Tag: Tea Party

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

The Lakota Levy of 2017: After they try the 2013 attempt

Lakota is currently trying to pass a 2013 tax increase so it probably will come as a shock that the school will be planning a 2017 levy attempt as soon as they can.  In the chart shown in the following video, I use another “bullwhip economic” trick to demonstrate how targeted cuts to the Lakota school district could maintain the profitable trend they have shown over the last couple of years.  Yet, the school apparently resents greatly their operation of maintaining a budget surplus and has very immediate intentions of escalating their spending as soon as they receive levy passage.  In the following chart, the red line represents the tax revenue that the Lakota communities of Liberty Township and West Chester Twp provide to the school.  The blue line is the budget for Lakota.  Watching this video it will be clear that the recent levy defeats have forced Lakota to bring their costs in line with the tax revenue supplied.  As explained, the teacher’s contract the district has with the Lakota Education Association has maintained a wage freeze lasting through 2014.  This is why the district has operated in a surplus.  However, it is also clear that the intention of the levy of 2013 is to throw money at the new teacher’s contract because the blue line spikes up dramatically and predictably until 2017.  The green line is the amount of funding the school intends to inject into their financial dynamics upon levy passage in 2013.  As it becomes terribly obvious, the green line and blue line intersect during the year 2017 meaning that Lakota will have to pursue another tax increase at that time.

It is terribly obvious that Lakota has been forced by the voting community to live within their budget with levy failures, which is good.  Yet they have been promising that the summer of 2014 would reap a payday to school employees because the blue line spikes sharply upward countering all the positive gains that have been made since 2010 to the present.  It was always my intention to bring Lakota’s operating costs in line with community revenue without raising taxes and this chart shows how well the effort has worked.  The NO votes have been the most useful tool in forcing the school district to operate the way they should have always functioned, with a keen focus on their expenditures and operating with a slight surplus.  But they seem to not have learned their lesson and have been promising their employees large raises in 2014.  Their spending projections reflect this as the numbers making up the data on the chart are generated by Lakota’s own statistics.  There is a reason they must disclose all their information to the tax paying public—it is for just this type of analysis.Historical & Projected Revenues & Expenditures

Lakota has been able to maintain a positive balance by making the forced targeted cuts due to the levy failures, which is also reflected on the chart, which is why I find my “bullwhip economic” demonstrations to be so effective.  It’s my own unique way of explaining such dry material that has a tendency to bore people to death when they are forced to attend the kind of meetings it takes to ascertain the data that makes up such charts.  So I like to put a little metaphorical zip on the information to present it in an entertaining way, otherwise the information goes in one ear and out the other.  But relevant to the Lakota levy of 2013 and all future levies, the information couldn’t be clearer.  The data speaks for itself.  Lakota plans to go on a spending binge in 2014 like pent-up sailors who have been at sea for many months approaching a whore house.  The projected numbers that make up the blue line can be obtained from Lakota’s treasurer or anybody involved in the financing structure at the school.

In October of 2013 Lakota will have to produce a new five-year forecast which will involve many of the same numbers seen in the chart discussed during the video.  However one thing that has not been yet included in Lakota’s blue line forecast is the grim reality that I have covered extensively which is that Lakota is set to lose another two thousands students between the present time and the year 2022.  This will force the layoff of around 80 teachers.  CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW.  It will be interesting to see if Lakota includes these declining enrollment numbers into their projections, which they will have to address at some point in time.  But for their pro-tax levy attempts, they will hope to bury that information deep in their forecast because it will clearly show that they do not need more money.  Instead of the blue line projecting upward, it needs to be in a further decline from where it currently resides.

The frustration, anger, and in-trench warfare that sometimes goes on behind the scenes with the pro levy crowd is predicated directly off their lack of desire to acknowledge the facts driven off numbers shown so clearly in charts like the example I used in the video.  I call them “levy addicts, “levy zombies,” and more derogatory “latte sipping prostitutes,” because of their destructive desire to hurt an entire community with corrosive taxation as they belong to a group of people who desire to throw large wages at employees who aren’t needed, but for emotional reasons.   The desire to increase taxes for the solitary reason of injecting money into a group of employees that have a perceived value which is too high, or are not needed is simply stupid.  Many times the only reason is because the levy supporters are friends with those employees, or hope that by throwing money at the school, the money will off-set their terrible parenting skills.  They hope the school will give their children what they can’t because they are plagued with so much self-doubt as individual people; they have nothing to offer their children but social connections and a big mouth that advocates bigger and better schools to teach them in.  The root cause of the problem is that those levy advocates do not have faith in their own parenting and hope that they can hide the fact behind their chants for higher taxes, and more community spirit, and they have no restraint in demanding the community fund perpetual increases in the blue line based strictly on emotional neuroses.

