Tag: Sheriff Jones

Lakota Doesn’t Really Have a Choice: The Video of the CCW issue on February 26th 2018

Looking back on the video of the school board meeting on February 26th 2018 where the topic of arming teachers with a CCW drew a lot of media attention around the city of Cincinnati it wasn’t even close. The entire meeting is shown below, for which the media categorized it as “contentious,” which it was—but it was much more civil than you might think for such a hot button issue. The public comments section can be viewed at the 38-minute mark. My comment can be seen at the 53:30 mark. After me there was one other speaker on the list from the sign-in sheet and at that point the score was 6 for arming teachers with a CCW in class to just 2 against. Once the listed speakers had concluded Samuel Ronan who is running against Steve Chabot in the 1st Congressional district and was from Springboro spoke. He didn’t count in my view because he was simply there to give a stump speech on a national issue because the Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones took the lead on suggesting that he’d offer free CCW classes to any teacher who signed up for his class. After Ronan spoke there was a student who cried and couldn’t get through her speech followed by a lady who additionally added to the anti-gun comments. When the scoring was all said and done for the evening the score was 6 for allowing CCW teachers to bring their guns to school to act as first responders with only 5 against the proposal. That is the purest score this issue will ever get at Lakota. Obviously, the people against the measure hadn’t had time to professionally attack the CCW proposal and were caught a little flat-footed on the matter.

Those of us for the CCW proposal really hadn’t coordinated our efforts either. I had a few people call me to see if I was coming to the meeting and when I said I was, there were others obviously who felt they could come and add their opinions to the matter. If Lakota had a vote likely the tally would come down to a similar demographic as was shown in that school board meeting on that particular evening—something close to a 60% to 40% vote in favor of arming teachers in our 22 school buildings. Those who spoke against CCWs presented an emotional argument without any solution present, which is typical on this subject. There is a portion of our society that is just afraid of guns and wishes that humanity could remove them completely. Any logical person not thinking emotionally understands that 92% of all mass shootings take place in gun free zones—which is why schools are such a hot target. Wishing that guns were never invented isn’t a logical solution—especially in the short run. Lakota does have school resource officers—10 of them to cover the 22 current buildings, which isn’t nearly enough for a community that has over 100,000 residents. The cost is prohibitive to have an officer in every building and in every hallway in case something was to occur where a school shooter might attack and realizing all that, based on this school board meeting, there really isn’t a choice. Lakota is going to have to adopt a measure arming teachers and the reasons are obvious.

My first thought when Samuel Ronan handed his camera to an Islamic woman who was sitting next to one of the anti-gun speakers from earlier was that we were getting ready to hear from the professional anti-gun lobby. And that was confirmed when the 3-minute clock was not started for Ronan. Listening to Ronan speak I thought a member of the school board had invited him to talk which was why the clock never started for him, and why he was permitted to not address the board–but the audience and the television cameras that lined up the back of the room. But after going on for well over 3 minutes the board did stop him so it appears that the progressive politician had just crashed our meeting in a similar way that a school shooter might attempt to do and take advantage of our good graces as a community. He simply went on a stump speech for every progressive political platform and his supporters represent the emotional element which the media has latched on to. But if you listen to his speech there is no solution presented even though he is an obviously polished speaker. At the end of his speech we still had the problem and that was the same for every speaker against the measure.

