Tag: Tea Party

Thank a Rich Person: How Wealthy People Make American Society Better

One of the things that is wrong with America, it’s this marketed notion that one should aspire to be poor, meek, or average. No. Nobody, anywhere at anytime in world history are happy with being average, unless of course they are perpetually lazy. For such people, they are the mouths behind the communist movement in America.

It is the rich man who moves the world. Doc Thompson of 700 WLW covers the topic of how to think like a rich person on his morning show which is a broadcast everyone should listen to.

A man does not become rich by just making money. They become rich by having an idea that nobody else has uncovered yet. The lure of treasure and financial reward is the engine that drives such a quest, and society benefits from that quest with new invention. The wealth and jobs created from those ideas are what makes American society great.

And the sum of those elements give American youth something to aspire to.

Take for instance Orlando, Florida. Back in the 1950’s there was nothing in Orlando but a few buildings. I’ve revealed my admiration of Walt Disney more than once at this site. I’ve talked about how successful he’s been, and what a self-made man he was. He did not even graduate high school, yet he created one of the most dynamic companies in the world. Orlando is the city it is today because Disney had the vision to build Walt Disney World there, and over the years, the entire economy of Orlando has thrived because of Walt’s idea. Disney wanted to build a park dedicated to the films he produced, where imagination had no limit. That was his premise. The result was explosive.

On November 12, 2009, The Walt Disney Company reported $10.667 billion in theme park and resort earnings for fiscal year 2009, ending October 3, 2009. This figure includes earnings from the Walt Disney World Resort, Disneyland, Disneyland Resort Paris, Tokyo Disney Resort, Hong Kong Disneyland Resort, Disney Vacation Club and Disney Cruise Lines. A majority of that income is centered around the Orlando operations. 36% of the entire GDP of the state of Florida which is the state Orlando resides in, and most of that is tourism that started with an idea from Walt Disney.

Sea World did not set up its park in Orlando on its own. It went there because of the success of Disney World. Universal Studios did not set up in Orlando with their two parks, Universals Studios and Islands of Adventure on their own. They went there because of Disney World. All the interesting restaurants, hotels and shopping establishments on International in Orlando and Kissimmee all are there because of Disney World.

Not a single building was put up in Orlando because of a creative union, a teacher, a cop, firefighter, an SEIU worker, a president, a congressman, a senator. All those types of people are employees to the originator of the idea, and that is Walt Disney.

For the mind to wrap itself around just how important Walt Disney World in Orlando is to not just the state of Florida, but the entire United States have a look at these numbers from source article at the link, a majority of the text is below however:

http://disneybythenumbers.com/wdw/wdw.html

When you read this, think for just a second of all the companies that exist just to supply Walt Disney World with material, whether it be food, wrappers, steel for construction, concrete, you name it.

30,500 acres or 43 square miles of property is what is considered the original area centrally located in Florida and is considered the largest of its kind in the world.

1965 is when the public was told about the Walt Disney World Resort Plans

52 months of construction were needed to build Walt Disney World back in 1971.

8 million cubic yards of earth were moved to build Walt Disney World.

2,000 acres remain open for development by the Walt Disney World Company.

$180 an acres was a great price for the Florida land, until Disney was named the person buying the land then the price went to $1000 an acre.

27,258 acres of land were purchased for WDW

$5,018, 770 was the cost of the 27,258 acres

18 months of moving dirt were used to just prepare the Magic Kingdom site to be built.

8 million cubic yards of earth were moved to build the Magic Kingdom.

2,600,000 chocolate covered Mickey Mouse ice cream bars are sold every year at Walt Disney World (WDW)

4 colors make up the official colors of WDW, lagoon blue, mint green, pumpkin orange, lavender.

450 acre area is Bay Lake and located near the Magic Kingdom.

4.5 miles of beach line the Seven Seas lagoon and Bay Lake

2.385 billion gallons make up the volume of water that is Bay Lake and the adjoining Seven Seas Lagoon.

3.8 million pens are purchased by WDW each year.

600 tons of steel helps make up Cinderella’s Castle, and not a single stone.

4 inches is the distance the driver of the armored car has between the door and the wall of the Utilidors, which is the only gas-powered vehicle allowed in the Tunnel.

9 acres of tunnel are under the Magic Kingdom.

14 feet below ground are the 9 acres of tunnels servicing the Magic Kingdom.

2 times a month the horse shaped hitching posts on Main Street, USA are scraped and painted.

20 minutes is all it takes to fill Splash Mountain and 5 Minutes to drain it.

47 square miles is the original property size that was purchased for Walt Disney World.

7,500 acres were set aside as Conversation area in 1970 and developed a system of more than 43 miles of canals and 22 miles of levees to control the water level.

70,000 fingerling bass were originally stocked in Bay lake when WDW first opened.

4 trains are part of the WDW railroad; each train has 5 cars and can hold approximately 360 Guests and 2 wheelchairs. The train names are: Walter E. Disney (red), Lilly Belle (green),Roger E. Broggie (yellow),Roy O. Disney (blue).

10 miles per hour is the touring speed of the WDW railroad trains travel at while taking you on your scenic journey around the park.

3,000,000 are how many passengers the WDW railroad carries each year.

100,000 guests is the max capacity for the Magic Kingdom. The parking lot closes at 75,000 to allow room for Hotel resort guests arriving on buses, boats and monorail.

11,000 firework shows per year makes WDW the largest consumer of fireworks in North America.

2,300 wedding are estimated to take place at WDW in a year.

15,000 weddings have taken place at WDW since September 1991.

7 million hamburgers are sold in the park each year

5 million hotdogs are consumed each year in the park

1.4 million barbecued turkey legs are consumed each year at Walt Disney World

58,000 employees are employed by Walt Disney world as of 2006, spending more than $1.1 billion on payroll and $478 million in benefits each year

5,000 employees are dedicated to the maintenance and engineering at WDW including 750 horticulturists and 600 painters.

$100 million is spent each year to maintain the Magic Kingdom.

10 of the 12 trains can be stored in the maintenance shop on its upper level (the bottom level houses the four steam locomotives that circle the Magic Kingdom). On any given night, two Mark VI trains are parked outside the gate of the Magic Kingdom. No train will ever be left outside two nights in a row.

150 truckloads of holiday decorations adorn the Walt Disney World Resort and 300,000 yards of ribbon and bows drape over 1,500 Christmas trees during the yuletide season.

72,000 ticket holders at the FedEx Orange Bowl National Championship game in Miami each receive a surprise free ticket to any Disney theme park in the world. The largest Disney theme park ticket give-away ever was part of the launch of the Happiest Celebration on Earth, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Disneyland and Disney theme parks.

50,000th child to have a Disney theme park wish granted by the Make-A-Wish Foundation and Disney. This event took place on October 6, 2005.

2,500 different Cast Member costume designs make up a working wardrobe of about 1.8 million pieces. Approximately 13,000 costume pieces are manufactured each year at Walt Disney World.

15 million miles are driven by the Walt Disney World bus fleet each year.

3,421,399 (approximately)famous “Mouse Ear” hats sold each year at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando to cover the head of every man, woman and child in Portland, Oregon.

30th year anniversary for Walt Disney World was celebrated October 1, 2001. Happy Anniversary !

392,040 square feet of space under the Magic Kingdom creates the Utilidors and are bustling with action. Beside navigation information the walls are covered with motivational information, such as the 7 rules of a Cast Member.

750 watercraft makes Walt Disney World the 5th largest fleet of watercraft in the world.

14 feet deep is the Seven Sea lagoon, but Bay lake is only 12 feet deep.

2.5 million garments(pieces) exist in Walt Disney World costuming department.

150,000 gallons of paint were purchased in 2004 enough to cover 7,500 average size homes.

263 buses are in service at Walt Disney World.

50 million soft drinks are sold annually at WDW.

9 million pounds of French Fries are sold annually at WDW.

194,871 miles of toilet tissue are used annually at WDW.

24,409 miles of paper towels are used annually at WDW.

319,353 lbs. of chocolate are used annually at WDW.

1.2 million pounds of watermelon are used annually at WDW.

741,150 pounds of sugar are used annually at WDW.

1.8 million pounds of flour are used annually at WDW.

245,000 pounds of fruit filling are used annually at WDW.

38,000 pounds of white icing glaze are used annually at WDW.

2.9 million pounds of eggs are used annually at WDW.

606,000 pounds of bananas are used annually at WDW.

510,000 of grapes are used annually at WDW.

1.5 million soft pretzels are served annually at WDW.

639,000 pounds of macaroni and cheese are served at WDW.

337,000 pencils are purchased annually to use at WDW.

148 million sheets of recycled copier paper are used annually at WDW.

730,102 gallons of bleach are used annually at WDW.

214,000 bandages were provided to guests during the year 2004 at WDW.

20,000 different colors of paint used in Walt Disney World.

14.25 pound largemouth bass is the largest ever caught on Bay Lake, but we’ll never know since it is catch and release fishing.

3 circle vision films play at WDW. n the Magic Kingdom, take a trip through time in Tomorrowland’s “The Timekeeper.” The other two films using the Circle-Vision technology are both found in Epcot’s World Showcase. They are O Canada!, and the Wonders of China.

175 different outfits are in Mickey’s wardrobe closet, including a scuba suit and a tuxedo.

200 different outfits are in Minnie’s wardrobe closet, including a cheerleader costume and various evening gowns.

15 million gallons of water are used each day at WDW.

5,000 plus performers, (not counting the 500 doves that were released), joined in the Grand Opening Celebration of Walt Disney World at the Magic Kingdom on October 25, 1971.

1,076-piece band (including 76 trombones) was led by “Music man” Meredith Wilson as part of the Grand opening parade up Main Street, USA.

51,000 employees work at WDW, this number changes with the seasons and peak park seasons.

11 miles of garland, 3,000 wreaths and 1,500 Christmas trees are spread around during the holiday season. The tallest is a 70-foot tree in Disney’s Contemporary Resort. In addition, trees, which range in height from 45 to 70 feet, are placed in prominent positions in the theme parks.

500,000 character watches are sold annually mainly Mickey watches, are slipped onto wrists from Walt Disney World gift shops each year. At any given time, there are more than 200 different varieties of character watches. The most popular timepiece: a gold-tone relief of Mickey Mouse.

100 pairs of sunglasses are turned in at the Magic Kingdom lost and found alone. There have been enough “shades” submitted each year in the Magic Kingdom to outfit every resident of Sun City, Arizona; Sun City, California; and Sun City, Florida. Since 1971, an estimated 1.5 million pairs of glasses have found their way into the “lost” bin.

6,000 different types of food are served at WDW.