It is a shame that so many young reporters who work for the local papers cannot see the benefit of the numbers shown in charts like this example, because many of them are children themselves.  This is why they support school levies.  If they are under the age of 35, they are likely still new to the ways of the world and do not understand how things connect, so they make their decisions based on pure emotion—on the backs of children who are used by the levy addicts to hide the reality of the blue number—the desire to throw money at district labor based on an anti-trust criteria. (Click Here to Review)  Then of course many people find such information daunting, and beyond their grasp.  So rather than do the hard work of analyzing data, they choose to subscribe to the emotional position of the levy addicts.  That is why the Lakota administrators are working blindly toward a 2013 tax increase knowing full well that another attempt will have to be made in 2017, because they do not target cuts unless forced to with levy failures.  Beyond 2017 there is no question that there will be more levy attempts and that within 15 years of this current time Lakota plans to add at least 10 more mills of levy to the current rate of 33, pushing the rate of taxation to a level over 40 mills, which is very unattractive to long-term real-estate investment or business growth.  That is why it is reckless, and devastating to a community to insinuate uncontrolled taxation, which is what Lakota is guilty of.

So the tax increases will not end in 2013.  They will continue until the school is forced to cut their costs the proper way with controlled cuts made without emotion.  Since Lakota will not regulate themselves, they must be forced to with failed levies.  The Levy Zombies do not run the community.  They are often young people between the ages of 25 and 35 and are functioning from personal insecurities.  It is dangerous to allow them to dictate budgets, which is why Lakota believes that nobody will ever challenge their blue line projections well into 2017.  The same logic left unchecked will pillage the Lakota community until there is nothing left but a high tax zone of residents and empty business establishments driven away by the bottomless pit hunger of the levy addicts.  Against those specimens targeted cuts is the only defense and I use bullwhip economics to highlight the point.  But aside from the spectacle of my whip tricks the situation is actually quite serious, Lakota is a parasitic organization that is selling itself as the savior of community value when it is practicing the opposite effect.  Under the Lakota plan seen on the chart, the financial imposition that public school will place on the community will be devastating and end the thriving business culture that currently exists.  Anyone who supports a school levy is crazy, especially when given the facts that show the proof.  The best thing anybody could do for Lakota and the community that surrounds the school is to vote “NO” on the levy and force Lakota to live within its means, instead of their projected path of deficit spending toward a future resulting in economic collapse.  The data tells the story.  All anybody need do is look at the data to reach the same conclusion.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

Dan Varney and No Lakota Levy Defend Lakota Community: Extortion from the school superintendent

Recently Dan Varney, the treasurer for No Lakota – accused Lakota officials of trying to manipulate voters by enticing them with $2.8 million of possible restorations of some budget cuts. “It’s how they play the game and they are trying to instill some passion in the school parents” to drum up votes for the proposed property tax increase,” Varney said.

Bravo!

Dan Varney, who appeared with me several years ago on WLW radio for an in studio broadcast about the Lakota tax increases (CLICK HERE TO REVIEW), did a wonderful job of speaking the truth of Lakota’s 2013 levy attempt.

Recently the Lakota school board approved a recommendation by Superintendent Karen Mantia that would allocate $2.8 million of the levy’s annual funds to partially restore some services that have been cut and also preserve the district’s current programming and operations. The school district reduced its annual spending by more than $20 million over the last three years.  I broke the issue down into specific detail in another article, but Lakota needs to continue cutting their costs much further than they have already.  CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHY.  The cuts are not over because declining enrollment is forcing the issue.

According to school officials if the levy is passed, bus service will be reinstated for grades 2-6, for students who live farther than one mile from school. This is simply an attempt by Lakota schools to purchase votes in the next election using tax payer money to do it.  Currently, bus service is issued only to students in those grades if they live farther than two miles from school. This school year, the district supposedly identified some routing efficiencies to provide bus service to all K-1 students at no additional cost.  (Isn’t that amazing, just in time for a school levy attempt?)

“We value the community’s feedback that we heard in our Community Conversations last year,” said Mantia. “We heard this would be a tremendous help to our families, and will also help us regain lost instructional time.” Superintendent Mantia noted that the change would provide busing to an additional 2,200 students, helping minimize traffic congestion on some of the district’s busiest roads.

