Tag: Taxes

Hamilton City Schools is Just the First: Years of collective bargaining agreements bankrupted public education

The announcement by Hamilton City Schools Superintendent Andrea Blevins in mid-January 2026 marked a significant moment in the ongoing fiscal challenges facing public education in Ohio. The district, serving the city of Hamilton in Butler County, unveiled a plan to eliminate approximately 153 positions—representing about 12% of its workforce—as part of a broader strategy to address a projected $10 million structural deficit for the 2026–2027 school year.<sup>1</sup> This included closing buildings such as Fairwood Elementary, consolidating the freshman campus into the high school, outsourcing preschool and nursing services, and implementing reductions across administrative, teaching, clerical, food service, custodial, and other roles.<sup>2</sup> While the initial figure of 153 positions was highlighted in media reports, district officials noted that through natural attrition and retirements, the actual number of forced separations could drop to around 101 or even fewer, with changes set to take effect starting in August 2026 to allow adequate notice.<sup>3</sup>

The shortfall stems from multiple converging factors: reduced state foundation funding under Ohio’s revised allocation formulas, recent changes in property tax laws that limit revenue growth, and declining student enrollment, reflecting broader demographic shifts in industrial communities like Hamilton.<sup>4</sup> These issues are not isolated; they illustrate a national and state-level reckoning with the sustainability of traditional public school funding models that have long relied on escalating property tax levies and generous state aid. In Hamilton’s case, the district’s current-year deficit was already around $5 million, with projections escalating without intervention, prompting proactive measures to avoid deeper program cuts or emergency borrowing.<sup>5</sup>

This development aligns with longstanding critiques of public education’s dependency on perpetual tax increases and union-driven collective bargaining agreements that prioritize salary scales, legacy costs, and benefits over merit-based compensation or operational efficiency. For decades, many Ohio school districts have assumed voters would approve levies to cover rising costs, including teacher salaries that often exceed private-sector equivalents for comparable education levels and workloads.<sup>6</sup> In Hamilton, as in neighboring districts, the era of unchecked levy approvals has ended amid economic pressures: inflation, housing affordability challenges, and taxpayer fatigue from repeated requests for additional funds. Property taxes, which fund a substantial portion of local school budgets in Ohio, have become particularly burdensome in areas with stagnant or declining industrial bases, where businesses relocate to avoid high taxation, leaving residential properties to shoulder more of the load.<sup>7</sup>

Nearby Lakota Local Schools in Butler County provide a parallel example. In 2025, voters rejected a $506 million bond issue and a permanent improvement levy tied to a district-wide facilities redesign, signaling resistance to additional tax burdens, even for infrastructure needs.<sup>8</sup> Lakota’s prior operating levies had sustained operations without new asks since 2013, but the failed 2025 measure highlighted growing skepticism toward large-scale spending proposals. This rejection occurred amid broader discussions of school choice and funding equity, where money follows students rather than zip codes, potentially forcing districts to compete on quality and cost.<sup>9</sup>

The broader Ohio context points to a deliberate policy shift toward tax relief. Political momentum, amplified by figures associated with the Trump administration and candidates like Vivek Ramaswamy in his 2026 gubernatorial bid, emphasizes reducing or eliminating state income taxes while pursuing significant rollbacks in property taxes—the “largest in Ohio’s history,” as Ramaswamy has proposed.<sup>10</sup> Ramaswamy’s platform includes making Ohio a zero-income-tax state to attract residents and businesses, coupled with aggressive property tax reductions to ease homeowner burdens and stimulate economic growth.<sup>11</sup> These ideas build on existing reforms that have lowered Ohio’s top personal income tax rate over the past decade and eliminated certain business taxes, though often at the expense of state aid to local services like schools.<sup>12</sup> Federal-level discussions under the Trump administration, including revenue from tariffs and potential clawbacks of federal taxes, further support a trajectory of lighter local tax loads over the coming decades.<sup>13</sup>

Critics of traditional public education funding argue that overreliance on property taxes has distorted community development. High levies deter business investment, contribute to population outflows, and exacerbate housing affordability issues, particularly for young families entering the market.<sup>14</sup> In declining industrial cities like Hamilton, where companies have long since departed, the tax base weakens further, creating a vicious cycle: fewer resources lead to service reductions, which accelerate out-migration. The push for enterprise zones and economic revitalization in such areas requires restraint on taxation to attract private capital, rather than burdening new opportunities with endless school funding demands.<sup>15</sup>

At the heart of these fiscal realities lies a deeper philosophical debate about the value and efficiency of public education. Collective bargaining has secured escalating wages, often tied to advanced degrees rather than performance, resulting in average teacher salaries well above those in many private-sector roles, despite generous vacation time, summers off, and job security.<sup>16</sup> Historical data shows Ohio teacher pay rising from averages around $63,000–$65,000 in the early 2010s to higher figures today, adjusted for inflation but still outpacing many comparable professions.<sup>17</sup> Proponents of reform contend that merit-based systems, competition from charters and private options, and student-centered funding (where per-pupil allocations follow the child) would incentivize excellence and cost control. Without zip-code-based monopolies, schools must attract families through superior results, not guaranteed enrollment.<sup>18</sup>

Additional pressures include the perceived ideological drift in curricula, where progressive influences have sometimes prioritized social agendas over core academic rigor, contributing to generations of students entering adulthood with skill gaps, delayed independence, and reliance on parental support.<sup>19</sup> This undermines the future tax base, as young adults struggle to form households, start families, and contribute economically. The traditional model—free transportation, extended daycare-like hours, and heavy administrative overhead—has been criticized as unsustainable, as parents increasingly drive their children to school or seek alternatives.<sup>20</sup>

The Hamilton announcement serves as an early indicator of inevitable restructuring across Ohio and beyond. Districts facing similar shortfalls will need to prioritize efficiency, reduce legacy costs, and adapt to competitive models. Charter schools, homeschooling, and voucher programs will gain traction as families demand better value. While painful in the short term—job losses, building consolidations, and service adjustments—the transition promises a more accountable, innovative education landscape aligned with economic realities and taxpayer priorities.<sup>21</sup>

This shift reflects a broader cultural move toward meritocracy, fiscal responsibility, and reduced government dependency. Public schools will survive, but in leaner, more responsive forms, focused on delivering robust education rather than serving as employment vehicles or ideological platforms. The warnings issued over the years about unsustainable models have materialized; adaptation, not denial, offers the path forward.<sup>22</sup> But as all these things are happening, don’t say I didn’t warn everyone.  They chose to ignore the inevitable.  The public school product costs too much.  Does too little.  And has turned out to be destructive to society, not beneficial.  So lots of changes are coming, because they have to. 

Bibliography

•  Local 12 (WKRC), “Tri-State school district to cut 153 positions, close school amid $9.6M budget shortfall,” January 22, 2026.

•  FOX19, “Hamilton City Schools announces $9.6M in budget cuts, job losses,” January 20, 2026.

•  WCPO, “Hamilton Schools announce cuts, including building closures,” January 2026.

•  Journal-News, “Hamilton Schools announce cuts, including building closures,” January 16, 2026.

•  WVXU, “Voters reject $506M Lakota Schools levy proposal,” November 4, 2025.

•  Forbes, “Vivek Ramaswamy Wants To Make Ohio The Ninth No-Income-Tax State,” March 13, 2025 (updated context 2026).

