Tag: Rich Hofman

Legend of the Misty Mountains: The first snow on the Cherohala Skyway

As if the No Lakota Levy campaigns were not enough, my work on Issue 2, my occupations, and my family, I have been working through a critical edit and rewrite on my new book tentatively titled The Tail of the Dragon. My publisher is exploring a title change however to capture the epic quality of the story to something like Legend of the Misty Mountains. But it’s still early. So my mind was spinning late in the night as I was thinking about all these tasks at the same time when a friend of mine from those Misty Mountains sent me the picture you see displayed here.

The Cherohala Skyway received it’s first snow of the year over the weekend and my new book involves a massive car chase upon it’s roads, so my friends from down south who are eagerly awaiting the completion of my novel wanted to send me the lovely site of that first snow upon those scenic wonders where the mind of man and the wonders of nature unite upon the Cherohala Skyway which takes drivers to the mouth of The Dragon along the western frontier of the Great Smoky Mountains.

My editor and I were having the type of banter that writers and editors have. As anyone who reads here can tell, my Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom is more like my personal notes which I share for everyone to see, mistakes and all, because for me it is to capture the ideas as they come and that is the essence of the task. It is the editor’s job to focus those ideas. When you put together a book, which involves many parts of a publishing company, the hand print of others are part of the process, so cuts, re-writes, refocusing key ideas are very important to the end result. So she and I were having this back and forth about what the novel was truly about, because we are at that phase.

I would say, “This book is about how politicians use public officials and legal manipulation to climb into power. That is the essence of how the governor in the story is using the police unions to solidify his bloc voting in a run for the White House.”

She said, “That is certainly an important part of the story, but it’s not the main theme. This is a pirate story. The main character is a pirate, and a violent one at that. This is also a love story, and a journey of self-discovery. It’s much more epic than the political subplot.”

So I mulled her comments around in my mind into the small hours of the morning as I stared at that misty mountain picture. Just a few hours before I had given an interview to The Enquirer over the debacle of Lakota’s school board and all the infighting that is going on. Before that the No Lakota Levy people had one of our meetings and mapped out our ad strategy and assignments for distributing signs. And as I looked at the stat list for this blog site, I noticed that my Stacy Schuler articles had over 4,000 views alone over the last couple of days. The combination of all those elements together sent my mind into a bit of sadness. I have written many, many deeply insightful articles here, and it’s Stacy Schuler which is the most popular. It is quite obvious that the crime of much of my time consumed centers around the lack of participation in most of society to THINK. It is the lack of THINKING from the voters that has allowed the public unions to rule over our politics. It is the LACK of THINKING that has allowed for higher taxes and manipulation of the type of ads which come from the anti-Issue 2 crowd. Those of us who think wonder how people could be so stupid not to see that Issue 2 is a fix, and is fair. But the emotion of the unions works even if they don’t have any facts to back them up. So in many ways my anger at those who don’t think had found it’s way into my novel, even if unintentionally and that anger and rebellion was unmistakable, and my editor had keyed on that emotion by rationalizing that my epic political adventure was actually a modern pirate story.

The roots to this book began ironically in one of my favorite restaurants in the world, and I have dined in some fine places. My wife and I love to eat at the Friday’s restaurant in downtown Gatlinburg. We don’t dine at the one’s here in town, but when in Gatlinburg we like to eat at Friday’s. There is something unique about that particular location, something in the air which I enjoy thoroughly. It may be the large mountains that rise up when you set foot out the front door, or the Ripley’s attractions across the street. Gatlinburg as a place is a thriving center of nearly pure capitalism and I love the area intensely. And I love to sit in the booths at Friday’s in Gatlinburg, where each one has its own flat screen television, and I scratch down notes for future writing projects. It was in this place that this current book was born, this pirate story about fast cars, rediscovered love, and the treachery of politics.

In the south they still enjoy being rebels. They do not pat themselves on the back for bowing down to authority. Down there they still resist, and I think it’s for this reason that so many people from Ohio visit the place each year. It’s not just for the scenic mountains. It’s for the reduced pressure one feels in such a place in political attention. It’s a similar feeling that you can experience in most beach communities and specifically Key West, they all have in common a tendency to look down at authority, with authority being the enforcers of a politician’s goofy ideas. I enjoy visiting places for vacation that embody such qualities and in my entertainment I enjoy the same eminence.

My anger at systems, at orthodox, at wasted money, at stupidity has its roots in this elementary concept. I think we should all be freer as a people, but to be free, it requires people to be somewhat intelligent and to think. It is evident that we are being herded about like animals in a barnyard by masters who consider themselves above us in the political class. If one of those animals declares, “I’m not an animal, I’m a human being” trouble is not far behind that declaration.

As I studied the rift that had developed on the Lakota School Board, due in large part to the information released on this site, which I thought was actually quite insignificant, a higher truth is revealed that I don’t think even the participants understand. The people on the school board want to be taken out of the “herd” and be considered as part of the political ruling class, and that’s why they are so interested in getting elected for a nothing job. The essence of all corruption is present in even a simple job involving no money for the participants, and even then, power struggles will erupt because people desire to be released from the HERD.

Rather than join the political ruling class I turn to writing, and vacations in exotic locations, and I find solace in places like the Cherohala Skyway and the Friday’s in Gatlinburg. My anger at that political ruling class comes out in my writing whether it be here as my personal thoughts and notes, or the more sophisticated and potent new novel that will be released during 2012 which ended up being a modern pirate story.

Such releases are important, especially when you involve yourself in the small-mindedness of the herds who all wish to rule. The clutter and mess they leave in their wake are frustrating and to level with them in an attempt to help them is like speaking to a rock. They do not have the capacity to understand what you are trying to tell them. And to keep from going over the deep end in anger I jot down notes on napkins, my hand, and on the bags of the cloths my wife has purchased, while we eat cheese sticks at Friday’s in Gatlinburg.

So knowing that, and with my editors consent, we will pursue this theme of the pirate against the masses of government, and I will enjoy every word written, every phrase turned and every act of rebellion contained within it, because such a story is needed for all those who have a mind to think and appreciate with sincerity the first snow on a mountain roadway in a land that refuses to bow it’s head in submission to mindless authority.

For the answer to everything click the link below!

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

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

Average Lakota Teacher Overall Compensation is $130,219 Per Year: That’s $67.82 per hour!

I have said it time and time again, more money spent on education does not yield better educational results. Doc Thompson of 700 WLW and I talk about that very aspect during his 9AM to noon show.

Money does not make any education system better! This discussion was triggered from some fantastic reporting recently in the Cincinnati Enquirer who has been looking hard at the data of whether or not higher taxes improve education. I put the blame for this misperception cleanly on the radical union aspect of education. It has been their factions who have spread the rumors and they’ve done it to increase their wages and benefits. The rumors have nothing to do with actual education. For Instance, Indian Hill spends around $793 per $100,000 in taxes compared to $1,672 per $100,000 in Finnytown. Which school system do you think is producing more academically bound students? How much do you spend per hundred thousand? Well, have a look. This chart came from one of the Cincinnati Enquirer articles and is very useful.

Source Article:

http://news.cincinnati.com/interactive/article/20111022/NEWS0102/310230005/Who-Pays-Most-School-Taxes–

Of course how much we spend on our properties to fund a school is only one part of the story. The other is how much a district actually spends per pupil to achieve the desired academic results. Doc asked me what the difference is, in why some schools can produce Excellent with Distinction results even though they might be spending $8,000 per student, and schools that are spending $15,000 per student are only excellent. I explained that the difference in cost is all tied up in the salary structures of those schools. I would say that statistically, the schools that are spending less per pupil are for the most part more rural communities and employee newer teachers, and when teachers get some experience under their belts, they transfer to schools like Lakota, Mason, Princeton, and Cincinnati Public because those are very desirable places to live with a lot of culture for the teachers to participate in. So the more remote schools have a high turn-over at the top end of their pay scale and have more younger tenure teachers, which helps keep their costs down. Yet those schools still produce excellent results, so the myth that money equals quality is shattered by this information.

