Terror from the Ohio FOP: How much workers make in America

This radio ad from the Ohio FOP is to me one of the most disgusting I have ever heard. It’s disgusting because it assumes that the public in general are truly weak, and docile. While there are some who are, there are many who are not, and this ad is an insult to the intelligence and courage of the average Ohioan.

My answer to that ad is, police officers, keep your fat asses home. Stay at the coffee dispenser in Dunkin Donuts talking to the cashier. If some punk comes to my house and duplicates the encounter you recreated in that ad, this will be what that criminal encounters.

It’ll be nice and simple. I’ll even video tape it for testimony in court, so it will be without question within my Second Amendment rights to protect my property. And with that gun, there won’t even be a need for the first responders to show up. All you need is the meat wagon. I wouldn’t want to interrupt your card game around the firehouse. I’ll take care of the whole thing myself. I don’t need you.

I am willing to pay a certain price in taxes for my friends and neighbors who aren’t so self-reliant. But I am not willing to pay too much. I am not willing to support the unions which these employees are a part, because I do not support progressive politics, and the AFL-CIO is a progressive organization as defined by Richard Trumka. I do not want my money in his pocket, and if I give too much money to police, firefighters, and teachers who then give with union dues money to any group backed by the AFL-CIO, my money ends up in his pocket, which is theft from me. I see all progressive groups as detrimental to the kind of America I want to live in.

Read my article on Richard Trumka specifically here. This will explain to all my readers why the collectivism of union behavior is dangerous for America, and is unsustainable.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/the-overton-window-and-the-johnstown-tragedy-richard-trumkas-progressive-push/

I am sick and tired of listening to moochers declare what heroes they are because they stand between criminals and the public, how they run into a fire when I run out. Such people are no different from the soldier who says to a naive 19-year-old girl in a bar just before he goes oversees, “I may be killed tomorrow, so will you sleep with me tonight?”

“Oh, you’re such a hero,” says the young girl. “Yes, I would love to be your last time.”

The soldier doesn’t say to the girl who he’s going oversees to be a cook in the mess hall, and will never see any danger. But he uses the mask of hero-worship to get laid. I see many public servants using the same tactic to garner higher wages for themselves. And that type of message doesn’t fly with those who know better, so let me make it clear. Heroes do not consider money before heroics. Heroes do not strike; they do not walk off the job. They do not cry when they are shot at, and they get back on their feet when tragedy strikes, which in dangerous occupations happens often. A mercenary does do work for money, which isn’t a problem, because many people do. But call it what it is.

For instance, when the firefighters of Monroe, Ohio in June of 2011 haggled over a contract demanding a 5% increase in wages for a three-year period, those are not heroes, they are mercenaries. When a union like police and firefighters negotiate over health care benefits, wages, and retirement benefits, they are mercenaries. Not heroes. You are not a hero just because you put on a uniform. You are a hero when you act heroically.

The confusion that society has on this issue is obvious. Click the link below to see how much police and firefighters make in my community and consider how that happened. If you’ll look at that list, there are many employees who make 70K to 80K per year. Teachers in my community make an average of 63K per year. Now compare that to the list below which shows what jobs all across the country make, including teachers, firefighters and police.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/indicted-west-chester-officer-made-70032-20-yet-the-apologists-think-thats-not-enough/

This is what people make in America on average by salary range.

Salary range: $20,000-$29,999

1. Personal home and care aides: $20,280
2. Manicurists and pedicurists: $22,150
3. Funeral attendants: $23,880
4. Landscaping and groundskeeping workers: $25,340
5. Dietetic technicians: $28,530

Salary range: $30,000-$39,999

6. Veterinary technologists and technicians: $30,580
7. Travel agents: $32,450
8. Dental assistants: $34,000
9. Police, fire and ambulance dispatchers: $36,470
10. Massage therapists: $39,780

Salary range: $40,000-$49,999

11. Surgical technologists: $40,710
12. Law clerks: $41,960
13. Flight attendants: $43,350
14. Firefighters: $47,270
15. Health educators: $49,060

Salary range: $50,000-$59,999

16. Food service technicians: $50,850
17. Respiratory therapists: $54,200
18. Anthropologists and archaeologists: $57,230
19. Editors: $58,440
20. Public relations specialists: $59,370

Salary range: $60,000-$69,999

21. Zoologists and wildlife biologists: $60,670
22. Insurance underwriters: $63,300
23. Registered nurses: $66,530
24. Audiologists: $66,850
25. Budget analysts: $69,240

Salary range: $70,000-$79,999

26. Microbiologists: $71,980
27. Computer programmers: $74,690
28. Sociologists: $76,190
29. Radiation therapists: $77,340
30. Marine engineers and naval architects: $79,240

Salary range: $80,000-$89,999

31. Chiropractors: $80,390
32. Administrative services managers: $81,530
33. Financial analysts: $85,240
34. Producers and directors: $86,870
35. Biochemists and biophysicists: $88,550

Salary range: $90,000-$99,999

36. Art directors: $91,520
37. Construction managers: $93,290
38. Compensation and benefits managers: $95,230
39. Purchasing managers: $96,910
40. Advertising and promotions managers: $97,670

Salary range: $100,000-$109,999

41. Political scientists: $101,050
42. Astronomers: $102,740
43. Judges, magistrate judges and magistrates: $103,990
44. Air traffic controllers: $106,990
45. Law teachers, post-secondary: $109,150

*Salaries are the according to the National Compensation Survey.

You can see the source link article here:

http://msn.careerbuilder.com/Article/MSN-2751-Job-Info-and-Trends-45-jobs-at-every-salary/?SiteId=cbmsnhp42751&sc_extcmp=JS_2751_home1&gt1=23000

When I tell some of these local public workers that they make too much, and they used emotion, the heroics of others to get it from the public in the form of tax increases, I hear back that I’m being cheap. “Can’t you afford just $24 a month more to support your local public servants?”

“I would if they were broke, or even making a middle-class wage, but they are doing exceptionally well. They don’t need an increase. I need that money to pay for my Netflix account. That’s more important to me than giving someone who has too much even more.” Is that selfish? No, because for many, some people may not be able to pay their cable bill, or the cell phone bill, or may have to give up Netflix so a public worker can have a 2 to 3% increase on a top salary of over 70K per year. Give me a break!

Even if you take two of the highest paid communities in the country, the cops, firefighters and teachers in Southern Ohio are making an enormous sum of money, which every dollar must be funded with tax money.
The U.S. capital has swapped top spots with Silicon Valley, according to recent Census Bureau figures, with the typical household in the Washington metro area earning $84,523 last year. The national median income for 2010 was $50,046. Silicon Valley has an average household income of $83,944. That’s HOUSEHOLD income. The figures indicated for the public workers are for individual salaries, not households. The only people who don’t think these salaries are out of control are people who have lost touch with reality.

See the source article for those numbers here:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-19/beltway-earnings-make-u-s-capital-richer-than-silicon-valley.html

That brings up the next question, why are these salaries so high? Why, especially in the southern part of Ohio? Well, southern Ohio is a particularly conservative part of the country and the people tend to vote in a conservative fashion. So the progressive unions know that to purchase the loyalty of those who would otherwise vote for Republicans they need to provide a service they wouldn’t get any other way, so the AFL-CIO has managed to obtain for their members very high wages, which they collect money in the form of union dues to fuel their progressive organization. The conservative police officers, firefighters, and teachers put on blinders to the progressive direction of the union because the pay is so good. They are mercenaries and the unions know it. The wages are so high to purchase the loyalty of the members, because those employees would not make wages that are so high under natural competition. Only by artificially increasing the wages, which are paid for by us with tax increases, the unions can then maintain a progressive army that they purchase with threats of panic and intimidation.

What else is that ad from the Ohio FOP but a fear tactic? They are declaring that we should vote to repeal Issue 2 so that there is a police officer available if someone is breaking into our homes.

