Tag: Rich Hofman

Even Republicans are Looters: Take away the money that feeds corruption

Darryl Parks from 700 WLW took a moment to enjoy the defeat of the various school levies around Cincinnati.

School systems and the corrupt funding spoils system surrounding them is reflective of the larger government where most everyone involved is looking for excuses to stick their hand into our wallets and loot it. Education is big business, as is Medicare, Social Security, virtually everything in government. Most of the positions are useless, and only exist as an excuse to create a job that only serves further consumption of our tax dollars. So to call the perpetrators “thieves,” “looters,” “robbers,” and “scum bags,” is not a falsification. Those thieves of our taxes are both Republicans, and Democrats, they are Presidents, and local commissioners. To me, if a politician does anything to “buy” a vote, they have stolen from the tax payer because if money is taken from me and used to buy more power in elections, then the money taken from me for the use of running government is only being used to gain power, so the money was taken and used under false pretenses, and that constitutes theft.

Bruce Bartlett, Forbes columnist and former Treasury official explained about the Bush administration’s progressive oriented government how votes were bought under George Bush. Progressives are for the most part all thieves, because they seek to make simple things complicated. In complication thieves can do their work of taking our money while we are left to believe it’s for our own good.

The Bush administration was already projecting the largest deficit in American history—$475 billion in fiscal year 2004…But a big election was coming up that Bush and his party were desperately fearful of losing. So they decided to win it by buying the votes of America’s seniors by giving them an expensive new program to pay for their prescription drugs.

When the legislation came up for [an important vote on a motion to proceed]…it was failing by 216 to 218 when the standard 15 –minute time allowed for voting came to an end. What followed was one of the most extraordinary events in congressional history. The vote was kept open for almost three hours while the House Republican leadership brought massive pressure to bear on the handful of principle Republicans who had the nerve to put country ahead of party. The leadership even froze the C-Span cameras so that no one outside the House chamber could see what was going on.

In addition, during this period Bush attempted to buy the votes of “soccer moms” with No Child Left Behind which was the largest expansion of federal education spending in American history, created the Department of Homeland Security, added 100,000 federal employees and signed the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill, among other things. Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s “K Street Project” created many thousands of earmarks for lobby firms that were encouraged to hire more Republicans and provide more money to the GOP. What the Republicans had done over the last decade was nothing short of evil, self-serving and down-right theft of the American Taxpayer.

Yet even though President Bush signed legislation doubling the K-12 education budget Democrats still attacked him as “mean-spirited and cheap” by criticizing him for not spending triple! Democrats under Obama have done much the same. It is this path that has brought us to this point in American history leaving us with essentially two choices; raise taxes to pay for everything which will cripple our GDP or cut the programs created under these looters, which would instantly drive up unemployment from all the federal workers that have been attached like cancer cells to the body of American government.

I support that second idea, and this is why I start with attacking school funding first, because the looting of the tax payer starts there. It is in this theft committed behind the security of our children that we initially throw up our hands and proclaim, “WHAT AM I TO DO ABOUT IT!” And once that statement is made by a person; a voter’s journey toward complacency has begun.

The way to fix this whole problem of crime in politics is to take away the money that feeds it. Socially, as American’s we need to pay public positions less so that the corrupt aren’t attracted like flies to those professions. Superintendents in school systems, mayors, township trustees, congressman, senators, and presidents, all are attracted to public positions that get into the “business” of politics for the sole reason of looting the public. They may lie to themselves about “the greater good” but anyone that wishes to live off public money is a looter at heart, a uncourageous loaf who fears to produce anything on their own, and craves the safety of public service. But the truth that they hide from even themselves is that they are no better than a common thief that dangles your life in front of you in exchange for the money earned with the sweat of your work.

A lot of people forget that I was one of the first people in Butler County to call Michael Fox, Butler County commissioner a crook and a thief in the media. I fought him toe to toe from 2001 to 2005.

I knew he was corrupt and I said it openly in the Pulse Journal. Mike Fox was into the county commissioner position in Butler County for himself, as was the evidence of having a highway named after him, which was later changed from the Michael Fox Highway to Butler Country Regional when better minds prevailed later on as Fox was going to be indicted on fraud charges. Once he got caught, Fox’s friends did what all politicians do, they pulled away from him.

Now I know many of the people who worked with Fox. I like many of those people. But that still doesn’t excuse looting, and I call it looting even to those same friends. I have been very consistent about that even in days when it was not popular. I know what it feels like to be cast aside hoping that the isolation would force me to “play ball.” I have never played that game. Wrong is wrong, and Fox, a distinguished Republican, was wrong and I fought him openly, just as I’m doing with the Lakota School District now. So this isn’t a fight against public education. It’s a fight against corruption, something I can’t stand.

I fight public education and other aspects of government now because they are looters at heart. They expand the government at all levels to cover their hands as they attempt to stick them in our pockets and they used disguises of safety and our “American interests” to do it. The only way to stop them is to take away what they like, and that is your money. Take it away from them. Take away their car allowances, their free air travel, their gas cards, expense accounts, and their high wages. Take away the value of the vote, the threat of removing them from office. This will keep them from being prone to manipulation from special interests. Make public office not a privilege, but a sacrifice only undertaken from the best and most pure that our society has to offer. Take away the spoils so you can have what’s good from public office.

So that leaves us to wonder, who will want to take these public jobs? The answer will be, fewer people and for shorter tenure. Politicians should be the elderly that have already made their livings, raised their children and are at the end of their life. They should have the wisdom of a lifetime to resort to. They should not be people in their 30’s, 40’s and 50’s that are trying to prove their worth in the world, attempting to use power to obtain property, or sex. No human being that is prone to any thoughts of giving to themselves the wealth generated by others should be in public office. For instance, a man like Barrack Obama should not be in public service, because he could not create any wealth for himself. He has only gained wealth in public service, and public service comes completely from the tax payer. Here Obama assumes that he is one of the “big boys” that is making over 200K a year and deserves to be in a tax bracket that pays more. He considers himself in the top 1%, which is laughable. He’s happy to pay higher taxes because without taxes he wouldn’t be rich, so he has no value on the word “wealthy.” It’s easy to give away money because he didn’t earn it. He took it.

You get a smaller government by taking away the money. Take the money and you’ll take away the corruption. That will leave only a handful of people out there that are self-made people who would take a public job to help their community, state or country because they are good at what they do. And when their term is up, someone else will fill the seat out of honor, not to get paid. Nobody should be fighting for a seat in public office.

Only when our society stops treating thieves as heroes, or as our leaders, will we stop the looting government from open theft and expanding to rob us in every aspect of our lives. The solution is simple, but it requires our resolve to commit to it.

Look to yourself to lead your own life, and your family. Never look to a “leader” like George Bush, or Mike Fox, or even your local school superintendent. They are all looters; otherwise they wouldn’t be in politics to begin with. So stop feeding them with your endorsement of public approval, and stop giving them money to use against you as a weapon.

Rich Hoffman

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

Still the MOST POWERFUL WEAPON IN THE WORLD: Vote on Tuesday May 3rd to avoid further taxation

“Our problem is not merely to help the students to adjust themselves to world life, but to make them as unlike their fathers as we can. While we are followers of Jefferson, there is one principle of Jefferson’s which no longer can obtain in the practical politics of America. You know that it was Jefferson who said that the best government is that which does as little governing as possible…but that time has passed. America is not now and cannot in the future be a place for unrestricted individual enterprise. The people of the United States do not wish to curtail the activities of this Government; they wish, rather, to enlarge them and with every enlargement, with the mere growth, indeed of the country itself, there must come, of course, the inevitable increase of expense…It is not expenditure but extravagance that we should fear being criticized for.”

That is a quote from the father of modern education and president of progressive policy who along with Social Gospel soldiers such as John Dewey created the situation you see on the below chart. The quotes are from Woodrow Wilson.

Check out the source article of this chart at: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/the-charts-that-show-why-the-u-s-is-screwed/

The new strategy among school systems to pass levies is to not advertise them in the traditional way, to not put out signs, to not send out mailers, and to attempt to keep things quiet so that majorities of the voting people don’t show up. Those who do show up are usually the employees of the school system, or those radical parents that are hoping to use the school to mold their children into miracles of future productivity, which they as parents lack the ability to accomplish on their own. Listen to Darryl Parks of 700 WLW cover this warning along with the pressing coming from extremely high gas prices.

