Tag: Teachers Unions

The NEA has it’s Finger on Senator Bill Seitz: How attorneys stand in the way of reform

There was a lot of dispute about the removal of Senator Bill Seitz from a key committee during the final days of the vote on Senate Bill 5 which would become Issue 2. See an interview from Seitz with Channel 9 who is from the Cincinnati area.

I didn’t know it at the time, and I think many people still don’t know it, but Bill Seitz is a labor attorney and has represented many police, firefighters and teachers and was not able to put his personal feelings aside for the passage of Senate Bill 5.

I’ve known a lot of attorneys, and one of the common tactics they use when they have a weak case is to drag their feet and extend out a case. And Seitz obviously blindly loyal to labor interests even though he sells himself as a conservative was not able to see Senate Bill 5 for what it was, a good healthy culture change for public sector employment. Seitz, the labor attorney, listed as one of the best in America, as you can see at the link below, looks to have sabotaged and watered down the impact of Issue 2 from the very beginning by loading it down with unnecessary politics, which went against the kind of reform Kasich and many in the house and senate were looking for.

http://www.taftlaw.com/attorneys/78-william-j-seitz-iii

To hear the real Bill Seitz, not the one that Bill Cunningham, a fellow attorney in brotherhood propped up as a champion in such high esteem, Brian Thomas asked far more probing questions. You can hear Bill Cunningham’s pandering interview with Seitz at this hot link. Just click on it. To listen to the Brian Thomas interview, click the video below. This video is just over an hour and right after the Seitz interview there is about a 30 second pause. Don’t worry about it; just let the video play, because the calls that follow are worth listening to. What was revealed later in the discussion was that in order to get Seitz booked for this Brian Thomas interview the NEA out of New Jersey had to be contacted to set it up. If that doesn’t send up the alarm flags, I don’t know what would? Seitz is heavily involved in unions and supports them completely. In the strategy of war, I’d refer to Seitz as a Trojan Horse.

When we talk among each other in plan talk around the water cooler, or around the grill, we refer to people who employ double talk as clowns because those entertainers clearly wear a mask to entertain, but when they aren’t in a circus, they take off their makeup to reveal who they truly are. Clowns are intended to be a derogatory term to imply that someone we are supposed to trust speaks out of both sides of their mouth. This isn’t a new concept. Betrayal of this kind is as old as human society.

In my opinion one of the greatest threats to our modern society has been the extraordinary quantity of attorneys our universities have produced. Those young attorneys encouraged into those fields by parents who wanted better for their children breed a society of legal professions with little to do but attempt to advance the divorce rate, which has destroyed the American family, create endless litigation from law suites which has driven up production costs, and created mountains and mountains of legal provisions of which only the attorneys can translate in government. They have destroyed “common sense.” Since many attorneys move into politics for stable income and networking opportunities, we have seen an endless stream of complicated laws created to provide future opportunities for professionals in the legal profession to serve as council in future court cases. It is the attorneys who have virtually destroyed America with paperwork and compliance.

It is the attorneys who are most against tax reform, because it was they who created all the deductions in the voluminous compliance code currently controlled by the Internal Revenue Service. The complicated tax code is on purpose. It is so that tax attorneys can sell their services to large companies to lower their tax rates by knowing what the dedications are. Having the tax code so large and complicated is to make it so only the attorneys can understand it. Attorneys hold the keys and must be hired to unlock the secrets.

When it comes to union reforms, which are greatly needed, it is now obvious that labor attorneys are more than willing to put their own self-interests above any reforms. In Seitz case, he openly agrees that there is a need for reform, but his underlining motive is to drag the situation out so he can play at reforming, but all the while continue to do his legal work for public employees. By reforming collective bargaining, it gives professional attorneys like Seitz less to do, and threatens their livelihood.

