Tag: S.B.5

Darryl Parks Calls them Veal: The people that pave the path to socialism

Darryl Parks of 700 WLW had an interesting topic on his Saturday April 2nd, 2011 radio show. His question was, “Why is socialism bad?” After all, he argued, people seem to want it. They want social security, they want public unions, they want health care, government jobs, they want to be regulated by government for “safety,” etc. And he’s right, at least for half the country.

I was on the Big One with Darryl to offer my opinion:

I was going for a big topic there on a 7 minute radio spot, but I liked the question and the eventual debate that followed. I meant it when I said that I do not play the lottery, ever, because I wouldn’t want to come into any money that way. I would not keep money given to me in an inheritance either, or any other random act. In fact, once when my wife and I were at a casino cruise in Cape Canaveral, I spent .25 cents on a slot machine and lost my money. I was extremely upset so I spent .25 cents on one more try. I won back .50 cents and my wife and I spent the rest of the cruise eating from the buffet and watching sea gulls fly next to the ship while reading a book, happy I made my money back and was leaving with what I started with. I was done with gambling for the rest of my life. I simply will not gamble away anything loosely that I earned with my hard work for the fantasy of hitting some kind of collective jackpot. I don’t even do office pools for the same reason, which people think is strange because such things are very popular.

Why do I feel that way? Well, for the same reason I don’t accept help from people unless I can return the favor immediately with my work or mind. The reason is simple, because in my life, when I have to define it to future generations what I am, it will never be said that Rich Hoffman was bought and paid for. It will never be said that I kissed any ass to get my way through life. It can never be said that I didn’t earn every single dime I ever made with complete honesty. For everything its worth, to me, the highest goal a man can achieve is to be a self-made-man.

People will and have said that such a position is selfish. That taking such a stand deprives people of helping you. That it takes a village to make the world go round. Well……..no it doesn’t, it takes a bit of genius to come up with unique ideas, and people who are willing to do the work of bringing those ideas to life.

If I were to win the lottery I would have been robbed of the opportunity to earn the money with my skills and tenacity. It would be like winning a football game without the other team ever showing up and the score keeper just putting some points on the board, and you automatically win. For me, the fun is in beating an opponent, to taste the blood in my mouth from a hard-fought battle, to sweat droplets from my forehead in the hot sun, or to work late into the night to outsmart a competitor. If someone just handed me a check and said, “you win, the fight is over,” I’d feel deprived of a true victory.

I understand that my way of thinking is “old fashioned,” and probably is a complete foreign concept with today’s youth. Socialism is a big part of their life, and it starts in school when they are taught that nobody is better than anybody else. Everyone is the same. Except athletes and straight “A” students that can help a school system get funding from the community by putting those students on a pedestal. But for the most part, our youth is taught that it’s bad to excel. It’s bad to be the “best.” It’s bad to be strong, faster, or more creative.

Our government created millions of welfare recipients that have put out the lights of ambition in many people. When someone is given something, and they don’t earn it by giving back something of equal value, they are robbed of their merit. This might bother them at first, but once they accept the lack of merit they lose their ambition, and this is the cause of massive failure in the welfare system.

I once attended a trade show in Chicago’s McCormick Center for one of my products. I drove up from Cincinnati and was appalled that there were so many toll booths on the way into the city. Counting all the cars going through the booths, it was obvious that Chicago was ripping people off by generating enormous sums of money with the tool booths. So on the way back home after the trade show was over, I drove back through South Chicago and was stunned by how poor it was. My plan was to avoid the toll booths and get back on the highway far to the south. I drove through miles and miles and miles of slums and getting back on the highway that was built over the slums was nearly impossible. It seemed as if the slums were desired by the city of Chicago in order to keep everyone on the toll highway, and discourage what I was doing, by driving through a crime riddled neighborhoods to leave the city.

I looked at angry faces at every stop sign at every block. I had a few arguments with men and boys that shouted racist slurs at me and I expected at any moment to have a gun fight right in the street. It was obvious to me that the good intentions of socialism as implemented in the welfare system was a massive failure, and I felt sorry for the people I was seeing. I knew that if I could have a few of those angry young boys for a few weekends, and take them on a camping trip and teach them to value themselves, I could probably help some of them a little, because what was missing was a sense of value in their lives. They had learned and accepted to live off the government, and had lost their ambition. They had lost their merit. It is no wonder they turned to crime, trying to steal back from society what was robbed from them, which is their honor. The crime began with our government “helping them.”

Anytime you make someone dependent on you, a crime has been committed because you have stolen from them some merit.

This is why when people who have lost their merit, or never had it to begin with because their parents didn’t provide them with a sense of value, and they inherit money, or win the lottery, they go broke in just a few years. The money does not make them better people. Money cannot buy merit, or honor. Money is only as good as the people who hold it. Social problems cannot be fixed by throwing money at those problems.

The same thing happens when an owner of a business works hard to build that business, and then passes it on to his kids later in life, only to have the kids screw it up. The kids don’t work the business the same because they didn’t earn it.

This is my primary problem with the whole teacher salary issue. I would argue that a few teachers may be worth 70K or 80K per year, but because of the socialist tendencies of the teachers unions, all teachers with tenure, and certain degrees make the same “step increases,” so they all make that kind of money. That’s an insane idea. All it does is drive up the labor costs for the district! That’s why the S.B.5 Bill that Governor Kasich signed recently was so important, because it will allow school boards to stop that terrible imposition of their budgets. Money does not make a good teacher, just like it doesn’t make a good person. You may pay a good teacher not to leave you because of their merit, which makes you value them over others because what they bring to the table is valuable. But to pay everyone incremental amounts of money is built along the same lines as a lottery. You’re giving people something they don’t deserve. They are just getting money because they filled legal qualifications. Not because they fought hard and earned it in competition with others.

Speaking of Governor Kasich you can tell a lot about people when they are “tested.” Here is a great video from a couple of years ago with Bill Cunningham and John Kasich talking about what should be done to regain the principles of American value. It’s ironic that Cunningham seems poised to question the integrity of Kasich. “What kind of governor will you be, will you be like Regan, or will you be like Taft?” So far, Kasich has lived up to what he said here. He’s playing hardball, and being tough, doing the hard things Cunningham challenged him on, where Bill Cunningham once he realized that a smaller government meant reducing the strength of public sector unions backed off recently and has turned against Kasich over S.B.5. Cunningham has begun the movement to undo the bill encouraging a referendum as fast as Kasich signed it. This is the difference between “talking tough,” and being ”tough.”