All we are paying for with more costs are the inflated contracts of teachers who have priced themselves out of their own market. But that market value is artificially propped up because of collective-bargaining derived from the union influence. I didn’t get the time to explain it on the radio but the best way to explain this concept is with professional baseball. The New York Yankees have the highest payroll in baseball. So with that in mind, they should win a World Series every year if money bought wins. But the Tampa Bay Devil Rays have one of the smallest payrolls in baseball, yet they have regular playoff appearances, and could be argued statistically to be as good as the Yankees.The reason is the Rays tend to dump their high dollar employees in favor of fresh talent right out of the Triple A League. The Yankees tend to buy up other teams best players, which inflates their payroll on the belief that in doing so, they are buying a championship team, which doesn’t work. It doesn’t work in sports and it doesn’t work in business. It also doesn’t work in education. Being lean and mean works, employing people who have passion works.

And getting rid of your “train riders” (people who are burnt out and just along for the contract ride) does not, and many districts who have high per pupil costs are carrying too many of these types of employees. But when you speak to an employee, they of course will tell you that you need them. They are trying to sell you their services. But if the people who do the hiring and firing do not understand this basic concept, then the costs will become inflated, and that’s what’s happening with these teaching professions. Late in the evening the night before last, I received the spreadsheet you see below. This man is not part of the No Lakota Levy group. He’s a neutral fellow who’s just trying to make sense of the situation at Lakota so he did the extra work of trying to figure out whether or not he should vote for the Lakota Levy or not. He wanted me to publish this so others could share in his work and compare it to their situations. He calls it his Lakota Levy Calculator.

To understand what you are looking at I changed the colors a bit to make it easier to see. I put the essential numbers in Yellow so that the main point is easy to see for those who aren’t used to looking at spreadsheets. In this case, he uses a flat 60K per year as the average salary of the people in West Chester, and compares that against the $62,331 average Lakota Teachers made during the 2010 school year.  It shows all the hidden costs of the typical teacher at Lakota, so you can clearly see how much better they have it than the rest of us. His references are listed at the end, so feel free to double-check him. What he is showing here is that the annualized compensation for the average Lakota teacher, once all costs are added up, (insurance costs, wages, bankable personal days, which are actually large costs, the compensation is $130,219 per year. For the average resident of West Chester who makes $60,000 per year brings in just $74,520. The hourly compensation rate for the teacher is $67.82 per hour. For the average West Chester resident it’s $38.81. Now, who believes that a teacher at Lakota is worth $67.82 per hour? I don’t. They might be worth $38.81 an hour, but not $67. It is this type of cost which drives up the budgets which dictate the need for school levies. These costs are the hidden impacts against our community budgets and the suggestion that education would improve if we pay a teacher $70 per hour, or $80 per hour is just insane, and is an outright manipulation of the facts. Before the state can solve the state funding problem we have to understand what the value of a teacher is in Ohio. As of now there are too many spoiled costs inserted into these union contracts to make firm budget decisions. And until those costs are placed into the realm of reality, we cannot reform education funding.

 It is for this reason that the teachers unions are so upset over Issue 2. They know that once communities start understanding what their tax money is being spent on, they won’t want to pay it, and they shouldn’t.

People vote for higher taxes hoping that they are giving their kid a better chance than a school that isn’t performing at a higher level. But the key is not in the employees themselves, it’s in the management, and it always has been. What makes a sports team better, or a business better, or a school better, is the management. And this includes an organization like the Indianapolis Colts. Payton Manning is the same as having a head coach and a player wrapped up into the same position. Manning is more management than player, and the great ones always are. It’s not just in physical ability, but what comes out through strategy. You can’t throw money at a situation to buy quality. A district has to actually be a quality place to begin with and that starts with the community itself. They are the management, and if they want a great school it starts with paying attention to your kids, not teaching them that money can buy them anything they want, and that watching every dime isn’t just being cheap, but it’s good practice at driving the best out of people who are then forced to dig deep within themselves to perform at the highest level possible. When employees are fat, dumb and happy, they become complacent, and become a problem. For evidence of this, sports provide the formula for us to see. And education is no different. The schools of Ohio are in trouble because they haven’t come to grips with the big rip-off shown in the above spreadsheets, and they better learn to understand the situation before it’s too late to improve the situation. And that starts by voting NO on all school levies, because more money just feeds the problem and if you give them more money, you have become part of the problem.

To understand how much of the problem you are, look at the end of that spreadsheet, at how much money Lakota would have as a budget surplus if we were paying teachers the very good wage of the average West Chester resident, all things equal–we’d have a $66 million dollar surplus.  Wow, and tell me that it’s all about the kids. 

Now we know why the Pro Levy campaign called themselves “Move Forward”……..because they are moving forward toward the bank while the rest of us count our pennies. 

For the answer to everything click the link below!

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

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

The Lack of Courage Amoung Us: How much do you make and where does it rank?

How much do you make? Well, the Wall Street Journal has a link that will allow you to type in your household income and see where you rank among other people in America. Just click on that link to go to the WSJ calculator. (Keep in mind teachers at Lakota make $63K per year on average individually. And cops and firefighters in the same community are pretty close to that number as well)

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/10/19/what-percent-are-you/

It also allows you to understand how ridiculous the expectations of public employees are in relation to your own income.

Obviously we have a major cultural problem in this country, which is evident in the State of Ohio over Issue 2. Watching that video I can see clearly the cancerous effects of collectivism and the impact it’s had on the people who have participated in it. These are not the type of people who founded this country, pushed west in westward expansion, and built the foundations which became the greatest country on earth. These are people who have been taught to be parasites on self-reliance, and they are broken beyond repair. This is exceptionally evident in the below video where some union representatives declare they have saved the state billions of dollars in “givebacks” from their proposed contracts. The essences of what they are declaring as a givebacks are items in their contracts that they were promised, but did not collect on. This prompts us to study the nature of these “givebacks” without the distorted lens of organized labor.

In regard to the poll numbers on Issue 2 the difficulty is this, Democrats, who represent a form of collective philosophy anyway, are all together on this issue. They seldom ever have a thought of their own, so this isn’t surprising. Republicans fall into two categories, there are the firm fiscal and social conservatives like myself who are looking to the Tea Party as more representative of their core values, and you have conservatives who are fiscally conservative but socially liberal. Many of these types have used the Republican Party as a networking tool and didn’t have firm beliefs on too many matters to begin with, only when participating in political speak. Two of these types would be Bill Seitz and Bill Cunningham from Southern Ohio, both attorneys who served labor at some point in their careers yet spent much time declaring that someone do something bold in government. Yet that bold thing they never really contemplated, until Senate Bill 5 was passed into law and threatened their understanding of things. So people like this were the first to jump off the ship into that land of neutrality “Can’t we all get along? Can’t we just talk?”

I was at an event the other day where many politicians had gathered. All of them knew both Cunningham and Seitz and we had very animated discussions about them. I offered that I think these guys think public education is all about football scores. They think public education is all about the Friday Night Lights which brings the community together under the banner of sports. The thought of a teachers union doesn’t cross their mind. In Cunningham’s case, the PTA groups and Lakota coaches come into his sports bar in West Chester and ask him, “please support us. You are the only one. Our children’s lives are in jeopardy.” I have a good idea what kind of talk goes on because another sports bar within the Lakota district received the threat of a boycott from one of the principals at Lakota last year working through the PTA organization, which really scared the owner. So much so she came to the No Lakota Levy group for help. The PTA argument was “We will pull our business if you don’t support the Lakota Levy.” So there is no question that similar discussions have taken place with Bill Cunningham who is a businessman first and understands that such a fight would cost him. So it’s easier to just keep focused on those Friday Night Lights, ground everyone can relate with, and ignore all the real problems.

When I say that public employees make too much money, I say that based on what I am willing to pay for them. When listening to the speeches at the beginning of this article, the critical ingredient missing from that discussion is what is the value of these public employees and how much should they make?

