The Fireworks Superstore on Exit 141 in Tennessee: a pillar of freedom

On a trip that had the main computer system of our mini-van go crazy on us while visiting a ghost town in Florida, had an accident with a crazy woman from England when she backed into the front of us at a stop light in Cape Canaveral, blew a tire in Georgia, and had the ABS system fail completely just north of Atlanta we had our share of transportation problems on our most recent trip through the south. And all day long while driving back to reality my son-in-law wanted nothing more than to stop and get fireworks from a dealer for a Fourth of July, 2011 celebration at our home when we got back. Because of all the trouble with the car I wanted to set a goal for the last really big place on our way home on I-75, a place I had taken my kids when they were very young, and it stuck in my mind as embracing everything that reminded me of just how great America is. It’s the Fireworks Superstore at exit 141 in Tennessee, a palace of patriotism!

Predictably, the place was wonderfully cheesy and had been kept up in the same manner as I had enjoyed some 20 years before. A quick glance around the store revealed many names that are rooted in rebellion and danger, because in many ways that’s that fireworks represent. And before buying fireworks, you need a general understanding these days of what they do.


Open circuit	An incomplete electrical circuit
Orange book	The United Nations publication for classification and testing of dangerous goods
Oxidant	The component of an explosive that supplies oxygen for the reaction of the product
Palm burst	A color break with palm tree core
Parallel circuit	An electrical circuit in which the current is divided between several igniters. Less easy to test for breaks.
Paste	Commonly used to cover shells to enhance their burst
Pattern shell	A shell of fewer stars that creates a pattern rather than a sphere
Pellet	See Star
Peony shell	A shell whose stars do not leave any trails
PIC	Plastic Igniter cord
Pigeon	A specialized type of firework which travels to and fro along a horizontal rope
Piped match	Raw match enclosed in a paper or plastic tube
Pistil	The central core of a shell. Often a complimentary or contrasting colour to the main burst
Plug	See Bung
Portfire	A thin walled tube filled with slow burning composition used to light other fireworks
Propellant	Composition used to produce force e.g. A rocket motor

Punk	Slow burning lighter for small fireworks
Pyrotechnic	Generic term for any item which react in a self sustaining chemical reaction and generally produces a light effect. Pyrotechnic articles are different to fireworks and generally are used for stage and theatrical uses
Quickmatch	Raw match enclosed in a paper or plastic tube
Rack	Apparatus for firing rockets or mortar tubes
Rain	Shells containing long burning stars that fall all the way to the ground.
Raw match	Black powder coated thread used for linking fireworks
Repeater shell	Usually a cylinder shell with timed bursts at regular intervals
Ring shell	An aerial shell that produces symmetrical rings of stars often have a rope tail to control orientation of the break
Rising effect	Often a tail effect on a shell but can be external attachments to a shell that break off during the rise to create special effects
Rocket	Aerial effect propelled by a motor
Rocket cone	A device for firing flight rockets
Rocket motor	The power unit behind a rocket. Typically made by pressing black powder into a choked tube
Roman candle	A cardboard tube with a stack of timed comets or bombette units
Round shell	A shell in the form of a sphere usually containing colored stars
Safety area	The area around a fireworks display site between the spectators and fireworks. Not including a fall out zone
Salute	Report or loud bang
Saturn shell	A chrysanthemum break with an outer ring of a contrasting color
Saxon	A bar with centre pivot with drivers at either one or two ends which make the bar spin on a central point.
Screecher	A whistle unit with a hole through the centre. This increases the burn speed and therefore the sound
Sequence	The pattern in which fireworks are detonated in a display

Series circuit	A circuit arranged so the current runs through each igniter in turn. This enables and breaks to be detected
Serpent	A spinning tube used in candles and shells. Usually with a report unit
Set piece	A ground firework. Generally static
Shell	The most spectacular of fireworks propelled with a lifting charge from a mortar and a bursting charge that charge to a star composition in the air after a predetermined delay
Shell delay	See Delay fuse
Shell of shells	An aerial shell that contains smaller shells ignited when the main shell bursts and subsequently produces small secondary bursts
Short circuit	The accidental completion of a circuit which causes the current to not flow through the igniter
Shot	The single functioning of a roman candle or cake
Smoke	Air suspension of particles from incomplete combustion of a composition
Smokeless powder	A powder containing nitro-cellulose and nitro-glycerine as it does not produce much smoke
Spark	Typical effect caused by incandescent particles ejected form the surface of a burning composition
Sparkler	Wire coated with pyrotechnic composition that gives off small sparks
Spider shell	A shell containing a small number of large stars producing a symmetrical burst. Sometimes called octopus shells
Splitting comet	A comet with an internal charge of flash powder which when ignited splits the comet into several pieces.
Squib	Electric igniter
Star	A pressed unit of composition usually spheres or cylinders used in shells, mines, rockets and roman candles
Storage	The holding of fireworks prior to their use. Premises must be licensed for amounts above a certain quantity
Strobe	A pulsing on off star effect fired from candles and shells and ground based effects
Tail effect	A comet star secured to the outside of a shell to give a tail to the rising shell
Tiger tail shell	A shell made up of a solid ball of composition to produce a substantial tail effect. Sometimes with a small shell break
Titanium	A silver metal used in the production of maroons and grebes
Top fused	A shell where the shell delay is lit separately from the lifting charge. Often found in large Maltese shells
Tourbillion	See Serpent
Transportation	The process of consigning a load of fireworks. Subject to heavy legislative control
TREM card	Documentation required when transporting fireworks of any quantity. Transport emergency card. Provide information for emergency services
Trunk	A large tail unit often used on palm and willow shells

UN classification	The assignment of a packaged firework into the UN classes for fireworks
UN compatibility group	The G or S of 1.3G or 1.4S. The compatibility group indicated what a particular item may and not be transported with
UN Hazard code	See UN number
UN Mark	A complicated mark assigned to a particular packing box for dangerous goods
UN Number	A four-digit number assigned to hazardous goods. Explosives always start with a 0 e.g. 1.4G fireworks are UN 0336. Used to identify a dangerous item in the event of an emergency
Volley	A mass firing of rockets or shells
Water firework	Aquatic fireworks e.g. shells or water gerb
Water gerb	A floating gerb with a weight and cork float.
Water shell	See Aquatic shell
Waterfall	A curtain of coloured or silver sparks that falls vertically. Composition is made from an aluminum alloy
Weeping willow	See Willow shell
Wheel	A rotating piece attached to a post in the form of a saxon bar or wheel with driver units
Whistle	A tube containing composition of potassium benzoate and potassium silicate. On burning the composition creates oscillation in the tube and creates a whistle effect which is amplified in the tube
Whizzer	See Hummer
Willow shell	A shell containing charcoal based stars with a long burn time which often fall to the ground

Fireworks and participating in controlled destruction is important to the celebration of any July 4^th ceremony. And cheesy fireworks stores only enhance the celebration. As I walked through the store I contemplated why that was, why one of my favorite towns of Gatlinburg, which is far from the sophisticated wine county of the Bay Area, has so much appeal to me. So much so that I feature the town in my new book, Tail of the Dragon so prominently, and the reason is, that such cheesiness is uniquely American. Shops like the fireworks store with all their contents are loud proclamations of businesses that are not subjected to state control by the government. They, like the stores in Gatlinburg Tennessee with the multitude of t-shirt shops, the large amount of Ripley’s Believe it or Not’s that line the street, are ideas in someone’s head that have been translated into reality and they are unique in the world.