Kasich is a self-made man, and he governs that way. Willie did work for the public sector, so he cannot see the socialist tendencies present, because he accepted them in his past. He can justify them, but cannot speak against them now, even when it’s the right thing to do.

There have been plenty of warnings about what socialism will do to people who embrace it. If you haven’t seen it, here is a version of George Orwell’s, Animal Farm. The British animation firm of John Halas and Joy Batchelor perform yeoman service in adapting George Orwell’s allegorical novel Animal Farm to the screen. As any high-school English student can tell you, the original 1945 novel was Orwell’s spin on the rise and fall of the Communist myth. A group of intelligent animals overthrow their corrupt human owner and set up their own self-sustained farm, predicated on an idealistic credo: “All Animals are Created Equal”, “No Animal Shall Ever Drink Liquor”, “Four Legs Good: Two Legs Bad” etc. But when Snowball the Pig (read: Trotsky) is overthrown by the despotic Napoleon (read: Stalin), all idealism goes out the window, and soon the pigs are ruling dictatorially over the other animals. Before long, Animal Farm operates on but one principle: “All Animals Are Created Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others.” Orwell’s ironic ending, in which it becomes impossible to tell the difference between the Pigs and the Humans, is blunted in favor of a grafted-on happy ending, perhaps to mollify the kiddie trade. Maurice Denham supplies all the character’s voices, while Gordon Heath serves as narrator.

The warning signs have always been there for us in literature, whether it’s from George Orwell, or Ayn Rand, the analysis on socialism as been conducted.

Socialism is a disease that robs society of ambition and takes us down only one path, our eventual destruction.

But there are those in government who use the excuse to “help” people in order to place themselves in the managing role, so their support is simply a power grab built on the backs of slaves. They will exploit millions of people’s integrity in order to feed their own egos for power. That’s why socialism will never work.

And before anybody says that my thoughts are part of a well-funded conspiracy from the right-wing, Glenn Beck, Ayn Rand, Rush Limbaugh, or Fox News in general, or even talk radio like WLW, guess again, because the Hollywood left is programming socialism into our kids at every entry point, entertainment, education, music, and there is a lot of money in the push for socialism. The conservative push back to the right is being done because of the years and years of propaganda from the left while we weren’t paying attention. That’s why they’re so mad at the Tea Party movement. Socialists don’t want to see the nation swing back away from what they worked so hard to penetrate our culture with by way of influence.

Here’s just one example from the Comedy Central cartoon South Park. Guess popular culture doesn’t want young people to read Atlas Shrugged……………..why do you think that is?

Here is Ayn Rand arguing against socialism and President Obama promoting it.

Socialism is a terrible concept which leads to all out communism and the eventual destruction of the culture that embodies it. If you don’t want to hear me yell about it on WLW, or Glenn Beck yell about it on Fox News, or Milton Freeman lecture about it try Ayn Rand from 1961. Ayn was a little girl when socialism took over her country of Russia and she dedicated her life to combating the disease of socialism because she had seen firsthand what it did to her home country. She fled to the United States and fell in love with skyscrapers, because such a thing could have never been built without American ingenuity and the power of individuals in a capitalist society.

Capitalism works because it allows for merit. Socialism doesn’t work because it robs people of merit. To see why just look at the high cost of education in your local community, and the blank look of our children coming out of those schools, and have the courage to ask the hard question……..why did I surrender our children to a blank, meritless life of socialism?

And why did I buy that lottery ticket hoping to escape the perils of life by wimping out when times are tough. Money won’t make a person better if they lack merit to begin with. And people with merit will find that money isn’t that difficult to obtain, because the world lacks people with true merit.

Darryl Parks is right when he says that only the weak, veal type people in our society are attracted to socialism. Let’s just hope that the weak don’t outnumber the strong, because that’s when freedom dies forever. And socialism knows it. So long as the welfare system expands, so long as government continues to be a primary employer, so long as public sector unions exist, the weak will continue to put representatives into our republic that will slowly convert our society into socialism.

How do we get more people strong in our society, so we can get the country moving back toward capitalism? You have to stop pandering to people. Stop coddling that child every time they bump their head. Stop dressing your kids in elbow pads and knee pads. Stop trying to breast feed your kids even when they are 16 to 17 years old. In fact, this is the path of socialism, watch this clip of Hugh Jackman zip lining into the Sydney Opera House. I think Jackman did well. He came in too fast, but so what. He was able to make his transfer to his rappel line. But look at the women’s reactions here.


All those girls and women are probably going to have kids, and they’ll be the ones to pander to their children’s every whims, and nobody will attempt to toughen up those kids creating a society of……..as Darryl calls them………………………….veal.

Veal is good for only one thing, to be eaten. And you can’t build a country on people like that and expect it to stay strong for long. That’s when socialism takes over.

Rich Hoffman

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

Mark North is Challenged to a Debate: April 9th on the Darryl Parks Show

Rick McPherson did the unthinkable. He went on the sacred airwaves of 700 WLW during the Darryl Parks show and challenged Mark North, superintendent of the Lebanon School System to an on-the-air debate over the actions taken by the Lebanon School Board to approve union contracts prior to Governor Kasich signing the S.B.5 bill which would eliminate collective bargaining agreements. If North had held tight he could have used S.B.5 to drive down the costs of his district and avoid a school levy.

It was a bold challenge given by a man who knows that the Lebanon Superintendent is guilty of subverting the confidence of the taxpayers in the school district while at the same time encouraging them to pass a levy on the May ballot. Listen to that interview and challenge here. Darryl Parks upon hearing this information declared his support toward defeating the Lebanon School Levy with the very powerful 50,000 Watts of The Big One radio station, one of the most powerful radio stations in the country.

Mark North has two choices. He can ignore the challenge and attempt to point his finger at those opposed to the increase in taxes as simple “bomb throwers.” He’ll do that because he doesn’t have the guts to face McPherson on WLW during the Darryl Parks show of April 9th. North knows he’s wrong and has been caught doing the unspeakable, making deals with the union prior to passage of a controversial bill and proving his loyalty to the unions, and not the tax payers of the district. He also knows that he and the school board members are guilty of violating the “sunshine law” which prohibits discussions and deals such as what transpired prior to the last Lebanon School Board meeting.

If Mr. North were innocent of such allegations, he’ll gladly be prepared to go on the Big One to defend the reputation of his district under his leadership. Because in the court of public opinion, silence means your guilty. The branch of truth has officially been extended for him to defend these actions for all to hear and to settle any misconceptions the public may have about the situation.