Government, and schools are part of the government, are in a perpetual state of attempted growth. This is why government officials are often concerned with unemployment numbers. Government, especially progressive government, seeks to create a job to be filled by a living body. The focus is not on the productivity of that employee, but simply on creating a position and filling that position with a warm body. This is why government is so extraordinarily inefficient. And schools are no different. They are heavily staffed with senseless positions so that the school system can flaunt the numbers as if the number of employees a district carries is a proper measure of productivity. It’s not. Schools carry too many assistants at the administration level; there are too many councilors, and media specialists. And the invisible culprits to a school budget are substitute teachers where the normal teacher takes one of their many personal days (3) at Lakota and 15 sick days and must hire a substitute teacher so the district is not only paying the teacher for not being in the classroom, but must hire a substitute teacher to fill in. Now remember that teachers are only in the classroom for 9 months out of a year, so every calendar year a teacher is able to take 18 days off with pay, which requires a substitute teacher. Consider that the average month on a 5 day work week is approximately 20 days.

For a better investigation of these numbers listen to Scott Sloan break down the teacher’s contract for Lakota on the air with some levy campaign supporters. Most school systems in Ohio have comparable contracts, because the standards are set by the Ohio Education Association.

Yes Lebanon, you are in the same boat. Your superintendent rushed through a new contract prior to signing S.B.5 so that the wages and contracts were secure for the teachers union. Mark North proved where his loyalty was and how little respect he had for the tax payers that employee him. What are you going to do about it on Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011?

Government is a corrosive, corruptible creature, and teachers are a reflection of everything that’s wrong with it. They take too much and do too little. Tocqueville proclaimed in 1840 “Having thus taken each citizen in turn in the powerful grasp and shaped him to its will, government then extends its embrace to include the whole of society. It covers the whole of social life with a network of petty, complicated rules that are both minute and uniform, through which even men of the greatest originality and the most vigorous temperament cannot force their heads above the crowd. It does not break men’s will, but softens, bends, and guides it; it seldom enjoins, but often inhibits, action; it does not destroy anything, but prevents much from being born; it is not at all tyrannical, but in hinders, restrains, enervates, stifles, and stultifies so much that in the end each nation is no more than a flock of timid and hardworking animals with the government as its shepherd.”

That’s what is coming out of our schools where the kids coming out of this public education system being taught by teachers that take 18 days off over a 9 month period and are off over the summer averaging a yearly salary of 55K in Ohio to 62K in some of the wealthier districts. Kids are being raised in this environment and they expect to be given a job like this when they graduate from college someday. Tocqueville was 100% correct in his assessment, the seduction of the weak, to become herded by a government shepherd in exchange for a good wage to perform in a mediocre way. This is what our tax money is funding, and essentially why schools continue to ask for more and more money in taxes.

Few tax payers ever really consider how much they actually pay in taxes, which robs them of money for themselves and gives it them to the mediocre only to feed a government monster with a big appetite.

If you listened to Darryl’s radio broadcast he also covered gas prices. There are two reasons for the dramatic increase at the pumps; one is that the Fed as driven up inflation, by printing too much money, and the second is that there are a lot of hidden taxes in our gas. In Ohio it’s between .47-.48 cents per gallon. This is why states like Tennessee and Georgia are .30 cents cheaper per gallon, because of the tax allocation between the states. Where is all that money going? What about all the sales tax we send to the state? And the federal tax. We are taxed on everything, and schools want to continue to tax our property to fund mediocrity when they’ve irresponsibly spent the money. All they know to do is to ask for more!

We have allowed ourselves to be herded around by the meek of society, people who are not the best we have to offer, but are the flocks of mediocrity that will bring a nation to its knees in lack of competition. We have thrown countless dollars at these flocks and they eat them mindlessly like cows eating straw from our hands with nothing to do with the energy the food gives but to convert it to fat.

Meanwhile the rest of us struggle to even fill up our cars to drive to work, to make a living so 57% of everything we make can go to taxes to pay these flocks of animals just grazing in a field while government proudly announces the unemployment rates without even considering if the job created has any real merit and adds to the productivity of the nation.

I’ve changed my primary job 6 times over my lifetime so far and I’ve never taken an unemployment check. Every time I’ve ever lost a job it was not from anything that was my fault. Yet it never occurred to me to file for unemployment. Heck, I’ve actually been impelled by sharp metal rods that went into one side of my hand and came out the other, I’ve had the skin ripped off the end of my fingers and pulled completely off, fingernail and all. I simply picked up the skin, cleaned it, and slid everything back in place, got my stitches and reported back to work by the time to leave for the day, and I never missed work for such things, and I never took a workman’s compensation payment. The people those Senate Democrats are talking to are those flocks of helpless little animals that just want a friendly hand to reach into the fence to feed them.

Compassion costs money, other people’s money and robs the people who receive the money the benefit of self-reliance. In this clip, Reid wants desperately to be a shepherd of the people because it gives him power over the meek. His secret desire is to be a manager of people and a hero to the less fortunate.

All he accomplishes in his ignorant grasp on society and history is a weakening of the resolve in the human spirit. He robs a man, or a woman, of their honor by placating their basic necessities.

How is what Harry is saying any different from what this farmer is saying?

To make this easy for all the teachers out there, the Senate Democrats, the progressives and media types looking for their next award covering “humanitarian stories” let’s go back to the basics and let Earnie explain to us all what happened to our tax money from these flocks of mindless animals that ate it.

And that’s where your tax money is going ladies and gentlemen. Remember, if you vote for a school levy, a social welfare levy, a tax increase of any kind…………………………..you’re stupid!

“If we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.” Thomas Jefferson.

See, this isn’t a new problem. And here we are, the government is wasting the labor of the people both in unnecessary expansion of government programs and filling those jobs with warm bodies so it can claim a job creation statistic, and then wasting the money that the tax payer generates by robbing them of their labor and taking their money to spend carelessly on foolishness.

And to perform the scam this time, on this election on Tuesday, school systems, labor leaders, and bureaucrats everywhere are prying that nobody shows up to vote. Voting is still the most powerful weapon we have over the thieves that seek to rob us. Have the courage to use it and take the time to protect yourself from further tax increases on Tuesday. Only by cutting the revenue that feeds the monster which is government, can you hope to restrict the power it has to inflict itself upon your life.

Rich Hoffman

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

23 Years of Marriage: Fighting the Maoists, Marxists, and other parasites that want to undo our flag

I spent my twenties reading Joseph Campbell who was an intellectual very well-respected among virtually everyone no matter what the political affiliation. And after I read every Campbell book, some of them several times, I read his autobiography by Stephen and Robin Larsen called A Fire in the Mind, The Life of Joseph Campbell and I remembered with some surprise the quote from that book on page 466 paragraph 3, “Campbell believed in a great revolution of the spirit, and deplored the authority figures of the world who sought to keep human-kind in line. While he seemed to be siding with the powers that be, on the other hand he felt that the revolution of the Marxists and the Maoists was no real revolution but only the triumph of a new kind of collectivism, perhaps even worse than the old religious orthodoxies, because it had totally repudiated the spiritual element—and even worse, the celebration of individuality.” That comment came on March 10th in 1969. It made Campbell very upset that many of his students at Sara Lawrence College were missing class to protest the war and that is the context of his comments.

Well, those Marxists and Maoists that were skipping Joseph Campbell’s class are now the old hippies and idealists that are in public office now. In 1979 lobbyists committed to the 10 Planks of Communism finally convinced Jimmy Carter to begin a Department of Education founded by those Maoists and Marxists types and since then they have penetrated our schools with the ideology of collectivism instead of actual fundamental education. It was during this period that the United States went from ranking second in education to other countries to fourteenth in the 1990’s just 15 years after the start of The Department of Education. That’s quite a sharp decline.

Today is my 23rd wedding anniversary with my wife. She knows what to give me, a guy that reads and writes continuously while watching the news and cutting hours of radio broadcasts into digestible bits so people who miss valuable information can hear them at their convenience. So she made me an American flag blanket which she gave me this morning.

She and I have fought through a lot to arrive at 23 years of marriage and we know what it takes to pull up the boot straps and accomplish a task. We’ve raised a couple of kids along the way and went on countless adventures. And it gives me great pride to look at each stitch on that blanket and think of the countless hours of quality she poured into it.