There are places in the world like Niagara Falls, Canada, and areas in Hong Kong among a few others that have attempted to take a page out of the American handbook in their tourist spots to capitalize as we have, and I always find it refreshing to see. Because in such places, capitalism is trying to pop its head out and grow.

But in the United States, we take it for granted that our nation’s highways are filled with these types of things, and while the progressive high brow, European lover may frown down on this activity, it is because they fundamentally embrace socialism, and they know such places are a threat to their attempt to manipulate the United States into a country of their vision. For me, such places as the Fireworks Superstore on exit 141 are the epitome of freedom and the polar opposite of progressive vision, so they are like temples of independance.

John Stossel understands this too, and did a wonderful segment recently exploring this topic.

Gaudy flashing lights are wonderful and I enjoy them wherever they exist. I may not enjoy the moral position behind them, but I do enjoy the freedom of the entrepreneur to have the opportunity to come up with and implement an idea, no matter how ridiculous it is.

That is what we celebrate on the Fourth of July, freedom to come up with an idea no matter how gaudy, and the freedom to explode stuff and pay homage to our past rebellion which allowed us to form the greatest country on Earth, the United States of America. So when you pass a fireworks stand on the highways of America, salute them for the freedom they represent. They are an important reminder of just what America is and what it can be, and are a part of that thin line that exists between tyranny and freedom.

Rich Hoffman

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

Being a Hero: The greatest gift you can give to a child

I will make some people very angry with what I’m about to say, because as we’ve discussed at this site on many occasions, the education bubble is bursting, the housing bubble has burst, the tolerance of federal police powers is bursting, and another bubble, a much larger bubble is about to not just burst, but will explode, and that bubble is the value of family and the ability of third parties to fill the role of a strong parent or family mentor role.

Human beings have a gestation period of growth that extends well beyond their time in a fetus. Human beings do not just plop out of their mothers like a small calf, find their footing and start eating. Human beings are complex creatures that require at least 13 years of constant parental nurturing. And in many cases it takes even more than immediate family members to contribute to those children’s success in life, because being a mentor is what young human beings need more than even water.

In our family, I am that uncle that every kid wants to be near, because I know what being a mentor is all about. In life I am a lot of things, a professional businessman, a writer preparing a manuscript for a national release, a political watch dog, a commentator, a Wild West Arts advocate, an adventurer, my list could go on for some time. But what I am most and my kids know this, my wife understands this, and all my nieces and nephews and brother and sister- in-laws have come to expect, is that I am a family mentor. I am that person who when those young people are out there in the world doing whatever, they think of to bounce what they are doing against what they want to achieve.

One of my nephews wanted me to be the Best Man at his wedding recently because I had a tremendous impact on the young man growing up. For me it was an odd experience because with him it was as if he were grown up and graduating from life close to an equal, while in the audience of my best man speech at the reception were many other young people who I am currently just as important to and I take that role very, very serious.

I’m writing about this on the 4th of July for a reason. Our society has come to believe that public education, college, day care, neighborhoods, sports, and many other social programs can give young people what they need to become successful adults. They can’t. The progressive dream of “it takes a village” will only make a village of idiots and followers. Psychology and psychiatry are such new fields that they have been recklessly incorporated into society with incredible relevance, and have contributing to that expanding social bubble that is about to burst. The reason that social bubble is unstable is because it was built with flimsy, careless ideas and not supported with the value of heroes.

One of the greatest faults of the progressive is the notion that “I’m not perfect.” Or “I am no expert.” Progressives, for their own vision of social order desire a world of socially trained experts in a particular field of endeavor, just like in a village, where there are hunters, basket weavers, people who build the fire for cooking, those who cook, that kind of thing. In our society we have lawyers, doctors, teachers, fireman, police, accountants, and we teach people to move into one of those fields of endeavor and to know everything about their learned field, but those same people are expected to not know anything about other people’s responsibility. This is why unions get so mad at people who can see through their scams, like with public education. They are the professionals and the society at large is supposed to take everything they say without question.

Well, if you’ve ever studied the way young people learn from adults, they learn by copying. This is such a powerful tool that kids born in the south will develop a southern accent purely on copying the speech patterns of the people around them. When you throw a child into education methods, and child care, then deny them an adult to look up to, you’ve doomed that child to a life of misery. There will always be exceptions of course, but most children if they are surrounded by adults who refuse to be mentors to their children, will doom those children to a miserable life when they grow up. If a child grows up to become a bad person, where they don’t know how to balance a check book, they can’t maintain a stable relationship, where they turn out neurotic and psychologically flimsy it is the fault of their parents.

Parents these days have bought into the lie that they can be bad, shallow people and still raise good kids, because those parents have bought into the lie that the village can raise their children better than they can. They cannot.

A young man wants the men in his life to be the best, the strongest the fastest and smartest at everything. The young boy has an innate instinct that this is important to their development because a young person knows that the value in learning something should come from the best so they have the best chance at success. Young girls want to know that their mothers are the, prettiest, and wise creations that have the answers to everything. Moms must be experts on everything. And fathers must always know what’s best. This is the key to the successful raising of children.

A child does not want to hear from his parent that they are incompetent fools who are scared of something in life. Children want to believe their parents are immortal, larger-than-life, supermen and women of high quality because that is who the child is going to copy and the child wants the chance to be all those things themselves.

At the wedding mentioned, as is the standard for my involvement in any wedding, I do not attend bachelor parties. I do not indulge in drunkenness. I do not sit with strippers in Vegas, even when my own brother was married and every male member of my family went to see naked women, I did not. I didn’t because I would ask the young people who look up to me not to do such things, and if I want for them a good life, I must do my part and stay away from any kind of mortal revelation that indicates weakness. You have to lead by example. You can’t send children to public school and hope you can “cheat the system,” while you’re off doing bad things. Kids will see through it. You cannot have a “do as I say, not as I do approach.”

Children expect their parents to be living gods on Earth. They expect parents to know it all, this is why when children hit their teenage years, and the parent has given them a mundane outlook on life and the teenager gravitates to their friends, to spite the parents who let them down with low expectations, the child will go through an excessive rebellion phase. The parent is expected to have high expectations in their children, but the parent is expected also to lead by example. If the parent does not lead by example, the child will lash out in a last-ditch effort to save themselves, which will most often accelerate the failure.

On our way to Kerr City last week, a ghost town in the middle of Florida’s rugged interior, far away from the tourist spots, my niece was with me, my daughters, my son-in-law and my wife. She received a phone call from a friend of hers that was upset that my niece was spending the day with us instead of wanting to do something with the caller.

“You want to hang out with your family? That’s weak,” said the caller in a frustrated voice. “I thought you were my friend?”

My niece tried her best to appear conciliatory, “My family is cool, and we’re looking for a ghost town. I’ve lived in Florida for 7 years and I didn’t even know there was a ghost town and my Uncle Rich is taking me to see it.”

“You sound like my mom,” the caller retorted. “You’d rather hang out with your family than your friends. You’re becoming just like my mom.”

The call ended as my niece looked out the window for a moment. I watched her through the rear-view mirror for a moment until she regained her composure.

“She’s just jealous that I have a good family and she doesn’t,” my niece said finally.

My wife looked at me from the passenger seat then turned around to address my niece. “That’s right honey, if your friend was given the same chance, to go with us, she’d become suddenly very supportive.”

And that’s been my experience with young people. When my kids were growing up, our house was always filled with their friends who preferred to come to our house and spend time because at our house those kids were getting what they were looking for, someone to emulate.

