Tag: Rich Hoffman

Ohio’s Bullwhip Fast Draw: Thoughts while listening to the ‘Lone Ranger’ soundtrack

While I was in Greeneville, Ohio participating in the annual Annie Oakley Western Showcase events a FedEx package arrived at my home two counties to the south.  The Lone Ranger soundtrack featuring Hans Zimmer’s new music for the 2013 Disney film came out on July 23rd prompting me to run all over town trying to find it.  I went to Best Buy, Barnes and Nobel, Target, any store that carried actual CD’s.  The soundtrack was actually released on July 2nd as MP3 downloads but I wanted an actual disk to call my own, and Disney had timed the release of the soundtrack to come out between the American and London release of the film.  I was hoping to have the music to listen to on the long drive up to the Darke County Fairgrounds so I went to Amazon.com and ordered The Lone Ranger soundtrack hoping it would be delivered by Friday.  Unfortunately when I checked on the shipping information before leaving for the bullwhip competitions, my treasured music was at the Hamilton hub and wouldn’t be delivered until later that day while I was gone. But I had been listening to clips of the soundtrack all month online, and was thinking of them as I participated in the yearly Ohio Bullwhip Fast Draw Championships which can be seen below.

The Bullwhip Fast Draw was invented by Gery Deer and Paul Nolan at Gerry’s studio in Jamestown, Ohio near Ceaser’s Creek.  There is nothing like it anywhere in the world.  The competition was literally born in Ohio out of a desire to display how fast bullwhips can be drawn from a coiled position and thrust out to hit a target.  At our annual Annie Oakley Western Showcase competitions the SASS (Single Action Shooting Society) is set up in the next building performing their pistol quick draw events so it only made sense for the benefit of the crowd and fun for participants to do something similar with bullwhips.

At the Annie Oakley Western Showcase expert whip handlers from all over the continental United States have come to participate over the last decade and try their hand at Ohio’s very challenging competition.  When the Bullwhip Fast Draw was first conceived by Gery the Wild West Arts Club had their big yearly meeting in Las Vegas led by Mark Allen and Alex Green so the smaller gathering in Ohio needed something to solidify its uniqueness.  That is how and why Gery invented The Bullwhip Fast Draw.  Over the years as older Western Arts acts with their aging participants left the field Ohio became the center of attention under Gery’s diligent work and enterprise.  Every year when the Annie Oakley Days hit Greenville, Ohio in Darke County the Bullwhip Fast Draw has become increasingly a crowd favorite.  It’s a very fast event that has plenty of drama and is the perfect kind of bullwhip activity to perform in front of an audience.

I won the event this year and several times in the past, but there have been many winners.  My son-in-law is particularly good at it as he and I used to practice in the back yard against each other when he lived at our house during the early days of his marriage to my daughter.  One year Richard Best’s 10-year-old granddaughter won the whole event beating everyone. Kirk Bass has done very well at it over the years which is why our stand-offs against each other are always exciting.  As a knife thrower he has the proper movement ingrained in his head so he gets to the target quickly.  Sometimes, like the instance in the video above the quick draw is so fast that the eye cannot see the result in real-time.  Only slow motion can reveal the winner.  The camera in that footage captures images at 30 frames per second, which is faster than a motion picture camera producing 24 frames per second.  By watching the Bull Whip Fast Draw in slow motion it is clearly seen that only a few images of the whips in motion can be seen from the coiled position.  As the entire Bull Whip Fast Draw takes place in a fraction of a second there are only a few images that are captured of the actual whip in flight.  When the end of the whip strikes the cup it is traveling at well over 750 MPH because the crack is a sonic boom.  The whip handler must calculate in their mind within a fraction of a moment the exact location in space and time where the end of their whip will strike the target.

Within the entire world there are only handfuls of people who are very good at the finesse aspects of whip handling.  This means performing some of the complicated cracks using two-handed maneuvers.  But when it comes to focusing those efforts on a directed point in space and applying the timing necessary to hit that point of space with all the calculations it takes to make a bullwhip arrive there is a whole different set of circumstances that has an even narrower range of experts.  This is why even very technical bullwhip performers can have difficulty when they are put up against a clock or worse yet, another human being standing across from them.  In the early days of the Bullwhip Fast Draw I always had the speed to hit targets quickly, but often found that if I tried to push out too much speed I would tend to crack the target off to the right—often missing.  A bullwhip to work right is a matter of timing, the end of the whip has to be known within fractions of a second and projected to a directed spot in three-dimensional space.  To win the Bull Whip Fast Draw a piece of the cup must be cut off, so the end of the whip needs to crack precisely on the target.  It is not enough to just run the whip through the target using downward momentum to knock the target from the holder.  To win the 750 MPH needed to obtain a crack of the whip needs to be focused in order to hit the target before the other opponent as fast as possible and that speed must be directed at the target.  Kirk Bass is so good at the Bullwhip Fast Draw because he’s not only strong, but is accustomed to directing focused energy complete with timing because he is a professional knife thrower.  Whip artists who are good at the Bullwhip Fast Draw are able to make all those calculations in fractions of a second using power, finesse, and impeccable timing to hit their target under the pressure of time.  Not at all easy, but really fun to watch and try.

Unlike traditional firearm quick draw, such as what the SASS Society engages in, the calculation is in the hand/eye coordination but with the added pressure of creating the force needed to generate a sonic boom to destroy the target.  The gun does most of the physical force work in traditional quick draw.  With the whip the force is done by the same hands that make all the calculations in time and space which is why it is such a unique event.

Like all games of skill the benefits often carry over into other aspects of life.  I find that the skills that allow me to be good at the Bullwhip Fast Draw help me in all aspects of my existence and that is the real reason for working hard to accomplish the needed skills.  Every year I enjoy the opportunity to re-calibrate myself with the wonderful people who meet me at the Annie Oakley Festival and compete against me in Ohio’s very own Bullwhip Fast Draw.  The crowd watching has a great time, but the competition for me is even better as a useful tool in measuring what works and what doesn’t.  The ability to discover how fast is too fast, and how fast is just right is useful in making virtually all decisions about all things and this is what I like most about The Bullwhip Fast Draw.

After a good day of working with some of the best whip artists there are anywhere it felt good to return home at the end of a long weekend to find The Lone Ranger soundtrack waiting for me on my front porch.  I had been humming the music in my head all during the whip competitions, especially the Bullwhip Fast Draw and my mind was in a good mood from the experience.  It is one thing to enjoy music like Hans Zimmer’s latest soundtrack to a western film which is highly unusual, especially the song, “Red’s Theater of the Absurd.”  Listen to it at the clip below. 

I LOVE THAT SONG!

But it’s quite another to be able to actually participate in events that celebrate western arts, which are the foundations of American culture while listening to it.  It was late at night but I opened the soundtrack anyway and quickly downloaded it onto my iPod.  As I drifted off to sleep thinking of my day participating in Ohio’s very own Bullwhip Fast Draw I listened to the music of The Lone Ranger.  Because Gery and Paul invented the Bullwhip Fast Draw, a unique event that has brought to my life a way of thinking that is highly unusual, and much appreciated, my life has been improved.  The musical notes of The Lone Ranger are just a little bit sweeter when it is known that all the work done in the Bullwhip Fast Draw were invented in Ohio, and seen only at the Annie Oakley Festival every year at the end of July.  It puts you in the kind of company that can be counted on only two hands as far as skill level.  It’s all about speed, calculation, and force, skills that are often needed when life deals hard problems which are not quite as literal as the relationship between a target and a bullwhip.

Rich Hoffman

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

The Secret of Ho Chi Minh: What Obama neglected to reveal

When it was time to leave, President of Vietnam Trương Tấn Sang, reportedly offered Obama a gift as the American President was visiting recently — a copy of a letter sent by Ho Chi Minh to Harry Truman.  Obama stated “we discussed the fact that Ho Chi Minh was actually inspired by the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and the words of Thomas Jefferson. Ho Chi Minh talked about his interest in cooperation with the United States.  President Sang indicated that even if it’s 67 years later, it’s good that we’re still making progress.”  I have told some of this story before.  Review by Clicking Here.  Of course Obama neglected to tell the rest of the story which he no doubt already knew but used this conversation with Sang to attempt to quell the newly fueled Tea Party movement which has gained momentum in the wake of the many Obama scandals with an obvious attempt to misdirect the current offensive.  Read more at the source article at The Blaze.

http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2013/07/25/obama-americas-founders-inspired-communist-ho-chi-minh/

In 1911, working as the cook’s helper on a ship, Nguyễn Ái Quốc (later known as Ho Chi Man) traveled to the United States. From 1912–13, he lived in New York (Harlem) and Boston, where he worked as a baker at the Parker House Hotel. Among a series of menial jobs, he claimed to have worked for a wealthy family in Brooklyn between 1917–18, and for General Motors as a line manager. It is believed that, while in the United States, he made contact with Korean nationalists, an experience that developed his political outlook.[7]  As a young man Nguyễn had a problem, he wanted to get the French colonies out of his homeland of Vietnam and he wanted to learn from America by taking on odd jobs so he could perform the task.  The French had colonized Vietnam in much the way that England had occupied America so the future communist leader of Vietnam wanted to learn how to remove them using America as his revolutionary model.

At various points between 1913 and 1919, Nguyễn lived in West Ealing, and later in Crouch End, Hornsey. He reportedly worked as either a chef or dish washer [reports vary] at the Drayton Court Hotel in West Ealing.[8] It is claimed that Nguyễn trained as a pastry chef under Auguste Escoffier at the Carlton Hotel in the Haymarket, Westminster, but there is no evidence to support this.[7][9] However, the wall of New Zealand House, home of the New Zealand High Commission, which now stands on the site of the Carlton Hotel, displays a blue plaque, stating that Nguyễn worked there in 1913 as a waiter. Nguyễn was also employed as a pastry boy on the Newhaven-Dieppe ferry route in 1913.[10]  He was quite an adventurer stopping at nothing to learn all he could about the West so he could free his country from French occupation.

