Tag: State Soverignty

Why EdChoice is so Beneficial: Removing Parkinson’s Law from the public education debate in Ohio

I’ve been watching and listening to the whole debate about EdChoice in Ohio with great interest. Of course, the Ohio Senate had to vote to delay the implementation of Ed Choice which was scheduled to take effect the day of this writing, until April 1st 2020. The public schools in particular have responded terribly to it, including the school in my own district which I’ve written a lot about, Lakota. It has been nothing short of embarrassing to listen to Lakota’s superintendent complain about the funding model that is coming whether they like it or not and move the entire district into a victimized status so quickly on the issue. The report back from some financial news from Lakota has not been good and they are floating the idea for another levy which would be a terrible, anti-growth tax increase just to supplement their mismanaged spending habits, so the news was bad enough. This EdChoice debate has only made things worse. Dealing with professional educators to me is the worst experience that there is in professional politics because they are so entitled and unrealistic about what they think their financial requirements should be, so we’ll deal with some of that here, and in the coming months. Listening to politicians attempt to put their minds around what to do about EdChoice, which is simply a grading system that inspires the financial contributions of the state to follow the student of that failing school to the school of their choice. This of course leaves variability in public school budgets for money they have been used to getting now going to an unpredictable number of students who may decide to go somewhere else with that precious state money.

I listened to Bill Cunningham and Representative Bill Seitz talk about this EdChoice problem on WLW and every word made me cringe. Here were two people who call themselves rock ribbed Republicans missing the whole point of the public education debate. Now, my history with these two is that they are on the wrong side of many issues. They mean well like a lot of people do, but their perspective has been tainted by years of acceptance of a system initiated by people like John Dewey during an experimentation of many things during the progressive era at the turn of the last century and like many have accepted that that’s just the way things are and the way they will always be. Money goes to the school from the state to teach children living in that district not just skills for a future job, but to turn them into democratic citizens with an emphasis on social change. In hindsight this has been a complete disaster, look at the products of the schools, which many of us are. People aren’t very smart, and they don’t set their sights very high in life. Dewey’s mistake was in attempting to steer society away from republic representation and more toward democratic majority rule, which we all know now is a disaster at the epistemological level.

For the two Bills talking on WLW about EdChoice, they are both people in their 60s and 70s now, to them public school is about sports programs, learning to follow orders so that kids learn to live in a civil society, and in establishing much needed social connections with peers. Way back, many decades ago when my wife and I pulled our kids out of public schools for a year to teach them at home because the results were just so disappointing we had family members literally melt under the news because they were afraid my kids would turn into complete social outcasts, because they believed after so many years of this Dewey philosophy that the goal of public schools was to establish these mental applications. Of course, those sentiments were completely fear based, just as about everything in public education is. We have learned to just accept the failure that is evident because that’s always the way we have done things. People like the “Bills” on WLW enjoy the idea that their public school is the holder of real-estate value, and that Friday Night Lights football in the fall months of every year make for great conversation. But it was flawed from the beginning and never was poised to do what Dewey wanted because his fundamental problem was in thinking that the state as a central authority should be in charge. It was a progressive experiment, but not a very “Republican” thing to do.

Schools like Lakota and many others who are complaining about the insecurity in their funding model should be looking at the situation like any business would instead of some free-loader sitting in a bird nest of a rich district and opening their mouths for tax money to flow in. They should be working to be the best school with the best options in a free market society. No matter what the report card states in giving families the choice of a school they’d like to go to, Lakota should feel confident that kids would want to go to their school for all the reasons that anybody would, to get a good education, be near a good sports program, or just to be around other students who aren’t problems coming from broken families. Students should have a choice and if Lakota wants those students, they should have to work to attract them.

The most tragic thing I have noticed, looking at the situation professionally, is that all public schools have become addicted to the natural state of Parkinson’s Law that has contaminated their budgeting structures. Everyone who has been involved professionally in process improvements understands that Parkinson’s Law is an adage that states “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion,” meaning that a work schedule blankly stated will allow a worker to fill that time allotment from beginning to end by the nature of human interaction. If you give someone an hour to do a 5-minute job, they’ll take the whole hour. Process improvement demands to understand how long it actually takes to do a job, and to work out the tendencies of Parkinson’s Law to misstate labor needs. Well, that same tendency is at the center of the public education debate all across the country, and is why the EdChoice trend is so badly needed. Budgets have been filled to their maximum to accommodate whatever the state provides and to what extent local school district tax payers will put up with in increased levies driven by labor unions looking to use Parkinson’s Law to attach need to student performance by using the chaos of money going to the schools, not the student, to keep the process centrally controlled and with a false understanding of what education per student should cost, leaving the real state funding model perpetually broken, which is just how the labor unions and lazy superintendents like it.

Clearly what we have had hasn’t worked. Education needs reformed and the centralized aspects of it need to be removed. Free market solutions are the only way to improve schools and the students that come from them. People should have the option to vote with their feet putting schools into the same competitive situation that every restaurant, shopping complex and entertainment destination must do, compete for the dollars available. Education is not so sacred to not be attached to competitive market conditions, end of story. A quick look at our students declares that trying something new wouldn’t hurt, because we couldn’t do worse. And ultimately that is the direction of education anyway, just as the trends of the world are declaring. People want more choices in life, not less, and it’s a matter of time anyway where money for education shouldn’t even come from the state. But while it does, it should go to the students so they can vote with their feet. Not to hold them to a school that doesn’t feel it has to earn their business. If Lakota is such a great school, or any government school for that matter, don’t tell us how good you are. Make yourself one of those schools that people want to go to. Make it so that you are so crowded that you must turn people away, which only increases the value of the product. Sure, it makes the current way that schools do business chaotic, it forces them to understand how much Parkinson’s Law is in their processes. It forces the teacher unions to think differently for sure. But that is their problem, not ours. And the state will never know how much it should spend on students so long as Parkinson’s Law is contaminating their assumptions. That is the key to this whole discussion and we’re going to have it now or in a few years, but the way things have been are not the way things are going to be. The old Dewey model was poised from the outset to fail. But these days, life happens too fast and there is just too much to learn to attempt to squeeze everything into the traditional classroom setting that we have been attempting to do. The times and this new economy are forcing us to change, so let’s get at it and solve this problem once and for all by looking at the entire concept differently.