I would expect a higher standard from a police force, and am disappointed that they think in such shallow terms. In my life I have no value for public employees who are so petty, have such high expectations and are assisting a progressive political agenda. I’d rather deal with the cop who has told the AFL-CIO to get out of their life. I don’t want a firefighter employed in my district that is in a group headed by Richard Trumka, and endorsed by Barack Obama. I want no part of these organizations. And I certainly don’t want to pay a teacher to preach disastrous leftist doctrines in a school that I pay for, such as I learned about a few days ago which is covered in greater detail at this article:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/vote-for-a-dog-before-jamie-green-or-julie-shaffer-the-union-syndicate/

I would rather do the job myself than pay too much for a group endorsed by any union. The extremism shown by the Ohio FOP solidifies my distrust in the process which says all public workers should be in a public union. I would say none of them should be. Unions should be illegal in public service, and if there is no Issue 2 this year, the next step is to rid ourselves of unions all together in Ohio. We tried to be nice, and we are given insulting ads such as what the Ohio FOP created. That shows what they think of people in Ohio and that sentiment is not rooted in respect. It’s an insult!

For the answer to everything click the link below!

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

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

The Joan Powell School Board Scandal: A lesson of what not to do at Lakota

Darryl Parks of 700 WLW had my friends and me on to discuss many of the local school tax levies in order to compete on which school will get the full fury of the 50,000 Watt Flame Thrower known as The Big One in Cincinnati. That Flame Thrower of a radio station reaches 38 states and part of Canada so the prize is obvious. If you want to get out your message of a school system which needs to defeat its school levy, you want The Big One to broadcast your message. Listen to that broadcast here, which contains many very good points from school districts all over Southern Ohio.

At Lakota while this broadcast was roaming across the Eastern United States, mailmen were putting the letter you see below into the mail boxes of “select” supporters of Joan Powell, the school board president. Have a look at that letter for yourself.  The first thing that should send an alarm up your spine is that Joan chose to put pictures of her grandchildren on the letter, that always means there is something hidden underneath the surface of the message.

I get a lot of material from “school insiders.” In this business of digging for the truth you need such people to give you new information. Last year we had a few such people and they provided very valuable information such as the letter at the link contained here, which came from a principal at one of the schools after the levy was defeated.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/11/10/lakota-principal-openly-complains-the-words-of-michael-holbrook/

It is always interesting to see what people who work for the district think when they believe that nobody is looking. Anyway, the “insiders” are a growing number of people who see that the situation they are employed under is wrong and they’d like out of the straight jacket they are forced to work under. Many of them do not want to be in a union and if Issue 2 holds up this repeal attempt, they can opt out of the union to be free to be employed without membership. But until that day arrives, they will achieve a level of rebellion against a system they disagree with by sending me information. This year there are more than a handful of such people. In fact, I have so many that I can hardly keep up with the material they send me.

And that’s how I got Joan’s letter, which went to selected members and staff who Joan thinks are her friends. The letter taken alone is not bad or illegal. But what it does show is that Joan is blaming many of the problems at Lakota on the school board “not getting along” and “divisiveness.” The letter is an endorsement letter for two members running for seats. Joan wants to see Julie Shaffer who has worked on the Pro Levy Campaigns in recent years including this latest one, and Jamie Green who actually used to be on the board and served as its president during the years of 2005-2009. (wait a minute…….isn’t that the period of time where the unions walked all over the school board during the labor dispute which caused this current financial crises?)…….YES!

I find this letter a very bad decision on behalf of Joan. As president she should understand that she is responsible for developing a “team” and playing games by eliminating other board members in favor of her “hand-picked” candidates is bound to cause trouble. As president of the board, it’s her job to build that unification, not blame members on their divisiveness. That’s called management. You may not like the people you are working with, but as president, it’s the job of leadership to pull everyone together. Not blast them apart. Chances are the new school board members will be Mark Etterling and Lynda O’Conner. I personally like Luke Hall in that mix if not this time, then for one of the next three seats that are coming available, Joan’s included. My question is what does Joan think will happen when Lynda gets re-elected and has to sit at the table with her, knowing that Joan attempted to get her booted off the board? Does Joan think that Jamie Green won’t become power-hungry for the presidency again, and won’t challenge Joan for leadership? What about Julie, who is quite smart, but is a tax and spend candidate? Joan knows where the problems are yet she picks two candidates who are pro levy candidates. She wants to go backwards. Does Lakota need more school board candidates to eat out of the hand of the union? Isn’t that what caused the whole budget crises? YES!!!!!!!!! It is!!!!!!! When $165 million dollars, (which is unofficially $250 million dollars) is not enough money and we have a school board president that says that’s not enough, and is openly campaigning for candidates who think just like her, I’d say the source of the problem is clear.

At a recent “meet the candidates” event I gave a review of who I’d like to see for school board, and Jamie and Julie are at the bottom of the list. They are not business friendly and believe that more taxes are the fix for problems they are tasked to manage, which isn’t managing at all. Anyone can balance a check book if the answer is to always inject more money, because what’s there to balance? You ask for more money till you meet your expenses. That’s their thinking, when it should really be to reduce expenses until the books are balanced, and that must come from the uncomfortable task of reducing the average salary at Lakota that is over $63K to the mid $50’s. That is hard, and it is obvious that Joan and her “pick of the litter” don’t have the mind to do it. (See my review here)

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/04/who-are-the-candidates-for-the-lakota-school-board-meet-them-before-the-2011-election/

Worst of all though from Joan is that short-sighted politicking she is engaging in for a job that pays little money, just pocket change for each meeting the school board has. Why? Are these people so desperate for attention that the title of school board president actually means something to them? Is it the power to control a multi-million dollar budget, probably? But I would have hoped that after all that has been discussed over these last two levy attempts that somebody would have learned something, and instead Joan is clinging to the failed model of the past which delivered us to this time and place. And that’s why not only her two picks need to be defeated, but Joan herself when her seat comes up in 2013. Only by electing good school board members who aren’t power hungry for the presidency and political games, can Lakota get its arms around the budget problems. The last thing we should do is tax ourselves more to put into the lap more money for these people to squabble over. The real answer is in systematically replacing these chatter boxes with legitimate, and caring people who will put the entire district into focus with good management, and not treat the school board like a girls club of levy supporters.

VOTE NO on the LAKOTA SCHOOL LEVY. Vote for any candidates except for Jamie Green and Julie Shaffer. And VOTE YES on Issue 2 so this school board can actually manage its costs in the future and not keep asking us to pass school levies while people like Joan toss that money into a bottomless pit called the Teachers Union.

And to back up these assertions, prepare to tune in to 700 WLW over the next three weeks, because the FLAME THROWER is coming in your direction at Lakota!

Listen to Julie Shaffer on WLW discuss the teaches contract that Joan Powell and Jamie Green negotiated which we have to pay for. CLICK THE VIDEO!


For the answer to everything click the link below!

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

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

The Harsh Reality of the World Economy: Learn about money and why you may be a looter

The greatest peril of an oncoming tragedy is in attempting to convince the people who do not yet see it that catastrophe is about to occur. When watching a football game, it is the really good coach who does not panic, makes adjustments at halftime then comes back out to attempt to win the game after he has educated his team to a new strategy. The bad coaches fail to identify the problem and leave fate to hope that the situation of their team will improve on its own.

Those of us who can see problems way out ahead of most everyone else have been sending out the alarms that America is falling behind for a long time now. Darryl Parks of 700 WLW is one of those “visionaries” and frequently has elements of his programs that are incredibly revealing. We have been attempting to make those halftime adjustments and tell those around us who don’t see so clearly that peril is in front of them. We try to say that if American society does not make adjustments suddenly, there is a very good chance we are going to lose big in the economic game of the world marketplace.