But, the video of the meeting speaks otherwise. Unless he can prove otherwise in a debate with McPherson on Darryl Parks show the proof of the despicable acts committed under his leadership will be confirmed in his silence.

Stay tuned, because we’re just getting started.

This isn’t a witch hunt to those of you that wish to think so. This is a demand of honesty, and for the system to work as it is supposed to. This is a demand to not perform illegal activity behind closed doors, and then ask tax payers to pay for incompetence. That’s all it is. If it’s painful, well……too bad. Your public officials and your boss want to know why you behaved the way you have, and you owe an explanation. Why not provide that explanation on the 50,000 Watt FLAME THROWER, 700 WLW for all to hear?

Declare your innocence…..if you can. After all, anyone that makes $149,937 a year should have no problem talking to half a million people over 38 states and part of Canada. Show up on April 9th and the debate will occur without a representative from the Lebanon School System.

The choice is yours…………………

Rich Hoffman

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

“I AM JOHN GALT”: Take Action Now–SEE THE MOVIE!

When you hear the progressive battle cry, that the rich are the enemy, tax them more; you are hearing an ignorant fool. A mindless, aimless, illiterate, unmitigated fool. You are hearing a person that has every aim to undo our civilization like a cancer cell in an otherwise healthy body. To illustrate that point clearly, here is a fantastic video that will give you everything you need to know about such foolish statements.

I have been beating the Atlas Shrugged drum for the primary reason discussed on this episode of Hannity.

In that story, Atlas Shrugged, government brought society to a complete stop in all the ways we are seeing today from those mindless, aimless, illiterate, unmitigated fools in politics that use the mask of public welfare to hide their own insecurities and grabs for power. Thus, it became the effort to confront that evil encroachment on mankind’s liberties, advancement, and it’s very soul by John Galt to draw a line in the sand and bring those parasites to their knees by removing the “men of the mind” from the social equation.

Here is part of John Galt’s speech to those parasites:

And with that I present to you one of the people close to the film version of Atlas Shrugged with a special message and task for all those who look at the progressive movement and feel helpless against it. This man has a challenge for you and a way for you to become a part of history.

I believe that once people who are intimidated by the length of the book, see the movie, they will become “enlightened” to what is now, and has been going on for quite some time, are the real motives of the progressive movement.

Take the challenge, read the book, and see the movie, many, many times. It’s important in so many ways. One of my passions is history, particularly archeology and anthropology along with comparative religion and mythology. I understand how important it is to discover relics from the past to help us comprehend our future. Atlas Shrugged is a relic from America’s past that is uniquely American. And by dusting it off and understanding it fully we can begin to identify finally and conclusively what being an “American” truly is. I can tell you what being an American isn’t, it’s not a white person, a black person, an Indian, a Jew, a Christian, or any hyphenated American term. An American is a thinker, an adventurer, a freedom craver among many things that are complete opposites of everything a progressive believes. It is now time to realize that in all of us is a little John Galt, and it’s time we awaken to that spirit.

Rich Hoffman

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

All I Want For My Birthday!

When S.B.5 was signed by Governor Kasich on Thursday March 31st I received one of the two gifts that I wanted more than anything for my birthday this year. S.B.5 because it showed me that there are people able to have courage and a backbone functioning at a political level committed to putting power back to the communities, to “decentralize” government. That’s what S.B.5 does. Darryl Parks of 700 WLW interviewed Mike Wilson of the Cincinnati Tea Party and Ohio Liberty Council about the multiple benefits of the S.B.5 Bill and the strategy of the referendum attempt. There are a lot of wonderful facts here that are worth listening to even after the Wilson interview.

The other thing I want for my birthday is for the government to shut down on April 8th, the day before my actual birthday. The reason? Because I want people to see how little the government actually does? I don’t want to see people’s lives be interrupted, but I do want to show that American life will continue without the government functioning. For those of us that want a smaller government, people need to see that the government is not essential to American life. In fact, it is a hindrance. And only a government shut-down will show that.

I want to see the Republicans hold a hard line to the budget, much like Kasich did in Ohio. The budget cuts proposed by the house, senate, and the president aren’t even in the ballpark as to what’s required. For the Democrats to only propose 8 or 10 billion isn’t even in the realm of reality. They are clueless parasites with that type of thinking. It’s not even worth discussion. One has to wonder if they didn’t land here from some other planet, because they are so out of touch. Again, listen to Darryl Parks of 700 WLW talk about just how much in debt the government truly is and how utterly ridiculous the cuts the current government is proposing.

I want to see Republicans do the right thing. To hell with the public relations, the public opinion, the traditional politics all together, those are the very things that have nearly ruined our society and they need to end.

I want the media to proclaim that the world will come to an end. I want Democrats to cry for all the dead and sick that will fill the streets, for the apocalypse that is sure to ensue. Then I want the American people to see what a lie the whole thing was. I want for my birthday to show the world that America doesn’t need a large government and that it can shut down, go on vacation, actually set up shop on the moon, and life will go on in America.

I already received one present. Now if I could just have the second.

Surprise me!

Rich Hoffman

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

S.B.5 Passes: The “GOOD” of Money! What’s missing in our culture.

Congratulations to all those who passed Senate Bill 5 late in the night on Wednesday March 30, 2011. Your good work will always be remembered.


To the foolish looter’s……………there is only one passage I know from all of literature to describe my anger at your short-sighted rhetoric and I will quote it after these two statements I read in the paper. Among that rhetoric, is the belief that money is somehow free and easy to get, and that only the greedy rich are sitting on piles of money, that if removed could be taken by all and shared. People who believe such things have no idea what the “good of money” even means. So I will draw from literature to provide a definition that every American should be required to read in high school. That quote is listed below.


But first, meet a couple of looters, as described in the literature quote.

• Rep. Connie Pillich, D-Montgomery, said: “I am disappointed that my colleagues across the aisle voted against having the bill read in its entirety…. It undercuts veterans and attacks the middle class. It is unconstitutional and is public policy at its worst.”

• Rep. Denise Driehaus, D-West Price Hill, said, “As a Catholic, I strongly believe we have an obligation to respect the dignity of all workers. We also have a duty to protect their right to organize so they are able to collectively work to ensure justice and dignity in their workplace.’’

The reality of what S.B.5 is can be seen here in this video. This is what the “education establishment,” and that includes politicians, union leaders as well as teachers and superintendents, are afraid of.

Those two representatives truly represent a portion of our society that has become everything warned about in the passage below from Ayn Rand on the good of money.

