Dynamic Intellectualism and the Tea Party: The battle between the Spider and the Wasp!

I have spent a lot of time explaining the troubles of finance in education, the disparity of truth propelled by the organized labor elements, and the general failure of progressive politics on this site. Generally society as a whole is happy with general assertions as to those failures because once they understand what they are, they can act correctly in understanding the danger and how to avoid it. I see pointing out the danger of progressivism and all that falls under it, such as public education models, communism as a governing body, and the lack-luster ambition the hippie-generation has propelled upon American society, the same as I might warn a spider that it is the nature of the wasp to stun a spider into paralysis, inject a wasp egg into the spider to live as a parasite using the body of the spider as food for the young wasp before emerging forth from the carcass of the spider to live a wasps life. Looking to nature in understanding the behavior of our current society is an intelligent thing to do, because all living things are following the innate laws of cellular biology. In human society the more intellect applied to creating new rules from which to live, the less of a tendency for human beings to behave in such a raw biological form, such as can be seen in this following video of the spider and the wasp. But when intellectualism fails by picking all the wrong things to think about for all the wrong reasons, and the default for the human mind is to resort to biology, then it is entirely possible to suggest that there are elements in our current society that will inject other elements of our society with an egg, to feed off our collective bodies for sustenance until those host bodies are dead completely giving rise to the parasitic infant which will seek to procreate using the same destructive methods.

Needless to say what I refer to throughout this article may require a foundation understanding of the principles of quality discussed with elementary terms in my previous article Why Public Unions Fail: The Science of Stagnation, where I provide some basic foundation concepts that will assist the reader on this next exploration of thought. The following article will explain why our society is failing, and the paralyzing force behind racism as the primary concerns of our age, and why it is necessary to return to a new foundation built from the Constitution and what role the Tea Party plays in this. The goal of this article is not to simply point out what’s wrong but to properly diagnose the trouble much the way one would diagnose the failure of an automobile, so that the car can be fixed. Society cannot be fixed if we do not diagnose it correctly, and that’s what we’re about to do.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/why-public-labor-unions-fail-the-science-of-stagnation/

Unique to the 20th Century was a human effort to place intellectualism as the foundation principle of our society. Through public education and colleges, this has been the great leap attempted by the human race. Intellectualism was intended to usher in the values of the Victorian Era morality taking individuals above their biological natures in their mere social class natures to function from a grand new intellectualism built upon science. However, as pointed out in my article The Secret of Malden Island, science is far from perfect. It often fails when objective observations alone are its foundations and mode of operations, so the intellectual is already handicapped, right out of the gate. This is why progressivism has failed and will always fail, because intellectuals require a “dynamic” component, which they are missing and often reject.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/08/13/secret-of-malden-island-why-public-education-is-hiding-history/

The joke that intellectuals can only see what’s right in front of their face and nothing else is actually quite serious. Such an observation is completely true. This is why they are reluctant to speak outside their field of study citing that they do not have the authority to speak on a topic for which they are not trained properly. That notion is a distant result of the old Victorian era beliefs which were also flawed. To put it in terms easy to understand the Victorian, who essentially built up New York city into the type of society it is today and left behind the type of culture most easily found on the East Coast of the United States who look to Europe with those homesick eyes function in a similar nature as the spider in the video shown. Their job is to cast a web and hunt other insects to eat. They are clearly the superior species and they considered it best for the rest of the world to make all living things more like them. That is the foundation of their morality. But they are not wired in their brains to defend themselves from the wasp, a more aggressive creature than they are who is able to sting them and plant their eggs within the spider’s bodies to provide growth and sustenance to the larva of the young wasp.

The wasps of our current American culture are those aggressive religions, such as what Glenn Beck was attempting to point out in his Restoring Courage speech in Israel. It is also in allegations of racism where societies built upon their biological natures can poke holes in the intellectual approach that science has not observed, and therefore cannot pass judgment on one cultures belief system or another’s because all cultural beliefs are relative to that culture. So the intellectual scientist will not see, much like the spider will not see, that they are in danger of being stung by a wasp to provide host to its young by devouring the spiders body. The spider is helpless because its cultural conditions do not provide protection from a wasp, so the spider won’t see the danger, and is therefore always vulnerable.

This is what happened in the Hippie Movement of the 1960’s. Intellectualism, built on many poorly conceived premises failed. The intellectuals led at first by Woodrow Wilson then followed by many, many others were not able to stop poverty, they created more of it. They could not end racism, they simply did as the typical scientist does, and they pointed it out, allowing different cultures to take advantage of other social cultures with a kind of paralysis of observation. They tried to imitate communism which has halted America’s competitive advantage. They tried to eliminate the need for a parent, because it was thought that the biology of child rearing could be better achieved with Victorian intellectuals who could provide the young with more perspective than the biological parents. What the intellectuals really achieved was providing the wasps of the world, (the communists, the radical religions, the social reformers) bodies to carry their larva. Of course the consequences were completely unintended.

Intellectuals did not mean to usher in millions of young people into the sting of a wasp. They intended to save those children from the ignorant biological impulses of their parents, but it didn’t work. It failed massively which led to the hippie movement of the sixties, which our American society has never recovered.

Intellectuals fail over and over again because the foundation of everything they believe is built upon static social patterns constructed by objective observation. But as explained, this form of science is just one step in scientific observation. There must be creative thought applied to the process as well. This is why NASA has been successful as a government organization. All the static patterns of traditional science are present. But at NASA they can also dream, brainstorm, and reason out the gaps between what is observed and what they have yet to discover. NASA functions with the needed element of Dynamic Intellectualism.

When I went to college I saw that the intellectual culture there, of which the education institutions were attempting to sell to me as “fact” was flawed because the foundations of their teaching was rooted in static observations and did not readily allow for dynamic adjustments. This is why so many dynamic personalities just drop out of the college experience because there really are only a few choices. You accept at face value the teaching the intellectuals are providing, which is flawed to begin with, or you reject it in favor of your own life experiences, your own dynamic impulses. Most people chose the former, they allow the Static Intellectual to “teach” them, but those people only grow up to be stung and paralyzed by a wasp to carry the egg of a parasite which uses them as a host. Look into the eyes of many parents who look at their children covered in tattoos, living failed lives of two and three marriages, children out-of-wedlock, severe psychological trouble. Those parents realize by age 40 or 50 that they were simply consumed like a spider by the larva of a wasp. Their bodies are used up and wrinkled and death is the next step and all they can cling to is their flawed beliefs that static intellectualism will save those children. So they save up all their money and send their children and grandchildren to more college to get more Static Intellectualism hoping that somehow the results for the next batch of children will be different. All it does is allow those children to become host of a wasp larva much quicker. That’s great if you’re a society of wasps, but not if you are a society of spiders.

As seen in my article on The Most Successful People Who Did Not Go to College,

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/successful-people-that-didnt-go-to-college/

 many of those people became Dynamic Intellectuals at some point in their lives. They either did not go to college at all as in the case of Walt Disney and Henry Ford, or they dropped out, such as in Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, Richard Branson, the list goes on and on at great length. The Dynamic Intellectual has an education that never stops, they push scientific observation to the limit with creative thought and are always seeking to reach beyond the static patterns of Static Intellectualism without shattering those previous patterns, but bringing new information that will build upon the static patterns. This has worked incredibly well, and makes one wonder why colleges have not picked up on this trend and made adjustments to their educational style. Even worse, why public education has not realized its failure and done the same…………………………well, they can’t. You see, the Static Intellectuals who cling to their static patterns are also some of the more timid of the human species. It is under this new idea of Static Intellectualism created by Victorian Intellectuals that these timid creatures have been revered so highly in our current society, and if America were to return to a society where actual bravery, and valor were the values of that culture, the Static Intellectuals would suddenly be looked upon as frail and meaningless. So the static pattern motivation of the modern intellectual is no different from a typical politician, and that’s to be viewed as meaningful by their peers, to be accepted, which is not an intellectual trait at all, but a biological one of basic human essence. So the ultimate failure of the Static Intellectual is that they are falsely propped up socially, and provided no incentive to be anything larger than their primary biological impulses for social acceptance. This makes them spiders in a cage run by wasps with full intention to use their bodies as a breeding ground.

