Tag: Rich Hoffman

‘Edison’: The biography by Edmund Morris is a fantastic story on the powers of Home Schooling

It doesn’t happen often but when it does, I do a review on great books that I read and one of the best that I’ve read in a while is Edison by Edmund Morris. Sadly, Edmund Morris died in the spring of 2019, just ahead of the publication of one of his great biographies of people who were above and beyond the norm. He is known for his trilogy biography on Teddy Roosevelt which I have adored over the years, and his very controversial book on Ronald Reagan called Dutch. So, it goes without saying that I was looking forward to reading his latest Edison biography with the kind of eagerness that someone might look forward to a new Star Wars movie or a major sporting event. It was something I couldn’t wait to read, and I had an open window to handle the 700 plus page book just after New Years of 2020, and it didn’t disappoint. I read the book a few times just to make sure it was as excellent as I thought it was. Edison, the book, is one of those rare treats where the contents of a great person in Thomas A. Edison matched the wit and wisdom of one of the world’s greatest biographers in carving out an excellent narrative that was bizarrely articulate. I have always loved Edison, but this biography solved a riddle for me that I had been asking about the man all of my life and to unlock it, Morris told the story in reverse.

The book starts with the death of Thomas Edison in 1931 and it actually ends with a baby Edison contemplating space and matter in his first 9 months of life. The purpose of telling the story in reverse which has caused much consternation among critics and the reading public in general was to reveal why Edison was such a passionate inventor working his 20-hour days and sleeping on his work bench most of his life. He was like most people do throughout their lives trying to get back to those wonders of childhood and for him, he never stopped thinking like a child, always inventing and behaving as if answering the questions hidden by nature were the most rewarding thing in the world to do. Morris had to tell the answer of how Edison became who he was by putting the beginning literally at the end so that everything that had been studied throughout Edison’s long life and many thousands of inventions including the lightbulb, the phonograph and extended batteries for use in submarines, were climaxed by a point in his past that could only be articulated in reviewing a life in reverse, the way a dying person may have their life flash before their eyes. Reviewing history in this way took an almost God-like perspective in the context of universal history that was significant and enchanting.

For me it answered a question I have long suspected, and this is common in great thinkers such as Edison, Walt Disney, even great minds of today like Elon Musk and Bill Gates, a little love from a good mother and some independent input from parents in the early phases of a life where other social elements of standardization are removed from a child’s mind, can ignite in a human being great potential. In the case of Edison, he wasn’t made a genius inventor by any school or upper level academic institution which is a point I make often about society in general, but by a mother who worked closely with him to ignite a spectacular man who literally had never been taught to think in a limited fashion. The reason the childhood of Edison was kept to the end of the book was because that was the key to the making of the man to begin with—where he was in his lifetime the most popular man in the world at his death where every world power took a moment to honor him for all that he had done to advance mankind to a new level.

I was even surprised at how much academia was against Thomas Edison through his early years, until he simply outworked his critics and invented so many new things that nobody could even hope to compete with him. I was also surprised to learn that the famous rivalry with Tesla was not so much true but was more a product of a media that wanted to chronical some sort of horse race to sell newspapers. It was remarkably like the way we call Fake News today in covering the Trump administration. Edison did not have much formal schooling, even through grade school, so he had never learned what couldn’t be done, which is a continued plague among most of our fellow human beings. Edison was remarkable because he had never learned not to be.

Even though Edmund Morris the writer was considered, and still is even in his death, one of the great academics of our times by way of writers, his books have this common theme that he has managed to uncover about people of exceptional ability, such as Teddy Roosevelt and Thomas Edison. When reading Dutch, which Morris was invited into the White House to study Reagan for that book, you can see through his writing that Morris was almost disappointed in the man because he was not Teddy Roosevelt, but simply an actor who had learned to take on the character of America and play it in the 1980s to unite the country to defeat communism and unleash the power of our capitalist economy. The man himself was not one of these special people and Morris had to invent a narrative character controversially to give himself emotional distance to the subject to get through the project. That certainly wasn’t the case with Edison. It was obvious that after spending thousands of hours studying Edison to even write this book, that Morris loved the man, and for good reason. After finishing that book, I did too.

I was at a bookstore in Disney World holding this book in my hand thinking of buying it, but we were on vacation and I didn’t have the time for it then, so I held off a few weeks longer. But I was thinking of Edison while at Disney Springs where they have a restaurant there dedicated to Thomas Edison that I was very enchanted with. I knew of Edison all the usual things, that he was in fact the founder of General Electric, and that he had done great things for the war efforts. But I didn’t know he was such a good person, not so much with his wives and his kids, but as an individual who really had just never grown up. Even though he was practically deaf and lacked a lot of compassion for others the way that people measure it, he was authentic and did not waste his time looking in the rear-view mirror at anybody. I appreciated that restaurant while visiting Disney Springs, but I think now I have a lot more reverence for it, and deservedly so. Thomas Edison was a great man, not necessarily because of any other reason but because his mother taught him the love of life and the boundless rewards that can come from a thinking mind, and thus, we are all the better for it. Just imagine if our society produced hundreds of Thomas Edison’s every year instead of every other century.

Rich Hoffman

Rich Hoffman

Become a Millionaire Overnight: Coronavirus deaths in China are much less than 1%, so why the panic?

You have to understand dear reader that goal of the CDC and other agencies warning about the spread of the coronavirus to the United States is to create an artificial fear that will disrupt the economy, to not only incite a short term hit to the stock market, but to produce a bad quarterly economic report around the time that the Democrat convention is about to announce its nominee. If the FBI was in on a scandal to overthrow the 2016 election working with the DNC to do so, then the CDC is up to the same kind of activism in hopes to cause poor economic news that might torpedo President Trump’s election in the upcoming fall. However, like all the attempts as before, the Russian hoax, the fake impeachment which went nowhere, the liberal establishment is using fear to attempt to capitalize off China’s fake news attempt in a similar fashion, to cover-up their poor economic performance after the Trump trade war. They hope that if the news can cover up the economic story in China, then perhaps it might incite people in America into a panic that might hurt Trump. But its more fake news, because the real value of the Dow is now over 29,000. If I were you, I would buy up some stock for those companies today, within the hour because when these kinds of things happen, its time to profit off the chaos, and to turn it around on the perpetrators.

Oh, don’t be naive and toss this news to the pile of conspiracy theories that are floating around out there. For anybody who has been to a Thanksgiving dinner full of deceitful family members pretending to like each other for the sake of the ritual knows to what level every single human being alive is capable of compunction and if profit for them is spelled out clearly, they will utilize it. For many such people employed at the CDC, the FBI, or the DNC, such compunction is obvious, and easy. They are motivated to stop President Trump by any means necessary, and if they have to try to scare people away from voting for him by taking away his greatest triumph, the economy, then they will do it with the fear of death and not think twice about it. Never underestimate the levels of evil that people will undertake to achieve something deceitful, and it is they who will be the first to call such a suggestion, a conspiracy theory. If you know people, you know that they are perfectly capable of such a malicious attempt, even if it causes trillions of dollars of temporary losses at the stock market. I would say to those thinking of what to do with their own investments, push it all in and make yourself a millionaire. The recovery will be back to pushing at 30,000 within a month.