Family is very important, much more so than progressives want anybody to believe. So as we celebrate the Fourth of July, it is important to know that enjoying freedom today is good, but it will evaporate tomorrow if there aren’t people who believe they are heroes entrusted to guard it. And those people are our young people today. They need adults to look up to so desperately, they need to believe in something and that belief must come from their family.

I’ve always thought these things, but now that I’ve seen my behavior translated over a twenty year period in open opposition to the progressive movement which I’ve fought against for longer than that, the evidence is coming out dramatically in favor of my beliefs. And when my nephew who was now 26 wanted his Uncle Rich to be his Best Man when he had plenty of options, particularly from people his own age, I consider it a high honor, and even more telling, just how important all the things I taught him were. My teachings endured through all the hard teenage years, the drinking years, the girls, the friends, the social propaganda, to the most valuable foundations the young man wanted to remember before embarking on the adventure of marriage. That’s how important being a mentor is to young people.

So before you busy people reading this scurry about your lives in selfish pursuits, going to that gentleman’s club while on that business trip while your wife drops the kids off at day care so the two of you can make really good money, play golf with your friends and go out to eat every weekend, think about what you’re doing. When the young people in your family ask you a question, they expect an answer, and if you aren’t confident enough to live up to their expectations, they will resent you because you are their gateway to adulthood and if you give them crap, they will grow up and become crap, and it will be your fault, not theirs.

The future is in the hands of each and every one of us, and when the bright eyes of a child looks up to you and asks a question, make sure you have the answer. The fate of our nation depends on this very trait, the extended gestation period of the human child continuing to grow outside the womb so it can observe the world around it and adapt however required to the conditions of its survival. If the child is surrounded by fools, it will grow up to become a fool. If it is surrounded by heroes, then it too will grow up to become a hero. 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

Senator Bill Coley Protects S.B.5: Ben Dribble of the Lakota School Board sticks his foot in his mouth

Over the last couple of days I have received dozens and dozens articles, comments from newspapers, video reports from news stations all over Ohio and Kentucky over this crazy school funding issue. Members of the Ohio Education Association seem baffled that voters are not interested in their rhetoric, as they have been in the past. People like me are not impressed with the silly stunts the OEA is trying to pull off with their 54 contracts signed this spring as S.B.5 goes into effect today, July 1st to attempt to appear that they are working with communities……..finally. With the unions, it’s all smoke and mirrors, as usual.

Unions don’t understand where the cost savings is in S.B.5, according to them. They don’t understand because those same OEA members believe they should be paid extraordinary amounts of money for teaching positions when new options such as electronic courses that could drive down the costs of education and are being resisted by the union. Now the OEA is trying to downplay S.B.5, as if they were nonchalant to the bill, even though they have aggressively gathered 700,000 signatures of their members and their families and friends to get the bill repealed.

Senator Bill Coley was on the Doc Thompson show on 700 WLW talking about some of the ways that school s can drive down their costs, and he also discusses how even with the 700,000 signatures the unions won’t be able to repeal the S.B.5 Bill, enabling unions to continue to drive up the cost of education in uncontrollable ways. Bill explains how Ohio is the first state in the nation to advance a program that will allow teachers to still make good money, but will also drive down the cost of education. But it’s competition that the teachers will have to deal with, and that’s why the union resists anything new.

A nasty email came to me the other day saying, “Mr. Hoffman, you won’t be happy till teachers are making 35K per year.” Let me say that people who think like that have gotten on my last nerve. They are fools who have played the system for years and brought all our budgets to the level they currently are. They have taken advantage of state and federal money that was passed out like candy on Halloween, and now that the governments are broke, schools and their unions believe that the budget gaps are supposed to be paid by tax payers.

Here’s the problem…….taxes are already too high. They always have been, but now that the money isn’t there from external sources, the local taxpayers are being asked to cover the difference; it is showing just how out of control the spending always has been. In schools, too much is when the budget exceeds your income. If you are losing state and federal money, then the school has to cut its costs to fit the budget. If the school has too many teachers and administrators that are making above 60K per year then it will have to dump some of those expensive employees to meet their budget. It’s pretty simple really. You don’t ask tax payers to cover the difference, because that difference is unrealistic.

I also hear quite a bit that schools are the pinnacle of a community, and that if tax payers don’t pay extraordinary amounts of money to public education then that somehow means the community doesn’t support it’s schools. This is nutty thinking by people who are grossly out of touch. Who says that money makes something good? Why can’t we have a great school at half the cost? And who says we need union labor to teach a kid to read? I’ve worked with union labor plenty of times and they always over exaggerate their importance. The typical union employee would make watching TV sound like they were making a sacrifice.

I don’t care if the labor is union or not, only if it is too expensive or correctly priced when it comes to an organization. I personally don’t want to pay money into a union because they have their roots in socialism and I don’t like socialism. But if a union wants to get together and play cards or whatever, they are free too. But they don’t have a right to collective-bargain for my money taken from my property. Whenever there are cost over runs, it’s most always because there isn’t any management controls.

I read the other day that Ben Dribble of the Lakota School Board mentioned that one of the requirements of a superintendent was to pass a levy………………………..what? So that is what a member of the school board believes? That costs just go up uncontrollably by some mysterious force and that taxes must therefore increase to meet those cost increases? People like Ben Dribble won’t know what to do with S.B.5 which actually gives school boards management control over their costs. So it may take some time for districts to find school board members that can actually manage costs, but eventually, these cost overruns will be dealt with.

Lakota like all schools must realize that even with the decrease in state and federal funding that property tax revenue will decline even further as more people move out of the district because of foreclosures or decreased property values once they go through property reassessment. Homes that were bought on the top of the housing bubble need to be devalued and should not be taxed at the higher rate. And when that happens, Lakota will lose even more tax revenue.

Apparently people like Ben Dribble and the OEA believe that it is feasible for property owners to cover the budget gap no matter how big that gap is. They believe that because they don’t understand the value of money, which is why the cost of education is so high to begin with. They are out of touch and are elements in education that need to be removed before any budget decisions can actually be discussed.

Thank goodness S.B.5 is now effective. Now let’s see if anybody has the guts to use it. Because the task of education is to get better than it is now, and also more effective without driving up the cost, anything less is not acceptable. The changes that are needed won’t happen without S.B.5 remaining intact, because it requires those changes to meet the new challenges presented. And so far, unions are standing in the way of that change and that makes them a detrimental force standing in the way of progress.

Rich Hoffman

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

HUD Power Grab: The Intent behind entitlements

They try at every turn to embed themselves into your life any way they can. Government’s latest attempt is in the expansion of public housing in Cincinnati.

Doc Thompson covers the HUD issue that is being imposed on the city of Cincinnati which is a detrimental power-grab instigated by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Doc covers some of the flaws in this plan from a social stand point on his 700 WLW radio show.

Channel 9 also did an article on the fine details of this situation listed below.

______________________________________________
Posted: 06/06/2011
• By: Tom McKee
CINCINNATI – The Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA) will know by the end of the week how much it will expand its public housing in Hamilton County to settle a discrimination finding with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

A Voluntary Compliance Agreement (VCA) is expected to be signed between CHMA and HUD that will stipulate where some of the housing will be located.

HUD found that CMHA failed to put public housing units that it owns in numerous Hamilton County communities, including Green Township, where the agency’s former board chairman lives.

Green Township currently has 27 CHMA-owned units within its borders, but may be required to add more as a provision of the settlement.