350 or more chefs are employed at WDW

150 semi trucks of decorations are used to decorate WDW during the Christmas season.

15 miles of garland are to decorate at WDW during Christmas season.

300,000 yards of ribbon are used for decorating at Christmas.

1,500 Christmas trees are used all around the WDW property for decorating.

8 million lights are used to decorate the 4 parks for Christmas.

18 towers are on Cinderella’s Castle.

2 times the size of Manhattan Island is the property of Walt Disney World.

200 feet is the maximum building height in Florida, so the building does not have a red light installed for aircraft.

1st guest entered Walt Disney World on October 1, 1971

50,000,000 guest entered Walt Disney World on March 2,1976

100,000,000 guest entered Walt Disney World on October 22, 1979

150,000,000 guest entered Walt Disney World on April 7, 1983

200,000,000 guest entered Walt Disney World on July 20, 1985

300,000,000 guest entered Walt Disney World on June 21, 1989

400,000,000 guest entered Walt Disney World on August 5,1992

500,000,000 guest entered Walt Disney World on October 13, 1995

600,000,000 guest entered Walt Disney World on June 24, 1998

4 million guests of Walt Disney World Resort hotels have used Disney’s Magical Express since the airport shuttle, luggage delivery and airline check-in service launched May 5, 2005

250,000 Guests at the Walt Disney World Resort ride the Various forms of “mass transit” every day, which include monorails, ferryboats, bus services and water taxis.

100,000 to 200,000 photos of guests are taken each day by Disney’s PhotoPass photographers

4 % percent of all amateur photography is estimated to be taken at Walt Disney World and Disneyland

3 times the park has been closed, once resort wide in September 1999 for Hurricane Floyd; resort wide on September 11th, 2001 due to the terror attacks on America; and Epcot only on July 17th, 2002 due to a power outage.

72,000 individual AudioAnimatronic functions per second are controlled by the Digital Animation Control System (DACS)

800 different variety of trees had been acquired, moved and acclimated and transplanted at WDW as it was reported in 1970

2.2 million travelers were bused from Orlando International Airport to either a WDW resort hotels or cruise ships in 2008, That works out to about $1.6 million a year in payments to the airport

80,000 high school seniors will celebrate graduation during the annual Grad Nite party at Walt Disney World Resort. Disney has hosted the event for 36 years with a variety of acts from KC and the Sunshine Band to Jessica Simpson.

Now, even at such a creative place such as Disney World, or the company of Disney overall, Walt Disney’s ideas are still paying dividends.

In the resent adventure film The Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, it was Jerry Bruckheimer and a team of creative writers and other artists that brought that great film to life, and produced a marketing machine that has been very successful. But even that started with an idea from Disney, a rather radical idea if you think about it, of putting a pirate ride in a kid’s park where the heroes are thieves and hoods that rape and pillage entire towns and kill all the authority figures of England and France. The idea started with Disney and was proven with his theme parks over time, and now a new generation is taking it to a new level. To date the film has produced $810,904,120 worldwide. Think of all the theaters that employee people who are being paid out of that money, advertising firms, media personalities, popcorn manufactures, and beverage companies. All that money generated from an idea. The consumer exchanges some of their hard-earned money in trade for the message of the film, which if you get down to it, is a love of freedom. People bought a ticket to feel freedom through the characters of the pirates. Walt Disney knew it over 50 years ago, and still, to this very day, that primary idea is still being exploited

Total Lifetime Grosses
Domestic: $196,004,120 24.2%
+ Foreign:
$614,900,000 75.8%
________________________________________
= Worldwide: $810,904,120
Domestic Summary
Opening Weekend:
$90,151,958
(#1 rank, 4,155 theaters, $21,697 average)
% of Total Gross: 46.0%
> View All 3 Weekends

Widest Release: 4,164 theaters
In Release: 20 days / 2.9 weeks

If you take the time to think about it, Walt Disney alone is responsible for all the numbers spoke about above. It was his mind that created the platform from which all else was launched.

Using Disney as an example is easy because everyone knows who he is. Most people have seen a Disney film and many people have or desire to go to Disney World. So it has universal appeal.

But taken on a smaller scale I could say the same for some of my developer friends that work with me on the No Lakota Levy campaign. I heard during the last levy campaign constant uttering’s that because they are rich, that it was somehow their social obligation to pay higher taxes on the properties they’ve either built or plan to build to a school system that obviously has no concept of expense. Schools are reflective of all government because they think in a socialist fashion. In their mind they believe that the wealthy owe them something. That’s preposterous!

Where would a community be if the developer did not build homes, if they did not have a vision for the community that lured a certain type of demographic buyer to an area? They are what make a community, through the architect that knows what certain types of home owners desire to buy, and the developer that invests their money into a property to start the process of building. The politicians that loot off those developments with fees, building permits, and other regulations under the guise of “quality control” do nothing to bring an idea into being. They only scoop money off the top of an idea.

And that’s how it usually goes, someone like Bill Gates comes up with a great idea in their garage, build a successful company that changes the life of everyone for the better, then the looters in government come after them. It was the government that decided that Microsoft had become “too big” and sought to break up its monopoly. Good thing the government didn’t break up Walt Disney, because Walt wasn’t making an actual product. He was in the business of creating ideas, so the government wasn’t sure how to destroy that type of business, otherwise they would have.

One of my child hood heroes was Howard Hughes. I saw the Spruce Goose in Los Angeles at the dome when I was a kid and I loved it. I was the only kid in school that wore a Howard Hughes shirt to school while other kids wore their favorite rock bands. When I think of Howard Hughes I think of an innovator who pushed aviation to the absolute limits. He successfully used his wealth to advance aviation to the levels we are accustomed to today.

Source article about Howard Hughes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Hughes

In 1939, at the urging of Jack Frye, president of TWA, Hughes quietly purchased a majority share of TWA stock for nearly US$7 million and took control of the airline. Upon assuming ownership, Hughes was prohibited by federal law from building his own aircraft. Seeking an aircraft that would perform better than TWA’s fleet of Boeing 307 Stratoliners, Hughes approached Boeing’s competitor, Lockheed. Hughes had a good relationship with Lockheed since they had built the aircraft he used in his record flight around the world in 1938. Lockheed agreed to Hughes’s request that the new aircraft be built-in secrecy. The result was the revolutionary Constellation and TWA purchased the first 40 of the new airliners off the production line. It was Hughes control of TWA that intercontinental airline travel began, the world became suddenly smaller and it was because Hughes pushed to have better planes built.

As the major airlines continued to compete over various routes through the 1940s, TWA gained a reputation for banking its future on the most advanced aircraft available. For example, as United and American began using the DC-6 aircraft, TWA responded by introducing the Lockheed L.1049 Super Constellation on September 10, 1952. The new aircraft had a 35 percent greater passenger carrying capacity than its predecessor. TWA was the first airline to inaugurate regularly scheduled nonstop transcontinental service between Los Angeles and New York on October 19, 1953.

TWA also entered the international market. At the end of World War II, the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), the organization that distributed routes for U.S. airlines, decided to allow other airlines to share in Pan American’s monopoly of international routes. TWA was one of the airlines granted this right, with permission to fly to Europe and India. TWA began regular New York-to-Paris service in February 1946. This route was later extended to Cairo, Egypt. TWA battled hard with Pan American for various international routes, but it initially failed to exploit its key advantage of being able to connect international flights with domestic ones, a handicap for Pan Am, which did not fly any domestic routes. TWA was also late in introducing jet service internationally, preferring instead to focus on domestic jet services. TWA’s first regularly scheduled jet flight took place on November 23, 1959—a New York-London-Frankfurt flight – a year after its main rivals. It took several years for the airline to regain its competitive advantage lost because of this delay.

Source article:

http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Commercial_Aviation/TWA/Tran14.htm

For fun facts about Howard Hughes check out this site.

http://www.funtrivia.com/en/Movies/Aviator-The-13606.html

Howard Hughes drove the industry forward, but as he went along, there was no shortage of parasites that threw themselves in his path to rob from him his wealth in order for their meager lives to profit. Hughes was brought before a congressional committee as a war profiteer because he refused to submit to Senator Brewster’s blackmailing, where Brewster tried to force Hughes to sell TWA to Juan Trippe of Pan Am. The criticism of Hughes was over the Spruce Goose, a plane Howard was developing for the military. Brewster declared that the plane would never fly, and used the hearings as a way to leverage Hughes to sell his shares off. Hughes flew the plane himself and proved them wrong, thereby defeating the take-over by Trippe, and the predatory senator.


The very rich are the heroes of modern American society, and the government looters are no different than the thieves from Europe that sought to tax the colonists in the 1770’s. The common goal is to suppress ideas and keep people under control by using taxes to control behavior. When the very wealthy still strive to achieve success and freedom, there are labor unions, government agencies and other trolls of impropriety that seek to make a name for themselves off the labor of the rich.

America would be far better off if it just stopped feeling guilty for the wealth it has achieved in such a short time. It would also be better off to admit that most politicians do nothing productive. All they make are rules, and rules are not productive. Rules do not make wealth. Therefore, government cannot make anything productive. When the lure of being rich and therefore free of some sort of entity which seeks to control individuals is not present, imagination dies, and imagination is the fuel to innovation which creates productivity.

It is time that Americans stop feeling guilty about whom they are. Work hard, make your money, and buy nice things with it. And guard yourselves from the unproductive government looter. Live your life as well as you can, and look at each day as yet another possibility of limitless opportunity. And when you hear a looter demanding they deserve the wealth of a rich person, defend that rich person as a fellow American, and as an example of the best that America has to offer. Don’t be a jealous fool. Be happy for those that have made it, and as for yourself, keep trying, because as long as America is what it is, there’s always a chance for you. Don’t allow yourself to be the worst that human kind produces and that is a looter that just scrapes through life on the products of others and expects as a divine right, “equal justice.”

My favorite modern company in the entire world is Industrial Light and Magic. To me, they are what every company in America should aspire to be. EVERY COMPANY! And Industrial Light and Magic was born because of Star Wars.






It took a very wealthy George Lucas to bring this gift to the human race.   And George didn’t become wealthy with a hand out.  He took risks, worked on ideas and never settled into a comfort level.  He pushed and pushed and pushed, and still continues to push the limit in everything he does.  This is perhaps the greatest example of how the wealthy should be thanked in every way possible. It is the wealthy, the very rich that shapes our world. It is through less regulation, less government that more companies like Disney, Industrial Light and Magic and many others can emerge. It is a shame that because of government it is our American entertainment companies that succeed the best. That is because entertainment is mostly in the mind and government looters have difficulty regulating the mind, as they have every other industry, agriculture, science, aviation, energy production, transportation…………………imagine what kind of world we could have if government would just GET OUT OF THE WAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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

Public Housing Nightmare: But a dream for socialist looters and social reformers

The Federal government is threatening to cut off federal money to communities that do not accept the spread of public housing development. Listen to Doc Thompson cover this fatal issue on 700 WLW.