To understand just how severe the world marketplace is, by way of population and the amount of jobs available to those people, listen carefully to this broadcast with Darryl Parks. The facts are broadcast for all to hear, and upon hearing them, you’ll understand more clearly what I’m going to say next. (CLICK THE VIDEO TO HEAR)

20 years ago when I made the decision to stick with manufacturing, many people chastised my decision. They simply didn’t understand, and I’d try and reason with them, that the world does not need more lawyers, it does not need more teachers, technology is making them less important to the education process, and we do not need more doctors, nurses, X-Ray technicians, insurance salesman, politicians, and the like. None of those jobs produce anything. They are simply a service oriented occupation that falls in the same category as a grill cook at McDonalds, “service.” What is needed is manufacturing jobs, things that America actually makes, loads on a truck and is delivered to some paying customer.

Even as a child I would scratch my head at the labor strikes and protests I’d see at places like Armco in Middletown, now known as AK Steel. I saw labor disputes at the Norwood car plant where they built Camero’s and I’d wonder what those people were thinking. But back then manufacturing jobs were abundant and the parents of the next generation who didn’t want their kids to “work for greedy management” (indirect rhetoric created in the union halls of America) wanted better for their kids. So they sent their children to college to become teachers, lawyers, and doctors and now there isn’t anybody to build anything. The Norwood plant is gone now, just like most of the American Steel Industry. And the tax base cannot afford the public employment of the extremely high expectations promised to those public sector people because there isn’t any manufacturing anymore to support government looting with a progressive tax system. America has become like I warned 20 years ago, a service industry and not a manufacturing giant, and it is the labor unions that played a huge role in killing American manufacturing.

In regard to the protests over Issue 2 and the other collective bargaining reforms taking place all over the country, I would think many of those people should be grateful every day that they have a job to go to. In fact, the reason we are creating Issue 2 is so we can keep all those people employed. But greed is ruling their minds. They are not job creators. They are employees in a service industry, who maintain what we currently have.

The trouble with trying to convince those who are causing us to lose this game that they are guilty of the act is in their lack of understanding the true value of money. To the public worker, the protester, the teacher who expects to live like a member of some royalty because they are a member of academia I leave for them an article I wrote some time ago, a piece about the value of money, so that they can see where they are wrong, and make those adjustments so they can get back on our team and help us win this game. But until those public workers get a grip on that basic concept, my words have as much meaning to them as if I were trying to explain quantum mechanics to my dog. So please take this moment to educate yourselves. They owe that to the rest of us who have seen this problem for a long time, but have had to put up with the arrogance of their poor understanding.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/04/01/s-b-5-passes-the-good-of-money-whats-missing-in-our-culture/

If they can’t understand that, then there is no way they can help the rest of us win this game.

For the answer to everything, CLICK THIS LINK:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

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

The “Education Bubble”: The enemy gathers outside of it

For those who believe that all is right in the world, the video below is something you should see. I recently had a debate on 700 WLW with Julie Shaffer over school levies and how much she believes people outside the “education bubble” make as a wage, which far off the true mark and goes far to explain why educators are out-of-touch in asking the public to increase taxes to maintain their lifestyles even when the CPI index says those same teachers are extremely overpaid. It is that same “education bubble” of academia where they view the world with rose-colored lenses darkened even more with tenure that they cannot, or will not see that in their typically leftist viewpoint of global unity and focus on “world peace” that our enemies stir. (CLICK THIS HOTLINK TO HEAR MY DEBATE WITH JULIE)

While the teachers inside this bubble teach our youth pacifism, our youth are becoming less inclined to identify evil for what it is. In fact, many of our adults have the same difficulty, as we have all been educated in the same places. It is not the fault of public education so much as it is the fault of those within the “education bubble” to allow themselves to be seduced by the messages of peace that were created by socialist sympathizers early in American history, and should be viewed no differently than when the farmer takes his flock of cattle to the slaughter-house, petting his animals as he leads them to their deaths. The farmer will drive away from the slaughter-house with money in his pocket, but his cows will leave in pieces, their necks slit and drained of the life. Those in the “education bubble” are like the farmer. They don’t intend harm to their flocks, but they do crave that safety from within academia where they chose to reside, and will at great effort labor to stay there and turn their eyes away from what goes on outside that bubble, even if it means selling away their cattle for money.

I would place the blame on why Americans do not seem able to identify this Middle-Eastern threat on the shoulders of academia, because in their methods of self-preservation, they have allowed the arrogance of an enemy to grow to dangerous proportions. They have lulled society to sleep with empty promises and a pursuit of material wealth accompanied by a healthy dose of altruism, all designed to dissect sectors of modern society from their strongholds of belief.

The academic will scoff at my utterances and those of Glenn Beck because they don’t want to believe in those threats. They do not want to consider that the foundations of their beliefs are but blinders to a menace so magnificent that it threatens to erase any progress mankind has made and cast it back to tents in a desert valley, erasing from the minds of all any trace of skyscrapers, Wall Street trading, or even automobiles. For the rage that dwells within the predators of man care for nothing of invention, peace, love, charity, or reaching for the stars. Their hungry eyes are on the fresh meat within that education bubble which they would consume without reverence or mercy.

And they plot like sinister manipulators, walking among us like the wolf in sheep’s clothing, climbing under the fence to get behind that bubble to eat. Meanwhile the academic looks at the predator and says, “look there at the poor, the downtrodden, the oppressed and offer them your hand, your help, your charity! I say to you my young students to beckon your wealth in their direction, to assist them for they are our brothers and sisters of this world, and deem our respect and understanding.” In this way the teacher leads the students straight into the mouth of the predator to be consumed uneventfully.

The media personality is another type of academic within the “education bubble” who looks everywhere but at the predator in hopes to maintain their fantasy of peace. As they prepare their news stories to met the most recent deadline, and news of a predator in their midst proves unmistakable they utter to themselves, “If only I could take such violent minds to the streets of France to dine within sight of the Eiffel Tower and later that night make love on a veranda overlooking the city at night, then these predators would not want to cut the head off the innocent. If only I could save them from themselves then I would be a type of hero who offered myself to save their lives.” Shortly thereafter, the disillusioned media personality will bury their faces into their hands when they realize too late that it was they who left the gate open to the predators to slaughter their friends behind the “education bubble.”

The enemy is now everywhere and our eyes are no longer trained to see them, because the “education bubble” has failed us. They are in our government, they wear suits, and look like everyone else, and they study everything we do. The enemy is so diverse these days that the enemy doesn’t even know it’s the enemy. They believe they are social servants. Thus, the training provided from within the “education bubble.”

As teachers and other public servants chant at the statehouses all over the nation to protect their “collective bargaining” rights, and their view of the world that was built within the “education bubble” they do not see that the fight they are engaged in is one of manipulation. They were taught to provide a military type distraction in two ways, first to bankrupt our financial structure and deplete our manufacturing base; second they are to draw attention away from the real predators as they maneuver into position to attack. Within the “education bubble” we are taught to think in terms of quarters and semesters. The enemy is taught to think in decades and generations.

So as the teachers and sympathizers of the “education bubble” continue to beat a drum of distraction to preserve their right to shop at Nordstrom’s, an enemy gathers outside of their vision. And as people like me point and say, “there is your end,” they gallantly shrug off the warning.

“Oh, that Mr. Hoffman just hates teachers and so anti-education. You can’t believe anything he says, because he chooses not to join us in the “education bubble.”