Rich Hoffman

A Miracle in West Chester: People brought together to cheer on a president who wasn’t even there

As there was an event dedicated to President Trump held by a combination of people important to the re-election actions needed in 2020, I was reminded of some of the more subtle realities of leadership management that don’t get talked about much. To comment that there was a Trump rally in West Chester, Ohio that drew a very large crowd, and he wasn’t even there says a lot about just how good this president is in ways that modern academia is clueless about. They can’t teach this kind of leadership effect at West Point, or any institution of learning, because the contents of its power are so elusive that it is beyond the measurement of modern methods. But I have come to understand it in my own way, the nature of influence leadership and just how important it is into shaping the world that we know. Even with all the attacks against President Trump, and the attempts to prevent the inevitable that comes from his raw enthusiasm for everyday life, I have watched his remote influence shape directly the lives of a cast of characters I have known within the Republican Party in such positive ways that it has been almost magical, straight out of a Disney movie.

Locally within Butler County where Republicanism is almost a regional consideration, the values have not always been aligned. I was reminded at that same event by several people that the Butler County Republican Party supported John Kasich during the last election, and we all watched that character fall from grace completely, and totally making himself a national embarrassment along the way as he made a hard left on the political spectrum almost toward the death and resurrection of Karl Marx himself. Even for me, I had been in conflict with many of the people celebrating the Presidency of Donald Trump. We all had differences rooted in positions along that political spectrum, yet at the event, we were all friends united by a common love, and understanding that Trump brings to everything he does, and that is the element that makes him so good. He unites as all leaders do people’s attention toward the obscure and they love him for it.

Even now, I see that the person I had been supporting for Senate, Jim Renacci has conflict with the current governor of Ohio Mike DeWine. I could tell similar stories about many people attending the West Chester Trump Rally on January 30, 2020. There were people there who had been at each other’s throats in years before, myself included, but with a little Chick-Fil-A offered up as a food option and a lot of positive sentiment directed toward the stage where current politicians reminisced about the Trump presidency, there was great love born from the experience where those differences melted away like a spoonful of butter on hot pancakes in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. It was quite something to witness.

I have been warning many who have been in the fight for a long time not to become too in love with the thrill of the fight, and the nature of conflict, because at some point there will be a unifying circumstance that will bring everyone together as friends again. So its important to be open to that friendship when it gives rise to the opportunity. Its also important not to put away the weapons of war too deep into the closet either. Just because everyone has found unity in an idea, conflict is still the bond that creates future friends and pushes for the development of new frontiers of thought. Sipping tea and conversing over lattés doesn’t get you there. Team building comes directly out of people unified by necessity and war still is the most unifying function that can focus people’s attention on the things that connect them, not what divides. Part of the reason the Democrats are so floundering to find solutions for themselves these days is that they have used an attempted need to create hatred for President Trump to move their base forward, perhaps in the way that the Tea Party movement thought of Obama. The problem is, President Trump is a very likeable person and he has managed to unify nearly the entire spectrum of the Republican Party into a happy family, maybe as much as would ever be possible, and he has done it in a remarkably short period of time.

I was part of many conversations in those early days of Trump among those same Republicans, many whom supported Kasich for President, or Ted Cruz types. Some of us still had old war wounds from political endeavors where we all weren’t in agreement, particularly on public union issues. But under the pro-growth policies of the Trump approach to things, many of those concerns have been crushed under the sheer optimism of a Dow Jones marker near 30,000. I think it’s a lot to ask of any expectation, but if we can’t get politicians to agree on cutting out the fat in their budgets, Trump has chosen to think big and grow our way out of it. Even for me, I can see a path that will deal with the national debt in the next term as all these pro-growth strategies will begin operating in the black. That doesn’t solve the problem of debt spending by a government out of control, but the Trump solution of solving part of it with sheer growth has put the knives back in their sheaths and allow friendships to spring forth once again on unified fronts. That doesn’t mean that constructive conflict won’t continue, but perhaps instead of slit throats it will only be arm wrestling.

The media seemed to have difficulty understanding the story of this Trump Rally in West Chester, because as they kept saying, Butler County is Trump Country. What’s so big about a rally there with or without him. Where is the news? Of course, the prejudice from newsroom directors is obvious, they could find a story in a cat stuck in a tree, so their choice is not to give any positive news to the public about anything Trump does. But their boycott on logic went deeper to that, to an almost subconscious understanding of this leadership issue, and that the Democrats just don’t have an equal. But outside of the conflicts of politics, the story is in the long reaching effects of good leadership and how unifying it can be in obtaining goals everyone can agree on. That to my eyes is a miracle of modern splendor nearly unheard of in the history of the world. It was a good story to see, so many wild and woolly Republicans of all different backgrounds and needs unified in such a wonderful way, that was a news story that should have made front page news in any other time. But because the other side doesn’t have a comparable advocate, the results are being ignored in hopes that the greater world might not yet be touched by such a miracle. And to know the characters involved in this shin dig in West Chester, calling it a miracle is an understatement. Yet former enemies were now friends, and the seething combat that often takes place on Facebook and during fierce campaigns was now cheers for a president far away in Washington D.C., not even there to shake hands and pump his fist to the crowd, and that was something to behold for the prosperity of all time to witness.

Rich Hoffman

President Trump, Warren Davidson, and George Lang: ‘Nobody Does it Better’

It was good to hear my congressman’s name come up during President Trump’s March for Life speech on Friday. Warren Davidson has been doing such a great job representing me in Washington D.C. that it gave me a great moment of pride in hearing his name mentioned so prominently by the greatest president in American history. But that wasn’t all that Trump was up to that day, additionally he had a meeting of the nation’s mayors at the White House so to inspire them into better things. Also he released on Twitter the new logo for the sixth branch of military service, the Space Force which has come to be under his presidency. For most people any one of those things would have been the climax of their week, even for former presidents. They would have needed a nap after just the mayor’s event. But for Donald J. Trump and those rising to great success under his influence leadership, like Warren Davidson, its just another day at the office. Few people would have known it, even though every network had committed most all of their broadcasting effort toward the effort, but an impeachment trial was going on at Capital Hill by those seeking any way possible to slow this president down. And this coming on the heels of new trade deals with China, Mexico and Canada, and a very successful trip to the Davos economic forum of world leaders. This president is too big of a thinker to be encumbered by the small minded, and after a week of impeachment coverage, it was quite clear that President Trump had more of a personality of a James Bond theme song than the scandalous acceptance of political diatribes that brought down Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon. Trump is a winner and everything he touches improves just by his influence, leaving attempts to paint him as a lesser person weak and affectless.

This isn’t a new idea to me, that is why actually I have named this site for more than a decade now, Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom. As an individual I live my own life in such a way, something that is bigger than just the meager exploits of common human ambitions. That’s where the “overman” comes from, expecting more of yourself than just the primitive attempts at basic living, but to do everything in your life as if it were a legendary status. So it is great to see that those types of people are finding success these days instead of being held down by some pretense of social construct. Those cracks have been forming in every field of endeavor for well over 100 years, and it is very exciting to see what having one finally live and work in the White House can do for people, and that wonderful new politicians like Warren Davidson on the national level and George Lang at the Ohio level, are emerging under a flag of winning that people just haven’t experienced before.

