Tag: tax payers

The Underwear Gnomes of Lakota Schools: Why do they have a COO

When it comes to waste, we are seeing a lot of that these days, and as we do, remember that public schools are nothing but free babysitting services for busy parents, paid for by taxpayers to support radical labor union structures that are politically dangerous to any healthy society. So there is a cost to that free babysitting service.  Sure, both parents might work to buy things that might impress their neighbors, who are doing the same to try to impress them. In the end, everyone ends up miserable, and the next generation of kids gets all messed up in the process.  And while all that is going on, a bunch of really dumb people with access to over a quarter of a billion dollar budgets fumble around like the three stooges, making mistakes with every step, and try to cover it all up at school board meetings as if they are masters of the universe.  And that is the real problem with the leaked discussions about Chris Passarge, the Chief Operations Officer at Lakota schools, and some money that mysteriously disappeared due to his alleged mismanagement of $64,000.  I have heard several people tell me this story, which the media hasn’t reported on, and likely won’t, as it is under investigation at the large, northern Cincinnati public school.  And my first reaction to it was, why does Lakota Schools have a COO?  Their entire business model is the Underwear Gnome endeavor from the popular cartoon South Park.  They collect money from taxpayers; they throw it into a big basket.  Then the labor union pays itself enormous amounts of money and goes on summer-long vacations.  And when it’s all gone, they ask for more.  Why is there a need for a COO?  And while the people were telling me this story, I kept thinking that $64K is a lot of money to you or me.  But in proportion to these public school budgets, like Lakota’s, it’s a slight drop in a vast ocean, and many administrators take advantage of the system, siphoning money off the top.  We receive reports frequently from people who are, or were, married to these individuals, and numerous free vacations often result from those positions.  It’s not too hard to figure out where that money went.

I have a long-standing interest in this topic. Years ago, I was one of the key individuals featured in an I-Team Report for Channel 9.  They used to hear me on WLW radio all the time talking about these issues, and they conducted a thorough investigation into one of my pet peeves: the issue of whether school superintendents were equal to private sector CEOs, which I thought was laughable.  John Kasich was the governor of Ohio at the time, and we did a whole segment with the I-Team on how most of Ohio’s biggest schools had superintendents who were being paid significantly more than the governor of Ohio, and for what?  I knew a lot then and know a lot more now. Many CEOs and COOs, as well as other types of leadership designations from the private sector, were doing things that were a lot more valuable as to those in public schools.  I had done all this well before Trump was in office, and I went through all the things he did now, which I had already experienced back in 2010 through 2012. Over time, I learned who I could trust at these news organizations and who I couldn’t.  Eventually, I created my own media because there were so many hooks into the public schools that depended on easy money, making it difficult to trust anyone. As a result, I stepped away from doing so much radio and television, as my blog proved to be much more effective. 

But this recent Lakota story regarding Chris Passarge being under investigation wasn’t surprising at all.  It was outrageous to this newer generation of parents telling me about it because this is all new to them.  I’ve observed this over a long period, and what I find most shocking is that these individuals continue to give themselves titles like CEO, COO, and CFO.  All these public schools are just playing house and pretending to be kids, living in a grown-up world.  They are playing with plastic food and pretending to work fake checkout lines in their parents’ basement.  There is no effective management of public schools, and all the money taken from taxpayers is wasted on unnecessary expenses.  It’s a ridiculous scam that people are too busy to pay attention to, but that’s all the public education experience is, and I can say that from years of experience.  This story with the Lakota COO is no different than the South Park story of the Underwear Gnomes, where little people would break into people’s houses to steal their underwear in the middle of the night.  The South Park kids wanted to find out why the Gnomes were doing this, so they followed them one night to a tree deep in the woods and caught the little creatures red-handed.  It was at that point that the Gnomes explained their business model, which is essentially the same as what Lakota schools provides at school board meetings when they try to explain a budget of over $250 million. 

The Gnomes’ business model was to steal underwear.  Their step two was a mystery to them.  They had collected piles of underwear, but it was still stacked in the tree waiting for something to happen that would make them a lot of money.  However, they had step three all worked out; their goal was to make a profit.  Everything was great; they were happy stealing underwear and storing it in their tree.  And they knew they wanted to make a lot of money.  However, they had no idea how to complete the middle part, specifically the step 2 portion of their business plan.  And that is precisely what Lakota school administrators are like.  It’s not a surprise at all that Chris Passarge could lose such a large amount of money.  What is most surprising to me is that they refer to him as a COO.  He’s just a tax looter stealing money from the public and distributing it to a bunch of government employees who want an easy living, grooming children into liberal politics.  And if a free vacation to some Bahamas cruise comes out of it, with a cover story of being an “education conference” is where that $64K went, it would not at all be surprising.  And the media doesn’t cover the story because they have kids and drop them off at these schools while they run around the city covering every cat that gets stuck in a tree, so they can buy a new car and impress some nosy neighbor, who is equally worthless.  But they want to think that Chris Passarge knows what he’s doing.  But he doesn’t.  None of them do, that’s why they work in government schools, they are all Underwear Gnomes pretending to be enterprising public servants.  But what they are, are small-minded pretenders playing house with taxpayer money, and hoping that nobody notices that they have no plan, but to steal money, put it into a bank account, and then give it to unionized employees for work nowhere near good enough.  And they call that public education.  However, the Underwear Gnomes refer to it as making a “profit.” 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Peeling the Old Potatos in the Basement: Kristi Ertel presents 18 months of crises to the West Chester Tea Party