And they wonder why I wish to pop that bubble so that they can finally see………………………………

For the answer to everything, CLICK THIS LINK:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

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

The Great Debate at Lakota: Julie Shaffer and Rich Hoffman on WLW

Julie Shaffer who is running for a Lakota School Board seat and representing the Pro Lakota movement came on 700 WLW and debated me on Doc Thompson’s show. Julie had some good points from her view-point, and I maintained my usual opinion. It was the public response to this debate that I think is most telling. WLW is widely heard by all demographics in the adult population all across Ohio so the callers who responded to our debate speak volumes of the values our communities currently embody. Click the video below to listen to that very important broadcast. (BE SURE TO LISTEN TO THE WHOLE BROADCAST)

One thing that came up constantly during the debate is the controversy over numbers. Julie interprets them one way, I interpret them another. But the facts are the facts in spite of what one side or the other wish to see. As to my facts, I look at them without attempting to make them speak slander. And the summary of this whole Lakota Levy Debate is this—what is the value of a teacher and how much should we pay them?

It is my opinion that years of radicalism in the teaching profession have distorted the actual value of the service. This leaves us with the difficult position of discovering what the market value is of a teacher, and that is what these levy defeats all over Cincinnati are all about. We are establishing what we as a community are willing to pay for a teacher.

That teacher radicalism can be seen easily in this recent Letter to the Editor published in The Pulse Journal pointing at me for having a lack of respect for teachers.

What many people don’t understand is just how much teachers cost. At Lakota during the school year of 2009-2010 the average pay of a Lakota teacher was $62,331. The following year it was $63,727 and mysteriously went up even with a pay freeze and step increase freeze under a new 3 year contract. Why? Well, it is because of the teachers laid-off that Lakota cut to meet its budget reducing it by $12 million. How many of those new teachers were really good and how many teachers paid top dollar but aren’t so good kept their job? It was the lower paid teachers who were taken out of the equation, which drove up the average salary. Over the span of time shown above approximately 60% of the teachers received “step increases” of around 3%. This is the kind of thing that has driven up the labor costs and made school levies a necessity, because the schools perceive they need the money because they do not recognize a limit to what is available to them. To put this in perspective, the cost of those increases were around $2.1 million. The savings of the busing cuts is $2.8 million. So it could be said that the busing cuts at Lakota were needed to pay for the increases the teachers received over the last school year.

Even though administrators at Lakota have not received an increase of any kind over the last three years, they do average a pay rate of $80,747 a year. At that rate of pay, who would think they’d need a pay increase. Julie and I discussed on the air two versions of what we believe the average pay to be of a person living in West Chester is. I said the average person is making 50K per year, which included professionals of all types with various degrees. Julie thinks it’s over $70K per year which explains why the people on her side don’t understand the problem.  They live in that “Education Bubble” which sees the world through the eyes of academia, which is idealistic in its interpretation of the information they see, and that view is clearly out-of-touch. That can be heard in the callers that followed our debate.

(BY THE WAY, TO SEE THE REAL NUMBERS FOR YOURSELF, HERE IS CNN MONEY MAGAZING’S REVIEW OF WEST CHESTER. THIS SHOWS HOW MUCH PEOPLE AVERAGE IN INCOME.)

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bplive/2010/snapshots/CS3978246.html

It is irresponsible to ask a community that is suffering from record foreclosures, where business owners have to lower their lease rates to keep their business tenets, because the taxes are so unattractive, then you compare that reality to the world of Julie Shaffer and her Pro Levy teachers and one can only wonder how the teachers don’t see it.

In a late night meeting with Superintendent Mantia where she reached out to those of us in the No Lakota Group hoping to earn our trust in her ability to get control of these crazy costs, that we told her flatly, Lakota should pull the levy, it should then ask the teachers to take a reasonable pay cut to bring that average teacher salary into the mid-50’s. Mantia in my assessment understood our point of view, and she understood the conditions outside of that education bubble, but indicated that the levy was already in the process.

One of the No Lakota Members in our group then said,Those Pro Levy People have 30K in money they raised from last time that has been sitting in a bank since last fall, and it’s burning a hole in their pockets, and we think that’s why you guys are going through with this levy.”

Mantia shrugged her shoulders. “I just got here, gentlemen. I’m trying.”

We shook her hand and wished her well into the rainy night knowing that we had more in common than we did in differences. The only difference is she’s in charge of that “education bubble” and we want to pop it. Because the people within that bubble need to share in the world the rest of us live in. Because then and only then can a realistic discussion about the value of a teacher be ascertained.

For the answer to everything, CLICK THIS LINK:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

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

The Money Hole: Facts and Facts and more Facts about why Issue 2 is needed in Ohio

I have been a fan of John Stossel for years, particularly when he was doing work for 20/20 which I watched every Friday night. Stossel is what a journalist should be, he digs deep for a story and he never takes anything at face value. For my money he has produced some of the most stunning documentaries over the years which have been a tremendous service to American society. One of his more recent documentaries, The Money Hole is one of his best. In that documentary which you can see below, John Stossel shows why America is in a financial hole, what has caused it, and how do we get out of it. For my readers in Ohio, or anywhere else in the world where government spending is out-of-control, I’d urge you to watch John’s documentary so to gain insight to the problem. If you are in Ohio and are confused about ISSUE 2 this documentary will help you. It is the kind of waste that John outlines in this video production that Issue 2 is seeking to get control of, and why Issue 2 is so important to the future of our state, which will then have implications for the entire nation.

John Stossel is not a Republican. John is not a Democrat. John is what might be called a “libertarian” a person who believes in extremely small levels of government. Stossel would most likely tell the story that he didn’t start off this way in his journalism career. He like many in the media who studied from institutions where pictures of Walter Lippmann loomed like a God down the halls of journalism, had a progressive view of the world until his reporting drove it out of him. His conclusions observed in the fields of living did not match what he had learned in college, and he made adjustments to his belief system to incorporate this new data.

This adjustment of political sensitivity occurred for the same reason it occurs in other journalists who continued to push the edge like Bill O’Reilly. Journalists who actually go against the grain, like they are supposed to, learn what works and what doesn’t. Unfortunately, a majority of the journalists out there know what John knows, but they don’t act on it because the editors and producers they work for not only admire the picture of Walter Lippmann, but they wear his picture around their necks like a religious icon. This is why more reporters don’t do as John Stossel has done, and that’s forged his own way, and do hard hitting stories like you can see in The Money Hole.

Stossel isn’t unfair when he does a report. He sits down with all sides to get a story and you see that in The Money Hole. He sits down with union leaders, democratic politicians; in fact he sat down with a representative from every side of the Wisconsin dispute over collective bargaining reform, which is similar to what Issue 2 in Ohio is doing.

A lot of people didn’t know until a few years ago, just how bad the public sector unions have been on our government. It is reporters like John Stossel that has exposed this cost for all to see. It is only a matter of time that the public unions recognize what an imposition they have been to the tax payer and join the rest of us in that negative assessment. But the beginning of that assessment came from the reports of John Stossel, who did this kind of reporting before it was fashionable.

I became interested in education reform when another documentary by Stossel called Stupid in America showed me how ineffective our public education system had become, and what stood in the way of fixing the problem. He did that documentary before there was ever a film called Waiting for Superman, or Glenn Beck was a household name. Stossel has been doing this kind of reporting service for a long time, and it’s always been unpopular, but he has never wavered from stepping into the fire to bring back a story to share with the rest of us.

As to Issue 2 in Ohio, if the evidence present by John Stossel, who has no skin in this game, and is certainly not a “republican stooge” or “corporate crony” can arrive at the conclusions shown in The Money Hole, then why can’t all tax payers see it? Well, like John showed in his documentary, politicians have spent a lot of money on ads which program the fleeting mind of the average person to repeat like a parrot whatever message those politicians intend. The trouble is that to preserve a free society, or even to eliminate corruption within a government, it requires the people of that government to think, and ask questions. But just as thousands and thousands of students graduate from journalism in college each year, there are only a few who end up like John Stossel, the same ratio can be seen among the tax payer base. Everyone knows the problems, but few have the courage to face the problem squarely, even if it personally affects them, to do the right thing. Many of these union members in these public unions who are double-dipping, and abusing the “rules” for their own financial advantage know they are doing wrong, and they hide their guilt in the collectivism of their unions, for it is easier for them to live with themselves when they know their union brothers and sisters are also “gaming” the system for all it’s worth. And they don’t want to see the documentaries that John Stossel produces.

