Tag: Senate Bill 5

Don’t Wait for Superman, Look in the Mirror: KASICH HOSTS A STATEWIDE PARTY!

At the Republican Headquarters in Lebanon Thursday May 19, 2011 a unique event occurred. I was skeptical of this event at first, but once concluded, I will admit to a level of enchantment that is unprecedented in these modern times. Concerned citizens looking for options in education funding and content issues gathered to listen to the Governor of Ohio, John Kasich speak from Cleveland at a statewide showing of the film Waiting for Superman.

I wasn’t sure how such a thing would be done. I knew the technology was available. I’ve been involved in many conference calls for business meetings, but what Kasich was trying to do was unique.

I sat down in the lobby of the Republican Headquarters, a small converted house just behind the historic Golden Lamb. It’s an older building unpretentious in it’s nature. Several of my friends were there popping popcorn and eating pizza. At 6 PM a laptop on a desk in the corner played Kasich live over the internet as he introduced the film Waiting For Superman, a film made by the same people who did An Inconvenient Truth which made Al Gore so famous. Kasich spoke about the need for education reform and said that this film, made by liberals, touched him so deeply that he felt compelled to act. He also added that he didn’t like to speak after watching the film but said that we’d all meet back online to have a discussion. Then he said hit play, and enjoy the movie.

There were about 25 of us crammed in the lobby sitting in chairs and watching a widescreen television that was playing the movie, which follows a number of children on their quest for a voucher school. The film explained how devastated public school had become through union influence and kids weren’t learning what they needed to. There were many charts about how America is falling behind the rest of the world in education and there simply isn’t any reason for it. America is nationally spending close to 10K per student, yet the results have not shown up in the kids.

The movie was sad. It’s a film I had wanted to see for a long time, but just didn’t take the time to view. It’s on Netflix, so if you haven’t seen it yet, make it a point to do so. I truly felt sorry for the parents that had children crying because they weren’t able to hit the lottery, which is how kids get into these crowded schools. It’s amazing that these charter schools are so crowded, that there is such a demand for them, because public school is free, and is supposed to take care of this issue without the extra expense. But like anything that’s good, and like everything that’s government run, there are vast discrepancies. What’s good is driven by passionate people who care, and are able to see beyond the headlights, visionaries, and other creative people. Government produces complacency, mediocrity, and sheer dullness. The two different styles and their results are grossly evident in the film.

As I watched the closing moments of the film, the popcorn that was freshly popped just hours before still filled the room with its festive aroma. A screen door that was the threshold to the small building was blowing open and closed in a gentle evening wind as the sun was setting quickly outside. I watched traffic rolling aimlessly down the street outside as the credits ran and nobody spoke for several minutes, computing their emotions. I thought of the people driving those cars, how most of them were so easily manipulated, because they are too busy to think. They are the first type of person that believes the Lakota Administration when they proclaim that their recent contract negotiation with the LEA was done in good faith, and not the threat of S.B.5. Those people driving down the road can’t see the shell game being played against them, not because they are too stupid, but they aren’t willing to deal with the problem. They do like they do most things in their life, they throw money at it and hope the problems go away. Their car breaks down a lot, they throw money at a brand new one. Their neighbor gets new gutters that direct the water away from their homes, so they go buy new gutters. Their neighbor buys a new television, so they buy a new television. They work too much, they are on their second marriages and have step children that need educated, but they don’t truly care for their step children, because the children remind them of a previous spouse, so they avoid the children psychologically. They instead count on the schools to fill the emotional gap so they throw money at the schools.

At the end of the credits Kasich was back on live from Cleveland speaking from the laptop. He went on to perform an hour of questions and answers about his views on education reform. Educators, school board members and other concerned citizens spoke in the town hall-style meeting and I thought Kasich did a great job of opening himself up. I couldn’t recall any governor of any state attempting with such sincerity to do anything close to what Kasich was doing, let alone tackle the controversial issue of education with such direct frankness.

Around 9 PM everything wrapped up, I grabbed a handful of popcorn and headed back to the car with my wife. On the way home we talked about the experience. She looked at me as the darkened countryside passed by outside the window. “I understand with clarity what the problem is.”

“You do?” I asked.

“Yes, I felt sorry for those mothers, but the problem is many of those women have forgotten to be mothers. They had other options. Looking to someone else to educate their children is asking for a disaster.”

I thought about it. She was right. She is a woman who took a lot of criticism while we were raising our kids because she took a very active role in their lives. When we were first married we made the decision to have her not work, so when we had kids she would be able to commit herself toward their development. We didn’t want to do daycare. We didn’t want to rely on a family member, because there was a certain vision toward life I wanted them to have, and I wanted a mother there to make sure they got it. We didn’t raise our kids waiting for superman. We decided to be superman. I did the extra work to make sure my wife was free to raise my kids. And she did the extra work to make sure it happened even though society ridiculed her for it. Here was a woman who could have been a professional model, here was a woman who had a load of brains and was book smart, where school was easy for her. But to society, she was wasting her life in sacrifice to her children. She was giving up a career and everything that comes with it so she could be cooped up in a house with a bunch of little kids. To society, that decision was tragic.

My opinions on this matter where settled when I was very young. My mother was the kind of woman everyone wanted for a mom. She did all the things that kids fantasize about in having an ideal mom. She was always there for a little treat. She was always there to hand out a band-aid. Dinner was always ready around at 5:30 pm when Dad came home. She was a room mom in school that would make treats for every kid in my class. She did all the little things that are so important while children are still developing their consciousness from those tender ages of 1 to 12. My mom was the kind of woman who would give me books that she’d write little things in that I still have, and I may not read the book right then, but within the next year or two, I would. She still does things like that, just the other day while my dad and her were vacationing in Hilton Head, she brought me back a new book mark that had pirate skulls all over it in 3D. She wrote a little message on the back for me to remember, which I will.

For me, I was done cooking at age 12, because I had a dedicated mother, and a grandmother that was equally dedicated. I had a stable father, and a good positive family environment. It worked wonderfully. All the kids my mother had turned out well. Nobody has any deep psychological problems. We all handle stress well, and are successful at the art of living, not just financially, but emotionally as well. It’s not a surprise. It’s not a secret formula. All it took was a mom. As a man, I don’t have a single insecurity. Not a single inferiority complex. I don’t have a single doubt, or fear. I didn’t get that by age 12, but the foundation was set. The rest I had to do myself and that didn’t get completed till I raised my own kids. Because when you are raising kids, you may not fear for yourself, but you do fear for them.

I married a woman who wanted to commit herself in the same way to my own kids. That’s what I looked for in a woman, someone who would be dedicated to building a family. Someone that would always be there for my kids, someone who would make actual birthday cakes, and not buy them at Kroger, someone who would buy my kids little treats while they are out shopping, so the children would have something fun to greet them when they came home from school. I wanted a woman who would drive them to school everyday so my kids wouldn’t have to ride a school bus, because I remembered what happened to little girls on the school bus in grade school, and since I had girls, I wasn’t going to put them through the humiliation. I didn’t want them to accept humiliation. When the school system crossed the line and didn’t teach my kids what I thought they should be learning, or they didn’t teach enough, we pulled the kids out of school and taught them ourselves. I wanted a woman that would do that kind of thing, that would buy my kids books and would read to them every night.