More and more, Rand’s work comes to my mind as I see what is going on in the world around us. When you ask the obvious question, “Why are people so foolish,” only literature provides an explanation. Not TV. Not music or any popular form of entertainment. No Hollywood actor or politician, nobody has any real answers. Only Literature, because in literature, the proper amount of time is given to an idea, and the blank page is there to hear it. And in Ayn Rand’s case, time has proven her 100% correct in all aspects over half a century.

To quote the passage, the following comes from a character in Atlas Shrugged who is at a wedding party attended by very powerful people. The speech is given when questioned about the evil of money, and those that make it.

“So you think that money is the root of all evil?” Said Francisco d” Anconia. “Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

“When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor—your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?

“Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions—and you’ll learn that man’s mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

“But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made—before it can be looted or mooched—made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced.

“To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss—the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery—that you must offer them values, not wounds—that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade—with reason, not force, as their final arbiter—it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability—and the degree of man’s productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

“But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality—the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

“Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he’s evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with purpose, if he’s evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with the money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats of the frauds come flocking to him drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

“Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth—the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

“Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men’s vices or men’s stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment’s or a penny’s worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you’ll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?

“Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

“Or did you say it’s the love of money that’s the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It’s the person who would well his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money—and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.

“Run for you life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another—their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

“But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich—will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt—and of his life, as he deserves.

“Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard—the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money—the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals and the statues are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law—men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims—then money becomes its creator’s avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob the defenseless men, once they’ve passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then the society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

“Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion—when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing—when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors—when you see that men get you against them, but protect them against you—when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice—you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as a half-property, half-loot.

“Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: ‘Account overdrawn.”

“When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, ‘Who is destroying the world?’ You are.

“You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it’s crumbling around you, while you’re damning its life-blood—money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men’s history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves—slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody’s mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers—as industrialists.

“To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money—and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man’s mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being—the self-made man—the American industrialist.

If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose—because it contains all the others—the fact that they were the people who created the phrase ‘to make money.’ No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity—seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words ‘to make money’ hold the essence of human morality.

“Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters’ continents. Now the looters’ credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialist, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide—as, I think, he will.

“Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns—or dollars. Take your choice—there is no other—and your time is running out.”

Ayn Rand 1957

Feel free to print that and read it again and again and again until it makes sense. It is the state of our nation, and it speaks about the very things we must fix immediately, or we’ll lose it forever. With all that said, S.B.5 will take these steps to begin the march back to a system of value, where looters and moochers no longer establish the precedents of financial flow.

What Senate Bill 5 will do:
• Makes public employee strikes illegal.

• Generally restricts the topics on which unions can bargain to wages. Police, firefighters, nurses and other public workers may still bargain for safety equipment.

• Eliminates step raises or automatic raises based on years of experience and years of training.

• Reduces seniority rights. For example, it would prohibit workers from being laid off solely because they are new.

• Bans “fair share’’ fee charged by unions for bargaining-unit members who don’t join the union or pay dues but receive negotiated pay and benefits.

• Eliminates automatic union deductions for political campaigns without employee’s written consent.

It will be up to us now to defend this bill from those same thieves that have now for decades eroded the value we have in virtually every aspect of American life, and return to the stage of concern the true assessment of how good money truly is and what role it has in the greatness of our nation.

Rich Hoffman

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

We Get Paid To Ask For More Money: With education, it’s all about marketing and spin

The day after the Lakota School Board chose to take a bit more time to analyze the deep cuts that must be met there was an article in the Enquirer about unions rushing to get contracts passed before S.B.5 becomes law. Listen to Doc Thompson discussing this issue on 700 WLW in the video below. It is good that Lakota did not get into a hurry to buckle under the union pressure. That would have been very irresponsible. However, most school districts, such as Lebanon went ahead and made deals with the unions. In Lebanon, Mark North, who makes $149,937 a year showed why he’s paid so much. He twisted the wording of his real intentions to proclaim that it was to the districts advantage to lock down their costs because S.B.5 would be challenged in court anyway. He gets paid to spin information like that so voters don’t see the real intentions, which is to secure their union contracts. But his actions, like a lot of other districts looking to pad the pockets of their union friends are revealed. Isn’t it nice to know where the loyalties of your elected administrators are? After all, it’s not their money. It’s yours………and before you say that Mark North is not an elected official, he is appointed by the school board who is elected by the public.

Here is the Enquirer article:

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20110328/NEWS0108/103290330/Unions-employers-fearing-SB5-rush-contracts?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

Under the comments section of that article there were a couple of the comments by the clueless types of people who inhabit the extraordinary costs of those collective bargaining agreements.

office1698
7:38 PM on March 28, 2011
Can’t wait for the referendum to begin! Gov Kasich and his Tea Party supporters have yet to see the power of unions.

ucfcltymbr
7:41 PM on March 28, 2011

Enjoy your Tea Bag Party reign. It will not take long for the public to come to their sense and run you and your pals out of Columbus and DC.

What we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks is that the unions and administrators have been most certainly in bed with each other. In casual talk we all make jokes about it to ease the tension, but in the back of our minds we want to believe that the administrators, whether it is a school board, or a city council, that they are acting in our best interests. With the rush lately to pass all these contracts before S.B.5 becomes law, the villains reveal themselves.

Villains? Is that the right word? Is that too harsh?

No. It’s not. Villains, looters, feeders, predators, are all words that can be accurately used to describe what the pubic worker has become to the American economy. They are those things because they have become too greedy, demanded too much, and are now in a position to make demands to the people who pay them. They have become corrupt to the point of treason if the word treason was used in a traditional capacity.

What are the definitions of treason?
treason
n
1. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) violation or betrayal of the allegiance that a person owes his sovereign or his country, esp by attempting to overthrow the government; high treason
2. any treachery or betrayal

The unions, their strikes, their political manipulation, their raw extortion of the public tax dollar have engaged in treason, and they do it openly without fear of prosecution.

In the Pulse Journal report of the Lakota meeting of Monday, March 28, 2011 Lakota Education Association President Sharon Mays proclaimed that teachers have “stepped up” in these times of financial crises. She said, “We’re taking on more teaching responsibility-more class preps-in order to give students more opportunities. Delaying a decision is not fair to teachers or students.”