Well in regard to West Chester police and firefighters I have shown on a spreadsheet where their problems are. They have police officers who make 70 to 80K per year just in salary, not to mention the other benefits, and that’s too much when you add 100 or 200 more employees to the mix. SEE FOR YOURSELF:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/indicted-west-chester-officer-made-70032-20-yet-the-apologists-think-thats-not-enough/

And the teachers in my community at the Lakota School System make an average of $63,000 per year just in salary. They occupy well over $120 million in budget compensation for just 2000 employees. SEE FOR YOURSELF:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/pay-rate-for-the-top-625-teachers-at-lakota-schools-yes-the-number-grew-much-larger/

Yet nobody wants to make the declaration that public employees have a value of X, and they certainly don’t have the courage to say what the value of X is. This is why the public employee sector budgets have exploded to where they make 43.4% more than everyone else. CLICK HERE TO READ HOW:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/public-workers-make-43-4-more-than-everyone-else-more-reasons-to-vote-yes-on-issue-2/

One of the reasons nobody wants to touch those numbers is because the radical labor union aspect of the whole business has artificially propped up the value of those workers to build in the cost of their union dues, because unions want to collect the PAC money and if their members aren’t well paid, they may not want to contribute the money. So to me, before we go forward with anything a value must be assessed on the public employee. We must know what a job is worth before we can spend money in a budget on those positions.

To get back to Bill Cunningham, who is a smart businessman, I am sure he would not appreciate all of his dishwashers “collectively bargaining” for a 2% increase every year. At some point in time, a dish washer is a dishwasher and gets paid the maximum level of money for that position. For a dishwasher that might be $14 to $15 dollars an hour. But to pay all dishwashers collectively the same would be ridiculous. Some of them would show more ambition than the others. Some might deserve a 5% increase where some might not deserve an increase at all. But a dishwasher who had been washing dishes for Cunningham over 15 to 20 years won’t be getting $20 to $30 an hour for washing dishes, because that would be above the market price for dishwashers. At some point a cap on what a dishwasher is worth must be established so a budget can be built around that value, and if Cunningham doesn’t establish that cost, he could run his business into the red, which would kill it shortly thereafter.

A teacher is not worth more than 65K per year. I think the budget range should be within the parameters of 45K to 65K. If a teacher thinks they are worth more, than they are free to shop themselves on the free market, but at Lakota I wouldn’t be willing to pay more. It doesn’t mean much to me that a teacher in elementary school has a master’s degree. That SRC which dictates that public teachers pursue a master’s degree is simply an effect of the union lobby in Columbus and means nothing to me. The goal of that provision was to drive up costs, which was foolish. If a teacher wants to get a master’s degree, have at it. Maybe they get a job over someone who doesn’t have one, but the cost of that degree should fall on the teacher, not the property owner.

Police and Firefighters are in much the same range. For a cop to drive around in a police car, I’m not willing to pay more than 65K, and that would be for a 20 year veteran. They might face danger in my community a few times a year, and they are paid for that danger. Firefighters the same, I’m willing to pay a good wage, but not an outrageous one. The way I see it, I could do much of the work they do myself with a volunteer group. Paying them to do the work keeps me from having to do it, but there is a limit and I’ve reached it.

It’s not just Lakota dealing with this situation. The reason we are fighting the tax levies in our community can be seen below. All schools in Ohio are facing this problem which was caused by not setting any limits on how much public employees make. Without Issue 2 giving employees the option to be in a union, or giving school boards the ability to give increases based on merit the collective bargaining situation is forcing these Montgomery County school districts into higher taxes to pay for their contracts. Below are the amounts residents will have to pay in additional property taxes to cover the ballooning salary costs in those districts. These deficits are projected to hit by 2015.

• Huber Heights City School District: $1,273
• Northmont City School District: $1,272
• Valley View Local School District: $1,266
• Oakwood City School District: $1,249
• Northridge Local School District: $881
• Vandalia-Butler City School District: $880
• Mad River Local School District: $869
• Kettering City School District: $862
• Dayton City School District: $387
• Trotwood-Madison City School District: $383
• Centerville City School District: $311

Source: http://www.betterohio.org/blog

Who thinks that the residents in those districts will receive equal pay compensation to offset the cost to their personal budgets? And those residents are obligated to pay those increases forever. In most cases the property tax increases will continue to go up perpetually. They won’t come down. So unless the incomes of the residents increase at the same rate as the public worker, we have a big problem. The taxpayers will not be able to pay, and the reason is because nobody had the guts to tell those public employees they aren’t worth as much as they thought.

The radical union position is that Issue 2 is a union busting bill. I see it as a compromise. I was personally furious when I saw that the governor wasn’t going to make belonging to a public union illegal, because no union should be allowed to exist on a public job. If a union wants to organize in a private endeavor, the market place will decide the result. But in a public job, the situation has been disastrous. I’m happy to support my local firefighters, police, and teachers. But get the SEIU, the AFL-CIO stickers out of your windows and off your license plates. Those are communist organizations operating like a syndicate and I want no part of them! By belonging to a union you bring their corrupt influence into my community which makes you a Trojan Horse, and you did so in order to make all the money you could make. Call it union busting. I call it getting rid of something that should have never been to begin with. It’s wrong, corrupt, and divisive. I would be willing to openly support public employees if I could see which ones belonged to a union and which ones didn’t. Issue 2 would give employees that option, and would allow me to know who believes in what.

Issue 2 requires people to show what they believe, and many people in the middle are just too mushy to take a stand. It’s easy to carry a sign, or to beg for more money, or to take a “can’t we just get along” position just because you’ve profited from it in the past. It takes courage to identify the situation and decide to see beyond the yelling and screaming, past the lies and manipulation to the essence of the problem, and that is unions have driven the cost of the public employee too high. Any future givebacks are already too late, but the union members are addicted now to the level of income they were promised, and the tax base cannot afford it. The man in the second video of this article says that if state money had been restored, many of these problems would go away. Well, no they won’t. That state money and that federal money also comes from the tax payers and while there is much that is spent on stupidity, from my perspective it’s the same kind of stupidity that the public employee is asking for.


Everyone with their mouth on the public tit is in the same boat, and we’ve hit a wall that will either dramatically drive up taxes, or dramatically reduce services, because the values are inflated, and have been for 20 years. And the situation to fix it takes courage, and unfortunately, courage is in short supply.

For the rest, it doesn’t take much courage to Vote YES on Issue 2 in the privacy of the ballot box. The union won’t report your phone number to their thugs like we know is happening in the telephone polling, where you are afraid to give your true position. I understand that it can be scary. But when you get into the booth, and it’s just you and that voting card, VOTE YES on ISSUE 2 or you can sign your name to the devastation that follows, because everyone who takes a passive position on this matter is a contributor to the problems that will follow.

For the answer to everything click the link below!

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

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

Indicted West Chester Police Officer made $70,032.20: Yet the apologists think that’s not enough

The West Chester Police did a good thing and that’s act quickly on an internal investigation of one of their own.  The nine-year veteran 37-year-old David Busemeyer was investigated and indicted by a grand jury of three felony charges, obstruction of official business, obstruction of justice and attempted tampering with evidence. Busemeyer is of course innocent until proven guilty, but this entire internal investigation is a reminder that public servants are not perfect. And I don’t expect them to be. What I expect is for West Chester to do exactly as it did, and that is bring about justice even when it involves their own.

However, in light of Issue 2, where the rhetoric has been turned up, and those pandering types use public servants to prop up their own political positions, I keep hearing that public servants do not make very much money, that police start at 35K a year, and that firefighters make 55K per year, and that teachers are not getting rich off their jobs. Well, I’ve shown at this site that teachers at Lakota make an average of $63K per year and are doing very well relative to the rest of the community. The police and firefighters in my community are also doing quite well, which I wasn’t aware of till the last levy was approved. After the approval of that levy I started looking at the numbers which resulted in the below spreadsheet.

Because this officer had been named and indicted by a grand jury, I was curious how much this particular police officer made, because according to Bill Cunningham and many others who are supporters of collective bargaining and union labor, these guys don’t make very much money. So I took a look at the spreadsheet below and sure enough, David Busemeyer is on there. At only 37 years old and nine years on the force he is making $70,032.20 as of 2010 numbers, since I received that information during the winter of 2011.

That’s not bad money. In fact, that’s quite a bit more than the average tax payer, even in West Chester. Have a look at my list.