As the countryside went black I looked at my wife. She had done all those things over a 20 year period. She endured ridicule from family members and friends that most people never experience, because most people don’t go against the grain as furiously as she did. Only in hind-sight can those same family members see the benefits. Only in hind-sight do we understand what we fought so hard for. Our children are evidence of all the hard work. They are brilliant and good in every way a parent hopes for.

We have occasional disagreements like when I recently argued with my youngest about applying to college in London. I told her those socialists would attempt to reprogram her and she’d be too far away from home to get her grounding again. “Oh, dad, I’m not a weak-minded fool.”

My kids don’t lack courage. They are secure. And there isn’t any problem that they think they can’t handle, at any level. Why is that? Because they had a fantastic mother.

In the movie, Waiting for Superman, I realized my wife had hit the core of the issue. Those mothers, crying to get their children in a charter school and away from the apathy of public school were making a fundamental error in raising their children. They were looking for the school to do the job of the mother. That is the fatal error.

Not everyone reading this can take pride in having such mothers as I describe. We are suffering through a hundred years of progressive brain-washing. I know how hard it was on my wife and me, so I understand why people give up, or don’t even get started on the commitment. However, no amount of money can be thrown at a situation to fix education. It cannot be the job of a school of any kind, especially a government-run entity, to replace the parent. There is no substitute for a mother, especially a good one.

My advice to people is don’t wait for superman to come and save you. Become superman and save yourself. If you really want your kids to have a good life, fight for lower taxes so you children can keep more of the money they make. And spending time with your children is a lot more productive than spending money. There is no substitute as much as lost progressive souls wish upon a star of illusion. Their legacy has left mothers trying to be fathers, fathers trying to be mothers, and fathers divorcing mothers and mothers marrying other fathers of other children while those fathers marry new mothers. Progressives drool over the hope that they can fill the social destruction with a teacher that we are asking too much of, what they don’t see is that it is their policies that created the mess to start with. Progressives are responsible for the whole mess. They are what destroyed the American family. They are what have destroyed education. They are what have left us taxed beyond existence, the blood is on their hands as millions of young people grow less intelligent the older they get.

I know a very bright-eyed young girl of about 7 that is full of hope and dreams. Everyone when they first met her thought “this is a young girl that will be something.” But the closer she gets to junior high, the closer she gets to older kids that are “giving up,” because they see where their lives are going in their messed up parents, the light in this young girl’s eyes is dimming. I told my wife that in a few years, the light will go out all together.

“Why, we must do something,” she said.

“You can’t help her,” I said. “You can only help your own children, your nieces or nephews. You can be kind and offer yourself as a mentor, but ultimately those kids will only be as good as their parents.”

She whiffed in frustration, but she understood what I meant. We both drove into the darkness of Monroe, passed the Hustler of Hollywood store and noticed that it was full on a Thursday night. We both knew what the other was thinking as we continued west back to our home. Government tried to replace the family and they failed, and public school is the evidence of that failure. More money won’t fix that problem until we fix our desire to have strong families again, as a society. Because it all starts with a mom and a dad. And if the mom and a dad don’t make it, the kids will suffer. No amount of money can wash away the guilt of what those parents put their children through, even though countless parents hope and pray that the sins of their lives can be purchased from the souls of their children. We now understand that it is impossible.

Become Superman, don’t wait for him. The greatest gift you can give a child is to give them someone to look up to, to emulate. Money won’t do it. Only what’s in your soul will work, and you can’t hide that with material goods. You have to be superman to the core of your being.

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

Changing a Flat Tire in the Wasteland: Those who take away S.B.5 will be responsible

We have a real problem. Public officials have paid themselves too much. They don’t want to surrender any of that funding now that they’ve looted our tax money for everything that has been sent in their direction, so their solution is to increase taxes to pay for their “public service.” This is true of mayors, city council members, coroners, teachers, superintendents, virtually every public official. Listen to Doc Thompson of 700 WLW talk to a Lance Burton from Channel 9 about their latest investigation into public employee salary problems.

Toward the end of this broadcast I came on with Doc to give an update to the new contract concession made by the Lakota School System with the LEA. The LEA still needs to vote on the concession, but the process has started.

This is one of the key reasons that Senate Bill 5 was passed by the Ohio House and Senate and signed by Governor Kasich just over a month ago. Public employee costs have sky-rocketed in recent years. There is no management control of the public’s money, and the only solution those public officials can come up with is higher taxes. This is the primary reason school districts all over Ohio are failing.

They all have one thing in common; their labor costs are too high, and when those labor costs are analyzed, it is clear that the public officials have paid themselves 30%, or more, above the average wage of the non-public sector employee. It was their lack of discipline that led to the budget shortfalls, not a shortage of cash supplied by the community. Public officials seem to all share the same mentality, tax more to pay for their big spending.

Look at all the police cars escorting Joe Biden to a fundraiser for his boss. Seems like a waste of money to me.

This is certainly Todd Portune’s solution to the stadium shortfalls in Cincinnati. Portune is a commissioner of Hamilton County. He was warned years ago of the potential problems with the stadium deals, but everyone just kicked the can down the road. Now it’s time to pay up, so Todd wants a sales tax on the fans, as if the cost for a professional sports ticket wasn’t already high enough. Todd does this because he doesn’t understand any other option, tax and spend. Or spend then tax. Same difference.

It is on the back of all this news that a recent Quinnipiac poll of 1,370 voters reported that 54% of Ohioians support repealing S.B.5 as opposed to 36% that support keeping it the law of the land.

I am proudly one of those 36%. I think S.B.5 is the only hope for the future of the state. It is the only tool on the horizon that will allow citizens to get these out-of-control costs under control. It is because of the passage of that bill that Lakota and the LEA even met at the table in record time and made a deal to eliminate the step increases. It is the LEA through the OEA (Ohio Education Association) that decided that S.B.5 would destroy their grip on politics and communities so they made a concession now to take the edge off. Because not only do they seek a new levy in November, but they also want to put on a softer face so enough Ohioans will see things their way and vote to repeal S.B.5. But consider that without S.B.5 as a threat, nobody would be talking. The LEA, the OEA or any government employee wouldn’t even consider negotiating. They haven’t in the past, and based on the rates of pay they have given themselves under the generosity of Ohio’s communities they won’t in the future.

I can only conclude that of that 54% those are the people that either work in government or want to. They are the type of people who look to some “jack pot” to solve their problems in life. They are those types of people that crave a “government job” because of the high compensation and security that is unheard of in the private sector. They are the reason that having too many people work for government is dangerous. Having a government that is too big means democracy, or even a representative republic dies, because people will not vote against themselves, and if government is the way they make their living, they aren’t going to cut their own throat, even if that is what’s best for the state or nation.

