Why Public Labor Unions Fail: The Science of Stagnation

It is one thing to say that communism, or labor unions do not work, that they are bad for American society, and history shows us that the typical result when these collective organizations have a majority rule are either a stagnate society or a declining one. The benefits of collective ideas when it comes to social construction are short-lived and only last a few generations. But the big question is why? What is the science behind this failure?

Well, there is a science to it, a predictable path that can be witnessed and predicted accurately as to why labor unions and other collective organizations are doomed to failure. For such a science I turn to the work of Robert Pirsig, which came to my mind while I was writing another article about the needs for voting YES on Issue 2. Click here to see that article:

Pirsig many years ago came up with a definition, a way of determining the “quality” of something that needs to be understood in reference to what I’m about to say. I created a chart which articulates this definition of quality into two types, Romantic and Classic. So click here to see that chart and learn a bit about these two types. But for the purpose of understanding why unions are doomed to fail understanding that there is a science behind determining the quality of something is important and can be obtained with mathematic certainty.

Once the quality of something is determined then that quality can be broken down into two types, Static Quality and Dynamic Quality. Static Quality tends to be all the rules of society, or the rules of your business. Static Quality is the rules that everything runs off of. One of the reasons that I like Robert Pirsig is that he has done the work of understanding the classic Greek thinkers, but where the classics fall short, because metaphysically, society has advanced, we now know of quantum physics and have an understanding of how the universe works that is based on much better data than the astronomical observations made with primitive telescopes. So our society has advanced, and the force that drives that expansion is Dynamic Quality. An example of Dynamic Quality would be Leonardo Da Vinci, or Bill Gates, people who brought radical changes in thought to the Static Quality of the rules society had previously lived by. Pirsig is the most recent philosopher to take into consideration this Dynamic Quality change with the new science discovered in the most recent century.

Dynamic Quality are the rebels of society, or even of a body. They are the cells of a body that fight off diseases and strengthen an immune system or they are the people who challenge conventional thought and force an expansion of human understanding. Between the two types of Quality, both types are needed. Without Static Quality everything would fly apart, and chaos would rule. Dynamic Quality needs Static Quality to keep some sense of order in existence. But Static Quality also needs Dynamic Quality to allow it to grow. In fact in organizations where Dynamic Quality is stifled Static Quality has shown to actually proceed in an evolutionary decline. Without the presence of a Dynamic Quality regression of an organism or an organization is the natural next process. This could be said to be the cause of aging in human beings, or the decline of cultures the human beings have built. This can also be seen in sports organizations that become complacent and do the same things over and over and why some teams are always competitive because they are always seeking to bring a “dynamic” quality to their teams. Maintaining a dynamic order to anything is the key to any measure of success. But you must do so while still maintaining a sense of order, otherwise known as Static Quality.

Labor unions fail because in order to preserve their Static Quality, which is the focus of all their endeavors, they destroy any chance of allowing Dynamic Quality into their organization to help challenge their beliefs and expand their culture. So instead, they are a culture on decline.

A decline in culture can be seen most evidently in inner cities where the problem is not one of race. It is of losing the aspects of their Dynamic Culture. When welfare and other government care is introduced to the culture and the parents of the children of that culture are no longer pushing young people to become “dynamic” then the individuals who have these tendencies will turn their efforts into a destructive behavior that leads to their premature deaths or they move away from the inner city leaving the Static Quality of the inner city belief system to rule, which leads to the decline that can seen by everyone.

This is also the reason why public education is failing, is because the dynamic individuals are punished by being different rather than celebrated or challenged for the health of confrontation. The dynamic elements are attacked like a cell in a body would attack a white blood cell in the body because the white blood cell is different from the common cell. This process leads to disease in the body the same as it does in society. The result is no different.

This explanation is but a fraction of what I could say on this topic. In fact, I could write volumes of books on the matter, but for the novice in this field, the person who normally doesn’t think about these kinds of things, this should at least suffice to demonstrate that there is an order to all this discussion about central organization from government, or labor unions and understanding why the work and products they produce always seem flat and unimportant. It is because by their very nature; they spend their energy as organizations fighting off their Dynamic Quality competitors in order to protect the Static Quality of their existence.

So the argument is not one of union busting, Republicans or Democrats, or young against old. It’s not the Middle Class against the “rich.” It is simply about the battle between Static Quality and Dynamic Quality being stifled which is the direct cause of decline in any culture, and that is the premier reason why labor unions and government will always fail.

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

Money, Prostitutes, and Libertarian Islands: The history of fleeing tyranny

The Report Card for local school districts in Southern Ohio are out during a year where almost all of these schools have cut back their spending dramatically, reduced their staffing to unprecedented levels, yet still maintained their excellent ratings. Doc Thompson of 700 WLW had some fun with the facts because he is the only media personality who has tackled the hypocrisy of school funding. The same administrators who are now patting themselves on the back for performing well in their school districts are the very same administrators who proclaimed that the school districts would decline if tax payers didn’t pass new school levies. Listen to that broadcast here:

During Doc’s discussion he covered the debacle of college expectations, where the debt for college loans is about to exceed 1 trillion dollars in the United States. Professors and college administrators have marketed their product of education so well that every American believes they must have that product in order to be successful. However, to a person who sees clearly it is obvious what’s going on, those in the education industry share a common thread with unions to communicate their message that more money makes education better, and are manipulating the situation to suit their own financial interests. There is no evidence which suggests that more money poured into education makes education better at all. The entire premise of education is based on a foundation void of results or measurements of any kind, because the real origin of the education culture has a much more cryptic intention.

On my way out to speak with Doc Thompson on his broadcast toward the end, I was engaged in a conversation with a person who was struggling to save enough money to put his kids through college. My comment to him was “why, with the rate that tuition is increasing uncontrollably, and the amount of students coming out of college these days with a degree but no job to work, why does college for your child make sense primarily considering the expense?” All the man could say to me was that he had a moral obligation to give a college education to his kids. (CLICK HERE TO READ WHY THIS IS A BAD IDEA) I felt sorry for the guy, because he was obviously a victim of the marketing machine of education that has been allowed to grow uncontrollably and indicates a problem of a higher nature.

The trouble with America’s colleges as they are now is that they attack the kind of person who traditionally is an American. Colleges are inventions of Europe and were brought to the United States by people who value education a great deal, just as I do. What was mistaken in this process was the failure to recognize just what an America was and why it needed to be protected from foreign ideas.

In the great novel, The Frontiersman, the essence of the American is seen clearly. The very land from which I am writing this piece was embroiled in a wilderness war with the Native American Shawnee Indians against the English frontiersman. The frontiersman who came to America in those days wanted nothing more than a fresh start away from the European hierarchy, which can be seen to this very day not only in Europe, but in virtually every college institution. The Americans who founded this country became something of a hybrid adventurer who craved freedom from political strife more than their fear of death, and America was a “chance” to escape those psychological shackles. The personality of the American adventurer became an interesting mix of the Native American warrior personality merged with the European.

Well, once the frontier battles were fought by people like one of my all time favorite Americans, Simon Kenton, Tecumseh, Blue Jacket who was a white guy adopted by Indians and fought on their behalf, and Daniel Boone, the Europeans moved in droves to this new land cleared for them by the spirit of the adventurers. Those adventurers resenting the migrating Europeans continued to move westward for all the same reasons that Native American tribes were being pushed westward. It was in this wave of people who settled in New York, Philadelphia, Boston and the like who brought with them the university system, and the education methods of their homeland. The trouble is Europe was a broken, fractured land full of conquered people from thousands of years of war. It was this system that poured into the borders of the United States after the frontier wars, almost immediately after the American Revolution.

It is not by accident that John Wayne was born in Iowa; Annie Oakley was born in Greenville, Ohio. Roy Rogers “King of the Cowboys” himself was born just outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. It’s because the land of the Midwest, the land of the Frontier Wars, was ignored by this emerging European style culture being established on the East Coast, so the people born in this region still maintained some of the spirit of the brave adventures who fought and died in that part of the country and those traits showed up in those famous personalities who went on to evoke the spirit and adventure of westward expansion, which is an innate desire in not just American culture, but world-wide. Freedom is a universal desire.