A good indicator of such ability at market manipulation is from the primary opponents to Donald Trump who are fellow billionaires, two of them from New York, George Soros, Tom Steyer, and Mini Mike himself, the former mayor of New York, Bloomberg of Bloomberg media. Pouring a little of their money into the media system is a good way to trigger selloffs, they know how that game is played because that’s how they got rich in the first place, buying low and selling high. They know how to drive down a stock price and two of those people are running for president against Trump right now. In the United States the coronavirus isn’t much more dangerous than the common cold, more people are dying of the common cold presently than this new Chinese contraption. The virus feeds off people living in third world conditions and let’s face it, most of China is. It will not be a problem in the United States, where every part of the country has access to first world resources.

But don’t expect the money of Bloomberg, Steyer, and Soros to let the public know that. Mini Mike knows the only way he has a remote chance at beating President Trump in a fair election is if he can take down the great Trump economy, and that is what this coronavirus nonsense is all about. Likely, there are many other sources of revenue pouring into the media through ghostly sources, but if you trace the money beyond the tributaries, those three names will likely be at the head of it, but committed in a way that does not directly tie them to the panic. This panic is just more fake news, it was that way in China and it is even more that way in the United States. Presently the number of deaths from coronavirus is 2,362. Does anybody know what that is in percentage of China’s total population? Its not even 1% of the population. There are more people likely being killed each day from a hammer falling off the top of a house than are dying from this disease, so the reporting of it is meant to be misleading and to instill panic. Even more likely, there are many more people dying in China from elements of a common cold that go unreported as usual because statistically, the numbers are so small. And proportionally, the same story could be told in South Korea and Iran where more of these stories about the coronavirus are spreading. The story is a hoax. The disease might be real, but the impact it is projected to have on the world is.

But to accept that we must accept that we have so little faith in organizations like the CDC that is always looking for a handout for more government money, that this is an advertising blitz for them to get more congressional approvals for their work. Nothing like a deadly disease prevention action to jack up their funding levels, and to help harm the chances that a declining economy might hurt Trump from being re-elected. We must accept that people can be this cruel, that they would wreck fortunes and destroy lives for political motivations if those motivations serviced their desires. Even Sam Donaldson is taking a check from Mini Mike, imagine all the media outlets who are starving for some of that Mini Mike money in ads. A deadly virus outbreak is even better especially if it helps the guy that is pouring so much money through advertisements that they’d like to see continue coming. If only they could help get Bloomberg over 15%, maybe he’ll continue wasting his money?

Yes, people who are behind spreading this virus killer news think you are stupid and overly emotional, and they are trying to capitalize off your fears. Just like the left does with school levies, with Social Security—practically anything that Democrats have their name on, fear is their driving force. And because China started this rumor of a mass coronavirus outbreak several money movers jealous of Trump in the United States are piggy backing off it to attempt to drive down the stock market and hurt the great economic news that has so far been a part of Trump’s entire term. It’s the only chance they have left in the tank before the election, and, thinking the way that these guys do, it’s a chance for them to get even richer off the panic. And that is why dear reader, they think you are a sucker, a fool, and a loser who might switch your vote to them.

But wait, you still doubt what I’m saying to you? Well, think about this, usually when the media reports that there is trouble in the stock market, they always speculate as to the cause, but the evidence is always vague. However, in this case, most of the media outlets over the last couple of days, even reporting the issue before the markets even opened planted the seeds to the virus being the driver with great certainty. And that is what we all call old fashioned misdirection and an attempt to shape public opinion to enact a cause and desired political effect.

Rich Hoffman

George Lang Was Always a Leader in the Tea Party: When education and book exchanges were important

It is odd, and obviously full of politics to be a part of discussions defending George Lang’s Tea Party support during the height of the movement and for myself to be associated with the establishment because of it. But then again, so be it. As I have been saying a lot this year with President Trump going into his fourth year in office, and a much different, and better world as a result especially on the investment side, at some point those on the outside get on the inside and what they do with that opportunity will define future history. To get feedback from old friends from those times suggesting that I was never a Tea Party supporter is laughable, as I was clearly one of the leaders of the movement, and did so at a great cost to myself, which I’d do again over and over. But for me there always needs to be an end to a project, and the Tea Party movement was a project needing a resolution. And George Lang along with his wife Debbie were of the same mind. They enjoyed going to the meetings and talking to people and learning things about how our government should work. But at some point you have to evolve past the rock chucking phase, and become part of the management team that takes over, and does things right.

As much as people attempted to demonize the Tea Party movement it was never a bunch of crazy radicals and far right ideologues. Mostly they were older people who knew something was wrong and they wanted to educate themselves to learn what it was. The Tea Party in the pre-Trump days had a few rallies here and there to show they were a force to be reckoned with, and they tipped the scales in some elections toward a more Republican party more representative of their values, but what I enjoyed about it was that it was more intellectual than anything, as book sharing and discussions were the centerpiece of the movement. Books like the Thousand Year Leap, Atlas Shrugged, Common Sense and even reading the Constitution and understanding it were the focus of activity that was largely leaderless. The Tea Party didn’t need a leader, because it was really books that was guiding everyone’s interest and at Tea Party events it was a chance to get together with other like minded people and to talk about these things.

That was actually how I met George Lang and his wife, we liked the same books and enjoyed getting away from the rigors of the world to talk about smart stuff at Tea Party meetings. There was always the elements of the Tea Party meetings that had people very concerned about some big brother control of their lives who protested back then the smart meters that were being put on everyone’s homes to regulate their use of power, and those people have evolved into protestors of 5G wireless service. I was never one of those types so much, I figure the Second Amendment trumps over concerns of little bureaucrats trying to impose on my family how much laundry we can do in a day, so I don’t worry about those things much. And as to 5G, I never really got involved in that debate because I like technology. Sure all these communication waves are flying around and through our bodies at all kinds of rates blasting our atoms with constant intruders, but I expect most human beings will evolve to match the challenges of technology. And to me technology means business, and business means economic prosperity for regional need. Again, with the Second Amendment, I’m not too worried about some evesdropper using 5G to spy on me. If I catch them, I’ll deal with them in my own way. But I like the technology options that come with the changing world.

After Trump was elected there wasn’t much in the Tea Party left for people like George and me. It was actually during the Republican primaries where people were pretty upset with me for supporting Donald Trump over Ted Cruz and other Tea Party picks for president that I lost touch with all those old friends. It was a clear situation where we had all become bitter rivals during 2016 and the Tea Party pretty much dissolved in disagreement over who anybody should support for president. I have been to a few Tea Party meetings since Trump was elected, and clearly once Trump won, people united on the issue, but the educational effort wasn’t the same. The Tea Party had fallen into a status of victimhood, of below the line behavior that isn’t attractive to me, and really couldn’t justify my time any longer. The same thing looks to have happened with George Lang and many other politicians like him who used to come as long as the meetings were places where they could justify the time. But just to sit around complaining about things wasn’t why the Tea Party was good, so the effort fell apart once a lot of the things that we had wanted to see was now happening in the White House, fiscal responsibility, free markets, and an optimistic look toward the future.