What does any of that mean? How have the teachers “stepped up?” Everything she stated is undefined, actually it’s expected. As employees of the district, everything she said is expected. Sharon makes $81,156 per year and at that pay rate, everything she stated is expected from someone in that pay scale. Everything and more! Yet she phrases it as though she were actually doing the district a favor of some kind that teachers are working longer than 7.75 hours per day.

Everyone I know that makes over 50K per year, including executives, company presidents, plant managers, sales managers etc, put in approximately 10.5 hours per day. They may spend 7 to 8 hours at the office and another 2 to 3 hours at home. Teachers take home papers to grade and do some class prep work as would be expected. And for Sharon to make $81K per year, I’d expect her to be on call 24 hours a day and do at least 4 to 5 hours of work per day at home. That is the value of that type of salary.

Yet that’s not what’s happening. Teachers are being paid extraordinary amounts of money to teach, which I’ve said should be in a range of pay between 40K to 70K. Any more than that is taking advantage of the tax payer. And the manipulation that union leaders commit against the community is a form of treachery, especially in the face of the last two weeks leading up to the S.B.5 passage.

The plan of these unions is to push hard to get their contracts signed, buy time, and then get their signatures for a referendum into the state by July 7th so they can freeze the bill and get it overturned in the November election. They truly believe that the public will be just as naive as they’ve been in the past, that holding babies and campaigns of “it’s for the kids” will work. They are counting on the same old strong-arm tactics to.

But what is the aim of those tactics. Are they protecting our children? Are they working on behalf of the greater good of the community? Are they working on behalf of a school system that is facing major layoffs?

No. They want their money. They want their money even if it costs their fellow union members their jobs.

I am proud that the Lakota School Board took some extra time to cut their costs. I would hope that once S.B.5 comes into play that they make full use of it to drive their costs down before the July 7th freeze, due to the referendum attempt.

For those union members at the top of the pay scale protecting your inflated salaries, you should be ashamed of yourselves letting others suffer so that you can continue a wage level you know is outrageous, and to hide such a fact behind children is despicable. If I were on the school board I’d set a cap on teaching salaries and for those that didn’t want to live under that cap I’d point to the door. You’re lucky I’m not on the school board. I hope the people we have there now can muster up a similar level of responsibility to protect the community. Teachers that put money before kids are not the type of people I want in my district anyway. We’ll pay you well, but not foolishly, and it is that foolish level of pay that causes the deficit.

It might be wondered or even considered malicious for me to include these wages in this article. The reason is that I know of no other way to balance a budget. How can you balance a budget without looking at the money you spend? Then you have to consider what that money buys you and assess whether or not you are getting the value for what you spend. And I don’t see it. I don’t think the money we spend on government is worth it. I don’t think the money we spend on education is worth it, because I see very little light on behind the eyes of our youth. And I get the sense that public education is simply an organized crime-like syndicate and they are charging the tax payer for protection of services the public values. If lightweights in the mind think my view is extreme, too bad. Everybody thinks it. They just don’t talk about it in order to maintain the status-quo. When people like Ms. Mays, and Mr. North, who makes a lot more money than the average taxpayer, says we need to increase taxes in order to continue to pay their salaries, I say to them, you’re not doing your jobs if all you can do is ask for more money. North as a superintendent should have put the community in front of the union. Mays as head of her own union should have brought her members to the table to take a pay reduction to save the teachers at the bottom of the totem pole and fit into the community’s budget. That would have been the responsible thing, but they didn’t do those things.

This is a fight that is just starting. We’ll see how much courage each side has when the smoke clears. One thing is for sure, I will be reporting every detail of it, because only one side is right. There is no left or right here. There is only right or wrong.

Rich Hoffman

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

Looters of Lebanon: Mark North and the School Board Rob the Taxpayer!

CAUTION! THE VIDEO YOU SEE BELOW WILL MAKE YOU FURIOUS.

A great crime has been committed on the people of Lebanon, Ohio one that was defined by one of my favorite philosophers as “looters.” The term looters is aimed at those in government positions that seem to believe that their sole function of existence is to take from those that have, and give to those that haven’t. They are the reason government is thought to be corrupt at every level. They are the reason that congress cannot agree on the proper level of budget cuts which will most likely shut down the government on April 8th. Government in almost every category is in my mind simply looters that steal from us all in the form of taxes and mindlessly spend that money on programs that only make our nation worse and less competitive. Looters are the proper term for these types.

It is difficult to see the behavior clearly at a national or even a state level because the media does a good job of cleaning up the way information is presented. However, recently at a Lebanon School Board meeting Mark North, superintendent of the Lebanon School System and the entire School Board performed in front of the community the very kind of “looter” trick that has all but destroyed our nation, and they did it right out in open.
See it for yourself.

What happened here was the School Board during their public meeting called for a measure to go into an executive session, which was unprecedented, since this was a public meeting. Executive session means all parties involved go behind closed doors to discuss issues in secret. The reason was to approve their union contracts before the Ohio House of Representatives passes the new S.B.5 Bill and Governor Kasich signs it into law. As you can see the crowd wasn’t sure what to think of this move and this prompted Robert Waters to rise and question the board, which he had a right to do since the executive session was going to be done out of the public eye and was an extreme surprise to the audience.

When Mr. Waters asked the question, “How long will the board be in executive session,” it is the Superintendent Mr. North that says, “Sit and wait.” Then goes on to tell the board that Mr. Waters is not a member of the board and to sit down, as if Mr. Waters is simply a child in the school system.

The reason Mr. Waters needed to question the board in this way is that the Lebanon School Board under the guidance of Mark North made a deal with the education union prior this meeting to pass the contract so the terms would be grandfathered in prior to the S.B.5 passage. This was extremely irresponsible, because if the board and Mr. North had been truly representing the community of Lebanon, they would have attempted to hold off the passage of the contracts until after S.B.5 was passed so they would then have leverage to control their costs. But what they did is now guarantee that the step increases will occur which is driving the need for the levy attempt.

They openly stole money from Lebanon right in front of everyone’s faces when they didn’t need to. That is called looting, and if the people of Lebanon allow that kind of behavior to go on when it is so very obvious then our nation as a whole is doomed. You cannot expect the nation to operate right if you can’t solve problems like this in your own community.