From 1919–23, while living in France, Nguyễn began to approach the political path, through his friend and Socialist Party of France comrade Marcel Cachin. Nguyễn claimed to have arrived in Paris from London in 1917, but the French police only had documents of his arrival in June 1919.[7] He joined in a group of Vietnamese nationalists in Paris whose leaders were Phan Chu Trinh and Phan Văn Trường, bearing a new name Nguyễn Ái Quốc (“Nguyễn the Patriot”). But before he contacted any of the radical socialists in France he attempted to gain audience with Woodrow Wilson during the Treaty of Versailles seeking help and advice from The United States as they divided up the world forming The League of Nations.  Much to Nguyễn’s distress, Wilson wanted nothing to do with meeting anybody from Vietnam or going against the wishes of his French host, so Nguyễn was abandoned and left to seek political advice elsewhere which is how he came into contact with socialists which he had also met in the streets of Harlem in The United States as the progressive era was coming into full swing.  Nguyễn naturally must have thought that socialism was the future of America as they spoke so highly of it during his visits, so he pursued that path as a way to free his nation from French occupation.   Citing the language and the spirit of the U.S. Declaration of Independence,  Nguyễn, had expected U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to help remove the French colonial rule from Vietnam and ensure the formation of a new, nationalist government. The future ruler had no idea that Wilson was trying to undo the Constitution, not preserve it with his own academic overthrow.  Since he was unable to obtain consideration at Versailles, the failure further radicalized Nguyễn, making him a symbol of the anti-colonial movement at home in Vietnam.[12]  That is the part of the story Obama conveniently left out in his meeting with President of Vietnam Trương Tấn Sang.

In 1920, as a representative in the Congress of Tours of Socialist Party of France, Quốc voted for the Third International and became a founding member of the Parti Communiste Français (FCP). Taking a position in the Colonial Committee of PCF, he tried to attract his comrades’ attention towards people in French colonies including Indochina, but his efforts were often unsuccessful. In this period he learned to write journal articles and short stories as well as running his Vietnamese nationalist group. In May 1922, Nguyễn wrote an article for a French magazine criticizing the use of English words by French sportswriters.[13] The article implores Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré to outlaw such Franglais as le manager, le round and le knock-out. While living in Paris, he reportedly had a relationship with a dressmaker named Marie Brière.[13]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh

The rest is history and within four decades The United State found itself attempting to defend their French ally in a war that was started because the Vietnamese people wanted independence from colonial rule in their country.  Nobody had listened to General Claire Chennault after World War II regarding the spread of communism across China so the mismanagement of the American government through many errors had placed themselves in a Catch 22 with Vietnam.  If they abandoned the French, they would have had to admit their mistake during the Treaty of Versailles and allowed the spread of communism across the entire Asian continent, funded by the Russians—America’s Cold War enemy.  All Ho Chi Minh wanted was to do to the French what America had done to the English in their own revolution.  Yet the help and support of freedom wasn’t there—instead, Ho Chi Minh ran into the statist progressive Woodrow Wilson who did not care about the individual rights of the Vietnamese, only the expansion of European dominance, which was the result of the Treaty of Versailles.  Wilson had been bitten by the seduction of communism that was flowing through-out the world because of Karl Marx, leaving Ho Chi Minh to seek refuge from with the communists in Europe.  Either way, revolutionaries by design only had communism to form their thoughts which was the strategy of communist expansion during the progressive era.

Obama hoped that nobody would know anything about the real story of Ho Chi Minh so that he could deconstruct the resistance to communism most Americans have due to the rhetoric of the Cold War.  Nothing politicians do at the level of Obama is an accident, and the meeting with modern Vietnamese leaders highlighting the similarities between communist led Ho Chi Minh and the Founding Fathers is a deliberate attack on the beliefs of most modern Americans who have little knowledge of history, particularly of the Vietnam War.  But the story is not that Ho Chi Minh was a communist who learned his behavior from the Founding Fathers, but was a revolutionary who was inspired by America—and even sought our help, but was turned away and miss managed by Woodrow Wilson at a crucial time in world history.  Ho Chi Minh was ultimately a creation of Woodrow Wilson and the failure of the progressives—which is not the truth that Obama will tell under any circumstances—even though he knows better.  Like most modern politicians with statist tendencies, they will lie and manipulate any fact to achieve their ends, and in the case of Ho Chi Minh, this is exactly what President Obama was trying to do.

Rich Hoffman

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

Being Proud of American Exceptionalism: Understanding what a “neocon” is and isn’t

After the interview I did with Matt Clark featuring the life of Walt Disney and more specifically, American Exceptionalism there was of course some upset listeners, as there always is.  Listen to that broadcast by CLICKING HERE.  The term “American Excepitonalism” tends to set off tempers from the type of people who have been taught their entire lives that America should follow the trends of the rest of the world and not proudly proclaim the wonderful attributes that have come out of the freest country in the world–such as capitalism, human rights, individual freedom, and a quality of life that is unmatched anywhere.  Americans on the world stage have been told by virtually every government that as one of the youngest countries they need to respect their elders and yield to the social philosophies of older cultures and disregard their own.  This kind of mentality inspired Barack Obama upon his presidential election to go on his famous bowing around the world tour apologizing to the countries of Europe and elsewhere for American arrogance that had been displayed over the last couple of centuries.  Americans were told by progressive activists that The United States was not a good country and that we should all be paralyzed by guilt for the slavery that caused the Civil War, and that somehow all the good things in America were to be erased due to civil rights violations.

Well, the types of people who utter such nonsense are the enemies of America.  They forget that America willingly freed its slaves, which the King of England had started in the colonies, and under the American Constitution, slavery was abolished—a move that happened nowhere else in the world.  To this very day there is still slavery in Africa, all through the Middle-East and spanning along the northern shores of the Indian Ocean.  Women’s rights in the same region are equally appalling.  Only in America were such rights granted to women without destroying the economy.  Capitalism gave men, women, and children options that exist no place else anywhere in the world and freedom for all races, shapes and sizes of people more equally than any other country—so what is there to apologize for?

Americans have been taught by their government that The United States gained everything it achieved by consuming too many resources, and stepping on the rights of others across the world.  Such claims are equivalent to jealous classmates who swear that America cheated because they cannot fathom how it accomplished such wonderful attributes competitively.  It is in those types of people who find the term “American Exceptionalism” an offensive term, and it was those who were angry at Matt and me for even discussing it on his radio show.  After the broadcast there was a comment from a guy named Ben Cowan who said:

(American Exceptionalism) “a neocon made up term.  American experience is the real name, the founders were never arrogant or braggadocios about this country.”

–Ben CowanScreen shot 2013-07-22 at 8.47.54 AM

Matt’s response to Ben I thought was very kind, and as a radio personality he gets those types of comments all the time—and his answers are usually very diplomatic.  However, in this case I’d like to answer Ben in my own way as the terms he used in his comment deserve scrutiny.  A Neocon by definition is a conservative who supposedly disliked the social freedom of the 1960s. A neoconservative equals someone who became conservative as a reaction to the social freedom of the 1960s and 1970s.  The term braggadocios are considered empty boasting and swaggering self-aggrandizement.  Since I fully support the term “American Exceptionalism” then this means that by Ben’s comment that I am a neocon that is practicing braggadocios—and that I shouldn’t do so because the Founding Fathers didn’t perform the behavior.  But Ben is wrong and here’s why.  The Founding Fathers at the start of the American Experiment of 1776 did not boast because their philosophical theories were unproven at the time.  However, in 2013 the aspects of their philosophy that worked can be seen in the many attributes described at the beginning of this article.  The benefits to capitalism and the American Experience produced a unique type of person that had only been contemplated by philosopher fantasies prior to The Declaration of Independence.   Unlike 1773 to 1782 there is now a history to show how such a small country was able to have such a major impact on the world without having kings or queens to take the credit for such productive output.  Life in virtually every facet is better in America because of the philosophy of personal independence that is much larger than the “American Experience.”  The type of person that is produced under such a system of government is what is meant by “American Exceptionalism.”  The example that Matt and I discussed was Walt Disney, a man who could have only been produced under the American style of government focused on self-reliance, creative enterprise, and a focus on the greater good by impacting the individual at the level of their imagination.  The proof of American Exceptionalism is in the track record of success by individuals in America directly compared to individuals in other countries, such as China, India, Spain, Russia or anywhere else.  No country has produced individuals like Walt Disney so Uncle Walt is an example of American Exceptionalism, the same kind of exceptionalism that invented airplanes, electricity, and the telephone.  The same county that walked on the moon and set the standard for space flight, is the same country where even the poor are comparatively wealthy when compared to the villages of Africa, India, and Southeast Asia.  That is something to be proud of which must be termed American Excpetionalism.