However for some in the Tea Party, it was their chance to point at every boogieman on the horizon and to isolate themselves from a solution, and largely that is what it has become to my eyes, which of course happens everywhere that leadership is absent. George Lang was a member of leadership within the Tea Party movement and once he found other things to put his mind on, and many others like him across the country, the movement weakened and dissolved into what it is today. I view it as something nice that I was a part of for a while, but now its time to do all the things we talked about, and that’s what’s going on. George is part of that puzzle along with other great people who came out of the West Chester Tea Party like Mark Welch, Ann Becker and T.C. Rogers who as a commissioner for Butler County came to most every meeting from 2010 until 2015. The meetings changed from book exchanges to complaint sessions and at that point the political leaders stopped going to the meetings and now there are clear divisions which is normal in any organization that loses its focus. In the beginning, the Tea Party was about education, not activism. Now it’s about activism which is much less conducive to people’s time, especially when they are part of the solution as elected officials. People like George Lang, and myself included, are turning our eyes to fixing the problems we had been concerned about, while what’s left of the Tea Party is still looking for that rally cry to continue with. Some people find comfort in spending time with people of like mind, so the Tea Party gives them something to rally behind, even though the pendulum has swung to our side and management is now up to us. But to say that we were never Tea Party supporters, George Lang and I, is like saying there was never a sun in the sky or clouds during a rainstorm. Its just not a proper statement. It might be a wish, but its certainly not a fact. What has changed is that some coming out of the Tea Party want to actually do something about everything we learned while in it, and now is the time for that action. Complaining about everything was never what the Tea Party was, but it is what it has evolved in to.

Rich Hoffman

Nobody Cares about Moderates: People want blood, and to step on the neck of a rival

It was a great example of what I have been talking about when President Trump gave a defiant speech at a rally in Colorado Springs to a fanatical audience. Michael Bloomberg had just had a disastrous debate and was getting really bad press, Roger Stone had just been sentenced to 3 years of prison as swirls of rumors that Trump would pardon him swelled, and the media in general was starting to really see that Trump was an unstoppable force. That’s when the calls for reaching out to more moderates from him to them became most audible, as it always does. I have been saying in elections and in all things in life really, that moderates are not the keys to success, but are only the late comers to something new. They are the last to see, and their sentiments usually go to whomever is winning. So when the calls to Trump were to reach out to them otherwise he wasn’t ever going to be considered a legitimate president were only attempts by the blind to listen to something that might slow down the political momentum of our times.

But Trump understood the game, as was clear at every speech he has given. People vote for a winner not some soft bellied tell all who puts their opinions to the wind and lets those moderates play king maker. That may have been how things were done, but that’s not the way things are supposed to be. Even in some of these local elections around my home in Cincinnati where the term “people over politics” is used, the sentiment is that politics had become so emotional and contentious, and that we need to get back to where we all love each other and can have a conversation. But those were also the days of the moderates, where the fence sitters decided the temperament because the belief had been that gradually politicians had to reach them in order to get decent fundraising, and decent press. However, that premise has always been wrong. People vote for those most impassioned, who will say and do anything to win, and those precious moderates will follow the winner. All someone needs to do is win, and they will find an army of followers waiting for them—moderates included.

The entire political approach to life has been wrong for a great number of years, people don’t vote so much on ideas, but on winners. For the same reasons that a fan of the NFL might buy a jersey late in the season of a team going to the playoffs, a political moderate will join one side or the other based on the ability to garner wins. That is a reality to voting patterns that losers obviously do not want to see revealed to the world. A lot of politicians join those ranks because they don’t want to have to compete with the real world, especially Democrats, so letting it out that winning elections is the key to success in politics and not some sentiment of reaching out to fence dwelling moderates is devastating. I’ve stated often that the keys that make Trump a great president are not some wisdom gained in books, or an understanding of strategy learned on the battlefield of the military, it was in his experience with sports, especially his work in the Hall of Fame of the WWE.

The falsehood that political moderates are so important came from those who are not very aggressive and tend to be losers in life, or soft-hearted timid types. Due to their limp natures they can play by no other rules, so that leaves them vulnerable to the true rules of politics which was on full display at the Democrat debate. Of course Trump had a right to be upset with A.B. Stoddard while on the Neil Cavuto show describing Michael Bloomberg’s debate performance with Donald Trump who spent a considerable amount of time at the Colorado rally explaining that he had won every debate during his own primary a few years before, and Bloomberg had a long way to go before winning his first. The true intentions of Stoddard and people like her is to keep the public focus on why politicians need to continue reaching out to moderates instead of digging in and becoming so divisive. But digging in and sticking to what you believe is what wins, and why people are willing to wait all night for a place in line just to hear President Trump talk. That might make people who like the old system, fence sitting moderates themselves unhappy, but that’s not the fault of reality. People like a winner, not a cry baby and they like people who believe firmly in something because so many people don’t. They wait for others to tell them that its OK.

When Trump defended his right to possibly pardon Roger Stone by saying that Comey had lied and so had many other FBI agents to congress, so why was anything Roger Stone had done different? Well, moderates have always told us that two wrongs don’t make a right. Religious figures tell us to turn the other cheek. Then everyone wonders why their rights get trampled on time and time again and they feel they never have representatives who believe anything in elected office. Of course, two wrongs can make a right. If they stick it to you, you have a right to stick it to them, and even more so. To hit them so hard that they can’t even show their face in this universe. People want to see the kill shot; they don’t want to see people shaking hands at the end of a debate. They want to see their guy or girl making a belt out of their opponent. That is what wins elections with a majority vote, passion realized through action.

Trump’s job is and never was to reach out to moderates. His job is to get his base so revved up that they will vote for him and other Republicans on election day and clearly Cavuto and Stoddard were thinking about that after that Democrat debate for president. They were trying to play that moderate game, but it wasn’t working, and its quite clear that if those are the rules, Democrats are going to lose big in this upcoming election. And that might hurt the feelings of moderates who are used to being the deciding factor in the politics of old. But today, they will be expected to join the party once the victory is obtained because what makes them moderates to begin with is a lack of passion for their own thoughts. So they will do as they always do and that is root for the team that wins, no matter what side they are on. Playing nice with the other side is not the way to win in politics but taking the kill shot is. And that reality is something that Democrats cannot escape, because they have built that system of moderates through the media and now, they have lost control. They don’t like it, but too bad. I certainly didn’t like the old system and clearly most Trump supporters feel about it just as I have. They’d rather see kill shots in politics than opposing forces shaking hands with some ridiculous show of sportsmanship. What people want is a winner and any politician that can give them one is the one who will win those precious office seats. And that trend isn’t new, just recently utilized.