The way to correct this entire situation is to return to a social static pattern that worked then rebuild society from that static pattern using a combination of Static Intellectualism with Dynamic Intellectualism to allow for expansion of that static pattern. This is what the Tea Party is doing by going back to the Constitutional principles of America’s foundation. The Constitution is a static pattern for the creation of a country, and it worked. So the Tea Party wants to reset the pattern. That is equivalent to teaching a spider how to defend itself from a wasp. Back when the Constitution was written it was designed to protect the spider from a wasp, the New America from the Old Europe. That is good if you are a spider, bad if you are a wasp. Good if you are American, bad if you are from Europe.

To understand who the wasps of our society are, all one has to do is look at the various sectors of our society who are upset with the Tea Party. Those are your wasps, and now you know their intentions. They may not actually want to inject your body with larva. But they do seek to paralyze you in the form of Static Intellectualism so that they can inject your children with ideas that will grow up and serve their purposes. This process is not some grand design of the types of world builders like George Soros and the super wealthy. They are simply the nature of parasites, and the human race is filled with them.

American society used to know how to detect parasites, back in the days when frontiersman had to understand the dangers of the world in order to live, back before the time of the Victorian Static Intellectual. Once those Static Intellectuals came to be, those timid creatures were paralyzed by their own intellect to be easily stung by wasps which gave birth to more parasites which are now ravaging our culture at an alarming rate and a war between spiders and wasps is underway.

The answer is to return to a static pattern that works and in going forward to lean on the insight of the Dynamic Intellectual to grow society properly, not in the manner we currently see. The Static Intellectual has failed on their own, and should have never been given so much power as to determine the fate of our species, for they are not the most dynamic of our society and can only hold us to a static pattern like a spider caught in its own wed, only to be consumed by a wasp.

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

The Flip Flop of Steve Chabot: Who is the media?

There are so many things wrong with the Steve Chabot town hall meeting on Monday, August 22, 2011 where he had the police confiscate the cameras of citizens recording his speech.  Before I get into the details of this listen to Doc Thompson of 700 WLW cover the two videos he put on his blog site, both of them from Progress Ohio which shows the terrible act being committed.

After the whole issue blew up, and Doc was covering it on WLW, Chabot attempted to clarify that in the future, he would make the policy clear that only the media would be allowed to have cameras during a town hall meeting.  Well, that created so much of an uproar on 700 WLW that later in the day Chabot came out and said that there would not be any rules about cameras in the future.  The reason it created an uproar is that the media cannot always be trusted, and politicians for way too long have learned to manipulate the media to make themselves look better.   

One of the greatest benefits of this modern age is that everyday people can also be part of the media.  With all the video cameras out there, and cell phones, and blog sites like this one, politicians can no longer wine and dine members of the media to mold their public image.  People have to actually be what they say they are, and that’s a great aspect of our current age.  This is why schools can’t get away with ripping off the tax payers anymore with fluffy terminology, because it is no longer just newspapers and television that are covering the “feel good” stories that shape public opinion.  Because of the internet and YouTube specifically a political blunder can now be seen, and not pushed under the rug so bad behavior can continue.  Stories like the Stacy Schuler case in Mason can no longer be “controlled” by a public relations media personality, because there are other ways for the public to get at the truth, or at least remember the event.  So politicians like Steve Chabot who are aware that his enemies, Progress Ohio are in attendance at his town hall meeting have tried to control their public image just like the policy shown in the video, of police confiscating the public video cameras.   Progress Ohio clearly was looking to rattle Chabot and get video they could use against him in a future campaign. Chabot has to be a good enough of a politician to stay away from double-talk and not give those people any ammunition.  But no politician has a right to “censor” their public image in a public forum.  That just isn’t something that can be allowed to happen.

Now, here’s the worst aspect of this situation……..it’s the fact that without any knowledge of the law, the police on the whim of a politician, can instruct the police to do their bidding.  Those police officers had no right to confiscate one single video camera.  If Chabot wanted to enforce a video camera policy, it was up to his staff to provide that security.  The police department cannot be used as his personal enforcement service.  And as to the early comments that Chabot uttered about only the media would be allowed to film events, that brings up the question, who is the media?  Is it the media that only the politician likes?  Is it the media that represents the major television stations?  Is it just the media like newspapers who have reporters that are kind to the political entity, of course not.  The media are the people who chose to cover it, so in this day and age, every member of society is a member of the media, and that’s the way it has to be.  So no politician has a right to pick and chose who covers them if they are a public official. 

I’m happy that Steve did the right thing in the end.  I’m sure his intentions were good, because he knew the sharks were in the water.  But this is a perfect example of how good intentions can pave the path to hell, because police powers were abused, private rights were abused, and trust in the government was violated all because a politician wished to control his public image with censorship.  That is the path that has placed our current political system into such a shambles, it is decades and decades of this kind of “censorship” that is just now being challenged because it is only in the last decade that virtually every citizen in America has their own video camera and access to the internet in order to convey the truth as they see it.  So the dynamic has changed for the better, and politicians must adjust to that dynamic because the dishonesty of politics can no longer be shoved under the rug to hide which just mounts up to a hugely expensive government full of dishonest people who stay in office because they had control of the media.

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

Lakota gets a Good Grade: But didn’t they say the world would end without a levy?

Wow, I came home to a flood of email today from parents upset about the busing cuts, and even angrier at the school system for not dealing with the excessively high salaries before taking away busing to their children. It looks like many people are starting to see how this scam works, and that is good to see. I’ll deal with that in another article because I think the bigger story is the recent rating that Lakota received from the ODE. Remember the busing cuts are only around 3% of the total budget, and it is the labor costs that make up 80% of the school budget, so let’s keep that in context.

Before we get into the details have a look at the various interviews from me, and those of the Yes Lakota people prior to the election of 2010 from the clip above. Listen to what the Yes Lakota people say will happen if the levy isn’t passed, then compare that information to the results you will see below and decide for yourself what’s fact from fiction.

As Lakota received news that they received from the Ohio Department of Education an “excellent” rating for the 10th year in a row, I was actually surprised. I fully expected with all the cuts and controversy of the last year to see a lower rating, after all that’s what the pro levy people said would happen if we didn’t pass a levy last fall, and even the school board said as much. But the levy didn’t pass, the district made deep cuts, yet last year the rating was 104.9, but this year the rating went up to 105.9. How did that happen? Below is the article from the Pulse Journal by Steven Mathews. Have a look for yourself.

_______________________
Lakota’s top state ranking 
puts district in elite group
Excellent with Distinction honor draws praise from community, school board members.

By Steven Matthews, Staff Writer 10:16 AM Wednesday, August 24, 2011

LIBERTY TWP. — The Lakota Local School District’s Board of Education met on Monday night, and much of the session was centered around the big news that was announced last week — the Excellent with Distinction honor awarded by the state for the 2010-11 year.

The meeting, which included a PowerPoint presentation from Assistant Superintendent Lon Stettler and praise from community members, lasted about 90 minutes at the Lakota Central Office.

“Despite the challenges that we had last year and we continue to go through, the focus is where it needs to be — in the classroom,” board member Lynda O’Connor said.

Stettler emphasized in his presentation that Lakota — the seventh-largest district in Ohio — was the largest district to receive the state’s highest honor.

It’s the 10th straight year that Lakota has earned the highest possible honor, and its 105.9 performance index is an all-time district high.

“In the last 10 years, we’ve experienced changing demographics,” President Joan Powell said.
“It demonstrates that our staff has risen to the occasion.”

• New Superintendent Karen Mantia said that she has met with several focus groups, which consisted of residents, business leaders, government officials and parents. She also plans to meet with students once the school year gets underway.

“Here’s what I learned,” Mantia said. “It’s absolutely imperative that if we do nothing else, we make sure we maximize our children’s performance, and maximize the staff’s performance and expertise. … Across the board, they all understand the expectation of our staff is high.”

• The board approved a policy to either provide a cell phone or a cell phone stipend of $60 per month for certain district positions. Chris Passarge, the executive director of business operations, said most eligible employees chose the stipend.

• The board also approved the acceptance of a $2,000 eTech Ohio grant that has been awarded to the Lakota East Freshman School.

Tamera Terndrup, a Spanish teacher at the school, will use the grant to purchase four wireless laptops with microphone headsets.
___________________________

I think that’s excellent news about the rating, the rest of those issues I’ll cover in another article, but it proves what the No Lakota people have been saying all along, for the school to do more with less, and you’ll find better results when you’re lean and mean. Oddly enough, Lakota did not even have a superintendent during this rating increase, so what does that mean? Lakota made cuts to their deficit, eliminated positions, cut busing, sports programs and electives and they did all this without a superintendent, yet their rating went up, not down on the heels of a failed levy.