Also,

  • Students in grade 4-6 will be offered one additional day of art, music or physical education. Currently students take classes in art, music or P.E. one time per week.
  • Student participation in after-school clubs and extracurricular activities will be encouraged by increasing opportunities and reducing fees from $550 to $400 at high school and from $350 to $300 at junior high.
  • Students in grade 9 would be offered a seven-period class schedule, instead of six periods per day.
  • Part of the funding was allocated for advanced technologies and modernized coursework to further individualize learning, a focus area of the district’s current strategic planning work.

The school board voted June 24 to place a levy on the November ballot for the community’s consideration, and announced at that time that a major component of the levy would be for technology, including a $13.5 million multi-year upgrade to the district’s instructional technology infrastructure. School building security will also be bolstered across the district. The decisions made by the board Monday evening finalize the plans for how the levy funds would be allocated.

Here are the source articles from above:

http://westchesterbuzz.com/2013/08/12/lakota-board-says-it-will-restore-some-cuts-if-levy-passes/

http://westchesterbuzz.com/2013/08/13/lakota-local-schools-release-details-of-levy-proposal/

Of course all these things that Lakota is “giving” to the community are contingent on the passage of a tax increase.  The arrogance displayed by these public workers is astonishing; they will give back to the community what is already theirs “IF” they vote to pay more taxes on their properties—which is simply amazing.   So in that context what Dan Varney said in the paper was dead on, if all too polite.  Lakota schools think that the votes are suckers, and stupid.  Lakota has no respect for the average tax payer in the Lakota district, as their behavior displayed grotesquely in evidence.  The definition of Lakota’s actions is pure extortion.  They stated that if tax payers gave Lakota more money, they would restore services that were only lost because the school board did not manage their costs under the leadership of Superintendent Mantia.  If a levy is not approved by the voting public, then those items listed above will not be granted.  It is a low down dirty trick that belongs on one of those television commercials advertising products for $19.99.  It’s a scam disguised as education.  Its corruption disguised as community benefit.  It’s wrong, detrimental, and socially corrosive.

In such a time when bandits rule our school system using our children as shields against justice, thank God there are people like Dan Varney of No Lakota Levy out there fighting the good fight defending those same children with honesty from the looters wishing to exploit them for personal gain.  Without people like Varney the extortion scams advocated by public education institutions like Lakota would have no representation in the press, leaving the sinister schools to dance upon community innocence with immunity from righteousness.  No Lakota Levy is an organized resistance that is all that stands between open extortion by public schools and the out-right looting of the “rich,” so-called “wealthy” property owners who will lose millions if the Lakota levy of 2013 passes.

For idiots, diabolical nut cases, open progressives and Obama voters, they enjoy the Lakota levy position of attacking the rich and giving to the poor, the silly, childish levy supporters who purchase half million dollar homes, pay over $5000 per year in property taxes still desiring more, then turn around and ask the rest of the community to give their children a “free” education at Lakota which is run by the kind of people shown above who openly believe that extortion is an acceptable campaign strategy.  I’m glad there are people like Dan Varney who can hold their tongue in the face of such a travesty, but he does, and is a good man for the job.  Every homeowner should be thankful that there is a group like No Lakota Levy out there defending them from higher taxes by government looters like Lakota’s administrators and their band of education thieves.  In that group there are people like Dan Varney who stand as pillars of stone against the winds of chaos in a battle for the heart and soul of Lakota–the residents who pay the taxes versus those who wish to steal them.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rich Hoffman

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

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

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

AJ Malott · Cincinnati, Ohio

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

AJ Malott · Cincinnati, Ohio

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

AJ Malott · Cincinnati, Ohio

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

AJ Malott · Cincinnati, Ohio

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rich Hoffman

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

The Department of Justice Attacks the Apple Company: The Anti-Trust scam is back!

The lawsuit against Apple by the Department of Justice is an astonishing maneuver made by an organization that is under criminal investigation itself.  Yet even with all the scandals that it is currently being scrutinized for such as cover-ups, criminal deceit, and murder, the Department of Justice is engaged in an outright attack against the Apple Company for an e-book price-fixing anti-trust busting lawsuit.   For a review on my thoughts about anti-trust cases created under the Sherman Act, please refer to the following link, where I break down the history and hypocrisy of these government cases revealing what is really behind them.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/labor-unions-should-be-prosecuted-under-the-sherman-act-the-largest-coercive-monopolies-in-the-world-go-unpunished/

The federal government operates currently the largest monopoly on the face of the earth with their vast support of price-fixing through government labor unions.  For examples of price-fixing that is much more destructive than anything Apple has done look no further than the local teacher at your government school, look at your friendly neighborhood IRS agent, or any bureaucrat working for the federal government in virtually any direct capacity.   The government is not qualified to pass judgment against Apple for price-fixing.  But in this case, as in most anti-trust cases, the intention is not to find justice for the “public” but to shake down the prosecuted for money through bribes, court settlements, or campaign donations to  political parties.  If the roots of this case were traced back to a cause, one of those three issues was the motivation.  Because Apple did not grease the wheels of government “properly” they are now being prosecuted.  It is that simple.  For proof examine the statements below as reported by CNET regarding this anti-trust case, and read carefully the words used by Justice Department attorney Lawrence Buterman.

