750 miles and a flight ceiling of 30,000 feet. It is the future. Now, there are a lot of videos here. This is one of the rare times that I’ll say the videos are more important than the text I provide. So take your time and watch the videos, all of them. And pass this link on to a friend so the word can get out. I believe this is extremely important to the United States in 2011 and on.

I’ve followed the work of Paul Moller for most of my life and am a tremendous fan of his. So much so, that I dedicated a large part of my book The Symposium of Justice to the M400 Skycar in hopes that the military would see the potential for applications, and get the ball rolling.

Paul Moller is the equivalent to the modern-day Henry Ford, or Bill Gates. His idea could be just as explosive if only politics would embrace the concept and accept that highways, manufacturing unions, and current aerospace manufacturers and their government contracts, are becoming obsolete. Can you imagine the changes that would have to take place in the airline industry? Can you imagine the airline industry lobby against the Skycar concept? Do you think GE would want this technology to emerge unless they had their feet already in the game, which they don’t? If the TSA employees join a union, can you imagine the protests trying to protect their jobs that would be leaving as people gained the independence of personal transport and wouldn’t need TSA Security any longer; all the vehicles would be controlled by GPS Systems? Nobody would be running into buildings with these things because they’d just be riding around like a passenger while computers do all the flying. Of the large aerospace companies, only Boeing has entertained the construction of Skycars so far, so the protective interests are actively in place.

I gave a Powerpoint, to John Boehner so he could possibly do something to help with the lobbyist politics that exist on K-Street and other places so the M400 Skycar could enter the marketplace. I also sent the same Powerpoint to the current President and to the head of General Motors, giving them the idea to “re-invent” themselves. They of course are committed to building electric cars, which will soon be irrelevant.

Does it work? Yes! Now that these tests are completed and on the record, even if Moller never gets this M400 into production, the steps have been taken, and a vertical takeoff personal vehicle will emerge for personal use. The sky is the future because it costs less to maintain and eliminates costly infrastructure need. There will always be need for highways for shipping reasons, but personal transportation of 50 miles or more needs to go to the air. That might seem like science fiction, but it’s currently science fact. All that fact needs is for public consciousness to catch up and accept the technology, and that will happen when people understand how they’ll benefit.

Here is the testing of stability in flight, hovering controls. Pretty important so the vehicle can land in a parking lot with reliability. This is one of the most difficult technical feats the vehicle had to overcome, and it has been successful.

So who is Paul Moller? Meet him here. He has testified before congress on this issue and has worked with NASA. This entire infrastructure is in place now. All it will take to bring it to a reality is for you to demand it. Paul will explain the whole concept, just listen, and enjoy.





I personally can’t wait to have one. For my life style, it will be perfect. I could be in New York within a morning, take care of my business, and be back that night for dinner without any difficulty. Same for Atlanta, Chicago and Washington D.C. since all those cities are within 500 miles from Cincinnati. In other places around the country, the trip from LA to Las Vegas would be minutes, and from San Fran to LA under an hour with most of the flight time being accent and descent. New Yorker’s could be out of the city and up into Connecticut, Vermont and Massachusetts within an hour. No traffic because the GPS system would stack all the destinations at different elevations. Weather conditions would be the only variable, but conditions would be favorable over 95% of the time. Only heavy wind and thunderstorms would prevent flight.

Image the trip from London to Paris, which currently takes a few hours by their high-speed rail system that goes under the English Channel from the time you buy your ticket, get on the train, and arrive at your destination. You could literally travel from the British Museum of Natural History and arrive at The Louver Museum in well under an hour including getting into the Skycar and exiting.

However, there is a lot of resistance to the Skycar out there, particularly from the existing infrastructure, and politics and I have a sincere concern that Paul Moller’s dream may be all too reminiscent of one of my personal hero’s, Preston Tucker. If you don’t know the story, Tucker was a GREAT car builder and was WAY ahead of his time. His car was so ahead of its time that the Big Three put pressure on the government to prosecute Tucker though Senator Ferguson, who was taking lobby money from the Big Three, before he could launch his car to the public. Listen to this clip from the film Tucker: A Man and His Dream as delivered by Jeff Bridges.