Those disgusting old hippies, goons, freaks, losers, Marxists, Maoists and thieving intellectuals that wish they encompassed just a fraction of the mind of someone like Joseph Campbell are now taking our nation on a path as seen in this chart by David Murrain, and this is something I take very personal, because it’s my country they’re attacking, and have been for a long time.

You can see more from the work of David Murrain at this link.
https://www.breakingthecodeofhistory.com/about.htm
Who is David Murrain, check him out here:

Here is another bit from David on the devaluation of American currency.

The solution I see, as opposed to open warfare, is a candidate in 2012 that will punch hard those Marxists and Maoists that have entrenched themselves in our economy, our education, our politics at every level, our media, virtually everywhere. The next president will have to be combative, articulate, and a creator of magnificent proportions if we hope to avoid the decline of the over-extension portion of that chart, because Obama and his gang of Marxists and Maoists are taking us to an end quickly.

I agree with the Bull Dog from 700 WLW that Donald Trump is the kind of guy that can level out that curve. He may not be the guy everyone loves, but we need a media equivalent to the Marxists, Socialists, Maoists, radical extremists, union interests composed of the same elements, that are embedded in our culture and it will take someone like Trump to do it. If someone comes up with better candidate, fine, but the Bull Dog articulates the problem very well in this bit.

. To repair the nation it will take each and every person that makes up that nation to do their part, be good individuals and work toward the goal of renewal, and we’ll do it one stitch at a time, or one word at a time, but we will get there because I have committed myself to as much in this next phase of my marriage. That’s why my wife gave me that gift, to show her support of my effort.

Rich Hoffman

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

Lakota Tossed Away Good Money on Gary Hudepohl: Why people who don’t value themselves don’t understand the value of money.

Who are those vacant souls that cleave to chaos on a quest to control everyone from their self-important temples behind the desk top nameplate? Doc Thompson explores how a double-standard of racism is making Cincinnati Public Schools a maze of malice that masks the true conduct behind a school superintendent.

Superintendents are a mysterious species and within the Lakota School System Gary Hudepohl of Hudepohl and Associates made an abysmal statement in his assessment of what it is going to cost Lakota to hire a new superintendent that is business minded, and reflect the values expressed by the business community within the Lakota School District. His audacious statement, after the school board paid his firm 40K for just a search of candidates, is that the community will have to pay over 300K per year for the position of a qualified superintendent.

What?????????? Why?

http://westchesterbuzz.com/2011/03/28/lakota-superintendent-search-presented-at-board-meeting/

This tells me that Lakota wasted its money on Hudepohl. This guy is as clueless as the people who threw the community to the wolves by agreeing to teacher contracts that blew the budget with no management cost controls. Hudepohl clearly doesn’t have his mind around the type of superintendent that Lakota needs, and the school board paid 40K for that bit of information, that we’re just supposed to throw more money at the problem. And wasn’t it said by one of Lakota’s school board members who protested the spending of the 40K on a superintendent search that 40K would pay for two teachers? No, it won’t. 40K will only get you one teacher at Lakota. How can they manage their costs if they don’t understand what they are?

The next question I have is why does it take months and months to find a superintendent? If I were paid 40K for a search, I would have delivered within the week. Why is Gary Hudepohl so inefficient? If our school system has to pay his fee, why hasn’t he performed? Does he think speeches to the board and to community’s business leaders earn his money? And why do we even need a superintendent. Lakota has effectively been without a superintendent for two business quarters now. It appears that Ron Spurlock who is an assistant superintendent and filling in the role has done a good job so far, and he’s cheaper. Why not give him the job? I’d say he deserves it assuming he can stick up to the union in that role instead of caving to it because he is a former member of it.

I know that West Chester Trustee George Lang was asked by Hudepohl, “who should be the next superintendent at Lakota?” George called me and told me what he told Hudepohl, “Call Rich Hoffman. He knows what you should be looking for.” Of course Gary didn’t call me, so instead, he is choosing the same old expensive, big government type that he believes will come in and be able to get control of the situation and sell the status quo to the community. That’s why he thinks it should cost 300K, because the new superintendent will have to be able to campaign against people like me, who can go on the radio and debate false facts and make people believe them, in other words, a union stooge that can maintain order.

Well, Gary, you are going to be looking a long time because the person you’re looking for doesn’t exist. You’re looking for a big government school type when schools need to be downsizing. As seen in the below article, Oklahoma just voted in favor of a major bill that will expand School Choice. Ohio is marching in the same direction. And when that happens, Lakota will have to become 500 times more efficient than it is now in order to survive. They think they do more with less now, and they do, compared to the massive inefficiency of the public school system. But the cost per pupil needs to be driven down to less than 6000K per student. And Lakota isn’t even considering how to achieve anything close to those kinds of numbers. And Gary’s 300K superintendent won’t be able to do that job so the 40K we’ve spent on Gary’s firm was as predicted, a tremendous waste of money that has delivered nothing, and won’t.

Oklahoma House Passes School Choice Program with Broad Student Eligibility

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OKLAHOMA CITY, OK — More Oklahoma families will be able to send their children to the schools of their choosing, following today’s passage of the Oklahoma Equal Opportunity Education Scholarship Act. The bill will provide partial tax credits to individuals and businesses that donate to nonprofits that distribute private-school scholarships to eligible families.
By a vote of 64-43, the Oklahoma House of Representatives approved the measure, which previously passed the Senate chamber by a vote of 30-14.
“This is another step in the direction of choice for Oklahoma’s parents and children,” Robert Enlow, president and CEO of the Foundation for Educational Choice, said. “We look forward to seeing school choice continue to flourish in the Sooner State, and we are eager to watch other states follow Oklahoma’s lead.”
The Oklahoma Equal Opportunity Education Scholarship Act, sponsored by Rep. Lee Denney (R) and Sen. Dan Newberry (R), would make families with incomes up to 300 percent of the income needed to qualify for the federal Free and Reduced-Price Lunch program eligible to receive scholarships; however, scholarship-giving nonprofits must spend a portion of their expenditures for low-income students in an amount equal to or greater than the percentage of low-income students in the state.
Eligible students, 50 percent of whom must be enrolled currently in public schools, can receive scholarships worth up to $5,000 or 80 percent of the average per-pupil expenditures in the school districts where they reside. With a “cap” of tax credits allowed set at $1.75 million—and with the tax credit itself being worth 50 percent of the donation—the program will provide potentially $3.5 million toward scholarships. The program also provides a separate $1.5 million in tax credits for donations made to nonprofits that distribute “educational improvement grants” to public schools, which is similar to a 10-year-old program in Pennsylvania.
If the Senate agrees to the changes made in the House, the bill will proceed to Gov. Mary Fallin.

The Foundation for Educational Choice is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and nonpartisan organization, solely dedicated to advancing Milton and Rose Friedman’s vision of school choice for all children. First established as the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation in 1996, the foundation continues to promote school choice as the most effective and equitable way to improve the quality of K-12 education in America. The foundation is dedicated to research, education, and outreach on the vital issues and implications related to choice and competition in K-12 education.

_____________________________________________________________________________

School Choice is the future of education. Not big expensive superintendents. Schools will have to shrink in size, not expand larger. And those are the facts of life.

Gary Hudepohl is out of his mind and is too expensive in his thinking. He’s looking for the wrong candidate and this disappoints me greatly and here’s why. Money’s value is equal the person that makes it. The formula gets skewed when you give money to people who don’t value that money, because they are people in and of themselves of little value. You can’t give a fool money and expect them to know what to do with it, which is evident in the exploding school budgets in all school systems. And in this case Hudepohl was thrown money by fools that don’t value the effort it took to earn the money. When you work in government, this is a common tendency because the money spent is seldom earned. 50K or 100K is all the same to a fool. It’s just a number. And only a fool thinks it’s appropriate to throw 300K at a position that an assistant making a third of that money is currently doing. Because to the fool, 300K or a million is all the same value, because they know very little about value, because as people they lack value in themselves.

Oh, I heard what you said in your mind. You said how can I make such negative assessments on people? Who am I to make such an assertion?

Well, I’m a person who knows people. And people who are attracted to board of education positions that are supposed to be a donation of their time, and very little, if any, financial compensation is provided for such jobs, are attracted to those jobs because those people are looking for value in their lives, because they lack value in themselves. They look at a public position to give them respect, and power. That’s why they crave these jobs for very little money because the money isn’t important to them. Because they have no value of it to begin with, they seek the approval of others to obtain the value in their lives that they are missing. This is why education is so expensive. It is run by fools that are missing much in their lives and pass themselves off as authority figures. That is the tragedy that has revealed itself and the answer to the riddle posed at the beginning of this article.