I spent much of Saturday with the people fighting the Lebanon Levy. I was impressed with their organizational skills, and they appear poised to be able to raise the money needed to fight this levy. There are donors that are afraid of retaliation from the school system that are on the fence, but that’s normal. Courage will find them because the group I met was very good. There are several people in this group and they have many diverse skills and are very passionate about defending the taxpayers of Lebanon and truly keeping education aimed at children. I was surprised to learn that Mark North had classified these good people as “a bunch of angry parents.” It was upon hearing that comment that I decided to spend the day with them, because after seeing the video of the executive session I felt the Lebanon School Board was committing a crime against Ohio, not just the people in their district, and this is a fight that needed attention. Here’s their website.
http://www.lebanonschoolfacts.com/

I didn’t want to rush to judgment, I asked a man who knows Mark North, “what kind of man is he, is he a man of integrity, because what I’m hearing is that he’s not?”

The response I got was a tight-lipped one where the words were carefully selected. “Mark is a man who will do anything for the school system.”

I nodded knowingly. What that means is that Mark North sees his role as a protector of the school system, which means the unions that occupy it. Those unions are what drive up their labor costs, and it is those step increases that are making this levy in May needed, which they just passed in executive session when they didn’t have to. North like most government types is a looter looking to pad the pockets of those he’s directly responsible for at the expense of the people who pay him. In this case he’ll disguise the looting by telling the taxpayers that Lebanon was rated in the top 9.98% in achievement performance at the lowest costs per pupil. What he doesn’t say is that he could have avoided the upcoming levy by not cutting a deal with the unions, showing where his true loyalties are.

Looters only care about the taxpayer when it comes time to ask for money. They are the greediest of the greedy and are the epitome of what’s wrong with our country. I’ve seen a lot of bad conduct by public officials, but this incident is one of the worst, simply because it was done in the open with absolutely no respect for the community. They truly expected nobody to stand up and question their motives. Lucky for Lebanon, one guy did.

Anyone who votes for a levy increase in Lebanon is contributing to a crime and endorsing the behavior of looters like Mr. North. As long as those methods work, they will always disrespect you, and the bet is that the taxpayers of Lebanon will turn the other way and allow the looters to get away with a crime committed in front of everyone to see.

Rich Hoffman

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

Kevin Bright Leaves Mason Schools as LT. Gov. Mary Taylor Speaks to Thousands About School Choice

Mason’s superintendent Kevin Bright made the announcement this morning that he was resigning from the Mason School System to take a lesser job in another district. For those of you who don’t know, Kevin is one of the highest paid superintendents in Ohio and is an instructor at the OSBA conference in Columbus at Levy University which teaches school systems how to pass levies. This ironically occurred at the same time that Sharon Poe, who ran the anti-Mason Levy campaign was on 700 WLW talking about all the good reasons for School Choice with Doc Thompson.

It reminded me of when I was on WLW with Scott Sloan many months ago talking about teacher wages on the air which many people weren’t aware of how much teachers were making. In fact Kevin’s name came up as one of the examples of extremely high paid administrators and that the levies were a giant scam only used to increase wage rates for school system officials. That interview caused so much trouble in the Lakota School System that the radio station was threatened by pro levy forces and they flooded everyone involved with nasty emails. One week later Mike Taylor resigned effective in January 2011.

Does this make WLW bad or evil, or me, or Sharon bad or evil? Well, it does if you’re one of the people who openly lie and manipulate the public in order to secure tax dollars. Superintendents are breed and bought to get school levies passed. That is their soul purpose, which is wrong. They are supposed to run the district like a business. Not just continue to lobby for more money. I know that a trustee for West Chester gave the employee search firm looking for a new superintendent for Lakota my number. This search firm was asking the trustee what they were looking for in a superintendent, and the reply was someone that can run the district like a business. The next question was, well what sort of person is that? And the trustee gave the firm my phone number.

“Call Hoffman, he’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

Of course the call to my phone was never made. Because they weren’t interested in the kind of person I’d hire. They are looking for another suck-ass manipulator that will get a levy passed in a very reform minded Southern Ohio market. Notice they still haven’t found one. Because those people aren’t out there, and nobody like Kevin Bright, which is what the firm is looking for, wants to come here. Those types of people are leaving, not coming.

One of the problems here is that we’ve all allowed education to be tied to our property values. Real estate agents spend a lot of their time accommodating families looking for a good school district for their children, so home sales have been connected to school districts. And then school districts complain about the growth of the district in order to ask for more money. At Lakota during the last levy, it was reported that the growth of thousands of students had been placed into the system which was beyond their control, and their financial forecasts had to account for that type of continued growth. The reality however is that Lakota did post numbers of 400 to 600 new students a year until the housing bubble burst. The reality is that only 98 new students enrolled after 2009. It was the sharpest drop in the 18,500 student district since 1991, and this all occurred before a school levy ever failed in 2010. The numbers were deliberately inflated to manipulate the poor tax payer into voting for a tax increase that would even further hurt the housing market with unattractive tax rates.

See, these superintendents know they are scamming us. They’re not bad people, as I’ve pointed out in my article, The Old Hollow Tree. They are just doing what they are told to do, what they were trained to do in compliance with the OSBA.

And today at Columbus there is a large rally supporting School Choice, which is the most innovative program to hit education in this century. But the threat is that it creates competition and no longer will real estate values be able to be associated with the kind of manipulation that school districts attempt to hide behind.

By the way, look at all the people at this rally.


The superintendents are leaving the sinking ships because their true motives are revealed. They’ve always been about the money. They say it’s about the kids, but their actions speak otherwise. In Kevin Bright’s situation he still has the Stacy Schuler case that is coming his way and will be extremely embarrassing and he knows that once S.B.5 passes, the school board will be forced to make real cuts to the district, not cosmetic ones. There won’t be anymore levy increases, so he’s leaving to friendlier districts. What he doesn’t understand is that this movement that is occurring in Southern Ohio is growing north. He can hide from it, but he won’t escape.

In Lebanon they are doing some great work. I am very happy with the tenacity of my buddy Cyd, and Rich McPherson. They are calling it the way it is and going after the superintended of Lebanon, Mark North who went into executive session last week in a deal made with the unions to get their contracts passed before S.B.5 became law. And the Lebanon people were there to call him out on it. Check out their fantastic website here.

http://lebanonschoolfacts.com/

It would be wise for these school officials to come clean now, and stop hiding behind children, and real estate values and reveal their true intentions before things become even more embarrassing. And for those teachers and administrators that are gaming the system thinking of leaving these districts for some friendly place like Kevin Bright is doing, good luck, because soon we’ll be there too. Enjoy it while you can.

If you doubt for a second that there are people, like these superintendents that aren’t aware what they are doing to communities or don’t have a social agenda listen to this tape of a former SEIU official discuss how they think. These union trained officials apply these tactics on everything from education to finance and combine their thinking wherever they can. That’s why Mark North made a deal with the unions to pass their contract before S.B.5 was passed.