Politically speaking for Lakota being one of the largest and most affluent school districts in the state of Ohio if a school shooting were to occur and footage from this meeting were to come out in the wake of the tragedy as it always happens in other mass shootings, because hindsight is always 20/20, it would destroy a lot of credibility in our school management that is completely unnecessary. If the comments of Butler County Sheriff Jones are added to the matter it will look really bad on Lakota if action is not taken, because the community spoke very civilly and succinctly on the matter when there was time to act. I personally think as a nation we are living on a time bomb where the combined elements of video games, lack of parental influence, aggressive music and the basic epistemological failure of philosophy for young people is throwing a disproportionate number of kids like the Parkland shooter out into the world. With the 100,000 residents of the Lakota district there are of course a portion of that population that will try something. It was only a month ago that the heavily tattooed and very scary looking Jason Lehman attacked a daycare facility in broad daylight for no apparent reason. Then a few days within that event a distraught Charles Warren attacked a mail carrier at gun point—intoxication appears to be a contributing factor. We are facing an opioid crisis virtually everywhere and all those people are potential bombs of danger that could pose a threat to a secure zone, like a school, and proportionally to the size of our community, there are a fair share of dangerous people who can and will inflict harm on the innocent should they take a chance to. What makes the Jason Lehman situation so disconcerting is that it could have easily have been a public school instead of a daycare facility. At least at the daycare it was a privately operated endeavor that was much smaller and easier to secure with passionate employees. In public schools where there are countless hallways and points of entry in the 22 schools, there aren’t many teachers available who will lay down in front of a door to keep an attacker from getting in, which is what happened at Children’s Learning Adventure Childcare Center on 747 at the entrance to Beckett Ridge. An attack at such a place would not seem likely because it’s in a very nice area where people don’t typically have to deal with people like Jason Lehman—scary, aggressive, and emotionally out of control. If not for the owner of the Buffalo Wings and Rings next to the daycare center who attacked Lehman, who knows what would have happened. Lucky for all of us it was a fist fight instead of a gun fight, but its only a matter of time. West Chester got lucky in that case.

Hoping that something won’t happen isn’t a strategy for dealing with problems. We can go back many years and study that among our Lakota population there have been plenty of people who have snapped and went on violent rampages. Not even considering the two people already mentioned, have we already forgotten the case of Donald Tobias Gazaway who held a kid hostage at gun point for over 30 hours just last month a few miles down the road from Lakota East? What if that guy decided to turn his wrath on the school instead of a residence? It’s only a matter of time before something happens, so hoping that the event never happens isn’t a strategy.

Lakota can pull together to help solve this problem or it can let an opportunity fade and be a victim with a whole lot of smart people pointing backward in hindsight to declare that they spoke their mind but nobody in leadership listened. I don’t think that is healthy for anybody, not the school, not the community, and certainly not the children in our care. The same media that showed up to wonder what makes people like Donald Gazaway and Jason Lehman want to threaten and attack places where there are children are the same people who listened to that Lakota school board meeting and considered the opinions evenly weighted on both sides. That wasn’t the case, the video proves it. Residents have expressed their opinions to the school board and it is now up to them to act either way. But if they don’t adopt the CCW measure, the media storm against them will be horrible when someone does attack one of the Lakota schools. And that will be a lot more painful than going against the progressive caucus that hates guns but doesn’t have any other suggestions for these troubling modern times.

I said my peace and I’m willing to give a little on the issue to help solve the problem, to make it easier for the school board to make a hard decision. But waiting for some other school board to make a decision first isn’t going to work. Lakota needs to be the pace setter on this issue, it needs to show the kind of leadership that comes with being the big school on the block to take action before people really do get hurt. The Lakota school district has had plenty of warning signs just in the past two months. Its one thing to have a tragedy when action to prevent it was taken, it’s quite another to get caught in indecision when there are families dealing with the aftermath. It is for that reason that adopting the CCW for teachers is really the only correct decision. And by the look of the video shown from that February 26th school board meeting, the community is behind the leadership of the school for what might be the first time in decades. It would be crazy to squander that rare opportunity to do something good. That same anti-gun media that tried to make the Lakota board meeting look evenly matched and even supportive of the anti-gun activists will be the same ones who cower through this video footage and show all the people who were for CCWs when something does go wrong—and that wouldn’t be good for anybody. These events are going to move forward whether or not we are ready for them. Leadership is meeting those events with solutions instead of being caught on our heels when maliciousness knocks on all our doors.

Rich Hoffman
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The Wonderful Idea Sheriff Jones Has: I’m willing to make a deal to see it happen at Lakota

Let me say that I am very proud of Sheriff Jones from my county of Butler, Ohio. In the wake of the school shootings in Florida, and elsewhere, Jones has stepped forward to offer CCW classes for school employees free of charge so if such a catastrophic event should happen while they are employed within the schools when an attack happened, they’d be prepared to take action to stop the carnage. What Sheriff Jones is talking about is a real solution to a real problem and it shows leadership that the country as a whole could follow. I am very enthusiastic about his proposal, so much so that I am willing to make a deal to my own school district of Lakota—to support this generous offering from Sheriff Jones. If 5% of the school employees within the Lakota school system take the Sheriff Jones CCW class, when it comes time to pass the next school levy, I won’t stand in the way with opposition. That wouldn’t be due to a sudden support for higher taxes, but years ago when people asked me what it would take to get me to support a school levy at Lakota, well, this is it. I could actually feel good about how my money was spent if my local school district was the first in the country to adopt a policy that could show everyone else how to solve this dire problem.