That is why those of us that do value money won’t just blindly throw money at fools.

Rich Hoffman

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

Birthday Presents and Angry Lakota Mothers: the cost of social kindness

I received the following note from an angry mother, upset about the kindergarten schedule at the Lakota School System. It is so audacious that I decided to respond to it with a full explanation, because I can see by the way she’s writing that there are a lot of pitfalls in her life that are of her own making. Does this make her a bad person, or a bad parent? No. But she is a victim of this modern way of thinking which has been directed by a progressive philosophy which simply does not work in the raising and daily living of human beings. So my response is one that I hope others will learn from.

Comment from bmarcum

I have a kindergartner at one school and two kids at Independence. Both schools start at the same time. She will have to take the older ones early and the process at each school will be at least 25 minutes. So she will have to take the other child to the other school and then pick her up at noon since kindergarten will NOT be a full day, and then at 4:00, she has to pick up the older ones. Thanks for the loss of income!

Ok, this lady says, “Thanks for the loss of income.” Why can’t people understand the value of a budget? This person like many others believe that if our budget is 160 million, which is what it has been, then the residents of Lakota should increase their budget to 167 or 175 million to meet the increase in budget demands without question. And we are supposed to do this because this woman needs to get her kid to kindergarten?

This leads me to some obvious questions that she should ask herself. Is it my fault she has kids so close together? Why isn’t she home during the day? Does she have to work because she and her husband bought too much house, too many cars, or ran up their credit card debt too high? Is she a single woman and if so why did the marriage not work? What is she doing about finding someone to help her with her family burdens? Is there a mom that can help, a dad, a brother or a sister? If not why? Do they live in another town? If so, why does she live away from them? Are all three of these children from the same man? Are all three of these children from her, or did she obtain a few of them from a new marriage with a man who has kids from a previous marriage? If so, why did she marry a man with kids from another woman? Didn’t she think that she might have trouble raising them?

I’m sure some of that doesn’t apply to her, and I’m sure that some of it does. But as a tax payer, none of it is any of my business. It’s her life and her decisions………………….until she asks me for money. Or until the school system has to engage in a program to help a woman like her by supplying buses or schedule deviations to accommodate her busy life. In fact, the school issues where the school attempts to be everything to everybody for every possible circumstance is the microcosm of the macrocosm to the federal problems. Every program created to help women like her is money, it’s expensive, and it plays to the weaknesses of our population by pandering to them. So I do not support it. I do not want to pay for behavior that will perpetuate the destruction of our population psychologically. And I don’t want my personal property taxes to go up just so she can get her three kids to kindergarten. That’s her job to figure out. Not mine and certainly not the school system.

Now I can read your mind dear reader. I see the stir in your soul from the coldness of my words and attitude toward my fellow-man. Well……let me tell you something about human nature and I’ll use my children as examples because they represent my own form of success and proof of my theory.

Human beings like to be challenged. Competition is a natural process that cannot be engineered out of evolution. You can see it in young people when they play video games. In the video game world, all things are equal. Strength, speed, agility, it is the mind that guides the characters, and if you have ever played a game online, you’ll see that human beings are a competitive species. So to make the most of the human race, competition must be a part of the society. This is why capitalism is the economy that produces skyscrapers and communism produces village huts. And we are teaching our children to create village huts. That is the direction of our current society and I do not support it without question. It is not important whether or not it’s inconvenient for a mother to get her three kids to kindergarten. What’s important is that she thinks of a way to do so. The competition and will to survive is the key to making a prosperous human being. So to my mind I would help that woman best by giving her the challenge of figuring out the problem. Not throwing money at more convenience, because that makes people lazy. It’s the “I can’t find the remote” syndrome. You know, where you keep the TV on the same channel even though you don’t want to watch what’s on that station, because you can’t find the remote to change the channel. You could still get up and change the channel manually on the cable unit itself, but often that isn’t even an option in the mind of the lazy TV viewer. When I was a kid, before TV remotes we always had to change the channel by hand. It is with the invention of the TV remote that such a task seemed laborious.

This is what has happened to people with the busing of students and the offering of various electives which create options for possible scholarships which are dangled in front of parents as a kind of lottery ticket to financing their children’s college tuition. What is never asked is whether or not that college education has become cost prohibitive, or whether it’s even needed for that particular child. It is just accepted at face value that it’s a useful enterprise no matter what the cost. That kind of thinking is insane.

With my kids who are both girls, I let them find the hard way through most everything. When they learned to ride their bikes, I let them wreck. When I took the rappelling, I let their hair get caught in the line. When they were learning to walk I let them fall down and didn’t pick them up with every bump of the head.

And those rules don’t just apply to them. I lead by example. In the past, when my wife needed the car to drive the kids to school I rode a bicycle to work, every day rain or shine for 12 miles or more. I did that for over 10 years, because my wife and I didn’t want the expense of another car. I seldom go to the doctor unless it’s very serious. In fact it was just the other day that I was playing with my oldest daughter’s dog and his teeth opened up my finger all the way to the bone while I was trying to rip a dog toy out of his mouth. It would have required about 8 to 15 stitches, but instead I pulled it together tight while my son-in-law poured Superglue over the wound to close it up. See, I didn’t have time to go to the doctor. I had a meeting that night that was of urgent importance, so there wasn’t time to sit in a waiting room. There weren’t any ligaments torn and the nerves were ok. As long as no major blood vessels were torn, and they weren’t because I could see them, patching up the skin wasn’t a big deal. And I wasn’t going to cancel my meeting. So I fixed it myself. Now, a week and a half later, it’s all closed up and looks good. I was able to grip a basketball yesterday for the first time in over a week, and throw a football.

My kids are used to this kind of thing and they understand how to bounce through life’s tough spots. For my birthday my oldest daughter made me a work of art that is displayed on the wall over my small library I have in my living room. It is a collage of all the things she thinks of when she thinks of me.

Now, as a father it was my job to make sure that she has things to think about on such a day. It means a great deal more to receive a gift like that, which she made by hand, as opposed to some manufactured item produced by someone else. Because there is value in her production, and her production is a reflection of how she feels about me. And if I didn’t give her anything to feel, that would make me a bad parent. And if I had just done what everyone told me to all my life, I would have been a crappy parent.

As I look at that collage of images it looks all jumbled from a distance, just like life does. So it is an accurate metaphor of my life which is her point in the piece. But up close, if you take the images individually, the tapestry of images becomes much more defined. The theme is one of adventure and always pushing the boundaries of things. Which is the greatest gift she could give me, because as a 21-year-old married woman, I see that the things I spent so much time and energy teaching her, she understands, and is applying it to her own life in her own unique way, and what could be better than that?

But when my kids were growing up, I didn’t follow the rules of society. I took what I valued, and rejected the rest as tripe. I picked the path I wanted instead of the one provided. I do that at state and national parks too. I seldom ever stay on the trail. I break the rules often, proudly.

So what do I say to the woman who believes that she is owed transportation for her children? I’d say, where is your husband and why doesn’t he solve the problem for you. Why are you relying on a bus or a school schedule for your success? And if Lakota cuts too many programs, take classes online. I did that for my kids. They graduated at 16 and 17 years old so they could visit Europe for their senior years. It was their idea. They learned more in the British Museum and the streets of London than they would have in some library at Lakota East. I’d also ask why she and people like her believe that the school budget should just continue to increase without any reason. When it is known and proven that the results of the money will not make her children any better. And that pandering to convenience will make them social liabilities later in life. Those kids are future voters. Toughen them up so they have some perspective on life. And relax. Take control of your life. Don’t look to someone else to fix your problems. That costs money and doesn’t work anyway. It only makes people feel good for the moment, which is the spectral menace of charitable behavior.

That’s just some friendly advice. At the bare minimum, don’t ask for more money at Lakota or any school system. Because as my good friend Darryl Parks utters often, “If you vote for a school levy……………YOU’RE STUPID!

Rich Hoffman

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

RIP Teaching Profession: Why are kids so dumb?

What does a “master’s degree plus 30” mean to me as a tax payer?  Yet that’s what a teacher from Lakota named Mary who teaches in a blue ribbon award-winning middle school, stated as a justification for her worth when she came straight out and asked what she was worth live on the air to 38 states and part of Canada.  She was responding to my appearance on 700 WLW with Darryl Parks on Saturday April 16, 2011 during his morning show. 