When those who find such terms inconvenient or even uncomfortably true based on their personal philosophies, try to refute such truthful statements as to point out American Exceptionalism they must use an anti-concept to attempt to remove such definitions so that there is no standard to measure against the failures of other belief systems.  This is what Ben Cowen did when he attempted to put Matt and me on the defensive with name calling such as neocon and braggadocios.  The automatic reaction might be to say, “No we’re not,” then spend the rest of the conversation attempting to prove that we are not neocons or braggadocios.  While it’s true that I find the social freedoms of the 1960s and 1970s despicable it is not enough to call my thoughts those of a neocon which somehow refers my beliefs into the realm of radicalism.  In the interview with Matt, we had spent one hour talking about Walt Disney and our love of a period well before the 1960s that we relish.  That period would be called “classic American” not a neocon.  The radicalism is only in reference to the severe psychological differences that are the result of the destructive period referenced during the Hippie Era.  People who use the neocon term are those who fear losing the social gains made during the 1960s which violate the type of classic America I honor.  The only radicalism present is the accepted period of the 1960s version of America as opposed to the 1920s when Presidents like Calvin Coolidge were burning the midnight oil doing America’s business and Walt Disney was trying to get his company off the ground.

As for being a braggadocios, I say why not?  When an NFL player scores a touchdown, they celebrate, when a basketball player hits a deep three pointer, or slam dunks over an opposing player, they celebrate.  When a NASCAR driver wins a race they do burn outs in the middle of the track to celebrate their victory.  So why would Americans not brag about the cultural aspects of their society that they know are superior, such as the aviation industry, the computer industry, and the entertainment culture.  Look how many literary works are produced in The United States compared to other countries.  No other country comes close to The United States in thinking production and that is something to celebrate. Of those thinkers nobody took the business of thought to the level of Walt Disney who is an example of American Exceptionalism.  It is OK to pump our fists in the air as Americans and be proud of what we are.  It is disgraceful to apologize for being too good and American has been.  Its time to stop that, the Founding Fathers didn’t brag about their good fortune at the time because they weren’t sure the experiment would work.  But now we do know and its time to stop pandering to the type of people represented by Ben Cowan.  They are free to think what they want, but not free to dictate our actions with name calling.  It’s time to call them names, like apologists, wimps, detriments to the human race and a number of other things I can think of right off-hand that are not fit to write down.   But it’s not acceptable to just take what the hippies, the progressive loons; the America haters declare is the new line in the sand of social value.  That line has been drawn way too far to the left and its about time to move it radically back to where it should have been all along, in an era represented best by the finest example of American Exceptionalism that is universally known to the entire world – Walt Disney.  For anyone who wishes to argue against American Exceptionalism point to an example anywhere in the world of a similar personality born under the flag of socialism, communism, or any form of statism.  I am confident that there isn’t one, and nobody reading this will succeed in providing a single example and that is ultimately what people like Ben Cowan are angry at.  Calling us neocons, which coming from them is like being awarded a badge of honor, declares that they hate our social position, painting on my face a smile from ear to ear.  Ben………..I am braggadocios about this country.  So you better get used to it.

Rich Hoffman

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

“Duty”: A statist concept detrimental to America

Eric Holder said some things about the Zimmerman acquittal the other day that bothered me deeply.  It wasn’t his obvious activism as head of the Justice Department under President Obama, or the obvious lies, deceit, and manipulation that has occurred under his control.  Rather, it was his reasoning against Florida’s Stand Your Ground law where he reflected Obama’s belief that people have a “duty” to retreat from a conflict when conflict occurs.  This implies of course that public safety is more important than individual lives.  Holder referenced that the laws of The United States routinely reflect that citizens have a “duty” to always look for a way out of a conflict before engaging in self-defense.  For instance, a story I have told before, CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW, where the police came to the office complex where my wife was working as a receptionist at the time and asked her to cheat on me because she was such an attractive young lady meant that I had no right to engage those cops on any grounds of honor because all they had really done was utter some verbal communication.  They didn’t place any hands upon her, or force her into a car.  If they did, then I would still not be allowed to pull a gun on the police and defend our life together because they represented the state as representatives of the law, and they may not be using guns to apply the force.  The state’s position is that there is more honor in sacrifice, even if that means losing a wife, or the sexual molestation of her, than in the honor of defending our marriage and her matrimonial sanctity.  The burden of the law fell on me, the citizen because of some ridiculous ideal of “duty” to some cause that is greater than my individual interests, or my relationships that might only be valuable to me.  My thoughts about this matter are essentially what my novel Tail of the Dragon is all about.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.

I grew up wearing primarily military clothing that routinely was unkempt on purpose.  My army pants had large holes in the knees from all the crawling around that I did—and still do.  My shirts were always un-tucked and I have worn a cowboy hat with that attire since I was in the fifth grade.  My reason was that I planned to rebel against the government if they ever drafted me into the military and I wanted to be always in a state of readiness in case I was forced into combat by a statist government.  The military was always known for their rigidity with military uniform, and my position was to get used to the uniform without the formality.  It was my way of thumbing my nose at statist philosophy.  When I was a kid, the drafting of citizens was still on everyone’s mind from the Vietnam era where the government decided that individual citizens could be compelled into service to their country for something politicians called “duty,” and I never planned to participate in that activity.  I had many uncles, cousins, and other family members who swore to me that if I were drafted into the army that my rigid independent streak would be broken by the drill sergeants.   By the stories they told, there was no choice.  You either did what they told you, or you were thrown into the brig for insolence.  I had no problem with the danger, with shooting at other people, or having them shoot at me.  I found that part very exciting.  But I was never going to allow myself to get on a bus, get my head shaved, and have a drill sergeant yell at me for six weeks until I surrendered my individuality to the cause of collective salvation calling it “duty to my country.”

Statist use more frequently now than ever this term “duty” when talking about the military.  This is why it has become custom to tell military veterans “thank you for your sacrifice and service” when speaking to them.  I do not do that.  I have known a lot of people who went into the military, mostly because they couldn’t figure out what they wanted to do with their life, or they wanted money for college.  They decided to surrender their individuality in trade for security.  In high school a Marine recruiter was heavy after me knowing some of the dangerous escapades that I had been involved in, and the court cases that I had attended.  He told me that I would self-destruct in a few years with my attitude and that the Marines would bring discipline to my life that I needed.  Of course I didn’t buy into the scam, but some of my friends did, and they were never the same after four years in the military.  They came out of the military nice little foot soldiers who followed orders without question as they had learned to participate in life with a sense of duty, instead of thought and the statists of government wanted the world to thank them for it so more people would follow in their wake, without having to impose a government mandated draft.

My idea of military life was the flight group, The Flying Tigers during the early days of World War II.  If that was what the military was offering I would have signed up in less than a second just so I could fly planes and participate in danger.  CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW.  But the whole “yes sir, no sir” thing was not for me and I don’t respect those who give up their individuality to surrender thought to any group behavior—including the military.  When I attend events where I see formations, salutes, and blind recital of chants I feel sorry for the participants.  Yet I have witnessed that the usual emotion from my peers is envy.  They envy the sense of purpose that serving in a group the “duty” defined by a statist government provides them.  The government might say that soldiers in Afghanistan have a duty to defend American interests, or that soldiers have a duty to defend the world against failed political policies in the Middle East.  That duty means a sacrifice of life, limb, or at a minimum–time from their life based on the definitions of statist politicians.  The reasons are never considered, only the act.

The idea of a draft in America during the Vietnam era broke the conscious of many Americans.  Many men learned as 18-year-olds that the government can do as it pleases with the individual lives of their citizens, and this mentality carried over to the statist policies which came out of the sixties, the counter-revolutionary movement, the rise of labor union influence, collective bargaining legislation, and many other aspects of idiocy that were sold as a social “duty.”  The idea of duty had been driven into these men who were broken from the idealistic kids of the Howdy Doody Show growing up in the 50’s by their drill sergeants without a choice available but from their government to say that their life was owned by the federal government, and that the government was more important than their lives.    This has affected this entire generation for the rest of their lives and the children they spawned.  Eric Holder and Barack Obama know this and invoke the subconscious memory of America’s sense of “duty” when they speak.

When these draftees came out of the military they were told that it was their “duty” to help the poor.  They were told that it was their “duty” to help the middle-class.  They were told that it was their “duty” to send their children to public school.  They were told that it was their “duty” to vote for Medicaid and to sustain Social Security.  They were told that it was their “duty” to raise children who would serve their country with sacrifice and that honor was in paying the ultimate price—death.

Today the word “duty” is thrown around by statists of all ranks.  People like Eric Holder use the word “duty” which has been ingrained in most of the population through one of two methods, from a drill sergeant, or a college professor to justify a statist policy against self-defense even if sometimes the best defense is a good offense.   By invoking the idea of “duty” Holder attempts to overcome the Bill of Rights of The Constitution which are centered on individuality and slides under the door of the American mind an ideal of collective salvation that is artificially created by statists for statist principles.  By creating a social concept of thanking service men not with the money they were paid but with the honor of sacrifice, statists like Obama and Holder who stand opposed to traditional American concepts rooted in pure capitalism can advance their philosophy of collectivism by touching the psychological paralysis that is built into most Americans by the statist system of sacrifice in the name of “duty.”

It is clear to me these discrepancies because I have rejected such a sense of “duty” my entire life, including my childhood.  But it is not so clear to people who have had to negotiate in their minds the ideal of a military draft which took away their individual rights for the good of the “state” without question.  These same people find themselves unable to understand why they feel disarmed when Eric Holder invokes the concept of “duty” in relation to Florida’s Stand Your Ground law so to build up public consensus against the measure.  Resonating in their minds are the drill sergeants from their early years who stripped away all their thoughts, all their childhood memories with six hard weeks of basic training so that the mind of the soldiers thought not as individual Americans, but as cogs in a military machine that did not think, but simply followed orders.  When Eric Holder states that it is an American citizen’s “duty” to follow the orders of the state, this is what he means, and why such statements are the roots of tyranny established to advance the causes of the left through carefully selected phrases planted in American minds through statist philosophy.