This is where the clown idea comes to play. While dressed as a clown, I cannot see the face behind the masks a politician wears and neither can most people. And it is not beyond comprehension that a liberal minded person may play at being a Republican in most facets of their life in order to secure a living for themselves. But you can see what the true motive of a person is by studying their behavior and in Bill Seitz situation, he is an attorney for labor, and is not about to go against his client base with Senate Bill 5. So Seitz needing to maintain the illusion of his act spoke in public that he supported 85% of Senate Bill 5, but he disagreed with 15%. But in actuality, he sought to lawyer the issue into years and years of discussion, gradually wearing down the initial reform until what ended up as a law that was a labor friendly bill and satisfied the objectives of his clients. The senate realizing this is what Seitz was doing removed him from the panel, so the bill could proceed.
At a recent debate over Issue 2, which you can see for yourself by CLICKING ON THIS HOTLINK, the firefighters brought up Seitz as a rally cry for their cause of repeal. They did this because Seitz is the “Republican” representative in the Senate. Seitz in the greater game of politics allowed conservative police and firefighters to also believe in the socialist tendencies of big labor, so they choose to fixate on his treatment during the passage of Senate Bill 5 as an unfair tendency of the collective-bargaining reform. But in reality Seitz planned to drag out the bill till his retirement, since as an attorney he doesn’t wish for any true reform since his first alliance is to that brotherhood of attorneys who represent public unions.

And this explains the behavior of Bill Cunningham on 700 WLW as well. In the brotherhood of attorneys, it is the mask of conservatism that they use for their act, but in reality when the make-up is taken off to who the individual truly is, the union of attorney brotherhood speaks of the true actions and now that Issue 2 for the first time in my adult life attempts REAL reform, it scares the people who have built their lives around the chaos of litigation.

This makes the modern attorney just as much an opposition to smaller government and any reform as any obvious threat like labor unions and other progressive organizations. In reality Issue 2 is summed up nicely in the below video.

Such a reform seems too good to be true, yet it is there, on the ballot. To have it all we have to do is to VOTE YES and finally some type of reform will be granted to us. For the people who signed their name to Senate Bill 5 which is Issue 2 on Ohio ballots, they did the first courageous act I can recall by any politician. Issue 2 is a way to cut out those who create a mess out of our public positions so they can skim money off the system. Of course those who have built their livings off that system will be angry, and those are the people who are against the bill and want to repeal it. But to keep Issue 2 all you have to do is vote YES, and see for yourselves that the world the attorneys would have you believe will not end, but will in fact be born again with better accountability and fairness for all, not just public worker unions and their attorneys.

For the answer to everything click the link below!

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

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

Making the Tough Cuts at Lakota: Why public employees don’t get it

In the middle of the night I received a message from Laura Sanders who is working on the Move Forward Lakota campaign, a group that is advocating the passage of a new levy at the Lakota School District. She wanted to show me her new video, which is nice and I think well-edited.  But like I wrote her, where in the video does it say “WHY is more money required?”  We know teachers are valuable to the community.  But Lakota is not underfunded.  It’s a district with $165 million dollar budget that we know about, and in all reality is closer to $250 million in total revenue.  Yet it is the average pay rate of the employees in the district that hovers just over $63K per year that is driving up those costs, so how much is too much? 

Like I said to Laura, having money to put on a glitzy show does not provide justification for the expenses.  We cannot manage our district if teacher pay is simply a bottomless pit.  Lakota has at least $30,000 to start their levy campaign with and I’m sure they will receive more over this next campaign.  To see who gives money to them and what their campaign finances look like read this article which breaks down how much they spent last year, how much they have to spend this year, and who gave them money by clicking on the link below:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/10/28/how-much-has-lakota-spent-on-passing-the-levy/

The belief from the Move Forward Campaign is that if they spend money, they will automatically convince people of their need.  And that’s what they’ve done with their new ad.  In the heading Laura titled it “Creative Battle” I suppose in response to the No Lakota Levy’s latest video which you can see here:

You can see our website at www.NOLAKOTALEVY.com where that video launches upon your visit.

This battle of videos shows clearly the difference between the No Lakota Levy group and the Move Forward Campaign.  We are looking at the situation and studying what the costs are, and questioning why they are so high.  I think the limit for the teachers pay rates has been exceeded.  The average is simply too high.  The Move Forward Campaign believes as they show in their video that by spending money, Lakota will move forward in some way that it hasn’t already.  We are supposed to put blinders onto the fact that an endless and undefined amount of money is required because teachers instruct our children, and maybe our wives?  (That’s what they said.)  I think all these people are just simply out of touch. 