It really comes down to this, if S.B.5 is repealed, and everything goes back to the way things were, then the situation we are seeing, where schools are going bankrupt, cities are struggling to avoid bankruptcy, and deficits are percolating in every government position for lack of tax money, yet the society paying the taxes are already spending 50% of all their income on taxes in some for or another, and it’s not enough, only bad things can happen. Those bad things will happen soon, before the 2012 presidential election. And when those bad things happen, if the state of Ohio does not have S.B.5 to protect ourselves, Ohio will fail miserably. It will push out its residence and business community with excessively high taxes to meet the greedy public employee expectations, or those public employees will bankrupt the whole system. And the devastation will be on the backs of those 54% who voted to repeal S.B.5.

It won’t be on my back or the back of the 36%. We are trying to fix the situation. Those who want to take away S.B.5 essentially want to take away the tool we have to fix the problem.

Imagine that you were trying to change a flat tire. And our funding problem is flat. People can’t afford higher taxes so the air is out of the tire. So you want to change the old tire to a new tire, one that doesn’t require so much air to fill it. Air of course is the taxes we pay. So we jack up the car to change that tire. Senate Bill 5 is the jack we use to raise the car and replace the flat tire with a new one. And along comes a bunch of people that want the tire to stay flat, because they don’t want the car to move. They want to be stuck, because they benefit from the car being stuck. So they take away the jack.

Without the jack, how do we change the tire? You can’t. The tire will remain flat.

That’s what’s at stake. There are a lot of people like me that are willing to change the tire so we can move the car down the road. But if the car stays stuck, and stranded, broke and useless, it will be because of the fools that took away the tools to fix the car.

If that happens, the blame will be solely on the backs of the idiots that took away our jack. (S.B.5) People like me will survive. I’ll do like a lot of productive people will do; I certainly won’t look to open a new restaurant or business. I may not even want to live in the state. I might move to another state like Texas or Florida that doesn’t have such high taxes. Or I might just do the minimum to live so I don’t get taxed too much, because what’s the use in doing the extra work if some scumbag, politician is just going to pad their pockets with my hard work. Meanwhile, the public officials striving to do almost nothing to earn a six figure income all off tax money will find themselves far worse underfunded than they do now. And it will be their entire fault. They will be kings of their own wasteland, a kingdom of their own bankrupt making left scratching their heads and crying about how they arrived there. That’s when I’ll laugh in their face and remind them that they took the jack, so the car couldn’t move. Now they are stuck and rotting along the side of the road in a wasteland of parasites and will only have themselves to blame.

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

Lakota Hopes to Freeze your Memory: The LEA and the school board freeze step increases

BRIAN COMBS OF 700 WLW ANNOUNCES A CONTRACT CONCESSION AT LAKOTA SCHOOLS

I’m convinced that today the majority of Americans want what those first Americans wanted: a better life for themselves and their children; a minimum of government authority. Very simply, they want to be left alone in peace and safety to take care of the family by earning an honest dollar and putting away some savings. This may not sound too exciting, but there is something magnificent about it. On the farm, on the street corner, in the factory and in the kitchen, millions of us ask nothing more, but certainly nothing less, than to live our own lives according to our values—at peace with ourselves, our neighbors and the world.

Ronald Reagan, 1976

Matt Mayer of the Buckeye Institute talks to Doc Thompson about union indoctrination in public school. This is a big problem lead by the OEA and the LEA. Listen to that very informative interview here:

The 1,190 member Lakota teacher’s union is set to vote on approving a contract that will eliminate step increases which will be a true “freeze” on wages, which is considered by many to be an unprecedented move. Many consider such a “sacrifice” by the union as a reasonable concession. As I watch the union’s movements closely, what they are doing is showing that government doesn’t need S.B.5 to create an environment of reasonable negotiation. They are using this negotiating strategy to point to in the fall when they are going to attempt to repeal S.B.5, and proclaim that the unions have been reasonable and worked with the school board.

The only reason they are doing this now is because it has now become evident that the unions have pushed things too far. Teachers are only working 9 months a year, 8 hours a day with some take home work on occasion, and they are being paid about 30% more than everyone else who pays their wages and are working longer hours each day and working 12 months out of a year. People are aware of the scam, and now the teachers union knows that S.B.5 could end their grip on local politics, so they are doing the only thing they can do, and that’s attempt to put on a softer face and appear to be “working” with the communities.

My opinion on the step increase removal from the contract is that it is a nice gesture that is about a year and a half too late in Lakota. It’s probably about 5 years too late in economic reality all across the state. Teachers showed no restraint in negotiating their contracts with lap-dog school board members, leaving the average wage at Lakota to be over 63K per year. About half of that 1,190 member organization makes over 65K per year going as high as six figures for a teacher. (For a review of what step increases are listen to this broadcasts between Darryl Parks and I from way back in September of 2010.)

The trouble is that these teachers believe they are entitled to this amount of money because they have, “seniority,” “specialty certifications,” and various degrees. They have the same mentality as those that have grown to accept Medicare and Social Security as “entitlements” instead of calling them what they really are, and that’s welfare programs for the elderly. Politicians for years have been successful in convincing Americans that they have a “right” to other people’s money regardless of how much they’ve paid into the system. And history shows, especially in regard to Medicare that if the money is on the table, coming from the invisible hands of tax payers, then there is no shortage of people willing to over-charge for services, or to go to the doctor for every ailment, because they can. And doctors are all too willing to prescribe medication to a patient to help out the pharmacist, and to help his patient. After all, all it takes is a doctor’s note to get out of work, so the doctor wins both ways. He helps a colleague make a few bucks, and he gets to get the patient out of some work so everybody wins. That’s what you get out of Medicare. It’s a big pot of money that everyone wants to stick their hand in and fill their pockets. Being human nature, it’s all too tempting to take more than is needed, because it’s there. So the more you put in front of people, the more they’ll want to take. Using Medicare and Social Security as an example, of the $31,406 Washington has spent per household in 2010 $9,949 will go to just Social Security and Medicare. And it was like that from the very beginning. This quote from the Harford Courant, July 2nd 1969. “Social Security officials conceded Tuesday that the cost of Medicare and Medicaid are running way over original estimates.” The more we put in, the more thieves there are to take it out.

This is what teachers have done. Communities have put a lot of money in their community pots by way of property taxes, and teachers using tenure, step up and have taken as much as they could carry. The newer teachers are all too happy to wait in line behind those with seniority because their leaders in the unions have made good on their promise that if the money ever gets too low, they’ll just go back to the community and refill the pot. They do this because they believe they are entitled to the money. They believe that their degrees, or their years of service make them “qualified” for a certain amount of money. Well, their degrees don’t mean anything to me. Why do we need a teacher with a doctorate, or even a masters to teach 1st or 2nd grade. I’ve seen home-school moms do a better job in their kitchens. So why should a school district have to pay wages that are excessively high for a teacher that is over-qualified? The teacher with their hand in the pot will say they “earned” the “right” to that amount of money because they did the work at college. Well, I didn’t ask those teachers to go to college. I didn’t ask them to get a master’s degree. Those types of deals were made by crooked politicians with OEA lobbyists to create laws that allowed those classifications of teachers to take more of the pot away quicker. It’s a little scam they’ve worked out in Columbus. I didn’t agree to be robbed of my property tax to participate in such a foolish system. That kind of deal was done behind my back and I don’t like it!