Even more baffling are the comments of Superintendent Mantia in that article where she says after her short time at Lakota, “Here’s what I learned, It’s absolutely imperative that if we do nothing else, we make sure we maximize our children’s performance, and maximize the staff’s performance and expertise…..across the board, they all understand the expectation of our staff is high.” WHAT??????????????????? What does any of that mean? Doesn’t Lakota always maximize its performance and understand that the expectations are high?

The answer is no. Until the No Lakota Levy group came along and started challenging everything that the school was doing in order to defeat the last two levies, the school district and its employees had been cruising along. Once the public in the form of No Lakota Levy came along, that anti-tax group had taken the role of “management” in the community, a role the school board had not been performing. It is because of No Lakota Levy breathing down the neck of all these officials that the costs of education at Lakota have come down, and the rating actually went up from this year compared with last year.

I’m not unnecessarily taking credit for the good work the administrators did in this endeavor. But they knew that they would be challenged so they have tip-toed around trying to be creative in their financing and still perform at a high level, which we all expect as a district. But it is the Lakota School Boards job to do what No Lakota Levy has been doing. I would personally prefer to do something else with my time, but since my elected officials have shown “no fight” in standing up to the organized labor forces that have embedded themselves in public education using tax increases to hide their terrible management of that labor, I am actually angered that myself along with a small army of businessman in the community have to actually do their job for them by showing them what kind of questions to ask, and understanding where that line is in our community of when too much is too much. The school board was supposed to be doing that all along, but they didn’t.

The reason for Mantia’s comments being what they are is now that she’s arrived here and got her feet wet, she is realizing that Lakota did really well without her, without a levy increase, and now she really can’t do anything but fail. She has come into a district at the top of its game and she really can’t expect to improve it. So here’s the question, and I’m sure this is bouncing around in her head also, why she should cost the district a quarter million dollars in costs just for her employment expenses? (To see a breakdown of what she costs the district CLICK HERE)

The school board hired Mantia because they are still stuck in an old formula of organized labor education philosophy which is based on the failed economic Keynesian economic models of Europe. But Lakota has proven that it can do more with less, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many more savings to be gained if only the school board would “manage” its labor costs and if the community could free itself from the organized labor elements of the teaching profession. This can be done if the people in Ohio will simply vote YES to keep S.B.5 on Issue 2. That simple step would go a long way to allowing future school boards to drive down the cost of education even more than Lakota has, while still maintaining their excellence. (Click here to learn what S.B.5 does for you)

The rhetoric that schools utter when they proclaim that if they don’t get more money is the same old tired diatribes that all labor utters when they are asked to do more with less. The problem with organized labor is they threaten to strike if they don’t get what they want, and will walk off the job like infants who don’t get a pacifier and it is that element in this whole equation that has driven up these labor costs and dictated these levy requests, and that is the hidden message behind Mrs. Mantia’s comments. She has been hired to preserve that empire, not to drive down costs, because the real savings is in dismantling the empire of education so that the children of these schools actually see the money, and not political labor unions attempting to finance their enterprises with a straw into our wallets and purses as a lifeline of finance, as they empty us to only fill themselves.

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

Public Unions Should be Illegal: They are simply too expensive and too demanding

CLICK HERE TO SEE AN ARTICLE I WROTE CALLED PAYING FOR PROTECTION: THE ORGANIZED CRIME OF TEACHERS UNIONS FOR MATERIAL SIMILAR TO THE ONE BELOW.

Leslie Ghiz of Cincinnati City Council goes ballistic on 700 WLW while talking to Doc Thompson about the lack of interest in dealing with the Diana Frey case, the public union president accused of stealing over $750,000 from her members. The source of the complacency she is upset about is the very reason why public positions simply cost too much money to the tax payer. Click here to listen to that broadcast:

There is a disconnect between the reality of the public union leader and the rest of the world. Doc Thompson recently did another show where the average tax payer would have a lot of difficulty coming up with $1000 if they needed to without going into debt. Yet the public union expectation when their contracts demand more money is just to raise taxes to fund their demands, and they don’t care at all that they are draining the communities of their wealth, who simply don’t have the money. You can listen to that broadcast here:

The public sector unions have shown no restraint, no sense of economic understanding, no compassion for their employers, which are the tax payers. They have been excessively greedy, corrupt (Diana Frey and she’s not the only one), manipulative, and perfectly willing to walk off the job if management doesn’t see things their way. Their behavior has driven up the cost of their employment simply to the point of being very unattractive as a labor option.

When the public union representing the teachers at Lakota in 2008 went on strike, and a deal was made to appease them, to keep the teachers from walking off the job, I decided that I would not support another school levy until the public sector union was out of the equation. They simply drive up the cost of education too much. The unions make it impossible to have an intelligent conversation about cost controls, because the direction of the negotiations always migrates back to the welfare of the employee, and not the product they create.

I have noticed that the television stations lately are focused on the catastrophe of public funding and are resorting to the feel-good stories of emotion, which plays straight into the kind of manipulation the unions have used to extort massive sums of money, (tax money) for themselves. It is never asked by the established media why all these public employee jobs are going bankrupt, because the answer is simply too painful. Public employees, particularly teachers are too expensive. They cost too much money to employee, and they did that to themselves with extreme labor practices such as threatening to walk of the job with strikes.

The legislators who made it law that a teacher should have a master’s degree to keep their teaching certificate helped perpetuate the situation with legislation. They did as they always do; they created laws without considering the cost of compliance. That is the problem with electing small-minded people into positions to create laws, because they are unable to take in the whole picture. Since they too are public employees and not responsible for creating the funding, they don’t make the connection but simply take money from the public in the form of taxes, so they bare no responsibility.

Public employees do not exist for the benefit of job creation. They are not there for the convenience of the employee. But that is the expectation. The tax payer is expected to jump through hoops to figure out how to appease the high expectations of these out-of-touch employees.

If I were the superintendent of a school, which I could never be because there are actually laws to keep people like me from being hired by a district, the unions have covered their tracks in every direction, I would simply let the teachers walk the next time they attempted a strike, and I’d hire cheaper labor. It is the cost of labor that is the problem and is creating the demand for more taxes in every sector of government service. Government in no capacity should ever be paid more than the average wage of the public, because it creates an incentive for people to attempt to become a government worker that will do anything to become employed by the government because it’s simply too lucrative.

Teachers should be paid fairly, and if they want to make a lot of money, they should work for a private institution that will pay them according to their expectations. If the United States were the best in the world, I might buy into the union argument that we need to pay for the best to have the best, but the United States education system is not the best. It’s average and that’s being generous, and I think it fails in entirely too many ways. It certainly isn’t worth the amount of money we are pouring into it.

Politicians and news organizations looking to simplify their stories focus only on dollars spent equals’ value to the child, but that simply is not true. We could pour all the money the United States produces into education and the result would still be a flat line. Education is an elusive quality that comes from the strength of a family and the mentors that surround a child. Children just do not learn on an assembly line and making the factory more expensive won’t improve the results.

I’m not against public education. I think it’s a good thing for people who come from broken homes, or poor families. In those conditions, it is possible for a teacher to have a major influence on a child, because the teacher can fill the role that the parent is neglecting. But in families that are strong where there are two parents, grandpa’s and grandma’s and the family has a middle to upper income, there isn’t much a public school has to offer in the development of a child but a baby sitting service. I know that hurts the feelings of many “sensitive” guidance councilors and teachers, but those are the facts. As a tax payer, I’m happy to employee some of those people in my district for some of the underprivileged, but having hundreds and hundreds employees all making extremely lucrative incomes is simply not good business.

But it is the unions who have high-jacked the entire process, allowed no management control on a run-away train that just goes faster and faster requiring more and more money to fuel. To me, they are not worth the money. They are guilty of being too greedy and out-of-touch. To be honest, I have never seen a system so screwed up, as wrong as you find when you lift up the rocks of public sector unions. The entire situation is terribly out of control which directly affects the overall cost. I believe the teachers for the most part believe they are in the profession for the kids they teach. But the union leaders are clearly out for the greed of the position and have shown no restraint on their demands. And the teachers who have voted to keep those types of leaders in place are all guilty of putting themselves over their job to the children and the more I learn, the angrier I become.

Being foolish is not against the law. If the union leaders wish to be so foolish as to be out-of-touch with the rest of the world, that’s their prerogative. But when they ask me to fund their foolishness, that is passing the fool baton to me, and I’m not going to carry it. They make it my business when they ask me for more money to support their folly, and I know better. Therefore, I will not support public sector unions with any more additional taxes until they remove themselves from the process. They are getting in the way of proper management of public employees and should be outlawed. We have tried that little public employee union experiment started by President Kennedy and it has failed, and needs to be abolished as a practice.