Also this week, Hamilton County Commissioners are expected to approve a Cooperation Agreement with CMHA that will add 375 public housing units to the 482 already in suburban communities.
Scheduled meetings include…

MONDAY – June 6
–11 a.m. – Hamilton County Commissioners staff meeting
– Cooperation agreement to be discussed
–11 a.m. – Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority special board meeting
– Executive session to discuss voluntary compliance agreement
WEDNESDAY – June 8
–11 a.m. – Hamilton County Commissioners regular meeting
– Cooperation agreement approval expected
THURSDAY – June 9
–9 a.m. – Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority regular board meeting
– Approval expected on voluntary compliance agreement

The cooperation agreement does not affect the City of Cincinnati, which has 5,269 public housing units.

_________________________________________________________

Public housing is one of those topics where government has exceeded its reach. It has no business in creating housing for citizens, because to do so, it must take resources from productive people and give them to people who are not productive. Government can only do this as a kind of theft.

Listen to this professor in the clip below. I can’t believe people pay him to teach, because he has a lot to learn.

The mentality is similar to the type of government that is bankrupting Greece, where their retirement age of 55 is drowning the country with expectations which is collapsing the country. I have friends in Europe that have 4 plus weeks of vacation and are working under this assumption of a retirement age. When they travel the world, even though they have moderately low-level jobs, I ask them “who does your work when you’re gone?”

They just give me the deer in the headlights look. “That is not my concern,” is the reply. That answer continues to baffle me every time I hear it. How can a country like Greece, England, pick your European country, subsidize vacations and retirement plans. Who pays for it, because while these people are on vacation, or retired, they are unproductive citizens? They are citizens of their home country, yet they are doing nothing to contribute to the positive growth of the nations GDP.

Nobody is arguing that people shouldn’t be able to take a vacation. But the amount of vacation or the retirement should be contingent on how much that citizen has saved up to be able to give themselves a break. Because if they can step away from their jobs so easily, then they are not productive enough, and in government, this is very often a case, the idea of a job is one that is created so that a worker can clock into their position, do their time, productive or not, then go home to their regular life. If they want to take a day off or go on vacation, they do so without a drop in performance from their employer. This is totally wrong, this whole entitlement culture.

That is the kind of mentality behind HUD. Government is in a business it should not be in, giving out Federal dollars as contingencies to implement their policies that don’t belong to them. And because the housing is provided and not earned, it is not respected. This leads to abuse of the property, and it leads to the decline of the citizens that live there. Crime runs rampant in such communities; drug sales and prostitution are the norm.

Public housing is something that we should be cutting back on, not expanding. It is a road that leads to one place, utter failure both financially and socially. It does not catapult people back on their feet, but more often than not, flattens their tires in life keeping them from advancing themselves. Because it pays to sit still and collect the check, the housing and the food. The entitlement concept is rooted in foolish European socialist ideology. It has appeal because it basically provides something to people for nothing but what doesn’t get discussed is that something comes from a nation’s wealth, or potential wealth. No society can function sufficiently when people just retire at 55 and stop being productive, relying on a workforce that is under 55, which might only be a fraction of the employed citizens to support everyone else.

The entitlement culture is a lie……it was a scam to get politicians elected into power, and the check is due but nobody wants to pay. People naturally want the free ride that was promised to them from people who didn’t have the right to make the promise in the first place. Entitlements are a premise based on nothing, and they are undeniably wrong and must be removed from the vocabulary of human beings……….All entitlements.

Rich Hoffman

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

Wild West Heroes: The Foundations of America!

The following clip was taken from the Annie Oakley Wild West event that I frequent each year with some of my friends. When David P. Little a political consultant hired to attack me saw this video he attempted to take the confederate flags in this video as a way to portray me as a racist. What progressives who think like Little simply don’t understand is that these Wild West events are important to American culture. Each year that I’ve participated in the Annie Oakley event it has been a way that I reset myself.

I consider the people in that video to be some of my best friends, even if we only see each other once a year. They are good people who know what America is supposed to look like. In American culture, the cowboy is very important. I like to use cowboy metaphors to explain complicated topics because using the premier symbol of individualism in the world, the cowboy; it helps put everything else in perspective.

Here are some examples of what I consider to be some of the best that America produces. Guns are very important to Americana. The six-shooter is as important to the United States as the Samurai Sword is to Japan.

Progressives and their globalist views, have sought to destroy American heritage which I find repulsive. I appreciate the beauty of a gunman that can handle a six-shooter effectively.

It is sad that progressives have successfully turned even the sight of a gun into a symbol of death.

Knife throwing is another heritage that is essential to American culture. I know several knife throwers personally and every one of them are wonderful people who appreciate life more, because they routinely dance with death.

So when you see a person that is keeping the Old West alive with a cowboy hat, guns, or a knife, thank them. They aren’t just paying homage to a time when people didn’t wear deodorant, had to kill their food daily just to eat, and water was hard to come by. They are keeping the spirit of liberty alive, a time that individuals sought freedom so badly they’d risk life on the frontier to have it. They despised the world of Europe so intensely, that all the discomforts known to man was more preferable.

You might recognize this guy from the first video. I’ve known Chris for a while, and he’s the real deal. He travels the world as an ambassador of the Western Arts.

That is what I think of when I think of the Wild West. And that’s why I enjoy events like the Annie Oakley Festival. In such places, America is alive and well, and simplicity reveals the truth behind the progressive deceptions that has sung our country to sleep like a patient on the operating table under anesthesia.

Here’s another guy from the video above. This is another one of my close personal friends. You may have seen the newscast Gery and I did for a Dayton TV station.

It is in fact quite healthy to consider that if the government proves too big to replace, as it is needed, and those who crave power so diligently refuse to take their hands off that power, as is proper in our republic, then it will be the very law enforcement and military that we have which will be turned against us. And in such times should they unfortunately come to pass, that the skills of the cowboy will come into play. So keeping those skills alive is essential to preserving the nation we call home.

Here’s an exhibition I did for the World Stunt Organization at a film festival.

If it all falls apart and the law is turned against us, then, well that’s the plot of The Symposium of Justice, a book I wrote several years ago. Back then, it seemed far-fetched. These days, not so much, but that is a story for another time.

Rich Hoffman

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

The Far Reaching Schools: DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY BECAUSE THEY WILL FIND YOU

If society is looked at without emotion, like an archeologist examines a civilization long over with neutral observation, then it is easy to see the problems. Since my love in life puts science first, before anything, then it is not difficult to look at our current civilization and detect where we are going wrong.

Doc Thompson did a great segment on the far-reaching culture of modern public education, where they attempt to extend their authority well into the private lives of children, all in the name of “protecting” them from bullying, or even from their own parents. Listen to that broadcast here.

When I see adults blindly submitting to authority, such as when they are pulled over by a police officer, it’s almost like a switch goes off in their minds that when they see the uniform of a police officer, they immediately revert into a mode of submission. The officer says, “Put your hands up where I can see them,” and automatically the hands go up without any conscious control. The same thing happens when an officer pulls over a speeding driver, the cop puts on the lights, and the immediate reaction is for the driver to pull over. To some extent, it’s probably good that this mechanism is in place, because society would probably have more conflict involved. But on the other hand, the same tendency that makes human beings become compliant to police officers also makes people prone to believe all symbols of authority, which includes politicians and spin doctors.

This is very bad, because even though people like the President of the United States are seen as leaders to the rest of the world, people tend to listen to him as though he actually carried a level of authority. If the President calls for war, there are people in the military that will carry out the order even if it means their deaths. If the President says society needs to care for the poor, then suddenly people will become more aware of the poor. This tendency is consistent all the way down the chain of command all the way down to a child’s local soccer coach.