That spirit was captured I think pretty accurately in St. Louis at the arch. They have a nice little museum at the foot of the arch that shows this whole process pretty well, from the objective standpoint of history. But what doesn’t get dealt with is why; what were the motivations of the frontiersman in the first place to brave a strange new land laced with danger. Well, the progressive history education in this European mindset of the universities will say that it is greed that the white man was after, greed for more. But as history now shows, that greed of which they speak is the same greed that we are hearing about today, from the same segment of the population which looks to Europe as the secure hand of a parent and thus explains they way they think. They are the same people who say that people who do not wish to pay more taxes are greedy, because those Americans do not support the social mechanisms of the tax hungry progressive. Europeans since the start of America viewed the type of person who founded the county with distaste. American’s were considered “uncivilized ruffians, and “undisciplined slobs.” The idea of the cowboy, and the Indian were terms of terror in the eyes of the European noble, and they did not have a hard time convincing a conquered people, and let’s face it, all of Europe contained conquered people at that time that life in America was for the fool and downtrodden. The European nobles had to market America this way to keep all their people from being tempted to flood into America to flee the tyranny of Europe.

Karl Marx and other European types like John Mayard Keynes, both residents of London came up with their own solutions to the European problem of declining economic gain, as America seemed to accelerate at a frightening rate under the flag of freedom. Those ideas were of course Marxism and Keynesian economics, and England adopted these methods more with an eye to America than at themselves. Through the university system, which American universities were attempting to duplicate from the European model of places like Oxford, English nobility infected American education with the notions of those types of European thinkers. In this way they were able to slow down the growth of America and prevent the new nation from getting too far ahead of Europe.

Another philosopher more than a century before Marx named John Locke who had frequent correspondence with my favorite pirate of the Caribbean, Henry Morgan was learning through Morgan’s exploits the merit of valor and freedom for the first time. Morgan was the ultimate frontiersman and it was the work of Locke who influenced the American intellectual rebels like Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin to cast Europe away, keeping the good but scrapping the bad, and this worked for over a century. Morgan had been hired by the king of England to roam the Caribbean for one reason, to keep Spain from accumulating too much wealth from the sacking of the Mayan and Aztec cultures of what would become Mexico. It was fear of Spain gaining too much wealth which provoked the whole pirate era. It was this same fear which caused Europe to infect American education with subversion tactics of an ideology which would suppress the culture for generations to come, and thus prevent America from growing out of the reach of the rest of Europe, intellectually, philosophically, economically and worst of all, as a world power.

It is this European system of education that our public schools are built around. The goal of these public schools is not to teach kids about Daniel Boone, or Simon Kenton, or Henry Morgan but about all the things they need to know so they can get into college. And once they are in college, radical European sympathizers will then teach the social principles of European nobility so that the American citizen will be “cultured” and not emit the kind of radical frontier independence that was so dangerous to the mind of the European when they had to confront the stories coming back from America in the adventures of Lewis and Clark. (I’ve been to college, my wife has, and I have many friends who teach in college, so I speak with firsthand knowledge)

When Teddy Roosevelt had captured America’s imagination with his exploits out West as a cowboy, and a rough-rider, it was Europe who seduced him under their wing. Roosevelt, being born of wealth in a European oriented culture in New York always had in him a kind of yearning to please the parent country of Europe, which was no different from a child wishes to please their own parents. After Teddy’s presidency and subsequent tour of Africa on his great year-long hunt, Europe begged Teddy to visit every noble family of their lands where they took him under their tutelage. Saul Alinsky many years later would call this process The Delphi Technique. (Click here to read all about it) It was during this trip through Europe that the monarchs seduced Teddy Roosevelt into “Progressivism.” Teddy still the rough and tumble adventurer of the Dakota’s was still mentally present, but he used the Progressive platform to split the Republican Party away from his former friend but now political rival, the President of the United States, (his successor) William Howard Taft. (also from Cincinnati) Teddy wanted to be President again, for a third term and it was the Europeans who planted the seeds in his power-hungry head. It was Teddy who then paved the way for progressives like the educator, President of Princeton University Woodrow Wilson and later Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Teddy’s younger cousin.

It was education that was used during this whole process to tie America’s wild spirit to the motherland of Europe with a yearning for European culture that survives to this day. London is a dank, compact city that is terribly crowded and rigid. Paris, the city of lovers is much the same. They are no different from any American city; in fact some of my European friends were shocked when I took them to the top of Carew Tower in Cincinnati. “My goodness, you have such high buildings here!” this coming from a guy who goes to London for everything he needs in a city. When I say that Carew Tower may be the tallest building in Cincinnati, but places like New York and Chicago have many, many more that are much taller he would just look at me like I was speaking from Mars.

Education costs too much because it is based on European models of thought which of course are failing. It is the European that threw American adventurers into the path of the Indians and created westward expansion. It was not greed for land to steal from the Native American, but a thirst for freedom that had always been there, but was suddenly released upon the discovery of the New World. Within a few centuries oppressed Europeans could leave the stifled political climate of Europe and run into the dangers of settling America, and they did.

Today American’s still love their cowboys, their NASCAR, their straight shooting Midwesterners who are descendents of those original Americans. But Americans are truly confused. The European plan to infect generations of these crazy, individualistic Americans has worked by using education institutions to halt the growth of America and turn its citizens back to the monarchs of Europe, which is what they always wanted, and yes, they do think in terms of centuries, where the typical American does not. People like the guy I mentioned at the beginning of this are dedicating their lives to sending his children to an education institution that is designed to turn his child against everything he thinks he likes about America, but has forgotten in the chaos of living. The man does not question whether the value of the tuition is even worth the money, because his mind has been trained by the education system itself to support the system blindly.

This led me to wonder about the mind of human beings. Why would they openly support a tyrannical system when they can see with their own eyes that it is bad for them? Well, all one has to do to understand that is to study the behavior of a prostitute who will sell her body for sex, subject herself to tremendous danger then turn around and give the money she’s earned to a pimp out of fear that the pimp will beat her. The woman is perfectly free to roam the entire Earth, and she could easily escape the pimp’s power which is usually only relevant for a few city blocks, maybe even a portion of a town. But the woman will not leave the territory of the pimp because she knows her surroundings and lacks the spirit of adventure to exceed beyond those limits, like a typical European. She will gladly walk into the violent abuse of her pimp because she knows him. This is similar to the guy struggling to pay for college tuition for his children. He does not question the validity of the money needed, he will just prostitute himself out in some blind pursuit to support a structure he knows and trusts without regard to whether that structure is right or wrong.

The conflict of the age of which we are all a part is no different now than it has always been. There are still those who know better who are looking to flee the confines of this cancerous European monarch system complete with nobility and political corruption that we are all taught to trust. Recently Peter Thiels the founder of PayPal placed over a million dollars of seed money into a manufactured island off the coast of San Francisco to give people a place to flee the corruption of government. I have met many of these types of people. You find them on obscure mountain trails in the middle of West Virginia, lonely roads in the middle of Tennessee, sitting at a bar in Key West, and on island paradises all over the Caribbean, people who just want to be left alone. They want freedom from the looters and thieves of monarchy, or European social structure, and they’ll do just about anything to have it.

So when Doc covered the report card for area schools, it is quickly revealed that it isn’t about results that the schools are really after. It’s money, and the money feeds the machine invented by Europe to suppress culture, not to expand it, so that no country on Earth would exceed the development of mother Europe. Institutional control is more persuasive than all the missiles, tanks and guns of all the worlds’ armies, because if thought can be limited and controlled, then conflict isn’t needed. And in a territory such as Europe, who has been at war with itself for several thousand years, they know very well how to wage a war whether it’s with literal troops, or thoughts in a mind. (Just read Shakespeare) But make no mistake about it, war is the objective even if the warlord who is the enemy shakes hands with a smile on their face and appear to be “cultured” and “civilized.” Such manipulations are designed to keep the mind fixed on the past so innovations of the future can be suppressed for fear that those who currently hold power can keep it.

Click here to read about all the successful people who did not go to college and make your own assessment to the validity of my content.

Remember, Einstein came up with his Theory of Relativity while working in a low-level position of a patent office, and William Sidis spent the rest of his life after predicting the existence of Black Holes 47 years ahead of their conceptual theory, working odd jobs and writing for his own amusement in obscurity. He could have owned the world with his mind alone, yet he chose to turn away from it. What does that say?????????