Everyone who knows me understands how much I am against out of control budgets and escalating costs of public employee contracts, so this is no small matter. But bigger than that is this very much-needed expansion of understanding firearms and using them for personal protection in the name of everything that is good. What Sheriff Jones is proposing is a very good idea that has behind it a desire to protect the best and brightest in all of us, and a CCW is the best way in these modern times to accomplish that task. The more good people who are a part of the concealed carry community, the better, and safer everyone is. It is no different from training to be a first responder in your place of business. Nobody would argue that learning how to perform CPR or general first aid to a co-worker in need could be a bad thing. When the fire department and police arrive, such scenes are turned over to the professionals, and the same would happen with concealed carry holders. They would serve as first responders to a threatening situation and protect those around them from the kind of carnage that happens when bad people turn to evil to wreak ill intentions. In the grand scheme of things, I can’t think of anything better than this idea from Sheriff Jones to help solve a problem that is only getting worse, because the indecision and fear of guns that most people have prevents a solution. Learning how to control that fear is the first step to solving this crisis and I would be willing to bend a little bit to see it happen.

Rich Hoffman
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Sheriff Jones and the Metrosexuals of Butler County: Dancing the night away during the Superbowl

This is really embarrassing.  The next thing we will likely learn about Sheriff Jones, my neighbor and local sheriff, who sells himself like a modern John Wayne, is that he’s getting pedicures and facials at a local Wal-Mart nail salon.  I really didn’t want to believe this when I first saw it.  I was hoping that it was some kind of Hollywood special effect.  But no, it’s true—it’s really him and a reasonable number of public employees who are wearing the uniform of the Butler County police.  Using the Super Bowl as an excuse to send what they thought was a “hip” public message, Sheriff Jones and his rag-tag team of highly paid ass kissers put out a video dancing to show how metrosexual they were which I thought was astoundingly childish.  It’s the kind of thing you’d see from a bunch of stupid kids, not a sophisticated sheriff’s department that is supposed to command the respect of the world because of his national platform.  Of course here’s how the local media covered the story.  Women naturally think it’s cute, men aren’t sure—it is awkward.

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/local/butlercounty/2016/02/06/watch-sheriff-jones-whip-nae-nae-video-warning-super-bowl-drunk-driving/79921068/

Let me give a little context, tough guys don’t dance.  They don’t sit around crying over things, they don’t wallow in emotion, and they don’t dance.  Young men do sometimes when they are looking for a female to mate with, but men—real men secure in their testosterone driven utterances—don’t dance.  It’s not cute.  It’s not hip.  It doesn’t earn “cool” points with the younger generation.  All it does is compromise authority.  It makes no sense.

Of course modern women who embrace feminism love it when men dance, because it shows them that their male counterparts are willing to be more open-minded and expressive with their bodies.  People who dance show that they are willing to compromise their individual integrity for collective rituals of expression—and women tend to be naturally included toward more social acceptance than men.  Women seem quite at home dancing in a club or at a wedding touching each other in expressive ways as men tend to stand along the wall with their hands in their pockets.  Men would rather be shooting guns or playing cards—doing something mildly competitive that they can beat another man at—just for fun.  They don’t typically enjoy shaking their bodies in suggestive ways to evoke the approval of collective consciousness.