•  Cincinnati Enquirer, “Vivek Ramaswamy running for Ohio governor. Wants to end income, property taxes,” February 24, 2025.

•  Policy Matters Ohio, reports on state tax shifts and education funding, 2024–2026.

•  Tax Foundation, Ohio tax data and rankings, updated 2026.

Footnotes

1.  FOX19, “Hamilton City Schools announces $9.6M in budget cuts, job losses,” January 20, 2026.

2.  Local 12 (WKRC), “Tri-State school district to cut 153 positions,” January 22, 2026.

3.  Journal-News, “Hamilton Schools announce cuts,” January 16, 2026.

4.  Citizen Portal AI summary of Blevins’ presentation, January 16, 2026.

5.  WCPO coverage of Hamilton budget announcement, January 2026.

6.  Historical analyses from the Ohio Department of Education reports on teacher compensation trends.

7.  Tax Foundation data on Ohio property tax burdens relative to income.

8.  WVXU, “Voters reject $506M Lakota Schools levy proposal,” November 4, 2025.

9.  Lakota Local Schools’ official statements on 2025 ballot rejection.

10.  Vivek Ramaswamy campaign announcements, January 2026 (e.g., Facebook video on zero income tax and property tax rollback).

11.  Forbes article on Ramaswamy’s gubernatorial platform, with 2026 updates.

12.  Policy Matters Ohio, “The Great Ohio Tax Shift,” 2024–2025 analyses.

13.  Broader Trump administration economic policy discussions, 2025–2026.

14.  Economic studies on tax competition and business relocation in Midwest states.

15.  Hamilton enterprise zone revitalization efforts referenced in local economic development plans.

16.  Ohio teacher salary data from the National Education Association and state reports.

17.  Inflation-adjusted comparisons from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Ohio data.

18.  School choice advocacy from organizations like EdChoice and Ohio-specific voucher expansions.

19.  Critiques in education policy literature on curriculum content and outcomes.

20.  Parental transportation trends from the U.S. Department of Transportation and local surveys.

21.  Projections from the Ohio Legislative Service Commission on education funding reforms.

22.  Long-term forecasts in state five-year financial reports for districts like Hamilton and Lakota.

Rich Hoffman

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

Dirty Tricks by the Pro Levy People at Lakota Schools: Trying to sneak their issue under the door at the last minute

Just a few observations about the upcoming Lakota school levy, the biggest and most ridiculous in the state of Ohio, where they essentially want to tear down a bunch of schools and rebuild all new schools, to make the classrooms smaller and drive up payroll by hiring more teachers to teach the same number of students.  It’s expensive and stupid, but what do we expect from these people?  But there is a lot more to notice than just how flat-footed their campaign is.  We always talk about how liberal they are who run and manage the school, and as they are pushing for their levy passage, they look to have taken their entire campaign out of the Kamala Harris playbook.  They have waited until essentially two weeks before the election to put out their signs, and what they have put out is a minimal number.  I’ve been all over the district and was looking for more signs in places more friendly to their position, but they are pretty flat, and where they do have signs, they have tried to appear bigger and more of a mainstream position.  Especially in places where Mark Welch has yard signs, they have been attempting to put the limited amount of signs that they do have next to him to give people the illusion that he supports the Lakota levy, when I know for sure, he does not.  These are not politically savvy people running the Lakota campaign for their massive tax increase, which is fine with me.  I want to see that levy crash and burn more than anybody.  But things have changed a lot over the last ten to twenty years, since I was on the front line of these things, and it’s certainly worth talking about.  Of course, anything can happen in an election; it will all depend on turnout.  But the Lakota people are certainly on their back foot on this one.

The pro tax people are trying to associate with the No More Taxes position of the very popular Mark Welch

It costs a lot of money to run these campaigns, and usually, Lakota schools have plenty of mad moms trying to hide how terrible they are for their kids from the public by supporting the schools that give them a free babysitting service, because they are too lazy to be good parents themselves.  It’s a well-known personality type, the mad and crazy mothers who campaign for tax increases on other people’s property.  And even worse than those neurotic types come their queer eye for a straight guy husbands, who are more interested in doing the dishes, hoping to get laid by their wives’ best friends husbands because they are so progressive themselves, that all traces of manhood have vanished from their cell structure like clowns at an anti-mime rally.  (that’s how you know that I don’t use AI to write my articles, I do everything the old fashioned way)  And watching their campaign this time around, after watching lots of campaigns from the past, it looks like their entire approach to this tax increase is based on that inner firing squad of transgender losers, wife-swapping scandals, and corporate bootlickers too busy to know that their children had their 8th birthday.  They don’t understand the forces against them because they haven’t worked very hard to get to know them, and you can tell by the way they have put out their signs and raised money for the effort.  They are doing what I call the Kamala Harris approach, where they know they have a weak position and their strategy is to surprise everyone at the last minute, before anybody knows what’s really going on.  And where they are present, they are trying to affiliate themselves with well-known politicians, like Mark Welch, who is an obvious frontrunner for the upcoming West Chester trustee race. 

A very weak campaign by the pro tax people

Another thing that I noticed while driving around the district is that there are a lot fewer businesses supporting this levy than there used to be.  The school has always acted like a bunch of mobsters when it came to pushing for business support.  If businesses did not support massive tax increases, those businesses were attacked by that mob of angry moms, and they’d try to inspire a boycott against those businesses.  Lakota schools traditionally has quite a collection agency force that is very aggressive on tax shakedowns, and they have been pretty ruthless.  But things have changed over the years; it’s been a long time since Lakota went for a tax increase because the community has been so hostile toward them.  And the shoe is on the other foot now, for sure.  When the mad moms think they are getting a hook in the water by putting their signs next to Mark Welch, to attempt to trick voters into supporting massive tax increases, hoping to get bleed off votes from low information people, there is an air of desperation looming over the whole effort.  I could tell a lot of stories about the past where the outcome was never obvious.  I have done interviews with some of the big media, a Channel 5 broadcast on prime time television comes to mind, where the pro-Levy people had the streets all lined up with supporters, and they looked like everyone was going to vote for them.  Then they’d put me in a lonely parking lot, trying to make it look like I was on my own and had little support from anybody.  And once the election happened, the silent majority showed up and crushed the visuals in embarrassing ways.  Those were the old days, and these Lakota people are certainly not functioning from that kind of strength. 

I think this says everything about the election of 2025

It costs about $5 per yard sign.  And based on the yard signs, you can tell the strength of the political party because the early investment usually indicates how much community support there is ahead of the election.  On the No More Taxes at Lakota side, the push was to raise about $20K to fight this levy attempt and to be prepared for follow-up attempts after this first one fails.  For Lakota’s side, once the filings get reported, it would not be surprising that their donations are in the six figures, as many schools are these days.  But in Lakota’s case, that money isn’t seen yet, and obviously, they are worried about giving people too much time to learn the facts, so they are doing a last-minute push just like Kamala Harris did, hoping to catch people a little off guard, which doesn’t spell confidence in their position.  They don’t have many signs out really late in the campaign.  The No More Taxes campaign has had its signs out since the last week of September.  So, impressions by the public who didn’t already have a strong opinion on the matter were being made during October.  But early voting has already been going on, so the Lakota effort has been noticeably flat-footed.  And where they hoped to win over people, they are trying to give the illusion that a popular local trustee, Mark Welch, is on their side, which he most certainly isn’t.  But those are the strategies of the desperate, and not very smart.  And a group of people who think that everyone is with them when they are only talking among themselves, with a couple of cats and dogs to greet them at the door.  When it comes to the community as a whole, I think they are in for quite a shock when the reality of the vote totals comes in.  They don’t seem to know just how bad people have come to hate them.  But they will, the election is near.  And for all the normal people out there, those who are not dysfunctional misfits hoping to hide in society through an overly liberal education built on a foundation of DEI hires, make sure to vote NO on the Lakota Levy, and do it in a big way.  These losers need to learn a lesson. 