The adults I know do not question enough what is going on in the world around them, and this is happening because they were taught very early to respect authority. In American culture what is required to maintain an honest republic is a respect of authority, but independence and free-will must be embraced by the culture even above authority in order for it to last. American children are learning to respect authority from their parents, their family, their siblings, friends, and public education.

Public education is spending too much money, and too much time teaching children to respect authority in my opinion. They are creating a society of grown-ups that automatically freeze up in the face of authority figures, and this is a very bad thing. As I said, a little authority is good, respect for mankind and others in general is important, but blind obedience is terrible for the sustainability of any culture. It leaves society vulnerable to tyrants.

This move by public education to intrude into the personal lives of the students we send to these schools is reprehensible and must stop. And it will not stop until parents demand it to stop. It’s not just an economic factor, because more teachers require more asserted authority, and we not only pay for those teachers, but we pay in how they teach our children to blindly accept authority and not embrace the nature of freedom.

The bottom line behind most everyone that pursues the life of an authority figure is that they wish to position themselves in a lucrative paying field of endeavor, where they can make a very good income, while also satisfying some inner inferiority complex that resides within them. They often are not people who should be followed under any circumstance what-so-ever. They should be despised and ridiculed for what they are, and that’s tyrants. So they need people to believe that their authority is needed to hold society together. But what they are really doing is destroying the very fabric of what makes American society unique, and fruitful.

So long as there is a fear of authority in American society, the republic from which that society is built will be flimsy, and easy to topple, which is how they want it. Because to the tyrant, they only care for gratification of the moment, and there are a lot of tyrants wondering about in positions of authority.

It sickens me each time I see people complying without question to the demands of an authority figure. And that process begins when the teacher tells a young child in public school not to run down the hall. The nail to the coffin is driven home when a teacher has the ability to reach into the private life of the child and police what the child says on Facebook, or even what they say on a private web-site. Once the child accepts that type of authority they will grow up and become weak-kneed adults that believe easily what a sappy politician tells them. Those adults will become terrible, over-emotional voters that will not know what’s good from bad, because their decision-making skills are tainted with the corruption of compliance.

Rich Hoffman

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

Educate Ohio and The Original Argument: My Speech and a Special Gift

A friend of mine gave me a new book. Every time I get a new book, I have a good day. This particular book was The Original Argument, by Glenn Beck and Joshua Charles, at an event I was speaking at called Educate Ohio.

The event had about 30 to 40 school board members, teachers and education reform advocates where I gave a presentation on how excessive wages under union contracts are bankrupting school districts.

After the meeting I learned how the book came into my friend’s possession. The book had just be released and a woman had bought 50 of them and was passing them out at the Lebanon Racetrack, a popular meeting place for the Lebanon Tea Party, and she gave my friend 5 of them and told her to pass them out to people who would do something with the book. My friend then gave me one of those 5, which is a treasure to me greater than gold.

I read the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist papers last summer. They were respectfully hard reads because of the old dialogue, but it was those books that inspired me to start this site, Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom. I wanted this blog site to be a kind of modern Federalist Papers using all the tools of the modern age to paint the picture of America’s situation. I had heard that Beck and Joshua were attempting to update the Federalist Papers into modern language that everyone could understand, and that’s what The Original Argument is. It is wonderful that finally every day people will be able to read this book and actually understand how the American government is supposed to be.

One of the speakers before me at the Educate Ohio Conference was Paul Lambert from Columbus, who said something in his presentation that made me connect the two things together, Glenn Beck’s new book, and this education event. He said, “Schools are one of the last things in our republic that we still actually control locally.” He was right; our school districts are one of the last bastions of America that are left. We elect our school boards locally, and we pay for them locally, at least for the most part. And we see that our schools have gotten away from us, they are being run by large unions that have their eyes on state and federal money that they can turn around and use indirectly to manipulate the political process, and it’s happening right under our noses.

When I gave my speech, there were many people there that were from Pickerington, Ohio where the new superintendent for my school district of Lakota comes from. This has been another issue that has exploded on the scene over the last couple of days and I am deeply disappointed in our school board’s decision to hire this person. Here is a preview of my comments that will appear in the Pulse Journal this coming Thursday. Click on the article to go to the I-Team Investigation video on double-dipping superintendents and learn the real story behind the scam. Click here to hear the radio broadcast done by that same reporter on 700 WLW. This is important!
____________________________________________________________________

I thought Ron Spurlock was doing a great job as superintendent of Lakota. He was innovative, energetic, had the ability to unite people, and he was cheaper. So it is baffling to me why the school board elected to hire a double-dipping superintendent from just up the road for $165,000, about $50,000 more than they were paying Ron, and they spent 50K to find her. Didn’t anybody learn anything from the Channel 9 I-Team report we did in May?

I’m sure Mantia is a nice lady. I’m willing to give her a chance, so long as she doesn’t ask for more tax money. My problem is in the absolute preposterous understanding of economics. The school board spent $100,000 dollars that it didn’t need to. Why?

Did the school board think that getting a superintendent from outside of the district like Mantia is what the No Lakota Levy people wanted? She’s more of the same. You’re personnel costs are too high, and decisions like what was made in hiring Mantia perfectly exhibits the folly. You had a guy right in front of you and you hired a woman playing the system. And we are supposed to believe we should increase our taxes even higher than they are now to pay for this lack of understanding?

Lakota doesn’t need more revenue to fund their inflated ideas about what education is. It needs to dump its high dollar, ineffective teachers and administrators, keep people like Mr. Duff, but dump the ones you plainly know do not deserve 75K per year, and replace them with ambitious, cheaper labor fresh out of college. Don’t tell me you don’t know the difference between a good teacher and a bad one. Here’s a hint, the bad ones are working just for money, and just like superintendents that retire the minute they turn 55 then seek to be rehired so they can double-dip. Let those bad teachers go to another district. It will create a job vacancy for us.

If Lakota wants to stay excellent, it can’t just tread water. It’s has to become sustainable over time.

_____________________________________________________

The arrogance of the school board to play politics in plain site is an obvious sign of disrespect. The people I talk to are aware of it, but aren’t sure what to do about it, because things have always been this way in their lives. People are only now waking up to it because the money is running out, and it’s not so easy to just toss money at corrupt people anymore to just shut them up. People are finally starting to look at how things are supposed to be.

As I packed up all my notes, and presentation material from my speech, I looked at the book that was left for me in the back of the room under my camera tripod, The Original Argument, by Glenn Beck, given to me by someone that had it given to them, who simply wanted to wake people up so they can understand how to defend themselves. A woman that bought 50 copies of the book with her own money and gave them away in all hope that someone would learn, and just possibly one person out of that 50 would do something to stop the madness.

As my wife and I left the building into the hot June sun, I thought about Paul’s words about how schools are the last things we still can control, and the woman who hoped that the foundations of the country would be re-learned. I watched the people leaving the Educate Ohio Conference and I saw that the battle lines were right in front of me. This is the stand that must be taken, and it must be defeated before any government reform can precede, this debate over school funding, and education content.

I ran my fingers over the cover of that book and took a moment to be grateful that such a literary achievement could even be published, and purchased, and brought to my hands with the best of intentions, because it’s not too late for an army of thought to gather in order to combat the massive tyranny that has hid itself in complicated legislation and ancient language. Holding that book gave me the feeling of rebirth in America, and that good would triumph over pure evil.