When Donald Trump danced on Saturday Night Live he did it with a strategy to appeal more to women who currently find him “too scary.”  But Donald Trump isn’t a sheriff—he’s a businessman.  He did lose points with me on that SNL skit—because I would never do something like that under any kind of pressure.    Dancing for men is off-limits.  It’s not something any man should ever do.  It’s stupid.  Now slow dancing with a woman may be acceptable so long as the man doesn’t have to rock their hips in some sexually provocative fashion.  Even then, it’s not something I would do.  I’ve danced with my wife at our wedding, 25 years ago, one slow dance.  I danced with a family member at my brother’s wedding a few decades ago-the same-because I was a member of the wedding party.  And that’s it.  At both of my daughter’s weddings, we skipped the daddy/daughter dance.  I’m sure they’d like it sometimes if I was more physically expressive–but that’s just not appropriate for a man to exhibit.  Prior to meeting my wife, I went to a few dance clubs to meet girls, and I was good at it.  I was even a fashion model for a period of time and was hired to dance around a swarm of really attractive women on stage to David Lee Roth’s “Just a Gigolo.”  Yet the moment I met my wife, I dropped that life in less than a second, because I didn’t like it.  To me, the only reason a man would dance would be to land a female into his bed.  That is absolutely the only reason.  Once you are married, or even have a steady mate, men should never dance in public or private.

Dancing is a form of collectivism and it’s a disgusting enterprise.  Surrendering the mind to the beat of the music is not a smart thing to do.  Letting the music take control of your mind and body is to surrender your individual sovereignty.  Dancing is not a thinking endeavor.  When a room full of people surrender thought to the beat of the music it is not a beautiful thing.  It’s a thing of disgust.  It’s tribal—and in an American capitalist society where thought should be king, dancing is a treacherous social value that leads its participants toward collectivism instead of individual merit.

I’ve heard the saying, real men are not afraid to express themselves.  Those are the same idiots who say that men should not be afraid to wear pink, and that it’s OK to cry in public—or private.  Let me tell you something dear reader.  Real men don’t wear pink, they don’t cry—ever, and they certainly don’t dance.  Never.  Metrosexuals dance, gay guys dance, and men who have had their testosterone evaporate from their bodies dance to show that they aren’t too old to be like the cool young people at weddings.  But real men don’t dance.  Dancing is not an activity of thinking.  It is an act of collectivism, of yielding to whoever the artist is.  A dance floor is a socialist enterprise where sweaty bodies mingle in collective effort toward the goal of assimilation.  It’s not cute or funny.

Sometimes people think I’m too hard on public employees such as the local police. Sheriff Jones and his staff obviously didn’t have anything else to do with their time but to coordinate that video—which obviously took some time.  I’m sure he’ll say that the whole thing was done on a volunteer basis and everyone was off-duty, at least I’d hope he’d lie to me about that.  Because if any of those people were on duty at the time, we have some big problems and the staffing levels need to be adjusted—because we are paying too much for our police department.

There is another element to dancing that involves race.  People of color, particularly from the African continent do have a natural inclination to dance.  This is not good.  I am not impressed with Cam Newton’s “dance moves” on the football field.  A quick look economically at Africa indicates that what I have said about dancing is one hundred percent correct.  Every country in Africa is suffering under some form of socialism—or collective based social interaction.   On their own, the people of Africa are not inventing things, building businesses, or advancing their lives forward away from the dances they use to invoke spiritual aid and mystical persuasion.  People from those cultures may dance well—but that is not a skill that advances mankind toward individualism and invention—because invention does not come from collective effort, only individual aptitude.  So pandering toward people of race as a “stiff” whitey only makes people like Sheriff Jones look like an idiot—not a man of compromise in showing that he’s not too good to “bust some moves” so to appeal toward members of our community who still think men dancing is cool.

Men, it’s not OK to dance.  Women may want you to, and race groups might put peer pressure on you to do so—but it’s not acceptable.  Sheriff Jones made a serious mistake toward the institution of manhood in doing what he did.  He may be socially confused, or his testosterone levels may be dropping to the point where he’s more estrogen these days than testosterone, but either way, it was very embarrassing.  If I were a goon, a punk or a creep looking to sell drugs in Butler County, or to traffic stolen young girls—or even to loot the wealth of homes in the area—Sheriff Jones and his Super Bowl antics would invite me toward indiscretion instead of providing a deterrent.  Having a bounty on your head from Mexican drug lords is a manly thing to have.  But dancing like a metrosexual from the Butler County Jail—that is just not acceptable.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Hurry! Get Your Contracts in Before S.B.5. Becomes Law!: The reason we can’t trust elected officials.

There is disturbing news coming out of Lebanon, Ohio that arrived to my ears late Thursday as I was trying to enjoy the first pleasant day of spring-like weather in 2011. The information isn’t surprising as I had been thinking along these lines all week. An aspect to that thinking is in leadership which Doc Thompson discusses in this broadcast.