This is one of my favorite films. If you haven’t seen it you are missing a classic from Executive Producer George Lucas and Director Francis Ford Coppela.

I don’t want to see Paul Moller become a Preston Tucker. I see dramatic parallels between the two men. I think Moller is a lot more level-headed, and more classical engineering minded where Tucker was a salesman first and an engineer second, Moller has the great ability to stay out of trouble.

Eventually, the Big Three automakers would adapt to the innovations that Tucker introduced in 1948, by the 1970’s. If we were a smart society, we’d learn from history and listen to Paul Moller now, and not shove him into the corner to protect the status quo, and put off technology we need today. Because we may lose it to the East, or to a costly two or three decades only to have it emerge in the distant future anyway. It’s really up to the United States.

Tucker died shortly after his trial, which he was of course innocent, but the experience cost him market delivery of his vastly superior automobile. The Big Three grudgingly adopted many of Tucker’s features but not for another 20 years. The Big Three didn’t want to absorb the cost of competition, so they put him out of business. And that is the problem that Paul Moller will have to overcome. It’s not the technical obstacles that are the problem. It’s the political ones that hold back our country. Here is Tucker’s story.




You can have the world you want if you have the courage to put horse-sense ahead of politics. If that happens, then you could have a Skycar to drive and fly within a decade. You may have a job in the Skycar emerging field in the same time frame, and the United States could return to the world stage as a primary manufacturer of something the rest of the world wants, while China and Japan continue to make cars, which will decline in importance, and become a secondary market item similar in usefulness to a motorcycle or bicycle, and certainly high-speed rail which is next to useless compared to Skycar technology.

But I suspect that history will repeat itself and Paul Moller will go the way of Tucker obscurity, and our great nation the United States will too drift into the cloudy recesses of a foggy morning in history, which once lifted everyone, will wonder if the fog had ever been at all.

It’s up to you.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Think Big! Think Star Wars!

I’ve said more than once, that Star Wars is an excellent study in political science, and is much more sophisticated than just a simple childhood entertainment.

I am extremely pleased to learn that my nephew, who is 6, just received his first toy Millennium Falcon for Christmas.
It’s great for young people, but it’s good for adults too. When you have an imagination without limits, there are few playgrounds for the mind than what you can find in Star Wars. As far as my personal thoughts and philosophy, the clip of Mace Windu below, reflects most accurately my essential foundations.

The politics in Star Wars is sophisticated and worth watching just for the interesting problems that are addressed. But the combat is always entertaining and visually pleasing to look at.
Here is a scene from one of my favorite Star Wars games. This is EPIC!


This TV show is keeping Star Wars alive for a whole new generation. GREAT STUFF!

A lot of people are asking me to run for office. Others are asking me to join their company to help them get their finances in line. But to be honest, I am thinking of retiring when this game comes out. My wife and I are planning to play this together for thousands and thousands of hours!

Star Wars is a great escape when you need it. But its themes are more valuable than just escape, and to me, this scene is the greatest scene of any movie in the history of film.

While it may seem like a lot of information to follow, the topics I have covered on this site, it really is only complicated in relation to other adults that have allowed their minds to be clouded with routine, golf games, shopping and other unnecessary burdens. Star Wars is something my entire family enjoys together, and places our minds on subjects much larger than the silly grip of power that a local trustee or city council member pursues. And because I value the fictional world of Star Wars more than the communist musings of the modern world looking for just an “average” existence that ends in some eventless death, it is easy to see the error many of these small minded politicians pursue. I would rather spend a minute with a deep seated Star Wars nerd than a whole afternoon with a powerful politician, if that tells you anything. Because the Star Wars nerd is spending their time thinking big, where the politician is on the silly little aspects of human achievement that a developing species, in their infantile beginnings, is limited to.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior

www.overmanwarrior.com