After my speech I thought of several people who had approached me, and as I unlocked my car to get in and drive away I reflected about what I said to them. “What are we to do, how can we stop this massive corruption?”

I told them, “They’ve already lost. They hide like cockroaches because they have to. They can’t talk about the facts because they rely on your emotions to control you. If you do like you’re doing, come to conferences like this, read, and pay attention, you will beat them sooner than you can imagine. Just keep focused, stay with the truth, and give them no place to hide. And you’ll get your country back.”
We’ve already won. The trouble is, the bad guys don’t know it yet because they’re too stupid and arrogant to see that they’ve been caught. All people need is the truth, and it will literally set them free in every way possible.

Rich Hoffman

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

Jimmy McMillan is the Real Deal: in a house of warped mirrors and flashy lighting

Jimmy McMillan is awesome! The radio interview he did on June 17, 2011 with Doc Thompson is classic. In this interview he declared his candidacy for President of the United States. He also tells the story about how in the past when his kids were hungry and he needed money how he went to the strip club and became a stripper working the poles so his children could eat. As outrageous as much of the stuff he says on this interview is, he articulates what most every single person in America feels.

I may not agree with everything Jimmy says. I don’t think it’s the government’s job to do much of anything for people. I don’t want a “daddy” watching over me. But Jimmy is a real person, a passionate person, who truly cares. If he was just after publicity he would have given up long ago.

Read all about Jimmy here:

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

Early campaigns
McMillan’s first run for political office came in 1993, when he ran for Mayor of New York on the Rent Is Too Damn High ticket. In the course of that campaign, McMillan was at one point tied to a tree and doused with gasoline;[5] he would later climb the Brooklyn Bridge and refuse to come down from it unless television stations broadcast his message.[6] He was ultimately disqualified from the ballot for coming 300 petition signatures short of the 7,500 needed to qualify for the general election ballot.

McMillan next ran for governor of New York in 1994 by traveling from his home in Brooklyn through upstate New York to Buffalo on foot, staying in homeless shelters along the way; his original itinerary had him walking back to Brooklyn as well, but an injury in Rochester led to him taking a bus home.[7] When he arrived in Buffalo, the site of the state Democratic convention, McMillan disrupted a speech by incumbent governor Mario Cuomo at the convention and was thrown out because of it.[8] After failing to collect enough signatures to get onto the ballot, he continued in a write-in campaign.

The Federal Elections Commission has a record of McMillan entering himself in the United States presidential election, 1996 as a Republican; McMillan did not get onto any primary ballots.
McMillan was removed from the ballot during the 2000 U.S. Senate election in New York.[9]

McMillan’s political positions contain heavy influence from populist principles. The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle described his 1994 platform as such: “While McMillan said he hopes to be a spokesman for the poor in his bid for Governor, his solutions make him sound more like a Republican.”[7]

• McMillan has come out against federal bailouts, specifically the Wall Street Bailout of 2008 and the Obama Administration’s bailout of General Motors. Referencing the bailout and his presidential run, he said of Obama: “If you don’t do your job right, I am coming at you.”[30]

• McMillan believes that global warming is a natural occurrence that occurs every 15,000 years. He disputes the idea that is caused by man and pollution, saying he “isn’t buying [the] punk science” of Al Gore.

• A supporter of same-sex marriage, McMillan joked in the 2010 gubernatorial debate he would allow marriage between a person and a shoe.[31][32][33]

• McMillan, as founder of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party, is against high rent and property taxes for homeowners. He believes that lowering rent and cutting taxes will ease financial stress and help eradicate hunger and poverty, as well as raise tax revenue. He surmises that reducing rent would “create 3 to 6 million jobs” by freeing up capital to give businesses a chance to hire people. He also favors tax credits for commuters.[34][35]

• McMillan and the party are in favor of writing off all taxes owed to the state, consolidating the rent boards in New York, seizure of unoccupied apartment buildings, reforming the state court system, and free college tuition.[34][35]

• McMillan is in favor of having fixed rate of low rent across America, which would be the same regardless of property value. He states that adjusting the rent for property value “is a bunch of crap” and “a scheme to run out the poor.”[citation needed]

• McMillan supports allowing laws to be influenced by Christianity. His website states that “we need more reliance on the moral laws brought by religion and not limit out goodwill to our neighbors and co-workers to what the law demands alone.” He also spoke of “restoring family values” and making sure that one parent remains at home to watch children.[36]

• McMillan and the party oppose any spending cuts to education or elderly care services.[34][35]

• McMillan has called for investigations of, and has sought to increase awareness of, fraud and Ponzi schemes in the real estate markets.[37]

• Of his potential Republican opponents for the Presidential nomination, he thinks of Newt Gingrich as a “good liar” in the vein of John Edwards and that “people look at him and laugh,” Mitt Romney as a “good-looking guy [that] will keep the ladies from looking at me.” He has also stated that he loves Sarah Palin[38] and holds an extremely negative view of New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.[39]

______________________________________
The problem with Jimmy McMillan is that he is all over the map regarding policy. Traditional conservative platform points are already established and the progressive press has laid out the ground rules. Any Republican that runs for any office knows that they must fit in with some sort of “talking point” within the established rules, the same thing for the Democratic candidate. I could argue with Jimmy for hours that education should be cut, issues around same-sex-marriage and other political sticking points should be other than what he believes, but that’s not the point. The problem is we have a two party system that is built to appease the American public in a controllable way. The reason I like Jimmy McMillan is that he is outside of that control. He is a product of his life’s journey, as a Vet, as a stripper, and long time political activists that boldly threw caution to the wind. He has not had a charmed life of privilege. Nobody has given him a break, a chance, or even a helping hand. Yet he is determined to get out his message, the way a wise man that lives through a lifetime should.

The same media that propped up Anthony Wiener and John Edwards will look at Jimmy McMillan as a joke when in reality it’s the other way around. I’d rather know about the real guy that runs for office than some contrived piece of crap like Anthony Wiener.

Talk about a joke, this is a guy that was the press darling just a few weeks ago. Is he any more credible than Jimmy McMillan? The hecklers are just saying what we all feel. Nobody likes to be lied to and Anthony Wiener did lie to us all, just as President Bill Clinton did.

John Edwards is a complete scum bag. I despise that any money I’ve ever given to the federal government might have found its way to him even in an indirect way. What a waste of tax payer money.

Remember when Ron Blagojevich tried to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat. He got caught on tape selling the seat away to the highest bidder. Ouch.

And of course just like all the radicals Obama has surrounded himself with, when they get caught, he washes his hands of the subject, hangs them out to dry, and changes the subject.

In the screwed up, backward world we live in, the thieves become celebrities and heroes while the good among us are ridiculed, punished and shoved into a corner. Here is Ron Blagojevich’s wife Patty on a reality TV show, an opportunity she would have never had if the media had not propped her up in pursuit of finding a way to redeem the actions of her husband.

So before anyone says that Jimmy McMillan is not the real deal, that he is somehow not a credible candidate for any office, I would suggest that you need to rethink what it is that you are looking for in an elected servant. Do you want the same old liar, cheat, thief, manipulator, and selfish sell-out, or do you want common sense to govern?

I want common sense. I want the least polished candidate that is functioning from true intentions. And more than any of that, I want a guy that has made peace with themselves, and is happy with who they are, because such people are less likely to attempt to use public money to fill the voids in their lives.

That’s why I love Jimmy McMillan. He’s the real deal. He’s broke, but he doesn’t care. He finds a way. I love this interview. He wears an Underarmor shirt with a business jacket………..authentic.