Rich Hoffman

“Justice Comes with the Crack of a Whip!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Labor Unions Caused Detroit Bankruptcy: Michael Moore’s lost sense of purpose

I spoke about this a bit the other day, but now that the dust has settled more details are necessary in regard to the Detroit bankruptcy.  Darryl Parks during his Saturday program on 700 WLW did a wonderful couple of segments about the Detroit situation which deserves to be highlighted, and can be heard below.  Darryl as he usually does comes to these types of topics armed with many facts and in this case many I did not know about the Motor City.  I have family who lived in Michigan and worked in the auto industries who were big union supporters.  Every year my family visited them at least once, so I learned a lot about Michigan during these childhood adventures, especially during the 70s and 80s when I was growing up.  I watched firsthand the decline that Darryl Parks articulated during his program.  I watched Detroit go from the richest city in the United States in 1965 to currently the poorest.  I knew that Detroit was at one time a source of entertainment as The Lone Ranger radio program was launched from Detroit and the city still owns the rights to the Howdy Doody puppet.  Detroit at one point in its very recent history was a center for art, entertainment, and manufacturing—which drove the entire economy.  But what destroyed Detroit is a reoccurring theme everywhere in modern America, the notion of collectivism framed within the labor union movement which is failing on a massive scale.  Click Darryl’s broadcast below to begin to understand how many labor unions are listed as creditors in the Detroit bankruptcy and it will quickly become clear how destructive unions have been on the American economy, the role they’ve played in wage inflation, and the way they’ve prevented the proper management of Detroit’s resources.

When Michael Moore made his first big film Roger and Me, I enjoyed it as I shared with Moore a love of the Midwest.  His film was about the decline of the auto industry in Flint, Michigan and the loss of entire neighborhoods becoming a gigantic ghost town.  But Moore lost me all those years ago in 1989 when he assumed that General Motors CEO Roger Smith had a duty to the people of Flint to give back to the community his large wages so that fewer jobs would be lost.  Moore’s position in the film was typical of most union households in Central and Lower Michigan from the 70’s to the 90’s that was raised on soft communism disguised as American patriotism.  Moore’s beliefs were harder than socialism, and shy of Russian, or Chinese communism but were certainly anti-capitalism in their nature.  Moore failed to understand that it was capitalism that brought jobs to his town of Flint which is just north of Detroit.  It was communism that had infiltrated the labor unions and made Moore believe that Roger Smith owed Flint, Michigan anything.

The film launched Moore into the national spotlight as a left leaning media was hungry to team up with someone who could capture their instructed beliefs into a film format.  But the parasitic nature of the type of contracts the unions negotiated for themselves continued.  Jobs left the Detroit area for destinations that were not friendly to labor unions, like China, and Mexico, countries already utilizing a social philosophy of socialism and communism.  I liked my family members, but found myself in contention with the adults who had cars in the driveway with bumper stickers stating, “Buy American” which was a typical union slogan at the time even though the Japanese were making better cars cheaper.  Their assertion was the same as Michael Moore’s, and that was people had an obligation to buy an American car built with union labor because of some misguided patriotic duty.  All those elements never added up to my mind, even at the ages of 8 through 15 when my years in Lower Michigan were most active.  No matter how much the adults from that side of the family yelled their philosophy never made sense to me.

When I was 18 years old I worked in a metal stamping plant while I was majoring in economics in college.  The economic professors didn’t seem to understand the real world of manufacturing the way I did because I worked in a real metal stamping plant known as the meat grinder at the time.  I saw many very serious injuries and I learned quickly that the parts we made at this facility required salesmen to sell them to a distributer somewhere in the world and that purchasing had to find the metal coils somewhere so we’d have materials enough to manufacture the goods.  I worked with some tough, rough neck people and fights on the shop floor were common.  When I first started at this place a man older than me by about 10 years picked a fight in the break room.  I launched a full can of Coke at his head and luckily missed his forehead by only a few inches.  The can exploded against the wall and after the man saw how serious I was about winning the fight decided to befriend me, and we remained friends for all the years I worked there.  There were many other fights that involved serious cuts, broken bones, knocked out teeth and eyeballs that were actually removed from their sockets.  The foremen would look the other way, especially in my case because I without question out produced everyone in the building.  My manufacturing rates were very high.  I didn’t work so hard because of fear for my job, or to earn praise from the foremen, but because I enjoyed it.  I liked working fast—I enjoyed pushing myself with sweat pouring off my body.  The fights came from the workers who were trying to unionize this facility and wanted to bring me in line with everyone else.

The college professors had no advice for my young mind as they leaned toward labor’s position in the matter when I asked about it.  Their arguments I know now were Keynesian in their nature and rooted in European socialism, but at the time, I assumed they knew what they were talking about.  Because of the economic professor at the college I was attending I tried to understand the union mentality so I listened to the advocates instead of fighting them.  This led them to ask me to present a list of union demands to the company president.  Even though everyone in the company was much older than I was, they wanted an 18-year-old kid to approach management and negotiate on their behalf.  So I did.

I sat across from the President and gave him the grievances from the workers but as I sat there I saw the man who ran the company with his hands that were too smooth from lack of work, a belly that was too fat from eating in too many nice restaurants and was having an affair with his secretary who was half his age.  But I also saw a guy who was taking all the risks in the company.  If sales were down, it was his fault.  If supply could not be meant, it was his fault.  If he didn’t grease enough wheels at OSHA politically, then it was his fault.  In essence I felt the grievances from the workers were stupid, short-sighted and childish.  At the end of the day the “workers” were able to go home and forget about the work they did while the president was always tuned in to what was happening, even when he was on the golf course—because he was the risk taker.  For the employees to declare that their labor was worth the same as those who took the risks it was preposterous.

I gave the demands back to the union organizers and told them I would not represent them.  They attempted to reorganize without my help and fell flat on their face.  Whenever they tried to cut back on their labor hours to force reductions in manufacturing rates the foreman would give me extra overtime to cover their slack.  When they tried to paint me as a “scab,” we went out in the parking lot and solved the problem, and a lot of people got hurt.  But I never yielded my beliefs on the matter and everyone ended up shaking hands in the end, even over broken bones and busted lips.  It was these types of people who made America a manufacturing powerhouse—but only as individuals.  The collectivism of labor unions destroyed this trait, which makes America less competitive globally, which is why the labor movement was introduced to America by European insurgents wanting to level the playing field for all economically.    And this is what happened in Detroit.  The unions got what they wanted and nobody fought them on it.  When the companies gave a little, the unions asked for more.  The companies became frustrated and just packed up and voted with their feet and behind them all the competent workers left to follow the jobs and Detroit went from being the wealthiest city in America to the poorest in just a few decades of bad policy and bad social philosophy.

To this very day I despise labor unions because they fight against individual responsibility and merit.  They are simply gangs of thugs who attempt to extort away from the companies they work for values they have not earned.  Collective bargaining is the absolute dumbest idea in economic theory.  All people are not of equal value, some workers are faster, stronger, smarter, more efficient, more technically savvy—and they are not all deserving of equal pay.  To force companies or governments to pay wages on collective bargaining takes away the incentive of the very good to perform well, because slugs, malcontents, and the ungifted receive the same wages for doing much, much less.  This is what killed manufacturing in Southern Michigan and more specifically destroyed Detroit.

The disease of economics that destroyed Detroit is the same idiocy that is at work in our public schools, the IRS scandal, and virtually every branch of government as it is only in the public sector that unions have managed to survive as they have embedded themselves on financial supply that cannot pack up and move out of the country to flee the parasites of economics.  This put the burden on tax payers to cover the labor costs and in Detroit’s case, smart people moved leaving behind a city of dependents that did not pay taxes.   In just the last five years Detroit went from having a balanced budget to being billions of dollars in the hole—because they do not have a tax base to support their unionized legacy costs.  They ran tax payers out-of-town with tax rates that were too high and attempting to sell the concept with “shared sacrifice” which is to say, “wealth redistribution” stolen from the earned and given to the unearned.

Detroit is the first major city in modern America to see such an impact of their mismanagement, but many cities are short in toe.  Michael Moore in his film Roger and Me stumbled around revealing his utterly failed philosophy about the way life works as his arguments are only based on observations and not the cause.  Further, Matt Damon’s new film Elysium set in the year 2154, where the very wealthy live on a man-made space station while the rest of the population resides on a ruined earth, never really covers what ruined earth.  Damon like Moore has been given the progressive task to communicate the union message to mainstream America which continually falls short on logical thinkers who know better.  In Damon’s film he takes on a mission that could bring equality to the two polarized worlds.  The nature of the story might as well be the same as Detroit versus the suburbs where smart people of value flee the type of people who make themselves social parasites and consume much more than they contribute productively.  Progressives somehow think the math will just work out in the end, but it never does.  Even as a child I saw what was happening to Detroit and I wanted no part of it in my life—and I have lived by those terms.  But not everyone is as combative as I am on issues they believe in, and most will think what I do, but they will not fight.  They will simply pack up and move to someplace else that offers less imposition on their lifestyles, which is the root cause for why Detroit has failed as a city.  Detroit imposed themselves on the productive, forcing them out-of-town leaving behind only the destitute like Michael Moore to look about their neighborhoods and wonder what happened.  The only word their failed philosophies have for the tragedy is “greed” but it is much more complicated than that.   The real villain is “financial incentive” and in the case of Detroit, the lack thereof.