A lot of people over the weekend tried to put their finger on the issue, really of what happened during the third week of January 2020 in America with a president who has a personality that is bigger than the news cycles and the top stars of Hollywood and within the networks. It obviously bothers them that they can’t match his efforts, but I would say that the fault is entirely theirs. They have simply set the goals for themselves too low, and their lives have been too meek to compete with President Trump, that even with all the vast resources of the federal government to utilize, they have not been able to hurt him at all politically. They may have kept his influence from spreading to those who have already voted otherwise. If not for their efforts, President Trump may have 90% of the country behind him currently. He may actually be the first president in American history who is truly a president to all people no matter what their political backgrounds. There were some bad mayors in the White House at that meeting, and Trump treats them all very fairly and always above the line, which is consistent with his business background. I think most successful business people are good at finding what’s best about people, even if those people don’t yet see it in themselves. Its not a bad thing to call them out and to try to push them into greatness, even if they insist on being sticks in the mud. Optimism is good for business, and now its also good for politics and the effects are now exploding onto the scene.

And to think how much President Trump has endured and yet stock prices on the Dow are hovering at 29,000. Trump was the first president in American history to speak at the famous March for Life that occurs every year. I mean how could anybody not be for life? Certainly, a positive person like President Trump wants to see every life have a chance at something great for themselves, especially those being born. How could any politician put their name next to a death cult of abortion and try to sell it to women as a right to be a murderer? Yet that is how it has been, and presidents were so terrified to be pushed under on the media cycle to even appear to challenge Roe v. Wade that they fear women may not vote for them in an upcoming election. President Trump however didn’t just make himself that first president to so publicly speak in favor of such a pro-life position, but its just one of the big things he did that day, and that is pretty much every day in his administration. He is an amazing character of significant achievement and like any overmanwarrior, he is not content with those efforts, but is always looking for the next win. Lesser people who don’t have such high goals for themselves simply can’t touch him. Look at how pathetic Adam Schiff was in the senate trying to use 24 hours of legal banter to make a case for impeachment only to look like a loser who farted in a corner and then tried to blame it on everyone else.

I know how hard Warren Davidson works in my district and I feel privileged to have him as an option for representation. Not that competency should be unjustly rewarded, its expected, but all too often we end up with hacks like Adam Schiff in federal positions, and those people are really struggling with the influence leadership of President Trump because they can’t keep up. All they can do is yell at the bus that has come and gone leaving them on a street corner of philosophy with all the rest of the garbage that has refused the call to be better than they were yesterday. In Trump’s America, everyone should strive to be more than they were even five minutes ago. He has lived his life that way and now as a President, he is showing what such a person looks like. Most of us, a majority, love it and will continue to support it well into the future. And that is unique to our times and is a growing movement that I relish. I have never enjoyed watching the news so much than I have from the day that this president was voted into office in November of 2016. He is simply too big to stop and the world knows it. And that big concept thinking is now giving a voice to other big thinkers, like Warren Davidson, and George Lang to become more than they ever could before, which is probably the most exciting thing that nobody is talking about. For a change its not the nobody’s who are shaping our lives. It’s the winners, and this is what it feels like, which is a great and welcomed condition. These times are for winners, and President Trump is the embodiment of the Carly Simon song, “Nobody Does it Better.” And we are all benefiting from it. Trump is the best, and the world is coming to understand it, even his enemies.

Rich Hoffman

George Lang: One of the Hardest Workers in the Business of Politics

I really can’t say enough about how good George Lang is. Yes, I’ve known him for a long time and watched him navigate through the kind of political waters that would sink most people, but his raw optimism and hope in everyday people has really put him into a category all his own. He’s in full campaign mode now for his 4th District Senate run in Ohio as the primary is coming up in March and I just have to say that I don’t know anybody who works harder and is more honest at it than him. I tend to judge people based on how hard they work and even though his personality and beliefs are not new to me, which is why I always support George Lang in anything he does, it really has been his work ethic for this senate seat that has impressed me most recently. He has been astonishing in the work he has been willing to put into the effort, even though he is the clear front runner. He’s already in the House of Representatives representing the same essential district, so his workload is spoken for, but seeing the crowd he was able to draw at a fundraiser this past week, and the quality of his supporters would impress anybody, even those not so inclined to political tides and concerns.

The fundraiser was held at a very nice home in Liberty Township complete with its own bowling alley, which everyone seems to have these days in such a wonderful land of opportunity that has evolved in that area. The crowd that George was able to muster would impress even the most rigorous national politician, and it takes that kind of ability to play the game at that level. While most media would cover such an event with the obvious hatred toward businesspeople and the money they tend to make—purely out of jealousy—George’s pro-business platform and track record already at the state level would impress anybody. What a lot of people who don’t have bowling alleys in their basement don’t know is that business owners and investors have had a tough road to run for many decades as the political class could have cast themselves straight out of the villains of an Ayn Rand novel, and they have had to tip toe around government in all sorts of ways just to make a decent living always with a weary eye toward some government imposed audit, or regulatory tyranny. If they treat themselves to a bowling alley in their basement or a nice car nobody should begrudge them, because most of the time, those types of people work 12 to 15 hour days and worry constantly 24 hours a day to provide jobs for people and to always stay ahead in tough, competitive business markets. They need someone they can trust, and George Lang has provided them with that option, so its good to see they see that and have shown up to support him when needed.

Most politicians have to pander to the business class type of donors to some extent or another, but they don’t often openly embrace business leaders the way that George does because of the media stigma that has existed for well over a century, created by the Karl Marx types that are so openly bred in our colleges and public education institutions these days. By the way intelligentsia treats business owners and leaders its amazing that anybody even wants to try to be anything but a paycheck puncher and nothing more. For even the most ambitious people find the lack of respect that is cast against any business owner a barrier to the kind of risks and personal dedication that it takes to be a job provider. If not for those who want some trappings of wealth to enjoy as a result of the massive amount of work and worry that it takes, nobody may attempt it. Luckily in America, and especially in the 4th District of Ohio there are plenty of people still willing to do such work and George has positioned himself to represent them, as well as all the people who enjoy jobs from such an endeavor. Because if not for people like the hosts of that fundraiser for George, with the nice bowling alley serving as a podium for the ever enthusiastic Lang, Liberty Township wouldn’t be such a paradise of unemployment and wealth generation that makes even the least ambitious person living in the area one of the luckiest people on earth due to the opportunities afforded to them by the hard working and industrious.

I’ve been to these kinds of things a lot, and to be honest, the efforts usually look phony to me. Politicians are forced to play both sides of the fence, they pander to the business owner for money, then boot lick the “worker” as termed by the Marx movement that has so infected several generations of people for over a century, as if they were polar opposites. What very few politicians have ever successfully made a proper connection to is that one makes the other, not the other way around, and that George through his own hard work represents them all authentically, not in the way of the phony that other politicians have managed. Authenticity of purpose is one of the rarest commodities and its wonderful to see that so many people recognize that trait in George and have been willing to put their money where their mouth is. They can see as I do the hard work that George Lang has been willing to put into everything he does, and they see him as a good investment. Not in the way that politics has been known to purchase power and prestige by selling away access, but in getting yield and support from a representative who actually does the work and is tireless in the effort.

When businesses thrive, everything that cascades off those wonderful industries improves the lives of everyone connected. For many people waking up in the morning knowing that there is a job out there with their name on it is one of the most treasured items in their lives. That is how they raise their families, pay their mortgages, their car payments, it funds all the things they want to be and hope to achieve. But the efforts to run a business and to own a business often is one of the most overlooked elements of our culture with old prejudices well established by other elements that permeate the thoughts of even the most logical. And its so refreshing to see that George Lang sees beyond all that to the truth, and in the manner of his extremely hard work, optimistic spirit, and sheer honesty, that he is unlike most any other politician that has ever ran for office. The speeches might sound similar at times as many politicians are gifted orators, but they aren’t like George Lang who expects to be more of a representative to everyone in his district than even comes from his presentations of himself. He’s as hard of a worker as the hardest worker in any position, and he offers himself as a friend to the start of all economic activity, the business owners and industrialists who need representation to work their magic, which of course benefits everyone. In that way, George Lang’s campaign is unusually honest, and is something that even those not very interested in politics could be proud of and feel some connection to due to the authenticity and stamina of its candidate. George Lang is impressive, but that’s because what’s underneath is even better than the package.

Rich Hoffman

Marriage Story: An important lesson on the birds and the bees and the nature of relationships

It was far better than the old tent pole movie Kramer vs. Kramer which splashed into our culture about divorce in modern America many years ago. Marriage Story, which is on Netflix and can be watched by everyone without an excuse is a fantastic film about the creation of families and how they can disintegrate over little issues. Its one of the best that I can think of and should be a must watch for anybody over ten years old. If you can watch the movie, it may be the best thing you could do for yourself today. The movie directed and produced by Noah Baumbach is a labor of love that tackles divorce in a startling way with humor, hope and tragedy rolled all up into one well done package that is more beneficial than just another offering for entertainment.

Even more stunning was that these big name actors, like Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Laura Dern and Alan Alda set loose a story that really shows in this day and age what happens when a mother puts a career in front of her family and expects everything to work out. Without question Adam Driver’s character of Charlie was the victim. He hadn’t done much to provoke the divorce, it was mostly Scarlett Johansson’s character who was seeking her own identity after doing what happens to most couples, finding a guy she liked, landing him, then trying to change him. When he continued to eclipse her socially, she wanted out of the marriage which a lot of women in this #metoo age feel pressured to do. The results are often divorces like the one shown in Marriage Story.

Rather than give a regular review for a film like this, other than to say, SEE IT, I’ll instead give a much needed lesson on the birds and the bees because so many people just don’t understand, including poor Charlie in this movie. He had sex with his girlfriend who became his wife. She got pregnant and he worked hard to be a good dad. So what in the world went wrong? A lot of people are asking those questions these days and our society does very little to explain it to them. That’s why movies like this can be so important, and why everyone should see this movie.

Forget about political correctness for the duration of this article, the nature of all human beings at a very biological level is to eat and reproduce. Young girls are pretty as humans define them because they are like flowers just blooming. The pretty ones attract the best DNA in male bees seeking to pollinate the most attractive females so that those DNA matchups are optimal and good children are produced. That is the divine way of the universe, we are all programmed to think in such a way. As women start to wilt beyond age 25 they come to understand that their value as females is going away. They had been taught that sex was their power since puberty, and they are about to lose that power so they enter a phase of crisis which in the modern sense of things is to replace their sexuality with a career.

Men are programmed to be ready anytime a woman is ready to be pollinated, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Often men get married so that they don’t have to waste time looking for sex, so they can do other things with their life like develop hobbies, and spend time with friends. Even after thousands of years of evolution they have not learned that you don’t get married to have sex. You get married to be a stabile biological contributor to a woman’s offspring and once she is pollinated, and wilting rapidly thereafter, sex is the last thing she cares about. She wants to raise her children and she wants resources. Men go from being showered with attention while the woman wants to be pollinated, to being a very low priority in the scheme of the family and they never seem to understand why. Charlie in the Marriage Story didn’t, and he had a really wonderful breakdown toward the end of the movie that was honest in ways I’ve never seen before, yet most of us go through it in some form during our lives. Because it is the story of all marriages. The only differences are that some learn to deal with it while most never do.

We’ve tried to turn marriage into some Disney fairy tale where people live happily ever after and that just isn’t an intellectual argument that belongs outside of the mind of a 7-year-old. Marriage is only about making a family. Happy couples who stay married learn to do things together that they both enjoy. But couples working in different directions don’t stay married because it just doesn’t work for the human mind. People are drawn together by common goals. If a couple does not have common goals, marriage is all but impossible. For most marriages obviously the production of children is enough to keep people working at a marriage to construct a family. Many people struggle to stay married once there are no longer children as the common goal, but in the case of the Marriage Story, it was the mom who needed something of her own identity as she could feel herself wilting as a flower and she wanted to replace that sinking feeling with a career. That was certainly the case of her friend and attorney, Laura Dern’s character who played a wonderfully accurate busy body modern day feminist who was a disaster of a personality. There are so many people like her functioning in the world its no wonder so many families break up and why so many kids are growing up messes of people.

The way its supposed to work is that a woman marries a man while she is still a nice-looking flower to pollinate. The man seeks to protect that image for the rest of his life even if he has to dehydrate the flower to preserve it in a book or something. It may look gross to outsiders, but the man remembers the flower he pollinated and the children that came from the experience and he tries to protect it for the rest of his life. But when we add complex social experiments to the nature of biology and psychology then we get variations of success in the experience of a happy life, leaving most people miserable. That’s when people start cheating on each other or seek to divorce so they can get that pollination feeling again, because they didn’t take the time the first time around to enjoy the experience. But its never the same the second time, or the third, fourth, or fifth.  Humans just aren’t built to have that many complex relationships in their lives, it destroys them at a core level every time they do it because the goal of the entire experience is to produce children. Not to have the fulfilment of an individual experience.

Couples who learn to play together at life, do things together are the ones who are happiest. By design, after 20 years of raising kids, there should be enough there to have a decent marriage. But men who leave their wives for younger women are doing so because they failed to launch past their biological necessities as the pollinators of young flowers. Maybe when they were young the attractive flowers wouldn’t give them the time of day and now that they are older with more money, they can get the attention of the flowers in full bloom with all their nice colors and thin stims. But it doesn’t last long, and the male soon finds themselves in the same cycle. Sex is used to secure the relationship and if kids aren’t produced there is no reason for the initial union, and the relationship dissolves.

We’re not supposed to talk about these things because we are supposed to have gay marriages legalized, and men and women are supposed to have their own careers and leave their kids to the state to raise in public schools, and its all supposed to work out. But that’s all hog wash. I’ve been married over 30 years and I know lots of people who have been married for 50 or more years. Take a little advice, watch a Marriage Story and learn from it. Avoid the mistakes because you’ll wish later that you listened and learned what the true nature of marriage was, and to build your life appropriately around it. If you want sex, don’t get married, rent a whore, find a knothole in the fence somewhere, or stay in your mom’s house and go to skank shacks at night picking up wilted flowers that spray-paint themselves up to look fresh under dim lights that are dying fast. But if you want to raise a family, which everyone should strive for in my opinion, take a number, be very patient and learn that nothing you do in a marriage is about you—its mostly for what you can build with someone else after the sex of youth has long gone, and what lasts in the realm of immortality, the things you do while you are alive that people remember.

Watch Marriage Story, its simply fantastic!

Rich Hoffman

Liberty Center and Disney Springs: It wouldn’t take much

I always love a visit to the Liberty Center for a good movie, dinner or just shopping. I consider it one of the best destinations of its kind and I love that its in my neighborhood, and that takes into account that my very favorite spot is Disney Springs in Orlando. While on vacation recently in Orlando I had a fresh take on all the wonderful new additions they have added to Disney Springs which made it a hopping place of excitement and adventure. Everything is so nice and clean, as well as competent. My wife and I spent a lot of time, and a small fortune at Disney Springs and loved every moment of it. But as soon as we returned we went to our hometown Liberty Center to see Star Wars one of the many times that we would see it since its release on December 20th and I have to say that Liberty Center is really nice to have, and I appreciate it immensely.

One of the conditions of our vacation, which really took place most of the month of December, with a week in Orlando, was that we would visit at least five different amusement parks. With Disney being the best of the best in that category, I was impressed with Kings Island’s Winterfest and had been thinking that Cedar Fair Amusements had done a great job since buying it, and putting it into a another level of category as a national destination. Considering that the day we were at Kings Island on a Friday we had the day before been at Disney’s Animal Kingdom and the experiences were both on the upside of quality. Then over that weekend and all through the following week we spent a lot of time at Liberty Center and I just have to say I am happy to have it in my town. Its really nice to have something like that in a region where tourism isn’t the primary hook, but business is. I use Liberty Center for those very important dinners all the time, but over the holidays I had to remind myself that I wasn’t still in the euphoria of Disney World, but was in Liberty Township, Ohio.

Now after several years of operating I can say with full confidence that going to a movie at Cinebistro is still the best way to go to the theater in the city of Cincinnati, or the surrounding area for hundreds of miles. It always has an uptown feel without the problems of going to such places, like New York, or Chicago. The parking is free, and easy. The streets are clean and well lit. The food is the top of the charts, but that movie theater is the best. Clearly the best in the city. I really like going there and being spoiled by the staff. I have become used to that treatment and really appreciate it. While watching the latest Star Wars film there, and the latest Clint Eastwood film ‘Richard Jewell’ it had the same feel of being on vacation at Disney Springs, only it was only less than a ten minute drive from my home and that is a treasure I do not take for granted.
There was a lot of news in November of 2019 where Liberty Center put a third party commercial real estate firm to handle the leasing, property management and marketing called Bayer Properties out of Birmingham, Alabama. This is the third chance since the Steiner group turned over their control to JLL. Hey, it’s a tough gig in a recovering economy where brick and mortars are struggling to find their voice. I spent some time walking around and looking at everything at Liberty Center and I consider it a great success story, but without question they are eager to fill up some of their empty lots with vigorous new business and for many of those businesses it’s a tough investment. But after several years of working it out, Liberty Center still has the feel of a destination market, a place that would be worthy to fly into town just to visit and stay at the Marriott that is on property.

However, there are things that could be done to improve the lure for new businesses to invest in the area, and to fill their office and condominium spacing that is available. I don’t think enough people still understand that there is a full mall on site that is part of the shopping and dining experience. Those problems could be overcome with just a few simple steps. Disney Springs looks like they are turning away leases, there are no empty spots for them anywhere. But then again, the big amusement parks are just a few blocks away. But that should not restrict Liberty Center from providing an equal value and create so much commercial value that they are turning away potential business plans instead of taking all comers. That is a problem that Cincinnati Mills choked on in Forest Park, and that same fate for Liberty Center can easily be avoided. The trick is that there should be more things to do at Liberty Center than just shop and eat, such as the big hot air balloon that they have at Disney Springs that is free advertising for many miles in every direction that something interesting is going on at that shopping complex. Liberty Center could use a bit more fun. It’s a shame they don’t have their own version of Main Event or Top Golf on the property to make a night out something that really is an all-encompassing experience. Disney Springs has a lot to do besides eating, drinking and shopping, and it should be doing it more than it is. That would help fill up some of those empty lots with vibrant businesses.

But more than anything everything needs to work that was put in, like the little pond in front of the wellness center on the top floor of the center of the complex. Loose bricks and poor landscaping should not be surrendered to because its hard to hire a staff motivated enough to keep up with everything. Disney management keeps their empire motivated with policy that their workers adhere to and it matters. I was very impressed with the workers at Cinebistro at Liberty Center because they had managed over time to retain that high level of quality and customer service. I always stay for the end of the credits and one of the attendants brought me a mint just for a touch of class. If the whole complex down to the custodians felt that way about the entire complex, that would go a long way to improving the charisma of the place. It’s a subtle thing, but one of the most important and is often the difference between a vacation like Disney and every place else, especially Vegas and New York. Those places its easy to see the dirt if you look a little closely. At any Disney complex, the dirt is well hidden from view and the workers are in on the illusion, which is what people are willing to pay for. Yet, Liberty Center is already mostly there, it wouldn’t take much. And for this new management group, I am firmly rooting in their corner for great success!

Rich Hoffman

The Magic of Disney Imagineers: Enjoying a world where creativity is unleashed and money is not an obstical

For me, the most enjoyable parts of life come from cultures that are “can doers” as opposed to those who use every excuse in existence not to do something. Whether its family, friends, co-workers, political alliances, or just basic economic considerations, I enjoy most what can be done and hate the most when people point barriers as to why something can’t. That is why so many of my articles are about taxes, politics and prohibitive psychology. The people I like most in the world are those who find ways to do something. Those I like the least are those who must be drug through the mud on everything, whether it’s a movie, buying a new car or house, or just going to the shopping center to purchase socks or something iniquitous toward daily life. Therefor, when it comes to my own needs to recharge my batteries, I find places full of energy and creativity the best for me and is my idea of a vacation. And more specifically, I love the type of people that the Disney Company hires as Imagineers, very imaginative and whimsical people who are also very smart on the engineering side of things. I enjoy the products they create and is my idea of a vacation to see their work.

With all that said my two favorite kinds of people are very creative types, and engineers, very smart and logical people. Sadly, for me, those traits often don’t exist in the same people, so I have to speak to a lot of people to get all those elements in my life. But in doing that, it takes time away from other things, which for me there never is enough of it to give. I fly in and out of meetings with people because there is always something going on that I need to do and in my own pursuits of these creative things, it’s a lot like digging for gold, you put a lot of effort into getting just a little bit. However, at places like Disney World, the reason things cost so much money ultimately is because the entertainment company tends to hire just the kind of people I have said I like the most and over the last decade, under the guidance of Bob Iger the Disney Imagineers have been given a lot to do and I enjoy watching them do it.

I think Bob Iger as the CEO of Disney has done a great job and in many ways I am thankful for him and the chances he has taken to advance the input Imagineers have had on the company. I’m not at all crazy that Iger is a Democrat. For this series of articles, I won’t hold that against him because he has made some great decisions to free the type of people I am talking about up so that they could do the best work possible. So for my vacation this year I have been at the Disney World complex in Orlando which I make no mistake in loving as I’ve said many times in the past. But this time the scope of my visit has been to enjoy the work of the Disney Imagineers in the way that one might enjoy the Mona Lisa at the Louvre or any other place where great creativity is on display. I consider the work of Disney Imagineers to be far better and superior to other acts of human endeavor and capitalism is the fuel they have to create such fantastic attributes. So under that definition, I have always loved Disney World and that is an emotion that grows as time advances.

I timed my visit to the parks this time to match the opening of the new Rise of the Resistance ride at Hollywood Studios and to enjoy the new Star Wars land that its in called Galaxy’s Edge. But its more than just geeking out on Star Wars, for me its all about the Imagineers who have been turned loose by the Disney Company to make so many great creations over the last decade that I have been so excited to see on a whirlwind trip that I had been looking forward to for a long time. Disney+ the new streaming service showcasing the many products of Disney over the years has a great show they produce dedicated to their Imagineers which I would highly recommend watching, even for a casual observer. If the world had more people like those Imagineers in it, everything would be better. And in spite of my thoughts on how the Disney Company has handled Star Wars, by introducing way too much social justice into the franchise and pushing it to near ruin, the vast financial resources that Disney has can not be understated in giving their Imagineers the time and money to make some of the neatest creations on planet earth, which I think is far more significant.

So this vacation of mine has nothing to do with rest and relaxation, or unplugging from the world, its all about relishing the products of raw creativity and vast amounts of financial resources. For instance, the new Star Wars land at Hollywood Studios and the park in Anaheim, California cost around $1 billion. No company on earth in any country could do something like that, so I can think of no place anywhere to visit that is better for my purpose, and that is to enjoy as much Imagineering created by raw capitalism that could be found anywhere. And for me, the first stop was to the newly renovated Disney Springs shopping complex where a bar was dedicated to one of my favorite movie characters of all time, Indiana Jones called Jock Lindsey’s Bar and Grill. I literally got off the airplane at the Orlando airport and headed there first because it’s something I’ve been wanting to see for a few years now.

The restaurants and shopping district of Disney Springs is what I would call a perfect marriage of the kind of world we should have everywhere. Because of the way Walt Disney bought the property in Florida, they have their own central government which helps with their regulatory burdens. When they need to fix a road or get a permit for a new building, the amount of land they control has given them their own governing ability, which keeps the bureaucracy to a minimum. A place like Disney Springs would not have happened any other way, and certainly nothing like Jock Lindsey’s Hanger Bar would have never been born from the minds of Disney Imagineers. But its not just that, all around the complex the input of the Imagineers is everywhere, most spectacularly in a recreation of the kind of springs that are so popular in Florida as the centerpiece. It was spectacularly beautiful and in a lot of ways much better than nature itself. The marriage of so much creativity with corporate capitalism at Disney Springs is something that was just wonderful in so many ways, I can’t think of any place I’d rather be to recharge my own batteries.

Politicians and other bureaucrats in any community anywhere in the world would find a million reasons not to build something like Disney Springs. And that is just the reason I love going to those types of places, because the level of creativity and the money to spend on it is so abundant, it is great to see what the human mind can produce if only they are allowed to. And in no place in the world are imaginative engineering types even employed, let alone turned loose to create so many fine works of art for the purpose of entertainment. And in our American culture, that is something to cherish, and to provide plenty of reverence, which I do.

Rich Hoffman

Stand Your Ground in Ohio: There is never a “duty to retreat,” the law is wrong

It tells you all you need to know about gun control, especially in states like Ohio where gun rights are very explicitly covered in its own Constitution, that all subsequent gun legislation has been designed to drive people toward more government central authority and not the individual rights guns protect. And that is certainly true of the liberal resistance, even by the current Republican governor of all forms of “stand your ground” laws that move through the legislature. There is another attempt at this now floating around Columbus, Ohio by lawmakers and the debate that it has spawned has been predictable. But for me, it is simply the legislature that is trying to catch up to the reality and intent of the original Constitution. This “duty to retreat” stuff is completely wrong. When assaulted with a threat, no human being has a duty to retreat, under any circumstance just to protect some hippie view of some collective existence being more important than individual ownership and the maintenance of private property.

Listening to the current crop of Democrats and open socialists running for president, all who support gun control and therefor the destruction of individual rights in favor of group affiliations, it makes me sick to think that we paid a lot of money for their educations only to have them grow up and become……that. Joe Biden isn’t going anywhere in the presidential election, but he’s been in the top job and knows better, yet when he talks about restricting gun magazines that can feed a gun in a firefight, he is way off his rocker. Citizens can’t have inferior weaponry to the state-controlled military. Who controls a potential out of control military if the wrong people are running things from the White House? People have to be able to stand up to corruption and abuse of power, and you can’t be shooting BB guns when they come knocking on your door to confiscate your property because they want it, or to throw you in jail because you are representing the wrong political party. (Roger Stone)

Our military and police are not a one stop shop of honor and protection. They must ultimately be managed by the people who pay them, and if the power goes to their heads and they are the ones with all the heavy weapons, silencers, and high capacity magazines, then they have leverage over the population and that is not their job. And when politicians fail us, such as they did during the Trump election, someone must have the power to keep them in check. No matter what anybody thinks of Donald Trump, his election revealed massive corruption at the top of the food chain, particularly among the Democrat Party and their scandals planted in Ukraine for their own enrichment. It goes far beyond Joe Biden. When the FBI is willing to edit FISA warrants and use the law for their own political desires, they will do anything else to harm private citizens and it is for that reason that any law in any state has a duty to retreat, to give the bad guys the advantage over the good, pure and simple. We know that we can’t trust government. We need government to manage affairs, but we know the power goes to their heads often, and we need to defend ourselves when it does.

In one of my published works, The Symposium of Justice the book starts out by the police letting a rapist out of jail to go after a young girl in the community. The police have a levy on the ballot for more money so they want to remind people how much the police are needed by letting a rapist out of jail and driving him by the home of a young teenage girl to “nudge” him into making her into a target that will ultimately panic the public into voting for more police funds. Just short of the attack a vigilant shows up and beats the rapist up to near death ruining the plans the police had and saving the girl from disgrace. A lot of people who have read my book think all that sounded like fiction and conspiracy theory dribble, but I can report that the entire first scene, including the vigilante action is nearly biographical and based on my own experience with the police department in Mason, Ohio while I was raising my family there and we became complicated with a marijuana distribution ring that the police were protecting, going all the way up to the mayor at the time. So don’t ever tell me I have some moral obligation to “retreat” when threatened. If you know how the game works you have a right and duty to justice to stand your ground, and nothing else. That is why my book was called The Symposium of Justice, because it was a look at what justice really is as opposed to what political tides want it to be.

American society and the culture of Ohio as a state shouldn’t not have anywhere in any of its laws a duty to retreat from a threat leaving action to the authorities. We shouldn’t give power to politically motivated prosecutors and loser lawyers to prosecute individuals who protect themselves and others with a gun, there are far more dangerous crimes out there to worry about. But to allow guns to be villains because they give power to individuals is the wrong sentiment and has no place written or implied in law. Rather, the key to a great society is when individuals can protect what they build and work for when danger comes to alter their momentum. For instance, if a businessman is taking his wife out for a nice dinner and they pull up somewhere for leisure and a robber is looking to enrich themselves at the expense of the couple, the businessman should be able to shoot the bandit dead on the spot without question, then continue their night of enjoyment unhindered. The businessman and his wife should not be subjected to embarrassment and plunder while the authorities waste countless amounts of tax dollars tracking down the villain, especially if it is found out that the businessman is a political contributor to a rival party and the bandit was sent to embarrass the businessman and force him down into a hole to hide in with disgrace from being robbed. This happens more than people are willing to admit. But regardless, its not the job of the robbed to retreat. That is just ridiculous.

There should never be in any legal writing any right to retreat, it goes against the very nature of a good society itself. Such a thing only helps the ill intent of villains, never the good people that are just trying to live their lives. The intent of such a law is to attempt to regulate good behavior to the words on a page and the promise of an oath to God, and these days, neither mean much to the villains of our society. But the barrel of a gun does, and it is that which truly keeps our world good and peaceful. Every person has a right to stand their ground, and nothing else, under no other pretense. Especially in Ohio!

Rich Hoffman

The Nature of Rules: Conformity, compliance and innovation often do not get along

The project I am currently working on, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business is really an idea I’ve been exploring my entire life. It’s on my mind because I’ve spent the last week enjoying all the various Star Wars mythologies that are spawning out of Disney, the new Mandalorian tv series, the video game Jedi: Fallen Order, the new book Resistance Reborn which is setting up the new Star Wars movie, The Rise of Skywalker. All while planning my trip to the Galaxy’s Edge at Disney World with my wife. I remember how it was in the beginning when I was just a young 20 something hanging out in Washington D.C. at the Smithsonian with the Joseph Campbell Foundation for which George Lucas was on the board of directors and seeing the models from the films which had filled my imagination all during my youth. Joseph Campbell had done for mythology what I want to do for business, and after half a century of work, those mythic efforts are finally starting to shape our culture in a positive, and measurable way.

Campbell taught at the little maverick school Sarah Lawrence College where he was free to conduct his outside the box academics to his liking, and to be truthful, if he hadn’t, Star Wars likely would have never happened. But it was a slow go on an obscure topic that took a long time to form roots. And in many ways, I consider Joseph Campbell one of my primary influences growing up. I’ve read all his books many, many times and listened to his various lectures most of my life. And my plans for my own life have been similar, but very different from his. My subject matter goes many steps beyond his study of cultures and comparative religion, but to the source of all activity among the human species. That is why my focus is on business and why this book I’m working on is such a big step that keeps getting deeper and deeper the longer I work on it.

The theme of my two previously published books, The Symposium of Justice and The Tail of the Dragon explore the nature of rules in our society and what their usefulness is. Nobody would argue that having a society of rules is what keeps everything we build together and that is certainly true in business. But rules by their nature prevent innovation, which is the key to all business expansion. My pick of the gunfighter period of the American West, around the 1870s to the 1890s is due to the lawless period of the American experiment that brought forth so much upcoming economic activity, which then created so many opportunities for people who otherwise wouldn’t have had them. The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald captured some of this very well, the idea of old money and new money. The old money was from the aristocratic class migrating from Europe while the new money was made in America by new innovations spawning from this Wild West period. While shortly after the Gatsby novel Ayn Rand wrote her classics, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged which did a good job of getting to the meat of the American experience as opposed to other influences around the world.

I grew up with a natural, and healthy hatred of rules. For as long as I have memories, I despised the limits others placed on me and dedicated myself to solitude and the treasures that could be found there. My best friend growing up was my books, especially the works of Joseph Campbell and Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. Once I figured out the nature of rules when I was still under ten years old, I stopped caring about them. Teachers and their homework assignments would take a back seat if I had something better to do. Society and their rules for going up and down escalators, speed limits, or not standing too close to a steep edge were all open invitations to me to break those rules to see what society was trying to keep me from. When I could drive a car, I routinely always drove 100 MPH everywhere. Functioning under the speed limit to me was forcing me to live by the averages of mundane people who weren’t interested in pushing any limits but confined to live within the limits of very average, and boring people. And yes, I was involved in several fiery crashes at those speeds. Not where I was driving, but other people, so I know what it feels like and after each one, I resolved to go even faster and defy death even more.