In the private sector the teacher would be paid based on the value of their service, not some arbitrary figure come up by politicians from 30,000 feet that haven’t a clue what education is supposed to be. They are only in office so they can take from another pot provided by the tax payer. These people with their hands in the pots, teachers unions, politicians and the like are simply moochers. They rely on a producer, such as myself, and most likely a majority of the people reading this article, to put money into that pot. I have no respect for a moocher.

Is moocher too strong of a word? What other word is there? That’s what they are. The OEA is doing what kids do when they play house, they are coming up with a set of rules that they negotiated with themselves, and values that they created for the confined little world that exists only to them in their bedrooms. They are moochers because they don’t contribute anything useful to society. Parents are paying these people to watch their kids while the parents work. And the moochers have invented all kinds of titles and regulations to make their little game seem relevant. They are doing the job that parents are too busy to do themselves.

When my kids were going to school, my rule was that if the teacher cared enough about teaching as I did, I let my kids listen to that teacher. There were a few teachers that my kids had that were very passionate, and I admired those people. Not because they had a degree, a title, or tenure. But because they had passion for life. For the rest, the majority, that just lived an idealized life, just waiting for school to let out for the summer, that took every personal day they could, and was just doing their time waiting by the pot of taxpayer money to come available so they could reach in and take all they could, I told my kids to watch out for people like that. Watch out for sinners dressed as “saints” I’d tell them. Be careful of the con artist with the smile on their face waving you into someplace they want you to go. I warned them about such teachers with the same caution that I’d warn them of a strange old man trying to get a young girl into their car. Whether the danger is physical or mental makes little difference to me. “Watch out what people try to pour into your minds. For every negative that someone tries to give you, you must off-set it with four positives. If someone tries to give you an ignorant thought, cleanse yourself with a book before you go to sleep. The process of reading will help your mind work out corrupt thoughts the same as water assists in the digestion of food.” That’s the kind of talk I had with my own kids. And my advice to parents and children everywhere is the same. “Be careful what you let people tell you, especially moochers like the OEA that are only out to build a financial empire for themselves with money from the pot we created.”

So what are the teachers at Lakota giving up in voting away their “step increases?” They are agreeing to not take away money the community hasn’t even put into the pot yet. They are agreeing to keep all they’ve taken already, but not to take too much of what we put in next time, since the pot is empty again, after the community just filled it.

We all know the answer to this. We’d tell our children who drank too much Kool-Aid and came back to the kitchen crying after the pitcher was emptied, “I want more.” We’d say to them as reassuring as possible, “You should have thought about that before you drank it all up.”

What the Lakota teacher’s union is essentially saying is “we’ll keep drinking just as much Kool-Aid as we always have, but we won’t ask for more, so long as you keep the pitcher full” Now it’s our responsibility to tell the children, “we can’t afford to give you so much Kool-Aid. You need to drink less.”

Rich Hoffman

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

Kasich and the Casinos: The many levels of EVIL all at war for justification

Governor Kasich has drawn a lot of unnecessary controversy to himself by standing in the way of the casino deal in Ohio where voters approved the casinos in Ohio by a slim margin. The casino lobby for a long time solicited Ohio as a possibility for gambling, and for many years I took great pride in Ohio for being a place were gambling wasn’t accepted.

I believe Kasich is legally wrong in what he is doing, since the will of the voter has spoken. However, I can’t say that I blame him, as a resident of Ohio, for not wanting to see casinos in Ohio.

I can only speak for myself, but I suspect Governor Kasich isn’t too far off from my thinking, based on his actions. So I’ll offer my opinion on gambling in Ohio as a possible window into the ethical problem Governor Kasich, in his position might be struggling with.

The Constitutional amendment for casino gambling has been floating around for a number of years. If you look at the chart below, you’ll notice that essentially the same constitutional amendment was dangled in front of voters from 2006, 2008 before finally being passed in 2009. So the vote in 2009 wasn’t a pure vote, done with the overwhelming approval of the Ohio voter. This vote was done just like school levies, where if the amendment didn’t pass the first time, then voters would just see it again a few months or a few years later. The vote in 2009 was passed by beating down the voter, attempting till those opposed just gave up realizing that bigger and bigger waves were on the horizon, and resistance was futile.

2009 Constitutional
Amendment Casino gambling Passed

2008 Referendum Payday lending Failed

2008 Constitutional
Amendment Casino gambling Failed

2006 Constitutional
Amendment Minimum wage Passed

2006 Constitutional
Amendment Casino gambling Failed

2006 Constitutional
Amendment Pro-smoking measure Failed

I see the state looking toward casinos as a desperate ploy by bankrupt souls to cover costs they don’t have the courage to address any other way but by throwing money at the situation. The same people who foolishly conceive that by spending money on school levies, tend to also support infinite amounts of money poured into education, police departments, fire departments and all public services, because in their limited perspective of the world, spending money equals success. These are the same idiots that believe that spending money at a craps table, or by playing dice, or pulling the lever on a slot machine, a person can win.

It is these types of minds that have led our civilization to the condition it’s in. To understand that world, study a casino. Here in Cincinnati, the closest major casino is Hollywood Casino’s in Lawrenceburg Indiana. At first glance, this is a neat place. The parking is cheap. The drinks are cheap. The lobby is extravagant. They have an excellent, all you can eat Egyptian Temple themed buffet that is spectacular. On the way into this palace where the hotel rooms are lavish, and quite impressive, designed to lure the drunk gambler or the illicit fly-by-night lovers to relish in some nocturnal sin, there are giveaways for Harley Davidson motorcycles and other “free gifts” that are designed like insect traps to emit pleasurable thoughts only to trap the poor creature into the actual ambush. The trap is the casino itself, where a smoky room and chaotic noise greets the would-be-gambler. Once inside the temptations of great wealth lures the player to a table, or a slot where the hopes and dreams of a lifetime are placed in the fate of the randomness of dice, cards or a computer selection.

I stood in this place and watched players for well over an hour. My lack of participation was alarming to many of the employees that watched me like a coyote roaming a hen house. What I witnessed in this trap was a decadent place that feeds off the ignorance of the players. I had heard stories for years of co-workers, and some of my own employees that had gambling problems. One woman is a little black woman who was a friend of mine named, “Fuzz.” Well, Fuzz every week when I gave her a check on Friday would proclaim, “time to hit them slots!” She looked forward all week to those slot machines. She spent all her money on those things. She was perpetually broke, and bought most of her attire at dollar stores. She was even on some government assistance even though she had a full-time job. I liked Fuzz, but I felt sorry for her. I’ve known one too many people like her. When I was younger I worked with a guy named Sonny who was addicted to the race tracks in Lebanon. Sonny spent all his money on the tracks, went through at least two wives that I know of, and ended up in a trailer in South Lebanon before meeting a dismal end due to alcohol related illnesses.

Fuzz and Sonny are just the bottom feeders. They represent a modestly small percentage of gamblers in casinos, and it could be argued that if there weren’t any casinos, these self-destructive people would find other way to destroy themselves. But casinos certainly take advantage of self-destructive people. And they by their nature encourage people to become self-destructive.