Rich Hoffman

“Justice Comes with the Crack of a Whip!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The Miracle of Uncle Walt Disney: Rich Hoffman and Matt Clark discuss the heart of American Exceptionalism

Hollywood StudiosWhen people ask what kind of America I want, and what am I fighting for, my conversation always comes back around to one person who delivered to me an ideal of America that I have always worked to achieve, Walt Disney.  Disney is one of the characters in real life who did just as the heroes of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged novel did, he brought to humanity wonderful gifts that have lived on for nearly 50 years after his death, and he did not do it as a collective effort, he did it with his solely driven mind.  Roy Disney, Walt’s older brother could not have done what Walt was able to do.  Roy brought a stabilizing factor to Walt’s life financially, but the collaboration did not work the other way around.  one-mans-dreamIf not for the solitary, driven mind of Walt Disney, I am entirely convinced that an entire era of Americana would have been successfully destroyed by external American enemies who planted seeds of deception into our culture that were met by only a handful of creative minds who stood as pillars against moral collapse.  The audacity to invoke into society the world over the unique human attribute of a personal dream was Walt Disney’s greatest weapon against tyranny, and most treasured gift to humankind.  My friend Matt Clark on WAAM radio in Ann Arbor, Michigan feels the same way about Uncle Walt as I do, and we spent an hour of radio time on Matt’s show during July 21st, 2013 from 2 to 3 PM talking about the importance that Walt Disney has had in preserving American culture not only in his time but in the present, long after he departed from this world.  The below conversation is unique, and Matt did a wonderful job of collecting video of the discussion complete with video examples.  I would suggest that you gather up a snack dear reader and make time to watch and listen to these two broadcasts shown below—each representing a segment of radio time between the top and bottom of the hour.  For old timers, it will be a walk down memory lane, and for the young, you will learn what all the fuss is about Disney as a company, and why they are so successful.  Disney was not an accident, but a direct product of the kind of people only America can produce.

What prompted our discussion was a nagging revelation that I had recently while visiting Disney World, specifically Hollywood Studios during a busy Fourth of July holiday.  Given my unique position where I write more than most people can even dream of, including professional writers, and my deep love of philosophy, along with unique real world experiences in politics and business many converging paths intersected at the same time to hit me with a number of intense revelations about the state of the world.  crossroads-of-the-worldNo other country on the face of planet earth, no education institution, no political system, no financial altruism, no welfare system, no friendship, no collaboration, no wish upon a star has produced another man like Walt Disney.   Disney was the very unique type of person that shared in a fictional context Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged characters.  Rand’s fictional characters and Disney’s real life character were products of a time in America where they were born at the end of a laissez-faire capitalism period before communist ideas contaminated the next generation filling up the empty minds of youth with the type of progressive tripe that is so common today.   Disney literally stood against a very tough world, through competitive studios who wanted to sink him for being too good, labor union disputes, communist infiltration, and many personal set-backs to build a company that is one of the most powerful in the entire world.  If not for Disney, there would be no ESPN, no sustainable ABC television.  And the film business may not have survived through the 1970s.  Disney single-handedly carried America on his back, and still does to this very day.  If not for Disney there would be no American Adventure at the Epcot Center, there would be no Hall of Presidents, there would be no real “Liberty Tree” and it is entirely likely that all references to the American Revolution might have been successfully erased from the minds of all after the effects of the Red Decade and the subsequent takeover of capitalist industry by the communist Trojan Horse—labor unions.   CLICK TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE LIBERTY TREE.

The enemies of Walt Disney to this very day are the progressive statist types who attempt to pick a few character flaws taken from Walt in hindsight—without the context of the times to mold the parameters of acceptability.  disneyThey assassinate his character while still trying to pander to modern Disney executives to fund their creative ideas.  Secretly there is a lot of resentment in the entertainment industry even within the Disney Company about why Walt Disney’s beliefs are so closely adhered to, when there are so many college trained CEO’s who should be able to do a superior job of management in the modern landscape politically, and economically.   The answer is of course that they can’t. walking-through-the-park Nobody can nowhere on earth, because what makes people like Walt Disney is laissez-faire capitalism and that doesn’t exist anywhere anymore.  Laissez-faire capitalism allowed Walt to be everything he dreamed of, and allowed him to take tremendous risks and receive eventually, not until much later in his life, great rewards.  It was only by the time the novel Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957 that Walt started to become personally wealthy from all his wonderful work—where he didn’t have to worry about going bankrupt.  But Walt wasn’t happy to be just another rich man from his efforts; he wanted to build his ultimate dream—Disney World, which he never lived to see.Hollywood Studios 2

When I was in Hollywood Studios over the Fourth of July period previously mentioned, I thought about Walt Disney a lot that day.  His view of America is what the Tea Party is trying to achieve, one that is morally righteous and inherently good.  water-towerThe Tea Party wants the kind of America talked about in the Davy Crockett television show, and on the famous Zorro series where crime and punishment were clear, and bad guys in politics did not win.  Walt loved freedom which is most pronounced in his Pirates of the Caribbean exhibit where he understood that it was the pirates of that period which led the way to the American Revolution which Walt was very dedicated to preserving.   He has an entire section of Disney World committed to preserving this memory that is more committed to America’s roots than the actual city of Boston which is extremely progressive.  If not for Walt Disney, there would not be a Tea Party fighting for fiscal responsibility, limited government, or free markets—the kind of themes that were uncompromisingly explored on the old shows of Davey Crockett.  Because of Disney, the world cannot forget what made America, and ultimately what made Disney– laissez-faire capitalism.  Hollywood Studios is a shrine to laissez-faire capitalism, to the free flow of ideas before the labor unions infested the industry during World War II with a dirty bomb of the kind of ideals that were destroying the world—collectivism.  Kaiden with Whip
The enemies of America did not attack California with bombs and airplanes the way it was feared when the U.S. Government took over the Disney Studios during the war with a martial law like imposition.  The real attack came with ideals of collectivism that were injected like a poison into American education institutions to slowly kill the ideal of self-rule, and the pursuit of liberty.  I am convinced that if not for Disney, America would have died on the operating table long ago as the poison of collectivism destroyed our history and our hopes.  Only one man attempted to counteract that poison with goodness from his own personal mind, and that was Walt Disney.  He died staring up at the ceiling of his one last hope for the human race—his design for The Epcot Center pinned to the ceiling over his bed by his brother Roy. Walt died in 1966, but Roy made the rest of his dreams come true by carrying on the torch to a new generation who was as clueless as the rest of the world as to the philosophy of success that Walt Disney represented, but they were at least wise enough to not change the formula and follow the teachings of Uncle Walt Disney, the last of the laissez-faire capitalists and hope for the world.Indiana Jones Stunt Show

Now watch this documentary about Walt Disney for the whole story.  The important thing to understand about laiseez-faire capitalism is that even with that economic philosophy; only a few out of millions of such minds produced can ever hope to be like Walt Disney.  But the worth to all society from those very few is infinite.

Rich Hoffman

“Justice Comes with the Crack of a Whip!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The Failure of Detroit: Going bankrupt and the primary reason why

It was not a surprise that Detroit filed for bankruptcy.  I reported it here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom many months, ago.  There was nothing stunning about it, yet the reaction of some of the public workers in the system such as County Circuit Judge Rosemary Aquinlina was.  Detroit was being crushed financially under their legacy costs negotiated by labor unions adhering to a failed Keynesian economics plan.  The unions led Detroit to a financial reality that was not based on any kind of successful logic.  Nobody wanted to associate the math of so many pension requirements with the decline of business in the city that was driven away by high taxes, union mandates, and unmanaged government.  They just hoped that the money needed to sustain government and its workers would magically fall from the sky and into their laps like some tribal god granting the campfire dancer’s uttering war chants their requests.

A Michigan judge ruled Friday July 19th, 2013 that Republican Gov. Rick Snyder’s Detroit bankruptcy filing was a violation of the state’s constitution and that it fails to “honor” President Barack Obama who “took (Detroit’s auto companies) out of bankruptcy.” County Circuit Judge Rosemary Aquilina said she hopes Gov. Snyder “reads certain sections of the (Michigan) constitution and reconsiders his actions.  I have some very serious concerns because there was this rush to bankruptcy court that didn’t have to occur and shouldn’t have occurred,” Aquilina said.

More on that topic can be seen at the links below:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/19/mich-judge-rules-detroit-bankruptcy-unconstitutional-claims-it-fails-to-honor-president-obama/

(Related: Melissa Harris-Perry’s ‘Delusional’ Analysis of Bankrupt Detroit May Stun You)

Judge Aquilina is obviously out of her mind, and a functional drone of the Obama administration.  Obama did not take the auto companies out of bankruptcy; he simply stole tax dollars to pay union supporters of his campaign money they did not deserve as their union’s legacy costs were destroying the auto manufactures.  The money Obama gave to the auto companies only delayed their bankruptcy.  The foundations that the unions built their union pension system in the private sector were entirely unsustainable and rooted in sheer communism, which should have never happened in the first place.  It has destroyed auto manufacturing in Detroit, and therefore—Detroit.  Then to make matters worse, the government of Detroit through their public sector unions applied the same economic theory to their own pension system—which obviously has failed.

We often consider judges wise—but obviously Rosemary Aquilina is lacking due to her beliefs that bankruptcy in Detroit can just be pushed under a rug.  Currently, both pension funds in Detroit have claims to roughly “$9.2 billion in unfunded pension and retiree health care liabilities,” the Free Press reports.  Where does Judge Aquilina think that money will come from—the ghost businesses in Detroit, the ghost residents of the neighborhoods who have moved away to flee the poorly managed city, or the ghost money that is flowing through the revenue collection system?  The answer is far worse than just being stupid, it is ideological and therefore rooted deep into the core of her thinking which should disqualify her from any decision-making authority as her personal philosophy has eliminated her from logical consideration.