This move is a progressive agenda item, the idea of public housing, loss of identification of towns and boundaries. The progressives are implementing the strategy of the 10 Planks of Communism which is like their Ten Commandments. They follow those 10 Planks of Communism very closely. Public housing is a progressive platform. Click here to see those Ten Planks of Communism if you are not aware of what they are.

The reality of public housing is it brings about the worst in human nature. Progressives have a fundamental lack of understanding of human nature and believe as many of the college professors who advocate the progressive platform do, that human nature can be engineered, and that the actions of the human being are not innate. They believe that through education that they provide they can control those innate desires.

History proves otherwise. Everywhere that there is public housing, there is failure. There are out-of-wedlock child births, welfare is endemic among the public welfare culture, drugs are a major problem, crime is up in almost every category, public housing is a dismal failure in public policy. That is unless that public policy is to weaken the human state of the participants to bring them down to the level of the rest of the world, which appears to be the desire.

As this video will show, public housing is filled with looters, not in the people who inhabit the homes, but in the people who run them.

This move by public housing advocates is precisely the same as that of the proposed health care bill otherwise known as Obama Care. They are the type that has been abusing the “commerce clause” of the 10th Amendment to impose congressional will on states and cities for decades. These are also the same people who claim there is a “supremacy clause” in the Constitution that claims a foreign treaty supersedes the wording of the United States Constitution. The threat to cut federal money to communities that resist the spread of public housing is a threat by the federal government to impose its socialist will on its citizens.

All governments by their nature will tend to flow toward socialism. This isn’t out of some sinister design by them, but simply out of survival. The government worker just like any worker just wants to work and get paid, like anybody else. The problem with government is that it is often unproductive and draws the weaker personality types that society has to offer. Without management controls, and given power, these people will vote themselves unlimited increases, unrestricted budgets and easy responsibilities and they’ll pay themselves top dollar to perform the task.

To feed this monster government will always be on a continuous push to justify their existence. They will over dramatize the jobs they perform. They’ll ask for more employees, and they will work as slow as possible in order to make their jobs seem more difficult. And politicians since they too are government workers are quick to give the tax money we send their way away to programs that expand government. They do it for survival, to increase their bloc voting ability.

Public housing is all about bloc voting and fulfilling the goals of the 10 Planks of Communism. It is strictly for the benefit of government. Not for the rest of us. Nobody wants to live near public housing. Public housing brings down home values. The people who live in those places tend to vote for higher taxes because they don’t have to pay as much tax as the rest of us, so they can only benefit from more handouts which politicians must take from the taxpayer to give to the politician in order to buy their votes in the next election.

For those of us that take care of our property, mow our grass, paint our homes, fix our decks, we don’t want public housing anywhere near us. But government doesn’t care because one of the 10 Planks of communism is to remove private property, so to their view, we’ll get used to it. They don’t care if we maintain our property or not because left to them, they’d hire government workers to do it for us. All we have to do is give up our property and turn it over to them.

So that’s the plan. That is what we are dealing with regarding public housing. Like public education, it is a big government plan to expand the role of government in everyday life, secure their livelihoods, drive up taxes to pay for everything and achieve the aims envisioned by Karl Marx which many, many academics adore. Many of those academics and experts that end up advising government are those Marx types, because they would not survive in a private sector economy not run by government. Government employees tend to be failures at life, so the products of their labor fail repeatedly. We see it in public education, we see it in public housing, we see it in every branch of government, every township, school board, and city council. Government fails at everything they do. Everything!

So why do we want more of it? Why would we allow government to dictate to us that we will have public housing in our communities? Why do we even need the federal money?

Forget socialism and their stupid square homes with corrupt politicians running them. Every American should embrace capitalism, because in America every person that works, saves their money and has an idea can strive for a home like the one in this next clip. If you want to see what democracy looks like, look at the riots of the poor looking for a hand out. If you want to see what a republic looks like, talk to someone who lives in a home like this one.

My answer to that is the same that I say for public education. If government at the federal level and the state level cuts the money to the schools, then we must cut the wages and number of government employees to balance the budget. We don’t raise taxes. And with public housing, we need less of it, not more, and all the people who support it should be removed from office. Because they are perpetuating a bad program that cost society in many more ways than just money. And if federal money is cut, then that means government jobs must be cut to balance the budget. That’s the only way to play this game, and that’s the answer to a domineering government that wants all the things that are bad for the rest of us, even if it is only for the naive desire of their own survival. Let the government workers perish so to save what is left of America, because like a cancer cell, government will always try to grow if allowed to impose themselves upon the taxpayer, because they feed off of what is healthy and thrive in what is broken and dying. That is why they fail.

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

What a Nasty Little Weiner: Why progressives support polygamy, power, religion, and the sexual playground

It is really up to Huma Abedin how much of Congressman Anthony Weiner she wants to put up with. Abedin who is married to Weiner is a practicing Muslim and a very close aid to Hillary Clinton, so it is entirely possible that she doesn’t care about all the pictures of Weiner’s weiner that is all over the internet. It is possible that while she seeks counsel with Hillary she might say, “What should I do?” Hillary will probably say something like, “Huma, I love you very much and trust me, all men are pigs………just accept it. Men just can’t keep their pants on so don’t even worry about it. The important thing would be to ask yourself, what do I want. Can Anthony help you achieve your professional goals and the answer is yes. So stay with him. Let the media drive the story into the ground, and within a couple of months, everyone will forget about it. In the meantime, stay traveling with me, don’t appear in public with your husband and leave him hanging out to dry. It’ll serve him right.”

At that point Abedin might say, “But it’s embarrassing, everywhere we go together, people will think I’m not a good lover. Or they’ll think I’m weak because I let him get away with it.”

Then Hillary will say, as she looks out the window of her plane while it’s en route over the Atlantic Ocean to the United Arab Emirates in Africa, “No they won’t. People don’t think like that. They’ll be jealous that it is you that holds the title to power while the other women are just concubines to your man’s wishes. That’s what counts. It’s the title, Huma that is important. That’s what people will see when they look at you in public standing with your husband. This Christian notion of monogamy is outdated and proven problematic. Believe me, I have years of experience. Men will cheat on you no matter how much sex you give them, no matter how attractive you are. Many cultures accept this, superior cultures, such as your Muslim faith, and even in Japan it is quite common for the wife to arrange pleasure with other women for her husband. Think of it as a way of appeasement, such as you might do for your cat when you give it some cat-nip to play with and roll all over it’s body. You do it to keep your man coming home to you every night, to keep the title of wife in your court where you have control over it. At heart, Americans are evolving beyond this silly Christian notion of monogamy, so all will be forgiven if you’ll just let it play out.”

Now I wasn’t on the plane with Hillary Clinton flying over the Atlantic on our way to Africa listening to what she told Huma Abedin as the young woman greaves over the embarrassment of dealing with her husbands sexting exploits revealed on Monday the first full week of June 2011. Progressives, like all these people are, do not think like the rest of us. They might as well exist from some other planet, because that’s just the way their mind processes data. I know the content of that conversation because I’ve heard it before from progressives. I’ve watched their behavior for years, and I understand how they think. So I have no problem providing the details of that conversation, because it is so predictable the contents aren’t difficult to witness even without being there.

The deeper, much more problematic issue is that Anthony Weiner was so arrogant in his ability to deceive the public that he lied to the face of America without any trace of shame. Over the last week, as this story was breaking, he stood before all members of the media and lied to them. He lied to us all, claiming that his Twitter account had been “hacked.” He used his office equipment for much of this, equipment we all pay for as tax payers, and he thought he’d get away with it. Even as the story was breaking, he continued to push the issue by contacting more women with erotic pictures of himself. He was literally speaking to members of the media claiming that some hacker broke into his account, then turned around and engaged in the kind of activity he was trying to hide.

This is entirely too reminiscent of Bill Clinton who openly lied to the public then tried to turn the whole argument around and claim that his private life was off-limits, in no way reflective of his professional life. That led to the famous quote, “It’s just sex.” Spoken like a true progressive.

Weiner has already tried to make that distinction; it’s just my private life. “I made a mistake. I will not step down because I can still perform my professional job.”

So here’s the deal, and I’ll say this only once. This is why this guy is a supreme scum bag that I wouldn’t hire to hand me a towel in the bathroom, every interview that Weiner gave about Health Care, or the time he attacked Glenn Beck about supporting gold on his Fox News show, and every debate that Weiner had with every media personality or fellow congressman, now has to be discounted. We know now that you can’t believe a thing this guy says. Nothing he says on the floor of the House can be believed. Nothing he says on behalf of the White House can be believed, because we have all seen that he is more than willing to lie, about virtually nothing, in order to meet his personal agenda. What would he lie about if the issue actually mattered, like issues of National Security, or the true intentions of the Progressive Party, disguised behind the Democratic Party. What would he lie about when there is really a risk? Because if just taking naked pictures of himself and talking dirty to a bunch of women online is really a nothing issue, then why did he lie about it? Why did he stand before the world and talk to everyone like they were the idiots and he was the only person right in the world.

Anthony Weiner is a dangerous man because he has no moral compass. He is a power-hungry little man who will undermine anyone over anything. If he wants government Health Care, he’ll say and do anything to get it. If he wants to smear a Republican, he’ll say and do anything to perform the task. If he wants to take down a media personality that stands in the way of the progressive agenda, he’ll utter any word needed to manipulate those around him to commit his purpose. That is why Weiner is the arrogant embodiment of pure evil. He should receive not one fraction of a cent that I send to Washington in tax money. Anthony Weiner makes at least $174,000 a year for his work in Congress, that’s the money I know about. As an American Tax Payer I don’t want to pay his salary one day more. We could hire anyone to lie to us. We could hire a con man from prison to fill the American media with lies. He has no authority and should not serve one more day in congress.

Doc Thompson of 700 WLW hits the nail on the head really well here. Click to listen to a collection of clips about Weiner’s history of contention.