Half of what he says in this next clip, I don’t agree with at all. But he’s right about one big thing, government is corrupt.

I think that once Jimmy had an elected office he is smart enough to figure out what’s right and wrong. I’d trust him well before I’d trust another candidate.

We all get the kind of government we deserve, and if we lack the courage to take a chance with someone outside the mainstream, that is looking at the world through the lens of common-sense and not party politics, then we will suffer under the maneuvers of the corrupt looters of our political system. We’ll continue to wistfully laugh and smile at people like Jimmy McMillan and their honesty like we shrug off the comment of a child while the adults go to the voting booth in the real world and vote for one guy they know will lie to them over another guy they know will lie to them. The choice is yours. You have options, but will you use them?

Rich Hoffman

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

Lakota’s New Superintendent is a DOUBLE DIPPER: It’s all about plunder…I mean kids

All it took was one guy from our No Lakota Levy group to show just the slightest inclination to break away from the main group before the district fluffed their wings and assumed that an opening was available to sneak on a school levy in November. This news came on the heels of Lakota’s new superintendent announcement of Karen Mantia. As I listen to Mantia and her priorities I can’t help but wonder why her primary focus is on our children’s retirement.

She has a reputation supposedly of thinking outside the box, but most of what she’s said so far sounds rather typical. How does she know that retirement will even be an option for the children of tomorrow? With all the life extension methods that are up and coming in science, retirement could be pushed to over 100 years old by then. People may live to well over 100 maybe even 150 years old. Retirement is a baby boomer idea that is quickly proving unrealistic. People just aren’t dying at 70 any more like they used to. So that seems like a strange priority. I would think that if she’s so well-educated, she’d be aware of these scientific advances. But she’s new, maybe she was just nervous and said the first thing that came to her mind.

It looks however that she is a double-dipper. Click here to watch a special report done by Channel 9 on this very issue. She retired from Sycamore in July 31, 2006 – likely after having 30 years of service. If she was 55 when she retried, her retirement is 66% of her salary. If she was making $100K when she retired, she will be bringing in $231K and that’s not counting the other benefits that are undoubtedly in her contract. If that’s the case, that’s a major issue with me, as a tax payer I’m paying for her retirement package, indirectly, but the money still came from somewhere, and now she is being paid by Lakota $165,000 per year, which is more than the last superintendent that I thought was paid too much. Lakota also spent 50K to find her, and she was just up the road. It doesn’t make sense to me.

But I’m happy to give her a chance. She’ll be alright with me until she asks for more money.

As to the article in the Pulse Journal where the Pro Levy people exploded in exhilaration that Mark Sennet showed signs of defecting. Read that article here:

‘No Lakota’ group split on next levy

Some would OK ‘conservative’ levy in November; others don’t want any levy.

Staff Writer 11:32 AM Thursday, June 16, 2011

LIBERTY TWP. — Members of the No Lakota group are in disagreement about whether they would support a levy if Lakota puts one on the ballot.

West Chester Twp. resident Mark Sennet spoke to the board of education Monday, saying the No Lakota group would support a “conservative” levy in 2012 if the board would bypass the election this November.
However, No Lakota member Rich Hoffman, who has typically spoken on behalf of the group, said no discussion had occurred at a meeting about supporting a levy, and he was holding fast to his stance on never supporting a levy.

Hoffman said there may be a split in the group, but he thinks the 50-and-older crowd will stand with him.
Sennet said Lakota officials have made “a valiant effort to try to work and control spending,” but people still need time to recover from the economic crisis. He said he and several developers would be on the board’s side if it waited for November 2012.

“We acknowledge that there were changes made,” he said. “The businesses had to make changes. The citizens had to make changes, and we were glad to see the union and teachers and board agreed to a pay freeze. But if the levy were to pass, then I guess that would be good for the community.”

Board member Ray Murray said he was pleased the business community is recognizing the district’s transparency and how it is listening to the community.

“There are going to be people who are not going to ever say yes to anything, and there’s nothing you can do about it,” he said. “We’ve got to generate more revenue. We can’t survive on a 2005 budget.”
Former For Lakota levy chairwoman Sandy Wheatley said the board and district representatives have been mending fences with those in opposition since the last election.

“Everyone has kind of stepped up to the plate to do their part,” she said. “Now, with all those pieces in place — because this is the only way Ohio has left us in terms of ways to fund schools — I think the community will see this as now it is time for us to put the last piece together by doing our part to support the tax issue. … Perhaps the residents now will be better critical thinkers around if what they are hearing is accurate information.”

Board president Joan Powell said the board will meet for a work session at the end of the month to study an updated five-year forecast and discuss options.

__________________________________________________________________

Mark and some of the other developers in our group have always been about trying to reduce the rates of tax on the properties they are holding that aren’t making any money in a tough economy. Mark just wants to get through a tough year and he’ll probably support a levy. I’ve always known that defection of a few of these guys was inevitable. They were welcome to ride along as long was we all fought for a common cause. We have many supporters of many different degrees of belief.

I do take offense however at Ray Murry’s comments where he says some people, (like me) will never support a levy.

Why would I support a levy when I can see in the light of day that labor costs are the number one problem at Lakota, and the teacher’s unions are the primary culprits that drove up those costs? Why would I think that a silly contract agreement that freezes actual step increases is enough? That’s only a three-year band-aid. Heck, three years ago I remember the teachers union in 2008 threatening a strike demanding higher wages. That wasn’t that long ago and I remember it vividly. When the union did that, I decided that public sector unions had no place in any tax payer organization. So there is no reason to even discuss a levy when so much money at the top is used on union activity. Unions drive up the labor costs not just for a couple of exceptional employees, but for everyone! There are no controls over how much a teacher can make. They are free to get a degree which immediately drives up their salary regardless of whether or not their degree actually contributes to a child’s education, because I don’t think it does. Unions just cost too much, so while they are in place, and I don’t want my money being scrapped off the top by them, why would I support them? If the union was out-of-the-way and the community could see the actual cost of what education costs, then I’d be more inclined to support a levy. I already pay a lot in taxes each year, so it’s not like people who don’t want more taxes on their property don’t support their schools and the kids that go to them. People like me don’t support public unions.

If that is a radical position, too bad, but it’s the facts. People like Mr. Murry are trying to justify why the school board has not been acting as a management protection, because they can’t. They are just figureheads. Lakota will attempt another levy because they have a new superintendent, they think our No Lakota Group is split, and they don’t know how to do anything else. Like Ray says, “We’ve got to generate more revenue. We can’t survive on a 2005 budget.” I’d say, “Why not?”

$10K per child is too high for poor performance, and the United States is not in first place in the world education market, and Mrs. Mantia’s Global Program won’t do anything to help. It’s just another way of dressing up what kids are already supposed to be learning in school.

But the state is cutting funding. The federal government is cutting money too! Hey, folks, get used to it. The gravy train the unions used with all the free money that was lost in bureaucratic nonsense is gone, and the expectation is that local communities are going to cover the difference. No, we won’t be. That’s simply not going to happen.

What’s going to happen is that schools are going to have to cut back their real costs, their wages, or they will become extinct. Property owners are not going to cover the cost of the outrageous expectations the unions have negotiated for themselves. Unions took advantage of government, as they always do, of the fact that nobody had any real skin in the game. When state and federal money is coming, it was easy to divide up the spoils, and they did. As a group, the teachers unions got greedy. Now that is coming to an end as states try to balance their budgets. And property owners do have skin in the game……their property!