Education does not create intelligence; it simply passes on what others have done to share with the class the exploits of those who do things. In all the billions of hours of classes taught universities have not produced another Einstein, Sidis, or a George Lucas. It is the individual themselves who make their own way which cannot be purchased with money, and it is typical of the European noble to loot the achievements of their “subjects” to their own benefit. And this is the answer as to why schools even in cutting back their funding were still able to produce at a high level. Because it is the parents of a community who send their children to the school who make the school good, and if the child is good, then the school will be good. Social engineering with a European mindset will never change this as much as they’d desire too. The answer to this equation is contained in the Metaphysics of Quality, seen at this link.

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

Meet Lakota’s Mrs. Mantia: Is a superintendent of a school system the same as a CEO?

John Halase is a frequent contributor to the West Chester Tea Party and since he attends many school board meetings for the Lakota School System, and has a technical background, he is the perfect candidate to take some of the obscure fiscal information dressed up in the legalism of education terms and explain them in a way everyone can understand. John is one of the most neutral human beings I know. His only goal is fairness, but a firm understanding of the facts involved in any particular situation. This can be seen clearly in his presentation of August 16, 2011 to a crowd of approximately 200 to 300 people eager to understand why Lakota has placed another levy on the ballot. Central to this new discussion was the new superintendent Karen Mantia and the justification of the one-quarter of a million dollar annual cost she is to the district.

My argument when it comes to costs, which dictate to the tax payers whether or not more funding is needed to fund a school is how much is the public supplying, and if it’s sufficient, then why is there still a requirement for more funds. If the revenue is insufficient, then what criterion determines the level of funding? Well, that answer is what the community can afford, and that is determined in a vote. If the people of the district vote no, then it is the school boards job to go back and trim the budget to the level of revenue that the tax payers approved. It’s that simple.

But how it is currently is a ridiculous situation. If the community votes no, then the district just puts the issue on the ballot. Most school boards do as Lakota did, and that’s drop some staff through attrition, cut small costs like busing and sports programs because it punishes the people for voting no, and they’ll keep putting it on the ballot however many times it takes till it passes. That is a foolish business model. Lakota is on its third attempt in a two-year period, and Little Miami is on their 9th over a four-year period. Most of the schools in Southern Ohio can tell a similar story.

That’s why it becomes necessary to look at just what the costs at a school like Lakota are, what they are spending their money on. Lakota has a total of 1,976 employees at an average wage of over $62,000 per year. 600 of those employees make over $65,000 per year. Of that employee matrix there are 1,192 teachers, 712 support staff, and 72 administrators serving 18,458 students. In 2010, Lakota brought in $157 million and it spent $167 million.

Now to regulate those costs, which were obviously at a deficit even though the revenue coming in is over 150 million dollars, which is nothing to balk at; it is the job of the superintendent to manage those costs. I keep hearing that it is the superintendent, who often makes over six figures and deserves to be paid like a CEO at a corporation, should be paid so much money because as in the case of Karen Mantia, she is responsible for over 24 buildings and 2000 employees with budgets in the tens of millions of dollars. Ok, fine, but with all that responsibility I see a trend with these superintendents where they don’t behave like CEO’s at all. They behave like spoiled union workers where there’s never enough money coming in, and that’s the big difference.

Karen Mantia is no different. She started off as a teacher at Northmont City High School where she worked for 24 years as a law/economics and government history teacher. While there she was a principal, Director of Curriculum, then Assistant Superintendent. She took a job at Sycamore Community Schools as Superintendent from 2000 to 2006 for 100K per year overseeing 5,710 students. In 2006 she retired when she turned 55. She then took a job at Piqua City Schools double dipping from her retirement at Sycamore while making 117K per year managing 3,750 students. She wasn’t at Piqua long, because by 2007 she took the Superintendent position at Pickerington School District making $144,000 managing 10,500 students. It was from this position that Lakota spent $42,266 to recruit Mantia from her Pickerington position where Lakota paid her $165,000 to manage 18,458 students.

Mantia’s contract pays her a base salary of $165,000 a year plus an annual deferred compensation of a $30,000 annuity. She gets an annual performance award, retirement contribution and STRS Membership “pickups,” health and dental along with vision insurance, “known as a Cadillac plan,” Life insurance based on 2.5X her base plus annuity. She is required to work 227 days a year, she gets 23 vacation days, 15 sick days in addition to 3 personal days during that span of time. She also gets all the administrator paid holidays. She is also paid for any professional membership meeting expenses. The over-all cost of Superintendent Mantia is one quarter of a million dollars, ($165 + $30K + $61K (31.7% benefits) per year. Mantia also has a severance package that is 3 years her base salary plus annuity up to the 5 years or less remaining on her contract for contract termination.

Now, to me, those are wonderful benefits. I think it is extremely generous. And what I expect a person so well compensated to do is to manage the district costs like a CEO, because she is currently paid higher than the Governor of Ohio.

But already, the indications are that she will provide a “business as usual” approach. On her first meeting as a superintendent, was the meeting where the school board voted to go for yet another school levy this November. So why?

The problem is, Mantia like all the other superintendents come from a teaching background and seem to be sympathetic to the union. In Ohio, because by law every teacher must be in a union and as a teacher Mantia was a union member, and she will not choose to take a hard-line against union demands, because it is because of those union demands in the past that she is able to receive the tremendous benefits she has received at Lakota. This is the big difference between superintendents and CEO’s. Mantia is a functionary and not making hard decisions about labor costs and management of them. Her primary function is that of a politician, not a cost reducer. Her job is to secure more revenue from the community, and make cosmetic cuts to convince the tax payers that they are doing everything to reduce costs, when in reality she is protecting the integrity of the union contracts which just continue to grow without any mechanism at reduction, which is needed.

If a superintendent could promise the community that the revenue needed by the district could decrease year after year, and at a certain point when we realize that we’ve minimized staff, wages, and contracts to a level that actually jeopardizes an excellent school, it is only then that any tax increase should be explored. But with education currently it is perceived that every year an education budget will increase and that just isn’t going to work as a long-term sustainable model. That is the reason why there is so much fuss about what Mantia makes as far as compensation. The education industry sells the superintendent position as a CEO, and in comparison to other CEO’s she holds a “lame duck, powerless” position that is carefully regulated by union contracts. It would be the CEO’s job to operate the corporation at a profit, which would be met with an increase in sales, and a decrease in costs. With a school superintendent, they are regulated to only dealing with 20% of the costs that are not covered by a union contract which means they cannot control their costs, and can only ask for more revenue in the form of taxes to cover the disparity. That is why such high compensation for administrators in education positions are considered too high, and why Lakota should have looked for a superintendent that was much, much cheaper.

It is decisions like those made in acquiring a new superintendent at Lakota that drive up the cost of education for everyone, and display vividly for all to see where the real problems truly are.

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

RICH HOFFMAN NO LONGER RECOGNIZES THE AUTHORITY OF ANY PUBLIC UNION

There are few things that truly anger me, and this whole issue of the attempt to bargain with the unions over the repeal of Senate Bill 5 is one of them. Because, the comments of We Are Ohio, a union backed group articulates the entire problem when they said, “we view the repeal of Senate Bill 5 as only the beginning.” It is that attitude which has virtually bankrupted the State of Ohio in order to pay for the services public sector unions have manipulated for themselves. For the unions to even proclaim for a moment that they are somehow innocent of any wrong doing in the whole budget crises of the age, that they are victims in some warped universe, is the ultimate denial from a group of people fighting to cover-up over 50 years of political mistakes instigated by their little “clubs.”

It is in the type of fury that I feel right now that I feel compelled to do something similar to what one of my favorite writers Robert Pirsig has done, and that’s to buy a sail boat and retire traveling the world without a care, because as Pirsig believed in frustration when people had difficulty understanding his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila. It was the same frustration that Ayn Rand experienced after Atlas Shrugged came out, when people were slow to understand the material. Those two writers are part of modern philosophy. The trouble with our society is that it is believed that philosophic growth ended with Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Voltaire, Marx and the several others from the “old days” of philosophy. They forget that modern philosophers like Pirsig and Rand are continuing along the traditions of thinking based on the evolution of society.

Well, I’m a person who understands the work of Pirsig without any difficulty. He matches my own thoughts which have been forged from a full life of experience. I can honestly say that I have seen every type of human deception, witnessed every type of scandal, and experienced the most brutal forms of violence first hand. I have to say that as a qualifier for what I will now say, because my feelings are harsh in regard to public unions.