These guys are scum bags. Bill Clinton is because he’s a manipulative liar too. And Weiner and his wife have more in common with Bill and Hillary than they do with the average American. As I’ve stated on this site, these people don’t give a care about American life. They are aiming for a world government ran by the United Nations, of which they are all polarizing for their own grabs for power in that not yet formed power of world affairs. They don’t care about affairs, sexting or even monogamy. They don’t care about the United States Constitution because they are all lawyer types that seek to bend the law to suit their needs at the expense of everyone that pays their wages. They are crooks and thieves with no moral compass or care. People like Weiner are no different from the weiner’s they take pictures of. They simply rise to the occasion to screw the taxpayer for their selfish pleasure. At all other times they are simply limp collections of flesh that just hang around and are only useful for disposing of bodily waste. In other words they are virtually worthless appendages intended for only one function of human endeavor, and that is to penetrate something else with the intention of pleasure and self-gratification. An entity of pure biology and no mind what-so-ever.

I think now we understand why there is such a push among progressives to embrace the Muslim faith, because the men want to practice polygamy, and the women don’t want to feel alone in public when their men sleep around on them.

http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/720291-The-Truth-About-Polygamy-In-Islam

 

It certainly seems to be the desire of Bill Clinton, and the king progressive thinker himself, Congressman Weiner and his multiple online sex partners. There’s always more to the story than what you see on the surface.


Good luck with that progressive lifestyle. If you’d ask me Abedin, I’d say find a real man to be the father of that baby, and not a weiner. But it’s your life.

Rich Hoffman

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

I Love Jimmy McMillian: Gas Prices are TOO DAMN HIGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When gas prices are too high, one of the first things people will give up are luxury items. That’s what’s happening to the Liz Claiborne facility in West Chester, Ohio. High gas prices which are ruining the economy are having an impact on businesses like this tremendous distribution center.

President Obama is now in his third year and while he did inherit a bad economic situation, he has now shown that his economic plan was only to perpetuate the negative economic conditions to advance his green jobs agenda, which has only exacerbated the economy in even more negative ways. As of June 7, 2011 a poll in the Washington post reveals that only 40% of respondents approve of Obama’s handling of the economy, and only 33% approve of his handling of the deficit.

At the start of last summer, in 2010 gas prices were over a dollar less than they are now, as they were just shy of $3 per gallon. In fact, over the winter I wrote an article here about how preposterous gas prices breaking the $3 per gallon mark truly were and how any amount of money over $3 would cut into America’s disposable income, and would cause devastating economic conditions.

Now gas is flirting with $4 per gallon and going up. The fault rests exclusively on the green freaks, progressives, and wealth redistribution advocates. Obama is directly guilty. He has openly discouraged oil drilling in the United States, but has openly embraced it in Brazil, helping that country with a collaborative effort to get their feet in the international economy at the expense of the United States. The blue print for all this activity is exactly the plot line out of the book Atlas Shrugged.

The progressive power grabbers however, while they are working the strategy implemented by Cass Sunstein discussed in his book “Nudge” they seek to sidetrack America on silly stories like racism, and plights in favor of the poor, which only achieves their bloc voting goals, while the cost of their strategy is showing up in the increasing gas prices.

Many of us see through the scam though, and Jimmy McMillian is one of them. Jimmy is the guy who ran for Governor of New York under the mantra, “The Rent is Too Damn High.” I love Mr. McMillian. He is what a great American looks like. I have no idea what his political affiliation is, and I don’t care. All I know is that he speaks the truth, and he does so with passion. For America to be great, it needs people like Jimmy McMillian to be in the majority, not the extreme minority. But if you want to know what a great modern American looks like, then watch Jimmy McMillian go to Washington to announce his “The Gas is Too Damn High” campaign.

Here is Jimmy’s website where you can visit and send him your pictures of fuel costs that are too high.

http://www.gasolineistoodamnhigh.com/

There is only one reason that gas is so high, and that’s because of the mismanagement of our resources by our government. It’s a lack of drilling for shale oil, it’s a lack of drilling for off shore reserves, and the lack of energy exploration in Alaska, all of this resistance is purely political. Click here to read a great article about this topic.

The Obama administration now and Al Gore all during the 2000’s kept pressure on oil developers to stop drilling citing environmental concerns. Yet those same politicians are embracing the same drilling techniques in China and Brazil. The reason is because the United States energy policy has nothing to do with the environment. It’s about wealth redistribution. It’s about helping the economy of Brazil and other South American countries, and China so wealth redistribution can be implemented. American’s are forced to swallow this pill with the glass full of bull-shit called “environmental concerns.” The green movement is purely about money, money for developing countries, and disarming the United States so to give those countries a head start on the economic play ground.

The high gas prices are also in place to “nudge” American’s into buying “green tech” vehicles. That’s those stupid little glorified golf carts that we’re starting to see on the roads these days. The cars are small, underpowered, and pathetic, they are not what America is about. They have little place in our culture, but the Obama administration has hung it’s hat on this technology, this is what Barack Obama wants to be remembered for in the context of history, which is a pathetically short-sighted goal.

I stand with Jimmy, and you should too. Send your pictures into Jimmy’s website and learn the truth of why the “Gas is too damn high.” It’s not to help America. It’s not even to help the Earth. It’s all about some pathetically short sighted politicians that want to be remembered for forcing green technology jobs which force Americans to drive slower, embrace public transportation like high speed rail and trolley cars, and robbing the wealth of America and giving it to other countries.

But why would “Americans” like Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Cass Sunstein do such a thing? They are Americans too……..because they are more loyal to the United Nations than the United States, and they are hedging their bets that in the future, a position in the UN will have more prominence than even being President of the United States. In their view, a president in the future will simply be another governor of just another country equal to Brazil, China, Germany and all the others. The real power, and the real prestige will be to lead the United Nations, and they’ll gain their reputations, and votes by robbing from the United States it’s wealth, because the whole world is jealous of America anyway, and giving it to the voters of the New World government who will elect them to rule the entire world.

That’s why gas prices are “TOO DAMN HIGH.” It’s a grab for power at our expense and it should make every American very angry. And it does Jimmy McMillian which swells me with American pride. So what about the rest of you? Where’s your outrage and what are you going to do about it!

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

Revenue Enhancement Equation: The Great Police Scam, safety = money + POWER

I heard a story this morning that was deeply disturbing, a guy I know was harassed by a cop from Trenton last night because that particular cop is in a fight with his brother-in-law. The cop came to the home of this guy I know, walked into his garage and flashed his flashlight into the eyes of the guy and his wife, openly harassing them, but walking the thin blue line of the law. The harassment is that the brother-in-law had told the cop the night before, “don’t you have anything to do but harass us for a speeding ticket my wife got. Last week you pulled over an ice cream truck that rolled through a stop sign. Why don’t you arrest those drug dealers over by the factory? We all know what is going on over there. You know it, we know it, yet here you are, harassing the very people who pay your salary, because you know you can.”

Apparently the brother-in-law hit too close to the mark, so the cop chose to step up his harassment, instead of doing less of it, and now he chose to harass members of the brother-in-law’s family, to put peer pressure on the brother-in-law to cease the behavior of resistance. After all, in the eyes of the law, resistance is futile.

Darryl Parks of 700 WLW deals with a bit of this police tyranny during the Memorial Day weekend when police all around Cincinnati make the announcement of the “Click it or tick it” campaign. The only reason for those cops to pull over drivers for the seat belt campaign is to raise money. Listen to that broadcast here:

There is much evil in the world that is done under the disguise of “safety.” There are DUI checkpoints set up to make the rest of us “safe.” There are cops stationed along road ways all across this country to keep speed down, so we will all be “safe.” This is the same mentality we see in our schools where teachers proclaim that they are needed to keep our kids, “safe.” Administrators are needed to keep teachers “safe,” so that teachers can keep our kids, “safe.” Safety is the key word for tyranny. Give up your freedom for the safety we provide.

When you question this process, especially with police officers, they get very angry. Stories like the one this brother-in-law tells are not uncommon. There are officers like this dirty cop in every single community. Their superiors are very limited in what they can do because just like in the teachers union, the Fraternal Order of Police protects its members with a mob like presence. Not every cop is bad, but the bad ones just like in any group tend to be the leaders. It’s always the most aggressive that set the policies for the group, and aggressive cops set the standard.

I know personally two officers in Hamilton that were demanding sexual favors from women they pulled over. They offered the girls and women a warning in exchange for getting out of the ticket. The cops resigned before the investigation got underway which is a standard FOP trick which allows the officer to get another job later once the stories cool down. How do I know about it? I know one of the guys. After he resigned he called me to ask me for a job, hoping I didn’t know why he left the force. These are not isolated stories. They are epidemic. The power of the position invites corruption of that power. And when you have too many police, which politicians prop up and pander to so they can get the support of the powerful FOP for elections, the police are bored while on the job, so the weak ones tend to abuse their power. They pull over attractive woman because they can. They pull over speeders, especially speeders in nice cars, because they have nothing else to do, and they have to raise the proper amount of revenue to justify their existence. And they exist for purely political reasons, because the sheer numbers of officers provide the FOP with the political clout to influence elections. It’s a big scam, and just one more imposition on the tax payer. Again, we pay for our own demise, harassment, and erosion of freedom.

Every time I see a check-point set up by police officers I achieve new levels of rage. For the most part, DUI laws were created by politicians under the guise of “protection” to prop up the insurance industry and to give their FOP supporters something to do. It provides business for the courts and all the employees of the court. Meanwhile, DUI incidents still occur, because we have a drinking culture. Politicians know it. News reporters know it, we all know it, but yet we don’t do anything about it, because they are the “authority.”

The cops know it too, that’s why they think it OK to walk into a man’s garage and harass him and his wife only because they are related to a man the cop has a personal issue with. That’s abuse of power and it’s time to call it what it is. Not to hide the contemptible behavior behind the guise of “safety,” “protection,” and “public well-being.”

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

Laura Sanders: My answer to your waltz of words in The Pulse Journal

Just like many people didn’t want to believe that anything was wrong with Ohio State football, Jim Tressel resigned amid a wave of controversy.  Our statewide school funding issue isn’t far off from the Jim Tressel controversy where little white lies that is in the context of the program, insignificant, the evil is in the cover-up.  And with school budgets, the cover-up is in the contracts extorted by the teachers unions. 

The apologists were out again in this past week’s Pulse Journal.  Another letter attacking me was placed in that paper proving the vast intellectual deficiencies of a certain percentage of the population.  When reading these things I almost feel sorry for those people.  I mean how do they live?  How do they make decisions?  Surely they aren’t so mentally challenged, because if you read letters from apologists like the author of the editorial below, that is the only conclusion a person that can actually think would conclude. 

Before I tear this letter to pieces, read it for yourself.  It isn’t my intention to make these people feel bad, but they do it to themselves.  They vote after all, and it is through apologists like the author of this letter that the teachers union uses to propel their strategy, which has worked because people like me couldn’t believe that there are actually people who can’t think critically enough to see through the façade of deceit. 