Apple shouldn’t “be rewarded” with the same sanctions as the e-book publishers that settled with the U.S. government, the Department of Justice argued ahead of a court hearing Friday.  “Apple has been found to have orchestrated and facilitated a…price-fixing conspiracy — amongst these very publisher defendants,” Justice Department attorney Lawrence Buterman wrote in a letter dated Thursday but made available for viewing Friday. “Apple should not be rewarded with the same terms received by those that chose to settle to avoid the risks of litigation.”

The Justice Department last week issued its proposals for ways “to halt Apple’s anticompetitive conduct, restore lost competition, and prevent a recurrence of the illegal activities.” The three big pieces of that proposal were that Apple would end its existing agreements with the five major publishers, let other e-book publishers’ link to their own bookstores in iOS apps, and staff an antitrust monitor to evaluate its business for five years. Apple fired back last week, calling the government’s proposals vague, overreaching, unwarranted, and even “draconian.”

In a filing Wednesday, the five major book publishers weighed in, arguing that one of those stipulations — ending the existing agreements — would completely eliminate a pricing model that’s become the industry standard. The publishers also said it would break agreements the Justice Department made with each of them when they settled.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57597773-37/doj-apple-shouldnt-be-rewarded-with-same-terms-as-publishers/

Hachette, HarperCollins, Holtzbrinck (also known as Macmillan), Penguin, and Simon & Schuster filed an opposition to last week’s proposed remedies against Apple by the Justice Department, arguing that the plan would “effectively eliminate the use of the agency model” for e-book distribution for the next five years.

“…Under the guise of punishing Apple, they effectively punish the Settling Defendants by prohibiting agreements with Apple using an agency model,” the publishers wrote, adding that the move “directly conflicts” with the settlements the publishers reached with the Justice Department before the Apple case went to trial.

“Despite achieving their stated goal of returning price competition, Plaintiffs now seek to improperly impose additional, unwarranted restrictions on the Settling Defendants, thereby depriving each publisher of the benefit of its bargain with Plaintiffs,” it goes on to say.

The “agency” model is where publishers set e-book prices to retailers, while retailers get a commission. That’s as opposed to the “wholesale” model, where publishers set the list price and the retailers can sell it at whatever price they want. (Read CNET’s in-depth explainer here.)

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57597501-37/publishers-urge-doj-to-rethink-apple-e-book-remedies/

Basically what all that means is that the Department of Justice wants to shake down Apple because they did not settle out-of-court as the five major publishers did so to avoid a damaging public court case.  The DOJ is using this excuse to inject its authority into the company for five years to monitor Apple business practices.  The DOJ also intends to use this case “to halt Apple’s anticompetitive conduct, restore lost competition, and prevent a recurrence of the illegal activities.” Those are amazing statements by a government entity that is itself a functioning monopoly excessively guilty of anti-trust violations of their own.  They are even more amazing statements considering all the other criminal investigations that the DOJ is currently under itself, but cannot be prosecuted for because there is no higher law enforcement authority than the Department of Justice—who works directly for the President of the United States.  (This is why it’s important what kind of president Americans elect).

There is only one motivation by the Department of Justice in this.  They do not care about the pricing of e-books on the open market.  They only care about entrenching themselves into the publishing business any way they can so that content can be “influenced” in subtle ways.  The message to the five major publishers couldn’t be clearer.  They took the settlement like most companies would, to take the path of least resistance.  It didn’t mean they were guilty, just that they took the option with the least immediate cost to them.  The real crime is that the Department of Justice injected itself into the capitalist marketplace with socialist standards of regulation that do not belong in America.  If not for Apple and those five major publishers, there wouldn’t be an e-book market.  The DOJ is functioning from a socialist economic model whereas the publishers and Apple are operating from capitalism.  Apple is not guilty of anything but operating as a capitalist enterprise.  The DOJ is operating as a socialist enterprise.  The difference between the two is one of philosophy, not function.  The Department of Justice view of itself might be more appropriate in China, or in Europe where socialism and communism are practiced much to the restriction of ideas and financial enterprise, but they have no place in America and never had since the concoction of the Sherman Act so many years ago.  The anti-trust busting that has been so publicly advocated by the government is simply the actions of a gang of thugs who want to shake down the profit makers of a capitalist economy under the guise of “equality.”