I am not a supporter of unions of any kind. In private industry, we have seen unions drive up the cost of a product, and if the demand for that product can support it, then fine. Having a union should be an option to people who want them. To date, unions for entertainment and sports are the strongest surviving unions, because people have shown they will pay the extra money for a ticket, or sports memorabilia to support sports unions, and buy movie tickets for all the entertainment unions. But in manufacturing, once NAFTA was signed into law in the early 90’s, jobs have fled the United States because the labor is simply too expensive. Only large manufacturing jobs who rely on government contracts have truly survived. It is unions that have killed manufacturing jobs in the United States and I resent them for it.

But the public sector union has absolutely no place in modern society. I personally don’t even recognize their right to exist. A union is simply a club of like-minded people, just like any club. It’s no more complicated than that. However, the make-up of this club tends to be, unless compelled by law to join, the very weak. They are the type of people who fear sticking up for their own rights to an employer. They are the type who prefers to cower behind a group of friends where courage only comes to them in mass. Unions have achieved what they have through violence, extortion, intimidation and other methods which lack personal valor. Unions allow the complacent and average to be equal to the best and that is a crime against society.

It is in the pursuit of being the best that makes one the best. One cannot be the best just by being paid wages that are high. The short-term sense of fairness and antagonistic relationship these types of employees have with their employers is culturally deficient and socially destructive. Unions kill culture the same as deforestation and drought killed Mayan, Aztec and Native American Cultures, just as war and territory wars have held back European society. Unions have their roots in Europe and are products of the Dark Ages. They should be despised in American culture like cancer is despised in the human body.

Public Unions should be illegal. They are not the back bones of the middle-class as they are sold by the complacent, the small-minded, and intellectually deficient. Unions are a short-term solution to the jealousy of those who lack ability, or ambition. To those who are too lazy to push themselves to reach beyond their limits to earn a sense of pride in their self-reliance. Unions, as a club of such lazy types have attracted the masses, because it is true that many people are born with a natural inclination to follow, but should look with eagerness at those around them who are strong and strive to be strong too. Unions kill this process. It forces the strong to be average and the weak rule in mass, so whatever enterprise is created under this arrangement is less than it otherwise would be.

Unions are a fix for the human sense of insecurity to have and maintain a sense of extended family. It is common for union members to refer to each other as a “brother” or “sister” as though their unity is bound by flesh and DNA. The only unity of such types is one of poor mental evolution. These people share in common a sense of basic functioning from the food that goes into their bellies, and the sex they can achieve with their reproductive organs. They are what the Kundalini Yoga refers to as the beings of the lowers states, those of Chakra 2, maybe 3 at the highest. Their only concern for existence is what goes into their bellies or comes out of their penises. They lack any sense of history but what occurs in their lifetimes, and they care not for what the waste of their lives produces in the future.

Unions are the inventions of fools, miscreants, socialists, the weak-minded, the violent, the power-hungry, and the empire builder. They are the mechanisms of fantasy for the social reformer, the corrupt magpie wishing to undermine society with a smile but a hand on the knife concealed under their clothing, (metaphorically speaking).

The gains public unions have made over the years they achieved through either the threat of violence or the threat of work stoppage, not the merit of their arguments. Not on the strength of their ideas. They gained respect through fear and are no different from a street gang fighting over turf in a city, or a drug cartel leader establishing a trade route over a rival cartel. They are no different from the organized crime habits perfected by Al Capone, and evolving to this current day in various enterprises where a baseball bat and a threatened loved one halts any intrusion into their business practices.

If I were the governor of Ohio, this is what I’d be thinking when a group of public unions struggling to maintain their business monopoly on the tax payers of Ohio wanted to meet. And when the Governor refused to meet with these people he spoke as my representative, because I did not want to even give those people the merit of an audience. They should be illegal, not legitimized with even an acknowledgement. By sitting down with those union leaders the governor gives them a strength they do not deserve, that was taken in the first place by violence and manipulation, and represent the kind of America that Karl Marx envisioned, not the one of Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, or John Locke conceived.

But don’t mind my opinion dear reader. My view of America is that the Federalist Papers were too imperialistic, if I lived in the time of the founding fathers I would without a doubt be an Anti-Federalist! But today I shake my head at the lost souls around me who have such a shallow understanding of history to actually believe they have a “right” to special privileges because they are a member of a club funded by the tax payer. My anger becomes paramount in my personal philosophy. The anger is from the kind of frustration one might feel toward a child who you are trying to teach to read, yet can’t even read the first word in a sentence.

These people against Issue 2, these union leaders, and blind followers have been taught all their lives all the wrong things. It is those wrongly taught things that are the sources of wrecked lives, health problems, broken marriages, and children who dislike their parents, because looted money from the tax payer cannot fix the mind that drives the bodies of these union people. They are on a path of personal destruction and do not have the eyes to see that it is their fault the foundations of modern society is failing. They fail to understand because they are stuck on the fixed idea of fairness created by philosophers long dead, and refuse to accept the new data which is arriving to our minds in great abundance in this very modern age that indicates mankind is doing all the wrong things for the sustenance of the human race.

A destructive class of people have the right to be stupid. But they do not have the right to dictate to a governor a seat at the table of power, a power they stole from the tax payer and did not earn with their personal merit of strength and intelligence. By sitting down with a simple club which is what a union is, the governor and his staff will only appease a mob hell-bent on personal destruction and have no interest in negotiation of any kind unless that negotiation involves the sacrifice of someone else. History has taught us this, and if we have not learned by now, then hope for intelligence to rule ever, appears unrealistic.

I understand now why Pirsig sails the oceans of the world on his boat, because the masses do not understand his words, because they waste their time in groups like these unions, reducing their minds with false philosophy and sit with their mouths open for society to feed them like some little bird in a nest waiting for a mother to drop food into it’s mouth. The more I think of it, the more Pirsig’s solution to society’s foolish behavior seems rational and actually evolutionary preservative. Because it is only on the open sea void of politics and the rules of mankind that the nature of existence makes sense. Thus the source of my anger is not at myself for choosing not to join Pirsig on the open waters, but it is in my belief that people are worth the fight, to help them become better than they show an inclination to become themselves. Such a task at this point seems pointless in the wake of a deal with the labor unions over repealing Senate Bill 5.

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

The Truth about Issue 2: Meet Shannon Jones in her own words

As I wrote this article there has been talk of a deal on Friday with the labor unions to back off their repeal. If such a thing is true, it is extremely unfortunate, and weak-kneed. It would represent everything that is wrong in politics, which would not be surprising. But lets see what happens.

Shannon Jones came to the West Chester Tea Party to speak about the merits of Senate Bill 5, now known as Issue 2 for the November ballot. The video below is the complete version of her presentation, including the Q & A session where a union president confronted her. The video is long, understandably, but well worth a viewing so that the contents of that meeting can be shared with every Ohioan, because it is worth every single tax payer’s time to understand just what Senate Bill 5 does for them.

Issue 2 (Senate Bill 5) does a lot of things that are very, very good for the average tax payer. Without it and this is not fear mongering, Ohio will struggle to pay its bills for the foreseeable future. In fact, every day that Issue 2 is prevented from being a law is equivalent to running up your personal credit card debt.

Issue 2 does not get rid of unions, or collective bargaining. It allows those things to continue. It does not cut salaries or hurt police officers and firefighters with unsafe work practices. What Issue 2 does do however is make it a choice for public employees to join a union. It does prevent public employees from being able to go on strike to extort higher wages and bring to a halt the services those public sector employees are expected to perform. And it does base compensation on performance rather than seniority. To me, and most everyone who can breathe air, those are very needed and common sense necessities that should be obvious to everyone.

So why are the public unions against it? Well, it takes away the monopoly status that unions currently hold over public employees. Think about it this way. If you are a teacher and you want to teach in the State of Ohio, you must join a teachers union to be employed. The unions know that if they can lobby to create more teaching jobs, then they are guaranteed a fixed amount of union dues that they can budget around. If it is questioned just how important union dues are to a public sector union, just study the actions of Diana Frey, who was considered extremely legitimate until she was accused of stealing over $750,000 from her members. Union dues are how unions buy and wield power, so those dues are very, very important to them. But not all employees want to be a part of that type of thing, and should never be compelled by law to be in a union. It should be a choice, and if the unions truly have something valuable to offer, then membership in a union would be lucrative and a choice.