Rich Hoffman

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

A Warning for Trump: Be careful of the bootlickers and losers

This is the hard part, with the honeymoon essentially over, the Trump administration has to watch that it doesn’t lose its edge.  I’m not particularly worried about it, but it’s something Trump will have to be careful about because when it comes to deal-making, he loves doing it certainly more than the political process.  And we’re talking about falling in love with the people you negotiate with, like China, like Russia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, where people pander to him, massage his ego, and then slip the Shakespearian knife in Trump’s back when they think he’s not looking.  The bad guys in the world have no choice but to appease Trump. That is the case usually with my “gunfighter at the bar with his back-to-the-room” metaphor that I always talk about.  The enemy does not seek to kill valuable people if they think they can use them first, which is perfectly true with Trump and his natural ability to get leverage in just about any situation.  But it is because of this tendency that Bill Gates and Dr. Fauci lied straight to Trump’s face about COVID during the last administration, the Fed practiced Modern Monetary Theory with Larry Fink as their distribution center right under the nose of Trump.  This is the point in the story where the appeasers appease, and the suckers bite on the sweet candy and sicken themselves forever.  And Trump, if he wants to do well in this term and achieve all the things that are possible, has to be cautious about his nature.  “If you can’t beat them, join them,” is what the enemy is saying.  And adding, “then beat them when you have their trust by a last-minute betrayal.”  Trump has to resist falling in love with the bad guys under the pretense of compassion because the villainy they are capable of is far worse than his nature understands.  At heart, he has developed into a great negotiator by understanding how to read a room and its people.  And he generally does like people.  And the only defense that bad people have against such a person is to appeal to his good nature to keep him from destroying them.  And many of them need to be destroyed.

The caution comes from Pam Bondi at the DOJ, the handling of the Epstein files, and the public expectation that people will go to jail.  And James O’Keefe and Laura Loomer have been reporting that there are not so forthcoming reports on other elements, such as video of sexual exploitation of children involved in the Epstein Island personalities.  And when you play in the sandbox that Trump plays in, and Pam Bondi, it is likely that people you know are on that Epstein list, and the pain and betrayal of that can be pretty harsh.  This is the difference between campaigning and doing.  It is easy to talk about something, but not so easy to do it.  Ultimately, I think Trump will follow through on the challenges before him.  However, in trying to deal with people and salvage relationships, especially in the Middle East, sometimes his love of making friends is more than destroying an enemy, and it will be used against him.  We’re dealing with some evil people who must be dealt with harshly.  It’s what people expect and don’t necessarily want to make a deal with bad people, even if it doesn’t strengthen the American position in the world.  And Trump is going to have to fight through that carefully.  The best way to preserve Trump’s legacy is with America First and easy wins on the scoreboard.  We have the midterms coming up soon, and if Trump wants more than just a couple of years of cosmetic cooperation, he needs to put some bad guys in jail.

The judicial problem I thought was very well explained recently by Matt Gaetz on the WarRoom.  To become a judge in America, you have to jump through many hoops, belong to many clubs, and prove yourself to be a good caretaker of the BAR Association, which has shown to be very progressive and radical.  I have often pointed out, especially among older judges, their relationship to Freemasonry as a problem because of their commitment to altruism, which, for fans of Ayn Rand, is a deadly word in a productive society.  We elect Presidents, congresspeople, senators, all kinds of positions, but the hold outs to the MAGA agenda are these legal people who are connected to deep and malicious finance, and they do think they can appease the beast in Trump just long enough to crush him when his back is turned and that’s where we are.  People who survive the barriers to the judicial profession only do so by jumping through hoops of social formation that is truly devastating to the perpetuation of a productive, sovereign country, and that is what Trump is up against.  Appeasing them with kindness and good deals won’t stop the villainy of their nocturnal deeds, and their oaths to the corruptive nature of mass collectivism, through the sacrifice of self, for the benefit of others.  Many judicial types see their role in life as stopping materialists like Trump with everything they have in their very souls.  And there is no way to make friends and bring them to your side.  They have to be destroyed, and if they are on video doing nasty things with little kids on Epstein Island, they need to be torn to shreds in front of the public spectacularly because it’s what people want in our Representative Republic.

Glenn Beck ran the numbers recently through AI on the possible ways the American economy survives.  And let me say that I think most of them are wrong.   I am very optimistic about the future of America and our economy.  But we must listen to caution and do good things with the information.  However, those AI programs don’t have many scenarios where the American dollar will survive an economic collapse in the world by 2030.  And I know that’s where Trump’s heart is.  There is a good chance that the AI programs can’t see yet, because it’s more intuitive than practical, that America will lead the world in a capitalist revolution that will improve things for everyone.  But many bad people will gladly throw themselves in front of that train, and we have to have the guts to run them over.  Because those people have the wrong ideas about existence, there is no way to reform them.  And it’s through that kind of ruthlessness that America survives and thrives. But there will be a lot of casualties, and some of them will be friends.  And it will be painful.  And there is no way to negotiate away the pain.  And not fall in love with the office of the Presidency because the ceremonial routine is filled with appeasers trying to massage Trump’s ego, just long enough to outlast him.  Don’t ever lose your edge because the edge that matters is in the knife they are trying to stick in Trump’s back when they think he’ll turn his back just long enough because it’s the only move they have.  Be recklessly cautious.

Rich Hoffman

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

Elon Musk and a Gold Chainsaw: The destructive force of the D.O.G.E. flood of information is saving humanity

When Elon Musk is on stage at CPAC with Argentina’s wild president Javier Milei waving around a gold chainsaw like a madman, you know the dark curse holding back all of human civilization has been broken.  Never under any condition a year ago would such a bizarre concept be considered even remotely possible.  Yet there it is.  It really happened and they were serious about it.  Of course, the chainsaw was intent on cutting costs as Elon Musk has been leading the charge for cutting government waste spending in a dramatic way, and within a month, has caused a sensation worldwide.  The whole scene was like a screenplay that I would have written under the most fantastic considerations, only to have an audience confirm that everything was just too unbelievable to put into a movie sequence.  Even our wildest fantasies would never lend credibility to such a series of events, which can only mean one thing: that a curse looming over our lives all these years is finally ending.  I’ve been talking about this stuff for dozens of years; the amount of government waste from our progressive tax system and this flood of D.O.G.E. information is terrific, if not timely.  We weren’t going to make it much longer under the previous system, and as a response, now that Elon Musk has been red-pilled into this perspective that he showed off on stage at CPAC, the world will have no choice but to follow.  D.O.G.E is likely the best thing to ever happen to America and it started on day one of the new Trump administration and has been justified by every bad thing that was done to Trump, and anybody who got caught up on the bad side of politics because they wanted to stop the kind of waste that goes with every government project. 