Judge Aquilina is not alone; in my school district of Lakota the same progressive union mentality is present.  If left unmanaged, unchallenged, and completely to their own devices, they are just as stupid.  In a recent levy attempt to put their money-making scheme on the ballot, they want a tax increase on property against residents while enrollment is on a declining path—which makes no sense.  Like Detroit, there will be fewer contributors to the tax system in the years to come, so Lakota like Detroit believes that they can increase taxes on those who are left to balance the books, while they continue to raise the costs of their positions with wage increases, more public employees drawling from the system and continued mismanagement.  The public employees involved are behaving like brainless zombies who have no idea where the money comes from, they only care to fill their endless desire for more.  It was that type of short-sightedness that destroyed Detroit, and now that the time has come, the contributors to moral bankruptcy cannot see that it was their mentality that bankrupted their city, school districts, and destroyed the lives of millions.  They believe even as the world burns around them, that their system of collective government is achievable, and that the Cloward and Piven strategy they all learned in college was actually to benefit the poor, and (middle class) instead of the real intention—to destroy American imperialism by cutting off its financial legs with slow brewed communism.  People like MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry and Detroit’s Judge Aquilina and Lakota’s Karen Mantia are the foot soldiers of the Cloward and Piven strategy of destruction that intentionally has used Keynsian economic theories to destroy American wealth for the global aims of a one world middle-class designed to bow at the feet of the elected elite described in Plato’s Republic.

But what is stunning is that people like Judge Aquinlina even as the world burns around her is in complete denial and expects that nobody can see the flames licking the sky about her talking head pronouncements.  The ultimate villainy of progressive theory is the denial of reality, which is typical of their kind.  They are so practiced in the art of self-deception that they actually believe what they are saying.  Aquinlina actually believes that President Obama saved the car companies with some kind of magic money, and that Detroit’s bankruptcy can be suspended till some future date perhaps after her own retirement from the system.  She believes that magically Detroit’s finances can be balanced by doing the same things that drove the city into $9.2 billion in unfunded liabilities which is obviously false.

Detroit is bankrupt, and it was the first large city of its kind to find itself in that situation.  But it won’t be the last.  As a state, California is collapsing under the same pressures, and nobody wants to face the music.  California boomed with three major economic expansions, the Gold Rush, the movie business, and the technical advances of Silicone Valley.  Without a way to continuously make money with sustainable jobs, the government which erupted in the wake of capitalist success like parasitic flees sucking the blood of a dog, California has driven away it’s positive money creation endeavors into other states with excessively high taxes leaving the pornography industry and what’s left of the film industry to carry the entire state’s finances.  But like all bankruptcies, Detroit included, the film industry is about to collapse on itself.  The studios there cannot continue making routine billion dollar box office pictures to pay for all their labor costs, which is why production budgets on films are so high.  Within a few years, only a few films will have the ability to generate so much box office money to cover their extraordinarily high production budgets—budgets that are driven up by union wages and legacy costs that are built with the same financial philosophy which has destroyed Detroit.  And when it happens there will be armies of people like Judge Aquinlina who will not understand because the essence of their very beings believe in these large statist ideologies and the very notion that they were always unsustainable means that they must analyze their entire philosophy about life, liberty, and happiness.  They will discover tragically that they were always wrong, and terrible liabilities on the success of tomorrow as they have been functioning for years as parasites to progress when their party of progressives fulfilled the exact opposite of everything they ever thought was possible with a grim reality of bankruptcy.

Rich Hoffman

“Justice Comes with the Crack of a Whip!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Walking School Buses: More dumb ideas driven by the Zombies of Lakota

Not everyone at the Lakota school system located in an affluent northern Cincinnati suburb is a levy zombie.  16-year-old Emma as a student was fourteen during the period of time Doc Thompson referenced as he was hosting Glenn Beck’s radio show from New York City.  On that very popular midday nationwide radio broadcast Doc Thompson thought back in time to our experiences fighting the Lakota school levy when the district retaliated against voters by cutting busing to residents wishing to impose inconvenience and turn, a “no” vote to a “yes” vote in the next election.   (CLICK TO REVIEW.)  Recently Michelle Obama advocated as part of her nationwide health initiative that school districts activate a really dim-witted program called Walking School Buses, which are essentially packs of kids who walk to school instead of riding in a vehicle.  It wasn’t lost to Doc Thompson the hypocrisy as he remembered the reason for Lakota’s busing cuts and thought it ironic that now Michelle Obama—as the queen of public education avocation was proposing that the very thing districts used as weapons against tax payers was now being sold as a healthy solution.  This prompted Emma from Lakota to call Doc Thompson at his New York City studio to poke some fun at the hypocrisy.  Click the video below to listen to the hilarious radio segment.

As crazy as the dialogue between Doc and Skip was in the radio bit they were not kidding.  The Walking School Bus program is real, and an officially endorsed theory of The White House.  From the website advocates declare:

“Studies show that fewer children are walking and biking to school, and more children are at risk of becoming overweight. Changing behaviors of children and parents require creative solutions that are safe and fun.

Implementing a walking school bus can be both.

A walking school bus is a group of children walking to school with one or more adults. If that sounds simple, it is, and that’s part of the beauty of the walking school bus. It can be as informal as two families taking turns walking their children to school to as structured as a route with meeting points, a timetable and a regularly rotated schedule of trained volunteers.

When beginning a walking school bus, remember that the program can always grow. It often makes sense to start with a small bus and see how it works. Pick a single neighborhood that has a group of parents and children who are interested. It’s like a carpool—without the car—with the added benefits of exercise and visits with friends and neighbors. For an informal bus:

  1. Invite families who live nearby to walk.

  2. Pick a route and take a test walk.

  3. Decide how often the group will walk together.

  4. Have fun!”

To verify everything you have just read and everything that Doc Thompson elaborated on with comic delivery—but was 100% true, you can see the link for yourself below.

http://www.walkingschoolbus.org/

Unbelievably the site is actually maintained by the Pedestrian and BicycleInformationCenter for the Partnership for a Walkable America, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Transportation.  That means that tax payers paid for the employees who came up with this whole idea which was an obvious waste of money.

Public schools for years have done just what Lakota did when they did not pass their tax increases—they took away school busing putting the burden of transportation on homeowners to drive their children to school.  When that method failed to work, which began to happen in the summer of 2010 all across the country as per pupil averages in public schools climbed to around $10K per student, Americans had shown that they had enough and tax requests were being defeated in greater frequency as a diminishing marginal return had been reached.  Now the same kind of public employees who came up with the failed strategy of extorting tax increases against communities have changed their strategy completely and are now declaring that walking to school is good for children.

The foolishness of both stances taken by the government employees involved in these decisions is catastrophic to any society that wishes to advance.  Just for putting their name at the bottom of the Walking School Bus web site, The Department of Transportation should be eliminated.  If walking is what The Department of Transportation considers under their authority, or concern, then they are overstepping their boundaries tyrannically and must be stopped.  If this is the way they spend their time and resources, they are ineffective and worthless.

It was good to hear a young lady from Lakota call into a gigantic national show that has a footprint throughout that portion of the day which ranges between 7 million and 15 million listeners.  Doc is aware that Lakota is seeking another levy, and now that his exposure is national as opposed to regional when he was in Cincinnati his voice carries to many more ears.  It surprised me that a young lady was listening to the broadcast and cared enough to call in and offer some satirical commentary to a ridiculous problem.  The caller Emma was much younger when Lakota implemented the busing cut plan and she has seen, as many students have, the hypocrisy of those who are in charge, and it is good to witness that she cared enough to voice her opinion.  In past levies, the school has used children as pro levy advocates, and certainly Lakota has managed to recruit a fair number of Zombies of Lakota to carry on the progressive message of public education that Michelle Obama so hypocritically represents without any real thought.  But Emma was a ray of hope that not all children or even parents in Lakota are zombies and have the cognition to participate in an intelligent discussion, even on a large national stage that is heard by millions.

As for Doc, I hope he and Skip had a good time on the Flight Walk from New York.  If Michelle Obama and The Department of Transportation have their way we will all walk before we drive, walk before we fly, and find ourselves sitting around campfires awaiting orders from some village chief dictating our movements.  The march of the typical progressive is a regression to the time before invention so to not advance human kind into a new age, but to preserve Mother Earth for all time as a superior idea to the products of human intellect—which they detest.  That is why people who think the way they do are the Zombies of Lakota.

Rich Hoffman

“Justice Comes with the Crack of a Whip!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Another Lakota Scandal: George C. Merk and the Levy Zombies Strike Again

There is a lot that is very wrong about the recent revelation that Lakota West High School math teacher George C. Merk paid $66,173 by the tax payers was placed on a 45 day license suspension beginning over the summer months.  The teacher admitted to inappropriate communication with students of a sexual nature which was revealed during a conference with district staff Jan. 11, 2012, concluding with a consent agreement dated June 26, 2013.  That is a long-span of time to resolve one human resources issue.  Merk’s five-year teaching license was suspended from June 12 through July 26 but he is clear for 2013-14 school year.  This case does not surprise me as I have verbal confirmation of many such stories, and usually the press does not investigate them.  However, in this case, Michael Clark broke the story in the Cincinnati Enquirer which did surprised me as it required a public records request to get to the facts.  As the story broke, both the Enquirer and the Journal had well-written stories which explained the facts in great detail by Hannah Poturalski and Michael Clark that was a great service to the community, and can be seen in their entirety below for the convenience of the curious investigator complete with original links to the stories as they appeared in online form.

 

Michael D. Clark reports: in The Cincinnati Enquirer

A Lakota West High School math teacher’s license has been suspended for “inappropriate” communications with students, including exchanging recollections of sexual experiences and orientation.