Every American should be outraged by the attack of the Department of Justice against the Apple Company.  If it can happen to Apple, it can happen to everyone.  Microsoft as a company never recovered after their anti-trust case in the 1990s.  And now Apple, without the leadership of Steve Jobs to pull them back out of the mud after this incident with the DOJ will find themselves overly, and needlessly cautious toward anti-trust accusations that will directly hinder their marketing strategies, and innovation for many years to come.  The cost of this lawsuit against Apple by the DOJ will resonate for the next century in America not in lost competition, but in lost innovation by a company that is among the best that America currently has to offer.  The government, as usual, is standing in the way of prosperity, hindering capitalism, and openly seeking to undercut technological growth through a thuggish strategy of short-sighted shakedowns against a good company to appease a blind and stupid mob who democratically elected criminals, scumbags, and despots to enforce laws that they make up as they go to serve only themselves and an ever-expanding government.

Rich Hoffman

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A Whip Trick To Save Lakota: The real reason behind the 2013 tax increase attempt

To state that Lakota, like most government schools these days, is operating as a deceptive enterprise built upon open manipulation of the taxpaying public and are dangerously malicious is not inaccurate.  Lakota has said recently that without levy approval in the fall of 2013, the distinct “will” decline.  Those are words from an Enquirer article featuring statements by Lakota Superintendent Karen Mantia who told the school board, “We have balanced our budget but now we’re at a baseline and that is not a good place to be.”  This prompted school board president Joan Powell to declare, “We are in danger of becoming a second-class district.”  Lakota and its administrators are pushing a 5.5 mill levy for the upcoming November 2013 ballot which will raise the taxes per $100,000 in evaluation by $192 based on the premise that they have cut, and cut, and cut till they can’t cut any more, and if they cut any more, every citizen in the district will suffer.  Well, the Lakota members of the administration who have said these things are guilty of deception, manipulation, and malicious action, because there is a very important factor that they did not reveal to the public in these levy talks which they did discuss in the same newspapers at the start of the 2013 year.  However the issue is a bit complex prompting me to explain the situation with one of my bullwhip economic videos.  Check it out.   I explain to Lakota what they should already know themselves.  I use a bullwhip to cut a soda can in half as a proper metaphor to what is in Lakota’s employment future.

The cost of the levy for the average property owner is quite excessive.  The figures I used in the above video were off the top of my head, which I refined further below.  Most homes in the Liberty Township/West Chester area are well over $200,000 each.  The tax increases on homes per year at $200,000 with voter approval of a new Lakota levy will be $384 per year.  At $300,000 a year, which is not at all uncommon, the taxes will be $576 more per year.  And at $400,000 which is quite the standard in Wetherington, Beckett Ridge, and Four Bridges, the tax increase per year will be $768 per year.  But that’s not all.  Commercial property is taxed at the same rate as residential property.  Buildings that are valued at $5 million will go up on that one building $10,000.00 in additional taxes. Buildings valued in this range are typically small strip malls housing several small stores and that cost will be passed down to the 5-7 tenants, who are all small business owners.  Their costs per year will increase about $2,000.00 each, and that’s tough on people with small margins and continuing rising costs in other areas.  In many cases, a tax increase like what Lakota is proposing could shut the doors on many small businesses operating at minimum margins.

The assumption by the government school of Lakota who does not have to do anything performance wise to obtain their profit margins except beg for tax increases, is that if residents can afford a home that is $300,000 to $400,000 in value then they can afford to pay a little more for a tax increase to “help the community’s children.”  They also believe that a property owner with a strip mall or restaurant that is $1 to $5 million in value will happily absorb an extra $10,000 in yearly taxes because they are already “rich.”  What’s a few thousand dollars to a “rich” person?  As ridiculous as that sounds, it is precisely how the administrators of Lakota think, and those who jump on the bandwagon to support the levy.  This is why I call them Lakota Levy Zombies, because they mindlessly pursue tax increases without considering what the impact of that increase will have on the people who pay it.