Rich Hoffman

The World Didn’t Suddenly Go Nuts: Its always been the way it is, what’s different is that people have choices

There are many who are confused by the politics of our times, who are looking at what’s going on and thinking that the world has come unglued and is about to fly apart. I would argue that these elements were always there, but that the freedoms of modern life have brought forth the truth thoughts of people and now that the froth has boiled a bit, the scum that has risen to the top is purifying our society for the better. It was clear to me that for the Republicans that it was the Tea Party movement that was starting that process, which would have happened whether or not Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck had ever been on the radio. Rather, it was the need of a public seeking answers that gave them the platform to do their thing, they didn’t make the thing themselves. The result was that true definitions of conservative values were challenged, and the party evolved into what has become Donald Trump. As the evolution of politics was boiling off all the definitions into clarity the Democrat Party was attempting to do the same only they interfered with the process and suppressed the Bernie Sanders surge in favor of Hillary Clinton, the Party pick for president for all kinds of artificial reasons. Because of that interference, that is why they are having troubles now.

As I have said for many years, socialism and communism have been at the heart of not just the labor movement, but of the entire Democrat Party going well back into the 1960s—even back to the 1930s, even the 20s. The concept of public ownership of resources seemed smart to a world that didn’t know better, but after a century of looking at the situation clearly, we can now all say that Karl Marx was smoking crack when he wrote The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital with Friedrich Engels. The idea of communism was doomed from the start because it ignores the motivations of the human race and instead imposes on it some mystical hope that assumes that intellect is subservient to nature, and its not. Intellect is born of nature, not a threat to it. So communism and all its various ideas were tried, and failed, however the Democrat Party built its entire platform around various forms of its definitions without ever saying the word to themselves openly. They hoped that by the time regular people figured out what the Democrat Party was, after years of public education, after years of union membership, after all the pushes for equal rights which were not meant to bring fairness to all, but to establish in the minds of normal people the idea that all individuals would serve the state, not their own needs, then maybe their ideas of communism would stick.

But since Republicans had that honest debate, as many sat on the fence between those two worlds, politicians like Mitt Romney, John McCain, and even known moderates like the old Ohio governor John Kasich, the never-Trumper Bill Kristol and many, many others, they had to reposition themselves on the political spectrum, many discovering about themselves that they were Democrats and not Republicans, the Democrats themselves now find their party fractured without a modern definition as to what they are, and they are clearly lost. That brings us to the present problem which was obvious on the debate stage in Las Vegas at the Democrat debate for president, especially between Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Michael Bloomberg, Mayor Pete and Elizabeth Warren. Bloomberg the billionaire trying to buy his way into their good graces could not answer the sheer hatred that the socialist minded on that stage have for money and wealth. Bernie Sanders just as he was in the last election is the preferred candidate of the Democrats and its time they have that honest answer about their true identity otherwise they will be utterly destroyed.

When Bernie Sanders had the rally the other day where the topless women stormed on his stage there really wasn’t anything unusual about it. Those people have always been there, the radicals, the crazies, the far left communist loving advocates of a society of equals where they eat anybody who might be a threat to the status quo, and who hope to live under the radar living and dying for causes greater than the needs of individual lives. The difference between now and a time prior is that Trump’s election has separated away the good, normal people of a healthy society into a unified fashion of hopes and dreams leaving all the crazies literally naked and afraid. For many years they had been hiding in the masses, disguised as emos at the corner of a New York City street waiting in a crowd for a light to change. Or they were gathered in a booth in the corner of a Waffle House popping zits on their greasy shoulders because they haven’t bathed in days and their body oils were looking for some place to escape under their Matrix like trench coats and hair that hadn’t been washed in over a week. They were hidden from view because the message everyone received in their public educations stated that we don’t judge anybody and that everyone had a right to live anyway they wanted no matter what it was. No individual was greater than any other, everyone was equally at fault and deficient.

Well, that press is what split our nation because not everyone has been willing to accept that premise. When Donald Trump stepped into the race many who had been hoping that Paul Ryan would bring Ayn Rand’s wisdom to the Republican Party had found a true representative of their needs and that is when the cover for the communists was ripped away and they were left exposed without a proper philosophical position to disguise their true intent. For many of the crazed radicals, life taught them as they got older that they needed to be more conservative in their personal policies, that they needed to get mortgages, buy cars and pay their bills to advance in life, and that they couldn’t just rip off their shirts and parade around naked in protest of dairy products. But so long as the saner elements of our society were not passing judgment, there was some cover for the lunatics. However, Donald Trump’s election was a value judgement vote, people voted to have a good economy, they voted for the super model who lived in a gold penthouse, and they voted for a television celebrity who was actually proud to be a billionaire, because many would like to have a chance at making a lot of money themselves, and into living the good life that comes from it. They didn’t want Das Kapital to run their lives, they wanted Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.

So its not hard to see what is happening and to predict the future. Michael Bloomberg isn’t going to go anywhere. He can pay off the media, but he can’t make himself likeable. And I don’t think people will ever be ready for a gay guy or a gay woman in visible leadership roles. Nobody wants to see gay behavior in public let alone on a stage running for president. Sex in itself is gross, but people put up with public affections because they assume that children will be the bi-product, and everyone loves kids, the hope of the future. But sex in itself is pretty gross, and sex that doesn’t produce children is not something people will ever be willing to publicly accept, so Mayor Pete isn’t going anywhere. Joe Biden is one of those lost in the shuffle, he’s had the covers ripped away and now he’s exposed to a dark world he has been ignoring his entire life. Elizabeth Warren is much the same, as a New England academic, she is forever lost to the campus antics of academia and its love of Karl Marx, and nothing else. That leaves essentially only Bernie Sanders who represents what the true Democrat Party has always been about because like Trump, he has at least been honest from the very beginning as to who he was. And that has allowed the political spectrum to pick clear sides which is where the nation is, for that great debate that has been poised to happen for decades. And this election year we will have it, and there will be clear losers and winners. Everyone isn’t equal, and that is what is being learned much to the distress of the topless protestors and trenchcoated wearing communists who had hoped to hide for a while longer, but no longer can.

Rich Hoffman

Kathy Wyenandt the Democrat Lakota Tax Supporter: Apparently they want a rematch

I think its very interesting that Kathy Wyenandt is still celebrating the passage of the Lakota levy of 2013 as her calling card to get into the Ohio Senate. At a recent debate some of the things I heard her say about her role in passing that levy stirred me the wrong way. In ways that I’ve written plenty on, that levy was personal and had evolved well beyond just a healthy debate between opposing sides. When she talks about No Lakota Levy as the organized resistance to the tax increases that were proposed three other times prior and went down to defeat, it was my face that was in the front of it, and it was my reputation that they attacked when they couldn’t win any other way, so I disagree with Kathy Wyenandt who became the fourth campaign attempt at passing that ridiculous tax increase at Lakota schools. After listening to her I think we need to set the record straight because there was some really bad action going on with that effort for which Kathy was in the middle of and we need to talk about it.