 ———————————————————————————————————————

Teachers aren’t just educators

Dear Richard Hoffman: You can rejoice now that Lakota’s teachers have agreed to a three-year freeze in step raises and a much less comprehensive health care plan. Or, is that not going far enough? Oh, that’s right…you believe our teachers are overpaid, even though 100 percent have bachelor’s degrees, and 68 percent of those have master’s degrees. I guess with six-hour workdays and summers off, they really aren’t deserving, huh? Those daily lesson plans and graded papers must magically appear on their desks each morning. 

I have friends who are teachers, and let me tell you, they are worth every penny they earn. Not only are they educators; they are counselors, role models, mediators, chaperones and disciplinarians. They perform a balancing act every day in the classroom, having to be assertive yet compassionate; formidable yet sensitive; strict yet respectful.

Instead of recognizing the commitments to our children put forth by Lakota staff members, you, Mr. Hoffman, are spending all of your time blaming unions, threatening school board members and charging “overpaid” teachers with taxpayer abuse. Your arguments are weak at best, accusing school administrators and board members of mismanaging school funds when it is well-documented that Lakota only spent $9,806 per pupil during the 2009-10 school year — less than most other comparable statewide districts. As a matter of fact,Westervilleschool Superintendent Dan Good was quoted in a February 2011 article as saying, “We’re going to be looking at what’s going on in those communities (Lakota and Fairfield) that’s allowing them to keep those high ratings along with such a low-cost per pupil.”

Our school system relies solely on levies being passed so that our teachers can be compensated. The reason for Lakota’s continued success is because of our teachers. They should be lauded, not punished.    

Laura Sanders

LibertyTwp.

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Ok, where to start? There are so many problems with this letter.  First off, I am not spending all my time blaming the unions.  I spend about 2% of my time fighting taxes, which began about 9 months ago.  The other 98% percent of my time is quite productive.  Of the 2% of my time I do spend on fighting higher taxes, it is the reasonable conclusion that unions are to blame for the overall funding problems.  They didn’t give themselves any budget limits.  Unions aren’t any different from teenagers, if you give them a $100 dollars, they’ll want $200.  You can never give enough because the teenager hasn’t learned the value of money. They don’t value what comes easily.  And neither do union members.  As a producer, and a capitalist, I don’t like unions.  I don’t want my money supporting them.  I’m fine if they can exist in the free market, but they can’t.  They have succeeded in driving up wages to the point that China,India, and Indonesia are now doing jobs that used to be done in the United States.  I blame the unions for that.  Labor costs are the unifying factor in the overall manufacturing problems our country is facing.  I think people should be paid a fair wage, but if it’s excessive, and drives up the cost of the product to where the consumer won’t buy it, or simply can’t afford it, then the victor of that wage level negotiation is not the union that extorted the higher wage, because the union killed the job in the long run. 

This is what the teachers union has done to the cost of education.  They have driven up the cost without a care in the world to the end result.  Their solution to everything is simply to raise more taxes, which isn’t a successful formula for prosperity.  That mentality has run the Norwood General Motors plant out-of-town, it shut down Fisher Body in Hamilton.  In fact it has practically decimated the economy of Hamilton.  It drove up the costs at Cincinnati Milacron down in Oakley.  The list goes on and on and on.  Those were all production jobs, and most of that work is now out of the county. 

I’ve employed people who worked for AK Steel in Middletown, several of them that wanted jobs while they were on strike during their labor dispute that went on for over a year back in 2006-2007.  I learned a great deal about the hard union mentality from those employees, since AK Steel is one of those mob type unions where they actually beat-up people who crossed the picket line during labor disputes.  A lot of my local motorcycle friends in and around town are big time union types.  I have made my feelings known to these guys.  I have told them, “You wouldn’t have a boat, and you wouldn’t have a Harley Davidson parked in the garage if not for the union, because you guys are too stupid to earn that kind of money on your own.”

“We ain’t got those head smarts like you do, brother,” is what they say to me.  “Thank God for the union.”

“You’re working yourself out of a job with the wages you guys demand.”

“Just so long as it don’t happen till after I retire.”  (they typically laugh at this point.)

Teachers are absolutely no different.  They are like anyone else.  They believe their job is the most important job on the face of the planet.  It’s up to someone like me, (in management) to let them know that their job isn’t quite so important, that someone else can do their job, and the show will go on without them if need be.  It’s my job in management to not be liked, because nobody likes to be told they aren’t that valuable. 

But for a manager to know the value of a job, they need to know something about the job.  I’ve worked in just about every endeavor someone could imagine and I know how difficult teaching is.  To me, teaching is worth a range of about 40K to 60K tops, because it is a degree position.  But a master’s degree has no value to me.  A doctorate has no value to me, not in public education.  I just want kids to be able to read, write and be productive citizens.  If parents want all that other stuff they can hire a private tutor, or a private school, and make sure that kid gets to college.  It’s an insane law to pay 68% of the teachers at Lakota more money because they have a master’s degree.  What’s the value in that?  Does it make them better?  The union will tell you it does, so where are the results?  Where are the test results that prove otherwise?  There aren’t any, its pure speculation.  What do a master’s and doctorate degree do to justify higher labor costs? 

I know a woman who is going for her doctorate.  I asked her, “why is that so important to you?” 

She said to me, “I’m a professional student.”  At least she was honest.  This particular woman is the really cautious type.  She is the kind that will put her kids in a helmet when they are riding their bicycles, and in her professional life, she doesn’t care much for competition, so she enjoys the security and pace of academia.  I know personally, as I look down the list of the top 625 highly paid teachers at Lakota that many of those teachers fit the same description.  Only in government does their vision for reality work, because the tax payer picks up the bill. 

The only reason a lot of the laws that school boards are constrained with regarding school budgets exists, like the run-a-way labor costs mentioned with the master’s degree ratio are because the OEA lobbied to get laws passed that completely benefited them. 

It is insane to create policies that drive up your labor costs then turn around and continue to ask for more money from tax payers to fund them.  With as much money as I spend in taxes, I expect Lakota to be the greatest districts in the state.  But don’t be a fool and ask me to pay for infinite amounts of money for it.  That doesn’t make any sense.  At some point there’s a diminishing marginal return and we’ve hit that point. 

As to grading papers, what?  A teacher is under contract for 7.5 hours.  Grading papers if a teacher has to do it every single day shouldn’t take more than 4 hours per day.  So that’s a 11.5 hour day.  So what.  Why was such a statement spoke about as though it were something special?  I average a lot more than that per day. I’m on call 24 hours a day, and most of the time 6 days a week, or 7 if I have people working all weekend.  And I don’t have summers off.  I would expect any employee that I hired for over 40K per year to do everything said in that letter and more.  I don’t understand the emotion.  Is all that money needed to pay these employees and a pat on the back too required?  What kind of fragile people are these teachers that think such talking points even dictate special merit?  It’s expected! 

It is well-documented that Lakota only spent $9,806 per pupil, but so what.  That’s too high. How do I know it’s too high?  What criteria?  Well, if the district asks for more money for a levy, that means they aren’t working within their budget.  When the average tax bill in the Lakota School District is between $3000 to $4000 per year and the district is still asking for more money which does not mean Lakota has done a good job.  It doesn’t change anything if another district in the state thinks Lakota is doing well.  All that tells me is that education costs everywhere are too high.  The teachers union and the school board need to find a way to bring that number down to $8,000 per student, or even $6,000 per student.  If it were up to me, and I were running the district I wouldn’t be happy till the cost per pupil was under $5000.  We’re talking simply about labor costs here.  Not helping children. 

The union is solely responsible for pricing themselves out of the market.  It is unreasonable to ask tax payers to fund this ridiculous perception that these radical teachers union members have about their value.  Are teachers valuable, sure.  But they aren’t more important than the kid’s parents, and many of the traits listed are not the job of the teacher.   If they wish to be mentors, that’s the teacher’s choice.  If they chose to be counselors, role models, mediators, chaperones and disciplinarians, that’s fine. But they are paid to teach the basics.  I don’t want to hear about all those other traits, because those are the aspects of living that kids should be getting from their parents.  The union types will say that the parents are not doing the job.  Well, who are they to say?  Who are they to take it upon themselves?  Who are they to impose on the sanctity of a family?  Is it their job to impose on every parent the policing that only a fraction of truly bad parents deserve?  Is it justice to extend those traits outside the classroom, which is what a lot of teachers mistakenly believe they have an obligation to indulge in.  No, because all those tasks cost money, money that is inflated for a role that is overly dramatized in order to justify the money spent. 

So to answer the question, am I happy?  No, because the contract was a ploy to gain an edge with the public to over-turn Senate Bill 5.  It was not genuine; otherwise the union would look at the financial situation with more intelligence.  It would have advised its members to reduce their cost to the district.  They would have sought to make themselves more marketable. 

I was happy to see the superintendent and school board members happy for a change.  It was nice to see them feeling good about their jobs.  I did like that.  But I know what they don’t want to admit to themselves, because they are stuck dealing with that crazy union every day, that this concession is just another manipulative scheme orchestrated by the union. 

I see through this labor debate.  I have employees that constantly lobby for more overtime, raises, less work hours, you name it.  I’ve heard every over dramatized excuse in the human vocabulary for why an employee thinks they are valuable.  The trick is knowing which ones are telling the truth, and which ones aren’t. 

I hope to God that the author of this letter about me is not a teacher, but is in fact just another neurotic mother that is overly emotional about all topics in her life.  I really hope that’s the case.  Because if this person represents the kind of employees that we are paying over 60K per year, which is the average wage at Lakota, then we are wasting our money much worse than even I have pointed out. 

 I see from experience that the labor situation at Lakota needs to be dealt with, in order for Lakota to remain excellent.  Labor does not make a school great.  Management of resources does.  Lakota has shown that it can manage resources better than other schools, but that’s not enough if it is asking for more money.  If the state cuts it’s funding, if the federal government cuts its money, and there’s less money to go around, then the school needs to find a way to do more with even less.  It’s insane, and highly ignorant to assume that the tax payer will shoulder that responsibility directly.  I’ve heard it said that Lakota needs new sources of revenue.  Well, how’s it going to do that when it doesn’t produce anything?  The product is the education of children, and the results of that education have not placed the United States in first place in the world, so why would we spend more than what we’ve spent at this point?  Why should personal property taxes go up over $4000 per property, what is the value?  So a public teacher can take a 5K vacation on their 3 months off?  Isn’t that what it really comes down to?  Because if it wasn’t, the union would have been more responsible in what they demanded, and we are where we are because of the demands on the community.  When the school levy passed, it wasn’t asked for, it was demanded. 