The unions will call it union busting. I call it practical. I do not recognize the authority of any union to take my money out of my pocket and do what they please with it. Such a practice is simple robbery. It’s nothing else and needs to be outlawed at every level in government. Until that happens, there will never be any management of government costs which is just plain foolishness when money is the primary concern.

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

SEIU Visits John Boehner’s Office: GIVE ME A JOB, or I’ll cry!

Tea Party Terrorists! That was one of the many signs outside of John Boehner’s West Chester office on August 9, 2011. A group of protestors had gathered to demand jobs from the House Speaker and the organizer of this illustrious event which involved kicking the doors to the office requiring the doors to locked by the staff, was none other than Gabe Kramer from the Service Employees International Union, otherwise known as SEIU.

Gabe is the Chief of Staff of Operations and Administration for SEIU District 1199 representing West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio and was the point person for this event which I think is an excellent example of everything that is wrong with our nation. I don’t mean to pick on poor Gabe, I’m sure he’s a nice guy if one were to sit down and have a beer with a guy like that. I’m sure he emits many noticeable, human qualities that are quite admirable. But proving to be a philosophic fool on completely the wrong ideological path is no excuse for intentionally attempting to mislead people into a thought process which is destructive to American Culture. And that is what Gabe and his little army of lost souls is guilty of.

It is not hard to gather up a multitude of the very lazy, the uneducated, the pompously altruistic, the unemployed, those who are afraid to compete in the world marketplace to rally behind a cause like those SEIU hosts. SEIU uses shock, and the force of mass to influence legislation, and have done so for many, many years. But the foundation of everything those “types” of people believe is flawed.

Rather than go into all the ways that SEIU is a communist organization following religiously the Ten Planks of Communism as established in the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx, the followers of SEIU, even if they are only a member and unaware of the basic philosophy because they are simply interested in their own personal incomes, the fundamental error is in their lack of understanding of how economics work. The roots of their entire philosophy rest in loose soil with no foundation but feelings. That is why they fail and everyone who follows them is doomed. History proves it.

Where I should have been angry that SEIU was in my home district, on soil that is sacred because it’s in my home land, I couldn’t help but laugh, for the comedy displayed at that event belonged on Comedy Central with full intention to make people laugh, which is until it is realized that these protestors are serious. They actually believe the things they say!

When the protestors demand jobs of Speaker Boehner what are they asking for? Do they really believe that John Boehner can pluck jobs from the “job” tree and pass them out like candy on Halloween, because that is the implication of their utterances? Do these same capitalist malcontents believe that it is the Tea Party that prevents them from getting a job? Apparently, they do! They believe that government creates jobs and gives them out, and that it is John Boehner’s job to “give” them a job…………………………….I’m serious!

The fact that so many people in the Republic of the United States believe this is evidence that our public education system has completely failed, because too many grown adults have no idea how their government, or their country work. Between my laughter at the protesters of this event, I have to admit a tinge of pity for these poor people. It must be terrible to see the world with such narrow vision, through the spectrum of naivety and ignorance. To be so terribly uneducated and foolish that the truth of the matter might as well reside in a whole different solar system from the one we all live in.

My wife and I were discussing this issue on the other day, at how small the world to such people must actually feel. My wife reads a three hundred page novel every two and a half days. It takes me about a half week to a week depending on my obligations. Our hobby together is to read. We read, and read, and read! In my books I have seen the rise and fall of civilizations and religions hundreds of times. And I am grateful for that knowledge, because it is easy to see through such thinly veiled smoke screens like those people like Gabe Kramer proclaim. Only an empty mind waiting for someone else to fill it with ideas is prone to follow blindly to an office like John Boehner’s and be foolish enough to stand with a sign and proclaim to the world that they are but children repeating what some bully have instructed them to believe. After the laughter at the audacious ignorance of the event, I felt pity for all those empty minds that have never discovered the joy of obtaining knowledge, who are so quick to grab a sign and follow somebody like Gabe into a fruitless battle pursuing the ideas of a poverty-stricken, promiscuous fool like Karl Marx who has infected the world with some of the most destructive philosophy mankind has ever entertained, and this includes the corrupt emperors of the world like Nero, and Gangus Kahn!

It is the mushy minded who are attracted to these communist ideas of Marx. Those girls of PITA who will stand naked in a public place to protest those cute little animals being killed because the girls themselves are only a few years grown away from their stuffed animals they slept with in their beds. But now that they have the bodies of women, somehow they have merit to their voice, as if their bare breasts and naked buttocks contained years of experience and intelligence. The radicals of SEIU or the teachers unions are no different from the radical behavior of those young naked women, they resort to emotion and sign stimuli to influence cultural policy, and that’s all those poor, empty citizens were doing at the Speaker’s office. They have no idea where jobs come from unless some politician passes out a new branch of government to buy votes, but the creation process does not come from government. They simply use the money that was created by others to create the job. It was not the government who created the job. It was the tax payer. And that is why government has grown to be too big now, because government was irresponsible, because it listened to the mindless fools of organizations like SEIU where they should have ignored them.

This fault is an innate reaction. Most of us are mature enough to become parents and know how embarrassing it is to take a child to the store only to have that child scream and cry when they want something, like a toy, at the store. If the parents says no, and the child begins crying, it is tempting to just give in to the child to save yourself from the embarrassment the children draw to the parent with the noise they make. The squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease syndrome is what that is. The parent is in control, has all the resources, the only thing the child has in its favor is the ability to draw attention to itself with loud noise. A bad parent will tend to give in to the child and will allow that child to grow up spoiled. A good parent will withstand the embarrassment for the child’s own good, and will not buckle under the pressure. Communism as outlined in the SEIU handbook, The Communist Manifesto teaches grown-ups to be like children, to yell and scream for things till they are given “something” by government. And the unfortunate circumstances of our age are that the politicians have been like the weak parents, all too quick to appease the children.

And that’s what I saw outside of office of John Boehner, is a bunch of children screaming for candy from a parent busy with other things, “adult stuff” and bewildered by the ungratefulness of those children. So while the behavior of the SEIU children was humorous from a distance, the behavior itself is pathetic. The fact that SEIU believes these screaming rants actually work is because it has in the past. They have used such behavior to harass our public officials and business community for a long time to the will of small, immature minds without any sense of how things work in the real world. With all the tools of modern society at their disposal, they still insist on being small-minded little children motivated to scream and cry for food to drop into their mouths, instead of taking advantage of the freedoms they enjoy and earning for themselves limitless opportunity in a capitalist republic under attack by cancerous, socialist peons from a declining European landscape that left to its own devices would still be rolling around in the Dark Ages.

People like Gabe Kramer would be more at home in 1112 AD outside a European palace with a soiled robe, burning a torch crying for the benefits of the Roman Empire to the political nobility, and wondering why Rome as a power went away, because he is just as clueless in 2011 when he cries for a job that it’s his job to create, and certainly not the job of John Boehner.

 

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

LAKOTA TAX INCREASE of 2011: If the superintendent wants to be paid like a CEO, act like one

On July 12th of 2011 Michael D. Clark covered the Lakota School Board meeting for the Cincinnati Enquirer about the inevitable tax increase the school district is planning to impose on the tax payers. Here is what he reported:

Voters, who in November 2010 rejected a 7.9-mill school levy, will see the 4.75-mill, continuing operating levy on the Nov. 8 ballot once the board conducts another, state-mandated vote next month.

If voters in the Lakota School System approve the 4.75-mill property tax hike, it will cost the owner of a $100,000 home $145 more in annual school taxes. That will of course be $290 per year on a $200,000 dollar home.

“The schools are the community’s schools, and it will be up to the community whether we continue to move forward or slide backward,” said Lakota Board of Education President Joan Powell.

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Here is the problem with what Joan said in that statement. Lakota has no choice but to continue to be a good school. Speaking for myself, I pay thousands of dollars a year into the school system, and I expect nothing less than an excellent district. Going backward as Joan suggests is not an option. Excellence and quality is required. It is completely expected by me as a tax payer. In other words, I am not spending a lot of money in taxes to get a crappy school system.

However, the school board is citing that a loss of state and federal revenue dictates that the district must go to the voters for more money, and if Lakota wants to maintain a great school, then the property owners of Lakota must pay the difference.

But that’s not what’s going on.