Kathy Wyenandt is taking credit for her role in passing that tax increase so let’s review what happened. After three levy attempts for which I was the spokesman of the No Lakota Levy group the school board targeted me personally to get me out of the way of their opposition for another attempt which they were talking about doing in the following spring. I had two problems with that, the voters had spoken on three previous attempts, a resounding no, and Lakota wasn’t listening. Instead they made it personal and went after my character directly, siding with the Cincinnati Enquirer in bringing great harm to my reputation in an effort to smoke out all the No Lakota Levy supporters whom I represented often on WLW radio. The organized labor efforts of the teacher’s union and the levy supporting moms of Lakota went on quite a campaign against me, because they couldn’t beat the arguments I poised at them in live debates on the radio, on stage at various forums, and anywhere else they wanted to fight. Because their premise on the whole thing was wrong. So they lobbied WLW to stop supporting the No Lakota Levy campaign, which led to the firing of my radio friend Doc Thompson while on his honeymoon, which was a very low blow to him.  He and I talked about the situation and he spilled the beans to me as to what went on behind the scenes at WLW in conjunction with Lakota lobbyists, all which occurred at the same time in a coordinated fashion.  No school system should have that kind of power against the tax payers who pay their bills and hire them to manage their district. There were other elements, but the Lakota position was certainly a corporate decision on behalf of Clear Channel that wasn’t there in the 2013 election.

I had my much publicized fight with the core levy supporters when I called them all “latte sipping prostitutes” essentially as I was outraged that those people did not respect the previous 3 elections and kept scheming and plotting until they got their property tax increase, and it caused a separation of No Lakota Levy from my representation. I wanted out in a lot of ways because I was sick of talking about education issues. I wanted to publish a book I had been working on that wasn’t related at all to public education, yet my actions with the Lakota levy was setting me up on all kinds of television, radio, and other public formats that wanted me to be their education spokesman, so the longer the Lakota levy issue went on, the more trapped in it I became. I was hoping that after that third attempt they would stop and listen. But they didn’t, instead they spent more tax money on more consensus building efforts and showed they intended to try for a fourth wasting more of my time, so I blew up and the rest is history. We agreed to a cease fire, I moved on to other things and Lakota started plotting for that fourth attempt a year and a half later for which Kathy Wyenandt was brought in to help. And even with all that, they only won by 1% of the vote, not at all a stout and convincing victory. No Lakota Levy was there to organize a resistance but in looking back, I think we all agree we should have stuck together and if we had, there is no way that Lakota would have won. If Lakota tries again, we are talking about getting the band back together again.

The big turn in the vote was Sheriff Jones, the popular Republican who thought it was time to support Lakota because they had promised to use some of the money for increased security. Many of the No Lakota Levy people were willing to join with Jones to give Lakota a chance and some voters followed, enough to give Lakota a very small victory. After the win, Lakota did with the money exactly what I said they would do, they gave raises to the teachers even though they should have been laying off due to declining enrollment. They had been operating as a surplus for several years due to that declining enrollment but now they find themselves in the same trajectory of surplus spending and are talking about yet another levy. I just had a talk with several No Lakota Levy people the other day and we are seriously considering to meet that levy attempt in the same way we did on the previous three attempts that defeated the tax increase. Playing nice like many of them wanted to in that 2013 attempt stung in the end and the taste has been bad for everyone because many feel like they were lied to by Lakota. We have all been focused in getting a third conservative vote on the school board, but that has been not nearly as effective as just voting no on school levies. But the status quo of just passing more property tax increases every so many years is just not an acceptable option. If Kathy Wyenandt wants to take credit for that tax increase, which she clearly does, then have at it. But the truth of the matter was that Sheriff Jones changed the numbers, and we had split our efforts within No Lakota Levy. Only by dividing and conquering did the levy pass. It wasn’t that Kathy reached across the aisle to Republicans and Democrats to build a coalition. It was simply that Jones and his followers wanted to give Lakota a chance, which they have squandered.

I have spoken to Kathy on several occasions now and everyone seems surprised that I am not some raving lunatic on that matter. In fact during the three previous levy attempts I was very friendly with everyone, including the pro levy people. I was always happy to argue the facts. But I have a very bad temper, I can handle it just fine, but when someone punches at me or even thinks to, it doesn’t go well for the perpetrator.  I have never taken an attack on me lightly and when Joan Powell and Julie Shaffer on the school board decided to attack me personally, that was the end of the cordial activity. It was they who weren’t listening to what the voters said, and insisted on continuing to make levy attempts until they wore voters out into just saying yes. It was one of the most crooked schemes I have ever seen and it ruined my thoughts on public education forever. I don’t think those people should be anywhere near educating the next generation and I could tell stories all day for the record, and if this extortion scheme wasn’t so wide spread in virtually every government school, there would be serious legal issues.  I have not told all the stories I know about these people because honestly, I have wanted Lakota to improve its image, for or community’s sake.  But since its government, it gets overlooked and we are all supposed to take it smiling.  It was with each levy attempt that Lakota made that caused me to think that the John Dewey system of education was a ridiculous failure that needed to be completely reinvented, which is where I am on all education topics these days. Most of the No Lakota Levy supporters do not feel as strongly as I do on the matter, they just don’t want to get ripped off by the school that harms their projects. I however think public education as a concept needs a complete re-invention, so I don’t want to spend a further dime on any of it until we have that discussion. If not for my experiences with the Lakota levy attempts, I might not feel that way, but the more I learned, the more I despised the process.

It certainly helped that when Kathy Wyenandt came along, she didn’t look like the bottom of someone’s shoe the way previous pro school advocates presented themselves. That certainly helped take the edge off all the hatred that had been brewing between the various groups in the process. But that hatred was created by Lakota not listening to the voters and insisting that they just keep going to the voters until an election went their way. They cut busing as an extortion tactic, they took away sports programs, they played lots of games when the real meat of their problem was their excessive payroll. Kathy made it easy for Sheriff Jones and some other local leaders to give Lakota a chance, which they have blown, of course. And if Kathy wants a rematch, let’s have it. I bet Lakota wouldn’t get 1% of the vote today. And I think she knows that which is why she wants this senate job, because everyone knows Lakota is going to try for another tax increase because they do not have control of their budget. And when that happens, Kathy wants to be in Columbus so she doesn’t have to face the fact that the levy win in 2013 was a falsehood of smoke and mirrors, and once people realize that, she won’t be able to use it for an opportunity for higher office.

I am always happy to have a professional debate and discussion about everything. I am used to dealing with people who do not agree 100% with my view of the world and I can talk to a person like Kathy and many of these other pro tax advocates without getting mad at them. But when they take a shot at me and make it personal, then my policy is worse than Donald Trump’s policy of hitting back twice as hard. I tend to hit back until there is nothing left of the other side and I do that in everything in my life. So any past that we have had where Lakota used people like Kathy Wyenandt to advance a tax position they shouldn’t even have been asking for is on them, and all the anger that came from that attempt which is still as strong today, if not stronger, than it was prior to 2013. The problem was and always has been that after the first levy attempt that was defeated way back in 2010, Lakota should have managed their labor contracts differently. But instead they chose to pass their mismanagement off onto the community to cover the insane expenses of their collective bargaining agreements to the taxpayer, most of which do not have children in the school system. And today there are more of those people voting than there were in 2010, so a rematch to set the record straight would be a welcomed occasion. Whether or not its No Lakota Levy or some update of that concept, I’ll be there to meet it with those also interested, and the truth will be obvious.