When we talk about floods, we often think of the force of water pressure that carries away all the debris from a river valley and dumps it far away, leaving behind a fresh surface, as all the weak garbage of society has been removed.  Floods, like raging fires, can clean things up, even if their initial implementation is violent and destructive.  And for many people who have been working in government jobs with outrageously good pay and benefits, but doing very little to actually deserve it, this D.O.G.E. process is terrible and destructive.  But for Musk to parade around with a chainsaw and laugh about cutting away all the government waste is a much-needed revenge for every time some loser politician said to us that we had to pay our fair share.  We were supposed to dump all this money into the mouths of a bunch of lazy thieves and pay more of it to feed their worthless souls.  Elon Musk probably is the most burdened taxpayer on earth, paying more than anybody else.  But that’s not why he is doing this; he’s the wealthiest person in the world, can pay all his taxes, and still has more money in a lifetime than anybody could ever spend on themselves.  But there is one thing that money can buy that they don’t talk about in the Bible, regarding threading the needle of goodness.  Money buys personal freedom, and because Musk is a free person, he can express himself as a person broken away from this matrix of government oppression because of his wealth.  Trump, in many ways, is in the same position.  When they tried to destroy him, it was his vast wealth that saved him and put him in place to do what he is now as president, appointing people like Musk to lead D.O.G.E., which is ripping the top off government corruption for the first real-time in history, with dramatic effect. 

There is no way to put this Genie back in the bottle; now that it’s out, it’s here to stay.  The argument about paying more to a worthless, expensive government will never return because of this flood of D.O.G.E information from a Department of Government Efficiency.  Cost cutting is back in our daily dialogue, which seemed to be gone forever just four years ago when the world government proposed endless spending like there was no tomorrow.  The evil that fuels the beast of the kind of government that brought us the COVID lockdowns and trillions of dollars of debt is the one that steals our tax money and uses it for globalists’ garbage.  And that game ended the day that Trump was re-elected and then sworn in on January 20th, 2025.  I remember how immensely angry I was on a cold day in March just 5 years ago when COVID was starting to shut down everything and a friend and I were trying to go to lunch at P.F. Chang’s but couldn’t because they had closed the dining room over Health Department safety concerns.  For people who have seen me mad, I scared even them that day, and I swore to myself that I would punish every last person involved in keeping me from getting my lunch because it was an attack on me and my community and country.  And I wasn’t going to stand for it.  And apparently, I wasn’t the only one.  Five years later, the battle has turned in our favor dramatically, and what happens next will be magnificent and well-deserved.

The video I did for this article is an appropriate metaphor. I was speaking about this topic in a snowstorm next to the flooded Great Miami River, and that’s how these years have felt.  I was in a storm, and a mess needed to be cleaned up.  However, as a result, there was a flood that couldn’t help but carry away all the carnage from that battle.  And with just a month of D.O.G.E. with Elon Musk leading it, and President Trump doing what he has always done best, to use executive leadership to empower many people to do many great things, as he has done in his companies, and was featured on the television show The Apprentice.  All this wouldn’t have been possible without the element of revenge that gave us all more than enough firepower to shoot back at those trying to suppress us.  That day, I stood in front of P.F. Chang’s with my friend, angry at the closed dining room imposed on us by the Dr. Faucis of the world; the revenge tour of today is more than earned.  We don’t need to feel bad for this flood of information converting our government back into something useful, perhaps for the first real-time.  As bad as our enemies have been to us, both foreign and domestic, they showed their wrath.  They didn’t manage to kill us.  And now, it’s time for righteous revenge, which is what is happening now.  And everyone is involved this time, even Elon Musk.  Going back even further, when I was on WLW radio with Darryl Parks on those Saturday shows, we never thought something like Elon Musk running around on a stage at CPAC with a chainsaw would have been remotely possible.  Yet, there it is, and we have much more to look forward to.  It almost makes all our pain and suffering worth it…………almost.

Rich Hoffman

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

Government is Not Our Boss: The lazy way they manage society with low engagment

I’m not the kind of person who doesn’t like jury duty.  I get a lot of notifications wanting me to do it because I vote for everything.  But I don’t ever get picked; nobody wants me once they realize how opinionated and firm I am in my beliefs.  I consider jury duty a privilege, and I always want to do it.  I’d do them every day if I could because I love law and think working on our issues of crime and punishment would be one of the highest benefits of any high society.  But recently, when I received my latest notification, the whole experience instantly turned me off.  Who writes these things, and who do they think they are?  When they notify you of jury duty, they are so negative and assume that you will be a problem that they instantly turn toward authority dictatorship to drive compliance with their summons.  The first line of their notification to me is, “You are commanded to appear and be available to serve.” Who do they think they are?  Deeper into their notification, they say, “Employers are prohibited from discharging or threatening,” and “if a juror fails to attend,” the court may impose a fine.  No wonder the government has so many problems.  They need to learn some hard lessons about engagement because if that is their default mode, which it is, no wonder they don’t get cooperation from people in a free society.  For a person like me who wants to do these things, that kind of language instantly makes me want to go in the opposite direction.  Nobody commands me to do anything.  The government doesn’t supersede my liberties and cannot compel me to be a part of their ill schemes and detriments. 

This is the general problem with the government and the kind of people drawn to work for it.  The power to compel people randomly and without thought to incursions into their personal lives is disrespectful at best.  To assume that people can rearrange their lives under the compulsion of the court is the wrong approach to what should be willing civil service.  People should want to serve on jury duty.  They should not have to be compelled to do so.  And this assumption that the needs of the court are more significant than the needs of an individual is preposterously horrendous.  That basic premise misses the point of all government.  Government serves us, we do not serve the government.  Notifications like that jury duty utterance show that the government does not know its place and never did.  They started wrong and just continued regardless of what sanity said.  The assumption that society is a low-engagement enterprise that must be ushered around like children fearful of their parents is the first problem in a long list that always leads to the failures of mass society. The power of government to compel people to do things they would never want to do on their own.  Using government power to force people against their will out of fear of punishment is the core of all government trouble.  Then, we are supposed to want to pay more compelled taxes toward a government that grows bigger and more powerful with every dollar they steal from us.  This whole arrangement with the governed is a rat’s nest of irony.  It’s lazy and presumptuous and gives the worst in our society, the most insecure, instant ability with the power of government that assumes it has rights over people it does not have.  “You are commanded?”  That is the wrong choice of words; the government works for us, not the other way around.

Many studies have been done over the last several years on engagement and why people engage in activity by choice.  The cell phone revolution is one of those successful exchanges of how choice motivates behavior.  I grew up in a time when nobody had a cell phone.  I have watched them become as common as shoes; nobody would have ever thought so when they were first invented.  What started as a series of released conspiracies about how the government wanted to survey the actions of all people everywhere with a chip embedded in them, during the 1980s and 90s became cell phones that would track everything we do and spy on us by choice.  We take cell phones wherever we go because we enjoy the companionship.  These days, I am never anywhere where I don’t see a cell phone interacting with a person even when real people are present.  People would rather interact with their cell phones, even during dinner conversations.  That is because the cell phone is polite and offers at least some illusions of choice, and people prefer that option over some dictator presentation.  Cell phone companies figured out how to get high engagement out of their customers by giving them freedom of choice over a long period.  Or at least the veil of choice.  If the goal is to track people and spy on their every movement, then cell phone companies figured out how to get mass society to choose for such an arrangement by the illusion of choice.  All successful enterprises work out some mix of choices to inspire people to engage with their offerings.  That is the key to all advertising, so it’s not like human beings don’t understand the art of engagement.