The reality goes back to an October evening in 2008 when hundreds of teachers packed the Lakota School Board Meeting with black shirts showing unity and demanding a 3% increase in pay or they were walking off the job. They were going to strike! You can see the news cast of that video here. You have to click on the link because Channel 5 has disabled the code. It is the events in that video which has caused our current financial crises at Lakota just 3 short years later.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kvPQPJ_F1A

Here’s another link, again this one will take you away from this page, but it’s worth the look.  Listen to Kit Andrews report that Lakota’s per pupil amount was just over $8,000 per child.  Now it’s almost $10,000 per child in just three years.  How long does anybody think this can go on?  What’s the plan to reduce the per pupil cost because that costs is almost completely driven off the labor cost of the employees, not brick and mortar costs?

http://eplayer.clipsyndicate.com/cs_api/iframe?windows=1&va_id=726521&show_title=0&wpid=0

To demonstrate just how quickly Lakota salaries went up after the strike attempt of 2008 the No Lakota Levy group has assembled the spreadsheet below.

Now, what does all that information mean? Well…..the average teacher’s salaries by school from the time of the strike threat in 2008 to the present look like this. The year of the strike the average teacher salary was $56,633. Just two years later the average salary was $62,331. The spreadsheet above shows the average rate of pay per school and the amount of increase at those schools. In essence, there was a 10.1% increase in the cost of an employee at Lakota right after the strike.

2007-2008 $56,633
2008-2009 $59,041
2009-2010 $62,331

Lakota currently has over 600 employees who make over $65,000 per year which ties up over $47 million dollars in budget costs. CLICK HERE TO SEE WHO AND WHAT LAKOTA STAFF MADE IN 2010-2011.

The way to fix the budget at Lakota is simple. It must be decided to not have as many employees making such large sums of money, because asking the district to carry that many highly paid employees in a district simply destroys any attempt a district of any kind has of balancing its budget.

To provide an idea just how quickly these costs can migrate out of control in 2009-2010 Lakota started the year at 59K per year and ended at 62K per year. During that year the district carried 434 employees who were paid over 65K per year. However, just one year later, that number jumped to 625 employees who made over $65,000 per year. I’m sure some of those people retired, or moved on to new jobs, but they still showed up on the payroll for that fiscal year and must be counted. The amount of increase in payroll demands from one year to the next, just one year, was $15,647,689.00. (The source for that information comes straight from the Pulse Journal wages edition published each March. Add the numbers up and that’s what you get) It is that number which causes the need for school levies.

Now recently the teachers union came up with a 3 year agreement so they could avoid the effects of Senate Bill 5, which was signed by Governor Kasich early in 2011, which puts a stop to the out of control “step increases” which has caused much of the trouble, because under a step plan, even though the teachers agreed to a “wage freeze” in August of 2009, they still received a wage increase under the “Step” plan which is why the salaries of the teachers went up so much over the course of one year. The teachers union at Lakota and other unions who have negotiated similar contracts plan to get S.B.5 repealed before their current contract expires, thus allowing them to resume back to their normal spending addictions, such as in 2008.

Having teachers making 65K or more is not a big deal if they only consists of the top quarter of your workforce, and in a district like Lakota which employs over 2000 staffing positions for more than 18,000 students the costs can get out of line quickly if not watched carefully.

Lakota has managed to bring their budget under the $160 million mark consistently on their 5 year forecast, but if it doesn’t balance the budget, then it’s not enough.

Tax rates at Lakota are already too high. There are too many homes going into foreclosure and higher taxes just aren’t attractive to potential home buyers. So the task at Lakota is to maintain its excellent rating, while also bringing down their costs and providing some relief to the tax payers, not more burden. If the loss of state and federal revenue forces the budget under $120 million a year, then that means the administration at Lakota needs to tackle their expensive costs, the amount of employees they have that are exceptionally well paid, to balance the budget. If that means letting those positions move someplace else so they can make more money and replacing them with cheaper labor…….fine. That’s the way the process works. Over paying employees is not good business, and does not make a district great. It makes fools of the management to even entertain such thoughts.

But statements that Lakota will be going backwards if we don’t pay more taxes are eerily similar to the kind of nonsense Lakota went through in 2008 when the labor threatened to strike, and got their pay raised as a reward, which the cost was passed down to each and every member of the community. If we are going to have to pay our new Superintendent Mrs. Mantia $165,000 a year, and the school board will justify that cost by stating that she is operating like a CEO of a company, well then we’ll expect her to drive down the costs in the same manner as a CEO does for their shareholders. I expect Mrs. Mantia to maintain Lakota’s excellent rating and current quality while driving down the labor costs to balance the budget. If she must let go of some of the expensive labor in favor of less expensive labor, then she must do that. But raising taxes is not an option. Any fool can do that. I could put my dog in charge of the school district and he could wag his tail to proclaim taxes need to be increased to meet a budget.

In the end, the Lakota Administration has not had the heart to do the right thing. They were outsmarted when it came to the labor dispute of 2008 and they are seeking to hide their shame with tax increases. The revenue produced by the community is more than sufficient to run an “excellent” school, but it is not sufficient to pay employees 20% to 30% more than the average income of the taxpayers themselves. The math just doesn’t add up.

Tax increases are an irresponsible measure by minds that lack the wisdom to see where they have made an error. And the greatest error is in pretending that more money will somehow fix the debacle. Lakota needs a long term plan for dealing with “declining revenues” because that is the fact of our age. People will be making less, properties will be worth less, there will be less coming from government and the bubble of tremendous benefits for public workers is at an end. And during this transition Lakota has an obligation to the millions of dollars our community produces to have a great school to maintain that service. Because failure is not an option! Lakota will not go backwards, and it cannot raise taxes. It must do the hard things that balance the current budget, or step aside so people who know what they’re doing can do it for them.

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

S&P Downgrade America: Crack Whores, Politicians, and Scumbags wreck a Superpower

ALERT! ………………………BIG SURPRISE……..CHINA LECTURES AMERICA ABOUT DEBT!!!!!!

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/China-flays-US-over-credit-rb-3974888722.html?x=0

Thanks Timothy Geithner, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Al Frankin, Barney Frank, George Bush senior and junior, Bill Clinton, Lyndon Johnson, Franklin Roosevelt and many, many, many others, your dream of ruining America is nearly complete. With the official downgrade of Standard & Poor’s credit rating from a AAA to a AA+ America woke up Saturday morning with the dumbfounded look of a mere teenager whom had just been dropped off at college with his parents credit card and racked up an enormous amount of debt on that card only to find out he now had too many commitments to too many debtors and he has now lost his ability to borrow. Or more accurately, that his ability to borrow has been downgraded, not only is this news unfortunate in that it presents new financial restrictions, but it shows that the foolish teenager can’t be trusted.  Again for the second week Darryl Parks of 700 WLW had a fantastic broadcast about this whole issue.  Toward the end, I come on Darryl’s program to discuss the difference between “crack whores” and politicians, and we can’t think of any!  Click below to have a listen:

Anyone with even a partially functioning brain could have seen it coming. I mean, look at the charts! Yet politicians have developed the habit of purchasing power for themselves by giving stuff away without having an eye toward the day when they’d have to pay for it, just like the foolish teenager spending his parents money. The teenager has no understanding of money because they didn’t earn it. They do know that they can impress people by buying them dinner, or that they can get dates by buying presents for the opposite sex, but they don’t understand why doing these acts has so much power. That’s because the people receiving these gifts know that money is hard to get, because you must do something to earn it. Something somewhere must be produced to get something. Nothing is produced from thin air, so when someone partakes in a pleasure, and the person enjoying that pleasure didn’t do anything to earn that pleasure, then somebody somewhere is getting ripped off, because they did the work which generated the money of which someone else is enjoying the benefits. With the teenager, his parents did the work, while the kid had the fun. In government, it is the tax payer who does the work, while the government spends the money on impressing their friends.

What Standard and Poor just did was let the child know that the government has misused the money. The trouble is the government is a reflection of the taxpayer just like the teenager is a reflection of the parent. And now that the United States has been downgraded, we all look foolish.

Look at these charts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What are those idiots thinking!!!!!!!!!