Unions are terrified of Issue 2 and have spent a lot of time and money trying very hard to pull every emotional string they can to hide their true intentions. This is the source of all the misinformation coming from the unions, and the reason they are attempting to hide behind police and firefighters, as a way to appeal to the public and hide the scandalous nature of their desires. And scandalous is the correct word.

The State House and Senate acted quickly with Senate Bill 5 for one primary reason, it wasn’t to bust unions, or hurt union workers; it was to stop the bleeding that is primarily going on in schools all across the state of not being able to control their costs. Unions have nobody to blame but themselves, they have successfully through legislation prevent elected management, (school boards, trustees, and city councils) from being able to regulate their costs with the radical extortion methods like strikes and manipulative work practices in binding arbitration. Years and years of this behavior has completely eliminated any management of tax funds which have driven up the costs and expectation of education and every person who pays taxes should be furious about it! It is solely because of this union monopoly problem that tax levies on Ohio property owners seems to come every couple of years with no end in sight. Issue 2 was created quickly to get the problems exacerbated under 8 years of governorship by Bob Taft and 4 years of complacency by Ted Strickland under control. It’s true that the financial meltdown did not occur over night, it took 12 years. But starting a couple of years ago, the costs of public employees started to spiral out of control which brings us to the current crises where schools are out of money, cities are going bankrupt, and the only fix anybody can come up with is to raise taxes on taxpayers who are already taxed too high.

Anyone who votes NO on Issue 2 is responsible for hurting our school systems, bankrupting our cities, and allowing practices that are highly corrosive to the lives of every resident of Ohio. Anyone who votes NO is guilty of putting off a problem that is already out of control and needs to be dealt with immediately.

When Issue 2 finally becomes law, police will still be on the streets. Fire fighters will still be there to put out fires and help provide emergency medical treatment. Teachers will still be teaching kids. The only thing that will change is those employees will have to adjust their lives just a bit, but elected officials that tax payers put into office to manage their tax dollars will actually be able to do the job they are supposed to be doing, which is something that must happen.

A YES vote on Issue 2 is the only responsible thing to do in order to ensure a positive future. If you have any doubts, just watch the video from the author of Senate Bill 5 herself. At over an hour of real information from a true source, the truth cannot be missed unless the viewer is one of those who want to maintain the monopoly of public union rule.

The control is in the hands of you, the voter. You cannot say this time that your vote does not matter, because with this issue, it matters more than it ever has and the implications will resonate though the scholarship of history.

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

Public Unions Should be Illegal: They are simply too expensive and too demanding

CLICK HERE TO SEE AN ARTICLE I WROTE CALLED PAYING FOR PROTECTION: THE ORGANIZED CRIME OF TEACHERS UNIONS FOR MATERIAL SIMILAR TO THE ONE BELOW.

Leslie Ghiz of Cincinnati City Council goes ballistic on 700 WLW while talking to Doc Thompson about the lack of interest in dealing with the Diana Frey case, the public union president accused of stealing over $750,000 from her members. The source of the complacency she is upset about is the very reason why public positions simply cost too much money to the tax payer. Click here to listen to that broadcast:

There is a disconnect between the reality of the public union leader and the rest of the world. Doc Thompson recently did another show where the average tax payer would have a lot of difficulty coming up with $1000 if they needed to without going into debt. Yet the public union expectation when their contracts demand more money is just to raise taxes to fund their demands, and they don’t care at all that they are draining the communities of their wealth, who simply don’t have the money. You can listen to that broadcast here:

The public sector unions have shown no restraint, no sense of economic understanding, no compassion for their employers, which are the tax payers. They have been excessively greedy, corrupt (Diana Frey and she’s not the only one), manipulative, and perfectly willing to walk off the job if management doesn’t see things their way. Their behavior has driven up the cost of their employment simply to the point of being very unattractive as a labor option.

When the public union representing the teachers at Lakota in 2008 went on strike, and a deal was made to appease them, to keep the teachers from walking off the job, I decided that I would not support another school levy until the public sector union was out of the equation. They simply drive up the cost of education too much. The unions make it impossible to have an intelligent conversation about cost controls, because the direction of the negotiations always migrates back to the welfare of the employee, and not the product they create.

I have noticed that the television stations lately are focused on the catastrophe of public funding and are resorting to the feel-good stories of emotion, which plays straight into the kind of manipulation the unions have used to extort massive sums of money, (tax money) for themselves. It is never asked by the established media why all these public employee jobs are going bankrupt, because the answer is simply too painful. Public employees, particularly teachers are too expensive. They cost too much money to employee, and they did that to themselves with extreme labor practices such as threatening to walk of the job with strikes.

The legislators who made it law that a teacher should have a master’s degree to keep their teaching certificate helped perpetuate the situation with legislation. They did as they always do; they created laws without considering the cost of compliance. That is the problem with electing small-minded people into positions to create laws, because they are unable to take in the whole picture. Since they too are public employees and not responsible for creating the funding, they don’t make the connection but simply take money from the public in the form of taxes, so they bare no responsibility.

Public employees do not exist for the benefit of job creation. They are not there for the convenience of the employee. But that is the expectation. The tax payer is expected to jump through hoops to figure out how to appease the high expectations of these out-of-touch employees.

If I were the superintendent of a school, which I could never be because there are actually laws to keep people like me from being hired by a district, the unions have covered their tracks in every direction, I would simply let the teachers walk the next time they attempted a strike, and I’d hire cheaper labor. It is the cost of labor that is the problem and is creating the demand for more taxes in every sector of government service. Government in no capacity should ever be paid more than the average wage of the public, because it creates an incentive for people to attempt to become a government worker that will do anything to become employed by the government because it’s simply too lucrative.

Teachers should be paid fairly, and if they want to make a lot of money, they should work for a private institution that will pay them according to their expectations. If the United States were the best in the world, I might buy into the union argument that we need to pay for the best to have the best, but the United States education system is not the best. It’s average and that’s being generous, and I think it fails in entirely too many ways. It certainly isn’t worth the amount of money we are pouring into it.

Politicians and news organizations looking to simplify their stories focus only on dollars spent equals’ value to the child, but that simply is not true. We could pour all the money the United States produces into education and the result would still be a flat line. Education is an elusive quality that comes from the strength of a family and the mentors that surround a child. Children just do not learn on an assembly line and making the factory more expensive won’t improve the results.

I’m not against public education. I think it’s a good thing for people who come from broken homes, or poor families. In those conditions, it is possible for a teacher to have a major influence on a child, because the teacher can fill the role that the parent is neglecting. But in families that are strong where there are two parents, grandpa’s and grandma’s and the family has a middle to upper income, there isn’t much a public school has to offer in the development of a child but a baby sitting service. I know that hurts the feelings of many “sensitive” guidance councilors and teachers, but those are the facts. As a tax payer, I’m happy to employee some of those people in my district for some of the underprivileged, but having hundreds and hundreds employees all making extremely lucrative incomes is simply not good business.

But it is the unions who have high-jacked the entire process, allowed no management control on a run-away train that just goes faster and faster requiring more and more money to fuel. To me, they are not worth the money. They are guilty of being too greedy and out-of-touch. To be honest, I have never seen a system so screwed up, as wrong as you find when you lift up the rocks of public sector unions. The entire situation is terribly out of control which directly affects the overall cost. I believe the teachers for the most part believe they are in the profession for the kids they teach. But the union leaders are clearly out for the greed of the position and have shown no restraint on their demands. And the teachers who have voted to keep those types of leaders in place are all guilty of putting themselves over their job to the children and the more I learn, the angrier I become.

Being foolish is not against the law. If the union leaders wish to be so foolish as to be out-of-touch with the rest of the world, that’s their prerogative. But when they ask me to fund their foolishness, that is passing the fool baton to me, and I’m not going to carry it. They make it my business when they ask me for more money to support their folly, and I know better. Therefore, I will not support public sector unions with any more additional taxes until they remove themselves from the process. They are getting in the way of proper management of public employees and should be outlawed. We have tried that little public employee union experiment started by President Kennedy and it has failed, and needs to be abolished as a practice.