But worse than anything is the carefully concealed study performed by the McKibben Demographics group who co-conducted an enrollment study for Lakota late in 2012 at a cost of $20,000.  The results of that study indicate that by the 2022-23 school year Lakota will have lost 2,300 students due to declining enrollment trends.  What this means in terms of jobs at Lakota is that the staff will have to be cut by at least 85.1 teachers who would normally teach 27 children per class.  By 2022 Lakota will have to reduce their work force to meet those new enrollment needs.  Over the next 10 years Lakota will save $5.1 million in just teacher salary at an average wage of $60K per year.  That does not consider all the six figure administrators that Lakota will not need to manage those 85.1 teachers.  Lakota will have to close down school buildings and consolidate resources that could easily save between $10 million and $15 million dollars without cutting a single program to the community just because the enrollment numbers will be less.  The projection numbers at Lakota were over 18,000 students during the 2010 school year but will decline to 14,950 by the year 2022.

In addition to those numbers Lakota’s treasurer Jenni Logan stated that Lakota has lost 672 students to other public, community, or private schools, which is a trend that is likely to continue.  Lakota has over the last couple of years taken away busing because their tax increases did not pass.  They have also cut electives for students, and they have raised sports fees.  Parents have reacted by voting with their feet and simply leaving.  Meanwhile Lakota administrators continue to brag about the “tens of millions” of dollars they have cut out of their operating budget attempting to sell those cuts as a “sacrifice” to the quality of their education service, but in all reality, the cuts have been on par with the reduction in enrollment.  In just the last couple of years from 2010 to 2012 Lakota has seen a drop of around 1000 students.  By 2015 the enrollment numbers will be around 15,913 and continuing down from there.  If Lakota continues to complain, and sell themselves as ineffective, more people will vote with their feet and simply leave the community taking their children with them, exacerbating those numbers further.  If that happens Lakota could see a yearly enrollment of 10,000 by the year 2020.

The cause of the decline in enrollment according to Mckibben is that the population in the Lakota district has aged.  Over the next 10 years most homes will be those of empty nesters as the current average age of the Lakota resident is 40.7.  McKibbean explained this trend to the Lakota school board at a January 28 2013 meeting by saying, “You have a very high graduation rate and very high post-secondary participation rate.  Your kids graduate, go off to college and don’t come back.”  However, McKibbean declined to finish that statement.  He didn’t want to insult the people who paid $20K for his study after all.  The reason kids don’t come back to the Lakota district after they graduate college is simple, they can’t afford to.  A twenty something with an average college debt between 50K and 100K cannot afford to purchase a home in the affluent Lakota community where average homes range between $200K to $300K. I know this first-hand because I have children in this age group, and they have moved back to Lakota to buy a nice home of their own in that price range and they looked all over the Cincinnati area for the best opportunity.  They are unusually successful as a professional couple.  They were able to buy a home in the Lakota district.  They are unlikely to use the Lakota school system to teach their children, however they are tax payers in the community.  But most young people their age are so saddled with debt; they can never hope to make enough money to purchase a home in that price range.  This means families with children who might want to use the Lakota school system will not be able to afford to move into the community because property values are so high.  Only successful adults with grown children will be able to continue living in the Lakota district.  That is what is driving the Lakota enrollment decline.

Yet, even knowing this information, Lakota’s administration is ignoring it choosing instead to pick and choose their facts.  They want to give their teachers who average in salary over $63K per year a raise when the collective bargaining agreement with the union is up in 2014.  They are not planning for any reductions in force, or even working their salary structure to meet the community budget established through the election process.  Instead, they are relying on fear tactics to win over voters which is dishonest, and negligent.  Fear tactics like saying “Excellent with Distinction” (at Lakota) is in jeopardy without new tax money.  We are in danger of becoming a second-class district.”

Without context the situation is complicated at Lakota, which is why I explained it with a bullwhip economics video.  Most people take these professional government workers at their word which is a mistake.  People are too busy in their lives to compare the notes of what was said in the media by Lakota eight months ago and what they say now after they examine Lakota’s need for more tax money not due to economic conditions of the Lakota community, but the administration’s own desire to cave under the union demands for a collective bargaining agreement in 2014.  To say anything other than the truth is misleading and after all that we’ve been through at Lakota the administrators still think the taxpaying residents are too stupid to see through their sham.  The facts of the matter is not that Lakota needs a tax increase, but rather they need a major employee reduction of nearly 100 teachers and administrators over the next 10 years.  They should be able to achieve such a reduction with tax decreases over the next decade instead of the other way around, but they will never utter such a truth—because that’s not what they are about.  As government workers they want to do one thing, and one thing only, to grow jobs through government off the backs of tax payers never putting their eyes upon reality in a hope that the formula will never collapse on itself.  But the formula is in serious jeopardy, not just at Lakota, but every school district in the country that is filled with an aging population that isn’t having as many children as they once did, and the children they do have aren’t making enough money to support the tax demands of the growing government.  The recipe for disaster is upon us, and is just now beginning to be seen in the embattled land of Lakota, in Liberty Township/West Chester, Ohio.