This behavior is not something the tax payer should be paying for. And when they get caught, they resign and move someplace else hoping people forget. The sad thing is some people do forget, or at least they used to. Listen to the Bull Dog blow his top over the amount of apathy citizens have toward their government.

Can you argue with him?

Rich Hoffman

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

The Old Hollow Tree: All you need to know about School Choice

It is time to have a real conversation about what being an American is. Once it came to my knowledge late in the night of Sunday, March 20, 2011 that the Department of Justice had changed the colors of its website to black, gray and white colors, something eerily similar to the marketing of the European Union, added with the strange sort of collectivism being preached by public workers and the unions that represent them, that American’s must decide what it is they are.

Here Doc Thompson talks about Governor Kasich’s Ohio Budget and the further application of School Choice, which I support tremendously, because it creates competition in the education system. I am more convinced now than ever that the collectivism taught in schools by default has been devastating to our national economy, our political structure, and our personal identities and can be declared an epic failure. I have been open-minded about public education for the benefit of society. But now that I’ve seen the protests at the state level, and the way students have been conjured up to serve the needs of teachers unions in spite of whatever their parents might think, I am now prepared to openly speak against all the devices that are failing in American society so they can be identified and changed.

I came to similar points of view as Ayn Rand not by reading her. I came to her work late in life. But I traveled a path similar to her and arrived at similar conclusions. She, as I do, likes Nietzsche and understands without corruption what that philosopher was trying to say. She was an atheist where I’m not, but I understand her reluctance. I see spirituality in higher dimensional planes where she looked for reason in the observable world. But on matters of collectivism versus individualism I am with Ayn completely without pause.

She is on my mind because the film Atlas Shrugged is coming out soon and I have been waiting for that film for a long time. In that great book of the same name Ayn describes a tree that one of the characters enjoyed as a boy, that made him feel safe. The tree seemed unmovable in the world, a symbol of stability in a changing world. Until one night lightning struck the tree and it split in two. The boy sad, was able to look down inside the massive trunk now that the tree had split. What he found was that the tree had been rotten on the inside, eaten away by millions of parasites over a long period of time till all that was left was a hollow shell that showed its former strength, but was in fact barely able to hold itself up, and was easily destroyed in a big storm.

America is that tree. It has been eaten and parts of it killed from the inside by these insect-like collectivist. They in themselves are not bad or evil. But if you ever study a termite colony you see that their societies are very destructive to wherever they establish their residence. They are just doing what they do, but their life style is destructive to where they build their nests. Any group or organization in America that preaches collectivism, that’s labor unions, education establishments, clubs, country clubs, political organizations, Freemasons, fraternities, I’d even say the Boy Scouts of America is a form of collectivism.

Now that may seem extreme by let me tell you a brief story illuminating this fact. I have joined my share of groups, but I usually end up leaving them because of this whole collectivism issue. I hate it. Years ago I was a member, which I still distinctly support, but I was much more heavily active back then, called the Joseph Campbell Foundation. I spent my 20’s reading Campbell’s vast work and through him and his lectures, which I think I heard them all, I explored James Joyce’s work through the Skeleton Key and Ulysses, and much of Nietzsche’s work. But Campbell’s work put me on the path. Now Campbell was an intellectual individualist, much different from other intellectuals, so this is the reason he’s been successful on a level most only dream of regarding the field of comparative mythology and religion with sub categories in psychology, philosophy and art. Campbell was a maverick in many ways which is another way of saying he was an individualist. But, many of the people attracted to literature, and I run into this all the time, are liberal. So many of his fans were left-winged, so the moment he died, even to his warnings, they tried to turn Joseph Campbell into some collective savior, almost a religion.

I learned this on a literary meeting sponsored by the foundation. I figured it was a safe, and authentic event because at the time George Lucas of Star Wars was one of the board members, so I figured that the people in the foundation would reflect Campbell’s views. What I found were a group of left-winged people who had lost the message of Campbell. They memorized his work and could quote it on demand, but they didn’t “understand” it. They were victims of “collectivism.” The point of the meeting was only to be around similar personality types for some sort of reassured conformation of their appreciation of Campbell’s work. Ayn Rand has a similar kind of following with her own Ayn Rand Institute. I don’t mind such groups, but I personally don’t enjoy them because they get in the way of my own individuality. I’m currently in the same dilemma with the Tea Party. I stay in the distance, I support them very much, but not at the expense of my ability to act on my own.

Now American’s understand the balance between “team work,” and “collectivism.” We know how it’s supposed to work. We invented a game that reflects it.

American Football, the game itself, not the cheerleaders, the politics around it, the fans, the schools, but the game of football in its raw form is just the right mix of individualism and team work. In football individual talent through competition emerges on the field of play with the focal point being the ball itself. It’s a game of individual assignments that must be executed with an overall battle plan’s overall goal of moving the ball down the field of play 10 yards at a time. Football is a brutal game where only the best find their way on the field. There isn’t much sympathy for those that are “benchwarmers.” They are actually looked down upon in our society. That is the true heart of the masses, otherwise, football wouldn’t be as popular as it is. The public has accepted those rules because on a subconscious level, they understand the implications of not allowing the best to play the game. The team that attempts collective diversity would find itself at a serious competitive disadvantage and the game itself would be boring. The winners on the football field are those that can run faster, hit harder, throw further, and adapt to changing circumstances most rapidly.
American’s understand football, because it is the game of capitalism.

But when the rules get blurred in all the associated groups that we naturally are inclined to join, because there is security in the group, we find that the world appears to be more complicated. But it’s not. We make it so.

It’s not that I dislike the insect like collective minded. When I swim in a pool and a poor little bug falls in and struggles to get out, I scoop it out and attempt to save it. I always do, even though the insect is part of a collective society. But, when a hive of worms builds a nest in a tree, or a wasp nest evolves in my garage, or termites, or ants make their presence known near my home I kill them without regret, because I’m protecting my home, my property. Collectivism does not understand this concept because personal property is seen as for the greater good of society, which is just how insects few the world.

So my words here, and the resistance to further taxes in schools, and reform such as what we are exploring in School Choice as heard by Doc’s interview are for the good of that great tree that is America. I see the insects that are eating the inside of our beloved tree need to be removed so the tree doesn’t die or split at the first big storm. And I have no emotion about the lives of those insects. They should not have attempted to set up a colony in our tree.