In 2005 I fought the school levy back then too.  For all the same reasons.  The money kicked in during 2006.  As soon as the money hit the district, and the union knew the receipts were in from assessed property value, after owners paid their taxes, they threatened to strike in 2008.  The teachers union pushed its members to strike, to walk off the job.  I will never forget that.  The strike was over money.  As soon as positive cash flow was shown to the district because of the levy passing, the union went after the excess money.  That is the path that brought us to the financial situation we’re currently in.  It’s my money they want, and it’s my money they squandered away like drunken sailors. 

Unlike a lot of people who live in the district, I have lived in the Lakota district for a long time, and I plan to stick around.  And I have a great memory.  I know that these are people who are attempting to scam my neighbors and children that I genuinely care for.  And that’s bullying, it makes me very, very angry.  And I will not stand for it!

So you apologists can figure out where you want to be on this position, but remember, there isn’t any negotiation.  There is right and wrong.  I’m right, and those asking for more money are wrong.  And that’s the end of the story.  Live with it……get an education and learn a couple of things, then talk to me when you figure out that you agree with me.

 

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

Kelli Kohls of the Springboro School Board: How to solve the education riddle

These are the kind of people who have created a dysfunctional public school system. Yet here is the Treasurer of the Springboro Education Association making a speech on how valuable she is, to justify why she should have tenure, and why she should be so highly paid. This woman is a union lobbyist, the kind of person that routinely pushes law makers to create laws just to shut them up. These are the type of people who Kelli Kohls of the Springboro School Board have to deal with on a routine bases.

People can say what they want about Doc Thompson, but anyone that says he doesn’t look at every side of a story to arrive at the truth is doing themselves a disservice to fallacy. Doc is a guy that asks questions and invites all sides to present their arguments. The invitation has been extended to school board members and superintendents all across Ohio to come on his show and dispute the accusations people like myself have leveled at the education industry and very few people have taken advantage of the offer.

That is till today, May 27, 2011. Kelli Kohls on the eve of a large vote in Springboro with their teachers union which occurs at 6:30 pm, came on 700 WLW to offer an insiders opinion of where public school is failing. The interview is particularly telling since it comes from a woman who is actively pursuing proper management of a school system, so her insight is magnificently portrayed in this hard-hitting interview, which is one of the first of its kind.

As Kelli stated in the interview, her school board can only really control approximately 15% of the total school budget. This is because of state laws and union negotiations that take the other 85% completely off the table. Kelli is noticeably frustrated because she genuinely wants to help her district. She wants kids to learn, and she wants the parents of those kids to get a good value for their tax money. But her hands are tied from every direction. She tells the story that so many ambitious community members tell that end up running for the school board, to help their community, only to discover that there is a giant political machine in place that makes all their efforts worthless.

I know several good people like Kelli that are current school board members, or former school board members. We’ve all discussed the process and how it’s broken. We all know the political games that are tied up into politics and the aspiring school board member must make a decision once they are elected by the community. Do they play ball with the unions, in exchange for financial benefits in indirect ways, discounted trips to Columbus where they are treated well and brought under the umbrella of the union syndicate. Or do they retain their values and continue to fight on behalf of the kids and the tax payers? If they do, it is a certainty that they will be singled out and hunted down by members of that syndicate.

Kelli is the school board member that I mentioned in another article, (click here to review) that the OEA was actively pursing harassment. That’s because she is one of the board members that is continuing to vote against their control of her district. She has a right to vote against them, because she is representing the interests of the tax payer. It’s not to the tax payer interest to have their taxes increase and still receive the same level of mediocre service. So she pushes back with her vote, and the OEA has singled her out.

I watched what happened to another friend of mine, Jennifer Miller formerly of the Mason School Board. (Click here to see the video Jennifer appeared with me in for an I-Team report by Brendon Keefe.) Jennifer was one of those lone voters that had the guts to go against the union syndicate and she was punished to no end. Watch this video where she had a confrontation with another board member. It’s not a position that avoids conflict. To do the job right, such confrontations are a necessity, sadly.

Many people have been pushing me to run for the Lakota School Board, which I have no interest. I’m used to having my way, and I would be enemy number one for the teachers union because they are openly extorting the public and I’d point that out publicly. I would bring constant combat to a school board because I don’t bend on anything. Negotiation to me is making people see things my way, because I work very hard to figure out the truth of a matter so negotiation is pointless, because all you’re doing in such negotiations is compromising to accept the other party’s feelings. In this case the other party is the union syndicate. But the truth is that public education has become too much about money and far too little about children, so feelings are irrelevant.

My vision for school boards is to have several people like Kelli on the board, people who will stand up to the union syndicate on behalf of the tax payer. I’ve seen personally that only one or two board members are not enough. There needs to be three or four such personalities that can actually garner a majority vote. That’s the only way to get these school systems under control, at least the start of it. But for now it eases my mind to know there are board members like Kelli out there fighting the good fight for all the right reasons, and there are people like Doc Thompson that will give equal voice where in the past there has only been silence.

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

 

Storm Clouds Gather over Lakota: S.B.5 forces union concessions that saves millions of dollars

Doc Thompson and I talk about the historic signing between the Lakota Education Association and the Lakota School Board on 700 WLW of the new contract that removes “step increases” from the financing scheme the district has been struggling with. Click here to listen to that detailed conversation that covers everything from storms to Senate Bill 5. This is the first time in Lakota’s 54 year history that such an agreement has been achieved. But for me, it’s too little too late, and too little when much more is needed.

As the storm clouds raged in over the Lakota Administration building around 7:30 pm May 23, 2011 bringing threatening weather with such wind gusts that the windows rattled, the Lakota School Board meeting was postponed while everyone present sought shelter from a would-be tornado. Channel 19 was there filming the event as a musical act was wrapping up, and effort from Ron Spurlock to create a meeting atmosphere that relieved the tension that had festered in a community that feels overly taxed on one hand, and a teachers union that never knows when enough is enough. I admired the work Ron has been doing, and he seemed o me to be functioning as the ideal superintendent for the Lakota district. He understands the way educators think, but he’s not unrealistic to what’s going on in the outside world. He’s a likeable guy and it shows. He is a perfect example of how leaders emerge in crises, and he is what has emerged as the previous superintendent left town during the last levy attempt.

The Channel 19 reporter told his cameraman, who then told a guy back in the tech booth that a dangerous storm cell was coming our way, so Joan evacuated the room to seek shelter stuffed into the back of the building away from the bouncing glass windows. My wife and I looked at the storm outside then at the people who that had forced so much pain on our community with the union contract, and elected to go outside into the storm to watch the fascinating clouds roll in. We joined the TV people wo had already gathered outside to get weather shots for their various stations. It was more dangerous outside for sure, but the breeze felt good and if a tornado touched down, we’d be able to see it hopefully in time to get to some cover.

Much to my surprise Ron Spurlock joined me outside along with Jenni Logan. We had a nice conversation, nothing serious. I purposely wanted to avoid doing a lot of talking. After all, they had a reason to celebrate and I didn’t want to rob them of the experience. The relief on their faces that the LEA actually negotiated a deal in record time with them without discussion of strikes, or other hardships, was nothing short of stunning.

As bits of mulch kicked up in the wind and became dangerous projectiles that the cameraman shielded their cameras with their hands to protect, I saw on Ron’s face a genuine love of the district and a joy of actually having some good news. So I kept the conversation friendly. This was not the day for contention. Even though the storms were spreading over Lakota from above, by an act of nature, it was nothing compared to the storm that had settled psychologically within the members of the community. So Ron and I stood outside with the news crews, joined by Jenni and watched the dangerous storm with the relief similar to those that are enjoying the relief of a hurricane that had move on.

After a half hour, the storm cleared and the meeting resumed. The contract was voted on quickly and the meeting ended. My wife and I left quietly.
On the way home I thought of the teachers union that had held out all this time and nearly bankrupted the district with their refusal to deal with the school board, to act like children to keep asking and asking for more money when the district has already well-compensated them. Then the reality hit me about their actions. They didn’t give up anything. They weren’t suddenly working with the district and the community that must pay their wages. They have their eye on the bigger prize, of repealing S.B.5 from law in November. It is that law that they want to get rid of and the union strategy is to give up these short-term fights for the greater prize of being able to continue to extort excessive wages from the community in the future. S.B.5 will give school boards such as Lakota much more leverage in contract negotiations. It will take away the unions ability to create work stoppages through strikes which is a heavy-handed strategy the union uses often. The LEA has threatened strikes twice in the last 3 years. Once in 2008, which came down t the wire and then a threat of another in March of 2010, both incidents were over wages and benefits. So the union does not want to lose the ability to use such tactics against the community. So the realization hit me hard that while we were all happy and celebrating at Lakota, a more sinister villain loomed on the horizon.

As the clouds parted to reveal a bit of the setting sun, and the cool breeze that follows such storms was refreshing our faces as we drove with the windows down, my wife and I enjoyed the moment for what it was, a moment of relief in a war that would resume tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow over the repeal of S.B.5.

It was S.B.5 that brought both sides to the table. It was the fear of it that forced the union to put on a friendly face and work with the community so they could claim as much during the campaign to repeal. So my mind went to work on what those next steps would be, as I took a breath and enjoyed the moment for all it was worth.

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

Pirates and Politicians, Same Thing: One uses a cutlass, the other uses a pen to force us into serfdom

Doc Thompson of 700 WLW discusses all the various ways politicians are misspending our tax dollars.

This is a rich country. We have plenty of money, and if you don’t believe me, ask Halliburton. There’s plenty of money out there; don’t fall into the trap of this whole deficit argument. The only question is how to spend it.

Van Jones, Former Obama Administration Green-Jobs Czar

It is not a false statement to call people like Mr. Van Jones a simple looter. Comments like what he has made, such as the one in the example, are statements rooted in sheer ignorance. But this is not an article to condemn only Van Jones. This is an article about condemning all those like him that look to the tax payer to fund their looter mentality. I write this on the heals of watching the new Pirates of the Caribbean film, which I liked a lot, but when watching the behavior of the pirates, and their mentality, I fail to recognize the difference between any official that asks the tax payer for more money to fund their “big ideas” when the reality of what they are doing is stealing the money outright. Yes, stealing is the correct term.