I’ve mentioned in many words on these pages why some leaders are better than others, and exactly what makes a leader, “good.” For a clear definition of what makes something of quality, and why some people are “better” than others I refer your inquisitive mind to the great book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. That book is one of the best, most thorough works of philosophy on quality and leadership done since the pre-Greek age. The capacity to be, “the best” is within all of us. But certain traits certainly jump out as contributory factors.

What brings all this up is the need for leadership in school systems, and the apparent lack thereof. The current system seems to be a nightmare scenario from an Ayn Rand novel and I say that without exaggeration.

I wondered how school boards were going to react to S.B.5 once it’s signed into law. After all, they are now empowered to negotiate on behalf of the community. I thought of the Lakota Levy when I’d go to school board meetings and see our elected officials all wearing Yes Lakota pins and actively promoting the passage of a school levy. Taken at face value, this seemed acceptable to me. But now, on the eve of a real management measure like S.B.5 that will give these school boards real teeth, I wondered if it was appropriate for school board members, who are elected by the community, to openly promote school levies.

That’s when the information arrived to me from an employee within the Lebanon School System that Mark North had been meeting with the union at Lebanon and informed them to have their contracts turned in by the conclusion of business March 17, to  avoid S.B.5 ramifications. The reason is that S.B.5 will honor all existing contracts, so any deals made prior to law will be recognized. Lebanon is planning to make the announcement to the press that the union has agreed to a “pay freeze” but the step increases will be held in place and kept under the radar.

This is disturbing news to me, and it’s not unique to Mr. North from the Lebanon School Board. No school board member should ever be on such cozy terms with any member of a union. They are a member of management and that requires them to be distant and impartial. If school boards were truly management on behalf of the tax payers that elected them they would not pass along information to unions informing them to get their contracts turned in before the passage of a new law. The school board should be looking to avoid a tax levy by using S.B.5 to bring their costs down. Such revelations are an enormous contributor to the current funding problems that all these school districts have.

School board members attempt to start off representing the community, however immediately in November they are sent to the OSBA Conference in Columbus. They do this once a year and the goal is to bring school board members in cohesion with the aims of the education unions that are really in control within the state. At these conferences the new board members “bond” with other board members and learn the ropes. Immediately school board members are eating out of the hand of the union. School board members that question this process are labeled “radical” and pushed out of the “group” mentality.

Now, before anyone says that I don’t know what I’m talking I know quite a few school board members all over the state, and this is how I learned about this story. It’s not a secret. Such ceremonies are no different from the “hazing” rituals in college fraternities. The intent is to unify everyone into a “collective team.”

That whole process needs to stop. School boards are elected by the public and need to represent the public. S.B.5 puts school boards in management control, the way people always thought they were, but the reality is like what has been reported on the activity of Mark North of Lebanon. They will never publicly admit that they are more loyal to unions than the public that elected them, but their actions prove otherwise.

At a minimum, no school board member elected by the public should ever wear a pin or carry a sign lobbying the community for increases in taxes. Because in doing so they are publicly admitting that they do not have management control over the school system and are not able to do the job.

S.B.5 will change the rules and the weak managers in the system, (and there will be many) will have to be removed and strong managers put in their place that will not go to the OSBA Conference in Columbus every November, but will truly represent the people who elected them.

And a warning to Mr. North and all those like him. Be careful what you say to people. The difference now is that when a whistleblower says something to the paper, and it falls on deaf ears, there are now groups like this one and others that are emerging, that will carry the story. So hiding behavior under a rock or behind closed doors will no longer be a valid way to hide improprieties to the taxpayer. And there are plenty of leaks. Believe me.

Now, for further evidence that it’s not only schools that are in a rush to ratify their contracts before S.B.5 becomes law here is the news for the Butler County FOP contract that’s been bouncing around since February 2010 . And to get an idea how much these guys make see my article, Oh, What Big Teeth You Have. What this article means is that they knew just as Lebanon knew, to take what they could get before the governor signs the new bill. It’s not a coincidence that this contract mysteriously was agreed upon yesterday.

It’s always about money.