The unions will call it union busting. I call it practical. I do not recognize the authority of any union to take my money out of my pocket and do what they please with it. Such a practice is simple robbery. It’s nothing else and needs to be outlawed at every level in government. Until that happens, there will never be any management of government costs which is just plain foolishness when money is the primary concern.

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

Rich Hoffman and Doc Thompson Fix the World: In spite of the hauntings from the past

As we are bombarded incessantly for further impositions into our personal income with the demand for higher taxes the irretrievable implication is that there isn’t a plan for taxes to ever be reduced, only to grow forever, until society completely collapses. This is the case of all government these days and has been since President Kennedy signed into law with executive action, the legalization of public unions, which Lyndon Johnston then expanded to build a voter base. (CLICK HERE TO SEE HOW IT ALL BEGAN) The incredible lack of wisdom and complete selfishness of the Democratic political party in those critical years of the 60’s have taken us all down this current path which ends at a collapsed bridge with steep cliffs on all sides and nowhere to go but back. Standing at the end of that road on a Saturday afternoon, being the first to arrive there, Doc Thompson of 700 WLW and I have a serious talk laced with humor and frustration about all the reasons why the school funding models are failing, and how ridiculous it is that school boards have no other option but to request higher taxes in an out-of-control system bent on self-destruction. If you have any doubts, questions, or fears about why taxes for your school keep going up, then listen to this broadcast. After my interview, there was a parade of callers all deeply frustrated who shed further light into this diabolical modern-day catastrophe that has become public education.

I’m not just blaming the Democrats in this folly. All politicians are to blame, because they didn’t address the problems, fearing political fallout. I personally have no desire to ever be a politician. From my experience too many politicians celebrate their wins as though they won the lottery, not as a sacrifice. Politicians know that there will be opportunities to enrich themselves, that there are unions and other special interests out there that will give them money to do as they say and they can become wealthy in the process, and that’s what’s been happening. (CLICK HERE TO SEE JUST HOW BAD THE SITUATION TRULY IS) My desire is to write, read, and continue to climb mountains with my wife on weekend adventures. Public office or political gain of any kind is unattractive to me. Fixing the problems of politics however is, because I don’t want to spend money on aspects of culture that isn’t needed because it lowers the quality of the culture I wish to enjoy.

I had lunch with my daughter after the radio interview and she showed me a new phone application on her smart phone that she downloaded for free. It’s a language translation program where she can speak into her phone, then the phone will translate the phrase into any language she wishes, and it will vocalize it as well. This will be helpful if she is in Romania on a photo shoot, but she doesn’t know the local language, and she needs to ask someone a question, she can simply speak into her phone, and then play the translation for the person she’s asking. The phone has become an instant translator.

My wife and I stopped by Best Buy on the way home to check on buying new computers for a new video game called The Old Republic by Bioware. I’ve been looking forward to that massive online game for years, and the release date is nearing, so my wife and I plan to buy a couple of new computers just to play that game, one for her and one for me, so we can spend time with all our nieces and nephews and other friends who are scattered all over the face of the planet. I was shocked that virtually every young person I spoke to from my daughters friends to the employees at Best Buy are all on a waiting list for that game. I joked to my wife on the way home that when The Old Republic is released, the economy may tank, because nobody will want to do anything but play that game. People my age and younger are eager to jump into that extremely immersive world.

But what does that say about our current society? Many of these people wanting to play The Old Republic currently play World of Warcraft and will spend countless hours learning everything there is to know about a fictional world with absolutely no implication to their actual lives. It’s all a fantasy. But why the powerful desire……escape?

Many people have given up on American culture, and public unions have capitalized on that apathy. The technology of online gaming and my daughters smart phone should be incorporated instantly into our education system because that is the way young people are learning now. They are wasting their time in modern education. It makes the parents feel good about themselves, but the kids really aren’t learning anything other than social boundaries which makes public education a complete failure in my book.

I can speak for myself; I understand why so many people are drawn to online gaming. Because there are no restrictions in those environments, the internet is the freest way of life ever conceived by human minds, and online gaming whether it is for Maddan Football, or World of Warcraft allows the human mind to venture beyond the social restrictions of our current culture, and that is the tragedy of our age.

Public education has been captured by public sector unions and molded into a boring, stale, environment that kids are simply not interested in, and is preparing them for a world that will change tomorrow. Public education is way behind the curve; they are in the back of the train as I’ve discussed using Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as a prime example. (If you haven’t read Pirsig it’s in the philosophy section of your local bookstore.) Click here to see what I say about it.

I have taught those close to me many things, one of them is a phrase I’ve used for more than 30 years and its “Advice is only as good as the person who gives it.” If the quality of the person giving advice, teaching ideas, or even coming up with a social model of ideas that are deemed important, if the minds “advising” are not quality minds, then the advice is worthless. When my wife was younger she had a parade of people who were always telling her she should be a fashion model, she should go to school to become a great scientist, that she should do a bunch of things because she is a very intelligent woman who is also very attractive, attributes that many around her secretly resented. So I’d say to her, “Where are the lives of the people telling you these things? Are they what you’d consider successful people? Even the people who are wealthy, do they look happy to you? If not, then why would you even consider their advice even a little? Their advice has not led their own lives to prosperity and happiness, so how can they be expected to tell you what to do.”

Yet in traditional education, we send a child to school to be taught by a complete stranger advice which the child is supposed to carry deep into their lives. I understand that many parents are not equipped to live by the mentality I provided my wife with, but in sectors of the internet, gaming community, and social networks like Facebook the true desires for human development are there for everyone to see. And the reason new ideas are not being explored in education is exclusively because public sector unions are resistant to the rapid changes happening in the world around them. They are like a boat going downstream in a swift river filled with rapids only to toss out an anchor into the water to stop all movement because they are “scared” of the changes. But in doing so they have limited the maneuverability of the boat to navigate in the water and the swift current is actually beating on the boat threatening to sink the vessel by sheer force.

I am convinced that no adjustments to public education are even possible as long as public sector unions exist. They are a cancer in the body of thought. And they are in denial of their corrosive nature.

Their leaders are fools intent to hang on to some archaic education practice long outdated, and is increasingly just too expensive. The teachers unions have priced themselves out of relevance because not only are they teaching in an outdated model that they force upon society with their fear of change, but they charge too much to do it. It’s that simple. They’ve high-jacked all administrative control, political persuasion, and social latitude to arrive at a place where the world is marching on without them and they are still holding their stupid signs from the 60’s, “better jobs for teachers.” Who cares? The kids can’t wait to leave the classroom of the teacher to get home and get on their computer and play World of Warcraft with their friends, or The Old Republic. If education was smart, it would be teaching in that realm so that kids could learn perhaps three times as much in a shorter period of time than what is currently experienced.

When a Smartphone can do with a free download what it takes two years of foreign language studies to achieve, society has reached an impasse, and the public sector unions like what the teaches have, are still walking around with the dinosaurs. They sadly believe they are more relevant than they really are, and society up till now has just thrown money at them so they don’t have to feel bad about all the years of college they have, the massive debt they’ve accumulated, and the social fulfillment they were promised when they entered the profession. They have become extinct, because society, like that swift river, is moving too fast for their timid minds to navigate.

And more taxes won’t fix that void left in the broken heart of the disillusioned soul who discovers that the impact they believe they have on social development is easily out-done by a video game character in a virtual world who can level up by initiative, without needless restriction. It is the teacher who belonged to a union and used that collective influence to make themselves extinct, like ghosts haunting a house who do not know they are dead, and insist on living by sheer force even though they are just reflections of the past.

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

Blood Drunk Apoligists: The Lost Fools of Modernism

I was on 700 WLW with Matt Patrick on August 10, 2011 indulged in the topic of whether or not Bert and Ernie of Sesame Street are in fact homosexuals. However, on a more serious note, the topic of the day was school levies and whether or not they should be passed or declined as a way to force change. Prior to my appearance Matt had received many callers that proclaimed passing a school levy is the “patriotic, and caring” thing to do if one loves their community. I argue the opposite.

Channel 9 News always in my opinion, does a fantastic job of covering topics. Brendan Keefe’s I-Team stories are great benefits to our city in the hard reporting that he does. However, and this is the nature of television versus talk radio, there isn’t much time to get into the heart of a matter, because attention is spent on the visual appeal of the stories. In an attempt to bring balance to the story of why schools are failing all over the state, Channel 9 is sitting down with various superintendents all over Cincinnati to put a face to the requests for more money. Channel 9 sat down with the new Fairfield superintendent to explore the topic of why funding was needed for his district.