To see my original article on this spreadsheet click here:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/03/12/oh-what-big-teeth-you-have-how-much-to-police-and-firefighters-cost-in-west-chester/

The trouble with “collective begging” which is the union term that Cunningham has adopted to refer to the “collective bargaining” reform bill of Issue 2 is that “collective bargaining” is not practical, is expensive, and allows employees who can’t achieve large wage levels under their own merit to make excellent wages under that system. Using West Chester purely as an example since it’s my community it’s not a big deal if David Busemeyer makes $70,032.20 if there was some sort of evaluation procedure that delivered him that type of wage. Maybe he does a lot of high risk work, or maybe he can speak in several languages and act as a translator for illegal immigration busts. But under collective bargaining, EVERYONE makes that kind of money. All a public employee has to do is show up for work, do what they are told within the union rules, and keep their nose clean, somewhat, and they will receive an automatic increase based on their collective bargaining contract. And instead of one employee making great money, you have hundreds making that kind of money and every bit of it must come from the tax payer.

Cunningham’s comments are the same as the typical politician. He’s pandering to the masses, which is no different from when Barry Obama does it, or Jessie Jackson, or Bill Clinton. Cunningham knows that many of his listeners during the day are public servants. Cops have on 700 WLW in their cars as they sit on the side of the road watching for speeders. Teachers have it on in the teacher’s lounge, and firefighters having it on in the firehouses. Cunningham seems to have always cared more for pandering than the actual truth which used to make me mad, but like one of my readers told me the other day, Willie Springer has no credibility. He lost that a long time ago.  It’s important to know that Willie is a brand name to a creation.  He is a lawyer.  He has a restaurant in West Chester where many teachers, PTA members, and coaches of sports teams for Lakota attend, so there is profit in pandering.  That seems to be why he supports a levy in my district even though he doesn’t live there.  He’ll pay the extra tax for his business because the school pandering will fill the seats at his sports bar.  I often assumed that what he said he believed, because I would, but he’s no different from an actor in a movie or on a TV show.  He’s a radio personality who has attached his role as a lawyer to the public sector worker as his listeners, the “voice of the common man” even though he is wearing a Mercedes shirt, which tells much of the story in itself.  It’s a cute gig until he starts taking official positions, where he comes out sounding as foolish as Sean Penn or some other radicle actor.

I hired Willie about 15 years ago to be my spokesman for a line of T-shirts I was producing to help get out a message I had which stated, “TAKE AN AX TO OUR TAX.” We were making the shirts at cost during the 1996 election season to bring high taxes to people’s attention. Rob Portman actually bought one from me, and I took one down to city hall and gave it to Roxanne Quals, the mayor of Cincinnati at the time. Willie was hired to do our commercial which we ran on 700 WLW.

I was set to go on with Bill Cunningham during his 9 PM show on a summer Friday night. As I was headed to the station Cunningham had on a segment where he had strippers on doing a live strip show while Cunningham did play-by-play commentary. My wife told me, “This is the guy you’ve hired to be your spokesman?”

I said, “No, he’s a conservative. Willie is just doing this for ratings.”

My wife said, “And you’re going to go on behind this?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Doesn’t this compromise your message?” My wife said. “You hate Howard Stern because he has no ethics. You hate Jerry Springer because he’ll do anything for money. How is this guy any different? And you’re going to go on his show and let him pretend he’s a conservative. You’re going to acknowledge his existence? You’re going to even give him the time of day?”

I knew she was right, so we turned around and went home. I called his producer and told him that I wasn’t going to go on behind a room full of strippers. So Cunningham kept the girls in the studio till midnight, and they had a grand old-time laughing and carrying on. And from that day on, I knew that Cunningham the personality was not the same as Cunningham the man, which was very disappointing, because I wanted to believe in him.

In the video above, Cunningham has fantasies that his words actually carry weight, and there is a certain percentage of the population out there who would listen to advice from Jerry Springer, Howard Stern, or Bill Cunningham. Those types of personalities try to be everything to everybody, and actually believe in nothing. But then again, most lawyers are that way. They’ll believe whatever you tell them to, so long as the money is green.

However, this business of Issue 2 is serious, and people like Cunningham just muddy up the water with the revelation that he has always been a Democrat, and was only a conservative for the benefit of his show. They take advantage of the ignorance of the masses who are too busy with their lives to look into anything for themselves. Yet the spreadsheet above shows what the union supporters don’t want you to know, and that is “collective bargaining” has allowed too many people to make too much money. Getting pay increases in large groups is a concept that could only work in government. In the private sector it puts companies out of business. In government it causes tax increases.

Apologists attempt to pander to everyone so they hope to divert our attention to the corruption of the federal government and the war in Afghanistan which is terribly expensive, rather than what’s going on in our communities.  All they are doing is trying to divert attention from the immediate problems. I can’t do much about those federal issues, but I can in my backyard. And getting these public employee costs under control is my obligation to my community, not to get side-tracked on some diatribe by a radio/television personality. People like that are no different from politicians who will do anything or say anything for a vote.

In the end, whatever happens to Issue 2, the collective bargaining system will collapse on itself. If the unions get their way, they will be solely responsible for the catastrophe that follows. School levies won’t go away, and neither will police and fire levies they’ll keep asking for money to satisfy their collective bargaining contracts while the rest of us suffer through stagnate wages that have topped out. Issue 2 isn’t about fairness, it’s about survival, and those that are trying to get rid of it are no different from those soccer players who crashed in the Andes mountains portrayed in the movie ALIVE.

They ate their dead…………………and became cannibals.

SEE MY ARTICLE ON ALIVE HERE:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/22/its-the-end-of-the-road-budget-problems-for-everyone/

I wonder what that officer really did to have the investigation actually bring about an indictment.  My question was why did that officer make so much money?  What was the evaluation process?  How many times was his life in danger the previous year?  What does he do from the start of his shift to the end?  The answer is we don’t know, because collective bargaining gives pay increases to all employees equally, so the evaluations done are just customary, since they have very little meaning to actual wages.  And that probably had something to do with why this officer wasn’t detected as a potential problem by his management, until something bad happened.  And that system will continue because people like Bill Cunningham are willing to give people like this a blank check of entitlement, which empowers these groups of public workers to believe they are far more important, and valuable than they actually are. 

For the answer to everything click the link below!

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

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

WE ARE BROKE: Senator Jones speaks about Issue 2 on 55 KRC

Shannon Jones was on recently with Brian Thomas of 55 KRC to speak about the benefits of Issue 2. One of the important parts of the conversation centered on the typical contract of most workers where the previous contract serves as the baseline for the next one, this practice has served to unrealistically drive up costs which in many cases far exceed the CPI index of the average tax payer. Most public workers don’t concern themselves with such measures because they are conditioned by government to act as baby birds and wait for mother government to drop food into their mouths if they chirp incessantly which has become their irritating mode of operation.

Brian and Shannon have a wonderful conversation about this very important bill. Be sure to listen to the entire broadcast especially the callers after the interview.

As I was sitting down for dinner with my wife, there was a knock on the door. The dogs were going nuts as they peered through the windows at a person they did not recognize. So I went out to meet the guy through the garage to avoid trying to talk while holding back the dogs.

“Hi!” the man said enthusiastically. “I wanted to talk to you about Issue 2.”

I smiled as he handed me the literature which was in favor of the repeal attempt. My wife had come out behind me and grabbed her forehead when she heard that a spokesman from the “other side” was in our driveway. “You came to the wrong house” she said.

The man’s smile disappeared as he studied our faces. “Why’s that?”

My wife gently pointed at me, “that’s Rich Hoffman.”

“Crap………..Well, you never know who’s door you’re going to knock on.”

I put my arm around the guy and said, “Dude, it’s alright. We’re definitely on opposite sides of this situation, but we can still get along…..even if you’re wrong.”

The man was holding out the literature for the repeal attempt, which I took. “Thanks,” I said, “I was wondering what you guys were handing out to people.”

The man smiled slightly and shook my hand. “Well, thanks for your time, and have a good day.”

“You too,” I said as the man turned and headed back to his car. I could feel my wife burning a hole in my back with her gaze.“What? I was nice.”

“Suspiciously nice,” she said. “What are you up to?”

I feigned surprise. “Now what makes you think I’m up to something?”