I was up late because my editor had sent me her edit on the first draft of a book I have coming out next summer.  She had marked the whole thing up with a lot of red and told me that the publisher wanted the giant manuscript to be cut down to 84,000 words from the 110,000 it is now.  By revision 2 and revision 3 that number will be cut down by even more till we get down to around 60,000 words.  The editor was very concerned that I’d be heart-broke by these facts, because other authors are. I let her know that I understand the nature of business, so we’d do what we needed to do to bring the manuscript to the level it needed to be at no matter what the cuts were.  It’s my job as the author to make it work within the business parameters.  Relieved she proceeded to give me a long list of characters to remove that are minor to the story, subplots to cut, and tightening of the dialogue to save space.  So I was up contemplating these ideas at 4 in the morning when I saw the video from Laura. Given my state of mind on my own project, and having to make cuts for companies that I’ve worked for that were very painful, I continue to be baffled that public schools and public employees in general who do not think cuts of any kind should ever be made. 

I have heard some of the most foolish comments in my adult life regarding Issue 2, which is the ultimate fix for these budget problems, especially at Lakota.  I know for a fact that there are teachers at the top of the pay scale that aren’t worth 45K per year let alone 80K and 90K.  Only in a union under collective bargaining could weak people earn so much.  But then there are some teachers that are worth that much money.  But if the Lakota Levy fails and cuts are made, it will be the newer teachers who cost the least and generally have the most ambition that we’ll lose, unless Issue 2 holds.  The argument the public workers are making is similar to me telling my editor that, “the book will be terrible if we lose these characters.  I refuse to make revisions to my 110,000 word manuscript!”  They would then say, “Ok, thank you for the opportunity to work with you Mr. Hoffman, but we can’t afford the publishing cost of a book that large.  Such a large book has limited market value because statistics show that most people are intimidated by large books, so we would never recover our initial investment, so good luck on finding another publisher.” The Issue 2 group does not understand that by trimming down a manuscript or a school district we make them stronger. 

While all this discussion over Issue 2 is percolating and unions are dug in deep with their rhetoric and talking points, Lakota is after more money to supplement a contract with it’s union that is excessively high, the Cincinnati Reds are floating offers for their star player in Joey Votto, who is currently the gem of our local baseball team.  He’s the ideal baseball player and we’d all like to see him stay in Cincinnati for his entire career.  But in reality, Joey will most likely decline in production over the coming years, and he is set to make more than 20 million a year, because his contract dictates that much.  So the Reds should follow the formula of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and dump him for a fresh young player that costs much less but can give comparable numbers.  The Reds would have to do this because to keep Votto means they couldn’t afford other players that will be needed to create a valuable franchise.  So at some point in the near future, the Reds will have to cut Votto, which will be painful, just like editing a book, or managing a school district.  It’s painful, and emotional, but we are REQUIRED to do what is right for the organization we are representing.  What dictates the Reds cut Votto is that they don’t have a budget which allows for him in the future.  Public workers don’t understand this.  They simply believe that tax increases will allow for them to have everything, job security and all employees making healthy wages without competition driving costs down. They believe this because a budget limit has never been established, which is what we are doing with the No Lakota Levy group, helping to manage costs by setting a limit.

The anti Issue 2 people who happen to be the same people who are pro school levy are all about emotion and they are afraid of pain, and they can’t see that not taking the pain today, will make tomorrow much more painful.  And that’s the state of our district, our state and our country.  There are those who want growth to explode without any concept of finance.  And there are those of us who are saying enough is enough, we have to exercise some good judgment and make cuts which make the whole systems stronger.  I suppose the difference is that some of us have had to come to grips with cuts like this in our lives, and some have been protected from that pain, and it shows in their cultural behavior.  That behavioral difference is extremely expensive and is the root of the entire problem.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

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

The Next Civil War: Unions versus Right to Work is happening now!