Butler County commission signs off on FOP contract
Butler County Sheriff’s Office deputies have new agreement.
By Michael D. Pitman, Staff Writer March 18, 2011

HAMILTON — Butler County Sheriff’s deputies and supervisors will get a raise, but they’ll have to wait until next year.
The Butler County Commission agreed Thursday to ratify the collective bargaining agreements for members of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 101.

The contract, which expires Feb. 9, 2013, had to go to a conciliator in November for the six items on which the union and administration could not come to terms.

“This is how the process is supposed to work,” said Sheriff Richard K. Jones, an opponent of Ohio Senate Bill 5 that passed the Senate and is in the House for debate. “We couldn’t agree, so we went to arbitration.”

Sgt. Jeff Gebhart, a spokesman for the FOP, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

According to the new contract, union members will get a 2 percent raise next year; $1,000 cash payment in lieu of a uniform allowance; and new top step effective in February 2012 to be set 2 percent higher than the current top step while deleting the lowest step.

The union also wanted similar pay scales for court services deputies and road deputies; the ability for supervisors to bid on positions; and a uniform allowance in 2010. The conciliator did not grant these requests.

“We want our people to have the best they can negotiate for; it’s not a battle,” Maj. Norman Lewis said. “But in these economic times, with the way the budget has been slashed, it’s a process that had to take place.”

Lewis said the collective bargaining process started in February 2010, but the six items of disagreement needed a conciliation hearing.

The contracts with corrections officers, corrections supervisors, clerical and dispatch unions are being finalized and likely will go before the county commissioners in ensuing weeks, he said.

Jones said the collective bargaining process works for the administration and the unions, and has worked well for the 34 years he’s been involved in the negotiations.

_________________________________________________________________________________

 

So who is looking out for the taxpayer if all these elected officials are scrambling at the last-minute to get all the money they can before the gates to easy money close with the passage of S.B.5.?

This is proof that the money was flowing like water and nobody cared to turn it off at the facet, and access to that easy money is really what collective bargaining has always been about. It’s easy to spend other people’s money. It’s hard and takes real leadership to have discretion. And what we’re learning is that our political officials are greedy and lack leadership in every way we feared and suspected.

 

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
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Butler County Sales Tax: A small step in the absolutely wrong direction

Butler County Sales Tax: A small step in the absolutely wrong direction

Listening to the arguments for the sales tax from Sheriff Jones, whom I like quite a bit, he did a great video with a group that I worked on with him, and I think he is completely sincere in his endeavors. I completely support his desire to sue the country of Mexico for the impact illegal immigration has had on the State of Ohio. I am willing to help him in any capacity to go after Mexico. That is a fight worth fighting.

But unfortunately, to support a sales tax is not the proper way to go. While it’s true that Butler County has its share of pools and golf courses, as Bill Cunningham professed on his WLW show on November 23rd, 2010. I do agree that the projected 7 million dollar shortfall in 2011 was caused by many years of uncontrolled spending. But to throw $10 million dollars more at the situation is not the embodiment of fiscal responsibility.

The comment of Donald Dixon proclaiming that we need to fix this problem before the state declares a fiscal emergency is eerily similar to Mike Taylor saying the same thing in the Lakota School system. What we have are two separate issues proclaiming similar end results. And what both issues share in common is a perception of what level of service the people of Butler County require and how much are the tax payers of the communities of the county are willing to spend on those services. Because if you look at some of the big budget hitters there is a reason so many employees of the sheriff’s office were at that meeting.

The police and fire departments are in much the same situation as the teachers in our schools. They are well compensated, and as the debate of public versus private sector positions, there is an extreme discrepancy. It brings to question how much we really need to spend for those services.

I can speak for myself; the only time I’d call a police officer would be to take a statement for court. If a villain stops by my place to threaten my family, or my property, I’ll take care of it. When Bill Cunningham suggested that if there was a threat of assailants putting a knife to the resident’s throats and that was the reason we need police coverage that was within 5 minutes from a 911 call, I don’t think that’s a feasible option. It is far more reasonable to rely on the 2nd Amendment to do the job it’s designed to do, and send the officer out to take pictures and testify to the situation in a court of law. Anything otherwise I would say is a convenience that we may not be able to afford. That’s my personal opinion.