So if Lakota chooses to put a levy on the ballot this November, or even in 2012, without cutting the wasted cost in excessive wages schools are enduring, then the No Lakota Group will be there to fight them.

During the last levy attempt of 2010 we held back. I personally had a lot more to throw out, but for the sake of the community, I held back a lot. If Lakota elects to go after the tax payers again with another levy before the teachers union reduces the wages for their top wage earners by 30%, or while superintendents like Karen Manita draws retirement from Sycamore where she retired at exactly 55 years old, then turned around and took another job so she could double-dip, then quit that district to come to Lakota, get a 20K raise then stand in front of everyone and tell the residents of the district is “for the kids.”

Hiding behind kids, exploiting the hard work of property owners to create lucrative jobs for themselves does not necessitate a levy request until the run-away costs are controlled, and if that means getting rid of the union, fine. If that means the union takes a pay cut, but stays put as an organization, fine. If S.B.5 gives school boards the ability to dramatically cut their labor costs, then fine. But it is not acceptable to ask for more money from the tax payer to cover the cost of lost state and federal revenue. We are not picking up the bill when the unions took too much, and they did in 2008. It’s time for them to give back, or move along so we can hire cheaper teachers, that will still keep Lakota one of the best schools in the state. Because failure, of any kind, is not an option.

Rich Hoffman

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

Rich Hart Explains the Strange World of Economics: The Devil is in the details

One of the most perplexing aspects of human culture is economics. Most people do not enjoy economics. Economics is a large, confusing tangle of numbers and obscure facts. This is the reason that thieves, looters and other predatory parasites linger in the midst of economics, because there is money to be made in the obscurity. When the average American would prefer to stand in their garage with their friends or family and watch football or NASCAR on a TV sipping on a beer, they are all too happy to just throw money at the government and hope everything works out. But it doesn’t because waiting in the confusion, in the rules and regulation, are the hands of many devils hoping to pull a fast one over on people everywhere to gain wealth themselves.

Paul Ryan’s economic plan is trying to solve this problem, and save the country from financial ruin. Many like Ryan on the inside understand that the looters who are putting America in the financial situation it is currently in, have little loyalty to the United States. The looters would be just as happy to live under United Nations control on an island in the Bahamas or in Nigeria, so long as they are wealthy. Those are the people who are against Paul Ryan’s economic plan.

I had the pleasure of meeting recently Paul Ryan’s economics professor, Rich Hart of Miami University. I was very impressed with Mr. Hart’s knowledge of Keynesian economics and overall ability to take a very complicated topic and explain it in a relatively simple way. So it was a pleasure to get Mr. Hart on with Doc Thompson to give half a million listeners a basic, free class in economics that some of the brightest in this country could only get by taking Harts class at Miami University, as Paul Ryan had.

In my mind Paul Ryan’s plan doesn’t go far enough. To me, if the goal for a smaller government is desired, then naturally employees of the federal government will be decreased dramatically, which has to happen. As proven with the school budget issues, it is labor costs that are the big budget breaker in public school. Unions took advantage of the housing bubble. But people were willing to vote in favor of higher taxes because the value of their property showed high on paper, so because Americans are generous by nature, they passed their local levies. They didn’t pay attention to the outrageous pay increases the teachers gave themselves, or the police and firefighters. That group of public employee is no different from congressman and city council members that give themselves pay increases. Yet here we are, in a budget crunch, the housing bubble burst so taxpayers have to look at the actual value of their money, and are learning that they’ve been scammed, and the feeling isn’t pleasant.

On top of the high cost of the public employee, there is the cost of corruption. Lobbyists are a major problem. But waste is the worst. Medicare alone costs over $60 billion each year. There is simply no way to balance any kind of budget when so many people are benefiting off the waste and corruption of these major government programs. You can read the source article for the $60 billion in waste here:

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/medicare-fraud-costs-taxpayers-60-billion-year/story?id=10126555

If you want to know who the thieves are, just listen to the people who criticize any kind of reform such as what Paul Ryan proposed. Paul built his plan based on the sound economics of one of the countries finest economics professors from one of the countries finest universities. Are those critics against Ryan’s plan because the economic theory is wrong? No, it’s because the critics are using Keynesian economics to plunder money for themselves and they want the money train to keep on rolling at tax payer expense.

Keynesian economics also called (Keynesianism and Keynesian theory) is a macroeconomic theory based on the ideas of 20th century English economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynesian economics argues that private sector decisions sometimes lead to inefficient macroeconomic outcomes and therefore advocates active policy responses by the public sector, including monetary policy actions by the central bank and fiscal policy actions by the government to stabilize output over the business cycle.[1] The theories forming the basis of Keynesian economics were first presented in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936; the interpretations of Keynes are contentious, and several schools of thought claim his legacy.
Read the rest of that article here:

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

John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was a British economist whose ideas have profoundly affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, as well as the economic policies of governments. He greatly refined earlier work on the causes of business cycles, and advocated the use of fiscal and monetary measures to mitigate the adverse effects of economic recessions and depressions. His ideas are the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian economics, as well as its various offshoots.

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

Keynesian economics does not work as explained by Rich Hart. It can now be officially declared that Keynesian economics is the economics of socialism which Britain was experimenting with under thinkers like Keynes. Public officials like Obama, and those who work in modern government know that Keynesian economics does not work, yet they support it because they either desire the results of a collapsing economy, or they have no stomach for the change in the status quo.

This isn’t hard to imagine. Most people work in an occupation where they know things are wrong, but they proceed on because they don’t want to upset the applecart of their income. In politics, we’ve made public service so lucrative, so highly paid, that politicians will lie, steal, cheat, manipulate, whatever it takes to keep their job. They’ll do this because they tend to be low quality people to begin with, and could not in their wildest dreams perform a private sector job and make as much money as they can in government. Look at Anthony Weiner and how he’s holding onto his job with both hands. He’s doing that because he simply couldn’t work anywhere else. Who’d hire him? A lobbyist? Maybe one of them, but he couldn’t work for any legitimate company. And he knows it. Weiner like the rest of his co-workers in congress and the senate know that Keynesian economics is their ticket to salvation and the good people who pay their salaries don’t want to deal with the complicated nature of economics, so the scam is never dealt with, and the looters know it.

If there is ever to be any real reform in the United States, American’s have to take some interest in economic activity. Citizens need to push to simplify the terminology so they can understand economics, they need to force the budgets to become smaller so waste and corruption cannot be so easily hidden in the details, and this is something that must happen, if any preservation of America is to take place.

So go back and listen to Rich Hart again, and again and begin your economic education so that you can begin to understand the forces that are working against you and why, because it will take more than one or two people to fix this problem. It will take a majority of the nation. This is why the looters fear the Tea Party, because if the nation begins to pay attention, the game is over for them. They’ve already made their bets that people will openly chose to stay asleep. Only time will tell what fate delivers.

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

	vwells34 on Where Evil Lives in Butler Cou…
	Rich Hoffman on The Blurry Bigfoot in Ohio: Pa…
	Anonymous on The Blurry Bigfoot in Ohio: Pa…
	Anonymous on The Mysterious London Stone: S…
	Anonymous on ‘Prehistoric Worlds Or,…
	Rich Hoffman on ‘Prehistoric Worlds Or,…
	Anonymous on ‘Prehistoric Worlds Or,…
	Anonymous on ‘Forbidden Archaeology…
	Rich Hoffman on Amanda Ortiz the Termite of We…
	Anonymous on Amanda Ortiz the Termite of We…

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: