Tag: Stupid in America

‘A Theory of Justice,’ by John Rawls: Destroying America through the legal system

A major escalation of degeneracy by the modern statist regimes using meritocracy to propel mediocrity into every modern profession is a fairly recent trend inspired by the 1972 book A Theory of Justice, by John Rawls who was a professor of philosophy at Harvard University.  Rawls argued in that popular statist book that a new theory of social justice demands that humans counteract the injustice of nature by instituting a corrupt and unthinkable concept upon mankind, equality at the expense of quality.  Rawls believed that nature should be rebelled against depriving those favored by nature of the right to rewards they produce, and grant to the incompetent a right to the effortless enjoyment of the rewards they could not produce or imagine on their own.  In other words John Rawls believed that justice should be redistributed into society to alter nature itself bringing different standards of justice based on social need, not individual desire.  Under this thinking if a dirt bag raped a woman, or broke into a home and stole all the money of the occupants, the scales of justice would be altered for the man if he was a member of the poor, or minority because nature did not give him the proper tools to be equal to those he robbed, or raped.  Under Rawls theory, the individual crimes are secondary to the greater good of social equality, so under his “Theory of Justice” the criminal is a useful tool of fighting against nature the tendency to make some people better than others.

A Theory of Justice is a work of political philosophy and ethics by John Rawls. It was originally published in 1972 and revised in both 1975 (for the translated editions) and 1999. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls attempts to solve the problem of distributive justice (the socially just distribution of goods in a society) by utilising a variant of the familiar device of the social contract. The resultant theory is known as “Justice as Fairness“, from which Rawls derives his two principles of justice: the liberty principle and the difference principle.

In A Theory of Justice, Rawls argues for a principled reconciliation of liberty and equality. Central to this effort is an account of the circumstances of justice, inspired by David Hume, and a fair choice situation for parties facing such circumstances, similar to some ofImmanuel Kant‘s views. Principles of justice are sought to guide the conduct of the parties. These parties are recognized to face moderate scarcity, and they are neither naturally altruistic nor purely egoistic. They have ends which they seek to advance, but prefer to advance them through cooperation with others on mutually acceptable terms. Rawls offers a model of a fair choice situation (the original position with its veil of ignorance) within which parties would hypothetically choose mutually acceptable principles of justice. Under such constraints, Rawls believes that parties would find his favoured principles of justice to be especially attractive, winning out over varied alternatives, including utilitarian and right-libertarian accounts.

Rawls belongs to the social contract tradition. However, Rawls’ social contract takes a different view from that of previous thinkers. Specifically, Rawls develops what he claims are principles of justice through the use of an artificial device he calls the Original position in which everyone decides principles of justice from behind a veil of ignorance. This “veil” is one that essentially blinds people to all facts about themselves so they cannot tailor principles to their advantage.

“no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does anyone know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like. I shall even assume that the parties do not know their conceptions of the good or their special psychological propensities. The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance.”

According to Rawls, ignorance of these details about oneself will lead to principles that are fair to all. If an individual does not know how he will end up in his own conceived society, he is likely not going to privilege any one class of people, but rather develop a scheme of justice that treats all fairly. In particular, Rawls claims that those in the Original Position would all adopt a max -min strategy which would maximize the prospects of the least well-off.

They are the principles that rational and free persons concerned to further their own interests would accept in an initial position of equality as defining the fundamentals of the terms of their association [Rawls, p 11]

Rawls claims that the parties in the original position would adopt two such principles, which would then govern the assignment of rights and duties and regulate the distribution of social and economic advantages across society. The difference principle permits inequalities in the distribution of goods only if those inequalities benefit the worst-off members of society. Rawls believes that this principle would be a rational choice for the representatives in the original position for the following reason: Each member of society has an equal claim on their society’s goods. Natural attributes should not affect this claim, so the basic right of any individual, before further considerations are taken into account, must be to an equal share in material wealth. What, then, could justify unequal distribution? Rawls argues that inequality is acceptable only if it is to the advantage of those who are worst-off.

The agreement that stems from the original position is both hypothetical and ahistorical. It is hypothetical in the sense that the principles to be derived are what the parties would, under certain legitimating conditions, agree to, not what they have agreed to. Rawls seeks to use an argument that the principles of justice are what would be agreed upon if people were in the hypothetical situation of the original position and that those principles have moral weight as a result of that. It is ahistorical in the sense that it is not supposed that the agreement has ever been, or indeed could ever have been, derived in the real world outside of carefully limited experimental exercises.

“ First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others.[1]

”

The basic liberties of citizens are, the political liberty to vote and run for office, freedom of speech and assembly, liberty of conscience, freedom of personal property and freedom from arbitrary arrest. However, he says:

liberties not on the list, for example, the right to own certain kinds of property (e.g. means of production) and freedom of contract as understood by the doctrine of laissez-faire are not basic; and so they are not protected by the priority of the first principle.[2]

The first principle may not be violated, even for the sake of the second principle, above an unspecified but low-level of economic development. However, because various basic liberties may conflict, it may be necessary to trade them off against each other for the sake of obtaining the largest possible system of rights. There is thus some uncertainty as to exactly what is mandated by the principle, and it is possible that a plurality of sets of liberties satisfy its requirements.

Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that (Rawls, 1971, p.302; revised edition, p. 47):

(a) they are to be of the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society, consistent with the just savings principle (the difference principle).

(b) offices and positions must be open to everyone under conditions of fair equality of opportunity

Rawls’ claim in (a) is that departures from equality of a list of what he calls primary goods—”things which a rational man wants whatever else he wants” [Rawls, 1971, pg. 92]—are justified only to the extent that they improve the lot of those who are worst-off under that distribution in comparison with the previous, equal, distribution. His position is at least in some sense egalitarian, with a provision that equality is not to be achieved by worsening the position of the least advantaged.[clarification needed] An important consequence here, however, is that inequalities can actually be just on Rawls’ view, as long as they are to the benefit of the least well off. His argument for this position rests heavily on the claim that morally arbitrary factors (for example, the family one is born into) shouldn’t determine one’s life chances or opportunities. Rawls is also keying on an intuition that a person does not morally deserve their inborn talents; thus that one is not entitled to all the benefits they could possibly receive from them; hence, at least one of the criteria which could provide an alternative to equality in assessing the justice of distributions is eliminated.

The stipulation in (b) is lexically prior to that in (a). Fair equality of opportunity requires not merely that offices and positions are distributed on the basis of merit, but that all have reasonable opportunity to acquire the skills on the basis of which merit is assessed. It may be thought that this stipulation, and even the first principle of justice, may require greater equality than the difference principle, because large social and economic inequalities, even when they are to the advantage of the worst-off, will tend seriously to undermine the value of the political liberties and any measures towards fair equality of opportunity.

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

When it is wondered why there doesn’t seem to be any justice in the world of modern America, and why the court system seems to be failing, look to A Theory of Justice by John Rawls.   Under the accepted terms of Rawls’ work, if a member of society daily injects themselves with heroin, pimps out stolen women into prostitution to pay for his drug habit, runs a theft ring and is a general menace to society, the social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are to be of the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society, consistent with the just savings principle.  Meaning, all the good people of society who have made quality decisions in their life, worked hard, treated others with fairness are to pour some of their hard work into the degenerate so that social justice can look favorably upon the entire human race regardless of individual value.  Isn’t it clear now why studying philosophy should be more important in your daily life dear reader?

Every courtroom in America with miles of case-law supporting them created by too many money-grubbing, parasitic lawyers have taken the work of John Rawls and made it mainstream thinking.  It is why criminals believe they have rights to the merit of the good, and why they are not motivated to change their behavior because John Rawls new theories of justice instruct them that nature has given them an unfair advantage in life, and it is up to the intelligentsia of meritocracy to determine winners and losers in society arrogantly suppressing nature behind the rule of the academic class.

Until A Theory of Justice is rejected by the American population and the case-law built upon its failed philosophy is scrubbed completely, justice will be elusive in modern society.  Criminals will continue to believe that they are “owed” something by somebody, and innocent victims will continue to search for justice among judges who sit upon their ivory towers and defend Rawls because through the meritocracy of the Harvard University elite, there is a power they dare not challenge.  It is largely because of Rawls that the Second Amendment is being eroded away, that the NDAA Act was voted upon, that the TSA, the NSA, and every other government organization works against the vast amount of American population with violations against their personal liberty.  Because under A Theory of Justice the rights of individual citizens is secondary to the rights of the under-privileged, the lazy, and the corrupt because nature selected them to be less, and it is the obligation of mankind to help them become better by giving them a free pass to continued behavior of a social menace.  Sometimes it only takes a few generations to wreck a civilization and in the case of American justice it only took a few years from 1972 to destroy the logic of our legal system.  The blame rests on the shoulders of John Rawls and his Harvard University meritocracy agenda driven psychosis of reshaping the world against the desires of nature to create a world molded by the morally bankrupt in a perpetual draining of wealth not just monetarily, but ethically till there is nothing left but a distant memory of a once great culture.  America was a land built by rules yet was destroyed by A Theory of Justice, written in 1972, a college professor functioning from a failed philosophy that was never corrected in time to save civilization.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

Fast Food Workers Are Not Worth Top Wages: When I eliminated four line positions by myself

A few years ago I had to work a second job because of a tax bill that came in the mail from the IRS.  The reason the IRS is such a terrifying organization is that if you get in the cross-hairs of them it will cost either in defense or compliance.  In my case it was compliance.  I had worked hard the previous year and some of the work wasn’t easily calculated and the IRS disputed that I owed them more.  Defending my amount would have cost more to take to court so I had to pay, and they knew that was my only real option.  So I elected to work a second job to pay my bill rather than rob the money from our family’s normal income.  Every morning at 4 AM I got up and rode a bicycle from Mason to Lebanon to report for work at 5 AM at my primary employer.  At 3 PM I got off that job and rushed up the road to the Kings Island exit to work at a popular fast food establishment there by 4 PM.  My job was to work as the grill cook, and within a few short months I became known as the fastest grill man from Michigan to Florida and my exploits drew the attention of corporate headquarters.  Fast food executives paid personal visits to me to figure out how I was able to work so fast.  I worked every night the dinner rush and left at 8 PM to ride my bicycle home arriving around 9 PM.  Finally after a long hard day I’d go to bed to begin the day again the next morning.  In addition to that schedule I worked at the fast-food restaurant on Saturday nights as well covering the lunch and dinner rush from 10 AM to 7 PM as Kings Island provided a lot of business.

It took me two years to pay off my tax debt in this fashion but I eventually did without it sucking the money from our primary income.  My wife did not work and I did not want her to.  She was homeschooling our children for a bit of time during this period and she needed to be free to care for them.  Even when they did attend Mason public schools, my wife drove them every day so that they wouldn’t have to ride the school bus with all the vile filth that goes on during bus rides.  So my wife working simply wasn’t an option.  During the day she also was a teacher’s assistant in my daughters classrooms until the relationship with the school went south when we would not allow our 4th grade children to attend a sex education class that consisted of teaching them how to put condoms on a fake penis.  We declined and from that point the administrators put an “X” on my wife’s back, so we pulled our children out of the school for their own protection, and proper instruction.  Meanwhile, I rode my bike to my jobs and kept the money coming in.  My exploits during this period of time were described in my novel, The Symposium of Justice.

I was so good as a grill cook that the restaurant management agreed to some of my unusual working mandates.  I did not participate in any customer interaction; I did not take orders from the front register or talk to anybody on the drive thru.  I could make such demands because I was the best at my job that there was.  Nobody came close to my speed.  (REVIEW MY BULLWHIP FAST DRAW).  I personally eliminated four line positions at this restaurant.  Normally there would be a grill worker for the front grill, a grill worker for the drive thru grill, a fry person and a chicken runner for the deep fryer in the back.  The restaurant I worked at was busier than most because of the Kings Island traffic, so corporate was very perplexed as to how I managed to be so quick and efficient all by myself.  I of course saved this restaurant a lot of money in labor hours.

I explained to them that I could read what a person would order by way of food by the look on their faces when they stepped into the dining room.  I had their food already cooking before they stepped up to place their order.  And on the drive thru I would watch the cars pull into the lot headed for the speaker and determine what they were going to order based on the way the driver looked, how many people were in the car, the condition of the car, and various other factors.  By the time the sandwich maker called the order I had the meat prepared and perfectly cooked ready to hit their prep.  The ability was physical of course.  I have always been very fast at everything I do.  But in this case it was more psychological than physical.  This left the corporate executives baffled as to how they could train other stores to have grill cooks who did the same thing.

They offered me a .50 cent raise for my efforts which I gladly accepted bring my total to $7.50 in 1997 money.  It wasn’t much then and it isn’t much now, but it was I thought a fair wage for the work I was doing.  My rule against the customers was that I knew that some government workers came to Kings Island often and I didn’t want to speak to them.  They had put me in the position of having to work a second job and be away from my family, so I didn’t want to be nice to them, or even acknowledge their existence.  I could always tell those types upon site, so I worked it out so that all I’d have to do was prepare the food, I would not have to give the people who put me in that situation the privilege of serving them directly.

I of course became the restaurant psychologist and the young people often confided in me their problems seeking my help, which I gave them.  The managers often had wrecked lives due to all the crazy hours they worked so I helped them too; by solving many of their personal problems.  But my rule about dealing with the customers was firm.  On one such occasion a pretentious Mason school teacher who weighed in at least three hundred pounds came to the front register while the 16-year-old girl manning that station was using the restroom.  The teacher demanded service and I was the closest one to her.  I instructed her to sit tight until someone came to take her order but she ignored me and continued anyway.  Needless to say her order fell on deaf ears.  I continued doing my work ignoring her.  When the girl came back, the Mason teacher was standing their refusing to repeat herself expecting me to tell the girl what the order was, which of course I didn’t provide.  Rather than repeat her order to the cashier the teacher complained about me to corporate headquarters thinking she would get me fired for disrespecting her.  She called from the dining room making a huge fuss in front of the other customers and demanding our own management to remove me from the line.  The lead manager told her that we were in the middle of lunch rush and that they couldn’t afford to remove me from the line.    The teacher proclaimed that nobody was “irreplaceable!”  Corporate took my side on the issue and the frustrated teacher took her business elsewhere.  She was back a week later, but this time didn’t look at me.  She simply placed her order and I had her meat ready for her.  I knew exactly what she was going to order, and it was a lot of food.

With all that said, the recent union attempt to inject themselves into the fast food restaurant business is a vile attempt at communism.  Fast food workers are not worth $15 an hour.  I was the best of my kind, and I wouldn’t have thought of asking such a fee for a job that was worth more to me for its flexibility than the wage I earned.  I enjoyed being able to come in and dominate a position so that I could dictate my terms based purely on performance.  While it’s true I could have made more money quicker if I were willing to “compromise” the fact was that I wasn’t, and fast food gave me the opportunity to work such a job, get the government off my back, while not having to lower myself to people like that 300 pound Mason teacher.  People who knew me then felt sorry for me, because I rode my bicycle to work every day, worked long hard hours, and had to wear a fast food uniform well into adulthood even though I was making good money and showing great talent at my regular job.  My wife and I could have just used the public school like a baby sitting service like everyone else did, she could have worked, we could have had two cars and life could have been easier if we just played along.  But we chose to do only what we had to in order to appease our government obligations.  Making a lot of extra money would have just been consumed in further taxes and was not a smart strategic choice.  Fast food gave me the perfect opportunity to dig out of that tax liability without making it worse, and without lowering myself to making plea deals with the IRS, or using expensive lawyers to just feed the monster even more.  And it also allowed me to take care of the problem so that my wife was always around my little girls, shielding them from the evils of the world that were being placed upon them by a statist government gone mad wanting to teach them to put on a condom in the fourth grade.  Little girls who had both parents working late staying in an empty house from the time they get home from school till their parents arrive between 5 and 6 PM have lots of opportunities to get into trouble with boys in their neighborhoods, but since my wife was always home, my girls didn’t have that problem. They didn’t need to learn how to put on a condom when that was furthest thing on their minds than anything at the time.

The protests from restaurant workers demanding a “living wage” for their work in fast food are not worth more than $7 to $8 dollars an hour, I don’t care who they are.  Fast food work is entry-level work designed to fill the social needs for cheap food on the go.  Nobody should work in fast food as a career choice unless they want to go into management.  There is no such thing as a “living wage.”  But there is such a thing as “value,” and restaurant workers are only worth so much.  The fast food restaurants of America have one obligation, to provide a good quality product cheaply.  If I could have taught corporate headquarters my skills at working a grill, I would have.  Unfortunately for them, I cannot be duplicated, and no machine can do what I could do—not even the perverted imbeciles who work at the NSA and supposedly have supercomputers that cross-reference everything we do in our lives.  They can’t calculate human behavior as well as I can.  Even so, the work I did was not worth more than $8 dollars an hour and I would never have considered asking for more.  I used the job to clear my tax debt and a little bit more, and then saved up money to move out of Mason and back to my childhood home of Liberty Twp.  I stayed on at the fast-food restaurant working to make extra money for some time after so to get out in front of our financial condition.  $8 dollars an hour becomes quite a lot of money when you don’t drive a car and your wife is at home teaching your children.  The household expenses go down rapidly when you are not part of the system.  And a good bit of savings can be generated while working fast food.

A “living wage” as the communist labor unions advocate is attempting to do the same thing they’ve done to the teaching profession and virtually every endeavor that they are a part of.  They set artificially high values for their labor that is built purely on monopoly power.  In fast-food, they know they cannot obtain that monopoly unless they get all the workers in that industry to buy in to their scheme.  Fortunately for America, that plan will fail.  If twenty fast food workers decide to strike from a local McDonald’s, there are always people like me who will step in and take the money that is left in the void, and can do four jobs all by myself.  It would make me happy to do it just to keep prices low on the hamburgers we buy.  There is no shame in it, but only advantage, for what I’m talking about are the benefits of capitalism—a concept that labor unions do not understand, and despise with every cell in their bodies.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

The Lakota School Wedding Crashers: Levy supporters late to the party and pretentious

I’ve given my two daughters both nice weddings.  One had her wedding at a nice country club setting that was very private.  That was a great experience and has fond memories.  The other was one that took place near downtown Cincinnati in a nice establishment specializing in wedding receptions, and often hosts multiple weddings in the same building.  When my daughter had her wedding at this facility, there were four other weddings going on in the same building and that I didn’t care for.  The place we were holding the wedding was very posh and elegant, but the lack of exclusivity made me perpetually uneasy.  I didn’t like it.

Our wedding reception went on for quite a while and was the last of the multiple weddings to yield to the night.  With that said as the music was thumping and our dance floor was crowded a group of guys from another wedding which had just ended came into our wedding looking for some fun, alcohol, and action.  Well, that was a big mistake, because this is my family, my nieces, and friends of my daughters, not some random pieces of meat for young men to fondle, and I wasn’t going to stand for it.  So I told the boys to get lost, that I wasn’t going to tolerate any wedding crashers.    They insisted that they just wanted to have a good time, and that I should reconsider.  I told them flatly, “NO.”  It was my money, my family, and my decision, end of story.

The boys left with their heads hung with rejection.  They couldn’t help but notice the attractive women in my family and cussed at themselves for the lost opportunities.  However, little did they know or understand that part of the reason there were so many attractive women in my family is because there are men like me who fight to give them some sanctuary to reside within, who keep them from being just cheap pieces of meat for the use of young boys looking for conquest.  Some members of my family thought I was too hard on the boys, and thought the wedding would be a lot more fun if a massive party erupted and I was the “cool” type who allowed wedding crashers to liven things up with their spontaneity.  But I’m not that kind of guy and if I’m spending thousands of dollars on a reception center for my daughter’s wedding, it will be the way she wants it—and wedding crashers didn’t fit the profile.

I spent about the same amount of money on that reception hall as I do in taxes for the Lakota school system each year which is the public school in my area.   Yet just last night embolden by events at the Lakota football games where the school had a booth set up passing out campaign signs for their upcoming levy attempt, several emails and comments came my way from levy addict supporters who were charged up with “school pride” established at the football game.  The message to me was that if I didn’t like the tax increase then I should move out of the community.  Click the link below to see one of those comments and my response.

 https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2013/02/12/lakota-schools-does-not-need-a-school-levy-meet-the-new-carriage-hill-development/#comment-38777

To me, those types of people are like those kids who wanted to crash my daughter’s wedding.  I graduated from Lakota many years ago and have lived in the area most of my life.  When I was a kid I grew up in a house along 747 when it was farmland for as far as the eye could see.  My home was on the kind of land that the Carriage Hill homeowners are paying 150K per plot to own today.  But I lived on such anchorage when very few homes could be seen from my front yard.  Traffic down 747 had the character of a distant country road.  My boyhood home is gone now replaced by a strip mall that one of the guys in my group No Lakota Levy built.  I didn’t always get along with those guys, but we did join together to fight the Lakota schools massive taxation plans for a community we had all been in from the beginning.  I have watched many new homes move into the area who are willing to pay extraordinary amounts of money to have essentially what I had as a kid—and that’s fine.   I understand wanting to have the best for families.

But when snot nosed despots move into the area with about a 5 second investment of their time and resources into my community then tell me I need to move, I think back to the kind of mentality that was exhibited by those wedding crashers at my daughter’s wedding that I had to run off.  These new pretentious homeowners who have moved into the Lakota community and overpaid for their properties due to their own stupidity, and arrogance are wedding crashers in the Lakota community relative to my position.  I am the one who paid for everything with my years of tax revenue contributed, and I helped shape the school into what it is with my participation in it, because I attended there.  So it’s my business if I want to tell the Lakota administration they are full of shit and need to manage their money better.  And if I want to call the levy supporters a bunch of pretentious latté sipping prostitutes with asses the size of car tires, and diamond rings to match—I will do it, and I have a right to do it—because it’s my community and I’ve invested a lot more in it than they have.

The levy supporters think that just because they show up in Lakota and purchase a half million dollar home on a quarter acre plot of land that they have some right to tell people like me to move if I don’t like their intentions to vote for higher taxes.  They are just as stupid and immature as those wedding crashing young men who thought they could come to my daughter’s wedding and play out some fantasy of what they saw in a movie.  In that fantasy they thought I’d sit idly by while they grabbed the asses of the women attending and had a jolly time drinking from the bar while I paid for everything and quietly sat in a corner and acted like the out-of-touch middle-ager they thought I was.    To their mindset I was old, and I had my day in the sun, and I should sacrifice myself to the youth so they could have their fun, and memories which they wanted to make at my expense.  The same mentality is present with the wedding crashers of Lakota.  A bunch of pretentious snobs have moved into the area and think that their little 7 to 8-year-old children should have infinite resources and that the community should spare no expense for their pleasure.  They are of course wrong.

I spend as much money in taxes on Lakota every year as I did on just that dance hall for my daughter’s wedding.  So it should come as no surprise what my response to the wedding crashers of Lakota is.  To me they are mindless zombies who don’t consider what the cost of a tax increase will do to the community, but only indulge in their own short-term desire to fill their bellies, and they have no right to make any demands, let alone move into my community then tell me to move out if I don’t like their decisions.  That is not how the world works.

If that is the levy strategy concocted at the Friday night football games by the pro levy crowd, good luck.  I’m not the only one who feels that way.  To most who live in the Lakota community, they see the levy zombies the same way I do, as wedding crashers.  Those types of people—the wedding crashers do not care for all the events that led up to the wedding, they only want to attend the party once everyone else has done the work.  In Lakota, few have done more work than I have, and few have the concerns of Liberty Twp., in their blood more than I.  So it naturally disgusts me to see pretentious, short-sighted snobs enter the arena of debate with demands for higher taxes to cover a neurosis that resides deep within their psychological imperfections.  I do not tolerate “community crashers,” especially when I’m paying the bill.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

Doc Thompson Blasts Public Education and Common Core: Entertainment and Education tag team children behind parents backs

The harsher reality to the presidency of Barack Obama is not just that he is a manipulative saboteur of American ideals who supports socialism over capitalism, but he was elected as a representative of a large number of the American public—people who enjoy welfare support, think the Miley Cyrus stunt at the recent MTV awards was cool, and loves intoxication, drug abuse, and alternative sexual practices.  The worse realization about the Obama administration is that it represents a growing number of Americans.  The origin of how those people came to be such a group of degenerates is harder to pin down because it forces an admission that is difficult to acknowledge.  The minds making up the typical modern progressive described started at the same point as everyone else, small children born of a mother and a father.  But the path that delivers such minds to fish net stocking wearing voters dressed in drag voting for Obama and his free government “stuff” is different from those who tend to find such personal philosophies repulsive.  Those differences of course start in a child’s home and are determined by their parents.  But beyond that, it is public education that destroys the minds of young people and corrupts them well into their adulthoods.  Public schools are breeding grounds for progressive philosophy and are dangerous.  They have been for a long time, but it has only been the last couple of years where such admissions have begun to be made.  Doc Thompson and his producer Skip on The Blaze Radio Network dedicated an entire hour and a half to the topic of public education corruption which can be heard at the clip below.  It is worth the time to listen to, because they cover Common Core instruction during the beginning then allow the discussion to evolve into the aim of public schools—which is to educate and create progressive citizens—who wishes to work against traditional America.  Have a listen! This is classic radio and you should take the time to listen to the whole thing.  

Public schools are incubators for social change—the kind of change that would rather see a child attend a Rocky Horror Picture Show screening at midnight in some dank college campus movie theater rather than attend church on Sunday to worship the teachings of Jesus Christ.  So it should come as no surprise that kids after twelve to thirteen years of public school education arrive at 18 years of age unprepared to do anything of any responsibly as an adult, because progressive education teaches personal irresponsibility.  Public school educations are destructive, and do ruin the minds of the attendees.

The tough admission is that almost every American comes from public schools and to arrive at the conclusion that it is there many of the stupid ideas which lead to presidents like Obama sitting in The White House are born.  Public schools are for most parents free baby sitting services which gives the illusion of positive social instruction, so it is hard for parents to blame the progressive tendencies of their children on “the baby sitter” because it forces acknowledging that they must take action to help save their children.  For many parents this means they have to make decisions that will likely cost them money…………..and time, which often they have neither.  So they are stuck sending their children to their local public school and they put on blinders to the faults of the institution because they do not have the mental or financial capacity to solve the problem.

Public schools consume enormous amounts of tax money which strip away the expendable cash that these same parents could use to send their children to a private conservative school—so to undo the progressive instruction otherwise given.  This leaves parents with no options but to hold their nose and support their local public school just because it’s near their home.  Parents do not have a choice because public education is a monopoly.  They suppress competition and openly destroy the minds of individual children leaving the consumers and suppliers with no choices.  When a child complains to their parent that the public school is a bad place, the parent has only one choice but to instruct the child that life is unfair, and that they need to learn to live with their displeasure.  This begins a chain reaction that slowly begins to destroy the lives of those children from that day on.

Three years ago Doc Thompson did not have a microphone that allowed him to discuss public education to such a degree as he has in the broadcast above.  Radio stations that employed him would have feared losing their FCC license—which further solidifies the public education government controlled monopoly.  Criticism of public education was nearly non-existent leaving millions of desperate souls to anguish over their unacknowledged fears regarding the intentions of public education.  But now, popular radio personalities like Doc Thompson are free to delve honestly into the evils of public education in several game changing broadcasts that are routine on The Blaze Radio Network.  It will take a while to change the culture of acceptance which public education has enjoyed using their monopoly to invoke on witless students the aptitude of a destructive progressive education.  But the start of such dismantling, and reinvigoration comes from the understanding that something is terribly wrong and should be corrected in order to save future generations.  A large portion of our modern youth are lost and will never recover.  They will continue to vote for politicians like Barack Obama because they have been trained in progressive statism.  Many of those same types were seen screaming after Miley Cyrus and her sexual antics on MTV that raised the eyebrows of many concerned parents.  Someday those former students will have children and life will beat their progressive educations out of them, and they will recover to some extent to live decent lives—if they are the fortunate few.  But their minds cannot be recovered fully as they were handicapped as children in public education.  However, if our society acts now, it may be possible that twenty years from now, public education and its impact on society will be greatly diminished allowing more people to rise to new emotional and intellectual heights.  At that time, the voting population will become better and vote for better representatives because the quality of their mind will be improved.

It is not enough to just proclaim the name of the problem.  Once known, it must be acted upon, and slowly over a fairly short period of time, radio broadcasts like the one Doc and Skip produced are changing minds, and forcing admissions.  Those admissions are difficult, but they are healthy.  Nobody said that doing the right things would be easy, or convenient.  But for the health of all our futures, we must do the right thing, and that is realize that public education is a corrosive endeavor that is laced with vile thoughts and teachings—which should be sanctioned from tax dollars.  Any group, even progressives should be allowed to compete equally in the battlefield of ideas, but citizens should not be forced to pay for such things with money extorted from them through taxation under force of a monopoly.  That is the greatest evil of public education, and the reason that it must be changed—options create competition and allows evil ideas like progressivism to be crushed out of existence in direct interaction with ideas which actually work.  Progressives claim that they have the superior mode of thinking, yet they can only convince others of such a claim through monopoly status by eliminating competing modes of thinking.  The first step in destroying such a tyrannical hold on the minds of our society’s youth is to destroy the monopoly that backs public education, and to introduce new ideas—ideas that are born out of the wreckage of the old—a public education system designed to put presidents like Obama into office for aims that are not American.

Now to explain a bit, “artistically” what was going on at the MTV event where Miley Cyrus was paraded about like a slut for the advancement of progressive causes.  Watching her performance I was reminded of two other events, the Janet Jackson Super Bowl stunt where she had her top ripped off to expose her breasts, then the famous kiss between Britney Spears and Madonna.   What all three women had in common was that the “public” thought of them as good girls.  Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears are graduates of the Disney Channel and were examples of nice wholesome teenage girls.  Progressive backed money was poured into entertainment, and it can make these girls do whatever the financiers’ desire like prostitutes working for an escort service.   Miley Cyrus was coached into performing the dance routine which was all very carefully designed.  Cyrus was placed on stage to rip from millions of youthful girls the innocent image of Cyrus as a Disney girl.  The dance routine was set up with the teddy bears looking not quite so innocent so to show on stage that Miley Cyrus had lost any resemblance of her youthful innocence and was no longer a little girl.  The act has been repeated for several decades now and is constructed by the same minds that stand behind Common Core education.  To understand what investors into Miley Cyrus’s record label believe, and MTV’s investment in the event, listen hard to the broadcast from Doc Thompson and his producer Skip shown above.  They have the answer.  Miley Cyrus is simply a paid spokesman for progressive causes, and she was established by an entertainment culture infused with “political progressive” money to unlock the teaching instructed to children in public schools.  Former Disney personalities are targeted because of their naturally high-profile, with foundations in family entertainment that Disney is known for.  This makes them very important in reaching the proper demographic groups with the ritual understanding of merging from childhood to adulthood through sexual practice.  Since the government profits off of misconduct through sexual recklessness, this is to their advantage.    

When people believe that Bill Gates is behind Common Core and is a good man, so Common Core must be good, consider again that Common Core computers only run on Window’s operated machines, Macintosh computers will not work.  So part of the implementation of Common Core in public schools is to support the sale of Windows operating systems over Macs.   That in itself isn’t bad, but the minds who shape the Common Core agenda for which Gates latches himself on to, in order to make a deal that will launch Microsoft driven computers into every school in America are the same minds who take the innocent greed of a young woman named Miley Cyrus and tell her that they’ll fund her record and image if she’ll dance half naked on stage with stoned looking teddy bears and sell herself to the public.  Bill Gates and Miley Cyrus think they are cleaver and astute business people taking advantage of the glories of capitalism to advance themselves.  But what they don’t see is the progressive puppet masters who have shaped the battlefield in both entertainment and education for the same intentions, to break down the traditional American family and revise the minds of youth to sexual deviancy which pushes them away from parental care and into the loving, manipulative arms of mother government, and the sinister plots of doom which were touched up in the classic novel Brave New World.   Now considering those things, listen to Doc Thompson recite the specifics of Common Core education to second and third grade students, and consider what the real intention of public education is in America.   The Miley Cyrus MTV event was the result, but the cause started in the classrooms of America’s government schools, and the plots of progressive politics that are behind nearly every single institution.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

State of the Union at Lakota: The compliment of silance

I know a great deal about human behavior and would happily argue with the most respected minds in the fields of psychology and psychiatry regarding their theories wherever they came from in the world.  I learned what I know because I’ve been around the block so many times that I have every brick, and crack memorized around that block.  On my blog postings I openly invite comments, but there often isn’t any.  This isn’t because people aren’t reading—they are.  Just watch the daily counter off on the sidebar.  However, in the world of strategy, silence is the best compliment.  When “they” can’t beat you—whoever “they” may be, the only tactical option available to them is to ignore you and hope that social castigation will dislodge a deep-seated insecurity taking you out-of-the-way of “their” objectives.

Over the summer while on vacation in Florida my nephews and I had an intelligent conversation about human nature while throwing football in the condo swimming pool.  One of my highly educated nephews argued that human beings are social creatures and needed to be brought together in optimal ways to manage peace and harmony in society, even if those instances are sometimes coerced by government.  Of course I disagreed vehemently with that statement, not because he was wrong, but because that is only part of the issue.  He is right; human beings are a social species.  They learn from babies to mimic others and this is how we all start in life.  99.99999999999999999999999% of all human beings continue that destructive practice well into their adulthood—so he is right, humans are a social species.  But my argument is that humans are destined at some point in their life to graduate from this way of thinking as the mind takes over what the social connections cannot provide and becomes a freely functioning entity of its own.  I am this kind of person.  I do not need the approval of anybody to make a decision, and this is a radical concept to most.  I am able to function without social input based on the product of my own thinking.  I do not need to consul, collaborate, or gain assurances about my decisions about my private life.  It is a learned trait that I would argue every human being should strive for—but it takes courage—like a child learning to walk on their own for the first time.  Human beings need to be able to function off the products of their own mind—but often they don’t.  Instead, they gather together in clumps of social organisms like our primitive ancestors around a fire and wait for some village chieftain to instruct them what to do next.  This is how we get into the political messes we are currently in.

The reason for this elaborate introduction is to explain this next phase in the Lakota school district levy fights and why things are the way they are.  It might be noticed that the newspapers and I have very little to say to each other these days.  I have thoroughly insulted the press and would not expect them to solicit my thoughts, but at this point it no longer matters.  I have made my decisions based on the observed conditions, and the strategy of current was formulated on those observations.  With that said, I offer this small article as an explanation for those curious.  It gets back to me what Lakota administrators say when they think the doors are closed and the phone lines are secure.  I know they are frustrated with me for being a “bomb thrower” and working from the outside instead of partaking in their structured manner, so this is more directed at them than my normal readers so that they can understand what is happening and why.

In past levy attempts I tried to work with Lakota in the traditional way.  I came to the school board meetings and allowed compliance of their silly two-minute rule where the board members pretend to be in control of a courtroom setting by “allowing” members of the community to speak to them as though they were royal nobles of some sort.   When I was acting as a spokesman for No Lakota Levy I put up with this behavior to respect the wishes of the members who wanted to see the levy defeated without fracturing their social relationships with Lakota.  I did not like the social schmoozing that went on in the early days of my involvement.  I also took note that as I began to go on the radio and television to argue the case of No Lakota Levy, those members did not want to sit near me at the school board meetings as they feared members of the Lakota community recognizing that we were all on the same team.  They enjoyed the benefits of my tactics but wanted to maintain their social status with the same people from the other side of the political aisle.  After a couple of levy defeats under my strategy, those fears began to relax a bit.  People were less resistant to acknowledge their association with me as I had several victories under my belt at that time—and people love a winner.  So people began to sit next to me at meetings and say hello in public.  But not until then.

I went out of my way to speak with people from the other side like Ron Spurlock who was the acting superintendent until Mantia came along, Jenni Logan, the treasurer, and Linda O’Conner.  I was happy to speak to them in a civil manner even though we agreed on very little.  But I knew it wouldn’t last because the behavior wasn’t changing which put them in trouble.  As nice of a man as Ron Spurlock was, he felt woefully slack during handshakes and he looked away a lot when I spoke to him.  This was because he was in internal conflict.

At this point everyone in town was trying to advocate that I run for school board and become politically active.  They still suggest the same when it comes to trustee spots and other high-profile political offices locally.  Yet the strategy to the kind of victory I am after cannot be obtained in that fashion, so I never had any intention of indulging in that activity which frustrated people who want changes to the system within the system.  When Mantia was hired essentially by Linda after all the discussions we had, I saw the direction that the school board was going.  They hired a political divider who would come in and play all ends against the middle where Lakota would control the strategic high ground.  Immediately that is what Mantia went on to do leaving Ron Spurlock to retire and stay on at Lakota as a consultant.  Mantia came to a late night meeting with the key people of No Lakota Levy assuring us that she would do one thing if the levy failed, then she did another when that reality presented itself.  Within a month of the levy failure Lakota was in full political mode.  Mantia did not perform as a business mind, but as a progressive radical politician, and went straight to the type of levy passing tactics that was taught at the OSBA’s Levy University.

I came to one of the meetings announcing Lakota’s cuts and as Channel 19 was interviewing me in the main hallway at Lakota East, Mantia stood off to the side like she wanted to speak to me.  When I made eye contact after the interview she looked away and hustled into the auditorium.  It was a strange engagement that I noted for later.  Then I saw Ron Spurlock who was approaching a man who was well-known at Lakota in the band circles—a popular guy who was well-respected.  That man had come to the meeting with me, which I had known would cause trouble—which is why I did it.  I wanted to confirm the moral position that I suspected about the school.  After my television interview this “respected man” stepped next to me and Ron, who had been working his way through the crowd to a warm greeting, immediately stopped and turned away.  Out of all the bad things that were said about me behind the scenes at Lakota, the much discussed Lakota Kroger Survey, the Letters to the Editor in the Pulse Journal, it was this event that bothered me the most.  I liked Spurlock.  I thought of him as a good man.  But he was so terrified of the internal politics at Lakota, even though he was officially retired, that he didn’t want anybody of any authority at the school to see him even shaking hands with me.  It was at that moment when I knew what Lakota was all about, and that the path to fixing it would not be by running for school board, or any other “respected” position.  More extremes would be necessary.

A month later my group started Yes to Lakota Kids under tremendous pressure from community groups to bring No Lakota Levy away from being such a negative social influence on the community.  I agreed to the charity group creation because it was a kind of checkmate against Lakota.  This was confirmed when I organized a press conference.  We were giving a $10,000 check to Lakota to help pay for student participation in sports.  Both sides were talking and were going to be present to issue and receive the money.  I brought the media.  Nobody from Lakota showed up, instead excuses were provided as to why they couldn’t come.   Anticipating this, we staged the press conference within walking distance of Lakota East where many officials especially from the athletic department were.  Even better, the board of education was literally four miles down the road.  It was a 15 minute drive for them, yet nobody showed.  Channel 5 was there, Channel 19, The Cincinnati Enquirer, The Pulse Journal, but there wasn’t any Lakota representatives.

This didn’t surprise me at all.  It simply exposed what was already known.  Lakota couldn’t take a donation from their enemy No Lakota Levy, even to help children and they knew it.   They needed the extortion of children to execute their demands, and would not stand for losing that emotional leverage against the community by my group.  Lakota did exactly what I expected; they went on a full court press to smear me personally because they knew they would never pass a levy as long as I was intimately involved in the process.  If I had been the kind of person who needed group reassurance as the foundations of my thinking, some of the moves made against me at this time might have destroyed me for life.  This appears to certainly be their intention.  They did not care who they hurt, or to what extent they executed their plans, as long as they preserved their strategic objectives, which was a tax increase.  Mantia and others put a lot of pressure on the other No Lakota Levy people to publicly pull away from any association from me.  The reason was that it was believed that in so doing I would feel the bite of being an out-cast and either change my behavior, or be ignored by the public.

Little did they know but I was choking under the “in” crowd and desperately wanted those shackles off so that I could be an out-cast once again, to have the freedoms that come with such a position.  That is where the best strategy is, and what I desired.  I did not want to be a school board member and fuss with people who constantly played things both ways every day of their lives for some perceived “greater good” and at the point I had arrived at, there was no desire to see public education preserved in any fashion.  It’s a bad idea that should have never been implemented, and that is the direction I wanted to argue.  I did not want the burden of being a spokesman for a system I think is destroying our youth even in protest against taxation.

Peer groups are learned in public schools primarily.  The kids who are “in” and “out” are designated quickly.  Kids who are “in” have something to bring the “greater good,” of whatever group is involved.  Kids who are “out” do not.  When I was in school I was certainly on the “out” group because I did not want to be in service to any group.  I enjoyed thoroughly being on the “out” because there are many more opportunities for a colorful life outside of group comfort, which is what I’ve always strived for.  Of course back then nobody really understood what I was rebelling against.  My parents encouraged me to buy a class ring which they said would mean something to me later in life.  It doesn’t.  I never wore it, but simply gave it to whatever girlfriend I had at the time.  They also told me I needed a school jacket, which I never wore—favoring my leather jacket instead.  They also told me I needed to go to my five-year-reunion that was at Coney Island.  So I did and while there they had the usual contests, who had been married the longest, who had the most children, who had the oldest children and that kind of thing.  Out of the five categories in the contest I won three of them, I had been married the longest, (four years at that time), I had two children, three and two years old, clearly the oldest of the participants.  In fact my children were running around playing tag around the podium where the Class President was speaking from.  Yet I didn’t win a single category formally.  I was sitting in plain view of everyone, my wife was there, my kids playing and screaming in delight running around the tables which everyone could see, yet I was as invisible to them all as a ghost on Christmas morning.  Apparently it was frowned upon to bring children and spouses to the Class Reunion and socially I was supposed to know that.  But I wasn’t about to go to Coney Island without taking my children.  I never did things like that without them.  So I brought them without asking if I could.

My wife and I laughed about that event for years.  It was a clear example of the social need for groups of pack mentality to preserve their thinking on an issue in order to maintain a pre-conceived notion.  The evidence of who had the most and oldest children was running around the podium during the award presentation, yet I did not win a single category.  That was because I was an outcast even then, and very proud of it.   The only retaliation they had to offer to me was to hope being castigated from their group would make me feel some level of shame, and desire to comply socially.  Of course that concept is horrendously preposterous to anyone who knows me.  Just yesterday I was having a nice lunch by myself taking some time to read a book and enjoy my day.  Another man dressed in business attire sat down next to me, first asking if I was dining with anyone.  I said no.  So he sat down and started talking about the upcoming Bengal season, the quality of the food, the weather, about anything and everything.  The guy was a real chatterbox.  I was trying to be polite, but there was a reason I was eating lunch alone.  I wanted to read my book.  Nothing the guy said was of any value to me, and it was really getting on my nerves.  After about five minutes I told the guy as politely as possible, “You know, it’s hard to read a book and have a conversation.”  He looked at me as if I threw Holy Water upon his forehead.  “Sorry, I just thought you wanted some conversation.  I saw you sitting here by yourself and thought you wanted company.   I guess you don’t…….right?”  I replied as nicely as possible, “that’s right.  I don’t want any company.”  He got up in uncomfortable silence and took his food with him and disappeared into the restaurant.  I was so happy that he left and for the next hour and a half I was alone with just my book, my food and the nice outside air of a late summer August day.  When I was ready to leave, that guy was inside the restaurant sitting at the bar talking to the bartender and anybody nearby who would listen.  Three businessmen were comparing Fantasy Football picks with him and they were all happy as sluts at a navel port gabbing at each other with much fanfare.  The man didn’t look at me even though I had to pay the remainder of my bill with the bartender.  It was easier not to acknowledge each other, and I was grateful that he felt that way.

That same mentality was present when Ron Spurlock turned away from me in the halls of Lakota East to preserve his position in the social structure of Lakota.  Well before I called the levy supporters at Lakota “Latte sipping prostitutes with asses the size of car tires and diamond rings to match” in the Cincinnati Enquirer the wheels of castigation were well in place.  I had tried to work with the Lakota school board and the superintendents to bring down their costs.  I worked with the media nicely to give them entertainment within the context of their acceptability, and I was gloriously successful at it.  I even played the charity game to make my friends happy who stood against the tax increases, but still wanted to maintain relationships with members of the Lakota administration.   But none of them wanted to stand by the truth and deal with the severity of the situation in the manner it called for.  They all separated into their various groups and expected me to facilitate myself to their whims, which simply wasn’t going to happen.  When I didn’t, not even good people like Ron Spurlock wanted to be seen speaking with me in public out of fear that it would put him socially on the “out.”  People fear more than most anything in the world being rejected from their respective “groups.”

I learned a long, long time ago that these groups are more destructive to the human psyche than all the mental deficiencies available to insanity.  They are as my nephew argued part of the human condition generated upon the human mind during childhood when dependency is the only option.  Good parents never allow their children to feel the bite of this dependency so that as maturity sets in, those individuals grown into self-driven entities reliant on their own thoughts and motivations and cast away group participation like a snake sheds its skin.  The human race cannot survive with the mode of thinking that drove Ron Spurlock to walk the other way under the Mantia regime at Lakota, or the class president ignoring my children as they ran around playing at her feet.

When groups of people are at wit’s end and cannot strategically deal with the impact of an individual, they attempt to look everywhere that they aren’t.  They attempt to ignore such people so to preserve their own thoughts and feelings without a challenger.  Shortly after No Lakota Levy and I parted ways after the events described above, I received the following note from a radical levy supporter at Lakota.  The contents are particularly revealing as it confirms everything stated:

richhoffmanhateskids@gmail.com

208.102.50.136

Submitted on 2012/03/19 at 4:40 pm

HA HA HA!  LAKOTA DOESN’T WANT YOU…HA HA HA! Its a sign that you are a nobody when groups start running away from you.

ha ha ha ha ha!!!

That letter writer was an adult who holds a very responsible position within the Lakota school system, and provides insight into the kind of mentality that Ron Spurlock feared so much on a cold February evening at Lakota East.   As mature and sophisticated the participants of the education profession pretend to be, they are still functioning human beings that are deficient of self-reliant thinking, and as far as I’m concerned, behind the evolutionary curve.  The money they ask for with tax increases is to cover the gaps of their thinking and mask their internal neurosis.  It has nothing to do with reality, but only the primal need for group behavior to separate social tasks into blocks of consensus building.  The very foundations that they have built their institutions upon is set to sink in the sand during high tide as it has no philosophical foundation to plant roots of thought.  All they can do when such a reality is presented to them is to ignore the facts to preserve their warped illusions.

That is why this next levy attempt of 2013 will be different.  I will not try to solve the problem from the inside, because it clearly will not work under any condition.  This is a problem that must be solved from the outside—in, because the root of the problem is on the inside and must be starved out of existence.  They cannot see the problem because they refuse to look at it and nobody on a school board or through the mechanism of politics can solve the problem in that insider fashion.  So my new tactic will be to launch the attack from the outside in, to famish the antagonists from within their own walls by starving out their supply chain.  Such strategies brought down the rule of the Mongols in China, and it brought down the Roman Empire.  It can bring down little ol’ Lakota, which is what I intend.  It’s not against education that I rebel; it is the institutionalism of individual minds that I despise.  I love education.  I just can’t stand the process that is currently accepted, and I don’t like the politics connected to it.

As it should be clear by now, at no point in my life did I care to be on the “inside.”  I have been at times when groups wanted to use my talents, but I do not volunteer to go.  They come to me.  And they can go away just as well, but my position does not change, as it has been built upon the foundations of logic and my personal observations.  I will not surrender that position to the illogical perspective of group consensus to preserve the neurosis of established thinking if that thinking is wrong.  My nephew was right from an academic standpoint, human beings are a social species.  They need each other, and seek to speak, touch and interact with others of their kind.  But I am right too, that such behavior is for the human race equivalent to a small child learning to walk for the first time afraid to let go of what props them up.  A human mind needs to learn to walk on its own, free of emotional shackles to inferior intellects and it must grow from there perpetually over a lifetime.  What Lakota does, and other institutions like them is artificially constrain thinking so to preserve political beliefs forged by group consensus, and that is a recipe for disaster that I cannot, and will not support—but will fight as though it was the most corrosive organism in existence—because it is.

Now, if anybody who has read this wish to argue with me, feel free to leave a comment below.  I won’t chastise or belittle you for trying.  I like the mental exercise.  But if you don’t, your silence will confirm all that I have said above.  So have at it……………….

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

What the Blue Indications Mean at Lakota: Home Foreclosures and the threat of high taxes

Lakota forclosuresAt Lakota and hundreds of other school districts all over Ohio school levies are on the fall ballot, and many people will find themselves torn between how they should vote.  The trouble with teachers and public education in general is that most voters know at least one person close to them who works for the industry.  Like any dedicated friend or loved one, it is typical to put blinders onto the reality of public education so not to betray those cherished members of our lives.  This has allowed the radical elements of the teaching profession to capture the message of statism and sell it as value to the communities from which they behave as raw parasites.  Lakota forclosures 6Because of the paralysis in judgment typical toward the teaching profession this has allowed complete falsehoods to be introduced into common language and social acceptance about public schools necessitating continuous higher taxes to substantiate levy requests.  Newspaper reporters, television newscasts, and neighbor to neighbor discussions about public schools tend to always focus on the same union bullet points without ever exploring the harsh realities.  Typically employees of such schools who speak in defense of their industry will say things like:

  • “Due to lack of money things are not well.”  “Of course there is waste and bad teachers, but they are the exception and not the norm, our children need our support.”
  • “If the schools are not supported, the community we are so proud of will end up in deterioration.”
  • “Because of the failed levies morale is low.   The excellent teachers and administrators are jumping ship.”
  • “With the latest cuts, elementary kids get one class of gym or music or art once a week on a rotating basis.  They used to get each one once a week.”Lakota forclosures 7

Such comments go on to infinity from there with the commentators never contemplating openly the causes.  There is a willingness to take the cause and effects of public education at the presented value allowing the radicals of government schools to get away with crimes of extortion driven by anti-trust violations.  So often the reason is because most people have somebody close to them who works in the business and nobody wants to hurt the feelings of those people.  This is how the crimes are committed, crimes of open looting of the public treasury for the solitary purpose of plunder by the state for the goal of statism.  The truth about school levies and higher taxes are easy to see for those with the courage to see them.  It has been proven that the best thing a community can do to maintain a healthy district is to vote down higher taxes, not cave into the emotional arguments provided by the employees of public education.  (CLICK HERE for more detailed explanations) The reason is that higher taxes destroy property investment, the higher the taxes, the less investment into business and residences.Lakota forclosures1

In my community of Lakota the result of a harsh economy is quite evident.  On the surface of course everything looks nice, there are well-kept homes, the roads are paved well, there are lots of consumer options, the schools are rated well—everything appears to be in order—and in relation to other places in America it is.  But if the façade is pulled back just a bit the reality can be seen for what it truly is.  The pictures shown here are from Zillow and display with red markers property that is for sale.  In the Lakota district there are quite a lot of homes for sale, some of which is normal.  Some of it is driven by occupational changes, and changes to household income.  But a lot of it is driven by taxes that are just simply too high.  The more alarming indicator shown in the included pictures are those marked in blue.  These are homes that are being foreclosed upon—meaning their owners could not keep up with their mortgage payments.Lakota forclosures2

When first checking, it would be assumed that there would be a few of these, but the actual number is quite shocking.  As shown, there are a lot of homeowners who have been barely hanging on through tough economic times who are finding themselves going through the disgrace of losing their properties to circumstance.  Because I have made myself a spokesman against higher taxes, pro tax advocates see me as being in the way of their goals, and get very angry with me.  This causes them to send all kinds of useful information out of anger.  One such note was from a typical levy cheerleader who has placed their own personal neurosis into the care of their children out of guilt for a series of other mistakes they’ve made in their life.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.   That particular person said to me, “I pay $5400/year in taxes. How much do you pay? $2800? If you don’t want to live in an affluent community with good schools, then move!”  What they were clearly attempting to do was make me feel like they had the upper hand because they pay a higher tax on a home that is over 300K in value.  The thinking is flawed because what they miss is that many of the people suffering foreclosures are people in the most affluent neighborhoods in the Lakota district–their neighbors.  Seen in the picture here, several foreclosures are occurring in the Four Bridges community and there are a few that are in the $1.1 million dollar range in other neighborhoods.  Because Lakota is on a downward trend with enrollment as only well-to-do families can afford to live in such an affluent district, there are fewer children to attend the schools, leaving many homeowners regulated to selling off their homes to move to areas of the country where taxes are not such a burden.  The only people who want to pay large taxes are the type of neurotic parents like that letter writer who are using the public schools to mask their deepest insecurities about their parenting ability.  Once that same type of parent has children leaving the public school they will typically pack up and move to some other district in the United States to carry out their social psychosis—their innate desire to be busy-bodies.Lakota forclosures3

The cost of allowing people like that to run a community into the ground uncontested is the unseen result of these Zillow pictures—too many people selling homes by choice flee the high taxes, or are forced out of their homes because they can’t keep up with the payment.  The frightening aspect is what is not shown on Zillow are the many thousands of homeowners who are just barely hanging on, where one more increase in taxes will either push them into the red indications, or worse yet—the blue.  When Lakota cheerleads the value that a school has on the community, they are speaking union bullet points that mean nothing.  The value of a community is in its ability to make people want to live there.  A school only attracts one kind of investor, people like the spoiled brat letter writer indicated above.  Those types come and go within a ten year span during their children’s upbringing.  They are not long term investors in a community unlike people such as myself who lived here before many of them were even born and will still be here long after they’ve bought up Florida condos and put those same children through college as empty-nesters. The way to ruin a community is to lure too many neurotic parents to a community to pay for homes they otherwise couldn’t afford if not for a strategic FHA loan from the government, or purchased with a variable interest rate that drive up their monthly payment quicker than the tax impositions of the public school.  Or fools who think paying $5400 a year in taxes gives them emotional leverage in an argument.  In discussions with their neighbors upon hearing such things nobody would reveal that they are struggling to pay their taxes, so they silently allow themselves to be foreclosed upon becoming one of the unfortunate blue indications on Zillow.  Not wanting to admit failure to their friends, family, and neighbors who utter such half-baked endorsements of public education monopolies, they quietly purchase lottery tickets hoping for a winner right up to the last day when the bank comes to reclaim their property for default.  Then and only then do they move and disappear from the earth and away from circles of Jabba the Hutt like socialites who think paying $5400 in personal property taxes is “good” for a community.  Zillow has the truth. Lakota Forclosures4

Being polite will not save a community from the destruction of parasites who think public education under the current funding model and anti-trust operation is sustainable.  But silence will destroy it, the kind of silence seen on these Zillow pictures.  Most people living near the blue indications have no idea that their neighbors are struggling because nobody takes the time to really get to know each other.  One week everything looks fine from the outside, the neighbor is mowing their lawn, wearing an Ohio State t-shirt while doing some minor landscaping, and the children are playing outside.  Nothing seems amiss.  Then the next week there is a bank owned paper stuck to the garage and the family is nowhere to be seen.  The home is empty overnight and an uncomfortable sensation engulfs the entire neighborhood as though a death just took place.   Lakota forclosures5In a lot of ways one did, a bit of the life that makes up a community died—the hopes and dreams of property ownership that was robbed from them by changes in finance.  Among those changes are the difficulties in keeping up with their taxes among all the other concerns they have in their lives.  Paying $3000 to $6000 a year in taxes just to send a bunch of spoiled brat kids raised by neurotic parents to a free education starts to wear on the mind when it is realized that having that money for personal needs is much greater.  Upon that realization, homes go up for sale or are lost because the admission that such properties cannot be afforded comes too late in the game.  Luckily for the Lakota district the residents have managed to fight off the corrosive public school since 2005.  It can only be imagined how many new blue indications will show up on Zillow if Lakota manages to raise taxes the way they desire.  But one thing is for sure, it will be a big number, and that is not conducive to a thriving community.    The value of a school district does not come from the school, the teachers, or the buildings themselves, but from the people who invest their money, and are motivated to continue due to financial incentive.  Higher taxes are not an incentive, they are detriments—ones that have a direct relationship to the blue indications on Zillow.

 

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

Lakota Should Be Prosecuted for Anti-Trust: Public Education is exempt from monopoly status through “state action”

If Lakota as a public education institution were viewed with the same standards as Microsoft, Apple, or the railroads of the 1890s, they would be guilty of anti-trust violations according to the Sherman Act.  Lakota as all public education institutions backed by the federal government are monopolies, and the cost imposition that they inflict against communities is directly related to their anti-trust status.  Using logic, Lakota should be judged by the same standards that private industry has been prosecuted under.  CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE SHERMAN ACT of 1890.  Public schools are monopolies and they openly stand against competition which is why they cost so much in tax money.  The obvious solution to this dilemma is to prosecute public schools under the Sherman Act or something like it so that competition could be implemented.  Yet it would appear that all government entities under state control are exempt from The Sherman Act.  This means that government can prosecute private business behaving in an anti-competitive fashion, but private industry cannot prosecute government for performing in a same manner.

In 1943, the Supreme Court first created the “state action” exemption to federal antitrust law in a case called Parker v. Brown. The California Agricultural Prorate Act of 1933 had established special marketing programs for agricultural commodities to restrict competition and raise prices for producers. Porter Brown, a raisin packer, sued W.B. Parker, the California Director of Agriculture, charging, among other things, that the California statute violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Supreme Court disagreed: “We find nothing in the language of the Sherman Act or in its history which suggests that its purpose was to restrain a state or its officers or agents from activities directed by its legislature. . . . The Sherman Act makes no mention of the state as such, and gives no hint that it was intended to restrain state action or official action directed by a state.” States are thus exempt from federal antitrust law, even though California’s agricultural producers would certainly have been in violation had they made a private agreement to restrict production and increase prices.

The result of that 1943 Supreme Court case is that government has been allowed to monopolize as an anti-trust entity against the public without fear of ramifications.  In the case of public schools, property owners have no choice but to pay for the public school that happens to be in their district, as designated by government—the state.  The state created a monopoly status for these public education institutions to ensure their continued funding regardless of performance because there is little to no competition against them.  This allows public schools like Lakota to continue to raise the prices of their service as no other competition exists to drive down their per pupil costs except for other public schools also set up with monopoly status and protected by the state under the “state action” exemption.

In a just world where the courts pursued “fairness” this practice would be highly illegal.  But the courts are not intent on justice.  They are intent on protecting such monopolies for their own preservation as even the courts are part of the monopoly process.  They too are protected from cleaver lawyers by the “state action” exemption, and are free to provide support to the anti-trust practices of government—particularly public schools like Lakota.  Lakota and their fellow public schools are every bit as guilty of anti-trust practices as the railroads of 1890 provoking the creation of the Sherman Act in the first place, as statism philosophy in government desired to control the capitalism being unleashed by the industry tycoons of the era.

For the protection of private business and residents who pay the taxes there needs to be a version of the Sherman Act introduced that protects society from the monopolies of public education.  Personally, I don’t believe there should have ever been a Sherman Act—that the government overstepped it’s boundaries upon its creation.   But as the current Supreme Court looks upon the case-law of the like–1943 Parker v. Brown case, they provide a way out for prosecuting their fellow public workers with anti-trust.  Such excuses for statism need to be removed.  If the government can prosecute industry for anti-trust violations than private interests should be able to prosecute the government with the same intention—to influence competitive options and supposedly keep costs down to the consumer.

The solitary reason that costs are out-of-control in public education institutions like Lakota is because they are monopolies.  They are functioning anti-trusts protected by government to eliminate competition which drives up their costs against the communities they supposedly serve.  For the protection of all tax payers, anti-trust legislation should be brought to fruition protecting all against the violations of monopoly status in public education.  If the Sherman Act exists to prosecute businesses supposedly guilty of anti-trust, then a new act needs to be created so that future Supreme Courts do have the language to prosecute public sector interests that is operating as an anti-trust—such as public education.

Lakota in 2013 is seeking a new levy and they expect that nobody will question the merit of their tax demands.  They can issue any financial information to the public they wish and we are stuck with the results because there is no competition.  If a property owner has possession of a business or residence near the Lakota school system, they must pay taxes to the public school because of their monopoly status and lack of competition mandated by the school.  When Lakota states that they have done everything they can to save money and in order to continue being a good school, they must have more money; they make those kinds of comments knowing that they have no competition to prove otherwise.  Private schools and neighboring schools are not competition when they are not working to solicit the business of the same student base and when it comes to public education at Lakota it is not Lakota East against Lakota West regarding finances.  One does not try to outperform the other in a race to perform the best service for the lowest cost.  The reality is that Lakota as a district is under the control of a monopoly.  Their costs are driven by a labor union and that group does not want ANY competition.  Their mandates are created by politicians, not the free market.  They are the worst kind of anti-trust there is, and it is criminal that they are allowed to exist as monopolies under different rules than what the private sector witnesses.  If there were any justice, Lakota and all public schools would be prosecuted as monopolies by the federal government with the same fanfare that was shown against the railroads, Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, or Microsoft.   The trouble is the prosecutors would be the same people who built the current monopolies, the public workers who are the employees, lawyers and politicians who built the public education system.  With the same vigor that the government proved in court that Rockefeller and the other “monopolists” who fell victim to the Sherman Act would not do the right thing and allow fairness in the marketplace, the public workers will not regulate themselves—so they must be made to do so with law—or some other method.  To stand as an illegal entity with the backing of the federal government to impose their will against the tax payer as a monopoly is simply unconscionable.

For more on this issue read about it extensively at the links below:

http://apps.americanbar.org/dch/committee.cfm?com=AT320250

http://www.byupoliticalreview.com/?p=192

http://reason.org/news/show/1013238.html

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

Why A Whip Trick to Save Lakota Helps America: 20 cities facing bankruptcy

After a few people saw my Whip Trick to Save Lakota video, (Click to review,) I started to receive several comments, one particular from a guy who lives on the other end of the country.  The problem of public sector workers taking too much money from the tax base isn’t specific to Lakota by any stretch of the imagination.  The entire structure of the public school system in virtually every community is a ridiculous scam that should have been called out a long time ago, but hasn’t essentially because nobody wanted to be called names for not supporting a public school.  Here is what the comment writer sent me:

“This goes on where I live too. In the face of declining enrollment, they (public schools) still beg for more money. They know they’ve got teachers on the way out, and they’re probably planning to use this money to jack up the salaries of the departing teachers in their last few years because their pension is probably based on their last few years of salary. It’s got nothing to do with quality education. It’s got everything to do with cozy retirement. Watch for them to get re-hired after “retirement” too!”

I referenced in the video A Whip Trick To Save Lakota the course of Detroit, and how unmanaged costs in Cincinnati, especially in affluent districts like Lakota will eventually lead to the same fate where the once wealthiest city in America has become the poorest in a span of 40 short years.  The unions destroyed Detroit, the private sector unions pushed businesses out of the city, especially in manufacturing taking those jobs with them—the public sector unions just continued to increase taxes to pay for their unmanaged wage increases.  For instance, in Detroit the average teacher pay has been $71,000 per year.  CLICK HERE TO READ MORE.  The end result is that high taxes pushed away those who didn’t want to pay the extra money, or couldn’t pay any additional money, and the city essentially died.

I also mentioned the upcoming bankruptcy of Chicago.  That city also has an average teacher salary of $71,000, which is what happens when nobody puts on the breaks and manages the salary ranges.  The unions are not management, and they will not regulate themselves, as is evidence.  School boards for years in virtually every community across the country have responded to union pressure by simply rubber stamping every pay increase that has come across their desks.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.   According to an analysis by the Manhattan Institute, several Chicago pension funds are in worse financial shape than the worker pensions in Detroit. One is only 25 percent funded. There are about a dozen major California cities having systemic problems paying their bills.  Any and all of the cities listed below are likely to suffer the same fate as Detroit.   CLICK HERE TO SEE THE SOURCE ARTICLE.  The list is based on bond ratings and other data, of the top 20 cities to watch for financial troubles in the wake of Detroit.  A large number of those unfunded pensions are public workers such as police, firefighters, and teachers who were promised too much by politicians who simply didn’t have the stomach to endure the constant threat of strikes and mob pressure invoked by public sector labor unions.  The fault of these failures are on all the people who were involved in the process of not saying “NO” to years of tax increases by a greedy class of public employee who simply took too much money, far more than their jobs were actually worth.

1. Compton, Calif.
Compton has teetered on the brink of bankruptcy after it accrued a general-fund deficit of more than $40 million by borrowing from other funds, depleting what had been a $22 million reserve.

2. East Greenbush, N.Y.
A New York state audit concluded that years of fiscal mismanagement — including questionable employment contracts and illegal payments to town officials — left East Greenbush more than $2 million in debt.

3. Fresno, Calif.
Fresno had the ratings of its lease-revenue bonds downgraded to junk-level by Moody’s, which also downgraded its convention center and pension obligation bonds due to the city’s “exceedingly weak financial position.”

4. Gulf County, Fla.
Fitch Ratings warned that Gulf County’s predominately rural economy is “narrowly focused,” with income levels one-quarter below national averages and economic indicators for the county also comparing unfavorably to national averages.

5. Harrisburg, Pa.
Harrisburg is at least $345 million in debt, thanks largely to municipal bonds it guaranteed in order to finance upgrades to its problematic waste-to-energy trash incinerator.

6. Irvington, N.J.
Irvington has a violent crime rate six times higher than New Jersey’s average, with Moody’s citing “wealth indicators below state and national averages and tax-base and population declines due to increased tax appeals and foreclosures.”

7. Jefferson County, Ala.
Jefferson County, home to the city of Birmingham, has been dealing with the collapse of refinancing for a sewer bond. It filed for bankruptcy protection in 2011 over a $3.14 billion sewer bond debt.

8. Menasha, Wis.
Menasha defaulted on bonds in 2007 it had issued to fund a steam plant which has since closed and left the city permanently in the red and, as of 2011, had $16 million in general fund revenue, but had $43.4 million in outstanding debt.

9. Newburgh, N.Y.
Newburgh was cited by Moody’s for “tax base erosion and a weak socioeconomic profile,” with 26 percent of its population below the poverty line and its school district facing a $2 million budget gap.

10. Oakland, Calif.
Oakland is trying to get out of a Goldman Sachs-brokered interest rate swap that is costing it $4 million a year. According to a recent city audit, Oakland has lost $250 million from a 1997 pension obligation bond sale and subsequent investment strategy.

11. Philadelphia School District, Pa.
Philadelphia’s school district, the nation’s eighth-largest, faces a $304 million deficit in its $2.35 billion budget, and is seeking $133 million from labor-contract savings to prevent further cutbacks.

12. Pontiac, Mich.
Pontiac, where the emergency manager has restructured the city’s finances, was downgraded by Moody’s, reflecting the city’s history of fiscal distress and narrow liquidity.

13. Providence, R.I.
Providence, rumored to be filing for bankruptcy for more than a year, experienced consecutive deficits through fiscal 2012, has a high-debt burden and significant unfunded pension liabilities, as well as high unemployment and low-income levels.

14. Riverdale, Ill.
The credit rating for Riverdale is under review by Moody’s because the city has not released an audit of interim or unaudited data for the year that ended April 30, 2012.

15. Salem, N.J.
Salem is under close fiscal supervision after it issued bonds to finance the construction of the Finlaw State Office Building, which was delayed by construction issues, and its leasing revenues are not enough to cover the debt payments and the maintenance fees.

16. Strafford County, N.H.
Strafford County regularly borrows money to cover its short-term cash needs after it spent two-fifths of its budget on a nursing home, which lost $36 million from 2004 to 2009.

17. Taylor, Mich.
Taylor has a large deficit and is vulnerable due to significant declines in the tax base, limited financial flexibility, and above-average unfunded pension obligations.

18. Vadnais Heights, Minn.
The St. Paul suburb of Vadnais Heights had its debt rating downgraded to junk last fall by Moody’s after the city council voted to stop payments to a sports center financed by bonds.

19. Wenatchee, Wash.
Wenatchee defaulted on $42 million in debt associated with the Town Toyota Center, a multipurpose arena, and has ongoing financial issues due to the default.

20. Woonsocket, R.I.
Woonsocket faces near-term liquidity shortages necessitating an advance in state aid, a high-debt burden and unfunded pension liabilities, with Moody’s citing the city’s continuing difficulties in making spending cuts because of poor management and imprecise accounting.

All those places and many more who are right on their heels to failure, are suffering now because they did not do the hard work of saying NO to tax increases.   It’s not easy saying no, and the most dominant reason that management gives in to the pressure of the public sector unions is that they don’t want to be called names by the mobs who are members, as silly as that sounds.  Most people have an inherit desire to be liked, and it is too much for them to be ostracized by their peers.  Much of the bankruptcy threats listed above simply exist because the people in charge of the money were afraid of being called names by the people who wanted the money.  It all comes down to that.

It is important to understand that the budget problems with the teaching profession is not just centralized in Southern Ohio—but is in fact a nationwide epidemic.  Even though I was never a fan of FDR as a president, he did warn that public sector employees should never be allowed to unionize.  John F. Kennedy, even though many wish to believe he was such a great president made public sector unions legal with an Executive Order seemingly to appease the mob bosses who helped him win the close election against Nixon, and the whole system has went downhill from there in a steady progression of failure.  The root cause of the default was when Kennedy signed Executive Order 10988.  Cities have been on a decline since that action.  Kennedy may have helped put the nation behind the space program, he may have endured a stalemate with Russia in Cuba, and gave some decent speeches, but he was a deeply flawed man who’s womanizing, mob connections, and unethical behavior opened the door to thuggish mobs to ruin America.  He hoped that city councils, school boards, and state law makers would have the stomach to stand up to the new public sector unions–but he was dreadfully wrong.

The only things voters can do now are Vote No against tax increases and force the reductions of the public sector union members as a political power.  Their inability to regulate themselves has forced this issue now, so they have only themselves to blame.  A failure to say NO will not only destroy their lives, but also the communities everyone lives in.  Their life as public workers will come to an end eventually anyway—sooner or later.  If it is sooner than entire cities may not be laid to waste.  But if it is later, as in the examples above, then it is too late to avoid the inevitable.  Bankruptcy will follow, and many more people will suffer because they feared to say NO to the masses that are never happy, and can never be appeased leaping from crises to crises always looking for higher wages from extortion to fill the bottomless pit of their belief in the net worth of their unionized professions.

Rich Hoffman

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

Mending Fences with Other People’s Posts and Wire: Lakota’s supporters divide up the community

Upon the announcement of the 2013 Lakota levy both sides of the issue began voicing their opinions, and one fellow that represented how the typical YES voter for tax increases thinks left a series of comments favoring the levy which can be seen below.  The guy named AJ Malott isn’t a bad guy, just a person who sees public education as an entitlement similar to Social Security and Medicaid, and he believes that the older residents in Lakota should be willing to pay for his children’s education because he is paying for their senior oriented retirements.   He also makes a point to mention No Lakota Levy, which is a group I played a large part in formulating so explanations are in order.   First, let’s see what AJ thinks.

AJ Malott · Cincinnati, Ohio

And another thing, isn’t it interesting that the so-called leader of the NoLakota levy group owns a contracting company? Is he expecting an influx of work when no one wants to buy/build/remodel in the community? People only want to invest in their homes if they feel connected to their home and community, and plan on staying.

AJ Malott · Cincinnati, Ohio

I thought we were smart by moving into the Lakota district 4 years ago BECAUSE of the support and quality of the schools. So, yes, lets put that in jeopardy so other millennials whom are starting their families do not want to move here. And, then those who want to move because they don’t want to pay the taxes can experience declining home values. Then, it can be a lose-lose situation for all.

AJ Malott · Cincinnati, Ohio

With the exception that they claim that the older generation doesn’t want to pay for schools for the younger generation. Well, doesn’t this whole system we have designed center around everyone paying their collective share. When one group decides they want to opt out (the seniors), it puts undue pressures on the other groups. So, if they can do it, I’m not sure why our generation can’t do the same thing. You pay for schools and I will continue to pay into benefits I’m sure I’ll never see any of.

AJ Malott · Cincinnati, Ohio

You know, I am finding it really difficult to continue to pay that Social Security and Medicare tax out of my paycheck. I look forward to the next generation of politicians that feel the same way, and look to make cuts to those “entitlement” programs. If you don’t want to support my child’s future, why should we support yours.

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20130708/NEWS/307080057/Lakota-Without-levy-district-will-decline

In that article which the commenter referenced, Bob Hutsenpiller gave a statement representing No Lakota Levy’s position.   He simply said any tax hike will be a tough sell to older residents in Liberty and West Chester Townships.  This prompted AJ Malott to assume that he was in a position to offer critical review about Hutsenpiller.   Bob went on to say “Lakota officials should continue its recent budget cutting while the seniors, retirees and residents of the district go through these rough economic times. Most of the seniors of the Lakota district are contemplating moving out of the district just to reduce their tax burden.”  For saying that, Malott felt entitled to deliver a subtle attack in order to defend his child’s “right” to a free education.  So before going into a dissemination of Malott’s comments which represent the average levy supporter in all public schools, I must put a book end into my involvement with No Lakota Levy prior to this upcoming campaign.  To discuss that I have to refer back to a Middletown Journal article from the summer of 2011 where members of No Lakota Levy without my agreement attempted to make a deal with the Yes Vote group at Lakota.  I was tipped off about the event by the reporter covering the story.  The article can be seen below.

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

 

West Chester Twp. resident Mark Sennet spoke to the board of education Monday, saying the No Lakota group would support a “conservative” levy in 2012 if the board would bypass the election this November.

 

However, No Lakota member Rich Hoffman, who has typically spoken on behalf of the group, said no discussion had occurred at a meeting about supporting a levy, and he was holding fast to his stance on never supporting a levy.

 

Hoffman said there may be a split in the group, but he thinks the 50-and-older crowd will stand with him.

 

Sennet said Lakota officials have made “a valiant effort to try to work and control spending,” but people still need time to recover from the economic crisis. He said he and several developers would be on the board’s side if it waited for November 2012.

 

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

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

 

“There are going to be people who are not going to ever say yes to anything, and there’s nothing you can do about it,” he said. “We’ve got to generate more revenue. We can’t survive on a 2005 budget.”

Former For Lakota levy chairwoman Sandy Wheatley said the board and district representatives have been mending fences with those in opposition since the last election.

http://www.middletownjournal.com/news/news/local/no-lakota-group-split-on-next-levy-1/nNRfH/

Needles to say, the kind of “fence mending” Wheatley was talking about was an attempt by the levy supporters to split up our group.  As she stated in her comments, there would always be people like me who would say NO to a tax increase, so the Lakota administration attempted to cut deals and split up our group so they wouldn’t have an opposition for the upcoming election in 2011, which of course didn’t work.  Prior to forming No Lakota Levy Sennet contacted me about joining forces as in the previous levy I had been doing my own thing.  He had been working from a group with a different name.  When he asked me to join his group, we called it No Lakota Levy which went on to defeat the next two attempts.  But before the second attempt under that name, Sennet had decided that the kitchen was too hot for him.  The social pressure of not supporting a levy impacted him, which was what Wheatley was referring to.  I witnessed some of the most open extortion I have ever seen through charity events, boycotts, and behind the scenes manipulation that was rancid with sinister intentions.   By the second levy, many of the people in No Lakota Levy didn’t want to be seen at meetings with me because they were afraid that such associations would harm their businesses, even though No Lakota Levy was saving them tens of millions of dollars in taxes.  In private meetings they liked my company, but they didn’t feel comfortable associating with me in public, for fear that the Levy Addicts would connect the dots and find out that they were members of No Lakota Levy.  Bob Hutsenpiller was the exception.

Once Lakota hired Superintendent Mantia her mode of operation was to apply even more pressure on the business community “mending fences.”  It didn’t work by the 2011 attempt in November so Mantia went to work with new strategies in the winter of 2012.  After my events with Sennet at No Lakota Levy, I wasn’t sure I wanted to handcuff myself to playing such a front man while so many others stayed in hiding for fear of being associated with an anti-tax group.  I played along for a while, but did not like the direction the rest of the group wanted to go.  The emphasis on public image of No Lakota Levy was becoming much more important, and I didn’t like that, and I wanted out.  I felt it would be better for No Lakota Levy if people like Hutsenpiller spoke on their own behalf, and we discussed it in meetings about future levy attempts by Lakota.  But I was very good at my job, and so long as I was there, it allowed the people who were most effected by commercial real-estate taxes to use me as a shield, which was giving Lakota the illusion that their “fence mending” was working in their favor.

I meant it when I said that in the next election Lakota would have to deal with No Lakota Levy on one angle, and myself on the other.  I don’t like to mend fences, because doing such a thing only benefits the people who build the fences to begin with, and those fences were built by Lakota politics.   I don’t like deals, peer pressure and financial decisions made under coercion and I prefer to call a spade a spade.   But I am glad to see Hutsenpiller speak reasonably representing his stance.  The amount of money that Lakota is asking people like him to pay in additional taxes is bewildering.  It is just a shame that others like him are so cold with their tongues.  Without question, they will be NO Votes in the upcoming election, but they are careful what they say in public because they will have to see people like AJ Malott at social events frequently who have no idea how much money the tax increases cost a business, and can never hope to comprehend.  Those phantom business owners don’t want the ramifications of being out of agreement with the “fence builders” like Lakota’s current superintendent, for fear that the lack of “cooperation” will have a dire cost against their livelihoods.  Unlike their contemporaries in public education, the business owners cannot raise taxes to cover their costs.  They have to actually nurture a customer base.

Every time there is a new Lakota levy there are new people like AJ Malott who come and go from the community.  They move to Lakota for the nice green space, the shopping, and the schools, but they don’t know much about the character of the area.  I grew up in Liberty Township and I know what kind of place it has always been.  It was named after the American Revolution just as the City of Monroe to the North and Hamilton to the West were named after key members of the American rebellion.  And most of the long term residents I know who have lived in the area most of their lives have that kind of blood deep in their veins no matter what their economic or social status proclaims now, Hutsenpiller is of that type.  They are free spirits who resent “fence mending” as much as I do.  They will do what they must for their businesses, but what they think in private is an entirely different matter.   The people who support these school levies are typically young people who are newer parents, or people who came from progressive places like New England, or California so they don’t really understand the argument against school funding and public education in general.

For me, I want to argue against the entire premise of public education, not just the ridiculousness of the funding.  I am encouraged to see other people rise to the occasion to make those points, which free me up to make the larger arguments.   The Lakota Levy to me wouldn’t mean much in financial investment, it’s the essence of the implication that is the problem.  I spend more on a typical dinner than the levy would cost my residence.  But the real cost of the levy is against the business owner, people like Bob Hutsenpiller who cannot build enough buildings to possibly cover the tens of thousands of dollars his taxes will go up if the levy passes.  Bob is not alone.  There are dozens of people like him who will pay millions in additional taxes if the levy passes, and it is a shame they don’t do more to defend themselves, instead of getting stuck in the political trap set by people who want to “mend fences” when the entire cost of the materials for the fence come from the business owner.

Rich Hoffman

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

When The Safety Net Becomes A Hammock: America’s welfare crises

The Fox News documentary special The Great Food Stamp Binge, hosted by Bret Baier was so good that I am going to include the complete text of their blog posting concerning that wonderful episode within the contents of this document.  If you missed it, fret not.  I have it below which can be seen in its entirety with six parts.  I suggest you watch it and share it with as many people as you can.  Everyone in America needs to see this documentary.  It is a work which explores the treacherous extent of the welfare state in our current economy.  There was a catch phrase during the documentary when Bret Baier stated, “when does the safety net become a hammock,” which I thought was particularly good because the information as provided was extraordinary and deeply revealing.  It paints a picture that points to an astonishing danger that is going to hit every American in the wake of the Obama presidency that will be very painful to overcome.  The welfare state and attack of the FDA with all other government agencies that are openly advocating more dependents upon the parental hand of statism are hard at work to remove from American culture the notion of independence leaving in the wake a society of moochers and disconnected serfs.  Watch, learn and share the following:

The tragedy of America’s great food stamp binge

By Patrick Caddell

Published August 08, 2013

FoxNews.com

 

Once upon a time this was called food stamps, but the modern world is all about branding and image, not accuracy or substance.  Thus, a snappy new name was needed. 

 

All this change is a direct result of the Obama administration’s surreptitious undermining of the law in the Stimulus Act in 2009 and the disingenuous gutting of President Clinton’s overwhelmingly successful Welfare Reform law. This was achieved by administrative fiat in 2010.

 

As I watched the rough cut with Fox Editor-at-Large Peter Boyer, I found myself at a loss for words. 

 

I don’t know whether I was more saddened, or angered by the interview John Roberts did with an apparently healthy “surfer” who happily lives a life of leisure in Southern California subsidized by the taxpayer.  

 

It was simply mindboggling to listen to this grown man explain the logic he uses to justify taking food aid — and thus free food — rather than working and paying for it himself. 

 

This great government giveaway is being undertaken and I can’t help but believe those that truly need help are still going hungry.

 

As we continued to watch I began to see what was behind the SNAP program. It is about changing the mentality of the nation, of Americans.  

 

Take this example, from “The Great Food Stamp Binge,” of what is nothing short of social engineering or reeducation. In North Carolina social workers actually got an award for breaking down the “Mountain Pride” that makes some from that state reluctant or unwilling to take handouts.  They actively fought the tradition of tightening your belt and taking care of yourself when times get tough. 

 

There is much more in this excellent program — it is a thought provoking, well told story and I urge you to watch it. 

 

Certainly, there are many in this country, who need the help.  The idea that Americans go to bed hungry or get sick due to malnutrition is one that should appall any morally sound man or woman. And that is what makes the SNAP initiative utterly foul. 

 

After watching I realized why I was angered by those who take, but don’t need, and frustrated for those who are given, but don’t want. This great giveaway is being undertaken and I can’t help but believe that those that truly need help are still going hungry. Millions of tax dollars are going to people who aren’t our neediest, it is a disgrace.

 

Many of you have probably heard the Chinese proverb, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” The SNAP program is one big fish giveaway that leaves people reliant rather than reliable.  The government is on a mission to sign people up – one in seven in this country already receive food stamps — and the taxpayer is footing the bill for, what I believe, is a tragically misguided plan.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/08/08/tragedy-america-great-food-stamp-binge/#ixzz2bgjaIv5O

Rich Hoffman

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!