But the teacher, George C. Merk, will return to the classroom at the start of the school year next month.

Merk, 41, was previously suspended without pay in March 2012 for 10 days for what Lakota Schools Superintendent Karen Mantia described as “unacceptable, insubordinate, deceitful and unprofessional” behavior.

According to a Feb. 15, 2012, reprimand issued by Lakota officials, Merk “admitted” to communicating with students via text messages, and other means, of disallowed subjects, including:

  • “(Students’) sexual orientation and their sexual experiences.”
  • “Your sexual orientation and your first sexual experience.”
  • “You denied receiving a picture of a condom box through text message from a student.”

Mantia wrote: “This behavior is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”

A report on Merk’s behavior and suspension was then submitted to the Ohio Department of Education’s Office of Professional Conduct for further investigation. That investigation ended last month under a consent agreement between Merk and the ODE.

The agreement, obtained by The Enquirer through a public records request, revealed that Merk agreed to have his teaching license suspended during the summer break for 45 days, ending July 26. Moreover, he has to complete 24 hours of training “on appropriate teacher-student boundaries” by Sept. 1 and he will no longer “communicate with current students using social media or by other electronic communications.”

Merk’s actions were not considered criminal and did not initiate an investigation by West Chester Township Police, police said.

Merk, who previously taught at Wilmington Schools, declined to comment.

His attorney, Julie Ford of Dayton, said, “(Merk) signed the consent agreement not because he believes he was guilty of any wrongdoing but to put this matter behind him and avoid any delays in the renewals of his current teaching licenses.”

“Both the Lakota school district and Ohio Department of Education are satisfied with this resolution, and Mr. Merk looks forward to resuming his teaching work in the fall,” Ford said.

Diane Brunsman, Lakota’s executive director for human resources, said “the findings of the Ohio Department of Education investigation are not grounds for termination.”

Both Brunsman and Mantia declined to comment further.

Merk was hired by Lakota in 2002 and his current salary is $66,173.

A review of Merk’s personnel file since 2002 showed no indications of previous transgressions and overall he has received high performance reviews by Lakota officials.

Under the state agreement, Lakota is also required to submit “detailed reports” every three months for the next two years to the ODE on Merk’s conduct.

http://westchesterbuzz.com/2013/07/17/teachers-license-suspended-for-sexual-texts/

By Hannah Poturalski

Staff Writer–The Journal

LIBERTY TWP. —

A Lakota West High School teacher whose teaching license was suspended for actions with students described as insubordinate and deceitful by the district will be returning to the classroom this August.

George C. Merk, 41, of Loveland, was placed on a 10-day unpaid suspension in March 2012 following an internal investigation by school officials. He has since been approved for teaching math in the 2013-14 school year at a salary of $66,173.

During a conference with district staff on Jan. 11, 2012, Merk reportedly admitted to:

  • having text message communication with students regarding sexual orientation, first sexual experiences and other personal issues
  • failing to report a student was bullied
  • providing a student with his cell phone number through a Facebook message
  • posting Facebook statuses about students’ academic levels and disparaging Lakota West High School administration
  • receiving a text message from a student offering to buy him an iPad
  • denying having received a picture of a condom box in a text message from a student.

“This behavior is unacceptable and will not be tolerated by Lakota Local School District employees,” wrote Superintendent Karen Mantia in a formal reprimand from Feb. 15, 2012. “Mr. Merk, your actions described above were insubordinate, deceitful, unacceptable and unprofessional.”

The district then submitted a report to the Ohio Department of Education’s Office of Professional Conduct. As part of the investigation, Merk entered into a consent agreement — dated June 26, 2013 — with ODE that outlines several stipulations.

The terms of the agreement include:

  • Merk’s five-year teaching license being suspended for 45 days, from June 12 through July 26
  • detailed reports on Merk’s conduct will be submitted to ODE every three months for two years
  • completing 24 hours of training on appropriate teacher-student boundaries
  • not communicating with current students using Facebook, text messages and other electronic means.

Merk’s attorney, Julie C. Ford, of the Dayton firm Doll, Jansen, Ford & Rakay, said her client fully cooperated with the investigation by ODE.

“Mr. Merk was not accused of having a sexual or otherwise inappropriate relationship with any students; at most, the school district concluded he had discussed topics that might have been considered inappropriate,” Ford said.

The investigation ended last December, but a proposed penalty wasn’t reached until the end of the 2012-13 academic year, she said.

Ford said her client didn’t attempt to negotiate a lesser penalty or go through a full hearing process before his current teaching and principal’s licenses were to expire at the end of June.

“He therefore signed the consent agreement not because he was guilty of any wrongdoing but only to put this matter behind him and to avoid any delays in the renewals of his licenses,” Ford said. “Mr. Merk continues to be a model teacher and employee at Lakota. Mr. Merk looks forward to resuming his teaching work in the fall.”

Merk joined the Lakota teaching staff in 2002, after six years teaching at Wilmington City Schools. Merk’s personnel file at Lakota doesn’t include any other disciplinary or performance issues.

“Mr. Merk is an outstanding teacher who takes great pride in his profession,” reads an evaluation dated May 16, 2013. “He goes above and beyond the district’s expectations, and his students are successful as the result of his efforts in the classroom.”

http://www.journal-news.com/news/news/lakota-teacher-suspended-for-inappropriate-communi/nYs6q/

 

Now that this story is out, I will have a lot more to say about it in subsequent articles.  But the gist of the situation is this– George C. Merk is not worth $66,173 as a public employee and I resent having to pay such people so much money with my taxes.  People like him are low quality personalities who are instructing kids to be low-quality adults.  The very nature of Merk even desiring to inquire about the sexual nature of his students as a 41-year-old man is disgusting.  In a sexual context people are often attracted to others who share their intellectual values even though much is focused on physical attributes.  Merk’s tendency to desire juicy gossip about the sexual nature of his students indicate that Merk intellectually is equal to his students, which disqualifies him as any kind of intellectual leader by my measure and he should be terminated from the Lakota school district.  Teachers should not have access to students outside of a classroom whether it is Facebook, Twitter, or any other social network tool, because as instructors, teachers should be operating at a superior intellectual position. 

 

However, as critical as I often am of the Lakota school board, and Superintendent Mantia, they have no real control over any disciplinary action against Merk because the Lakota math teacher is protected by his labor union—which is why his punishment was just silly words issued by Mantia and his suspension was carried out when the school was already shut down for the summer.  The teachers and their labor union run the asylum where the Zombies of Lakota know that bad behavior cannot be punished, yet the tax payers are “forced” to support such behavior through force with their property values just because the school exists near their homes.  

 

The punishment to Merk for his disgraceful actions is essentially nothing but a little embarrassment.  He has still been paid a salary that is 20 to 30% more than the average Lakota resident for a job that is only active for 7.5 to 9 hour per day, five days a week, nine months out of the year.  Merk does not appreciate his job otherwise he would not have engaged in the behavior outlined above displaying a low intellectual understanding of sexual context that is closer to high school kids with thriving pituitary glands not yet acclimated to adult life.  George Merk, and people like him should not be in a class room because they lack the intellectual high ground with their students, and have lost their ability to teach.  A teacher is not an equal to the student; they should be the type of people students aspire to become.  When a teacher demonstrates that they are no better than the rest of the puberty bound young people, then moral authority is lost, and instruction is nearly impossible.  Worse than that, the people of Lakota should not be forced to pay for such employees with tax increases and social extortion. 

 

Of course I will have more to say on this issue, but for now just the contents of Merk’s actions should be considered with the punishment he received—which is to say virtually nothing.  When Merk’s attorney Julie C. Ford stated that “He (Merk) signed the consent agreement not because he was guilty of any wrongdoing but only to put this matter behind him and to avoid any delays in the renewals of his licenses, she was saying that Mr. Merk did not recognize that he did anything wrong.  When Ford said Merk was not accused of having a sexual or otherwise inappropriate relationship with any students; at most, the school district concluded he had discussed topics that might have been considered inappropriate.”  Merk and his attorney Ford in this case do not consider having text message communication with students regarding sexual orientation, sexual experiences and other personal issues to be inappropriate between a student and a teacher.  Further, failing to report a student was bullied is not negligent behavior as indicated by Merk–or providing a student with his cell phone number through a Facebook message.  Posting Facebook statuses about students’ academic levels and disparaging Lakota West High School administration is apparently acceptable behavior with these professionals based on their statements.  It is also OK to receive a text messages from students offering to buy Merk an iPad which should be considered an obvious bribe.  Those are the kinds of actions that Ford stated Merk might have performed inappropriately leaving the door open for anti-concept interpretation declaring innocence at the same time. 

These are the types of employees that tax payers are told are invaluable to Lakota’s community.  When the Levy Zombies take to the streets in the fall of 2013 for the November tax increase they are fighting for teachers like George C. Merk to continue the kind of behavior that occurred under the classroom tutelage of a Lakota West math teacher who will return to the classroom for the 2013/2014 school year.  Teachers like Merk are more interested in being “cool” to their students instead of actually teaching them anything, as the boundaries between teacher and student have been intentionally blurred by a failed education system that produces teachers who would rather be 15-year-old kids than 41-year-old adults making $66,173 a year.  The teacher is paid to be better than the children, so that students will try.  The teacher is not paid to be one of the “cool guys” in an ocean of subservient children who would rather manipulate their way to a good grade instead of actually working for it.  It is that second example that Merk is so guilty and the reason he should not be employed as a teacher in any public school anywhere. 

Oh, and the title to this article was Levy Zombies Strike Again.  CLICK HERE to read about the first time.  