“Because I’ve been married to you for over 20 years.”

I held up the literature from We Are Ohio. “Because it’s nice to have the other side bring you information and place it on your doorstep. It saves me some research time. I’m grateful to the fellow, as time is a precious commodity.”

My wife and I finished our dinner with a hearty laugh at the literature and how terribly misleading it was. The emotional appeals that school levies and labor unions employ to their cause are traditionally pathetic and this literature was no different.

In bullet points the literature read like this:

• Issue 2 strips away important Collective Bargaining Rights. This was hilarious since there isn’t anything anywhere which states that collective bargaining is a “right.” It is a privilege that has been abused. Click on this article to see how.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/issue-2-debate-in-ohio-the-spoiled-class/

• Issue 2 Endangers us All. This is another one that brings about laughter. It’s the old “panic” trick which schools use to trick people into more tax money spent. “You’ll be safer if you pay us more money.” This behavior actually equates to mob type extortion, because the only real danger comes from the public employees themselves, because if they walk off the job, homes could burn down, criminals might roam with impunity, and kids would be in a classroom that has no teacher because they are on strike. The only danger is that if Issue 2, the public employees in a fit might retaliate by laying down on the job. It’s even documented that some public employees have actually burned down the homes of their tax opponents in the past or encouraged violence in other “indirect” ways.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/all-the-reasons-to-vote-yes-on-issue-2-being-bold-and-doing-the-right-thing/

• Issue 2 Hurts our Economy. This comes from people who most probably have difficulty balancing their check book if they didn’t have a 43.4% wage and benefit advantage over the private sector. They are people who have little knowledge of production, but are simply service oriented employees who think they know the miracle of money and production. It is these types of individuals who think that “job creation” is done by government and not the wealthy.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/s-b-5-would-have-saved-1-3-billion-in-2010-yet-the-oea-says-its-teachers-will-suffer-when-the-average-teacher-makes-55k/

• Issue 2 is an Unfair Political Giveaway. Here comes the classic class warfare ploy. It’s “us (the worker) against them (the management).” In the minds of the radicalized public worker “management” is always against them and they treat negotiations like a football game, where you gain yards against the defense which is management. It doesn’t matter who is on management’s side, they are all villains to the radicalized union member, and this especially true of public workers represented by a union.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/29/issue-2-is-wonderful-the-gap-is-closing-as-good-people-come-to-their-senses/

We finished our dinner with our stomachs sore from the laughter and again contemplated the public employees who have grown over time to become entitled, to expect everything in their lives to move forward, but to never give anything up. Their idea of giving back to the community is to take wage freezes and giving back personal days, which many in the private sector don’t get and never will. Giving back things you have not yet received is not giving back. But to the public employee, it is! As a group the public employee is desperately out of touch and they have no plan on what to do with the day after the election if they succeed in a repeal attempt. Their plan is to raise taxes to deal with the budget deficits, and that’s why we laughed so hard over our dinner. The idea of just how out-of-touch these people are is something that might be unbelievable on a stand-up comedy act. Yet, with a straight face, they hand out literature and protest with silly signs in the back of pickup truck to “repeal Issue 2, so we can keep everything the same for us, the public employee.” But they have no plan other than taxing the rich. Their argument is one of shallow water in a jagged stream filled with a dye that discolors the water which they applied so that nobody can see just how shallow their water is, and what they hide just under the surface. The answers to most of the reasons we need Issue 2 is articulated in the Brian Thomas, Shannon Jones interview. But also, all the reasons we should vote for Issue 2 also comes from the literature of We Are Ohio. Upon examination it is clear there is no helping these people since their perspective is tinted with extremely high expectations. And only time will heal them while we must help them put their feet upon the ground of reality once again after decades of neglect and pay-offs.
In the meantime all we can do is laugh and vote YES for Issue 2 on November 8, 2011.

For the answer to everything click the link below!

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

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

Making the Tough Cuts at Lakota: Why public employees don’t get it

In the middle of the night I received a message from Laura Sanders who is working on the Move Forward Lakota campaign, a group that is advocating the passage of a new levy at the Lakota School District. She wanted to show me her new video, which is nice and I think well-edited.  But like I wrote her, where in the video does it say “WHY is more money required?”  We know teachers are valuable to the community.  But Lakota is not underfunded.  It’s a district with $165 million dollar budget that we know about, and in all reality is closer to $250 million in total revenue.  Yet it is the average pay rate of the employees in the district that hovers just over $63K per year that is driving up those costs, so how much is too much? 

Like I said to Laura, having money to put on a glitzy show does not provide justification for the expenses.  We cannot manage our district if teacher pay is simply a bottomless pit.  Lakota has at least $30,000 to start their levy campaign with and I’m sure they will receive more over this next campaign.  To see who gives money to them and what their campaign finances look like read this article which breaks down how much they spent last year, how much they have to spend this year, and who gave them money by clicking on the link below:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/10/28/how-much-has-lakota-spent-on-passing-the-levy/

The belief from the Move Forward Campaign is that if they spend money, they will automatically convince people of their need.  And that’s what they’ve done with their new ad.  In the heading Laura titled it “Creative Battle” I suppose in response to the No Lakota Levy’s latest video which you can see here:

You can see our website at www.NOLAKOTALEVY.com where that video launches upon your visit.

This battle of videos shows clearly the difference between the No Lakota Levy group and the Move Forward Campaign.  We are looking at the situation and studying what the costs are, and questioning why they are so high.  I think the limit for the teachers pay rates has been exceeded.  The average is simply too high.  The Move Forward Campaign believes as they show in their video that by spending money, Lakota will move forward in some way that it hasn’t already.  We are supposed to put blinders onto the fact that an endless and undefined amount of money is required because teachers instruct our children, and maybe our wives?  (That’s what they said.)  I think all these people are just simply out of touch. 

I was up late because my editor had sent me her edit on the first draft of a book I have coming out next summer.  She had marked the whole thing up with a lot of red and told me that the publisher wanted the giant manuscript to be cut down to 84,000 words from the 110,000 it is now.  By revision 2 and revision 3 that number will be cut down by even more till we get down to around 60,000 words.  The editor was very concerned that I’d be heart-broke by these facts, because other authors are. I let her know that I understand the nature of business, so we’d do what we needed to do to bring the manuscript to the level it needed to be at no matter what the cuts were.  It’s my job as the author to make it work within the business parameters.  Relieved she proceeded to give me a long list of characters to remove that are minor to the story, subplots to cut, and tightening of the dialogue to save space.  So I was up contemplating these ideas at 4 in the morning when I saw the video from Laura. Given my state of mind on my own project, and having to make cuts for companies that I’ve worked for that were very painful, I continue to be baffled that public schools and public employees in general who do not think cuts of any kind should ever be made. 

I have heard some of the most foolish comments in my adult life regarding Issue 2, which is the ultimate fix for these budget problems, especially at Lakota.  I know for a fact that there are teachers at the top of the pay scale that aren’t worth 45K per year let alone 80K and 90K.  Only in a union under collective bargaining could weak people earn so much.  But then there are some teachers that are worth that much money.  But if the Lakota Levy fails and cuts are made, it will be the newer teachers who cost the least and generally have the most ambition that we’ll lose, unless Issue 2 holds.  The argument the public workers are making is similar to me telling my editor that, “the book will be terrible if we lose these characters.  I refuse to make revisions to my 110,000 word manuscript!”  They would then say, “Ok, thank you for the opportunity to work with you Mr. Hoffman, but we can’t afford the publishing cost of a book that large.  Such a large book has limited market value because statistics show that most people are intimidated by large books, so we would never recover our initial investment, so good luck on finding another publisher.” The Issue 2 group does not understand that by trimming down a manuscript or a school district we make them stronger. 