The government, however, is too lazy even to go that far.  Instead, when they want to accomplish something, they must rely on mass collectivism to inspire fear and drive public engagement.  Whether it’s a case of eminent domain or the draft, the government leans on force to drive participation, the fear of what might happen to you if you do not participate.  But for that to work, they must be bigger and more powerful than you to inspire enough fear that you will be compelled to comply for self-preservation.  That is not how civil service should communicate with people about any issue.  It should be a privilege that people want to participate in willingly.  It’s not something they do because they fear penalties.  No wonder so many people want to get out of jury duty.  And those who serve are not the sharpest tacks in the box because they have nothing else going on.  Who wants to be judged by a jury of their peers when their peers are too fearful to fight back against the compulsion of jury duty?  But rather is some brain-dead slug that doesn’t have a complicated enough life to get out of jury duty.  And then, they survive the lawyers and get picked for jury selection by a top-down parental government that doesn’t respect their time or individuality.  And that all lives must stop for the slow speed of the government.  There is a lot wrong with that simple jury notification.  I would choose to be on a jury every day if I could.  But the way the government asks me to do it makes me want to go in the opposite direction.  The government is lazy and relies on force to impose itself on the people it is supposed to serve.  No wonder the government is always so screwed up.  But it’s by choice, not by science.  They could do better if they wanted to.  But because of the government’s power over people, they don’t feel motivated to do so.

Rich Hoffman

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

If you Vote for the Fairfield School Levy, You’re Stupid: What really causes communities to fail

I’ve said it for years, and it’s just as relevant today as it ever was, perhaps more so.  If you vote for a school levy, you’re stupid.  That’s what Darryl Parks and I always said on WLW radio when I was a frequent guest.  Many of our old interviews are still on my YouTube site, where we talked about why in a thousand different ways.  When he was the program director for Clear Channel Radio, we spent many hours discussing what had come true in public education today, well before anybody else realized it, and nobody can’t say that they weren’t told.  It was just an inconvenient truth that nobody wanted to admit to.  When they thought of public school, they thought about school jackets, class rings, homecoming dances, and the social aspects of being around other kids.  But public school designed by socialists, Marxists, and outright communists under John Dewey was never intended to teach anybody anything useful.  It was always about social controls that would last the duration of people’s lives with liberalized sentiment and submission to authority, which served the notion of big centralized governments.  And the entire system has collapsed on itself.  Finally, people have admitted that sending their kids to public schools was something they’d instead not do if they could get away with it. Suppose they could afford a private school or some other alternative.  And that is the state now where there are massive waiting lists for alternative schools to the government school option at the center of everyone’s community.  It’s taken many years, and COVID was the final straw, but people have finally admitted that the public school option is one they’d love to get away from for the benefit of their children.  Based on what we know now, if you are choosing to send your kid to public school, it’s more for your convenience than that you love them.  Nobody would choose to send a kid to a public school and, in the same sentence, mean it when you said to them, “I love you.”  Those things do not go together.

And so it goes; knowing all that, my wife and I were shopping at Bridgewater Falls in Fairfield, and we noticed all the yard signs advocating for a new tax levy for Fairfield Schools.  Fairfield is a school district neighboring Lakota, where I live, and they have been flirting with a new levy in Lakota for several years.  Public schools were designed to burden a community, so everyone has to go through a kind of divorce with their government schools where property values are perceived to be directly connected.  For years, it has been thought that people move into or out of a community based on the quality of the schools.  That’s what real estate people will tell you anyway, but that has, too, been a lazy way to manage school districts.  Government schools that are controlled by radical leftist teacher unions with consistently high wage rates in mind have no means to generate more money to pay their staff but ever-increasing burdens on their property taxes.  So the game continued; home values would increase, making more taxable revenue available for the government schools to confiscate.  That money is then used to program the next generation of children into the ways of Democrat politics, anti-God sentiments, transgender bathrooms, and racial politics, making for much of their youth, future Democrat voters.  Public schools are essentially teaching anti-family and a replacement of domestic concerns with obedience to centralized government. 

So the longer a community survives this process, the more burden and expensive those government schools become before there is a collapse, and the following community with the next shiny thing becomes the new destination, leaving the old community behind and used up.  That has been the story of several communities around Butler County, especially Fairfield, where I have much experience.  My wife and I were married and went to church there for many years when it was a destination community for many people all over the country.  I have watched this government school game for a long time, and behind it all is the communist intention to attack private ownership.  We are seeing this trend in Liberty Township, within the Lakota district now, where apartments and lower-cost living seek to attract lower-income people who don’t own so much private property.  It’s not a massive conspiracy; I know all the trustees involved.  They are nice enough guys.  But it’s in the handbook of community development, written by the same dumb people from the United Nations who designed these horrible public schools.  What could go wrong with a community entirely of apartments and people who vote but don’t own property?  Then, people who own property are squeezed out of their homes with high taxes, and before you know it, the tax rates are too high and unmanageable, and people move away once their children grow up and start lives of their own somewhere else.  In the background of all these apartments and condos is the hope that the children will stay in the community when they grow up if only affordable options exist.  But what you end up with is Democrat voters until they grow up and take on more responsibility by starting a family of their own.  So they vote for school levies, but their landlords end up having to pay the taxes, and the schools achieve one of Karl Marx’s goals: the destruction of all private property.  We have seen this cycle everywhere, and Fairfield has suffered from it.  Most of their best companies picked up and left because the taxes were too high, the same story that could be told in every community around Butler County, Ohio, for the last four or five decades.  The Lakota schools are watching if any of these levies pass so they can try independently for their own.  We have managed to keep the taxes low in Lakota because plenty of people have a hostile reaction to the prospect of higher property taxes.  However, the system was built to fail in every way, providing a tempting lure to busy parents, free babysitting while they work, and dual income lives to pay for all this mess. 

However, changes are coming with another Trump administration; serious reforms to public education will happen by eliminating the Department of Education, which should have occurred during the Reagan administration.  But the communists fought to prevent it with the standard fear tactics, which Reagan listened to.  And so we have had this uncompetitive socialist model ever since, and Trump is poised to change it.  And to that point, the most apparent change will be that any federal dollars will follow the child, not the zip code.  That will mean that Fairfield, Lakota, Mason, and several other government schools along the outer loop of I-275 will have to fight to have children in their schools to access the funds that come with them.  And their cost structure will be challenged severely, which would be great.  Many teachers at Lakota schools make over six figures, which is a big part of their quarter of a billion-dollar yearly budget. If you have attended a school event anywhere lately, you will see many of these teachers can afford to miss a sandwich or two.  They are not specimens of excellent health, let’s just put it nicely.  The entire system is poised to fail, whether levies are approved or not.  And knowing all that, if you vote for a school levy, as I have said for several decades, you are stupid.  It’s silly to vote for any public school for more money that they are just going to waste on radical Democrat teachers.  And until we change that, it’s stupid to give them even a penny more. 