Come to think of it, what good is a blue ribbon award?  Who gives it out?

The State.

Why?

To give people the illusion that taxpayers are getting the value for their money.  But why do they believe such things?

Because people buy homes in school districts based on whether or not a district is “excellent.”

Who decides if a district is “excellent?”

The State. 

Why would the state do such a thing? 

Because it justifies all the jobs of the people employed in the Ohio Department of Education, the Ohio School Board, the OSBA, and the Ohio Education Association so that they can make people feel they are getting value for their tax money. 

It is interesting that one day I drove all over the city and I noticed that Springdale City Schools, Princeton, Lakota, Mason and Sycamore all had “excellent” banners on their high schools.  That leads me to believe that getting an excellent rating is pretty easy, because so many schools have it.  So what’s the value in that? 

The answer to all these questions is that it’s all deception designed to manipulate people into voting for increased taxes on their property.  The teachers union has openly scammed against all property owners in the state of Ohio with their endorsement of these deceptive practices.  I hold them more accountable because they are the organization that provided the lobby to politicians and Ohio Department of Education members to obtain these meaningless ratings like “blue ribbon schools” or an “excellent” rating.  And the next responsible group is realtors.  They love those awards because it makes selling a home in those particular school districts easier.  So they are usually at the front of efforts to pass a school levy. 

Darryl hit the nail on the head during our radio interview.  He said the teaching profession will soon RIP.  Why?  Because technology will eliminate millions of teaching jobs in the near future.  It will not eliminate them to be mean to them, or to hurt their feelings.  Technology is the most logical next step in the evolution of the teaching profession.    While teachers should be re-educating themselves for the evolving market they are instead holding onto the past.  This is what they were doing while I was on the radio with Darryl. 

They were collecting signatures for the repeal of S.B.5. like a bunch of short-sighted looters that lack any vision.   The speaker in this clip says that we need good schools in order to teach our kids to read.  Yet with all the millions and millions of dollars we spend on education, out of the thousands of dollars each of us pay on our property taxes, 1 out of 4 people are functionally illiterate.  Because of that, our education system is a dismal failure that is in serious need of reform.  Just listen to Miss Teen USA.

So to all those fools trying to repeal S.B.5 enabling them to loot our tax money and give themselves vacations to Cancun should ask, what value are you? 

Can you honestly answer it?  Because blue ribbons and excellent ratings are just words on a banner.  The true excellence is in the quality of our society, and by the sound of that girl, we’re in a lot of trouble.

Rich Hoffman

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

ATLAS SHRUGGED WAS SOLD OUT AT NEWPORT ON THE LEVEE: MY REVIEW OF THE FILM

I read all the reviews for the Atlas Shrugged Part 1 film as they began to pour in on April 14, 2011. The reviews were predictably not kind for all the same reasons that Frank Oz was overlooked in 1981 for an Academy Award in his portrayal of Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back. The reason back then was that the Screen Actors Guild did not regard puppeteers as actors. The Directors Guild also clamped down on George Lucas for putting all the credits at the end of the movie instead of the beginning which prompted Lucas to quit the guild and make Return of the Jedi using Richard Marquand, who at the time was not a member of the guild. Marquand at the time had only a few credits to his name, The Legacy and the TV movie Birth of the Beatles.

I am reminded of that little piece of history because so many critics seem hungry to criticize Atlas director Paul Johansson for his lack of experience directing only One Tree Hill episodes. The criticism that the film received a flat screen treatment meaning it seemed to resemble a high production value television show is sophomoric and is uttered strictly from the mouths of the unions, and have no merit. What are they comparing Atlas to as far as a film of value, something like Jackass 3-D? Atlas Shrugged is an ambitious film that takes on a lot of ground. I personally think they went too fast in the development of the story. They could have gotten away with another 50 minutes of film time, something the producers may want to release as a director cut when the film comes out on DVD. There were exposition shots of the government action in the macrocosm that needed to be there to develop why building the train line was such a big deal, and people who have not read the book might find it difficult to follow the story without repeated viewings. Because the cut of the film is trying to fit into under 2 hours at 1 hour and 40 minutes Atlas focused on the microcosm of the characters Dagney and Rearden. I understood it because I know the book so well, and people who do know the book will be happy to see that the filmmakers went to a lot of trouble to stay true to the nature of the book.

I see the film version of Atlas Shrugged as an experiment rather than a literal film meant to be taken on its own. It’s a work of philosophy put into visual form, and it requires a level of sophistication to begin with. Film is supposed to be like that. I can think of Koyannisquatsi, the great film by Godfrey Reggio that featured just a series of sped up images taken from all over the world to articulate the evolution of man in the current age into a society oddly similar to a microchip. Powaqqatsi a few years later did much the same to the soundtrack of Philip Glass.

I thought of those films while watching Atlas Shrugged. The filmmakers of Atlas were capturing the images of the book without attempting to duplicate Ayn’s work. The most notable and effective elements of this filmmaking style was John Galt in the opening scene only referred to in exposition by Rand where Galt stops Midas Mulligan on a rainy street and convinces him to leave the “outside” world. The other was the scene involving Hugh Akston. I thought the part of the film involving the static electric motor and Akston’s knowledge of it was hurried through due to the films running time, but when Askton hit the screen there was instant uttering’s of approval from the people in the theater watching the movie with me. All Akston had to do was appear on screen and the members of the audience were satisfied with the visual rendition of his character. In this way, the film version is interesting and fun because it serves as a visual companion to the book instead of a replacement, which I think many traditional thinking people might not understand.

Atlas Shrugged is an independent film. I’ve seen a lot of them, been to more than a couple of film festivals and seen a lot of bold attempts by young, and old filmmakers. Independent film has emerged as a powerful force because Hollywood does get stuck in its business model, which has been controlled by the political left, and has virtually ignored the portions of the market that go to Tea Party rallies and read books like Atlas Shrugged. To Hollywood, films like Hangover, and the next Scream film is the safe bets that fit into their understanding of things. Atlas Shrugged is about a foreign world to many on the political left, and they are not used to seeing views that are conservative in nature competing with their ideas and they don’t like it.

Atlas Shrugged because of the amount of characters and scale of the story will not work as a traditional film, with a lead like Angelina Jolie as Dagney and Brad Pitt as Rearden with a top-level director making over one million for his work along with all the supporting characters of John Galt, Francisco, James Taggert, and the other 50 or 60 characters that would all require SAG minimums depending on the scale driven off Jolie’s 20 million minimum and Pitt’s 20+ million per picture. Before anybody shot one frame of film there would be over 80 million in just wages alone committed to the film, which is why the movie had not been done up to this point. And a movie like Atlas Shrugged will never pull a ROI at the box office if the budget exceeds 100 million. This is a film for thinking people, so the scope of the film must match the intention, and that is to bring an epic story to thinking people and keep the budget to where the filmmakers can actually produce parts 2 and 3 without the contingency of waiting for DVD sales to refill the budget coffers.

My wife and I sat till the last credit scrolled across the screen at approximately 12:45 in the morning. I had to catch the late show because I attended the Tax Day Rally in Glendale where Doc Thompson was the MC. We left that event to catch the 8:20 showing at Newport on the Levee. I arrived about 7:45 to find the film sold out! Crowds of people swarmed around the ticket windows trying to get a ticket to Atlas Shrugged. So we bought a ticket to the 10:45 showing and killed our time at a nearby Irish Pub and enjoyed the storm that swept across the Ohio River while we waited. Our late show was about half full, which surprised me. What also surprised me was that many of the viewers were by themselves. I can’t recall seeing a movie that had a majority of the audience showing up by themselves. Now, the left normally would criticize those types of people as loners, and belittle them. But wishing them not to exist will not make them go away. These loners are the people who reject TV shows like How I Met Your Mother, or Two and a Half Men. These are also the types that reject reality TV shows, so their only entertainment is books, and the History Channel, because Hollywood isn’t making their kind of movies anymore. Atlas Shrugged is their kind of movie and many of them clapped at the end and stayed for most of the credits.

I sat with my arms crossed taking in what I had just seen and watching the reaction and found that the John Galt theme was racing through my head, which is a good sign. That means it was an effective soundtrack. I realized that Atlas Shrugged was the kind of movie that moves so fast and covers so much ground in such a short time that it requires repeated viewings. One viewing will not do it.