While all this discussion over Issue 2 is percolating and unions are dug in deep with their rhetoric and talking points, Lakota is after more money to supplement a contract with it’s union that is excessively high, the Cincinnati Reds are floating offers for their star player in Joey Votto, who is currently the gem of our local baseball team.  He’s the ideal baseball player and we’d all like to see him stay in Cincinnati for his entire career.  But in reality, Joey will most likely decline in production over the coming years, and he is set to make more than 20 million a year, because his contract dictates that much.  So the Reds should follow the formula of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and dump him for a fresh young player that costs much less but can give comparable numbers.  The Reds would have to do this because to keep Votto means they couldn’t afford other players that will be needed to create a valuable franchise.  So at some point in the near future, the Reds will have to cut Votto, which will be painful, just like editing a book, or managing a school district.  It’s painful, and emotional, but we are REQUIRED to do what is right for the organization we are representing.  What dictates the Reds cut Votto is that they don’t have a budget which allows for him in the future.  Public workers don’t understand this.  They simply believe that tax increases will allow for them to have everything, job security and all employees making healthy wages without competition driving costs down. They believe this because a budget limit has never been established, which is what we are doing with the No Lakota Levy group, helping to manage costs by setting a limit.

The anti Issue 2 people who happen to be the same people who are pro school levy are all about emotion and they are afraid of pain, and they can’t see that not taking the pain today, will make tomorrow much more painful.  And that’s the state of our district, our state and our country.  There are those who want growth to explode without any concept of finance.  And there are those of us who are saying enough is enough, we have to exercise some good judgment and make cuts which make the whole systems stronger.  I suppose the difference is that some of us have had to come to grips with cuts like this in our lives, and some have been protected from that pain, and it shows in their cultural behavior.  That behavioral difference is extremely expensive and is the root of the entire problem.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

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

The Typical School Levy Advocate: A fat woman in a dress….(A METAPHOR)

If your wife asks you, “Honey, does this dress make me look fat?” Then you, the husband answer as you can see the skin dimples pushing through the fine surface of the dress as it hugs her hips, “No, no, you look beautiful.” The husband has committed a sin. You told her she was beautiful when you know in your mind that the correct answer was, “Hell, no, you’re fat. You have let yourself go over the last ten years and I’m embarrassed to be seen in public with you.” The husband answers the way he does out of a duty to his wife that goes beyond truth. He is forced to put on blinders to the truth in order to share a life with this woman, who has gained 40 extra pounds, wants the ability to eat, and eat and eat, but still expects her husband to lust after her for sex. The man, to avoid fighting with his over-weight wife will tell her anything to shut her up and get her off his back, so he tells her, “No, the dress looks great………..dear.”

I see the same kind of behavior coming from these people who support school levies. They have the same level of truth behind their eyes as the man who lies to his wife to avoid a conflict. Case in point, witness the testimony from this woman in Lakota who is supporting the most recent school levy.

Parents who have kids in those delicate years of childhood, who are in their school years, are an insecure lot. They of course want what’s best for their children, and desire every opportunity for them. So they tend to trust the opinions of others over their own knowledge because after all, being a good parent takes experience, and how do you get experience but by raising kids. So during that process, parents tend to believe they can throw money at a “professional” to give them the added security that those professionals will be there to pick-up whatever they miss as parents.

The trend ends up making a voting adult who will believe anything these professionals say in hopes that they can achieve their aim at raising good children. To the parent who believes that by spending money on security, they are more than willing to put on blinders to the actual truth to achieve that security even if it’s false.

The truth is that the “professionals” the teachers, the administrators are actually quite fat and when they ask for a school levy they say, “Look how lean we are? Look how much money we saved? At Lakota, we are operating at less per pupil than other districts, so pay us more money. We are caring for your kids! Give us more money!”

The parents both working jobs and paying a lot of money for a house they bought just so they could send their child to Lakota is no different from the husband who is just trying to keep the peace with his wife. “Yes, you look good to me. How much do you need to do your job better?”

The obese professionals caring for our children then take that money given by the enabler and buy more junk food so they can become even more obese. And when the food runs out, they will come back and say, “I need more! I am a ‘big boned’ entity and I need to maintain this large body. I’m hungry. We need a new levy.” The enabler, the typical tax advocate will then say as the woman in the video said, “We need to pass this levy so we can have good schools, so we can maintain our excellence.” But the eyes don’t lie. The public can witness the dishonesty which resides there seemingly hidden. They can see what the enabler is really thinking. “Wouldn’t it be better if the school system wasn’t so obese? Wouldn’t the school be better if it was much thinner?” The enabler is just as guilty as the husband who tells his wife, “Yes honey, you look good. You’re not fat at all.” The husband knows that if he doesn’t tell his wife something to that effect then sex will come with difficulty, and it will be a pain-in-the ass to pass his wife in the bathroom or in the hallways of his home. And thus the levy advocates are in the same boat. They must pass these inflated professionals in the halls of the school their children attend and communicate with others in social events, so they put on the blinders so that they can endure the experience with some resemblance of sanity.

If I knew the husband and he introduced me to his wife at a dinner party and the wife wanting praise from me upon introductions would say in a flirtatious social banter, “Do you think this dress makes me look fat?” The husband knowing my reaction would cup his hand over his face and brace himself for the anger his wife would soon feel. “Please Rich Hoffman, do not say what I know you are about to say. Please for the sake of my life, don’t piss her off.”

I would look at the woman with her body attempting to bust out of her dress and ask, “Do you really want to know?”

The woman expecting praise as she fans her hands down her thighs to straighten out her dress doing her best to look sexy, “Of course, darling.”

I would then say, “My dear, your ass is fat and you are a pain to all the eyes of this room for you should have worn a potato sack rather than do that dress injustice by asking it to hide your blob-like body. There isn’t any amount of perfume, make-up, or cosmetic accessories that can hide the fact that you have visited the potato chip bag about 100 times too many!”

The husband would be breathing through his hands knowing that the hours and hours ahead of him would be spent repairing his wife’s fractured psyche. The wife would of course be upset and would storm off in anger. And I’d have to say as she was leaving, “You wanted the truth.”

It is customary in our culture to avoid hurting people’s feelings even if in doing so we might actually help the person. And this is the case of our current education system, where they collectively believe they are more important, more powerful and ultimately influential on a child’s life. The success of a child’s life comes from the static patterns the parent provides for the child. Education is a part of it, but so are the parents themselves and the grandparents, cousins, nieces, nephews and friends. The teachers themselves are just a fraction of the potential success of a child.

But the mentality of the parent who believes that education will fill all the voids that they as parents lack are the same as the obese woman who drinks diet soda, and then eats whatever she wants expecting to lose weight. It doesn’t work, and telling those people that they are better or more important than they really are doesn’t do them any good in life by feeding their minds with a false sense of worth, of which they then expect us all to pay with increases in taxes.

It’s not against the law, or even wrong to be overweight. But when one is indeed fat, but expects to be lied to in order to further their own waistline without the guilt of public ridicule, then crimes are committed when society must decide between the harsh reality of the truth, or maintaining the status quo in order to avoid conflict.

For the answer to everything, CLICK THIS LINK:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

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

Quandary of Collectivism: But you need my job to make you safe!

Below is a message I received from a teacher who is attempting to play a little game that is now all too familiar. In the debate I had recently with the Pro Lakota Levy group, you could hear the same type of fear based placement of a core argument, resembling the message below.(CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THAT DEBATE)

_______________________________________________________

Mr. Hoffman,

I’m voting NO on issue 2. Issue 2 is unfair, unsafe and hurts us all. It takes away the voice of workers in the workplace and they will be unable to negotiate on important issues such as working conditions. Issue 2 will cost the state of Ohio a POWERFUL PRICE. When the good teachers leave for states where they are given a voice in the workplace, who will replace them? Teachers who are less able who can’t get jobs anywhere else.

_______________________________________________

What is easy to see in this small exchange is a kind of lobby attempt that can be seen in its exact duplication of tone on a larger scale over national issues. That is, those who work in government have strived to make themselves appear much more valuable than they truly are in a natural attempt at self-preservation. The tendency of that lobby is to attack the presumption that the world would be better off without the government workers creating needless bureaucracy, and they use examples like the teacher above citing that somehow all the good teachers will leave the state of Ohio if Issue 2 survives, or as in the below example, the world would be like Somalia if libertarians had their way. The government lobby message is the same everywhere……………….”You need my job to make you safe.”