Rich Hoffman

The Debate for the 4th District Senate Seat in Ohio: George Lang was the clear winner

Prior to the primary election for the 4th District Ohio Senate Seat where George Lang, Kathy Wyenandt, and Lee Wong debated for that seat, the video included was done by TvHamilton at the Benison Event Center. For those seeking to understand the candidates prior to casting a vote, here they are. One notable mention is the disgraced GOP candidate Candice Keller who did not come to participate. It appears that this was the last of the candidate forums before the primary and she had not been participating anyway, so she was represented here by an empty seat off to the side of Lee Wong. Feel free to share these contents with a friend, neighbor, or curious onlooker intending to vote on March 17th along with the brief summation that is included.

Without question to my eyes George Lang won this debate easily, and he should be the next senator for the 4th District. But ultimately its in the hands of the voters. George’s answers were very polished, as we’d expect, and was the obvious choice deserving a vote. As is clear in the debate George can hit all the notes and appeal to the voter base that has various degrees of passion about the topics that are important to us all. Few people but George could have talked about Agenda 21—something that few established politicians could ever get away with, and he appealed to moderates by stating that he was friends with Kathy Wyenandt and was willing to work with anybody over anything. He is very Donald Trumpish in that he has quite a range of abilities in communication that just about anybody can relate to, yet with his core beliefs, he believes in helping businesses which obviously help voters with good jobs and secure futures. He is also a big Second Amendment guy who is every bit as committed as the most staunch supporter without the drama of a crazed radical.

And as the current Ohio 52nd District representative in the Ohio House, a seat that Kathy lost to him in her attempt to enter a political seat as something other than a school levy supporter for the Lakota schools, George specified what he has been doing and wishes to continue to do to bring more business opportunities to Ohio. As he pointed out there are several problems that are facing our state, for one, we are bleeding young people. Our youth are leaving for destinations they perceive have more opportunities leaving us in a bad state for attracting workers for more industry wanting to move into the area. As he said, that is leaving a recruiting problem for less imaginative industry that is looking for fertile recruiting grounds for their businesses and with so many youth leaving the state after they attend college, the numbers just haven’t been there. Personally, I think this is a problem of human resource departments and not the actual demographics, but George wants to overcome that problem with incentives to have a booming population that can attract the best that the world has to offer by way of jobs. For instance, he used Butler County as the example of how the rest of the state should look, which currently has a population of around 400,000 people of good income and plenty of opportunity.

One issue that was talked about in somewhat agreement by all the candidates was Ed Choice which is currently bringing great stress to public schools all across the state with report cards that they think are unfair as vouchers are now traveling from students to the private school of their choice leaving the broken funding model that schools use exacerbated beyond repair with worry in how to maintain their exploding budgets. As George pointed out correctly, the government schools are strapped with regulatory burdens that make it hard for them to compete with private schools and he is looking for options to make it more fair for them to attract customers as the trend is to send money to the students and not the school real estate that the schools reside within. Kathy had articulate answers but unfortunately she has a long way to go to fully understand the true problem. The state of Ohio cannot come up with a proper funding model for their schools so long as the budgets that they are asking for is filled with entirely too much Parkinson’s Law, where school levies get passed and the labor unions lobby for more increases to consume the total amount of surplus that is gained in property taxes. George’s ideas are moving more to deregulating the impositions that public schools have to live up to with report card needs mandated by the state, whereas Kathy’s thoughts were to protect the system that we have in place that has all the inflated funding in it. Lee Wong didn’t know what to say, he hardly seemed to understand what the question was.

Speaking of Lee, the West Chester Trustee who is running as a Republican, he stated during this debate that he thought of healthcare as a right. I’ve been saying about him that he is a Democrat that is only running as a Republican because Butler County is full of members of the GOP, which is why things tend to be so good. He has no other path to office other than to try to sell himself as a Republican whereas he is clearly a Democrat, even a socialist in many cases with positions like his on healthcare. Of course, George’s answer is to have more competition and to bring down the costs with more options. Kathy as the only stated Democrat on the stage was looking for more of a centralized committee approach that is aligned with other Democrats on the matter. But clearly she wasn’t very interested in the topic as her primary concern resides on education issues which constitutes her only real political achievement, the passage of the Lakota levy of 2013 which instantly gave raises to teachers, some of which were making six figures, and placing those inflated wages on the backs of Lakota residents who weren’t very happy once they learned what Lakota really wanted to do with the money they extracted from the public.

Essentially the summary of the debate was that Kathy Wyenandt agreed with George on most every issue except for school funding, because that’s her only real experience going into this election. She’s essentially an education lobbyist who thinks she has enough juice to deal with multirange needs as a senator, and compared to George, she has a lot to learn. Lee Wong is an old rival of George’s from West Chester and he really didn’t seem to care if he won or not. His hope seems to be to help Candice Keller with a split West Chester vote that might hurt George and give a radical rival a chance to knock George down in the primary. He was unprepared for this debate and obviously aloof. Only George Lang showed any real promise as a state senator in the kind of capacity that is expected out of the job. And that really isn’t a surprise, but it is good for everyone to see for themselves, for those who couldn’t attend that night. The proof is here, you don’t have to take anybody’s word for it, watch it for yourself and be sure to vote on March 17th, 2020.

Rich Hoffman

Voters have a lot to be angry about with Kathy Wyenandt: Remembering Todd Portune and his “people over politics” theatrics

Of course George Lang still needs to win the Republican primary in March before looking ahead to the Democrat challenger for the 4th District Seat for Senate in Ohio Kathy Wyenandt, but there are a few things about her campaign already that is disturbing, and they’ve come up before. One of the reasons Lang had to raise so much money for that 4th District Seat is because he needs to beat two Republican primary challengers then a very likeable Democrat in Kathy in a county that liberals would love to turn more purple than the hard red that it has been. Liberals hope to do that with women candidates who can cross over invisible political boundaries for voters earned and unearned and Kathy will be there with some money left from her previous attempt at the 52nd District House seat which she lost to Lang and a check from the now deceased Todd Portune that was sizable for the task of purple rain in Southern Ohio. Since he just died and its not fashionable to disparage the dead, I’ll save many harsh comments I have for Commissioner Portune for some other day but I do find it interesting that he thought enough of Kathy to give her a $2,500 check. Portune and I go back a long way and it was not pleasant. He was better late in life, but vicious political theater in the days of Dwight Tillery as the Mayor and Foxy Roxy as the Vice Mayor are stories I could tell that could dwarf the Bible many times over, but to put it mildly, I do not share with Rob Portman and many other conservatives any kind words. Yet it was the passing of Portune and of learning of his contribution connection to Kathy Wyenandt that reminded me of her campaign and the message she has for politics in general that I am very much opposed to.