Click Below to see the source articles of this content:

Journal News, Janurary 2013

The Cincinnati Enquirer, July 2013

Here is the situation nationally, but featuring Columbus, Ohio from the New York Times, July 2012

Rich Hoffman

Contact me at www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

The Best Talk Show Host in America: Doc Thompson ignites the flames of liberty with ‘The Blaze’!

What is the strongest beacon for freedom in the world today?  Is it Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, John Stossel, or any other modern commenter, publisher, or financier?  I would say not.  Is it the multitude of freedom oriented websites like FreedomWorks, or American Thinker?  I would say not.  Rather, I would say that it’s a new force to the entertainment world.  Several years ago the former Fox News star Glenn Beck started his own news organization called The Blaze—which is changing the way the news is delivered.  As an online publication that rivals traditional magazines like Time, Life, and People it also specializes in providing the latest scoop on news stories in the way that made the Drudge Report so important to the art of breaking news stories.  But it’s not even The Blaze that I’m speaking about—not as a website based news source.  In January of 2013 Glenn Beck created The Blaze Radio Network which is an all internet radio station that broadcasts online outside of FCC regulation.  Normally these kinds of operations are fly-by-night and built with pure heart, but little money.  Well, not anymore.  Glenn Beck has invested a considerable amount of his personal fortune into the new Blaze Radio Network and brought in top talent like Doc Thompson and his partner Skip to provide 24 hour a day seven days a week news and entertainment radio that is unparalleled anywhere.

I was very disheartened to learn that my friend Doc Thompson was leaving Cincinnati.  I have been a talk radio fan all my life.  I used to lie in bed as a kid and listen to radio broadcasts from 700 WLW and WMOH till the pre-dawn hours while the rest of the world slept, literally and figuratively.   During my working years, I would listen to talk radio through long hours of 2nd and 3rd shift hard labor.  As I grew older and had started participating in talk radio actively I enjoyed being more than just a listener, especially on Doc Thompson’s Cincinnati show.  I respect the art of being a talk show host.  But Doc was a bit too freedom oriented for the sports talk stations of Cincinnati, and was too big of a name to put on a station that didn’t have a voice equaling his own booming enunciations.  So it didn’t take long before Doc moved on to the Detroit market leaving a void in Cincinnati, and the freedom movement that was so strong here.

There are other voices, but on FCC controlled radio stations, they are somewhat handcuffed by their station managers, and the advertisers who essentially control the content.  Doc has been a breath of fresh air wherever he has worked, but the stations he worked for never allowed him to utilize his full potential of talent consisting of humor, deep political analysis, and a tremendous range of topics that he can discuss.  But more than anything, Doc is the opposite of the kind of radio host that Howard Stern has been—he has deep convictions and tries to be a good person.  He wants to do good with his microphone, and that has hindered him during his long career………..until now.  Glenn Beck hired Doc Thompson in January to start off his new Blaze Radio Network with the 6 AM to 9 AM morning show just ahead of Glenn Beck’s national show and the gloves have come off.  For the benefit of my readers here I have placed two of Doc’s recent shows on the following video clips so that they can be listened to on demand in their entirety.  I would suggest playing them and filling your day with their contents.  There is a lot of comedy, loads of great information, and some deep sincerity from Doc and Skip which is typical of them in what I consider to be one of the best radio show in the history of talk radio that was only made possible because of Glenn Beck’s innovative, and bold investment in the enterprise.

The reason I consider The Blaze Radio Network to be the purest beacon available for the freedom movement is because it is free, and it is not under the regulation of the government in any way.  This allows the programming on the Blaze Radio to be unusually unconcerned with regulators who can threaten to pull their license if at least a balanced approach to statist concepts isn’t adhered to.  Every television, and radio station in America is typically concerned about these federal regulations, and it does water down the content, even on programs like Rush Limbaugh’s.