This is why even when the facts are placed out in the open for all to see, there are still people who will not see those facts. They refuse to see because the realization of those facts will indicate that they are bad people to participate in such a bad system and they believe that if they just shout louder, then they can prevent people like John Stossel from putting the truth in front of their faces to look at. But Stossel doesn’t budge, and he’s not going away, and now that it’s been exposed, The Money Pit of government, it is only a matter of time before major reforms are enacted. Many of the crimes shown in The Money Pit were done while the public wasn’t paying attention, and now, thanks to reporters like John Stossel, a few of us are now looking at this problem armed with facts, and not just intuition. And it is what we do with those facts which will bring about the dawn of a whole new age.

When new age happens, be sure to give thanks to people like John Stossel for his part in exposing the truth when there were many who tried to drown it from ever being seen, even by their own eyes.

For the answer to everything, CLICK THIS LINK:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

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

An Evil Fog: The thief who wears the mask of safety

The common practice these days of perplexing every labor done in order that sentiments may be exchanged between a dormant mind and one seeking to loot has extended its sinister fingers into every crevice of our daily lives. This and this alone is the greatest misfortune of the 21st century, a time of astounding discovery and opportunity only to be met with social indifference.

Normally when I’m on the radio with Doc Thompson of 700 WLW I have a little fun ripping to shreds the misconceptions of education spending, because the values do not equate, so there is much fodder to be achieved. But on Thursday, September 22nd, 2011 my daily ride by motorcycle was met with a wall of mystic fog, and the wind called adventure to my throttle as I stormed into the cool morning on that steel horse headed for work. But upon arriving at my office and turning on the radio I was informed of school delays due to the fog and this sent my mind into a torrent which could be heard in my voice during that talk with Doc. Gone from my intonation is that happy banter, although I tried. The replacement thoughts which rushed back to me from the years past set my mind ablaze with a unifying theory which encompasses much of what is wrong in this modern age.

To understand my views on this one must understand a bit about my life. I purposely ride my motorcycle all year, even in the snow, because I enjoy the discomfort and adventure offered in the dangerous conditions. When I receive a deep cut, I usually tend to it myself including sutures. I have been known to stuff the ligaments and blood vessels incorrectly back under my jagged skin only to have it professionally repaired at a later date because the injury was just too great for self repair. In those times, such as a time I had to have my knee repaired with an ACL replacement, the therapy regiment scheduled me for a 12 week intense recovery program, which would require me to be off work during that time. I had the surgery on a Thursday and was back to work minding my 50+ employees on the following Tuesday, walking around on crutches. My therapists were infuriated with me as I learned that they wished to prolong my recovery to fill their own pockets. When after two weeks I declared myself healed, they protested violently. “Nobody can recover that quickly.”
“I just did.”

If I had listened to the cadence of their concerns I might still be in therapy 4 years later, because I had good insurance that covered my therapy, so they had no idea why I was in such a rush to recover, or get back to work. It was beyond their minds that I was doing it for myself, to teach my body to recover quickly and to not accept a loss of movement, or any dependence on an outside person. Self-reliance is the focus of my every thought of every moment of every day, and I expect that same passion out of every cell in my body. I call out to them like a general on a battlefield to fight off disease faster, to clot up lacerations quickly, and to heal with no time to spare. I have always been like this.

Speaking with Doc I thought of another similar foggy morning when I was a kid, couldn’t have been much older than the 5th grade, and a garbage truck stormed over the hill in front of my house and hit the school bus I was getting on from behind. I was in the isle walking back to find a seat when I saw the truck about to hit through the rear window of the bus, so I quickly jumped off the bus and back into my driveway. The collision was so violent that before my feet hit the driveway, the bus had been pushed down the road and was replaced by the wrecked garbage truck.

My first thought was not whether or not everyone was alright on the bus, or even the driver of the garbage truck. My first thought was that I would now be late for school and was granted by the grace of God a few extra hours of time to myself to read a book, draw pictures and write in my journal while the rest of the kids stepped off the bus holding their heads, rubbing their shoulders and looking for somebody to give them some level of pity.

At fire drills I never followed the directions. “Rich Hoffman, you need to get back in line. If there is a fire I am responsible to make sure you’re safe,” my teacher would tell me. Little did they know that if there was a fire, I’d be anywhere but where it was safe. The demons of the night would not allow my mind to rest if I walked away from danger, so standing in a line like a good little boy was not going to happen.

I remember poking the school bully in the eye with my scissors in first grade because he said he was going to kill me. He was out of school for three weeks due to that injury and I received 10 swats with the paddle, but he never bothered me again until the 6th grade where we had such a bad fight that the principle gave us both a paddling. Mine was worse because that kid had problems that would require him to take more time off school. In fact I received a paddling from so many principals that I can’t even remember them all. I remember making sure to let the principals know that I felt no pain, or that I could take it without flinching, even when I was 6 and 7 years old. You see, it was important to be tough, not only in respect from your class-mates, but it seemed important later in life somehow.

I remember sitting in front of one of my high school principals in his office after I had been involved in an altercation and my right fist knuckle was cut open in several places. The bone of my pointer finger was sticking out from the impact and the ligaments that held the top of my hand together were dangling out of the cut. The damage would require a plastic surgeon to fix. “Who did you hit to get a cut like that?” the principal would ask.

Blood running freely and me trying to fight back the effect of shock, “Nobody, why?”
“Rich Hoffman, you can’t continue on like this. You have to find a groove and get into it, this constant resistance to authority that you are prone to will have to stop one of these days or you will die before you get there.”

Once I was married and had kids life seemed to slow down. There weren’t fights with other kids and high-speed car crashes, like I had become accustom to stimulate my mind. Since we only had one car at the time, I bought a bicycle and rode that to work so my wife would have a car. That took the pressure off having to buy another car. I rode that bike to work every day for the next 10 years, 12 miles each way. I did it because it gave me opportunity for adventure on my commute to work. It put me out in the elements and laid danger at my doorstep daily.

Now that I’ve had a little success in life, I ride a motorcycle instead of a bicycle for the same effect, because I’m busy and need to speed up my commute times. Time these days is very important, so I don’t have much of it to kill.

So I can testify that I am utterly baffled by these overprotective mothers who lug around their large cabooses drowning in perfume as if to compensate for the disaster their bodies have become, who have always pointed at my lifestyle as though it were forged in the image of a devil. To me, dressing a kid in a helmet to ride a bicycle down the street is too much. To not let a kid fall down and bump their head or know what it feels like to see the life blood of your body running out before you, forcing you to act quickly to stop it, those are the experiences that make good, strong adults. Pain builds character, and I’d never consider going back in time to avoid any of it.

“The lawsuit culture, the cry-baby teachers, the political looters” I wrote in my notebook that day at the bus accident would all grow up fat, ugly, and socially neurotic. They spent too much time after the accident looking for someone to pity them for their experience, and they would carry that trait into their adult lives and their kids would hate them for it, because kids want to be stimulated. They don’t want to be safe!

Over the last couple decades as parents have divorced with increasing frequency and father number 2 or 3 move in and out of a child’s life so schools have taken up the extra slack of this cultural breakdown, and the teachers out of fear of litigation from neurotic parents have become neurotic themselves and suddenly we have a culture terrified of any danger, so much so that they will throw enormous sums of money at police, firefighters and the like because they live a fearful life and have no way to understand the value of the danger in those positions. The belief is that money will close the gap of understanding is one for fools.