As seen in that interview, the direction of the story took an emotional turn. It was never asked, why is Fairfield unable to balance its budget based on the current tax supply. It is often discussed that federal money is declining, and state money is also on a downward trend, especially in affluent school districts. So it is only natural that financial expectations must be scaled back, but that is not what’s happening.

I had an argument with family members and friends about a year ago, who are functioning along the same assumption as the school superintendents, the reporters, the teachers, the unions, the radical protestors in London, school board members, parents, protests in Greece and everywhere else, that the world will always continue on as they always believed it would, like their own educations ensured them of a continuity in social existence that was as solid as concrete. The foundations of everything they have been taught since childhood is at stake because their beliefs are failing!

One person who considers themselves “worldly” said to me, “manufacturing jobs are leaving America. That’s a fact. America has to serve “high tech” interests. We have to get used to the fact that our role is changing. We must start saving for our children’s college now, so they can compete in that marketplace!” His utterances were straight out of the union playbook. The talking points are the same everywhere, and predictable.

“But how can you save for something that the cost is raising at an insanely dramatic rate? Is college worth 50K per year? Should 4 years of college cost 200K? Should kids go into debt to go to college? Should public education that is preparing all these kids for college charge 9 to 10K per pupil to educate? Does public education need a teacher with a master’s degree to teach 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, grade? Can public education afford to pay all their teachers over 50K per year?

At this point in the conversation fury builds in the eyes of the apologists, for they do not have answers to these questions. In fact, they find themselves caught in their own dreamlike haze. “Without college a kid has no chance! If you don’t have a degree, you are doomed these days!”

“That’s what you’ve been told,” I’ll reply. “But businesses are learning the hard lesson, which over the past 20 years that a college educated person does not guarantee them a job ready employee. In fact, many young people are proving to not be mature enough to handle the rigors of life until their 30’s these days, and it is costing companies billions of dollars in lost productivity each year, to deal with the learning curve of these immature college graduates who lack common sense, because it has been “taught out of them,” during the education process.

I have a name for these types of people, the ones who argue the obvious; I call them “Blood Drunk Apologists.” The trouble with these types is that they have drunk the blood (metaphorically speaking) of left-wing education concepts and are under the spell of a social order designed to be everything to everybody. They started drinking this blood in their own education process so it is difficult for them to see the truth of the situation now as adults. They are under a kind of voodoo-like spell that prevents them from seeing the truth even when it is right in front of them, because they have built their entire lives around a preconceived notion regarding social structure.

I’ve always questioned education and the methods. When I was a younger guy I wanted to be an archeologist or an anthologist because my interests were in the “big picture” studies of civilization. But I was also interested in politics. I was also interested in other sciences. I was also interested in fiction and literature. I was also interested in fast cars. I was also interested in adventure and danger, and like I mentioned before I looked for jobs in my teens that allowed me to explore all those things at the same time. I read a lot, and it was in those books and the studies of civilization that I was insulated from the spell that was cast on the world around me. While I was reading heavily, the person who was arguing with me about the current state of education was walking around with his pants down around his ankles being paddled by his fraternity brothers in college. Others who have argued with me about this topic were stepping off a bus in boot camp and having their heads shaved and forced to do push-ups each time they answered a question wrong to their drill sergeant. These soldiers signed up for the military so they could qualify for the GI Bill, which would help them go to college, so they could grow up and get a good job!.

There are a lot of ways that people arrive at the pain of adulthood, where at some point they drink the blood of orthodoxy. It is usually brought about by pain, where the instigator of the pain is also the one who provides the relief from the pain, making the victim falsely trust their antagonist. By drinking the blood, they find the pain of life is eased.

Proudly I have advocated to those I care about that such a life of blood drinking is unnecessary, even foolish. Because all one has to do is study history, even passively to see the course of where their actions will take them. And this whole education situation is a major crisis in our country. Education is not the end all-fix all for society building. We have a whole culture of lost souls roaming around like they are under a voodoo daze, unable to think critically. And even if education did work well, it is simply too expensive. Cost controls must be put in place to reign in the out-of-control costs, because even if people determine for themselves that they do want to go to college, and do want to maintain the current direction of public education, the cost increases of 5% to 10% every year cannot continue. There isn’t money to pay for the financial expectations of education even if we taxed our citizens at 100% of their entire incomes, at some point; our society will hit that wall. Because only a very rich society can afford luxuries, and a society cannot be rich if everyone is going to school. Some people have to actually be in the trenches fighting to make something that can be sold to someone else for a profit, that’s the only way wealth is “created.”

Civilizations who forget that facts point to a right and wrong answer and pretentious arrogance that causes critical blindness find themselves extinct, and the face of the earth is a chronicle of such failures. Some of those societies fell so hard they aren’t even in our written records, but all had empires that were vast and complicated, only to be crushed by their own arrogance, because they were under the spell of the blood they had drunk all in the name of social comfort.

Debates such as this current one over education are as old as time itself on a social wheel that has spun repeated time and time again like the scratch on a turntable record. And the current direction is as predictable as a movie we’ve all seen the end of, and those who have drunk the blood and use it as sustenance are foolish enough to believe that somehow the ending of the movie will end differently because they are the current players. Such is the effect of the voodoo spell of Blood Drinking Apologists and their Ignorance of Doom.

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

SEIU Visits John Boehner’s Office: GIVE ME A JOB, or I’ll cry!

Tea Party Terrorists! That was one of the many signs outside of John Boehner’s West Chester office on August 9, 2011. A group of protestors had gathered to demand jobs from the House Speaker and the organizer of this illustrious event which involved kicking the doors to the office requiring the doors to locked by the staff, was none other than Gabe Kramer from the Service Employees International Union, otherwise known as SEIU.

Gabe is the Chief of Staff of Operations and Administration for SEIU District 1199 representing West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio and was the point person for this event which I think is an excellent example of everything that is wrong with our nation. I don’t mean to pick on poor Gabe, I’m sure he’s a nice guy if one were to sit down and have a beer with a guy like that. I’m sure he emits many noticeable, human qualities that are quite admirable. But proving to be a philosophic fool on completely the wrong ideological path is no excuse for intentionally attempting to mislead people into a thought process which is destructive to American Culture. And that is what Gabe and his little army of lost souls is guilty of.

It is not hard to gather up a multitude of the very lazy, the uneducated, the pompously altruistic, the unemployed, those who are afraid to compete in the world marketplace to rally behind a cause like those SEIU hosts. SEIU uses shock, and the force of mass to influence legislation, and have done so for many, many years. But the foundation of everything those “types” of people believe is flawed.

Rather than go into all the ways that SEIU is a communist organization following religiously the Ten Planks of Communism as established in the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx, the followers of SEIU, even if they are only a member and unaware of the basic philosophy because they are simply interested in their own personal incomes, the fundamental error is in their lack of understanding of how economics work. The roots of their entire philosophy rest in loose soil with no foundation but feelings. That is why they fail and everyone who follows them is doomed. History proves it.

Where I should have been angry that SEIU was in my home district, on soil that is sacred because it’s in my home land, I couldn’t help but laugh, for the comedy displayed at that event belonged on Comedy Central with full intention to make people laugh, which is until it is realized that these protestors are serious. They actually believe the things they say!

When the protestors demand jobs of Speaker Boehner what are they asking for? Do they really believe that John Boehner can pluck jobs from the “job” tree and pass them out like candy on Halloween, because that is the implication of their utterances? Do these same capitalist malcontents believe that it is the Tea Party that prevents them from getting a job? Apparently, they do! They believe that government creates jobs and gives them out, and that it is John Boehner’s job to “give” them a job…………………………….I’m serious!

The fact that so many people in the Republic of the United States believe this is evidence that our public education system has completely failed, because too many grown adults have no idea how their government, or their country work. Between my laughter at the protesters of this event, I have to admit a tinge of pity for these poor people. It must be terrible to see the world with such narrow vision, through the spectrum of naivety and ignorance. To be so terribly uneducated and foolish that the truth of the matter might as well reside in a whole different solar system from the one we all live in.