Wyenandt and I have talked about this several times, her belief that politics has become so toxic that her campaign slogan is “people over politics,” as if to say, she is not a partisan and will listen to people over any other influence. Well, ironically Todd Portune told me something almost exactly to the same effect almost 30 years ago while I was in his office and we were discussing a solution to a nighclub incident where a bunch of drunk kids had died in a car crash coming home from the Cooters night club after the place had closed. I was proposing to him to solicit help from the city to get approval through the CBC a non-alcoholic nightclub that would operate in Coryville right next to the freshman dorms on the University of Cincinnati’s campus and give kids somewhere else to go once all the bars closed for the night and poured a bunch of drunk kids into the world as dangerous toxins. I was weary of the Democrat Portune who had pictures of prominent politicians in his office and I wasn’t sure if I could trust him with the intentions of the group I was representing. But he said to me much of what Kathy has said recently about the common good and people over politics, so I trusted Todd Portune with my idea.

Well, and there is much political theater that fills the book ends as mentioned but the gist of it was that I found myself in a lot of political trouble every which way you can imagine and as it turned out Todd Portune, as a member of Cincinnati City Council at the time was also the attorney for the nightclub Cooters and he had ratted out all my plans to all the wrong people which killed the financial aspects of the deal and left me hanging in a very bad way. I was young, so it was a good learning experience and it only took me 10 years to dig out from that mess, but to say the least, I learned what it means when politicians tell you that they put people over politics. What they really mean is quite the opposite. When it comes to Todd Portune, I figure fate sort of played out for him. While Rob Portman, whom I knew pretty well in those days of my dealings with Portune has lots of nice things to say about Todd, I’ll just state that I’ll leave the dead to rest and let whatever version of God the readers hear have sort out the details. The lessons of those experiences are more valuable than any other element and it reminds me a lot of Kathy Wyenandt’s campaign.

Each time I’ve spoke to Kathy she is always quick to tell me that she doesn’t read this blog site, yet she knows an awful lot about it, and she always pulls the conversation around to how divisive politics is and how she thinks we can all agree to taking some of the toxic relationship out of it. She is a nice approachable person so it would take a while to dig into the details so usually those types of conversations never get into the weeds too far, but as I’ve thought about it over time, and have learned that she has even enough of a relationship with an old political rival of mine, Todd Portune, I have much more severe opinions about Kathy’s “people over politics” platform. As a school levy supporter for Lakota on the last attempt, a political point she has choosen to capitalize on, it is clear what she represents and that makes the premise revolting of what she is asking people to accept. The toxic relationship people now have in politics is because they have learned too much about the bad dealings of people like Todd Portune and the double dealing that often goes on especially among Democrats when they say to your face, “people over politics.” What that usually means is “see you in court while you spend a fortune defending yourself from some political incursion.” Democrats for years have tried to put us to sleep while they’ve literally tried to screw our eyeballs out and the toxicity of modern politics is that enough people have woken up to the fact and people like Kathy want to ease people back to sleep to that reality.

It is OK to be angry that Lakota has wasted all the money Kathy helped spend through that last levy passage and is now looking to tax homeowners even more. Of course she doesn’t want people to fight or be angry, she wants to put them back to sleep—to the good ol’ days where Democrats could talk out of both sides of their mouth and get away with it. Of course the Democrats which Wyenandt is a member want everyone to suddenly get along now that the many evils that we have discovered from politics gone wrong in the past are clear to us now. If people are thinking of those things, no Democrat will get elected for anything ever. So Kathy’s only real strategy is to try to kill everyone with kindness and put everyone back to sleep so she can have a chance at a higher office. But to answer the question that she asked me, which I know she’ll read about here on my blog, and we’ll talk about the next time we see each other out and about, is that its good to be pissed off and angry at politics and that it is people who elect representatives that can recover their interests who are waking up and that they should be angry at how they have been treated. And because of the Lakota levy of 2013 voters have a lot of reason to be angry with Kathy—and then some.

Rich Hoffman

Why Rush Limbaugh is so Beloved: Republicans are postitive people

The world’s reaction to Rush Limbaugh’s stage 4 lung cancer diagnosis was bewildering to me. I suppose I understood why many on the left were almost cheering that his death might arrive by the end of last week yet they still seethed when he was presented with honors at the State of the Union address and was seated well next to the First Lady. You got the feeling that if his pending death wasn’t as good as sealed that many of the people in that room wouldn’t have stood for such an incursion and that they put up with it only because they felt just a little sorry for the popular conservative talk radio host. Then I wondered why we have even put up with such hatred. But I was reminded of the major difference between Trump and Limbaugh by Friday when Rush was back on the air between treatments that he fully expects to survive and listening to the story of how President Trump thought of the illness, and it all made perfect sense. Its why I have always been a Republican and why my particular brand of conservatism has been very conducive to the mentality of the current White House. Everything is very above the line with Trump, and also with Rush Limbaugh. Tragedies are expected to be overcome, not yielded to, and even a death sentence is something to solve, not to be a victim of.

As Rush told the story of his big day in Washington D.C. and the after party of a sorts in the White House Residential area upstairs with the First Family, I was hearing a story that was all too familiar to me. That is how I solve problems in my life. I don’t get emotional about anything and everything has a solution. There is no impossible, everything is on the table and its only a matter of time before a problem is resolved. I’m like that with everything and it was nice to hear that President Trump truly is at that level of optimism when he wondered why Rush couldn’t just get all the cancer cut out before the State of the Union Address then enjoy the evening unfettered. It was a reminder to me why I enjoy the people of this particular brand of politics so much, they are positive problem solvers who don’t yield to the emotions of the moment but are always looking for solutions. Democrats are the party of victims, people on their heels and surrendering to the whims of chaos, Republicans under Trump are problem solvers who look at everything as an opportunity for improvement. And in essence, that is the state of our modern political life, half the nation is looking at the glass half empty, the other half, that its half full. The glass is the glass, but the interpretation is radically different.

Rush may not survive the cancer, but then again, he might. He certainly didn’t take the time to wallow in the sorrow of the moment, he was invited to a big event with the President and he enjoyed it for all it was worth. The hatred expressed toward him was personal because there was a subconscious understanding that not only did they want the radio broadcaster dead and off the air for what they think will give them a chance at future elections, but they hate how positive Rush is and ironically that is also one of the things they hate so much about President Trump. They want to have an excuse to fail, to not achieve, or even not to try at all. They want to blame society, they want to blame their parents, they want to blame their schools, their government, their economic conditions on why they have settled in some rut in their life which they lack the courage to get out of. And Rush and Trump remind them of it.

I’ve seen that hatred up close and personal; I never yield to problems at all. Everything has a solution just waiting to be discovered. Its just a matter of time to grind things out so that we can uncover it. That’s how I run my own life, so it was very refreshing to hear to what degree President Trump exhibited the same traits. It didn’t surprise me, but it was refreshing, just as it was good to hear Rush back on the radio on Friday and the early parts of this recent week sounding like he always does for his three-hour time slot. I can’t say how many times I have turned on the Rush Limbaugh Show while overseas on trips, just to listen to him talk on the radio. While in Japan I would turn him on at 1 AM there and listen while I lay in bed because it was noon in the states, and it was very nice due to his positive outlook on everything. Even while surrounded by the necessities of whatever culture I was visiting, listening to Rush Limbaugh was unique because he’s unquestionably American, in that problems aren’t meant to be yielded to, they are meant to be overcome. While visiting those cultures overseas, it is always nice to hear a bit from home, and from the best that our American culture has to offer. I had the same experience in London and in Paris, rather than go to dinner at 6 PM somewhere and listen to the pub talk, I would put in my ear buds and listen to Rush on my iPhone while the rest of the world wallowed in sorrow of their victimized status. It wasn’t that I so much wanted the news of the moment, it was just nice to hear that Rush always had a solution to whatever problem was being discussed, and that was and is what makes Rush Limbaugh something unique and so beloved.