I knew a kid years ago who wet his pants because a lightning bolt struck a tree near where we were playing. He was one whose parents sheltered him incredibly, to the point of neurosis, and of course that kid had difficulty recovering from those limitations when manhood came calling. I used to feel sorry for him, because he didn’t know what it felt like to live a life without fear, because his fears had been conquered. His parents instead taught him that fear was good, and that if he was afraid, then there must be a good reason for it. Bad advice!

Living without fear is the first aspect of a free existence, even before financial security. It is the obligation of childhood to arrive at manhood with as little fear as possible, but unfortunately our current culture actually celebrates neurosis, and belittles the FEARLESS! What an upside down world.
So I felt a twang of pity for all those poor kids who watched the adults in charge of their lives postpone school because an evil fog had cast itself across the land. I realized that a robbery had taken place, all in the name of “SAFETY.” Those children had been denied a mysterious journey through the masked landscape of their familiar routes to see the world differently, and to compare those differences with their everyday route. For it is an important lesson to see how different something you think you know well can look when the elements upon which you see it change. And those kids were denied that experience. Instead, they stayed safe in their homes waiting for the fog to clear and the opportunity for adventure to pass, as the thief went with it into the rising sun of an autumn morning.
Safety had just weakened the next generation proportionally.

For the answer to everything, CLICK THIS LINK:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

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

Public Workers Make 43.4% More Than EVERYONE ELSE: More reasons to vote YES on ISSUE 2

 

 

Let me guess. The pro union faction will declare the new report that Andrew Biggs from the American Enterprise Institute just released is false, which states clearly that public sector workers are being paid 43.4% more than private sector positions, and that many of the costs are the type of secondary costs that many in the private sector don’t even consider because they are only known in public sector service. The unions instead will declare that all the information contained in that report is somehow misleading and concocted by the “evil John Kasich” from his throne of power. (This shows what a poor grasp on reality those people function from)

That’s why I’m putting up the original video of Andrew Biggs where he explains how he arrived at the information and discusses how other information that had been floating around prior to this report is fundamentally wrong due to several errors of judgment, which this report corrected.

The public union supporters have been floating around for weeks, just as they do with school levies the fear that if Issue 2 stays law, then the public workers will stop their public service work and will leave those jobs to work in the private sector……………LOL. Let me make a prediction. (WHISPER) NO THEY WON’T, because as Mr. Biggs said, “Fears that public employees are being treated unfairly, or that many will quit their jobs and the government will be unable to recruit replacements, are almost certainly unfounded.”

Public workers even if they gave back half of all their benefits to the taxpayers in order to be more equal would STILL be out ahead of everyone who pays their salary. That is where all the hidden costs of state budgets are. They get lost in the chaos of big government and explain why those employees are so expensive. The more government workers there are, the less efficient they are, because personal accountability is decreased. That is the subject of this Doc Thompson discussion on 700 WLW in a recent broadcast where he reveals how inaccurate states have been in issuing unemployment insurance. Doc continues on to discuss the new AEI report after this stunning revelation. The terrible performance discussed in this broadcast could be translated to virtually any form of government. This is the problem with politicians who “create” jobs just for the sake of filling seats with bodies without any concept on performance.

For your own reference, feel free to read the whole report for yourself. You can read it at the link below:

http://issuu.com/communitypress/docs/brtcompensation/2

The basics of the report are this:

• Ohio public employees receive nearly the same wages as comparable private workers (2.5 percent less, although that’s an average disguising some of the education professions with lower level administrative work, such as those who issue the insurance payments. Teachers along with police and firefighters are very guilty of uncontrolled overtime payments, and double-dipping retirements which are paying the same employee twice and driving up the cost of staffing those positions.)

• Fringe benefits for Ohio public workers are more than twice as generous as those paid in the private‐sector, meaning that when pay and benefits are taken into consideration public workers receive 31.2 percent more in total compensation than private‐sector counterparts.

• Ohio Public employees enjoy significantly greater job security than private‐sector workers. That job security has an economic value equal to approximately 10 percent of compensation.

• Even if the provisions of SB 5 were implemented in full, it is very likely that Ohio public‐sector workers would continue to enjoy a substantial compensation premium over private‐sector Ohioans.

Seeing all this it’s not hard to see why the public employee unions are out chanting, screaming, and acting like a bunch of spoiled brats. They know they have a good thing going. The bigger government is, the less anyone pays attention to how much things cost and this is the direct reason that taxes are increased, because nobody is managing the costs. So when the union lobby says that Issue 2 will not directly save money, that is because they are not considering all the indirect costs, which make up a majority of the 43.4% disparity, and if each city and district can control their own costs, it will be much harder to hide these huge differences in compensation that are currently hidden in a massive bureaucracy.

For the public unions it is easier to make a villain out of Governor Kasich, as though Kasich is the one who wrote the bill, than it is to deal with any real facts. Sadly, the union lobby just like they do with their anger at Wall Street just don’t seem to understand that Kasich had very little to do with Senate Bill 5 known now as Issue 2. It was a bunch of Senators, many of whom I know, that wrote the bill based on what people like me told them we wanted to see happen. And if the public unions succeed in getting Issue 2 removed as a law, people like me are not going to go away. This is just getting started. This is the first step.

The reason for this persistence is that I’m not going to pay higher taxes to maintain a 43.4% difference in benefits. That’s just stupid. I’ve known this disparity existed for a long time, but I didn’t know it was even THAT bad as indicated in the AEI Report. I had been thinking it was around 30%, which I thought was too much. So this report reveals that it’s far worse than even I thought. And in my opinion if the public workers decided to leave public service, then good. We need a smaller government as it is, and if the pay wasn’t so good, then people wouldn’t want to work for the government so badly. Then maybe we’d get people working in government who do it as a sacrifice instead of trying to enrich themselves at tax payer expense. And before all the teachers, firefighters, and cops write me to say, “Oh, you are a big mean guy,” if what I said wasn’t true, then there wouldn’t be so many abuses of the retirement law. Double-dipping alone costs the state of Ohio millions and millions of dollars, and people in the private sector do not have that option. The retirement at 55 needs to be abolished, and with or without Issue 2, we’re coming after it. It doesn’t matter if it’s this year, or next year, or the year after, sooner or later those abusive privileges will be leaving, because I won’t shut my mouth until they are gone, and I’m not alone.

So public unions, go ahead and show videos of crying babies, and burning buildings and hope nobody looks too closely at the scam you and your unions have been running, which every single one of you know you are guilty of. Because the facts don’t lie, even though you wish they did. You have been cheating the taxpayer by 43.4% and you owe that back to each and every private sector worker sooner or later. Nobody in their right mind would vote to increase their own taxes now that they know you have been screwing them over in dramatic ways and hiding the crime behind their children, their sick, and the victims of crime. Such a thing is disgraceful, and not worth the money we pay you, even if it was equal with the private sector, which it isn’t.

For the answer to everything as to why labor unions fail, check out this link:
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/why-public-labor-unions-fail-the-science-of-stagnation/

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

The American Skeleton Key: A review of “THE DAY OF RAGE.”

The Day of Rage that was so aggressively talked about turned out the way I thought it would. Watching the “call to arms” videos such as this one below is an indication of all the same old communist stuff. These young people were simply taught these static patterns of thinking by their teachers in school. Those teachers are the types who look to the grand old “60’s” as their shining moment. None of these people have a clear understanding of what they are doing or why they do it. They were simply taught to think certain things, and they do so without any further inquisition. To understand some of the science behind this foolishness, CLICK ON THIS HOT LINK FOR MORE INFORMATION.