We all know politics in Washington has been a joke for a long time. But it’s only been very recently that our debt has been out of control. The debt in 1990 was hovering around 2 trillion after a long Cold War with Communist Soviet Union. Yet the moment that George Bush Senior took office, the spending skyrocketed for the next 20 years, with the exception of a period at the end of Bill Clinton’s second term as president, while he was in trouble with the Monica Lewinsky situation, where the President actually worked with John Kasich, Ohio’s current governor to balance the budget. Other than that, it’s been a spending binge with no eye on reality. Obama is only the latest, and most obvious big spender, and America is now a nation of spoiled brats, educated to believe all the wrong things matter. It is actually the education system itself that I blame, because the emphasis for three decades now has been on social issues, not economics. The result is that we have a society of people who will update their Facebook account religiously, but won’t pay any attention to how money is spent, how it’s generated, or what makes something better than another thing. Therefore, these people function with the assumption that America is great, it will always be great, and they have to do nothing to maintain it.

This is no different than the spoiled teenager saying, “Do you know who my dad is,” as a way to leverage some power over someone else. What the teenager should say is “Do you know who I am?” The teenager should have worked hard to build a name for himself, so being “somebody” has value.

The same thing is going on right now in our country. “We are America.” Well, so what! That doesn’t mean anything if teachers are more concerned over their “union rights” promised to them by LBJ, than actually working hard to leave their own mark in the world from their own efforts. It means nothing if the caretakers of America will spend more time updating their Facebook status while out to dinner with friends or family rather than paying attention to what is going on in the world around them. America means nothing if the people elect a politician to represent their beliefs in their state or in Washington, then don’t pay any attention to what that representative is doing. The value of America is lost in the complacency.

The debt crises is about one primary thing, aside from the obvious immaturity of the action involved in spending beyond our means, it is about a failed philosophy.

Being an American means something, but it loses its meaning if the aspects behind the definition are lost, poorly maintained, or simply squandered away carelessly. It is the philosophy of self-reliance that built America, and it is the children of prosperity, these fool politicians and academics who like immature teenagers have questioned their parental guidance in search of their own identity. But in the process, they have destroyed the family name of America.

That is what the downgrade means to America. It is embarrassing, and signals that the teenagers we’ve turned loose to run our country are simply not equipped to do so. They have learned the wrong philosophy for being a caretaker of the greatest country in recorded history, and they need to be removed quickly.

 
When I listen to the politicians complaining about the Tea Party being “terrorists” and other derogatory terms, again I think of the immature teenager, who complains about how “mean” their parents are, because that’s what’s happening. The teenager, who does not understand the value of things, who does not understand why the family name is so important because it’s just always been good, ridicules their parents for all the same reasons the politician ridicules the Tea Party. The Tea Party has evolved in American society as the responsible parent who has come back to the college to pick up their kid, take away their credit cards and teach them a hard lesson for their own good.

The teenager may cry about it, they may call the parent names, but it is for their own good in the end.
It is our responsibility to reel in the neglect these politicians are inclined to indulge in, because we have seen what they will do on their own accord. This most recent president is simply a spoiled child who is displaying the roots of many psychological problems. Donald Trump stopped short of calling the guy stupid, but I’ll say about him the same as I’ve said of many young people I’ve seen drunk and choking on their own puke after drinking way too much, or the young girl passed out on a sofa, completely nude who has urinated all over herself from her irresponsibility and personal neglect, that this current president and the congress, and the senate, especially the house led under Nancy Pelosi are a bunch of stupid teenagers who should all be gathered up and dropped into the middle of a desert so they can learn what real hardship is, and learn to overcome adversity, and grow up to have some sense.

Because the philosophy for which they are functioning under is reprehensible, destructive, and embarrassing, and I personally will not provide excuses for the behavior of those children.

The answers to these problems are along the lines of this John Stossel segment. I agree with everything except his view on drugs. What John does is similar to the parent who sits their child down to explain the rules they are expected to live under. If America was smart, it would use Stossel’s guide to hold all government to a level of expectation which will then improve the family name to the value we all expect it t be.

Source for picture:
http://www.federalbudget.com/
Other picture references:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt

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

VOTE YES ON SENATE BILL 5: If you don’t the results will be your fault

There is a strong desire among many who support Senate Bill 5, to meet those opposed to S.B.5 squarely on the battlefield, which means going behind them on their door to door campaign and telling voters to vote “Yes” instead of “No” which those opposed are advocating. The intent of course is to harass the harasser, to fight back! To be just as creepy, deceitful, manipulative, scandalous, thoughtless, egocentric, yet altruistic all the same, as those who chant, swarm, lobby, and intimidate their opposition to S.B.5 in favor of a spoils system which has enriched them.

The desire to fight back is strong from many who realize that we’ve been scammed for years by public sector unions. The greed of these public union organizations is grossly evident to those of us who dare to look, and many feel that they have been openly robbed, and want to lash out in the same fashion that one might wish to lash out at a thief who had stolen our money in a back alley.

I would say to those people to not wear yourselves out chasing after those harassers. Do not attempt to run into the hiding places that those thieves reside in. Do not play their game their way. Play the game the way we dictate on ground they cannot defend, ground based on the truth. Rip away their hiding places all together and shine light where it has not shown for generations, for the truth will do this to the con artists who are in hiding. It is they who have something to hide from. Playing the game the way they dictate is only an advantage to those who are guilty and must hide themselves behind illusions of good-will to protect the greed evident in their actions. Does anybody really believe Diana Frey acted alone, and is the only case of robbery going on in public sector unions?

The battle to save Senate Bill 5 is a battle for the heart of America. It is nothing less than that. Those opposed to Senate Bill 5 are clearly against the kind of America I want to live in which is one where taxes are lower, government is smaller, and localities have more control over their lives. Opponents believe that they can use a flash mob like behavior to inundate the voting population in mass, getting their message across. It is this behavior that has worked for them in the past, and has placed their wages about 30% above the tax payers who pay their salaries.

In 2008 the teachers of Lakota, the school district I pay my taxes in, threatened to go on strike which is one of the issues that Senate Bill 5 addresses. The threat of that strike is a direct result of the current crises of that district asking for more money from the tax payers. In fact, the same behavior has went on in Ohio for years and is why over 50% of all school districts in Southern Ohio are going to the tax payers for more money in November. In fact, Mt. Healthy, a district to the southwest of Lakota had their levy turned down on Tuesday and by Wednesday morning had made the announcement that they were going back to voters just 3 months later with another request. That’s ridiculous!!!! In Lakota the average teacher makes over 60K per year. Lakota is a district that resides within West Chester, Ohio which was number 33 out of the top 100 of CNN’s best places to live in the country.

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

The AVERAGE median family income in West Chester is $97,971 per year and is considered one of the most affluent districts in all of Ohio. That means in a two income household, which is most homes, the average rate of pay is 49K per year. Yet because of the union extortion which has taken advantage of the good will of the community, they have negotiated wages that far exceed the average in an affluent community! In fact, the average rate of pay for a teacher in Ohio is 55K per year! That makes teachers one of the highest paying professions, yet they are completely supported by the tax payer. One good teacher or one bad teacher they all get paid the same, and a district with a lot of employees will naturally find their payrolls bursting with excessive expectations which leave those districts one option, to go to the tax payers with higher taxes to pay for the union greed.

Many people are angry with the school boards for not regulating these costs, but as many school board members will tell you, and I know many of them all over the state, their hands are tied by state revised code, much of it created under pressure from a union lobby, and they can’t do much to control their costs. That’s why people who want to get control of these costs support Senate Bill 5. That’s also why people who want to continue to take advantage of the tax payer and the chaos of an out-of control system want to say NO to Senate Bill 5. Because they want to continue to plunder the public for everything they can, it’s that simple.

These same influences are what keep the debt ceiling issue from being solved on a federal level. There are just too many hands taking too much out of the cookie jar. The public has to make too many cookies to feed everyone, and that’s not fair to the people making the cookies.

The decision to keep Senate Bill 5 is a decision to do the right thing. It will be a personal choice made by common people. Not a bunch of thugs running around in flash mobs holding up signs to manipulate a lazy public, who spend most of their time watching Dancing with the Stars. The decision to save Ohio from financial ruin will fall on those who are intelligent enough to see where we are, and have the guts in the privacy of the voting booth to do the right thing.

I believe there are 2 to 3 million people in Ohio who are able to vote that understand the problem. And they will all have to show up and vote on Election Day, because those who benefit from the chaos of public sector unions number in the millions, and they won’t vote against themselves. They don’t have the courage for that. The YES vote can see through the tactics, the mob behavior of the unions, the mailings, the “feel good” commercials to the truth. Many of those public sector unions are just after our money and are no different from a Vegas casino. They advertise themselves very similar to a casino, with bright lights and feel good slogans such as “save the middle class,” yet their true intentions are to get you intoxicated so they can convince you to give them all your money.