Why is stealing the correct term? Well, politicians are using tax money in many cases to buy votes. Lyndon Johnston was doing that as president. He was openly creating government programs that had to be funded with tax payer dollars to care for voter demographics beneficial to him politically. In other words, he took money from people who wouldn’t openly support his programs, but took that money in the form of taxes. If the tax payer refused to pay taxes for the programs he created then the tax payer would be arrested under force and thrown in jail. FDR did the same thing in the 40’s. Roosevelt wasn’t interested in being a president; he wanted to be a king. How is that any different from a pirate stealing the resources of a vessel at sea under a black flag? It’s not. LBJ justified this theft by declaring a war on poverty, which he lost, because if the war on poverty truly wanted to be won, the free market would be more openly embraced. Capitalism would be the goal, making money would be the goal, because if a society desires not to have poverty, it would be more in the business of making money so there is more money to be had. Not just simply printing money, like the Fed is doing now to cover the looting they have been doing for years, but actually producing goods that can be exported to a buyer in another country. That’s how you fight poverty.

Karl Marx spent most of his life in poverty, so it is no wonder he looked with jealousy at the world around him and wanted to steal from them. So he came up with communism as a way for people like him, that didn’t know how to make things, and didn’t want to work for a living, to loot money from those that do make things. Since he was a poor man himself, he didn’t understand the value of money. He thought like Van Jones does, that money just existed out there in the world and he needed to find a way to take it from those that have it and give it to people like him, in other words, outright theft.

Each week portions of our pay are taken from us without our consent. This money is taken under the justification of caring for the government. But if you are a person like me, that won’t use Medicare, that won’t draw a Social Security check, that doesn’t want government to be so big. That doesn’t want to support a system that breeds “legal” piracy, you don’t have a choice. I want government to be smaller, so it can be better managed. I don’t want my money taken and used for such purposes as to the expansion of government. In other words, my money is taken and used for purposes I’m against. It is not for the greater good of government, or the country, it is for the looting and plunder of pirates that instead of dressing as Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean they wear a suit and tie. In function they are no different. I will debate anyone that wishes to challenge me otherwise. If they do they are fools, because they are simply covering for crimes they know to be true and are complicit in that crime either through ignorance or their own corruption.

Want some proof? Of the 62 members of Congress that left office in 2008, 16 of them now work as lobbyists. Of those 16, 13 are Republicans. Between 1998 and 2004 43% of those former lawmakers became lobbyists. What is a lobbyists? A lobbyist pushes law makers to pass laws that give the organization that hires the lobbyist to have a competitive advantage over either the government itself, which is essentially a pay-off to avoided excessive regulation, or to gain an advantage over another competitor. This isn’t happening in isolated cases. This is the law of the land. It’s common practice! Think about it, why do we need so many laws? We already have a constitution. With every new law passed, there is money involved, money for attorneys, money for tax collectors, and a reason for politicians to be in session and not off doing something actually productive. Law makers are no different from a fry guy in a local fast food restaurant. If there aren’t any customers, they don’t have anything to do, so they’ll just shuffle the French Fries around the fry bin to look busy. Law makers create new customers with our money so they can have something to do and a reason to exist. And in the complicated laws they pass, lobbyists will then hire them for the knowledge on how to comply with that legislation. That’s how a thief gives value to nothing using the plunder of our resources.

To put the whole looting scheme into terms we can all relate with, lets look at school funding, and something we all must send our children to, so it affects virtually every single one of us. The teachers union lobbies law makers for legislation that protects their members. This is why in Ohio school boards can only negotiate approximately 15% of their total budget costs. The 75% to 85% are completely off-limits because they involve wages and are the largest cost of a school system. This means every time a teacher gets a higher degree, they must be compensated according to state law, because the OEA lobbied for the creation of that law. So when a school like Lakota is told that a $160 million budget is not enough and the question is asked, why? The answer is that labor costs that have no limit in their ceiling value are exploding the budget. Since in Ohio property tax is the primary way of funding schools, a school system has no choice but to ask property owners for more money. For a property owner like me, that thinks an average wage of 63K per year is too much to pay a teacher, I’d favor something more reasonable like 49K to 55K, but that doesn’t matter because the contracts were negotiated with the lobbyist not the tax payer. The politicians made the deal to buy votes from the OEA members in order to secure a deal to put the politician in office so he can collect tax money of their own in a different way. It’s lucrative otherwise they wouldn’t be fighting so hard for the opportunity to loot the public. And all the money used is coming from the tax payer. In this case my property value is looted to support values and education I think are mediocre and too expensive. But I have no choice. If I don’t pay, I would be prosecuted. Yet a prosecutor won’t touch the illegal activity that goes on in schools to pass a levy because a deal is made with the money the members of the teacher’s union supply. The prosecutor won’t touch the issue because they don’t want to deal with the political fall-out involved. The teachers union is too powerful, and not worth the political fight.

Why is the teacher’s union so powerful? Because they have many members and if you want to teach in the state of Ohio, you must be in a teacher’s union. There is no choice. So for every school built, and every teacher hired, a new union contributor is born. Each member contributes money to the union through their checks to feed the system. They do this because teachers know that the union has negotiated a larger than average wage for them, about 30% more than they’d earn in the private sector for the same job. The union knows it must negotiate wage levels that high because teachers are less likely to complain about spending their money on union dues if the teacher has a money surplus each week. As long as the union collects the dues from its members it can then dangle that money in front of politicians to achieve their goals. If teachers made less money, they’d be less likely to openly pay a portion of their check to union dues. But since the teacher is paid with taxes and the dues paid lobby the tax payer’s representatives who then make deals with the unions which then turn around and drive up the costs of the service on both ends, the cost of education goes up, and the elected representative has wasted tax payer’s money. The tax payer is spending money on the politician for making deals and not doing the business of the people. The money is stolen from the property owner and then used against the property owner in the form of higher taxes to support the structure of the scheme.

The tax payers just want their children taught. They want their children to read, write and know how to do math. But educators have made the whole business so complicated that they know in order to rally tax payers behind their cause they must hide the shell game behind local sports, like football, or basketball, things that the whole community values, while the real problems lurk under the façade. That is why sports are the first things districts cut, it’s to loot from the community the thing the whole community values in order to extort a vote in the next election to increase taxes. The message is “you will have something taken from you. You’ll lose your social event, (football games) or you’ll lose money from your property value.” Pick your poison.

But what if I don’t want to pay the extra cost? The answer from them is that “you aren’t patriotic,” or “you don’t like children,” or “are you so poor that you can’t afford the higher taxes.” These are the same games played with our politicians to convince them to work against us. But what if you still don’t want to pay? “Then you will be prosecuted.” The money will be confiscated from you one way or another. That’s why such people are simply looters. They are modern pirates out to loot our wealth. They take from us and give to their whore houses, liquor and other scandalous behavior. And by whore houses, that doesn’t always refer to sex. There is a lot of ways people whore themselves.

That’s just on the local level, in your school. Such things are happening in the building of bridges and highways. In the transfer of property from residential to commercial use, in the creation of every new federal program. If such looting wasn’t going on, K Street and the corrupt activity that goes on there in Washington D.C. would dry up like a mountain town in the Wild West that only exists for the benefit of the gold rush. When the gold went away, the town died. In Washington, the prostitutes that walk the streets with police officers driving by them all day long, the pimps that stand in the middle of the street watching over “their girls” all night, the drugs and bribe money that passes hands across the dinner tables would go away. But all those things are thriving to this very day, at this very hour just steps in front of the White House while Obama practices shooting basketball on the White House basketball court, that we pay for too. Stand on the corner across from the Days Inn on K-Street from 9 to 12 PM and watch the prostitutes standing there with their fish net stockings, their skirts that are so short you can see their panties standing up. Their long high heels force their butts to strut unnaturally as they get into a car, drive off and 15 minutes later that same car comes back around the block and pulls up. The girl gets out, joins the other girls, if any are left, then within 10 minutes, depending on how good she is, she’s back in another car and back around the block. I watched one night the same girl get into 5 different cars over the course of an hour and a half.

Who are the customers, lobbyists out-of-town and away from their wives, spending the money that comes easily for them. They are some of our elected representatives. They are mostly men enjoying their plunder, the same as pirates did in the sinful town of Port Royal. What’s the difference? The plunder was stolen whether it was at gun point on the high seas or under threat of jail. What’s the difference? Very few of us would choose to support this activity. So why do we, because we don’t want to be harassed by the government that we pay for?

Through taxation we have created a political class that believes just as kings and queens did in Europe that they are our rulers. They are entitled to loot from us, to rule us as they see fit. And to pay for their service we are taxed on virtually every movement we make in society. We are taxed for every item of food we eat, every gallon of gas we buy. We are taxed for the cloths we wear and the cars we buy. We are taxed, taxed, and taxed working toward goals that are not our own objectives to sums of money we don’t agree with, to support a public social class that thinks it rules us. There is only one term that describes such a person and that is a serf.

What is a serf by definition?

1. A member of the lowest feudal class, attached to the land owned by a lord and required to perform labor in return for certain legal or customary rights.
2. An agricultural laborer under various similar systems, especially in 18th- and 19th-century Russia and eastern Europe.
3. A person in bondage or servitude.

Doesn’t that sound like what we are? Like with the school systems, I am legally bound to pay for a school system against my wishes? My property is taken from me in the form of money so that I may retain my right to property in the form of land. That is theft. I don’t give willingly to my community, the way I’d prefer it. It is taken from me and spent in ways I find disgusting and sinful, unethical. Yet when I get up in the morning and go to work, I pay over 50% of my earnings as a serf.

The Road to Serfdom:

If we’re only a serf to them why not call them what they are. We may have to pay them as a legal obligation, under the threat of the law that they control with the money we give them, but don’t endorse their behavior with legitimacy. Don’t call them “sir,” or “your honor,” or any respectful designation. Call them pirates, thieves and liars, because they are. It’s not extreme to call them what they are. It’s not out-of-place just because they wear a suit and not a pirate hat and sword. They don’t need a sword, because they have a pen which truly is more mighty and dangerous. It is with the strokes of many pens that we are no longer Americans working for liberty and justice, but serfs working to support giant programs that our citizens are now addicted to like drug addicts that will never get enough. We are now committed serfs that are losing more and more of our wealth to support the extortion of radical pirates with only the mind of a looter. They are willing to take from us everything we have to give until we can’t give any more. It is the same thought process of the master against his slave that only has use for the slave as long as the slave is productive.

We are on the path to serfdom, and we are further along that road than many of us are willing to admit to ourselves. Until we are willing to admit to ourselves the reality of these impositions, and to call the conduct of the looters for what they properly are, we will continue down that path until it runs out. That is the nature of the pirate, they will loot and loot until it’s all gone because they lack the ability to plan from one day to the next. They are only concerned for the prostitute in front of them, or the food about to go into their stomachs. Planning for tomorrow’s sunrise is beyond their capacity, and they don’t need to, as long as they have serf’s like us that will continue to feed them.