U.S.50 that Hollywood Casino is built off of used to be a country road leading into downtown Lawrenceburg. As promised by developers, the casino did bring some business to the surrounding area. There are some car dealerships, restaurants, and some shopping complexes, the same ones that seem to go in wherever large groups of people are brought together. One of the fears when Lawrenceburg first brought casinos to the neighborhood was that crime would go up, prostitution would sky rocket and there’d be drug dealers on every corner. Well, that was a bit dramatic. At first glance, Lawrenceburg’s economy did improve. They have retail there they wouldn’t have otherwise because of the casinos, and the prostitution and drug use are like they are everywhere else hidden from view. But, I have family out in Indiana and used to travel U.S. 50 a few times a year to visit them and I remember when the bridge for I-275 was being built by the power plant, so that’s how far back my memory goes. Back in those days, a strip joint was a far-away place. Newport was known as Little Vegas back then and there all the derelict men that wanted fast women and all the things organized crime provided was in some far away land. Not anymore. Concepts Show Club offers topless dancing right in downtown Lawrenceburg, there have been prostitution busts in a few massage parlors, which is carefully swept under the rug, because the local politicians love having the extra tax money to throw at government services, because as we can see historically, politicians use tax money to buy votes, and when there is more tax money collected, there is more money to buy votes. Casinos are simply disguised taxes. They are ways to pull more money away from “working people” so more money can be used to buy votes.

For the casino proposed in Cincinnati there are already discussions about having a strip club near that casino. I remember when Larry Flynt first brought Hustler of Hollywood to Cincinnati and all the controversy over putting that business in Monroe, and people were up in arms about having immoral business in Cincinnati.

15 years later, Hustler of Hollywood up in Monroe is always busy, all hours of the day. My wife and I have been in there, and I really don’t see the big deal. But apparently a lot of people love porn. But is Monroe a better place because of it? No. Monroe has struggled. They have the big discount outlet mall, and Traders World, but no major business has gone in around Monroe. No big new companies. Only little retail centers.

That is the same model in Las Vegas, Vegas is shows, restaurants, hotels, but how about those manufacturing jobs that actually employee people, not in service jobs, but production jobs? Why do people go to Vegas? Prostitution is legal in Nevada. So they go there for that. They go there to gamble, and maybe catch a glimpse of Area 51. But do employees go Vegas to produce, or to sell themselves?

That requires a different definition of employment. Does the employee get paid to make something, or do they simply entertain for the sake of amusement. For instance, a grill cook at Wendy’s makes a burger so he exchanges his time and contributions to the construction of a hamburger. But what about a casino owner, what are they producing? They are producing jobs, but what kind of jobs? The product a casino produces is hope. The cocktail waitresses do deliver the drinks from the bar, where the bartender makes the drink. But the function of both is to diminish the senses of the customer so they spend more money on hope. And those are the types of jobs casinos bring to a community. Yes, they do create jobs, but they do so by being a parasite to the community they serve. Casinos are like sex to what production oriented business is to romance. Sex is quick and easy. Romance can take a whole evening or even a weekend. Sex is tearing off the cloths of your mate on a beach in some exotic location after four or five drinks at the bar. Romance is having your mate go out to dinner without her underwear, and letting her know through the evening that you know it, but you don’t touch her. You go to dinner, you go to your movie, you behave respectfully showing restraint, then when it comes time to do the deed, you make it last for a couple of hours. However in the minds of some, sex and romance is the same thing and these are the same people who think casino business and regular business is the same thing. They are not.

Most business owners I know would prefer not to have strip clubs and casinos near their businesses because they provide temptations to employees to take too long at lunch, and to waste their money. An employee with empty pockets and a desperate heart is an unreliable employee. They cost an employer in thousands of uncalculated ways. It’s one thing when a casino is in some out-of-the-way place, because it takes effort and planning to get there, because casinos are subconsciously looked upon as places of low quality. The casino in Davenport Iowa when I visited that city years ago cheapened in my eyes the entire state, because it said to me that the state was desperate for money, that the political leaders took the cheap sex route no different than porn as a way to solve their financial problems. I thought the same thing in Kalamazoo Michigan when I saw casinos there. It said to me, “I’m desperate for money, so desperate that we seek to drain every last dime out of our local economy and the people that support it.” And we all feel the same way about Vegas. It’s cheap, sleazy, and speaks of raw sex. That’s why it’s so popular for bachelor parties to go to Vegas. Men don’t go there to be good. They go there to be bad.

So why would we want casinos in Cincinnati or anywhere in Ohio? Why would casinos attract big business to Ohio? Have casinos attracted large firms to Las Vegas? Is Microsoft and Silicone Valley seeking to relocate to Vegas? How about all the big car companies of the world? Are they flocking to such regions?

No. People who like casinos like to go to them, but they don’t want the sins of their illicit behavior to be a constant reminder to the thousands of dollars they lost, or the girl they bought to give them a “hand job” in some dark corner of a strip joint. They want to go back to their homes at the end of the night, far away from their sins and sleep with there nice wife, while their children sleep safely in the next room, far away from their improprieties.

So casino planners that speak of urban development being solved by casinos are extremely short-sighted. If anything, downtown Cincinnati would become even more of a temporary tourist destination. Why would residents want to move next to a casino in a multi-million dollar real-estate development? They won’t. People who can afford such things will still fly to Vegas, so they don’t have to stare their sins in the face every day from the balcony of their homes.

So if I were the Governor and I knew that the constitution of Ohio had been beat into submission by thousands of weak souls what didn’t put it on the ballot just once, but three times since 2006 and I knew that the casino deal is a very progressive plan to implement on the state, I’d drag my feet too, or I would at least not make it easy for them. I wouldn’t want those businesses desiring to bring casinos to Ohio to feel comfortable with using Ohio and its people to just rob and loot the wealth of our communities, without making them jump through hoops to test their sincerity. But that’s the problem with fairness. The right thing is to show equal opportunity to all business no matter if you like it or not. The marketplace needs to decide what succeeds or fails, and government has no place in the regulation of such things even if the business is evil and vile.

So whatever Kasich’s motives are, he shouldn’t be using regulation to discourage casinos from setting up shop in Ohio. But I cannot be angry with him, because the casinos themselves, and how they came to be are progressive institutions that I find repulsive and they should have went away when voters said in 2006 that they didn’t want casinos in Ohio. Instead, they did as all government does when they don’t get their way, just as in school levies, they just kept putting it on the ballot until resistance to them gave up, and the amendment passed. That’s how we obtained casinos in Ohio, under the strong-armed tactics of thugs, corrupt politicians looking for a financial bail-out from all the votes they’ve purchased with tax money and out-right-thieves that are licking their lips to take all the money they can from the weak, like my friend Fuzz, and Sonny till there is nothing left but a corpse.

So with all that said, I’m still a fan of John Kasich. It’s not an excuse to abuse a government position even if in his mind it is to right an evil. But in the face of all the evil present in the situation, I’ll give him a reassuring pat on the shoulder for only being human.