In a less harsh way, look at school reform. The interview above is absolutely correct. Education will change because it’s too expensive and ineffective. That’s a fact of life. It will evolve rapidly in the coming years to something more individually based, and it will happen because that’s the way it works in the world at large.

We’ve been compassionate and we let the insects live in our tree, and they have maliciously attempted to hollow it out without regard for the strength of the tree. And that is the cause of their soon to be fate. It is not the heartlessness of me or others that seek continuation of the greater life form of our nation. It’s not about fairness, it’s about competition and getting the results of that competition that is an occurrence reflected in nature itself. It is in mankind’s arrogance that they attempt to alter nature into a collectivism that does not act as a parasite on the world around it, which is an impossible and naive dream by incompetent insect like minds only considering their small lives and hungers.

My advice, be an individual contributor to society, not an insect.

Rich Hoffman

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

These People Teach Our Kids: Protestors React to Kasich’s Budget

The protests on Fountain Square the day Governor Kasich released his budget were amazingly short-sighted considering many of the participants were educators. “We need to tax the rich, and save the middle-class,” were the chants. Really? I mean, really???????? These people really believe that there are other options that are less painful than the budget cuts Kasich placed on the table. They really believe that the wage levels are somehow separate from collapsing community budgets.

Much of the debate at the Lakota School Board meeting on Monday March 14th, 2011 centered on the loss of junior high sports. Many angry parents came out to protest the elimination of sports programs. I listen to the arguments and can only scratch my head why this is such a contentious issue. First, how did sports become so embedded in public education to begin with? Second, why would you eliminate programs that parents want when it is evident that the wage levels are directly contributing to the overhead cost  increases? A 30% reduction in the top wages would generate over $20 million and would solve a lot of problems that could be spent on “the kids.” But the teachers and administrators are the same type of people protesting on Fountain Square Monday. They aren’t about to make any sacrifices. They’ll let the kids suffer in a minute  because their priorities are all wrong. They’re not bad people, but their workplace culture is wrong. They only know to increase taxes to deal with the budget deficit caused by the very good compensation they receive from the taxpayer. When I hear these people complaining about concessions they’ve made up to this point, or sacrifices, it is quickly obvious that they don’t have a clue what’s going on in the private sector. And what goes on in the private sector is market driven. It’s not some rich conspiracy against the poor. The public sector is driven by a socialist utopia that is not possible. And that is not an inflammatory statement. It’s completely true!

Few of these public workers understand that Medicaid is almost a third of the state budget and only 4% of the people occupy 70% of the cost. That’s a major problem and one of the largest contributors of the budget deficit Ohio is experiencing. It’s certainly not that the rich aren’t paying enough taxes, or that industry is getting tax breaks. The people who say such things are incredibly selfish and not very wise on world affairs. They only look at their little piece of the world and could care less if everyone else suffer, which is what’s happening in Lakota and every other school district.

I’ve been very vocal about the whole wage issue because I don’t think many of those teachers are worth more than 70K a year. I would never think to pay any teacher that amount of money. The education they obtain for themselves is on their dime, not mine. If the state tells them they must have a Masters Degree to teach, they know that getting into the profession. But with that debate aside, they prove with these foolish protests and lack of understanding of statewide matters that they are not equipped to teach our children anything. I wouldn’t send my kid to a school that teaches such small-minded socialism, and that’s what taxing the rich and giving to the poor is.

The protestors were already prepared to protest Kasich no matter what he said in his budget. He could have said he was giving everyone a thousand dollars in the state of Ohio, and they would have still complained about what an evil guy he is.

I look at the things Kasich wants to do and it all sounds good to me. The protestors clearly just don’t want change because they benefit tremendously by keeping everything broken. They are ultimately a very selfish lot that lack the intellectual capacity to educate anyone in my opinion. To know that there were teachers from Lakota at this rally disgusts me. They represent the community very poorly.

Here is what they are protesting from Kasich’s budget plan.

• More oversight over Medicaid, although spending on the federal program will continue to grow by $1 billion annually. Medicaid comprises 30 percent of Ohio’s $60 billion budget in fiscal year 2013, including all federal matching dollars.

• Better coordination of mental health services.

• To offer the state’s health-care coverage to local governments to save money and ask union workers to pay more toward premiums.

• To sell liquor distribution rights to raise money for job-development programs,

• To honor pay increases contained in the third year of a union contract that ends next February. The extra pay offsets lost personal days and unpaid furloughs by state workers – concessions to balance Gov. Ted Strickland’s last budget.

• To double vouchers for school choice, eliminating a waiting list for parents who want to transfer their children from public to privately operated charter schools.

• Bonuses for teachers – $50 for each student who shows marked improvement.

• A closer look at adding slot machines to Ohio’s horse tracks or legalizing casinos operated by Native American tribes.

• Study the concept of semi-private “charter” universities to give now-public colleges more flexibility. That would eliminate the requirement that they hire multiple prime contractors and pay prevailing wage on construction projects, to keep tuition down. It also caps annual tuition growth at 3.5 percent.

Those are just a few of the highlights. The bottom line is that unions just want to keep everything as it is. They don’t want change because they like the way everything is. But they hardly represent the majority. Only 13.7% of the Ohio population belongs to a union. And it’s those 13.7% that are creating the policies that break the budgets of school districts so that kids in junior high won’t be able to play sports, or ride a bus. In the scheme of things the cost of busing, sports programs, and electives are a small part of the budget, its labor costs that are the enormous factor. And it was excessive labor costs that crippled the auto industry, ran the steel industry out of Pittsburg and seriously hampered innovation in companies that are under union control.

Recently I needed a part from a large manufacturer in Dallas, Texas, and the person on the other end of the phone said they could see the part through the window from where they were sitting. But they couldn’t send it to me. Why? Because the department on the other side of the window was controlled by the union and the guy in charge of moving that part was out on sick leave, and he was the only one able under the contract to move the part. So because of union rules the person I was speaking to could not simply open a door and pick up the part to ship back to me. It cost thousands of dollars in delivery penalties and seriously set back our manufacturing process. I was so mad at that process that I put my fist through my phone in frustration.

The same mentality is at play with these public sector unions. They are out of touch and protecting the serious imposition they have imposed on us all. And they could care less of some kids suffer because of their inflated opinions of themselves.

The proof is in what they say and do. Not in their very controlled bullet points designed to manipulate a busy voting population.

And that is the crime that should have serious penalties. And for those that participated in that rally, if you really care about “the kids” and the community you work in, take a pay cut, and don’t even think about asking those communities for more tax increases.

Rich Hoffman

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