Those of us who will vote YES, and I will be one of them, know that S.B.5 is the needed measure to save our state and country. Those who vote NO will be exclusively responsible for the chaos that follows, because the problems of the day will not go away.

When the school levies fail this fall all over Ohio, those schools will still need money to fulfill the financial obligations of their contracts to those unions. And the only way they can make payroll is to raise taxes on families who are already paying too much. And those tax requests will come every two years for the rest of your lives if you don’t put a stop to it right now. School boards must be given the ability to keep their districts within the budget the community sets for itself. Those budgets cannot be left to the control of union radicalism, because the end result is uncontrollable budgets which are what is happening everywhere.

Foreclosures on homes, on people’s dreams, are happening all over Ohio. People do not have the expendable income to have their taxes increased, so further increases in taxes are not an option. So we are on the precipice right now of a serious financial collapse. Senate Bill 5 is the only way out of this problem. It’s the only solution to a devastating problem. It’s state law right now, but voters will have to vote YES to keep it. Anyone who does not vote to keep it will be responsible for the misery that will follow.

The best way to fight this battle is to reach out to those voters who are intelligent, and can see the problem. They won’t be reached with rhetoric. The public unions already have the other type on their side, those who are overly emotional and don’t understand basic finance. Instead, we have to provide those who have intelligence and a mind to see it with the proper information because the truth is on the side of Senate Bill 5. And we have to trust the truth, and that there are enough people left who can understand the problem and have the courage to act on it.

The alternative won’t be pleasant, but if you vote YES, at least you won’t be a party to the misery that follows. Saying YES to S.B.5 is the only responsible choice!

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

Save us from Embarrassment: Mt. Healthy levy fails and like all government is asking for more

Doc Thompson covered the results of the debt ceiling increase on 700 WLW the same day that President Obama signed the bill which passed the house late in the night, the senate early in the morning and arrived on the president’s desk a half hour later.  While all this was going on Doc contemplated the winners and losers about a deal that essentially does nothing but allow the government to increase it’s debt to 16 trillion from the 14 trillion it is now, which amounts to a joke suitable for a comedy club. 

The same day the debt ceiling was increased voters went to the polls for local school districts asking for more money, Mt. Healthy being one, which went down to defeat. Before the ink was dry on the newspaper announcing the headline all over Cincinnati, Mt.Healthyadministration officials were declaring that they would try again in November of this year! 

This has left many of us scratching our heads, what don’t the Mt. Healthyofficials understand about the voters rejecting the levy?  Isn’t that a clear sign to the district that the residents have sent a clear message to cut their spending?  Yet the district like a bunch of mindless ants only know how to do one thing and that’s ask for more money. 

At Lakota we are getting ready to defend ourselves from yet another levy increase when it has been made clear that the residents do not want to increase their taxes.  It has been established that the source of the problem of all these school districts is that the teachers unions have taken way too much money from the community to pay their salaries which are extraordinarily high.  At Lakota the average teacher makes over 60K a year.  That’s the average! 

Nobody is asking teachers to make low amounts of money, but by any scale anything over 55 K per year is a good living, and a teacher should be happy with a reasonable living, especially if the tax payers are being required to pay for it off their property.  But the trouble is that the teachers unions force dues upon their teachers, and other costs are deducted from their paychecks without the teachers consent.  The NEA is taking money from its members to re-elect President Obama, and in Ohio the OEA is taking money away from teachers to help repeal S.B.5 this November.  So the real income of a teacher isn’t quite as high as their salary because they have these political deductions coming out against their will. 

More and more often I am getting notes like the one below from teachers who desperately want to see reform and they want out of their unions.  They want to see the school boards have the teeth to solve their financial problems and they don’t support the politics of their union, however, if they want to work as a teacher in the state of Ohio, they HAVE to be in the union.  And the unions continue to drive up the cost of education using their members as a shield and revenue stream to fulfill a political agenda which they place on the backs of the property owners. 

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  1.  I am a teacher, and I would give anything to not be a member of the union. I am so sick of them. They are hijacking children’s education and tying it up in endless bureaucracy, squabbling over funds that don’t exist. Unions served their purpose, but now federal labor laws have covered what rights the unions once fought to protect. Now my rights are being violated when I am forced to join (and pay, which is all they care about). It is a complete scam, a giant monopoly of power, and completely counterproductive in this period where transition to new models of education is key if we want our children to be competitive globally.

(Oh, AND SCRAP TENURE. Terrible system that stagnates positive growth.) I don’t want to secure my own job by throwing kids under the bus. If I’m not good enough, I should be fired, plain and simple. The idea of protecting yourself from hostile workplace politics is not enough of a pro to save that outdated concept.

Sara

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The trouble with schools and the trouble with the federal government are the same.  They are all built on a model of Keynesian economics which has turned out to be a scam, and the people who have supported this economic theory have egg on their faces.  They insist on more “revenue” which is just a fancy word for “taxes.”  More revenue, more TAXES is the only way the Keynesian economists which fill the rank and file labor union leaders and politicians with great abundance can save themselves from the embarrassment of financial failure. 

That’s what we’re dealing with here, it’s a complete failure of political and economic philosophy that has been tried, and has failed.  And it’s embarrassing.  That’s the sum of the entire situation. 

What tax payers at all levels are being asked to do is to save these people, who were taught and believe all the wrong things, the embarrassment of facing the music which they have played upon our culture.  By throwing money at these situations these advocates of higher taxes hope to delay the ramifications of their failure to a future time when maybe they won’t be present to accept the blame, where the burden will be transferred to some unfortunate public servant onto a generation that is still playing with toys and watching Nickelodeon on TV. 

To those of us who know better, who never believed the merits of Keynesian economics the answer is obvious.  Costs must be brought in line to live within the budget established by the community.  In the case of schools, it’s the wages that are inflated and encompass every teacher of a district and the union monopoly which have driven up those wages that are the problem.  The union middleman option is simply too costly to a district.  At the Federal level it’s the entitlement programs which were created to buy bloc voting sectors to gain political power that is causing all the trouble, and all these parties are now caught in the lie they have built their entire lives around, and it’s time for someone to face the music. 

When any school district or politician asks for more “revenue” what they are really asking is for you to bail them out of the embarrassment their own actions have created.  And they expect you to bail them out at your own expense.  How does that make any sense, when the proper thing to teach our young people is that if you make the wrong decisions in life, you must face the music and change direction?  Not look to others to bail you out of your trouble so your feelings won’t be hurt, because such a position is not only expensive, it’s detrimental to the human condition, which is evident in the ideological positions of all who want a tax increase.  

How out of touch are these people?  Listen to Harry Reed, majority leader of the Senate; ask if he can go home to care for his fig tree.  That’s the mentality we’re dealing with.

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

Memories, Friends, and 8 X 10’s: The Annie Oakley Western Showcase!

The yearly meetings at the Fairlawn Steak House in Greenville, Ohio are becoming something of an American tradition, where a nearly extinct breed of human being, who do things because it puts a smile on the faces of children without ever considering money as a primary concern, gather.  The Fairlawn looms directly across from the Darke County Fairgrounds and every year during the last weekend of July the City of Greenville celebrates the life of Annie Oakley with a tribute to the western arts that made her an American treasure, and most of the western performers in the nation make the pilgrimage to Greenville each year to run their act, compete against each other, and gather at the Fairlawn at the end of the day for beer, steak, and tales of the years adventures.  See a montage of the weekend’s events here: 

The air conditioning in the Fairlawn works nicely in the little side room where this group of western arts performers gathers late into the steamy night.  Outside the setting sun fills the big sky in this part of the country in a spectacular way.  The orange neon lights that advertise the steak house to passers-by on Sweitzer St was a welcome sight to all of us who spent the day cracking whips, throwing knives, spinning guns, throwing ropes, singing, performing magic and answering questions to a curious crowd.  As we stagger up the path to the restaurant and the cool air inside greets us, nostalgia is the overwhelming emotion.  This year the bar’s television had on a Reds game, just like last year only this time as my wife and I ordered a beer, there was a news flash that came up over the bartender’s head to announce that congress and the senate is close to a debt ceiling deal. 

“Thieves,” an old man uttered over his beer looking from the TV to my wife then to the sweat soaked Australian outback hat on my head that has seen the world and looks like it.  “They’re all a bunch of crooks and thieves, every damn one of them.” 

“You’re right,” I said to him.  I noticed that old man was looking at my whip holster on my belt and he was curious.  Then behind me came the rest of our clan, all western performers openly wearing knives, whips, and guns as they wearily went to their seats in the party room where our reservations placed us away from the rest of the crowd in the main dining room. 

The old man watched them approvingly.  Then looked back at me, “You all from across the street?” 

“Yeah,” I replied as my wife smiled a bit at the man.  My wife likes older people because they no longer feel the need to engage in personal politics, and they have a life-time of wisdom to pass on to a generation who throws them away like trash.  She likes older people for all the same reasons that I like my western art friends.  There is truth in their eyes and wisdom in their hands.  And I could see the wisdom in the hands of the old man as he nursed his beer and looked over the rim at an image of President Obama talking about how people need to work together to solve this national crises.  “Damn thief,” he uttered again his eyes on the screen.   

And he’s right.  Many people have asked me how I can speak out on the tax topics the way I have, and go on TV speaking out so openly about how broken our political system is, my roots in those statements come from the type of friends I have, the people with me at the Fairlawn Steak House, who live life with honesty and perform an art form rooted in valor and goodness.

As the night wore on, there were stories from the old days, back when old Hollywood stunt men and Las Vegas performers were the guiding lights for all of us young guys, a torch that has been handed to us to preserve.  But that was a different age.  Divorces, financial hardships, and entertainment politics have put western arts on the downside of American priorities and what used to be many thousands of western art performers is down to a mere handful, many of them at Annie Oakley and eating steak at the Fairlawn.  We talked about the many personalities who have come and gone over the years, some still working in western arts, some giving it up because of financial necessity, but many of us sitting there at the end of a day of performing have the feeling that we are the end of a breed.  A kid whose mom drove him up from Alabama named Luke and was just 16 was a bright spot to the rest of us who are all 40 and older.  Having young people wanting to get involved was refreshing. 

The reason these western artists gather at The Annie Oakley Festival, and not Las Vegas or some other place like it has in the past is because of my good friend, Gery Deer who runs a bullwhip training facility in Jamestown,Ohio.  It is because of Gery, who is a western arts supplier and occasionally provides material for the film industry, has worked with me for over a decade on independent features, he has a band who performs folk music all over the Midwest by tour bus, and he has the only indoor studio in America dedicated to the training of bullwhip artists.  So as the western has declined in Hollywood, and the need for Vegas shows with a western theme declined as well, it is Gery’s studio in Jamestown that has kept that tradition alive in America, because he is the only guy around who has a studio designed to preserving that tradition, and that includes Hollywood. 

Most of the top Western Performers in the country have passed through the Annie Oakley Western Showcase at some point in the last 9 years since the event was first implemented as a supplement to the big event out in Las Vegas.  But over time, the Vegas event finally folded when the great stuntman Alex Green, who was a big part of organizing that event, passed away.  That left only The Annie Oakley Western Showcase and Gery Deer to keep the torch lit. 

Many of the most dependable participants travel the country in their motor homes and live like gypsies much of the time.  Robert Dante, a long time bull whip performer and World Record holder fits this lifestyle.  His van was parked outside of the performance area and in between acts he simply goes back to his van to catch up on sleep.  Leading up to Annie Oakley he traveled from Minnesota to South Carolina performing shows then “stopping by” Ohio to spend time with us, as he usually does.   When I asked him about his lifestyle, if he got tired of always being unsettled waking up in different cites all the time and living out of a van he said, “Variety is the spice of life.”  He said it like a seasoned Shakespearian actor knowing full well that he was part of a dying breed and he wasn’t about to apologize for if.

Kirk and Malodee Bass are also long time friends of my wife and I.  Kirk started throwing knives the same weekend I did at an Annie Oakley event about 7 years ago.  He stuck with it where I didn’t and he’s now one of the best in the country and has his own show called Bass Blades.  They are old theater veterans from the great outdoor production called Blue Jacket which went out of business almost a decade ago after its critically acclaimed performances that featured live gunfire during the show couldn’t support itself financially.  They are very dedicated parents who are home schooling their kids which impresses me greatly.  They assembled the curriculum for their children’s education based on a friend of theirs who has a master’s degree in education.  Their kids are lucky to have such interesting, and dedicated parents who happen to spend their spare time throwing knives at each other. 

Richard and Donna Best were there as usual.  Richard was hired by the Annie Oakley Committee to be the official Buffalo Bill for the week since he looks so much like Buffalo Bill.  Richard and Donna are old timers in the Western Arts and have performed everywhere, particularly in Vegas.  Their act is an archeologists dream for it is an authentic recreation to the type of entertainment that thrilled audiences in the 40’s and 50’s.  They are wonderful people and occasionally their grandchildren have come to Annie Oakley with them and participate in rope tricks and whip work.  You can’t help but look at those young children and think how lucky they are to have grandparents who travel the county, where grandpa makes a living cutting targets out of the mouth of grandma.  Such figures in a child’s life are paramount to positive adult development.

In the outside world, away from the smiling faces, the cotton candy, the hot dogs, popcorn, corn dogs, snow cones and other carnival food, the world looks down its nose at this group of aging cowboys.  For the world has become more progressive.  The art of American tradition is something the political establishment has frowned down on. 

After my trip to the Fairlawn last year it was Chris Camp who put the idea in my head about performing The Whip Trick to Save America (see that video by clicking here).  Chris is such a fantastic whip artist that he travels the country full-time and stays booked, which is why he couldn’t make it this year, because he was simply too busy.  The trick I did in that video is one that he performs in his live show, and he told me how to do it, and I put my own spin on it.  It was conceived in the dining room of the Fairlawn using cups and salad plates.  After I did that video and released it to the public it got the attention of The Cincinnati Enquirer and I used the metaphor from that video to explain why I was against higher taxes, because like the old man said to me at the bar, “they are all thieves.”  Why would we give a thief more money?  It’s easy for us to see who the thieves are at the Fairlawn in the late hours of the night as the sweat from a whole day are caked to our bodies in need of a shower, where the beer tastes good because we earned it, and even a simple salad before a steak dinner tastes like exquisite cuisine, because freedom is openly celebrated at Greenville, Ohio and everyone can feel it.  And freedom is best celebrated in the art of freedom, and that is the western arts of my friends

As society has moved away from freedom and those celebrations, progressives have looked down their noses at the western arts in an attempt to rewrite history with a focus on the civil rights movement of the 60’s where progressive policies really began gain acceptance.  Celebrating the arts of westward expansion was not what progressive politics desired; they simply want to move beyond those memories to more recent times. 

But I don’t.  One of those life altering decisions happened for me shortly after The Enquirer did a feature on my Whip Trick to Save America where the organized elements of the unions and other progressive groups came after me calling me a “hick,” “hillbilly,” “kook” and other derogatory terms simply because I wore a cowboy hat and used bullwhips to help explain the need to cut taxes on an over-taxed society.  (CLICK HERE TO READ ALL ABOUT IT)  The personal attacks infuriated me to the level that convinced me to create this website, Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom.  The personal attacks persuaded me that traditional arts and lifestyles needed a voice that I was in a unique position to provide, because of my background in western arts, so I started this site as a result. 

The art of a culture reflects the culture itself.  This is how anthropologist and archeologist come to understand ancient cultures.  But using the same measurement with our present culture we can see easily the state of our country in our art.  That is why the old men sit at a bar and utter “thieves” to the TV over their beer glass because their values were built by the type of arts my friends perform on a regular basis.  But the young people who were watching the Reds game, noticeably turned away from the TV when the President came on, and were indifferent to what was being said.  They were also the type who looked oddly when my friends arrived at the restaurant and eyed mysteriously at how they were dressed, because those young people have been taught to reject tradition, so traditional art is something to ridicule. 

But in the grandstands all through the day, the crowd that gathered young and old enjoyed themselves thoroughly as the politics of the age dropped away at the gates, and visitors were able to forget themselves on a stroll back through a more innocent time, where cowboys weren’t afraid to be men, women were proud to be women and a young lady named Annie Oakley set the imaginations of American’s everywhere with the values of the greatest nation on Earth by her trick shooting in the Buffalo Bill Wild West show.  A century later the same type of performers touched that same spirit in all who witnessed this unique event through smiles and bright eyes regardless of age, for the jaded judgment of the age was suspended as the crack of whips and the fire from guns ran out often across the Darke County Fairgrounds to a public hungry for substance in their art. 

For my wife and I that substance came with our dinner and the friends we shared it with as the night encroached the evening and reality returned to those western artists who faced the loneliness of an art form which transcends the greed of money, or the power of politics but is simply about memories, friends, and 8X10’s.

 

Rich Hoffman

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