My wife and I were discussing this issue on the other day, at how small the world to such people must actually feel. My wife reads a three hundred page novel every two and a half days. It takes me about a half week to a week depending on my obligations. Our hobby together is to read. We read, and read, and read! In my books I have seen the rise and fall of civilizations and religions hundreds of times. And I am grateful for that knowledge, because it is easy to see through such thinly veiled smoke screens like those people like Gabe Kramer proclaim. Only an empty mind waiting for someone else to fill it with ideas is prone to follow blindly to an office like John Boehner’s and be foolish enough to stand with a sign and proclaim to the world that they are but children repeating what some bully have instructed them to believe. After the laughter at the audacious ignorance of the event, I felt pity for all those empty minds that have never discovered the joy of obtaining knowledge, who are so quick to grab a sign and follow somebody like Gabe into a fruitless battle pursuing the ideas of a poverty-stricken, promiscuous fool like Karl Marx who has infected the world with some of the most destructive philosophy mankind has ever entertained, and this includes the corrupt emperors of the world like Nero, and Gangus Kahn!

It is the mushy minded who are attracted to these communist ideas of Marx. Those girls of PITA who will stand naked in a public place to protest those cute little animals being killed because the girls themselves are only a few years grown away from their stuffed animals they slept with in their beds. But now that they have the bodies of women, somehow they have merit to their voice, as if their bare breasts and naked buttocks contained years of experience and intelligence. The radicals of SEIU or the teachers unions are no different from the radical behavior of those young naked women, they resort to emotion and sign stimuli to influence cultural policy, and that’s all those poor, empty citizens were doing at the Speaker’s office. They have no idea where jobs come from unless some politician passes out a new branch of government to buy votes, but the creation process does not come from government. They simply use the money that was created by others to create the job. It was not the government who created the job. It was the tax payer. And that is why government has grown to be too big now, because government was irresponsible, because it listened to the mindless fools of organizations like SEIU where they should have ignored them.

This fault is an innate reaction. Most of us are mature enough to become parents and know how embarrassing it is to take a child to the store only to have that child scream and cry when they want something, like a toy, at the store. If the parents says no, and the child begins crying, it is tempting to just give in to the child to save yourself from the embarrassment the children draw to the parent with the noise they make. The squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease syndrome is what that is. The parent is in control, has all the resources, the only thing the child has in its favor is the ability to draw attention to itself with loud noise. A bad parent will tend to give in to the child and will allow that child to grow up spoiled. A good parent will withstand the embarrassment for the child’s own good, and will not buckle under the pressure. Communism as outlined in the SEIU handbook, The Communist Manifesto teaches grown-ups to be like children, to yell and scream for things till they are given “something” by government. And the unfortunate circumstances of our age are that the politicians have been like the weak parents, all too quick to appease the children.

And that’s what I saw outside of office of John Boehner, is a bunch of children screaming for candy from a parent busy with other things, “adult stuff” and bewildered by the ungratefulness of those children. So while the behavior of the SEIU children was humorous from a distance, the behavior itself is pathetic. The fact that SEIU believes these screaming rants actually work is because it has in the past. They have used such behavior to harass our public officials and business community for a long time to the will of small, immature minds without any sense of how things work in the real world. With all the tools of modern society at their disposal, they still insist on being small-minded little children motivated to scream and cry for food to drop into their mouths, instead of taking advantage of the freedoms they enjoy and earning for themselves limitless opportunity in a capitalist republic under attack by cancerous, socialist peons from a declining European landscape that left to its own devices would still be rolling around in the Dark Ages.

People like Gabe Kramer would be more at home in 1112 AD outside a European palace with a soiled robe, burning a torch crying for the benefits of the Roman Empire to the political nobility, and wondering why Rome as a power went away, because he is just as clueless in 2011 when he cries for a job that it’s his job to create, and certainly not the job of John Boehner.

 

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

The Devil of Public Education: The Mask of School Pride

I was on the air with Doc Thompson of 700 WLW to discuss the meeting at the Lakota School Board from August 8, 2011 where a 4.75 mill levy was placed on the November ballot. Click below to listen to that electrifying broadcast where I reveal that many people within the school district consider me the “Devil of Public Education.” So I returned from the confines of my hellish existence to have a lively discussion about the state of public education in Ohio with Doc.

(There is about 2:40 of this recording that overlaps toward the end. It’s not your computer; it’s a defect of the original recording. Just stay with it, because it will pass.)

There has been a lot of tension at Lakota over the last couple of levy battles, and now that Lakota is attempting to pass yet another levy, that tension is returning. I spoke to quite a few people from the education side of the school district after this particular meeting and tension was the general atmosphere. The fights of the past have been contentious to say the least. That was when it was revealed to me that many of the employees in the district consider me the incantation of the devil himself because I hate public education!

Well, I’ve heard that kind of thing before. The most obvious circumstance under which I’ve heard that kind of rhetoric is at football games where the Cleveland Browns come to play at the Bengals stadium or worse yet, the Pittsburg Steelers. For me the emotion is even greater when my favorite team the Tampa Bay Buccaneers plays New Orleans or the Atlanta Falcons. In fact when I heard that Troy Evans the linebacker for the Saints was providing busing to residents of Lakota, which is an idea that I think is great, my first thought was “darn” why did it have to be a guy who played for the Saints!!!!!! I HATE THE SAINTS!!

But why do I hate the Saints or the Bengals hate the Browns or Steelers? Because emotion is what sports is all about. The drama of a sporting event is all about picking a side and rooting for your team to win.

Schools do this also. The game between Lakota East and Lakota West is always a big game. It used to be that a game against Princeton, or Colerain was always a big game. There’s always been a lot of rivalry in these games. Fights occur between players in movie theater parking lots and parents will fight with other parents from other districts in the stands. It’s an innate response to the human desire for competition.

So it is only natural that a school district will use “School Pride” to unify the students and parents to the goals of the school, and will use that same pride to pass a school levy and make those out who are against the increased spending of taxes as “The Devil.” Such relative generalizations are indicators of a frail psyche. I indulge in them for competitive events like football games, or any other type of conflict, but in the grand scheme of things, I keep focused on the “big picture,” where my counterparts cannot.

The organized labor element of public education has a cleaver little scheme going, of which they are entirely aware of, they use this “School Pride” issue to drive up the wage levels of their personal incomes, because while human beings participating in that school as employees, students and parents are functioning under the spell of “School Pride” no amount of money is too much so long as their school system WINS. Rational discussion that might otherwise occur in any other business environment are ignored in favor of the passion for the fight!

This is how school levies have migrated out of control. Organized labor has used “School Pride” to pass tax increases which has translated to exceptionally high incomes for the members of those unions. Administrators strapped by legislative rules negotiated by organized labor cannot manage the costs of the organized labor, so they resort to “School Pride” to sell the public and cover up their weakness of administrative influence.

This is the state of all schools, and “School Pride” to the people outside the functioning mechanisms of the school doesn’t work so well, and now that wage levels have reached a “diminishing marginal return” on the tax payer investment, people are turning down school levies, because they see no end in sight from schools asking for more money. That is why 85% of all school levies across the State of Ohio failed in the August elections of 2011, because “School Pride” as a spell doesn’t work when the pockets of the people supporting school are empty.

With the Cincinnati Bengals, Mike Brown has obviously taken advantage of the taxpayers and he makes no apologies for it. His contract is bankrupting the city, yet he doesn’t care. And he continues to put a terrible product on the field giving fans very little to cheer for. Yet like mindless fools, there are still fans that show up and tailgate for the Bengals when the Steelers or Browns come to town and will proclaim that the Bengals will be victorious! The facts don’t matter at that point, because the game is about emotion.

And that same emotion is at play at Lakota and schools all across Ohio. The LEA (Lakota Education Association) has negotiated a contract for itself that is bringing extreme financial hardship to the district. And they, like Mike Brown, don’t appear to care one bit because their actions prove so. And all Lakota can do is make a guy like me, appear to be the “Devil of Public Education” because they have no other card to play. The truth is too painful and admitting that they are helpless to control their costs is just embarrassing. Calling me names is far easier, so that’s what they resort to.

That is also why schools fail time and time again. Because the solution is not in the emotion of the fight, it’s in the business of the numbers. And once the game is done, the reality is difficult to deal with. So like a drug addict needing another fix, those in education who rely on emotion to manage their business find themselves always in need of more, because the reality has not been addressed properly and never will while those in charge use “School Pride” as a mask to cover the real problem.

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