Rich Hoffman

“Justice Comes with the Crack of a Whip!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

‘The Lone Ranger’ Movie Review: A wonderful film that celebrates the individual character of America

???????????????With all the lead up to the movie being so intense here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom my lack of a review for The Lone Ranger was simply due to the fact that I was on vacation with my family when the film was released and there wasn’t time to physically go see the movie.  On two occasions while I was vacationing in Florida I intended to take my family to see The Lone Ranger, once at Downtown Disney, but had to withdrawal because the day was already overbooked, and then again at Merritt Square Mall which was down the road from our Atlantic Coast condo.  But there, getting everyone together to see the movie on a busy schedule while also coming and going from Disney World was nearly impossible, so I delayed my viewing until we were able to return home in Ohio.

But I did read the reviews that were coming in from our sea-side balcony which were actually hostile to The Lone Ranger which gave me great suspicion.  When I write about a movie with grand enthusiasm the reason is usually more than the film just being good, but because I see the struggle of the film makers to overcome the real Ellsworth Tooheys of the media who were trained by statist oriented education practices to recognize a threat to their social fabric which The Lone Ranger represents, and to assassinate such creative endeavors before they see the light of day.  I have spoken at great length about this very thing occurring with Christopher Nolan from The Dark Knight trilogy where critics attacked Nolan for his obvious warnings about an overly altruistic society.  Critics blasted Dark Knight Rises once they realized that the film was a not very concealed warning about communism in society after building up the social anticipation from the previous two films without such obvious proclamations.  Nolan saved his message for the final film, which made a billion dollars at the box office in spite of the terrible reviews the film received.  ???????????????With The Lone Ranger I expected to see even after the extremely negative reviews, a movie from Disney that was just good ol’ fashion fun—I did not expect yet another film with very heavy opinions against the government position of collectivism over the traditional rugged individualism that built America from the start.  Coming from the Disney Studios I expected a more disguised effort, especially with Johnny Depp staring as Tonto, and sharing a producing credit.  But if the nation is divided equally down the middle with Tea Party type Americans on one side, and welfare collecting altruists on the other, Disney usually makes films that all types of people will enjoy.  This is good for their box office numbers, but runs counter to the type of messages that Walt Disney himself believed who actually testified before a congressional committee against communism during the height of the McCarthy Hearings.  But this Lone Ranger was made by Disney to show favor toward the former of those demographic groups and not the later.???????????????

When The Lone Ranger is introduced as a young lawyer traveling from the East Coast by train the first bits of dialogue which come from Armie Hammer who was confronted by a religious group advocating Bible studies, was to hold up his copy of John Locke’s The Second Treatise of Government and declare, “This is my Bible.”  Upon that startling declaration I immediately knew why the film reviews were so terrible as The Lone Ranger was in love with America, and was making no mistake about it.  The film was setting out to attack many misconceptions about events which took place during a period of almost perfect capitalism in The United States, during the late 1800s.  ???????????????The Second Treatise of Government was one of the foundation books which people like Thomas Jefferson used to help shape the argument about the kind of country that America would be.  Modern Americans who regularly attend Tea Party events know that John Locke is one of the philosophers who opened the door to the way of thinking that distinctly became freedom loving.  To altruists, this is a major social danger as any message that exhibits freedom as one of the highest human endeavors also seeks to be free from social stupidity, the self-determined poor (lazy people), and the malcontents of civilization.  Social progressives have desired for years to shape American thought into reflecting European sentiment of sacrifice, shared suffering, and a focus on the “greater good” while steering the educated masses away from a personal love of individual freedom.  ???????????????Opening the film with a direct node to John Locke was a bold declaration that I was surprised made it past the Disney executives screening the film.  It’s possible that some of them did not know what the book meant to American foundation, but it is unlikely to have slipped by so many eyes without anybody knowing, especially Johnny Depp, who has been known to show up to film screenings showing his open support of Che Guevara.  I thought the John Locke reference was quite extraordinary but the references did not end there so I know that it was not an accident.

The film continued on as a fantastic western that was often a cross between the old Sergio Leone westerns composed musically by Ennio Morricone and the hysterical romp through the old west that was touched on by Back to the Future III.   The movie was very funny at times as Johnny Depp’s Tonto was brilliantly eccentric.  The film was wonderfully photographed, evenly paced, and was very passionate about its subject matter.  ???????????????It was an unapologetic western that might have been an early episode of the TV show Davy Crockett, only with Industrial Light and Magic doing some spectacular visual effects.  The stunts were ambitious, and the scope of the project was mammoth.  It was the largest scale western I think has ever been attempted.  But The Lone Ranger himself does not drink, does not curse, does not use tobacco (he refused when offered), he does not want to kill people, and is a naively good guy from the beginning to the end of the film.  The only character arch that John Reid embarked on evolving from the beginning to the end was in hardening up from a naive lawyer to a man who isn’t afraid to pull the trigger on a bad guy by the end of the film.  Reid never had a moment of weakness in the film where he got drunk, caved into the seductions of a woman, or lost his moral compass.  He was firmly focused on justice from the beginning of the film till the very end.???????????????

The bad guy in the film however was Cole played brilliantly by Tom Wilkinson.  I suspect that many of the reviewers who wrote such bad things about The Lone Ranger as a movie saw themselves as the evil character Cole, who spoke often very flowery about the need for “social sacrifice,” the “greater good,” and destroying entire groups of people if they stood in his way of vision for progress.  The film showed the Indian rebellions with extraordinary glory which was much more epic than Dances with Wolves ever managed, and even captured how the United States cavalry found itself caught in an uncompromising position of picking sides.  It was a complicated series of events that were manipulated by the villain Cole who appeared to be a good guy though 2/3rds of the movie.

By the time The Lone Ranger had competed his hero journey and arrived with his horse Silver to save the day at the end of the film with his six guns in his hands, a bullwhip on his hip and his uncompromising white hat running across the rooftops of the town on a horse to jump onto a moving train all to the William Tell Overture I thought I had died and gone to heaven.  For me that scene was the best moment of movie magic I have experienced since I was 12 years old and Indiana Jones ran his horse down a hillside to jump onto a moving truck to save the Ark of the Covenant from the evil Nazis.??????????????? There was pure magic in The Lone Ranger which was none stop for the last half hour of the film.  It helped that I went to the movie as a Lone Ranger fan as I think I have seen every bit of film ever produced about the Lone Ranger, but nobody makes movies like The Lone Ranger any more.  The last real attempt was the Indiana Jones films which I constantly thought about during the film. Ironically, Indiana Jones was modeled after the old Lone Ranger Republic Serials, so the ending to The Lone Ranger was a tribute to the history of film that took action to the next level.  The Lone Ranger was an instant favorite of mine that will go on my top twenty list.???????????????

But what was different about this Lone Ranger as opposed to other renditions was that Tonto was extraordinarily good.  Johnny Depp created one of the best characters of his career with Tonto and I found the scenes that took place in 1933 as the old Tonto was telling The Lone Ranger story to a little boy to be emotionally captivating.  These scenes were simply Johnny Depp at his absolute finest as an actor.  Tonto was a social outcast to his tribe that was living life with one firm foot planted into the spirit world and saw reality all too clearly giving the impression that he was insane through most of the film.  But he wasn’t, and it was obvious by the end of the film that Tonto as an extremely old man was deeply committed to the actual reality of justice that is hidden to most of the world, portraying a Yoda quality from The Empire Strikes Back that was captivating as a performance all by itself.

The only regret that I have about the movie is that I feel like it was made for people like me in mind, traditional Americans who love westerns, and characters who are uncompromisingly good.  It will not make a billion dollars at the box office like Iron Man and the last Pirates of the Caribbean film.  ???????????????It will be lucky to recover its $215 million dollar budget, which is unheard of for a western.  Only a company like Disney could have made a film like this, which was risky, so it is unlikely that Armie Hammer will have the chance to reprise his Lone Ranger role in the way that Robert Downey Jr has for Iron Man, and make future films.  The film by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Gore Verbinski using music by Hans Zimmer pulled out all the stops to make a great film under the penmanship of Ted Elliott, Justin Haythe, and Terry Rossio. ??????????????? Everyone involved with The Lone Ranger is among the best in their fields of endeavor, and it is a shame that the magic will probably never be seen again, because the box office will prevent it.  The Lone Ranger is one of those films that will percolate in America culture for a long time.  It will not have a big pop at the box office, but will be watched and loved for many years in a quiet way as viewers find it wonderfully good, but unsure why they like it so much while critics and industry professionals declare that it is such a bad film.  It is not the film that is bad for progressive types, but the message. ??????????????? Most people seeing The Lone Ranger cannot identify with the hero.  But they will identify with the villain, and that tends to make people angry.  Angry people do not throw down nearly a hundred dollars to see The Lone Ranger, which is what it cost me by the time we bought tickets and snacks, a rarity for us as a family.  I spent extra money at the theater knowing that a majority of the movie goers were not spending money on The Lone Ranger, so we broke our rule and bought the overpriced popcorn and drinks anyway, to support the film, and theater showing it.

Those critics missed the points and represent most opinions……………

Disney can roll the dice on movies like The Lone Ranger because they have so many other profitable revenue streams, which is just another benefit of capitalism.  I think the film will make its money back in the worldwide market so Disney won’t lose its money and Johnny Depp won’t lose face from his production credit.  Jerry Bruckheimer will continue to have successful films, including Pirates of the Caribbean 5 which is coming up in 2015.  But this will unfortunately be the last ride of this particular Lone Ranger, and that is unfortunate.  But if not for Disney, it would have never happened to begin with.  And because it did, I am very grateful.

Rich Hoffman

“Justice Comes with the Crack of a Whip!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com