Rich Hoffman

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

Why Property Values in Butler County Could Go Up By 42%: And What Nancy Nix and many others are doing to Protect taxpayers

It was a very beautiful day looking out the windows of the Office of Nancy Nix as the Great Miami River gently rolled by as it has for many thousands of years. I looked down from the third-floor vantage point into the park that used to be the movie theater in Hamilton, where I first saw Sleeping Beauty and reflected on good memories from childhood. The weather outside was perfect for a day in May of 2023, so it was an excellent reflection of the long history of Butler County, Ohio, where the city of Hamilton had seen so much history, lots of good days and rough times to say the least and of course, the river flows by regardless of what human beings cause themselves by way of trouble. And the topic that Nancy and I were set to talk about, captured well in the video above, was historic trouble. The short story was that Butler County and nearby Clermont County were being penalized for being affluent areas that had recently enjoyed dramatic economic growth. It made an easy target for the new Ohio Tax Commissioner, Patricia Harris, in trying to correct the many sins of the past, where the government had kicked the can down the road over a long period of time. She had decided that there was nowhere left to kick it. So this wasn’t something that just happened well before Nancy Nix took over in Butler County in the very important auditor position, this crisis was brewing, and now it was splashed all over headlines from a recent I-Team report that indicated property values in Butler County were going to go up by a recommended 42%. That meant that property values for a $250,000 house were suddenly going to be at $355,000, an increase of $105,000. And people were not happy about it.

At Thanksgiving Dinner, such news might sound great; people might even open a bottle of wine at the success of their investments in real estate. Suddenly things on paper looked much better, and their homes were worth a lot more. But in Butler County, regarding 8 of the ten school districts, there would be tax increases proportional to that value increase which was going to impact homeowners negatively. For instance, the school district of Ross, right across the river from Nancy’s office, as we spoke about this matter and looked in that direction, they just had a vote to defeat a tax increase for that school. The levy had failed for the third time. But now, because of this news from the Ohio Department of Taxation, Ross is holding off on trying for another levy because they will gain a lot of new revenue from the new tax rates of these inflated property values. That’s the kind of thing that has people so upset, and for good reason. In a lot of ways, the recommendation from the state is taking away a fundamental right of property owners to manage their local governments by essentially taking extra tax money without a vote, with just a decision by the state to calculate these varying percentages based on sales data recorded during a very turbulent time that does not represent the norm.   According to the state, which then imposes the percentage rate onto auditors like Nancy Nix, they take a three-year sales reflection of what they think is market value during their state-mandated triennial update. But for this one, that analysis period was one of the worst in the history of the world. Looking at sales from 2019, where America had one of the best economies in human history, then the following year with Covid lockdowns, then the volatility of runaway interest rates resulting from the Biden presidency and the economic tampering of several government controls, the data collected is far from the norm, and has resulted in these crazy recommendations which Nancy Nix and other auditors are questioning, aggressively. 

And as bad as all that news was, it was still a good day from the vantage point of Nancy’s office as we talked about the many proactive measures that she and area legislators were doing to help solve the problem. Regarding that, a new Fox 19 article had hit, and I was talking to Senator George Lang about it, where he is proposing a way to change how Ohio’s property values are reassessed, which is obviously needed. Politics aside, Patricia Harris, the Ohio Tax Commissioner, had just been appointed in January of 2023 and obviously could use more time on the job before destroying everyone’s tax bills based on some bad data compiled during her first few months on the job. And George’s proposal as a legislative solution would definitely help her and the people connected to her decision. But the Ohio Department of Taxation itself, according to the spokesman Gary Gudmondson was already headed down the wrong road by digging in with obviously flawed data by saying, “We don’t change our recommendations in response to a county complaint.” What he means is that the Ohio Department of Taxation doesn’t listen to people like Nancy Nix, professionals who have been doing this kind of work for most of their adult lives. Instead, her job was to listen to what they recommended and live with it because they held all the cards. 

Yet, there is optimism on the legislative front; in addition to the good work that George Lang is leading, there have been further meetings involving Sara Carruthers, Rodney Creech, Jennifer Gross, and Thomas Hall. Treasurer Mike McNamara, Clerk of Courts Mary Swain, and Recorder Danny Crank are working aggressively to propose short-term and long-term solutions. Some of them are legislative, such as what George is working on. Some would involve amendments to the State Constitution, which are obviously long overdue. Others are things that Nancy Nix and the names mentioned can do as proactive measures. It’s not all bad news. But ultimately, these rate hikes are the result of years of government mismanagement from the state level imposed on regional government, where the most accountability to the voting public is supposed to be the key to all decision-making. But in this case, stuck against the cost of volatile bad decisions, especially during the Covid period, the impact of those decisions is not flowing into people’s property value assessments which are being penalized because they live in areas that were disproportionately well off in relation to other parts of the state that didn’t do so well. And now, we must sort it all out in a way that makes Ohio an attractive place to continue investing in. Otherwise, people might leave for destinations without these kinds of problems. The burden falls on the Ohio Tax Commissioner to develop better strategies for recovering costs from kicking the can down the road for so long and analyzing the market temperament correctly with a better sampling than what the last three years have shown, as they were the worst three years in the history of life on planet earth. And that isn’t the fault of innocent people who have lived in their homes for a long time and plan to stay in their homes. This is the task that I think Nancy Nix is doing a great job of representing Butler County under very turbulent times. But like the history of Hamilton itself and the Great Miami River that flows past her office, we are living history that will be remembered for a long time to come, and that history is made better by some of the great people who are tackling this problem aggressively in defense of the innocent who might otherwise be victims of bad government, such as we are seeing now with the Ohio Department of Taxation in its first few months of a new commissioner. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

What President Trump’s Tax Returns Say About Him: He took millions and millions in losses to serve as President and to save America from looting liberals

For several years now, Democrats have promised to get a hold of President Trump’s tax returns and reveal them to the public, as if that would change how people feel about him. Well, on the last business day of 2022, they finally did, and it was like a firework dud that never went off. You know, you get one of those fancy fireworks for the Fourth of July and hype up as a great climax to a backyard firework display. Then once you light the fuse, it just never goes off. That is what happened with the tax return issue, with Democrats releasing them with great fanfare thinking that something would happen that never did. As it turned out, Trump paid the taxes he owed, and primarily through his political years, he lost many millions of dollars of losses, which allowed him to take deductions, which he deserved. With all the hype, there was no smoking gun, nothing that showed wrongdoing. The only thing that was revealed with the insanity of liberal views on tax policy, income, and the merit of wealth, was how bad the progressive policy is for American sentiment. The assumption is that everyone in society has a “fair share” that they owe to a government that is obviously out of touch and wastes too much money. Their assumption, reflected in all “progressive tax policy” since 1913, has been that the more you have, the more you owe as if the government made it so that you could have that money. That’s the attitude. They are like mobsters who want their cut for not destroying your life. 