It was well acted. I thought Dagney was a believable person. In fact, the characters weren’t so beautiful that they were beyond the realm of reality which I think helps the film a lot. Again, with A list actors, that would have been a problem. Our society has become used to seeing extraordinarily beautiful people in leading roles, and that takes the situations out of our contemporary realities. When we leave the theater people don’t look like what we see in the films. So films take on a mystic of escapism. Atlas Shrugged is not out to do that. It seeks to place itself into the mind of the viewer’s experience, which is another reason for the cast to appear as it was. I thought the casting of Francisco D’Anconia played by Jsu Garcia was very good. Also of Paul Larkin by Patrick Fischler, that actor captured perfectly the treason of the good friend that was supposed to be of Mr. Larkin. Grant Bowler who played Rearden was excellent. This film is an obvious set-up for the part two which goes down the psychological rabbit hole, and I can’t wait to see Bowler stand in front of the federal court and tell them he does not acknowledge their authority or right to exist. Bowler will be able to pull it off.

I knew Tayler Schilling was going to nail Dagney in the first scene where she woke up to a phone call from Eddie Willers, also played very well by Edi Gathegi, in her apartment sleeping on the couch. A picture is worth a thousand words and Tayler got it. The character of Dagney is not an emotional person, and she played it straight until the incredible scream at the end of the movie. Here was a person that spent the whole movie trying to fulfill a promise to Ellis Wyatt, to get him a railroad, to repair the damage done by her brother to Wyatt’s business. Dagney is fulfilling a promise that she believes in with her entire soul to execute only to have Wyatt quit at the end and run off with John Galt.

Now the criticism that I’ve read is one from people who don’t understand what the big deal is. “Why is she so upset?” “What’s going on?” “So what, the guy left and burnt down his oil field. All conservatives are a bunch of greedy, oil loving bastards, serves them right!” Besides the fact that fuel costs were excessively high and Ellis was one of the only hopes in the United States for bringing the costs back down, why don’t people make the connection between oil and their own prosperity? Reardon asked the question in Atlas Shrugged, “What’s wrong with people?” Paul answered, “Why ask questions that have no answer?” He’s right, because the reason for those statements is because there are an alarming number of people in our society that no longer feel the pressure of a promise, because to care about a promise to a friend, wife or business partner, you have to care, and sadly, many people no longer care about things like a promise. So the lack of understanding directed at the confusion of Dagney’s motives in the film is more of a commentary on modern life, which is what Dagney is screaming at. She is afraid of becoming what we actually are. I would pay to see Atlas Shrugged 20 more times just to see that last scene. I thought it was vividly powerful. I loved how the camera pulled back to reveal the sign that Ellis left as his oil fields burned while she stood helpless to stop it. The reason for her “robotic” behavior is because she is determined to succeed no matter what the cost. My wife nailed Dagney’s performance by saying, “she reminds me of the terminator from Terminator 3.” And she’s right, Dagney will not be stopped. If she wants something, she will achieve it. And the scream represents that with all her ambition, with all her good will, all her energy, cleverness, and innovation, she could not stop Ellis from giving up. She saw the look in his eyes when Ellis was in her office chastising her for her brother’s incompetence and she thought if she did everything right, that she could keep Ellis from leaving wherever all the “men of the mind” were going.

I also read criticism of how the exposition was displayed with news broadcasts and this was somehow bad. I don’t agree. I think it was wonderfully done in this film. It reminded me of how the director Paul Verhoeven used newscasts from the film Robocop to propel the complicated aspects of the story along. Hollywood and critics in general have gotten used to the type of films produced in the 90’s and 2000’s that pamper to their every wish. This is something that Roger Ebert and Gene Siskal started. Those two reviewers created an industry of film critics and gave them much more power than they deserve. Movie reviewers have become breakers or makers of box office results, and that’s not necessarily healthy. Because the views of the reviewers become the editors of public opinion, and if those reviewers are progressive types, then studios will cater to those reviewers to get the “thumbs up.” I actually respect Roger Ebert quite a bit. He’s usually right on. But when he runs into something above his intellectual capacity, he gets stumped. You can see how Siskal and Ebert used to bounce off each other in this review of White Hunter Back Heart, which is one of my personal favorites films.

Ebert was fair from his perspective in his review. He knows Atlas Shrugged is loved by millions so he was careful in his comments. I think his mistake is he should have reviewed the film more the way he’d review an independent film like Koyannisquatsi. He like many people who go to see this film will mistakenly watch this film as a literal film, not as an atmosphere of images reflecting a philosophy. That’s the reason for the cityscape shots and the views of the mountains. Once all the films are completed, it will make sense. This first film is just an introduction. It’s also an experiment in filmmaking that I think is very healthy. It’s bold and deserves credit for that boldness alone. The merit of Atlas Shrugged will be felt down the road. It is the first step of bringing a new kind of entertainment to popular culture so it will suffer from opinion in the short run, but will stand the test of time over the long haul.

For the rest of us, those that don’t have to struggle to understand it, we can enjoy the treat of seeing on film the images we’ve painted in our minds while reading the book. Some of my favorite scenes were the opening with John Galt in the diner with the pouring rain outside, different from in the book, because Galt made an instant appearance in this film. I also liked that he was in Akston’s diner at the end. The appearance of Galt in the diners reminded me of the many day’s I’ve spent in such places at 3:30 and 4:30 am in the morning reading, writing and listening to the stories of the “night roamers,” those loners of society that everyone overlooks, but come out when everyone is asleep. It’s a subconscious understanding from people who understand John Galt and his motives, not an image intended for the masses looking for Batman. Subtle little changes to the book like that I thought were fun and artistic. But I’ll say that the bridge that Rearden built was magnificent to look at. Watching the train run down that track was fantastic.

My review of the film is that I like it a lot. I think it will be better when viewed with the other two films. For the DVD release I hope they can lengthen the running time with more exposition that had to be cut to keep the film under two hours. (the reason is to squeeze more showings in a day, very important for recovering a films costs.) And I think the film needs to be watched in the context of an artistic piece, just to sit back and enjoy the sights and sounds without trying to follow every word. The film moves too fast to be watched once. Repeated viewings are essential.

So go see it not just once, but several times!

Rich Hoffman

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

Atlas Shrugged is Coming: Obama and Lakota need to see it to learn about economics

It took me a full day for the anger to steam away from my mind once I took three showers and spent hours reading to relax from the most audacious speech I can recall hearing from a president of the United States. The president’s speech was very telling, and ignorant. It is everything warned to us by Ayn Rand over 50 years ago.

Rand warned us in the epic book published in 1957 called Atlas Shrugged of everything the president said in that speech and more.  And finally, a movie is hitting the big screen from that prophetic work.  That movie comes out April 15, 2011. GO SEE IT!!!!!! What is most infuriating with the way the president stood up in front of a room full of people and declared that taxes must be increased to pay for a great America, is that he was simply saying the same mindless rhetoric that our local politicians throw our way when they are trying to pass a school levy. The thought from these people is that money equals success, so we must raise taxes to achieve more success……………………………..

………………are you freaking serious????????????????????


Where do these people come from? Obama is a so-called academic, yet did he take a single class on finance, or don’t they teach that to kids anymore?

I recently spoke about these topics but focused on the local issue of the Lakota School District finance issues to Pulse Journal reporter Lindsey Hilty which she composed in the below article.

The theme of the article was that Lakota is operating with fewer administrators than the state average, so doesn’t that mean they are operating more efficiently than other school districts?


No. Statements like that, just like the president’s speech, is full of smoke and mirrors designed to justify excessively high costs of an out-of-control government at all levels, hoping that people will be foolish enough to just look at the smoke and not at what causes it.
Read that article here:

Lakota has 58% fewer administrators per pupil than state average, report says
By Lindsey Hilty, Staff Writer Updated 1:43 AM Thursday, April 14, 2011

LIBERTY TWP. — At a time when finances of the Lakota Local School District have come under intense scrutiny from voters, officials say state data shows they are running a lean operation.

The district has 58 percent fewer administrators per pupil than the state average, and 20 percent fewer administrators than similar districts, which are categorized by size and demographics, according to the latest report released from the Ohio Department of Education in March.