I would go so far to say that the function of militias is to not only protect the country from foreign enemies, but domestic ones, and who is to say that such groups couldn’t be organized in each county or township. And the same with volunteer firemen, it has been my understanding that typically a community has such people that step up and fill those rolls, and are on call, and do it for the love of their communities. I am personally the type of person that would go to my neighbor’s house and eliminate a threat if they called me, and I could be there in minutes. Then it becomes an issue of training. Teachers use the same reasoning, yet it is proven that home schooled kids perform better than public educated kids from professional teachers.

Now I may be an extreme example. Many proponents of big government ideas would say that I want to live in the Wild West. I’m a guy that made sure my kids were driven to school by their mother most of their lives so they wouldn’t have to ride the bus. And when the school system imposed things upon my children I didn’t like, namely in sex education, my wife and I took them out for a year and home schooled them. That’s the way I think, so I can only toss the idea out there from my perspective which involves a tremendous amount of self-reliance which to me is the solution to everything. If people did for themselves and helped their immediate neighbor’s, the country would be a much stronger and better place. It’s all this collectivism that causes the trouble with budgets, when people want services that they should do themselves. Of course that costs money.

Some aspects of service are better hired out. With the Sheriff’s department, operating the jail, embarking on drug busts, and heavy duty organized crime are things we certainly need and should staff for those levels. And with Fire departments, there needs to be some professional staff that could train volunteers and provide urgent care.

But it is not acceptable to initiate any kind of tax. We have the taxes we currently do, and I’d argue that those are too high. But deal with budget we currently have. Don’t even consider increasing that budget with a tax increase. If we need to pay off loans, we’ll have to take money that is currently going to other services to pay down those debts. Just like a household that is trying to pay off their credit cards might skip going out to Chili’s for dinner and instead have a hot dog on the grill to save the money to be applied to credit card debt. That is how you deal with our budget deficit and how we make up the 10 million needed, with cutting out the excess. You still eat, but it’s the type of the meal that you deal with. Will it be painful? Yes. But is it more painful to impose a sales tax on a community that is buying products at Walmart, Kroger, every restaurant, Home Depot, and even pizza establishments? Especially when there is a serious risk of inflation devaluing the US dollar dramatically in 2011 and 2012 which will further impact sales in Butler County?

In Forest Park sits the Cincinnati Mills Mall, a beautiful building full of massive potential. And down the road is Tri County Mall. The local economy obviously cannot support two large malls. Tri County did the better job in the 90’s of adjusting to the economic climate. They built a second story and remarketed themselves. And to this day, they basically put Cincinnati Mills out of business.

One of the advantages in Butler County, and the reason the homes are nice, and there are pools in the yards, are because people can live there without the needless taxes. Businesses want to come to Butler County because it is affordable to do business. Even though this sales tax is small, the philosophy is going in the wrong direction. And we should not even consider traveling down that road.

It would be far more profitable to get the money out of Mexico than to take it from the people who come to Butler County to do their business.

And Mr. Jones, I’m serious. Just give me a call when you want to head to the border next so that story can be exposed. I want to see our Sheriff’s department sue the Mexican government for the trouble they’ve brought us through illegal immigration. You could generate a lot more than 10 million dollars for the impact to our community if you did that and Butler County would be much better for it.

Rich Hoffman

www.NoLakotaLevy.com

Sheriff Jones Interview over Immigration

Recently, we did an interview of Sheriff Jones, the popular Southern Ohio personality after he returned from the Arizona border on a fact finding mission regarding the new Arizona Immigration law.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N53YIzOCm_s&hd=1

The problem with immigration, especially illegal immigration, is that it’s not just about people seeking a better life in the United States.

As the Sheriff points out, a majority of the illegal drugs in the world go to the United States.  And most of that is brought in across the southern border.  It can be argued that drug lords are only answering to the demand of the public.  But in reality, the drug problem, like many other social problems, are perpetuated by rival economic powers to undermine the strength of our nation and culture.  So just because there is a demand, the merit of that demand is an internal issue that must be dealt with. 

In the mean time under the Tenth Amendment, Arizona has a right, and obligation to create a law to stop the terrible effects of illegal immigration.  And the President of the United States has absolutely no right, or authority to question it.  To do so is an abuse of power.  And anyone that thinks otherwise does not understand how America is supposed to be running. 

Rich Hoffman

www.overmanwarrior.com