I could tell stories from here to some distant planet well outside our solar system about the many perilous adventures that have spawned off this tribute to pushing limits and questioning every rule that there is. I am far from an anarchist so I do like rules to a point, but I think a culture should always be pushing up against them and that insurance agents and politicians should not be limiting our intellects with stupid conformity to concepts invented by lazy minded losers. So putting all these thoughts together into this Gunfighter’s Guide to Business has turned out to be incredibly revelatory. I have gone back through all the education of the years that brought me to this point in my life, the rules based education of Lean thinking, of college MBA programs, of the kind of talking down that goes on in those endeavors and have crippled the scope of business to this very day, and am flipping all those concepts on their heads. But like all rules, you don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. You don’t break all the rules only to have anarchy allowing for open theft of possessions by the destitute. There has to be some structure to it all that is conducive to risk-taking and risk mitigation.

Guns are the perfect combination of the two necessities so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they are part of American culture the way they are. If you are reckless with a gun you can hurt lots of people, including yourself. But in shooting you unlock all kinds of gut instinct mechanisms that are obscure to the mind under any other condition, which is the nature of rule breaking so that innovation can flourish. By the time I’m done with this, I think it will have a very Joseph Campbell effect, not on mythology which was his thing, but on business, which is my thing. Looking at something differently than 5000 to 10,000 years of human evolution is a tough undertaking, but it takes being willing to break the very rules of assumptions by their very essence to get there. And that is what I am excited to see percolating out of obscurity in a very unique way. Rules are too often not put into place to help, but to hinder. The rule makers tend to be unenlightened and create the rules to keep challengers from dethroning them from some position of power they have acquired by learning the rules better than their competition. But rules in themselves don’t open the doors to the future, thinking outside of the rules does, so that new rules for new ways of thinking can then be applied. While we can’t have chaos, we can’t allow rules to hold us back from innovation. And that, once its understood has a marvelous potential that I am very, very excited about.

Rich Hoffman

The Professional Nerds: They want impeachment to hide their uselessness

One thing that everyone must deal with if you achieve any level of success at life are the professional nerds who ride the coat tails of previous achievement and always establish some kind of coup to claim ownership from the bold who came before them. That was certainly on display in Washington D.C. during the so-called impeachment hearings led by the former prosecutor Adam Schiff. Now prosecutors have never scared me, nor do depositions. In times past when pressed I have done my own legal work and quite enjoy tearing to shreds losers like Adam Schiff who are the very embodiment of that professional nerd culture that has essentially taken over in the Beltway and everywhere else where performance is measured by the layers of bureaucracy established. They are the modern metrosexuals who are afraid of flies and mosquitos and would let Rome burn to the ground while they come up with some consensus driven procedure to save it. Getting rid of them from our government is exactly what we mean when we say “drain the swamp.” If that is the best that Adam Schiff can do given all the resources he has extracted from taxpayers to do it, its pretty pathetic.

I mention the legal scenario of acting as one’s own attorney because I’ve seen this kind of arrogance plenty of times from this class of loser people. They think they have some information that they’ve read from a book, some boon like Prometheus might have obtained in gaining fire from the sun to return it back to earth after Zeus had hid it away. They don’t expect to encounter someone who can read more than them, experience more than them and is smarter than them. Their understanding of the law is formed within the Bar Association and the rules of conduct that they utilize. So anyone outside of that little clan they think of as ignorant, leaving them baseless to deal with reality when confronted. I find it enjoyable to stumble such arrogant people within their professional efforts because their intent is always malicious, even if they hide them behind good deeds. Their malice for effort is easy to exploit because their true philosophy in life isn’t a joy in intellect, it is through group association that doesn’t raise the bar for their personal performance, it just lowers it to uncover a laziness that they are so good at hiding that they don’t even see it in themselves.

Bureaucrats are the creation of this social veil because as timid souls they must conceal their lack of achievement by looting off people who do things so that they can share ownership. That is the entire root of their entire existence. They think that by getting some degree in college and reading a few books here and there that they can have the right to make important decisions, yet when they find out that they aren’t the smartest people in the room, it destroys their basic grip on reality. So long as they belong to some unique guild, like the Bar Association, they can hide behind that veil and they can trick people into respecting them. But once you learn its all a farce, as I learned very young by getting into so much trouble that I had gone to court more times than years on my age by double, the patterns of deceit are clear to see. And it was easy to see at that impeachment hearing by the dubious Adam Schiff. You would think that an attempted coup by a Democrat in congress would have smarter people involved, some ultimate movie villain that we see often on the silver screen. But much to our disappointment, in reality, these villains are just stupid professional nerds who gained their notoriety in life by boot licking and claim jumping. And while under pressure, they fold every time.

It was always clear to me, but now it should be clear to everyone else that the hatred of President Trump spawns from his competency in rooting out losers like Adam Schiff. Not that it was a malicious deed by the president but it always happens when a competent person of experience meets a professional nerd who are the come lately thieves who steal away the achievement of those who came before them and actually build a career off that effort by putting rules and regulations between them and their targets. A guy like Trump who has spent a lifetime taking risks and enjoying the winnings has exploited this ruse just by his election, and his actions throughout the years he’s been in office have further confirmed that all along it wasn’t some special sauce of leadership coming out of West Point, or the most elite Ivy League schools that makes a great president, its guts, and experience that do, which has shattered the world of the professional nerd. Anytime you want to see it and some lawyer demands action from you within a court of law, you’ll see them melt when they learn that you know their secret language meant to hide their incompetence—and that you aren’t a member of the Bar Association, or of congress.

Much of the testimony provided in the hearing on impeachment was of the nature of dissidents who were upset that Trump did not need them to perform his job. Normally, consultants are brought in to advise a president, but being a man of action, Trump doesn’t need them, so they have played along with this Adam Schiff attack willingly in hopes that the professional nerds could resume their ruse through impeachment. Their hatred for Trump is the same hatred that their type always has for people of achievement. While they need such people more than they need food and water, they secretly resent them because the dependence is so one sided, especially when it is put on trial. They need their victims to thank them for looting them with big words and obscure terminology that they have studied all their lives. What the professional nerds are terrified of is that the people they deal with don’t seek their counsel or interpretations but act anyway on their own such has Trump has. He hasn’t needed the generals, the advisors, and all the other professional nerds which has left them standing around waiting for someone to acknowledge them. And before people learn how useless they truly are they are trying to impeach President Trump so to preserve themselves for the future.

But its too late. It has been for me for many years now. I learned early in my life thankfully just how useless these people are. And now everyone can see it. Yet even I am a little disappointed that Adam Schiff couldn’t put on a better show than what he did. As a looter he clearly depends 100% off others for his sustenance and when he is forced to do anything on his own merit, he fails. He certainly did fail on the impeachment trial, which was clear on day one. Its not just a partisan interpretation of the events, it’s the accurate observation, and reminder that professional nerds have built up a scandal that was concealed so long as people never asked questions of them. They needed the exchange to be one sided only and when it wasn’t, they fail every single time.

Rich Hoffman