For the rest, those small little minds that are so enticed with bright lights, cheap 19 year old women and their bare breasts, and the fantasy that wasting your night in a casino constitutes nightlife, nothing can help you. You are the same people that believe in collective bargaining as a right given to you by FDR. You are children of LBJ’s Great Society and seek to cover the sins of not only your deepest desires, but your political subscription to that mythical society paid for by the future. You’re guilt causes you to endorse policies you know are wrong because the guilt of your poorly lived lives is too great for you to carry alone. So you seek easy money through casinos to lessen your burden.

You are the same people who seek to repeal S.B.5, because should the curtain be taken away from the shell game you and your generation have used for years to hide your deeds described above, there will be no place else for your guilt to reside, but in the mirror. So keep signing those petitions and try and erase S.B.5 from the books, and continue to solve your big government ideas with casinos and higher taxes, because you will not leave this earth with less of a burden, but with the knowledge that you have not only bankrupted us all financially, but morally as well. Keep signing those petitions! I will make sure everyone remembers who the villains are.

Rich Hoffman

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

Superintendents Make More than the Governor: Changes and Corruption in Public School

Today was a significant day in the world of education reform. As cops are using a memorial service in Cincinnati to repeal the S.B.5 Bill, which public school teachers through their union organization worked hard at during the election last Tuesday to collect signatures for their referendum attempt, new innovative ideas that those same teachers stand against were discussed by Bill Coley and Doc Thompson on 700 WLW.

It was refreshing to hear Bill talk about an idea that he has worked hard on since 2007-2008 where he actually managed to get Ted Strickland to sign the bill allowing Online Classes for public education. This new form of learning will be implemented in Ohio which is further along than any state in the country at this point in education reforms that will not only save money to the school districts and the state, but also stimulate the children being educated. So there isn’t any downfall to the students of Bill’s Online Education Innovation for Public Education. The downfall is only in the employment of teachers in a brick and mortar style classroom where all classes must be under 30 students where a teacher stands in front of a class and teaches as society has taught since the age of the Greeks.

But the story doesn’t stop there. As we have worked very hard to bring to the surface, education as it stands now is not about teaching children. It’s about making money for the employees of the district. After I came on Doc’s show to provide my support for Representative Coley’s project, which will become a major part of Governor Kasich’s education reform agenda, and one of the reasons teachers are trying to repeal S.B.5, so they can maintain their iron grip on tax payer funds with no flexibility at all for innovation or budget reductions, Brendan Keefe came on Doc’s show to discuss the ground-breaking I Team Report that he has by now unleashed to the voting population.

If you missed the broadcast, just check it out at the top of this page. In that report, what quickly becomes evident is that superintendents and other members of school administrations are deeply corrupt, because they know that if you live in a district, and want your kids taught, and you want your property values to remain favorable, then you will pay these extortion artists whatever they demand because they are openly scamming all tax payers. They don’t even respect people enough to come on camera to explain the situation. They won’t come on because they can’t.

I know Doc has extended the offer to come on WLW to many superintendents to defend themselves and all of them rejected it. Brendan did the same, he extended the branch of journalistic peace to all administrators and nobody would speak. The reason is that they are guilty of what they are accused of, and they won’t go on the record to project a lie that will hurt them latter. They are playing politics, hoping that people will just go back to sleep and pass their levies, and that the education money machine will always take care of them.

These people are so crooked that even before the election results were over from Tuesday’s election, these superintendents are floating out more levy requests for this November. I know that in the Edgewood district, just to the north of Lakota, they are considering not even announcing it in the paper, hoping that only school supporters show up to vote, leaving everyone else in the dark. That’s the game we’re playing in education, and this is why kids are not learning more than they are, yet we are spending more money than ever on education. But that money is not finding itself to the kids, it is being scrapped off and placed into the pockets of the corrupt public servant.

We have no choice but to call these people thieves since they refuse to give an interview to Channel 9, or WLW to say otherwise, because all the evidence points to these people as first class crooks.

Click on the link below to get to Brendan’s page where you can look up your districts superintendent. 

http://www.wcpo.com/dpp/news/local_news/investigations/i-team%3A-5-southwest-ohio-superintendents-make-more-than-the-governor

Rich Hoffman

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

Wanted: New School Board Members at Lakota–Apply at www.NoLakotaLevy.com

Lakota announced that they intend to vote on the placement of a new levy at the August 27th School Board Meeting of 2011. Apparently the school board, who I had been hoping would work with us in the community, has not received the message. They simply cannot see past the end of their nose. They only seem to know how to spend money in spite of the fact that most of their excessive costs bankrupting their budget is in their wages. Nobody on any side of the education issue at Lakota has shown any desire to deal with the issue at hand, so the school board is resorting to the only thing they know to do, and that’s ask for money.

Doc Thompson covers this issue and some of the “cultural diversity” that school systems are spending money on that is not something people like me find necessary to proper education of a child. I simply don’t want to spend good money on teachers that are teaching aspects of social behavior that are the jobs of the children’s family. The Cultural Center at Lakota is not something that is necessary as a funding option. Any employee that works on that program should be dropped for budget reduction reasons, because it is not something that a public school should even be involved in. Listen to Doc’s broadcast here as he breaks down the new levy attempt and a breakdown to the cultural sensitivity issues going on in our public schools, Lakota specifically.

Matt Mayer always has great information at the Buckeye Institute. He has an article that shows the origin of this behavior that we are being asked to pay for in school levies. Click onto this link to see his report and a copy of the magazine that the Ohio Education Associate sends its members. This tells you all you need to know about the social agenda of the OEA.

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

So the real question is do we want to pay for this kind of stuff? I don’t. This is why I don’t want any of my tax money to go to union activity. I would like to vote to not have that kind of behavior taught in my school district because I don’t support all this cultural stuff. When a school does this, they are crossing the line to what is my responsibility as a community member and parent.

The Lakota School Board should first look at cutting these kinds of non-essential social programs well before they come to the tax payer for funding beyond the allocated budget. This is an old game that is not only socially corrosive, if you’re a non-progressive person such as myself, but is extraordinarily expensive and people are forced to pay for the whole deal instead of just the portions they support.

The No Lakota.Com group had a meeting on this issue last week, in anticipation that the school board would attempt to pass another levy in 2011 well before they attempted to fundamentally change the way they do business, which is extraordinarily arrogant on their behalf. So the No Lakota Group decided to change our strategy a bit. Instead of just defending the tax payers from further increases in their taxes, as we’ll still do, we will now start taking applications from members of the community to become the next school board members. There are two seats that are up this year on the school board and in the next couple of years the remaining three seats. The No Lakota Group will be seeking to replace each seat that votes in favor of a levy starting with the vote in August established by the Lakota School Board. If all the school board can do is ask for more money, they are useless, and must be replaced. So the No Lakota Levy.Com group will not only be committed to defeating the next levy, but they will actively elect the next school board members.