The truth about the Trump taxes, which says a lot about him, is that he spent many years of his life building up a reasonable amount of wealth the traditional way. He’s not like these mindless tech billionaires who made a lot of money riding the wave of a new technology. Trump, the way he was in the 80s and 90s, would have had to make hundreds of billions of dollars to compete. But in those days, becoming a billionaire was a lot harder than today, so he was in unique territory. Trump was considered one of the wealthiest men in the world during those years when he had The Apprentice television show on NBC. I’ve said it for a long time when Trump met Melania, and it took a couple of things for him; he needed to get older and less interested in parading women around to show how powerful he was because that used to be a thing in the 90s. And Trump has changed while married to Melania, the supermodel wife who has obviously been very smart. I’ve met her, and I think a lot of her. She’s a sharp personality and clearly has the attention of Trump, who goes out of his way to ensure she’s happy. I don’t think Donald Trump would have ever run and won the presidency without Melania Trump. He might have talked about it as he did back in the Reform Party days, which I remember well. I was involved in the Reform Party during the Ross Perot days, so I remember precisely what was going on and why. The values for Trump changed; he was no longer concerned about making the most money in the world, but about using the money he had made to leave something behind that people would remember forever, something better than any building, any hot supermodel wife, or even a really great family. He wanted to save the country from the obvious intrusions against it that he became aware of. It looks like 9/11 was a big deal for him that changed him as a person, along with that television show, and slowly in the decade that followed, as his relationship with Melania grew, his focus changed a lot. 

That bit of backstory is significant because Trump became President without thinking of making money for the first time in his life. The combination of being married to Melania Trump, becoming the head of the Republican Party, and actually living in the White House for the first time made him a better person. I always liked Trump as a business guy, but I never liked his failed relationships with women. That was what kept me from supporting him during the Reform Party period. But like everything they do, liberals have been targeting wealthy people for years with their Karl Marx hatred of all management positions. By the time Trump ran for President, they had assumed among themselves that they had destroyed such notions among the wealthy that they had an obligation toward altruism and not the opulent showing off of that wealth. The value was in how much you could make, then give away to the needy. By the time this assumption had taken hold during the Bush administration and the first administration of Obama, the open socialist, the stage was set for Trump. Many of us from the Reform Party migrated into the Tea Party movement to protect America from the erosion of wealth that was obviously occurring as a perception of anti-America sentiment, which was always a full-scale assault on wealth creation and the nature of America in the first place. Then the Tea Party became the MAGA movement, led by Trump, bringing us to our current period.

By looking at Trump’s tax returns, it’s evident that the plan for his companies was to take a long view and to become President, give back his salary, take his losses and claim those losses in filing with the IRS to stop as much bleeding as possible. But to be in the hot seat as President with all the investigations and harassment that came with it, Trump was prepared to lose a lot of money. But it wasn’t the kind of loss that the political left had set the stage for. It was more of an Atlas Shrugged activity where Trump denied his wealthy input into the world of politics through donations and instead took up the job himself to show how easily it could all be done. Which considering the opposition, which was literally everyone in the establishment from the top down, Trump was enormously successful. His value was in actual production instead of some mindless commitment to a “fair share,” as defined by the same looting government that wanted to steal the money from all his hard work and then distribute it among themselves for the growth of more big government. I always thought it took a lot of guts for Trump to change his lifestyle, and it really took a lot for Melania to go through it with him. She could have chosen many things to do in her life as one of the most beautiful women in the world. But she has stuck with Trump, she has committed herself as a mom to her son, and she is deeply committed to the American experience, far more than many people realize. And she has Donald Trump’s heart enough to convince him to take these massive losses revealed in the tax returns to save his country from the terrors of liberalism. And that was a story that the political left didn’t want to see. But ultimately, that was shown to the world by revealing those returns, which is why nobody is discussing the story, because it didn’t do what Democrats want. Instead, it further validated Trump’s position and articulated quite well why he’s the perfect person for the job of President even more.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Public Toilet that Lakota Schools Is: We tried a conservative board, but they are just as bad, except for Darbi Boddy

Recently someone from Lakota schools attempting to defend the horrible behavior of the adult staff and administrators there sent me a list of Republicans and conservatives who have been caught in sex trafficking and the widespread abuse of children as if to justify the massive failures going on in the public school system. My thoughts on it are that it’s much easier to make a list of conservatives who commit such terrible acts against children because if liberals were included, we wouldn’t have enough time in the history of the world to complete such a list because there are so many. But regarding Republicans, I had just been thinking about how disappointed I have been in trying to play things right and what we ended up with on the Lakota school board. But there were good stories, too; one thing you can count on in life is that Darbi Boddy will never be accused of accepting evil and contributing to young people’s delinquency. But for all the work that was put into getting a new conservative school board in the Lakota school system, the board is just as bad as when the liberals ran it with the majority, back when Brad Lovell and Joan Powell were the ring leaders. Suppose a political body, such as the prosecutor’s office, the sheriff’s department, and all the other characters involved, cannot protect children as the most serious element needed in a public school. In that case, there is absolutely no hope for them. At least I can say that I tried to work it out with a social solution working within the rules, even if I doubted from the beginning that a conservative school board at Lakota schools would work at all. I wouldn’t say I will stop trying, but the results have been garbage. It didn’t matter if we had a conservative majority on the school board or a bunch of sex-crazed liberals; the results were the same. The system itself is broken and is left resolute to allow progressive politics to seep into all communities and work at destroying conservative values wherever they reside. There is no hope for public education to work. 

As that same person pointed out, the recent student teacher at Lakota who has found a lot of trouble for trying to have a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old kid in one of the junior schools had attended Liberty University, a traditionally Christian school. My reply was that she was picked as a target of investigation, likely because she attended that school, so the corrupt administrators could point to someone and say, “see, they want to have sex with kids too.” I’m against anybody who wants to do such a thing, and if conservatives turn their backs on children and fail to do the right thing for their well-being, then I hate them just as much as liberals who do it. It doesn’t change my anger toward them because they call themselves conservatives. What do I say all the time, “I love Republicans until they show me that they aren’t.” And it might be recalled that I recently pointed out that the Republican Party leadership of Butler County needs an oil change so that newcomers who want to do good can. Instead of letting some Boss Hogg characters run things with the level of corruption that was typical on the television show, The Dukes of Hazzard. If I don’t get invited to the Christmas Party this year because of it, I think I’ll live. It will just be one less thing for me to worry about. If people don’t have the guts to do the right, basic things in their life, I’m not impressed with them, and I generally won’t waste my time with them. If people turn bad, no matter what political party they are in, I scrap them, move on, and never look back. So with that said, Darbi Boddy and others who have risen to support her in the face of terrible radical teacher union protests and out-of-control superintendents who pick fights and then cry when people accept those challenges like a little baby have been worth knowing and supporting. But the efforts at the Lakota school board have been horrible; I’d say it’s much worse than when the liberals ran things in the past.

.So when I say that public education is no better than using a public toilet, there is some context to go by. I tried to be part of a solution to bring proper management to the Lakota school system. I prefer not to think about public education; I have a long history of showing all the problems with it. They are institutions of liberalism that seek to embed themselves into a community and to sell destructive progressive ideas to the residents who are forced to pay for the product with the value of their properties. It’s a horrible deal; I’d prefer not to deal with them at all. I only do because they are in my community and do not represent the conservative values of my community. Another person wrote me recently and stated they were considering moving because they only moved to Lakota because of the schools. I say to those people, leave. Move away and take all your stupid liberal ideas with you. If you want to live in a great community, then do so. But don’t move to a liberal school and bring a bunch of liberal east coast ideas with you and expect everything to work out well. I lived in the area when most of the neighborhoods that are built today contained cows and vast open fields. And the cows were much better neighbors. The pigs you could smell when you drove down the road smelled far better than the smell of today and what comes out of Lakota schools. If those losers who moved here to leech off the Lakota public school system for the free babysitting service want to move to a more liberal area, then I would be fine with that. It would not hurt my feelings at all to bulldoze all those homes back into dust and to put the cows back. They were much higher quality lifeforms than the supporters of Superintendent Matt Miller and his administrators of doom. The kids of the community would be a lot better off.