When I look into the face of these young people I see an otherwise blank mind, where their parents did not put a lot of their own recording into the child leaving radical teachers within the public school system to record some haphazard specter from the past in the form of radical, unfounded thoughts planted in the consciousness of America by KGB agents in the 50’s and 60’s. CLICK ON THIS LINK TO LEARN MORE ABOUT “SLEEPER AGENTS.” (YES THEY ARE REAL EVEN IF MTV DIDN’T TELL YOU SO) This leaves people like this kid looking blank and superficial just repeating what he has been told without any real information to counter the assertions.

Lucky for most of America, even though we have all been exposed to these communist philosophies delivered to us through sleeper cells directly from the KGB, most American’s don’t buy into the whole communist mantra, which is why very few people showed up for this “Day of Rage.” It was more like a day for a few sad souls to cry and weep because they lack knowledge.

The KGB wanted to stop the incredible success of the American economy, so they created the rhetoric these sad small-minded people are repeating, “arm our people,” and “tax the rich” and all that other nonsense came directly from Soviet spies to undermine our culture. Sorry, but it’s true. No conspiracy theory. It’s well documented. It’s just hard for people to come to grips with the fact that their beliefs are not rooted in any firmer ground than a glass of water, so they chose to deny those facts at their own peril. The cost of that denial has delivered us to our current state as a nation, as a weakened superpower that has lost its identity.

You see, and I’m talking to all the wanna-be hippies, Zen lovers, peace protesters, pin-heads, you know…………communists loving malcontents, your thoughts are wrong. The premise of your entire existence is incorrect and not of your own making. You are simply a ghost from the “Cold War” and the beliefs you have are part of a strategy of foreign enemies to cripple the United States Economy. That’s why the KGB wished you to target corporations and “the rich,” because those are the foundations of the American machine which no nation on Earth could compete against, so they attacked the fuel of that machine, the labor force through unions, and the young people who would take over those jobs from their parents, by infecting their education.

But America is a deeper culture with a much more intact system of beliefs that are luckily innate due to the fact that there are such a variety of ideas available to our population. So the communist theories have confused our population, but have not destroyed it. I’ve spoke a lot about the book Atlas Shrugged, because it is uniquely American. If Shakespeare is the giant of English literature, or Leo Tolstoy is the same for Russia, then Ayn Rand is that for America. Mark Twain and a long list of many others have also made their mark in American literature as well, but it was Rand who I believe truly captured the essence of what being an American truly was in her epic book called Atlas Shrugged.

A number of years ago I scurried the planet looking for a book called The Skeleton Key to Finnegan’s Wake, by Joseph Campbell, for I had been trying to decipher the book Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce for years, and since this was the pre-days of Amazon.com, I had no way to get the Skeleton Key, so I never found it in a used book store or even a yard sale. It had become a book lost to time. So I worked out my issues with that very elusive book Finnegan’s Wake on my own, and then moved on to my next literary pursuit. (Someday I’ll return back to that project now that getting such books is easier than ever) I enjoyed Finnegan’s Wake to such an extent that I named my lead character in my own book The Symposium of Justice after Finnegan’s Wake. (to learn more about Finnegan’s Wake check out this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnegans_Wake )

It is in that context that I say that Atlas Shrugged is one of the greatest novels on planet Earth from any time period. The reason is that it contains an elusive power to understand the structure behind why America works as a concept. It may not be the greatest work by way of command of the English language the way James Joyce is considered, but it is the power of the characters in the Ayn Rand classic which has captured the true essence of what freedom and the role of government should be in a human culture, and it properly identifies what the balance should be. It is the most important literary work in the history of mankind.

Over the last couple of years, as we have learned together of the types of protestors shown at the start of this article, I have also learned that many people are giving the book Atlas Shrugged to their friends and family as presents, giving this very important book renewed life, and serving as a kind of real Skeleton Key to the human race. In fact, when I first read Atlas Shrugged I proclaimed to my wife, “I have found the Skeleton Key!”

“I thought you were reading Ayn Rand, not James Joyce today.”

“I am, but it’s all the same, in fact it’s more important.” The Finnegan’s Wake Skeleton Key was just to translate a dreamy work of fiction. The Ayn Rand Skeleton Key called Atlas Shrugged was that skeleton key which would show all the lost souls of our spy impoverished nation still reeling from that terrible Cold War of the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s ideas given to us through that spy network underground. This Skeleton Key would show people the way back to America, back before even the World Wars, before the terror of Woodrow Wilson, even the divided state of the nation after the Civil War. Ayn Rand had put her finger on it; she had captured that American essence clearly, definitively and written a Skeleton Key for America to rediscover itself.

Last spring the first of three films was released trying to capture the magic of that grand book in a movie to share with the masses. I am proud to have played a small part in bringing that film to Cincinnati, so I am even prouder to see that the film is about to be released on DVD just prior to this election in November. This film gives people who are not the “literary” type an opportunity to be exposed to Atlas Shrugged for the first time from their television screens, and is truly the launch of a new day in America. For the first time in America’s 200 year history, our people are beginning to dust themselves off, and to look inward at what we are all really about, and what our world-wide role is to be.

While old hippie, academic, pot smoking, malcontents cleave to the “past,” “their past,” a past given to them by KGB spies of which they believe wholly in, that group of people of which Barack Obama is a part, who ironically are characters in Atlas Shrugged and are directly responsible for the unintended consequences of their own ignorance, which brings about the collapse of civilization in the book, the rest of us are looking to a light at the end of the tunnel to the insight given to us in the literary work of Atlas Shrugged. And it gives me great pleasure, more pleasure than the brilliant sunrise peaking above the tree line of color changing vegetation and sharp morning chill that whispers autumn down the goose-bumps of our spines, to hear all these people declare that they are indeed, “JOHN GALT.”

John Galt is that life redeemer, that inventor, that dormant energy of the American consciousness who resided high away from the looters of existence only to emerge when the last of the looters had run the world into the ground. John Galt is the one who will emerge forth from the wreckage and return the world to restoration properly, and for the first time without “looters” being a part of the process. When many people declare that they are John Galt, they are saying that they are ready to emerge and take the reins of America into their hands and out of the hands of the “looters” to bring about that much-needed American Renaissance, which is about to unleash itself upon the American scene in a way that the world has never seen. That renaissance is made possible now because more than enough Americans are becoming aware that the Skeleton Key to their lives are not in some government building, or in any politician, but was, and has always been within them all along. And they are beginning to overcome the shackles which bind them, which were placed there by the modern progressive, which is but a mask behind the sinister presence of life killing communism.

It is a new day in America. People are waking up. They are reading and watching new information to replace the stale, empty mentality of the protestors at the “Day of Rage.” This is why there weren’t more people there, because American’s know better. They are looking for the truth, and lucky for them, the truth is easy to find. All one needs to do is have the courage to use the Skeleton Key to unlock all the possibilities that are available to those with courage to step into that new world and begin again using the book Atlas Shrugged as a blueprint.

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

Graveyards and Government: Why do we need more taxes? Ask The Brakeman!

When I hear the President discuss the details of his Jobs Bill, the same question comes to my mind as it does when a local school or a city discusses their budget demands for raising taxes, and that is, why does the government assume that every job created in government deserves to be funded, and that the funding of that job dictates higher taxes?  Just because some politician in Washington, or some board of education member either at the state level or local level makes a decision and creates a job, the merit of that job never gets questioned……….why?

Why is it our obligation as a tax paying base to subsidize bad decisions made by politicians who have long since left office, leaving in their wake a turbulent chaos of bureaucracy, so that their puny minds could relish in the creation of a job, when in fact the merit of those jobs add little to the overall society? It would seem that politicians like Obama are so emotionally attached to certain jobs like teachers, police, firefighters, BMV workers, administrators and the like that they never measure the productivity of those positions against the taxes it takes to maintain them, and that is a catastrophic error.