So if you’d like to be a school board member and would like to serve your community and have a non-progressive, business oriented background contact us at NoLakota@roadrunner.com so we can add your name to the list of people we are assembling for our strategic replacement of school board members who vote in favor of more taxes instead of the more difficult management aspects of a school boards responsibility. We have two issues that are driving up the cost of education that a school board needs to have the courage to tackle. First is the foolishness of union contracts to not manage their step increases which are bankrupting the district. The second is the failure to filter out social teaching programs that if parents want their kids to be “culturally diverse” they can pay for it separately. The community at large should not be forced to pay for education measures that they don’t agree with. Social Justice is an elective that should be up to the parent. It is not essential education for young people to live their lives. Social Justice Education is something that should be independently funded, and its removal from the classroom could dramatically reduce education costs to the tax payer. Again, if a parent wants that type of teaching for their children they are free to pay for it elsewhere, or as an added fee in the school. But it is up to the school board to separate these costs before ever considering another levy attempt.

I’ve heard from many of you over the last several months. Now is the time to act, so contact us today!

www.NoLakotaLevy.com

Rich Hoffman

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

THX-1138 A GREAT MOVIE: Where our current education system is taking us

“Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: if it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

Ronald Reagan August 1986.

Politicians have to have something to do. They have been elected to a job, and to their small minds, small because they crave the power of a position, but in order to perform that job they pass laws and regulation so people hopefully see through the smoke screen they create to hide their true intentions. Rules and regulations are created to prove that politicians are doing something valuable or at least perceived to be important. And when they don’t have rules to create, they attempt to change American ideology.

A free society cannot endure this type of corruption and history proves it. Creative people, like George Lucas, George Orwell, and Ayn Rand have taken history and projected the results into the future. That’s been done in books like Atlas Shrugged and Brave New World, and in films like THX-1138.

If you haven’t seen THX-1138 you have missed a great film. It’s available on Netflix under Science Fiction. The film directed by George Lucas well before Star Wars hit the screen is a great look at a future that we will have if we leave our fate in the hands of politicians and avoid the responsibility of handling our own lives. If our society trades freedom for security we will see a society very much like THX-1138.

Most people know THX as the sound system that is a Lucas property, and yes, the origin of that name comes from that epic, break-through film. Here’s a trip down memory lane for movie lovers.

When the film came out, Warner Brothers hated it. They had no idea how to market the picture. It was a strangely dark film that involved thinking so it was a bit too cerebral for Warner Brother executives back then, which is a usual story for any project that is forward thinking. The creative mind creating something new is often on a lonely island of understanding and it may take years for people to gain an understanding of what the visionary was trying to say. That’s the case with this film. Released in 1971 it was taken away of Lucas’s control out of sheer anger from Warner Brothers who proceeded to cut 5 minutes from the film just to show Lucas that they could. The experience was so bad that Lucas started Lucasfilm so he wouldn’t have to rely on Hollywood to make the movies he wanted to make. Thank goodness he did, because we would have never had Star Wars and Indian Jones. Hollywood is incapable of making films like that on their own for all the reasons they cut 5 minutes of film from THX-1138. It was all about politics and control.

The THX-1138 hatred from Warner Brothers pushed Francis Ford Coppola into financial ruin because he produced the film. It also put the production of Apocalypse Now in jeopardy, which eventually got ironed out to become the classic Vietnam era film. Coppola revived his reputation with the Godfather series. Lucas saved his image with American Graffiti and Star Wars, so it wasn’t talent that was the problem. The people involved in THX-1138 were the best that the field of filmmakers had to offer then and even to this very day.

THX-1138 had problems because it hit too close to the fears people have about the culture of spoils and looting that goes on in politics. It makes people inwardly who participate in this diabolical behavior feel guilt. That’s why the Warner Brothers executives didn’t like the movie. That’s why the audiences didn’t like the movie, initially. It’s not a movie that desires to make people feel good and eat popcorn. It’s a warning of a possible future of which we are quickly heading.

It is a warning that if America continues to trade away our freedoms, as we have been…if we continue to tax ourselves heavily which is the same as regulating our freedoms….if we continue to hold back our business development because each and every politician wants to include their “two meaningless cents” on every matter available trading their integrity for a vote, we will become what is shown in vivid detail the life of THX-1138. That is the future that we seem unwilling to prevent in a mindless pursuit of security and laziness.

We’re not all fighting for the same thing in America. Whoever wins decides the future.

 

 

Rich Hoffman

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

Looters against Logic: The Thieves of Education!

I was on 700 WLW May 4, 2011 speaking to Doc Thompson about the Lakota School Levy situation, superintendent expectations, and the ridiculous way education is sold to mask larger social agendas by tricking tax payers into paying for things they’d consciously reject if they were aware of those issues.

This interview comes on the day after the illustrious attempt by several local school districts, namely Lebanon, Little Miami, and Batavia among others. Thankfully, those levies failed. It gives me hope that there are fewer stupid people in the world than I had feared, because if you vote for a school levy, you’re stupid.

As voters hit the polls yesterday there were petition booths set up to repeal S.B.5. I have to laugh at the type of people who are behind this movement. These are people that subscribe to Keynes economic theory, which in short believes that money spent equals value. This is a preposterous idea, one that is abysmally off center and has no grounding in reality.

S.B.5 is the only way school districts can get their costs under control and the unions are terrified that once the scheme is revealed to people, which is what is happening, that they’ll loose forever their power in politics, and they should lose that power. I don’t even recognize the right of a union to exist in the public sector. Unions have no place in American society. They are creatures of LBJ’s Great Society that reflected FDR’s Second Bill of Rights. Booth of those Presidents were ego driven fools that wanted to live on forever to memorialize their power and prestige in the minds of people deep into the future. It is these types of people the Constitution was designed to protect us from. The reason that Keynesian economic theories fail is that they don’t account for the faults of the human mind. They assume that the privileged few who rule are without corrupt intentions. Unfortunately, those who crave power are often prone to corruption. They might start off with good intentions, but the job and temptations often ruin their minds. That’s why term limits are so important.

What is terrifyingly obvious once a little investigation is applied to school systems is that superintendents as a group seem prone to fill empty aspects of their lives with the value of money. That’s where Keynes fails as an economist, it does not account for corruption and failures of the human heart.

In the story with Doc, we discussed how Lakota wanted to hire a superintendent at 300K per year, and the arguments are that Lakota is a massive school with a lot of students and that’s what a position with such responsibility merits. Well, traditionally, the President of the United States is the highest-paid public employee. President Obama currently earns $400,000 per year, along with a $150,000 expense account, a $100,000 nontaxable travel account and $19,000 for entertainment. The most recent raise in salary was approved by Congress and President Bill Clinton in 1999 and went into effect in 2001; prior to the change, the President earned $200,000, plus expense accounts. By the time you add up the car allowances of superintendents and all other benefits, they are getting paid too close to what the President of the United States is making for running the whole nation, not just a school district. So this gives some idea how far off base these numbers are for pay scales.

That’s why S.B.5 is important. It will allow communities to bring these types of corrupt costs under control and create a pay scale the tax payers can deal with. This is also why those people looking to repeal the law want to do so, because they seek to continue the theft they have been conducting on us for years. They want the spoils system of education to continue even when it’s obvious that the system is bankrupting itself just like every Keynesian theory does.