But it’s not just Lakota; it’s all public schools, government in all its various manifestations. The bigger government is, the more corrupt it presents itself. And if conservatives are fighting to preserve a big government approach, then they cease to be conservatives in my way of looking at things and are just as worthless. I remind people also, all the time, that we are not a democracy. We have a democratic way of establishing who manages our government, but we are not a flee bitten democracy where popular sentiment rules the day. As is the case in Lakota, if most people think that child abuse is OK or open sexual lifestyles are permissible because the sheriff, the prosecutors, the media, and a bunch of crybaby residents believe it’s OK, that doesn’t make it OK. Leadership is where one person stands up against a tide of bad decisions alone and under great ridicule and does the right thing anyway. That is what we expect in our republic form of government. That’s what Darbi Boddy has been doing. But as to the rest of the characters have been typical, and what is typical leads to the conclusion that all government schools are no better than public toilets and the content that gets flushed down them. I wouldn’t send a kid to a public school if the school paid me to do it instead of the other way around. It’s a worthless product run by terrible, horrible people who are dumb as rocks. And it’s irresponsible to consider them teaching anybody, anything. Ever. 

Rich Hoffman

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Rinos for Lakota: Time to call the public education scam for what it is

For the record, given the level of taxation we have now, locally, statewide, and nationally, you can’t be a conservative and be for higher taxes. Yet, at Lakota schools, behind all the reckless gossip of the superintendent’s life that has spilled over into his professional capacity, the real story under the surface of the debate is that Lakota has wasted all its money that has been generously given by the community and that levy whores are already pushing for tax increases to be placed on a ballot, because they know it will take several attempts to pass, to wear down the voters, and the big government spenders behind the Lakota school system want their money. And they are remarkably willing to overlook any problem so they can get it, which is grossly apparent not just by the labor union elements but the disguised face of the Democrat party, a Facebook group called Rinos For Lakota (Conservatives). They are obviously not conservative, they are pro-big government schools, and they want the hired superintendent, no matter his personal flaws, to sell a levy to the public and push up the income extorted from the community even higher than it is now. The school board recklessly gave out raises to the teacher’s union recently, and now they have to pay for it and are running out of money. So essentially, the next levy fight has already started, even if it’s not formally on the ballot, and Lakota has been keeping Matt Miller around, hoping that he has some miracle rabbit tucked away to pull out so that the public would vote for it. The anger toward whistleblowers reporting real news on Matt Miller is the giveaway to the real motivations and the example of why vast evil is permitted in public schools. Because groups like the Rino’s For Lakota Schools want the free babysitting, the hope that the school will be better parents for their kids than they are and that the school’s reputation will keep pushing up their real estate values artificially, perpetually, they don’t really care about the kids of the school, or what happens to them. They are like all liberals, they want what they want, and they’ll run over anybody to get it. 

There are plenty of lawyers involved. They’d all like some easy money out of a school that allows administrators to create unsafe environments for children. Be careful what you wish for.

Most of the assumptions that government school advocates utter, like the Rino’s for Lakota, are essentially old union talking points, like all public schools are the centerpiece of a community. If they go down, so will the community. Well, that’s false, and it’s time to call their bluff on that assumption. People move to a community for lots of reasons.   Schools might be one of them, but those tend to be low information, young neurotic parent types who eventually grow up anyway, often during election cycles. The unions have seized on this ignorance to exploit it for their own use, which is why we have our beliefs about public schools. But in truth, a good community full of good people is why a school district is successful. It’s not because of what a school does that makes a community good. The school system is simply riding on the backs of success that comes with the parents. Parents who move to a district because of the perception of a good school are already putting the extra effort into their children that is conducive to good behavior, so naturally, one thing causes the effects of the next thing. But it’s never the schools themselves that make something good. The belief that a school superintendent can make a good school is simply ridiculous. So is the notion that the teachers of Lakota are better than the teachers of Mason, or Monroe, or anyplace else. Lakota might be able to recruit good teachers for their first decade of service that might be better than other districts because of the nice roads, the great shopping, the wonderful restaurants, and other great things. But they are all unionized employees, and by the time they reach their shelf life after a decade or so of service, they start to become complicit slugs that aren’t worth the money we spend on them. 

But when that belief system is jeopardized, you can see by some of these Facebook musings from the Rino’s of Lakota that they have bought the ruse hook, line, and sinker. They swallowed the union bait and have built their lives around the scam. And they hope for the protection of legalizations to maintain their vast illusion. When people come along who challenge their premise, they get angry because they fear that everything they have built their lives around is false. And they want to attack anybody who shakes their confidence in that system they want to believe so intensely because they are too lazy to let the facts guide their decisions. It’s interesting to consider that just in April of 2022, the school board, led by many of these Rinos for Lakota, wanted to get rid of Darbi Boddy because if she stayed on the board, Matt Miller might leave for another district. Now, because they have seen Matt Miller’s police report, most everyone would gladly keep Darbi and say bye-bye to Matt.   Yet, the Rinos for Lakota aren’t mad at Matt; they are upset that anybody exposed Matt for who he really was. We went from complete illusion in April to an overdose of reality by September. And if the world were run by people like the Kool-Aid drinkers of Rino’s for Lakota, we would never know what kind of activity these public-school administrators were up to because the school itself, with the help of the board, would simply cover it up. 

My suggestion would be to call the public education bluff and terminate the superintendent on grounds based on his behavior. There are plenty of opportunities in his contract to release him based on his personal behavior that has impacted his public role as a hired administrator. But the main concern for Lakota, the teacher’s union, and groups like these Rino’s for Lakota is for the passage of another levy. They know they need the money, and they are hoping they can sit on this story and push it under the rug, then parade Matt around to high school football games like he’s Elvis and appeal to the young moms who are voters and might vote for a tax increase because they find him appealing. They aren’t selling facts but purely imaginary hopes and dreams with no bases in reality. They hope to control the narrative with rules and procedures that protect them from whistleblower judgment, and when that fails to protect their intentions, they get upset and scream to the gods of legalism for more power to shut down the voices that would tell them the truth. Because they don’t want to hear it. But regardless of their wishes, many people spend money on Lakota schools, and they are in the vast minority. Vanessa Wells only lost in her election because she made an ethical decision not to carry the Republican nomination. If she had kept it, she would have easily beaten anybody on the current school board. And that is a lesson for the next time around. But, if she had been elected to the board, she would not have had the freedom to act as a conduit of valuable information as she is now. And we likely wouldn’t know what we do. And Lakota is far better off knowing the condition of its employees than in not. Because if it really wants to get better, as a district, it will correct the bad things so people can believe in it beyond just mindless lip service from people too lazy to consider the truth.  

Rich Hoffman

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