It is in that keyword “safety” that the panicky young mother tunes her ear to the television. “I want my baby to be safe, so I should listen to them,” she says to herself. Or the grown man whose father ran off with another woman when he was a child, leaving he and his mom to fend for themselves, he thinks, “My mom needed the help of government. I’m glad government was there for her.” Or the old man facing his own terminal life who votes or the latest fire levy.  “It could be me they call to save my life.”  A thousand perplexed souls contemplate the same quandaries daily and it is these government types who capitalize on those primal fears to propel the security of their livelihoods in an unrealistic attainment of financial gain. But each time those government lobbyist open their mouth, the rhetoric is the same. The words are changed to fit the circumstances, but the intent is always to plant doubt in the minds of the tax payers that every government job created is needed. So when it is asked why does government seem to always expand, why is it so corrupt? Why is government so imposing? The source of the problem is in the desire of government to provide a job. In this way it grows like a virus unchecked by an immune system and destroys everything in its path in order to maintain the Static Patterns established by society in its pursuit of eternal safety.

The example of Somalia is a preposterous one. It is obvious that the creators of that little (anti-libertarian) film does not understand the greater aspects of social relationships. The real trouble in Somalia is due exclusively to their tendency toward collectivism as can be seen in this short documentary. It was on the back of collectivism that socialism was brought to that country, then when that fell, as it always does it paved the way for the clan Civil War that is currently taking place. Somalia is the direct result of government meddling at many levels, not the other way around, as the video obviously produced by some New Age Leftists, only able to see a small part of the overall picture interpreted.

The trouble with these documentaries is that they are often older than the minds of the modern socialist, whom was educated by a teacher similar to the one who wrote the opening statement of this article. Taken independently, I’m sure that teacher is a wonderful person. I’m sure there is a child who calls them a parent. I’m sure they are someone’s sibling, and is someone else’s child. I’m sure they shop at the same stores as the rest of us and it is their money that helps move wealth through our economic system, and that has intrinsic value. But the destruction comes from a belief in collectivism, a hope that government, and its expansion will bring justice and prosperity to everyone if only they worked for a big collective entity.

Collectivism is a naive concept conjured up over puffs of marijuana smoke in the college dormitories of America and it is in that naivety that people like Barry Obama formulated his belief system that teachers and public education are the salvation of the world, that would break down the barriers to everyone and reach into the villages of faraway places like Somalia and help the starving. Collectivists like Obama and the billionaire George Soros believe they can correct the part of themselves which they deem broken to be redeemed in social salvation. They are no different than Said Barre, the Somalia dictator. Even with all the evils of Barre, there are plenty of people who believe he’s a hero. Collectivists are ultimately the most selfish group on planet Earth, because they are typically flawed people who seek to redeem their own personal imperfections through philanthropy, and social reform, as if they can out-pace their internal demons with acts of charity.  (SEE MY ARTICLE ON JIM JONES)

It is collectivism that is the villain, and rhetoric is the mask that attempts to elude notice as it sneaks into American culture. The teacher who wrote me the letter was using rhetoric to mask the truth, that they can be replaced rather easily and they hope to scare me into believing otherwise, and the producers of the “Libertarian Paradise” film hope that the masses have just as shallow of historical knowledge as they do. And Barry Obama hopes that people will forget what he truly intended for America, a breakdown of the walls we had to the world, so that the world can share in our prosperity. After all, Obama has roots that come from a region of the world that thinks much like Somalia. Kenya is right next door. They all have in common the terrible disease of collectivism, which limits their minds and thinking to barriers in reduced social understanding. And that is why they fail time and time again.

I have been involved in the employment of people for quite some time, and I can personally verify that much of what people will tell you are laced with self-interest. Even in the most collective society, self-interest is the key ingredient. If a person believes they will be better off individually through collectivism, then they will seek to obtain in mass the fruits of that plunder, thus the labor movement. When the teacher says they must stand against Issue 2 to collectively bargain they are saying they want to dominate the process through collectivism so that they can en mass achieve the same results as the clans are performing in Somalia, individual gains reaped from brute force. And when those methods are questioned by the public, they already have the infrastructure in place to bring hardship to their employers in the form of a strike. Its military maneuvers at this point, not negotiation over tax money for the paying of government employees. And the mask is always one that says, “You need me. Only I can perform this task, so you must give me overtime to do it. Only I can do this job so you must put up with me and not hire a replacement.” Sometimes, you believe them, sometimes you don’t, but I have learned over time that after terminating dozens and dozens of employees and losing employees to disputes when you call their bluff, I have always been able to recover the achievement you hired the labor for in the first place, and the doomed promises predicted by the radical rhetoric never comes true. Because the rhetoric is only a mask and behind it is a soul with no real teeth who hopes that the public doesn’t catch on to their scam and pull the plug. Because in the world of collectivism, that world is financed by the tax dollar, and if tax payers stopped giving collectivists so much money, suddenly they are in real trouble. If government stops expanding, they suddenly lose the security blanket they built their collective lives around. So they will lie, cheat, mislead and conjure up any string of facts to justify their existence.

But that existence is coming under fire more and more, as the truth is seeping out from behind the collectivist’s masks of deception. And there is real fear in their eyes of what will become of them if those of us who produce decide to turn off the facet to their livelihoods. We are learning that the teacher asks for too much and does too little. We are learning that the government bureaucrat spends much time and money creating laws that get in our way of doing what we want, and it’s not worth it. And we are learning that community organizers who were forged in the radical sewers of human thought will have appeal to the weak and down-trodden who are willing to turn to collectivism for salvation they couldn’t achieve squarely on their own merit, and elect such a fool as President of a global village tribe, without considering that the tribe will break into an ideological civil war because society cannot be run by the weak collectives and their central planning.

The threats by these collectivists are utterances that aren’t worth the wind which carries the sound wave of discontent. Anyone who believes as collectivists do can be replaced by a superior mind quickly and efficiently, because it is the superior mind who avoids such occupations in order to avoid the fools who are currently employed there. The superior mind doesn’t waste their time on the quandary of collectivism. The apocalypse predicted by those employed by government as that body of collectivism is reduced by the tax dollar are unfounded, completely, the world will still turn tomorrow, kids will still be taught by a teacher, there will still be police and firefighters and many others. The term phrased, “the squeaky wheel gets the grease,” has been true. But my solution to the squeaky wheel is not to just put more grease on it; it is to replace the wheel all together with one that doesn’t make any noise, and might even work better. It is in such thinking that permanent fixes reside.

For the answer to everything, CLICK THIS LINK:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

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

The Great Debate at Lakota: Julie Shaffer and Rich Hoffman on WLW

Julie Shaffer who is running for a Lakota School Board seat and representing the Pro Lakota movement came on 700 WLW and debated me on Doc Thompson’s show. Julie had some good points from her view-point, and I maintained my usual opinion. It was the public response to this debate that I think is most telling. WLW is widely heard by all demographics in the adult population all across Ohio so the callers who responded to our debate speak volumes of the values our communities currently embody. Click the video below to listen to that very important broadcast. (BE SURE TO LISTEN TO THE WHOLE BROADCAST)

One thing that came up constantly during the debate is the controversy over numbers. Julie interprets them one way, I interpret them another. But the facts are the facts in spite of what one side or the other wish to see. As to my facts, I look at them without attempting to make them speak slander. And the summary of this whole Lakota Levy Debate is this—what is the value of a teacher and how much should we pay them?

It is my opinion that years of radicalism in the teaching profession have distorted the actual value of the service. This leaves us with the difficult position of discovering what the market value is of a teacher, and that is what these levy defeats all over Cincinnati are all about. We are establishing what we as a community are willing to pay for a teacher.

That teacher radicalism can be seen easily in this recent Letter to the Editor published in The Pulse Journal pointing at me for having a lack of respect for teachers.

What many people don’t understand is just how much teachers cost. At Lakota during the school year of 2009-2010 the average pay of a Lakota teacher was $62,331. The following year it was $63,727 and mysteriously went up even with a pay freeze and step increase freeze under a new 3 year contract. Why? Well, it is because of the teachers laid-off that Lakota cut to meet its budget reducing it by $12 million. How many of those new teachers were really good and how many teachers paid top dollar but aren’t so good kept their job? It was the lower paid teachers who were taken out of the equation, which drove up the average salary. Over the span of time shown above approximately 60% of the teachers received “step increases” of around 3%. This is the kind of thing that has driven up the labor costs and made school levies a necessity, because the schools perceive they need the money because they do not recognize a limit to what is available to them. To put this in perspective, the cost of those increases were around $2.1 million. The savings of the busing cuts is $2.8 million. So it could be said that the busing cuts at Lakota were needed to pay for the increases the teachers received over the last school year.