I am proud that WLW has covered this issue, and have done so boldly for quite some time. It also gives me great pleasure to know that these education stories are now being covered by television. To learn more, get ready for the I-Team report by Brendan Keefe on Monday, May 9, 2011 on Channel 9 at 6 PM. It will open your eyes, and close your wallet and teach you things you never thought were possible from the people we entrust with our children’s lives.

Rich Hoffman

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

The Start of Collective Bargaining: FDR and his Second Bill of Rights

Few people really understand, because it’s now been a couple of generation’s old, but life in America is not supposed to be as it is, and two definitive dates have moved America toward a socialist system that has greatly hampered the explosive growth that made our nation great. Those dates are the year of 1913 when the Federal Reserve was created, and income tax was implemented. The second is 1944 where a king seeking president in FDR created with great audacity the thought of a Second Bill of Rights.

The first Bill of Rights were an appeasement to the Anti-Federalists after years of arguing about the Constitution and the impact of a large centralized government. The Federalists made some concessions that became The Bill of Rights.

In 1944, FDR was fulfilling a long sought after promise of progressives, which his cousin Teddy Roosevelt helped begin, to create a better, more fair world, which were a direct play-book from socialist thought. FDR like his cousin, whom I admire because of his energy and intelligence, suffered from a desire for power, and a belief that he was one of the elites that were enamored by God to help the less-fortunate.

So FDR created his own Bill of Rights that reflected directly the Communist Manifesto and attempted to implement it. He had no right or authority to do it, but he did it anyway, while the nation was at war, which we are still feeling the impact of those drastic, and un-American concepts.

American exceptionalism is unique because the people who fought and survived in this growing nation bred children that reflected the tenacity of the pioneers that worked hard, were inventive, and loved freedom. But as more and more immigrants came from Europe, with European ideas those ideas began to compete with the ideas of our Founding Fathers, which were working dramatically, as is evidence in the great number of inventions and rapid expansion of our cityscapes in a very short time, even while the nation was still reeling from the Civil War.

Progressivism came from Europe. It was loved by the Roosevelt’s like Teddy, and FDR, because they liked European politics, unlike our Founding Fathers, and thus the Second Bill of Rights was initiated.

Walter Lippmann, the hero of modern media, was a progressive and advocate of The Second Bill of Rights. It was a young Lippmann that sat in Teddy’s home in the last days of TR and attempted to coax Teddy to continue the progressive march, which TR had lost interest in after Taft left the presidency. TR primarily became a progressive to fight his old friend in President Taft because he felt pushed out of the Republican Party. But younger cousin FDR was a true blue progressive which is a fancy word for a socialist and the New Deal was a socialist concept.

A much older Walter Lippmann stated at the time that the New Dealers would “Rather not have a recovery if the revival of private initiative means a resumption of private control in the management of corporate business…the essence of the New Deal is the reduction of private corporate control by collective bargaining and labor legislation, on the one side, and by restrictive, competitive and deterrent government action on the other side.” That statement embodies most everything that the press speaks to this day, and socialist leaning union members, film makers, and politicians that hide their beliefs in socialism behind the Democratic Party, or under the more encompassing term, progressive.

Here is FDR reading his Second Bill of Rights from 1944. Just like a king from a far away land, he consults his subjects in a similar manner, which is fundamentally an incorrect American philosophy. Unfortunately, for those in society that have a tendency to be skittish by nature, socialism is an attractive idea because they naturally lack courage. Those are the kind of people who embraced FDR and his New Deal policies.

“The Economic Bill of Rights”
Excerpt from President Roosevelt’s January 11, 1944 message to the Congress of the United States on the State of the Union[1]:
“ It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.”[2] People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.
Americas own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for all our citizens.
For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.

FDR attempted to hang on to his presidency by running for 4 terms. It is because of him that the United States began term limits for the presidency, like a king that seeks the meaning of his existence in an elected position. It was easy for FDR to continue getting elected, because the weak side of human nature will always like the person that gives them things, and FDR was giving away things that weren’t his. He is most responsible for the budget mess that we are currently in. And he wasn’t the end. Today, the progressive tradition is alive and well in financiers like George Soros, Presidents like Barrack Obama, and appointments to the Obama administration such as regulatory tzar, Cass Sunstein.

Cass Sunstein is working toward a different kind of America. People like me completely reject what Cass proposes.

This is a video from Cass Sunstein during 2006, long before he was Obama’s regulatory tzar. He is exactly why the FDR’s Second Bill of Rights would never work, because people like Cass are weak-kneed intellectuals that would rather have price fixes instead of allowing competition to drive the market.

My mind has been emancipated individually, so Cass is wrong, completely wrong. In fact, he’s so far off base he’s not even in the same city of the team he thinks he’s playing for. If he had things his way, to put it in everyday terms, if you let Cass Sunstein manage the NFL, every player at each position would have to weigh the same, would have to run just as fast, would be able to bench press the same amounts, the QB’s would have to be identical, because neither team would be allowed to have an advantage over the other team. That is basically the world FDR, and Cass Sunstein have been trying to create for the United States. It is socialism. Pure and simple.

The ghosts of these follies continue to resonate in the minds of people everywhere. It is these Second Bill of Rights that are uttered in union protests. They want the promises made by a man who had no right to squander American Ingenuity by robbing private industry and giving it to all those who are too lazy to match the task, yet had the power of the vote. So the man in FDR gave people something for nothing and took from those that had something at the expense of the future, and he did it for his quest of kingdom, the oldest, and most primal desire known to man.

I can say that I recognize nothing in the Second Bill of Rights. If it isn’t in the Constitution it doesn’t exists. I will continue to pay my income tax, which progressives are robbing from me. I will pay my Social Security, and my Medicare which progressives are robbing from me out of respect for the law, even though I believe the minds behind the law are no better than insects. But I will never take a check from the government. I will never cash in on a “pay day” of spoils provided by “the system.” I want nothing to do with it, and once they’ve robbed me of my money, that money is corrupted by their corrupt hands and I no longer want it.

Progressives and their collective salvation disgust me to my very soul. They will never be qualified to advise me, or help me in any way, shape or form because the value of what they have to offer is only a diminished quality of what they took from me to begin with.

Thus, that is the essence of taxation and the term “collective bargaining.”

Rich Hoffman

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

The Royal Wedding, Exploding Gas Prices, and Superman Lets us Down: the mentality of a servent

I normally have a lot to write, but today I am astonished at the level of inept servitude millions of Americans have shown toward the royal wedding. If you are one of those people enchanted by dresses and royalty, nobody can help you. Because while you were trying to figure out who made the dress of the princess, the unlived dreams of millions of young and old women manifested before the lens of their psyche of being a princess to some king. They forget that each and every person in America that owns a home is a king of their own domain, and every woman that owns property is a princess of her own land. For the millions that look to a far away kingdom, of a socialist economy, which is what England is, and get giddy feelings, you disgust me so further words cannot be uttered with my thoughts.

Doc Thompson feels pretty much as I do and covers it in this broadcast while gas prices shoot up over $4 per gallon, sad that the rest of the world is drooling over a meaningless event in another, irrelevant land of former glory.

And people wonder why they lose their freedoms. They are stolen from you while you are distracted with honoring others who don’t deserve your worship.

Rich Hoffman

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