In the 2009 report, Lakota had 43 percent fewer administrators than the state average, Interim Superintendent Ron Spurlcok said; however, “with our recent budget reductions and consolidations, we have seen that number grow.”
While that number may be touted as a good thing for the bottom line, he warned that it puts a strain on operations.

Assistant principals are responsible for discipline and also must sit in on all individual education plan meetings for students with disabilities.

“We realize economies of scale by running larger buildings, so we can economize where possible,” Kursman said.
However, fewer administrators in larger buildings means a bigger demand for their time, whether it is handling parent concerns, analyzing student data or reviewing teacher performance.

Many buildings now share assistant principals, she said, if the principal is called away for a meeting or to direct traffic due to transportation cuts, there is no one left to manage the building.

Levy opponent Rich Hoffman said he isn’t impressed with the numbers.
“I don’t believe any of the stats they give me anymore, because the reality is that they could do a lot more with a lot less if things really get pushy,” he said.

Hoffman said administrators could be reduced more, but they aren’t the issue.

The problem, he said, is “I think Lakota has drowned itself in salary obligations, and when you’re trying to cover 22 buildings when management of those salary obligations has been bad, it turns out to be a catastrophic mistake. Administrators get paid a lot, but there aren’t so many of them that it affects the bottom line costs, so their damage to the budget is negligible.”

There are too many employees netting more than $65,000 annually, he said, and that is the crux of the problem. He pointed to the salary lists recently published in the Pulse-Journal, and said the increase in employees in just one year who reached the $65,000 plus benchmark is unsustainable.

“You have to get the costs in line, but the costs are your salaries … None of us can afford it anymore.”
Hoffman called for tough negotiations as the board as the Lakota Education Association reopen the 2011-2012 school year contract, and said many in the community would stand behind the board as long as it was aggressive in controlling costs.

In fiscal year 2010, Lakota spent $96 million on salaries. In 2011, that number dropped $2 million due to retirements, no increase to the base salaries and a reduction in force. Employees still earned close to $2 million in step raises, Treasurer Jenni Logan said, but one third of employees, who are at the top of the pay scale, saw no step increase.
As details from legislation like SB 5 keep the district in a holding pattern, Logan said, “Inside the walls of Lakota, we’re focusing on the job at hand, which is educating our students.”

This isn’t just centered on the Lakota School District. Not even the President of the United States seems smart enough to understand the basics of finance. These people who think that showing some false numbers like “Lakota has fewer administrators,” will convince people who all the money we send their way will be spent wisely, are sadly mistaken.

Only a fool thinks that, and in the last Lakota Levy there were many fools that blindly spouted phantom facts because they were too lazy to think about the real problem. Just as the President of the United States received rounds of applause for embarrassing our nation in the eyes of anyone that has any sense throughout the world. Their collective belief is that money will make something better, when all it really ever does is compound the original problems.

It is my hope that when Atlas Shrugged Part 1 comes to the big screen that people intimidated by the length of the book will begin to understand the complex nature of freedom and the value of it.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
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Put Back a Few Cookies: Lakota Teachers took too many and didn’t leave enough for others

When you were a kid did your mother ever make cookies and put them in a cookie jar, only to have her catch you taking too many? “Now don’t eat all those cookies,” she would have said. “I made those for you, your brothers and sisters and all your friends. If you eat them all there won’t be any for the rest of them.” Well, at Lakota that’s what the teachers have done, they’ve taken too many cookies for themselves, and they’ve told the community through the teachers union that if you want to make us all happy, then you’ll just make more cookies. Problem solved. But the problem isn’t solved, because while we’re making all these cookies, we’re not being productive in other ways, when the reality is that all we need to do is exercise some common sense and fairness.

It is encouraging, yet there is still plenty of room to be skeptical, that the Lakota School Board appears to be looking for some room to gain much ground by voiding the second year of their contract with the teachers union.

The contract was voided because of the following clause: This contract shall become effective on the 1st day of July, 2010 and shall expire on the 30th day of June 2012. Contingent upon the District’s legal ability for the Board President, Treasurer, and Superintendent to sign the R.C. 5705.412 certificate. In the event that the Board Representatives are unable to sign the R.C. 5704.412 certificate the second year of this Agreement then agreed to between the parties related to the second year shall be considered null and void.”

The 412 certificate (see link: http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/5705.412 ) basically says that the District has to declare that it has sufficient revenues to meet its planned expenditures. This is Lakota’s press release: http://www.lakotaonline.com/news.cfm?story=2754

According to the Pulse Journal the move allows the board to void its contract with its teachers’ union, while at the same time, giving it flexibility to create a more sustainable long-term plan for the district, board President Joan Powell said.
“In the past three weeks as this information started coming to us from Columbus, it has become apparent that to maintain the future viability of this district, we need to look deeper than just the proposed budget reductions,” she said.
“Some fundamental changes to the contract are needed, and we have a window of opportunity to do so,” Powell said. “In light of the negative impact of this proposed state budget, we must take that opportunity. Our financial reality today is different than it was last November or last August when we executed this contract.”

Lakota Education Association President Sharon Mays said the union will continue to work cooperatively with the board to find the best solution for students and teachers, but the process now will take longer.

“I’m anxious to see the forecast, because we have not been able to look at it,” she said. “We feel as though we’ve been cooperating and collaborating, and have given up a lot of things in those memorandums of understanding. And to change direction this late in the game — now everything is slowed down.”

Treasurer Jenni Logan said deficit spending next year is expected to be $22 million, up from $13.9 million in 2011.
A $28 million negative cash balance is expected in 2013.

The stress to the budget, Logan said, is coming from three areas: the state is reducing tangible personal property taxes starting next year, Lakota is expecting less money locally, and federal stimulus dollars have gone away.

The $22 million deficit is something that has been a concern for a long time, and it is driven by one primary factor, wages. If you haven’t seen it yet, click here to see the type of wages we’re talking about. It is my sincere hope that the Lakota School Board will take this opportunity to drive those wages down. No other measure will be acceptable because no other budget cutting device will bring costs in line properly taking into account that federal money will not be there and the reductions in the personal property taxes. The days are gone where the teachers union could just blindly demand the incredibly high wages that put us in this trouble to start with.

During this next round of negotiations I proclaim that I will stand behind the school board fully if they’ll not allow the union to dictate terms to our community. I don’t want to hear any threats of any strikes from the teachers union. I don’t want to hear any threats at all. If the teachers of that union truly want to be a part of this community, they’ll dig deep and consider themselves lucky to work in such a nice district. We’re not asking teachers to work for free. But an average wage of over $62K per year is not acceptable. They asked for too much, broke the back of the community in the process, and now it’s time for them to come to the table and give back enough for Lakota to balance its budget. No other measure is acceptable.

For those that just want money, go to another district. Because soon that district will be going through the same problems Lakota is going through. So run from district to district like a thief in the night and collect your money. But for those teachers that want to work for Lakota, and want to be a part of our great community, work with us and we’ll work with you. But don’t even think of a strike or any other public relations stunt. There are people this time that will be there to expose you for what you truly are.

With all this encouragement, I hope that there isn’t some phantom intention to place another levy on the ballot in August or November, because the money isn’t there and such a thing would be incredibly arrogant. Higher taxes in our community in any capacity would be economically devastating in light of the increase in fuel costs, rise and in food costs which is directly influenced from increases in transportation costs. The amount of income that is required to purchase a $250,000 dollar home, which is what most homes cost in the Lakota School District along with the dollar shrinking in value and facing tax increases on their property is prohibitive. The only room for meeting the budget needs comes in reducing the impact of the wage costs of the employees.

The teachers took too many cookies and the community is done making cookies. The teachers need to put some of those cookies back so there’s some left for all the other teachers. Our budget is just under 160 million dollars, not a small amount. So there should be plenty of cookies for everyone. The only reason there’s not is because some teachers took too many cookies, which is robbing others from having a cookie. So do the responsible thing and put the extra cookies back in the cookie jar and play nice teachers union. Don’t be greedy. Don’t be vain. And don’t throw a fit of rage like some child that didn’t get their way. Help our school board balance their budget and do your part to make sure everyone gets along. But more (cookies) taxes, are not the solution.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
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The Cannibals of the United States: Sacrifice the RICH!!!! Save the needy!!

On my way home today I was riding my motorcycle in the pouring rain and listening to the soundtrack to the film Apocalypto on my Ipod. It was a surreal kind of experience that I enjoy a great deal, and the simplicity of a complicated problem made itself known to me through that cryptic music as the rain tried desperately to penetrate the confines of my helmet.