Even though administrators at Lakota have not received an increase of any kind over the last three years, they do average a pay rate of $80,747 a year. At that rate of pay, who would think they’d need a pay increase. Julie and I discussed on the air two versions of what we believe the average pay to be of a person living in West Chester is. I said the average person is making 50K per year, which included professionals of all types with various degrees. Julie thinks it’s over $70K per year which explains why the people on her side don’t understand the problem.  They live in that “Education Bubble” which sees the world through the eyes of academia, which is idealistic in its interpretation of the information they see, and that view is clearly out-of-touch. That can be heard in the callers that followed our debate.

(BY THE WAY, TO SEE THE REAL NUMBERS FOR YOURSELF, HERE IS CNN MONEY MAGAZING’S REVIEW OF WEST CHESTER. THIS SHOWS HOW MUCH PEOPLE AVERAGE IN INCOME.)

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bplive/2010/snapshots/CS3978246.html

It is irresponsible to ask a community that is suffering from record foreclosures, where business owners have to lower their lease rates to keep their business tenets, because the taxes are so unattractive, then you compare that reality to the world of Julie Shaffer and her Pro Levy teachers and one can only wonder how the teachers don’t see it.

In a late night meeting with Superintendent Mantia where she reached out to those of us in the No Lakota Group hoping to earn our trust in her ability to get control of these crazy costs, that we told her flatly, Lakota should pull the levy, it should then ask the teachers to take a reasonable pay cut to bring that average teacher salary into the mid-50’s. Mantia in my assessment understood our point of view, and she understood the conditions outside of that education bubble, but indicated that the levy was already in the process.

One of the No Lakota Members in our group then said, “Those Pro Levy People have 30K in money they raised from last time that has been sitting in a bank since last fall, and it’s burning a hole in their pockets, and we think that’s why you guys are going through with this levy.”

Mantia shrugged her shoulders. “I just got here, gentlemen. I’m trying.”

We shook her hand and wished her well into the rainy night knowing that we had more in common than we did in differences. The only difference is she’s in charge of that “education bubble” and we want to pop it. Because the people within that bubble need to share in the world the rest of us live in. Because then and only then can a realistic discussion about the value of a teacher be ascertained.

For the answer to everything, CLICK THIS LINK:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

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

“The Tea Party is Racist”: But they like Herman Cain, how can they be both?

The comments from the actor Morgan Freeman over this last weekend citing that the Tea Party are racists and have a sole purpose in removing President Obama from office because he’s black proves how little so many people who vote truly know. Click this HOTLINK to see a recent article of mine where I play the video from Freeman. Without extrapolating further the authority by which any value in Freeman’s opinion dictates, let me just say, Morgan Freeman is looking for a convenient outlet for his lack of understanding.

Herman Cain is my pick of the Republicans so far running for the 2012 election and I think he’s black. I didn’t consider his skin color until Morgan Freeman made me think of it. As I watched the Freeman interview I said to the TV, “Hey, wait. That’s not true, Herman Cain is black. The Tea Party is trying to replace a black progressive with a black conservative. It has nothing to do with the word, ‘blackness.’” It’s more like replacing someone who can’t do the job with someone who can.
I like Cain because he has more experience than our current president and he seems to understand the concept of limited government. Virtually everyone agrees that our tax system need reforming, including President Obama, and Cain has a plan. It’s called the ‘9-9-9’ tax plan. Check it out!

Saturday Night Live did a skit involving Herman Cain as an “unelectable” candidate. They also made fun of the fact that Cain was the CEO of Godfather Pizza, as if that “small” amount of experience did not qualify Cain for the Presidency. As I watched and considered the two weekend comments together I could not help but conclude that the “Progressive Machine” was functioning with full steam applied. Many in the media are afraid of Cain, because he is a black man, and he’s articulate, quite intelligent and he has a plan to straighten out an actual chaotic situation of government with solutions. That makes Progressives nervous because they need chaos to survive.

President Obama had virtually no experience at doing anything when he ran for President. Herman Cain has actually had success as the head of a company. The implication is that because it’s a pizza company, somehow the effort contains less merit. The media considers “community organizing” much more valuable, apparently.

I was happy to see that Herman Cain won the Florida Straw Pole. The reason for these debates is to show who the strong candidates truly are over time, and Cain is emerging as one of the stronger candidates even though the orthodox media and political machines wish those candidates to be Mitt Romney or Rick Perry. You see, the static patterns of society know what to do with people like Perry and Romney, and the media has already decided they will not allow Ron Paul a seat at the table even though Paul is a fantastic candidate. But Herman Cain is fresh, and Presidential. And he’s a black man. The only knock against Cain (according to the media) is that he’s a conservative.

What would the Progressive Community do if Herman Cain turned out to be the Republican Nominee? They would not be able to say that conservatives are racist because they nominated a black man. And the Tea Party likes Herman Cain. So how could the Tea Party be racist yet at the same time support Herman Cain?

Herman Cain proves the hypocrisy of our modern society. I don’t care what color Herman Cain’s skin is. I really didn’t think much about it. I simply thought Cain was the best of the offered candidates. I have heard that many people would support Herman Cain but are afraid to because he’s “unelectable.” What does that mean?

There is a belief that if the media will not endorse a candidate, that a person running for the Presidency cannot become President. So even though people may think Herman Cain is the best guy for the job, somehow the good people of the United States must settle for someone like Mitt Romney because the media will support them. It would seem the media has too much power and have themselves become a corrupt nobility who view their role on the world stage as reformers, not reporters.

The media does not create policy, even though they did create President Obama, the empty promises behind their strategy is immediately evident in the collective media’s utopian naïveté, because Obama is lost when it comes to any kind of management. Obama’s economic plan is one concocted by a small army of fools displaying an unprecedented ignorance and evidence that America’s education system is a failed institution—because it produced these fools.

Herman Cain’s ‘9-9-9’ plan will raise about $1.768 trillion in raw tax revenue and economic growth using numbers similar to the Obama Administration’s own estimates, will bring in an additional $1.4 trillion more creating $2.17 trillion which matches the $2.16 trillion in tax revenues collected this year, and it takes away all the corruption and lost money that thrives like a virus in the chaos of our current progressive tax system.

That’s a much better system than President Obama’s plan of taxing the social minority of 235,000 millionaires and billionaires, (you know, people like Obama) that already pay 40% of all Federal taxes. Obama seems to leave all the trouble of the current tax code on the shoulders of the “rich,” such as the fact that the bottom 50% of all wage owners pays just 3% toward taxes. And about 47% of all American households pay no federal income tax at all. Those are the Obama supporters. Of course they will endorse a candidate that will steal money on their behalf…..and it’s legal. “Go after the rich Mr. Obama and loot us some of that Obama money!”

Cain’s plan makes taxes fair for everyone, and it just makes sense. It solves a problem that progressives created, and this is why the progressives will not support Herman Cain even if he is a black man. Because the issue is not about the color a man’s skin, the color is just a deterrent from the real issue which is that progressives need chaos so they can have excuses to expand government even more and with each encroachment for American society to become less free.

The agenda is not to have a black president, but to use the guilt of racism to advance a political philosophy supported by the intellectual elite, which make up the media.

For myself, I will support Herman Cain to the ends of the Earth because I believe in the man, and I think he has the best plan I’ve heard for reforming the tax code and starting the country on the right course. And I believe Herman Cain will support American’s more than Agenda 21 and that makes him the ideal guy in my book to take America to the next plateau of greatness which it deserves after a waltz with the demons of discontent. (CLICK HERE TO UNDERSTAND WHAT AGENDA 21 IS)

Clearly we are two America’s and a confrontation is inevitable. Hopefully, that confrontation will stay at the ballot box. That’s why I will be voting for Herman Cain in 2012.

For the answer to everything, CLICK THIS LINK:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

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