Doc and Skip are for the first times in their life completely free as talk show hosts, and they are making excellent use of that liberty.  Before any organization can hope to be a beacon of freedom to the listeners they service, they must in fact be free themselves.  Because of the commitment of Glenn Beck into The Blaze Radio Network, it is the most “free thinking” broadcasting anywhere in the world.  It functions the way that The Constitution intended with the 1st Amendment of the Bill of Rights, to use free speech not in a destructive way to boost ratings with sex, and deviant discussion, but with high quality content from people who care deeply about the topics they discuss.  And for the first time, radio hosts who work for The Blaze have a boss in Glenn Beck who is just as committed to liberty as they are.

I know Doc Thompson personally.  I have been to dinner with him where he and Skip would not stop doing research for their radio show even at 1 AM in the morning.  Doc never turns off his engine.  He never completely shuts down.  Radio work and the matters of current events are his number one passion.  He is constantly analyzing material for his shows, and he ruthlessly looks for fresh content.  Doc is one of the hardest working people I know, and in entertainment/news, this is certainly the case.

Doc has been fighting for a chance to do what he is currently doing for more than 20 years of radio in cities all over the United States.  In one of his darkest days of recent past, he never let up off the gas.  I remember vividly when his wife Yuna Lee left her television job in Richmond, Virginia so she could finally marry Thompson after several years of a long distance relationship.  Finally they were going to be together, living not only in the same house, but in the same city.  Yuna boldly left her job to take a job at Channel 2 in Dayton where she works to this day.  But the very moment the two were married, Doc lost his job in Cincinnati.  He was always a bit too passionate, too “wholesome,” and too “Tea Party” for the Cincinnati stations, which left him jobless again looking for a home.  Even in those moments when he was most tempted to change his style to fit the producers of radio shows, he didn’t.  He held tight for a syndication deal because he knew he was that good and he needed someone to believe in him with financial backing.

Glenn Beck was that guy, and the benefit to freedom is that finally Doc Thompson has NOTHING in his way to be a serious pain in the ass to statists, progressives, communists, union thugs, race baiters, education empires, and every parasitic entity hanging from the halls of government.  For the first time in his professional life Doc Thompson is free to provide the kind of radio that hasn’t been conceived since the very early days of radio broadcasting before the FCC put its claws into the lives of every radio listener.  Doc takes full advantage of this freedom, as evidence in the over 5 hours of broadcasting played above.  I hope you took full advantage of those clips to let Doc’s voice bring the sounds of freedom to your ears.  The Blaze Radio Network it has nearly replaced all my old news sources.  I play it all the time, at home, in the garage, in my back yard, in my car, on my iPod—especially during flights, on vacation, in the middle of the mountains, and in the deepest valleys while camping.  Because The Blaze is broadcast across the internet, and podcasting is always available on Soundcloud, every show Doc and Skip do can be listened to on demand.  By loading his segments onto my iPod I can attend business engagements pausing his information, then resuming when my time frees up.  When riding my motorcycle, I can broadcast Doc into my helmet through my iPod, which is a completely new technology.  Years ago the only way to listen to a radio on a motorcycle was to have a bulky device attached to the handle bars.  Now I can hear Doc anywhere at anytime of day and the information is free.  CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO FIND DOC’S BROADCASTS ON SOUNDCLOUD:

http://soundcloud.com/docthompson

For traditional radio talk show listeners, The Blaze Radio Network has a full staff that broadcasts out of New York the news at the top and bottom of every hour just like most other AM stations.  They are doing much better work than Fox News is, and certainly leaps and bounds above CNN, MSNBC, or any other news source.  The Blaze guys are on top of just about everything 24 hours a day 7 days a week.  They are always there.

For these reasons listed above Doc Thompson on The Blaze Radio Network is the best and most authentic example of a voice for the freedom movement that there is in the world.  Doc works harder, plays harder, and has the tools in his tool box given to him by Glenn Beck to be a monstrous success, which he and Skip are well on their way to becoming.  What they are doing is the wave of the future, and the most effective form of new media there is.  I trust The Blaze in ways that I have never trusted any other news source. Their news is good even when they don’t agree with what the other side has to say. Such as in this example:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/08/07/we-should-be-like-jay-leno-glenn-beck-defends-tonight-show-host-in-moving-monologue/

The Blaze is a game changer in the news business, and Doc Thompson working for the Blaze Radio Network is a game changer in the world of radio.  The radio business will never be the same again, now that Doc Thompson is loose and able to communicate the truth where it lives most brilliantly, at The Blaze operated by Glenn Beck and managed by hundreds of wonderful people who deeply care about the state of America and it’s role to the rest of the world who look with longing eyes toward the freedoms that only we have.  I would recommend dear reader that you tune in to this wonderful tool for freedom and support it with your attention which will be mutually beneficial for many years to come.

Rich Hoffman

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!