If the United States is not number one in the profession of teaching, then why would we spend so much money to maintain that mediocre status. Or why would we spend more money, when other countries which exceed our education statistics, do more with less money spent per pupil? How many firefighters does it take to run a community given that there aren’t exactly fires and emergencies every single day, could much of that staffing be done equally well with a volunteer staff instead of an army of full-time employees, the same with police? What are the measurements as to how many you need to keep criminals in check? Who is asking those questions…………nobody? How many workers does it take to run a Bureau of Motor Vehicles? Couldn’t some of the traffic regulation be reduced to help with staffing of these bureau positions?

The trouble with government is every time someone like Obama wants to make a name for himself, and history has produced millions of those types, they “create” a job and expand government just a little bit more. And the cost of that expansion is what drives our taxes higher and higher in order to maintain the growth. This is why politicians are in such a panic over the sudden desire from the public, of which I am a proud part, to reduce government, because those expansions are part of a politicians “legacy.” To a politician removing a government program is similar to taking away their tombstone once they’ve been laid to rest in a cemetery.

My family explored a cemetery hidden away in the hills of Eastern Ohio a few years ago which was supposedly haunted. As we sat in the dark with cameras and other recording equipment waiting for a ghost to come up out of the ground and dance with the evening mist which engulfed us, I looked at the tombstones laying all about, mostly eroded away beyond recognition. The cemetery itself was about 150 years old and the town which housed the residents had long ago disappeared. This cemetery no longer had relatives who came to visit. These people were simply forgotten by a town that no longer existed. (TO SEE SPECIFICS ON THIS TYPE OF STORY SEE MY ARTICLE ON THE GHOST TOWN KERR CITY) CLICK THE LINK:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/the-ghost-town-of-kerr-city-a-metaphor-for-planet-earth/

To the people of a ghost town, all the activity of the town seemed so important while the town lived. My daughter and I looked at the tombstone of “The Brakeman” in the misty, haunted night where civilization wasn’t even remotely connected. The night air called out no hints of mankind’s existence from this place, as we waited for the ghost of The Brakeman to walk the cemetery at night, as legend said he does occasionally.

The Brakeman worked the railroad of the nearby town and had an affair with the wife of his card playing friend who was in charge of all the freight which left the town. When the friend found out about what the brakeman had done with his wife, he challenged his friend to a card game where he got The Brakeman drunk to the point of passing out. At that point the estranged husband laid his friend “The Brakeman” across the railroad tracks to be killed by the passing train, which happened within the hour, decapitating completely The Brakeman. Now legend has it that the ghost of the headless Brakeman roams the cemetery at night, and that’s what we wanted to see for ourselves in spite of all the reports from people who did exactly what we were doing, but suffered from being driven insane by curses that the angry Brakeman casts upon anyone who disturbs his grave. That’s the story anyway.

Strange things did happen that night, but not the expected “strange stuff.” But as we sat there waiting I thought about how important sleeping with that man’s wife had been to The Brakeman. How important all their jobs had been to the people of the town, even how important the man’s marriage to the cheating wife had seemed to the killer. Now here we were 150 years later waiting for a ghost to appear from that time and show us some hint to a mystery which occurred so long ago. And all the things that seemed so important to the people of this graveyard back when they lived were no longer even relevant to the order of the universe. The people were all decayed away and forgotten. Even the tombstones proving their existence was nearly gone. In another hundred years nobody would even know this graveyard ever existed.

This is the secret behind government expansion, and what is truly behind the words of politicians like Obama. Government programs and created jobs are the “tombstones” of the politician. They hope that when they are long gone, dead to the world that society will remember that they were good people once, and that their legacy will live on in some way. Social Security is the tombstone of FDR. Medicare is the tombstone of LBJ. I am 100% convinced that when those presidents signed those government programs into law that they thought to themselves, “people will remember me when I’m gone. These programs will outlast a tombstone.”

That is what is behind almost every government program created. It’s behind nearly every law created, every building built, every bridge that spans a river; it is in the infantile mind of the spiritually cumbersome which seeks some measure of immortality in the form of something that will carry their memory beyond the tombstones of a cemetery. And this is the mentality behind the President’s Jobs Bill, and the anger of many who think like him that people would “dare” to reduce the size of government by eliminating government programs, or even entire branches of it, because to them, this would be equivalent to desecrating the grave of the dead, for the impact, is the same. The fear is to be forgotten so nobody ever knew they lived. People like Obama understand this at a primal level and will protect those who came before him in hopes that someday someone will protect his tombstones in the form of created legislation. Isn’t that what Obama Care is after all, a memorial to Obama for all eternity?

When I was a very small kid, I actually took a tombstone from a graveyard and hid it in the basement of our house. I wanted to study it. My mother was aghast and demanded I put it back where I found it, which was an old cemetery I had found deep in the woods near our house. She told me the ghost of that man would track me down all my life, that God would be angry with me for desecrating the grave of this poor man. I was confused by her anger so I drug that tombstone the 2 miles back to the graveyard and put it back the best I could, wondering why my mother was so upset about it. I found out later that she had done the same thing when she was a little girl and her parents, my grandparents had put the fear of God into her, and she never did such a thing again. I asked her if she actually believed the Earth would swallow her up and she’d be damned to hell for all eternity if she took a tombstone, a simple rock with writing on it that the process of natural erosion would destroy within a few hundred years anyway. Why did human beings think such things are actually sacred? Well, the only answer she had was that it was wrong to do such a thing. And the rationality is just as simple when speaking about reducing a government program, or a law. All those things are just memorials to the deceased when taken down to their most elementary function.

I’ve explored graveyards all over America since then and seen and done things that many would consider sacrilegious to the religions of the Earth. I have done these things with the view toward science, not just belief, and this lends itself to the proper perspective in understanding the nature of a problem. And this is the case of government. It grows and expands not out of necessity, but out of fear……..fear of the lives that make up that government growing old and dying off to be forgotten by the world. This is the fundamental error behind many of the human beings who roam this Earth. They are living their deaths by planning for it their entire lives, wondering how they will be remembered instead of living the life that is before them one day at a time and when the time comes to leave this world of the living honorably to join with the greater mysteries of existence, most of mankind clambers with the fingers of both hands dug deep into roots of the living and while they hope that there is an afterlife, they don’t truly believe it. So they seek to be remembered for “something.” And this is the catastrophe of politics. It allows the small-minded to use tax money to build memorials in their honor, and that is not the role of government. And it is not the responsibility of the tax payer to make people who view themselves inwardly as “worthless” to project an outward appearance of “worth” long after death robs them of life and confines their Earthly bodies to a cold, decaying grave.

What I learned in my many trips to the graveyards of the world is that many people are dead long before they ever come to these places, and memorials are the most common form of hiding that fact from themselves. But deep inside, we all know the motives, including people like Obama. His ghost already haunts him, and he is doing what politicians all do, he spends money, he runs for office, and he runs, runs, and runs hoping he can outpace his own ghost, because when the ghost finally catches up with him, he will face a crises that no law or memorial can hide him from. On that day, he will be wrecked with that grim reality that his life was no more important than anyone else’s, and that when he dies, he will be forgotten just as everyone is because within a few millenniums all the laws of politics will be gone forever and the Earth will have recycled the human race many times over and the world will be plagued with the ghosts of those who just never understood what happened, like The Brakeman who just wanted to have sex with his friend’s wife in a town in Eastern Ohio in a moment of passion. Death came so quick that the man never knew what hit him and he still roams around sadly looking for a town, for a people, for a world he knew but is now erased from the world except for a few eroded tombstones.

Every politician ever known or yet created will suffer the same fate as The Brakeman, and no amount of money, of government program can protect them from the fact that they are living a death and their ghost will soon come to claim their bodies erasing their footprint from the mind of mankind forever.

So knowing all that, why should the rest of us pay for memorials to those weak-minded fools?

For the answer to everything as to why labor unions fail, check out this link:
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/why-public-labor-unions-fail-the-science-of-stagnation/

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