If you’ve studied other cultures, their rise and fall, there are common themes. Visit any ruin of an ancient civilization and you will see that all those societies bankrupted themselves. They either ran out of water, food, or their currency. Visit Ankor Watt, Chitzen Itza, or any city in Egypt and you’ll see it. Study the past to see your future.

In Mel Gibson’s brilliant film, Apocalypto Gibson showed wonderfully the height of the Mayan Empire and displayed the problems they were having. The Mayans built huge cities, depleted their food supply and built a corrupt hierarchy of politics that sought human sacrifice to appease the mob, and to keep the masses believing that the ruling class held some sort of power with the “gods,” so that society could continue for just a bit longer hoping by some miracle that if they cut off just one more head, or paint their faces just a few more colors so the gods would take mercy on their lives and save them all. In this case the god is Kukulcan. For those of you that don’t know much about history, the main street in Cancun that all the nightclubs are on, is named after that god.

The civilization of Cahokia, just outside of St. Louis, did much the same thing. They had sacrifices which were buried in Mound 72. It is highly likely that this culture along the Mississippi River was trading with the Mayans across the Gulf of Mexico and they had cultural influences on one another. The cultures were remarkably similar resembling the type of societies found in Mesopotamia during the pre-Christian era.
During excavation of Mound 72, a ridge-top burial mound south of Monk’s Mound, archaeologists found the remains of a man in his 40s who was probably an important Cahokian ruler. The man was buried on a bed of more than 20,000 marine-shell disc beads arranged in the shape of a falcon,[16] with the bird’s head appearing beneath and beside the man’s head, and its wings and tail beneath his arms and legs. The falcon warrior or “birdman” is a common motif in Mississippian culture. This burial clearly had powerful iconographic significance. In addition, a cache of sophisticated, finely worked arrowheads in a variety of different styles and materials was found near the grave of this important man. Separated into four types, each from a different geographical region, the arrowheads demonstrated Cahokia’s extensive trade links in North America.
Archeologists recovered more than 250 other skeletons from Mound 72. Scholars believe almost 62 percent of these were sacrificial victims, based on signs of ritual execution, method of burial, and other factors. The skeletons include:
• Four young males, missing their hands and skulls.
• A mass grave of more than 50 women around 21 years old, with the bodies arranged in two layers separated by matting.

• A mass burial containing 40 men and women who appear to have been violently killed. The suggestion has been made that some of these were buried alive: “From the vertical position of some of the fingers, which appear to have been digging in the sand, it is apparent that not all of the victims were dead when they were interred – that some had been trying to pull themselves out of the mass of bodies.”
The relationship of these burials to the central burial is unclear. It is unlikely that they were all deposited at the same time. Wood in several parts of the mound has been radiocarbon-dated to between 950 and 1000 CE. Check out more about this from this article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahokia

Many people don’t even know that Cahokia is even there in the middle of the United States. It’s the giant hill alongside the highway on the way into St. Louis. You can see the arch of St. Louis easily from the ruins of Cahokia, yet people don’t know much about the ancient city. In fact, Cahokia wasn’t even discovered until developers tried to build a neighborhood over it. I wrote a screenplay about the place for some financial people a few years ago and we had an actress and a director, but the whole thing fell apart in pre-production. But here was the conception teaser for it. The history that I speak about is real. The modern aspect of it is fiction.

So why am I talking about cultures declining and human sacrifice? Well, listen to Porter Stansberry talk to Doc Thompson on 700 WLW. We’re doing the same thing now as those collapsing civilizations did then. We are in a state of decline. The mob you saw in the Apocalypto clip is the poor, the welfare recipients, the union workers in the modern-day. The chants are the same. If you go back and watch the clip from Apocalypto you’ll see their union ancestors chanting at the bottom of the pyramid where the high priest is basically saying the same thing that President Obama is saying now. And who is being sacrificed…..who are getting their heads cut off. The people who produce.

In a culture like the United States it is the producers that are being sacrificed through regulation, taxes, Federal red tape. New inventions are being restricted out of fairness. New medical technology is being held back so government can pursue Obama Care.

Education reform is being held back by the corrupt unions that are only trying to protect the jobs of the teachers, forget about the effectiveness on the children. It is new ideas and the producers who create them that are lined up on the great pyramid steps waiting to have their heads cut off to appease a mob of fools.

We are told that the dollar is fine, because Obama and his gang of union thugs are running Washington. Who believes that? Our government can’t even agree on what to cut out of our federal budget, because we as a civilization are paying for everything, Planned Parenthood, which should be for profit, NPR, which should have always been for profit, Social Security which should work more like a 401K and be privatized, Medicare that has more corruption than most countries can endure just on that issue alone, and needs a major overhaul.

All cultures that failed went through these steps. In fact, at Cahokia they had a thing called Woodhenge, which was a bunch of logs stuck in the ground in a circle just to the west of Monks Mound, on the East St. Louis side of the ruin. The only function of that artifact was to convince the mob that the high priests could predict the sun rise, the spring and winter equinox, and other astrological observations. The intent was to prove that they “the ruling class” had mastery over the “heavens.” All they really did was make observations, and that’s all our current ruling class of fools is doing, making observations that they sell to us as mastery over economics.

On the other hand there are people like Porter Standsberry out there that are “really” looking at the real problems coming to our culture, and people like Porter are the kind of people our government wants to cut their head off in human sacrifice, figuratively speaking of course.

All cultures that believe in sacrifice, and most agriculturally based societies do to some extent or another is limited in their vision, and leaders of those cultures should be removed immediately. Because in the world of productivity, there is no limit, only in the capacity of machinery, or manpower, but demand can be infinite. Sacrifice to the “gods” whether literal or to economic gods is foolish and short-sighted.

I saw a sign over the weekend from a woman protesting the government cuts saying “don’t cut down the economic recovery.” It is amazing that people like that are out there, that they believe there is enough money, that the recovery we are having is somehow created by government and not business owners that have decided that now that there are Republicans running a branch of government, they are investing back in business again. The woman holding that sign is no different from that mob of Mayans chanting for more blood at the foot of a giant pyramid. And the high priest will be all too happy to appease the mob so long as there are sacrificial bodies. The same type of signs are being held by people protesting S.B.5. “Keep collective bargaining.” There’s that word……collective. That is one of the most evil words in the English language, disguised as an angel, but doing the work of the devil.

For society to thrive, the rich should be encouraged and not penalized. Those less fortunate should be pushed to work not just given a check.

A few years ago I walked the streets of Washington D.C. and was about to head into a McDonalds to get a bite to eat. A beggar asked me for some change. He was sitting outside of McDonalds right next to a “Help Wanted” sign. I asked him if he had applied for a job. He ignored me and asked a woman who walked by, which she gave freely with a polite smile. The man had lost his pride and allowed himself to be a beggar. There was a job opportunity right behind him, but he’d rather plead to the high priest for the blood of another, which the priest will always be willing to oblige. There’s no shortage of those types of people, power-hungry and craving to stand on the top of a pyramid and cut off the head of sacrificial victims.

Taxes are a form of sacrifice, property taken from those that have, and given to those that have not. It’s not the head of the sacrificial victim, but it is still their property. Estate Taxes are along the same lines, when a person dies, their property, “part of their living essence and history on earth” is taken by government and handed out to the vicious mob.

Sacrifice is the kind of behavior that will only take us in one direction. And it won’t be the way of success. Clinging to old, sacrificial activity, like high taxation, cumbersome education methods, and a stifling environment that fears competition from new technology will destroy our civilization and leave us all as just one more ruin in the history of the world. That is, unless we can take our civilization back from the looters, the high priests, and other derelicts that act as a cancer upon it.

What a bunch of idiots………..

Oh, and while some may say that Mel Gibson is crazy, hey, Mel has done crazy things with women for years. He cheated on his wife, drank heavily, and was generally a wreck of a person for many years, and the media covered it up just like they do George Clooney and Robert Downey Jr. But, Mel’s a great artist and a great director. It was after he made The Passion of Christ, then Apocalypto that Hollywood turned against him. If he hadn’t made The Passion, Hollywood and the press that feeds it would still be making excuses for his behavior. That’s the world we’re living in people. The high priests with all their fancy headdresses want the mob to believe they are gods! God forbid someone like Gibson comes along and shows the truth of something. Is that acceptable to you?

It’s not to me.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
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