What the left doesn’t understand is that at whatever future time that Rush Limbaugh doesn’t do his radio show every day, that people like me will not turn to them looking for leadership. Simply, someone else will fill the role that Rush Limbaugh currently does. The interesting thing that has happened is that even with all the attempts at communism and socialism that various factions both foreign and domestic have attempted against the American people, positive people always find each other. I supported Trump because he’s always been such a positive person. I listen to Rush because he’s a positive person. In my own life, and I’m thinking of positive politicians whom I like a lot, like George Lang, Mark Welch, Ann Becker, Nancy Nix, T.C. Rogers, Roger Reynolds and even Sheriff Jones. I like them all because they are all very positive people to the core of their personalities. Even though they all have lots of reasons to look at the glass half empty, they haven’t, they always think of it as half full and are scanning the horizon for solutions. That is the biggest difference in the political gulf that exists in our modern day, and its not the task of the positive to yield to the negative. Rather, the other way around. The desire to see Rush off the air is deeper than just hoping that conservatives will lose a voice and that Democrats might win some future elections, its in hoping that the excuses for failure will remain for them to hide behind. Because in truth, that is what is really behind the political tension of the American two-party system in its current form. But that was never America, we are free to solve problems, and that is what makes us different from the rest of the world and is why Rush Limbaugh is so beloved and always will be.

Rich Hoffman

Why Nancy Nix of Butler County is one of the Best: EdChoice and how Ohio needs a better funding model

I just want to say after seeing her at a number of political events recently, especially at places where George Lang and Mark Welch are present that Butler County is very lucky to have such a great treasurer in Nancy Nix on her third term. She is so good at what she does that I’d like to see her on her 100th term in the future. It is always wonderful to meet competent people who understand the details and Nancy Nix does. She is part of the puzzle that has come together so nicely in Butler County Ohio politics where a really good management team has risen to the occasion of our times to bring residents the best services possible that government could hope ever to provide. She has been on my mind a lot lately not just because she is a supporter of George Lang and Mark Welch, but because of something she said a few years ago about public school levies that are very relevant to the current challenge of EdChoice forcing local school systems to change the way they look at their funding.

Let’s face it, the whole progressive concept of attaching state money to a school located in a physical real estate concept was dumb from the beginning. It was just another brick in the road that has led to a pathway to hell. A lot of older people, like Bill Cunningham on WLW radio are struggling with this whole EdChoice concept because they only know of school systems being attached as the center of a community complete with sports programs and sentiments of school days long ago ended. These are the types of people where class reunions mean something, so it is painful for them to even consider that a child might want to pick up and move to another school across town and to take their state funding with them if that school isn’t very good. So far the focus of the argument is that the state report cards are unfair, but the bottom line is really in consumer confidence, do parents want to send their children to that particular school and how can the school market themselves in a way to make whatever the state report card says be the destination of hope for a parent and their child. In the future of education, it will take more than winning football programs, kids will actually have to learn things and be places that are good. A good school should not be determined by good real estate, it should be because the school managed itself well, spent their money wisely, and produced a superior product in a free market fashion.

Nancy has experience both at US Bank and as a Plant Controller so she gets money and how it’s a measure of value. I have worked with a lot of controllers and they are normally very boring personally, but beautiful people because their minds are very mathematical. Nancy has all the traits of the best of controllers, but she isn’t boring. She has a real passion for accounting and it radiates from her in such positive ways, so it surprised me when she came out publicly taking a position against several local government schools on their attempts to pass another school levy for what they were saying were, “safety needs.” Nancy stated, “Our homeowners are already heavily taxed, and its very difficult for many residents to make ends meet. My office receives handwritten letters daily from taxpayers needing help keeping up with their real estate taxes. Those who get too far behind can lose their home. Our county has passed 40 or so levies in the last 10 years and I’d argue some were for far more than they needed.” I found that very refreshing coming from a county treasurer who was looking at the big picture for a change and I’ve loved her ever since.

Her statements on that levy issue have come back to me now that all these lazy superintendents of some of the major government schools in the area, like Mason and Lakota have been complaining about losing their state funding due to EdChoice. What do they think is going to happen, that they are going to ask for more levies to cover their ridiculously bad management? Every controller I’ve ever dealt with would look at the way ANY public school is ran and demand an instant layoff to balance the books because the income is not conducive to proper balancing of the books. In fact, if Lakota had a proper accounting “controller” they’d have a shit fit on their hands due to the insane perception of what value is for the scope of the product, the education of the students based on state and local tax revenue chained to them like some masochist in a bondage chamber. The relationship with the community is about as dysfunctional financially as is conceivably possible and whenever it gets questioned the school hides behind the children imprisoned there due to their lack of choice in the matter—because the system gives money to the school, not the student. Government schools as Nancy pointed out, ask for too much too often. And I would add that they do it not because they need the money but because they know they are so inefficient that they take more money from people to manage their inefficiencies. Nancy has seen the backend of that problem when people write her to say their taxes are too high, and in too many cases, they lose their homes because the taxes are so terrible.

At the center of the problem is the perception of what the state should be giving to students, which is why Bill Cunningham’s troubles over the EdChoice issue is so comedic. The value of the education is just assumed as it has been set by the chaos of the government schools joined together by their collective bargaining agreements and the state is supposed to come up with a model that just rubber stamps that sum—whether its $6000 per student or $12,000. The numbers are inflated by these school districts to cover the high cost of their government employees and not the needs of the child. This is because of Parkinsen’s Law which states that the sum of needed money fills to the supply of funds. If a school levy passes and there is a cash infusion, then the union contracts will fill to consume the entire amount. Yet the kids are still coming out as bad as if they went to a third rate school, they can’t read, they can’t think, and they take on too many social beliefs rooted in liberalism. That’s not what we should be paying for. I would argue that if the state supplied only $2000 and schools had to compete for business that is in the marketplace, that the price to educate children would go down dramatically. That is when the state could provide a proper, constitutional, funding model.

Its just good to know that there are people like Nancy out there supporting other good Republicans like George Lang and Mark Welch, and many, many others. Good people tend to gravitate toward each other and she is one of the great ones. I appreciate that she is the treasurer of my county, and that our finances are in as good of hands as they could be. Most accounting types are alike in that they see beauty in numbers and can utilize that talent where needed. But Nancy has a different gear where she doesn’t just get lost behind some wire rimmed glasses and a big desk separating her from the world. She is connected and approachable, but more than anything, she does her work for all the right reasons and I’m glad she’s around.

Rich Hoffman