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

Oh No, Did I Make Some People Mad…..TOUGH: Letters Attacking Me in the Pulse Journal

What you’ll read below is reflective of the stupidity happening in the City of Cincinnati where massive wastes in tax payer dollars are occurring.

Watch this I-Team Report.

What follows is the response to my editorial in the Pulse Journal which is found here: CLICK TO VIEW

Two letters found my comments in this week’s Journal disturbing about the school board and attempted to refute my statements. I’ll present those letters below with my response in parentheses. These two letters come on the backs of Lakota’s contract negotiation with the teachers union.


The 2 million dollars saved is almost the same amount saved from cutting busing. That’s how much money Lakota is saving just in freezing step-increases, which they should have done two years ago, to avoid the current crises. Because the school board did not act in a timely fashion, there are over 600 employees at Lakota that make over 65K per year. Click here to view who they are and how much they make.

Now the letters:

Wrong qualifications listed for No Lakota group

Rich Hoffman of the No Lakota anti-levy group presented an interesting request in his recent letter to the Pulse-Journal editor. His letter solicited new candidates for the Lakota Board of Education and it was striking for two reasons. It was striking to see what the anti-levy group listed as qualifications and it was equally striking for what it did not consider important.

The No Lakota group determined that ideal school board candidates “should be older than 55, be preferably retired or semi-retired, and not looking to use the school board position as a political platform for higher office or to enhance a real estate profession.” Evidently the ideal No Lakota group school board candidate does not need an education, budgeting skills, social skills, communication skills, or any interest in providing excellence in education for the community. Just say no and you’re elected.

The No Lakota group letter continued to infer that current board members “cave to the unions,” that they “intend to overpay the new superintendent” and they are perhaps guilty of “corruption and abuse of the taxpayer.” Our community is in long-term trouble if many of the No Lakota group actually believe those charges.

Although most area residents moved here specifically because of our quality schools, Lakota could still become the next Little Miami district. Imagine that scenario: one home out of every four for sale, property values decline by more than 40 percent in three years, parents paying thousands extra to educate their kids in private schools, and local school decisions made by the state.

No thank you.

With all due respect, Mr. Hoffman, the ideal school board member should be a local taxpayer, interested in providing quality education to the community, understand school funding mechanisms from both the state and local levels, have excellent two-way communication skills, and have the real interests of students and taxpayers at heart. Care and respect for your community does not have an old-age requirement and it is not necessary to be retired.

Al Miller
West Chester Twp.

(Notice that in this survey by Coldwell Banker that nobody mentions schools as being the decisive factor in buying a home. Kind of interesting.

Al, buddy………where did I say school board candidates do not need an education, budgeting skills, social skills, communication skills, or any interest in providing excellence in education for the community? Just say no and you’re elected? Don’t older people have those skills and do they miraculously lose them passed the age of 40? Is that what you’re saying? Al, I expect all those traits in a school board member. In fact, I expect all that and more. I also expect a school board member to be able to balance a budget. This school board has been tasked with balancing the budget and they aren’t doing it, so they obviously aren’t very good at “budgeting skills” as you put it. I could put a child on the school board and they could do the same job as this school board when tasked with a problem.

“Joan, we don’t have enough money to meet our budget needs,” says the Lakota treasurer.

Joan says to the board, “Ok, we need to ask for more money from the community.”

Now, how is that intelligent, wise, or in any way prudent? Like I said, that is the first response a child would have to the problem. Not any of the skills you listed. So what are you defending? Are you saying that indefinitely higher taxes are the way to go, that every time the school needs money, we just throw money at them no matter how much? And I didn’t say the school could fail either. I pay a lot of money in tax each year to that school and I don’t pay to have a crappy school. If those people don’t know how to balance a budget, then they need to be replaced, because we have provided plenty of money to be an excellent school, and continue to do so.

Now, here is the Definition of CORRUPTION, since you brought it up.

1
a : impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle : DEPRAVITY b : DECAY, DECOMPOSITION c : inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (as bribery) d : a departure from the original or from what is pure or correct

So as to the corruption at Lakota, it is illegal to use teachers while on the payroll of the tax payer to use tax payer resources to pass a school levy. That means a teacher can’t talk about it to students. They can’t pass out literature. They can’t even use a school printer, decorate a bus or design pro campaign literature while on the payroll of the school, yet they ignore the law and do it anyway. The No Lakota Group has statements that some teachers spent entire class periods lecturing their students about the merits of a levy passage encouraging those bright young minds to go home and tell their parents to vote for the levy. We also know of incidents where principals have openly threatened through their PTA organizations to boycott Liberty Twp and West Chester businesses that don’t support the levy attempt. Some of these calls were made during school hours by employees of the district paid for by the tax payer. In fact, I have a letter from a principle that was typed on his school computer and sent to all the teachers that work for him complaining about the community not supporting the levy. This was done during school hours with school equipment, and that is illegal. The school board knows about this activity yet does not do anything about it. That is corrupt. It’s also corrupt to call the token cuts to services as needed when the obvious strategy is to inconvenience parents to extort money from them. When busing was cut to save a couple million dollars under the mask of “needed” cuts when everyone knows that the payroll is simply too high and out of control is an open participation in bribery. Pay the levy or we’ll cut services you need. That is wrong. I actually have many such instances of this behavior that will be revealed should the district choose to pursue another levy. We’ve held back on this information for the sake of the community, but it will not be tolerated from here on out.

And since you seem to not understand economics here’s a free lesson for you. Notice that passing a levy doesn’t figure into the equation here. The value of your home is only worth the value it has to potential people who want it. Most people who bought on the back of the housing bubble bought too high, so you are looking at a collapse that has nothing to do with school funding. In fact, higher taxes make your home less attractive, not more attractive. If the school is expected to still be excellent, and taxes stay stable, your value will stay at market value, which is probably too high because you bought your home on the back of a bubble. Passing a levy will actually hurt your value.

Basically, Al, it is your decision if you choose to not see these things, and you have a mentality to throw more money into a bottomless pit. You won’t be one of the people we’d nominate to put on the school board. We already have too many people who think like you working for the school system already.)

This video could be Lakota, Sycamore, or Mason. The problems are all the same yet nobody wants to deal with the real issue.

Now, the next letter.

DO NOT PLACE BLAME WHERE IT DOESN’T BELONG

Let’s get the full story out there please. The Lakota School Board is acting to deal with teacher contracts the only legal way they can. They have canceled the second year of the two-year contract because it could not be funded. They are going back to the negotiating table with the teacher union to achieve the best result possible.

Do not place blame where it does not belong.

The board said they would deal with the situation through a three pronged approach — reduce expenditures, put a policy in place to limit future expenditure increases, and seek additional revenues. Students and families have given, administrators and staff have given, we need our community now to recognize the need, and participate in maintaining and preserving the investment made by this community in our schools. The fact of the matter is that our school district can not be sustained without a levy. There is nowhere else to cut costs. If we want our communities to continue to be a great place for families to live, a great place to raise children, then we have to pass the levy in November.

Back when the first levy failure happened, the “no” people said they wanted the district to make serious cuts before they would support a levy. The cuts have been made. The cuts continue to be made. What is their argument now?

We must recognize that our school district and the school board are limited by law and mandates. Dedicated and civic minded individuals who genuinely care about the future of this district and these students would be welcome to be a part of the solution. Please be a part of the future of our communities and support our schools.

We must pass the next levy in order to have a sustainable and continuously excellent school district.

Andrea Henderson
West Chester Twp.

(Andrea, those cuts have not been made. The school board cut buses, laid-off some newer teachers, and made sports a pay for play deal. All those cuts are designed by the OSBA to inconvenience parents and force them to vote for a levy the next time. These strategies are taught to school board members at Levy University in Columbus. I know many school board members that have taken this class, so I know what goes on there.

Now, as to the district being limited by law in what they can cut, what you’re talking about is the teacher’s contracts and the protections the OEA have lobbied on their behalf. That is the very reason that Kasich signed Senate Bill 5 into law, to give the school board the ability to control their costs. So technically it isn’t illegal any more to attack those contract costs. Unions are scared to death of this bill, which is why they are trying so hard to get the bill repealed. Notice how these teachers speak in extreme ways. “It will destroy what we fought for, for years.”

We can’t afford their union. We can’t afford their collective bargaining. These rights they are speaking about are a result of FDR and LBJ, and their big government policies. They aren’t rights granted by the US Constitution and we are not required to pay for them as property owners. It should actually be discussed that it’s unfair to property owners to be forced to pay for the high expectations of these union employees.

Once those current teacher contracts are up, school boards can deal with that 85% of their escalating costs that have been illegal. Besides the potential problem with the law restricting control of those employee costs, we also have the trouble with quantitative easing that is about to hit us all hard from the federal level, so asking for a higher taxes will destroy many families. Oh, you don’t know what quantitative easing is. I’m sorry. Here’s a lesson.

The sad thing is, and I don’t mean to pick on you, there are thousands of people who think the same way you do, and they’re all wrong; that you are willing to write these people a free pass. For a district to be forced by law to incur further taxation is insane, foolish, and pure extortion in the simplest form. Anyone that supports such measures has an education that has failed them completely. Supporting your school does not mean tossing money out the window of a runaway bus. Supporting your school means solving problems when they come up. Squeezing the property owners for everything they have while an aggressive teachers union has negotiated a scam on us all, to maintain an average wage of 63K per year is insane. People who say “good” and “money” in the same sentence do not understand the value of things, and are ignorant to what makes something better than something else. You cannot rape and pillage a community of its resources and expect it to last.

The No Lakota people have different degrees of resistance. For me, I want education reform completely. I don’t like the current system, and I want to see major changes. It’s not worth 10K per kid. The senior citizens in our group are on a fixed income, and they can’t afford the tax. And the business owners in our group are people who have been hit hard by the recession. They are sitting on property that they invested in years ago that should have been paying them back by now, but are currently sitting vacant. Further taxes on that property only drain more money from them. So when people who don’t value money say these people are rich, and should pay their fair share, they sound like fools because they aren’t the people who are building up the community. The people supporting these tax levies are typically people who have kids in the school, they moved to Lakota to be a part of a good community, they want sports for their kids and all the electives of a large school, but they also want it cheap. They want the “shared” costs of the entire community that pays these costs year after year. These are the same people who will move out of Lakota when their kids grow up and leave the community, and those parents will downsize to another home in Florida or someplace else. Meanwhile, they’ll leave people like me with the bill they racked up. So don’t lecture me about what makes a good community. The people who want this levy are people who want something good cheaply and you want it for your own selfish reasons. When your kids are done with the system, chances are you’ll move anyway. )

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