You could peel the skin right off some of those old potatoes as Kristi Ertel gave quite a presentation to the West Chester Tea Party regarding the last 18 months of Lakota schools. Kristi has been considering joining Darbi Boddy on the controversial school board, especially after learning of the bad behavior that its employees have performed. Darbi has done a great job after her first year, and it has become grossly obvious that she needs help, and Kristi is considering taking one of the two seats on the school board that are coming up this fall. And this kind of thing isn’t just happening at Lakota schools in Ohio. It’s a national trend where moms have learned what has happened in these public schools for decades. They are getting elected onto school boards to help do something about the gross level of liberalism and Democrat policies that have infected them to the point where we now have entire generations lost to the horrible things they have been taught. And to make matters worse for many of these public school advocates drenched in liberal politics, many of these young moms joining these school boards are the kind of women that other women tend to be very jealous of. And in Lakota, as we have been exploring the root cause of the radical anger that has been thrown in the direction of Kristi, Darbi, and someone who works a lot in the background, Vanessa Wells, they are women who don’t look like leftover potatoes laying in the basement too long on one side. 

Public education issues have become a refuge for bad parenting and people looking for government solutions to all their insecurities, and with very high-quality people like Kristi Ertel critiquing the school system in front of the Tea Party, which has a lot of influential people who serve as members, it was too much for them, and they tried to lash out. When the liberals found out Kristi was going to do a presentation, they attended and retreated to many of the methods of intimidation that have given public schools a bad name in the first place. After the meeting, some of them criticized Kristi and the West Chester Tea Party in general, which tried to justify them all as radical right-wingers who threatened society. This particular group politically is to the left of Karl Marx, called Stand for Lakota. But it sounded petty and lost as many of those arguments were just lost sentiments from the past decades. I’ve been saying how detrimental these public schools have been to children’s minds for a very long time.  But after Covid and many of these young moms had to pull their children out of school over mask mandates or CDC policy rules for social distancing, they learned the harsh truth about public education, and now they are on a crusade to provide a solution. I know Kristi Ertel quite well; I don’t think she has decided to run for school board yet. And her interest comes primarily from seeing how badly the radical union elements have treated Darbi Boddy and Vanessa Wells over the last couple of years. And she has a problem with the level of evil represented by the Lakota schools. We all pay into this school with our property tax money, and it’s become reprehensible to know that we are supporting such a political machine of liberalism that intends to teach children to be Democrats, and radical ones at that. 

Coming to the West Chester Tea Party meeting was a kid named Landon Meador, who also appears to want to run for the school board, and he’s trying his best to mimic me for the cause. He’s been utilizing some of my methods to attempt to dethrone Darbi Boddy because they have tried everything else to force her to resign to absolutely no effect. It was interesting that Lynda O’Conner came to the meeting with a well known radical leftist on the school board, Kelly Casper. So these characters are really worried about Kristi joining Darbi on the Lakota school board and gaining conservative strength, which has been a refuge for liberal activism funded by taxpayer dollars. The poor kid Landon has picked a fight with Vanessa Wells that he has bit off too much. He will turn out like many of them that I’ve seen over the years who get pulled into these fights only to run out of gas when he learns just how weak the liberal politics he learned in school really is when matched up with reality. Right now, school board members who want to see transexual bathrooms, rainbows in the halls as propaganda of the religion of the Cult of Ishtar ruining the minds of children everywhere, and the Democrat policies of the teacher’s union like Kelly Casper and Julie Shaffer are trying to find some way to push back, so they are trying to copy what has worked for me over the years. They see this organized effort against their social incursions, and they have managed to cheerlead this Landon Meador into essentially a buzzsaw. There have been so many suckers over the years that they have tried to push into social activism to protect their refuge within public schools, and they have all failed, as will this one. They can’t win a policy debate, so all they ever have is to intimidate and harass their opponents. Only with this current set of moms, like Darbi, Kristi, and Vanessa, that kind of thing will only dig them in deeper, which then causes more people to join their conservative positions. Because Lakota schools are in a very conservative area, and most people sympathize with the politics of Kristi Ertel. 

The argument that Landon Meador, Stand for Lakota, the members of the current school board, and the radical teacher’s union all of them are fighting for something that actually died years ago and was recently revealed in that condition during the Covid lockdowns, and it will never return to its previous position. Going all the way back to a radio debate that I had with one of those current school board members, Julie Shaffer, that view of the world that she has, which is consistent with many who work in and around public education, was more of a refuge for a liberal view of the world than it was for the benefit of children, and that scam has been now revealed to a larger audience, which Kristi Ertel is now a part of. And what it essentially all comes down to is the protection that public education has given Democrat-leaning people from the harsh realities of life, hidden beyond massive spending stolen from the taxpayers to shield them from public opinion as they hid all their insecurities behind the innocence of children. And the truth is that every year from now on, more Kristi Ertel types will join these public education debates. These young women are the new leaders in our community, and it is terrifying to the standard model of public education for lots of justifiable reasons. Especially considering the potato in the basement metaphor. But the message of the future will be much different than the one in the past that young people like Landon Meador are trying to dust off. That old message failed for a reason, and it’s never coming back, especially when people get tired of being bullied and decide that for morality, justice, and concern for their community and its children, they choose to fight back.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business