I recently did an article about Issue 2 where I compared the details of that very good bill to the aerospace company Boeing, building its new manufacturing plant in South Carolina. To see that article click the link:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/10/07/issue-2-could-save-your-community-where-did-the-jobs-go/

Issue 2 is not about firefighter safety, or police ability to do their jobs. It’s not about teachers instructing our children. Issue 2 for Ohio is about keeping jobs in the state because to the south, the Right to Work States is soaking up all the manufacturing jobs. For the unions, repealing Issue 2 is about keeping control of the states that aren’t yet Right to Work states. As you can see by observing the map below, the states in Blue are Right to Work states, with South Carolina being part of the southern culture of maintaining independence from organized labor efforts.

http://www.redstate.com/laborunionreport/files/2011/02/right-to-work-map.gif

We are in the midst of a Civil War of a different kind, where the goal of the war is the unions struggling to maintain their power base. They fear that more companies will do as Boeing is doing, and that’s locating their business in the southern states, so that those companies do not have to worry about radicalized labor practices.

Unions in the private sector share much with the public sector but as with the circumstances around Boeing, there is nowhere to hide from a public sector union. They embed themselves in our communities and force tax increases upon demand. There is no competitive edge in public unions and we cannot escape by moving the enterprise to another country. Unions in the public sector are unconscionable in that they force employees to take part in them whether or not the employee wishes to, and the public is forced to support them with increased taxes without choice in service. In Ohio by law if a teacher wants to teach, they must join a union. Does that seem right? Why should any public employee be required to join a union as a condition of employment? The fight over Issue 2 is the radicalized portions of these public unions who are hiding their true intentions behind their members, who simply want to be employed. The union leaders are seeking to control the spread of Right to Work States and if Issue 2 holds, Ohio will go a long way to moving in that direction. This leaves the militants desperate to act.

All the history shown in that video is true. The map tells the whole story. In the north where militant unions took control, they have embedded themselves in our political process and driven up taxes. That video shows how we have arrived to this point in time involving Issue 2. Notice that the bill talked about in 1981 never had any impact, because the union lobby prevented the reforms, just as they are doing with Issue 2. Ohio cannot begin to attract business to Ohio if the public unions are bankrupting our communities. And militant union behavior is not something large companies want to be a part of. They would much prefer to establish themselves in the south where the people there enjoy their independence. And if operating in the south is too expensive, then the companies will just take their operations to another country completely, leaving the union thugs of the north jobless and desperate, seeking a government job so they can have a safe-haven for their beliefs, because unions have destroyed virtually every industry they’ve penetrated. It would seem only the entertainment unions have been able to survive because the public has been willing to support the increases in ticket costs to support those inflated expectations.

I can see belonging to a public union as an option, but I cannot see being told that I was under legal obligation to join one. I have no tolerance for the militant behavior that comes from public unions, the over exaggerations they employee to manipulate the public. Every time I hear cops proclaim that they are willing to take a bullet to keep me safe I shudder in anger. I would happily become deputized by my local Sheriff and run into a building under gunfire. Heck, I might even pay to do it, because danger of this kind is a privilege to a man. I wouldn’t think of charging for such a thing, because the danger is the payment! Or to the firefighter, let me become a volunteer and I would gladly run into a burning building to save a gold-fish, not to mention a human being. And I’d do it for the thrill of feeling the heat and smelling the smoke. And I’d do it without expecting a dime because I might save a life and bring ease to someone’s mind who is my neighbor.

It can be noticed that much of this union trouble comes from these northern states, because in the south, they won’t put up with it. In the south they have a strong tendency toward self-reliance, and tend to look down their noses at organized labor. And this is why they are experiencing economic growth in the south. They do have their share of public unions, but the people who live in those states seem to much less tolerant of the kind of extortion they employee upon the public. You don’t see protests like we’ve seen in Wisconsin and Ohio in places like Nashville and Dallas, or even Charleston.

Ohio is trying to compete with the south for future business. Issue 2 is not about hurting public workers, as they’d have you believe. They are a group that is in denial, and they believe their union leaders who think that they can hold these unions together when economic circumstances are pulling them apart. The unions are failing because they allow for a level of selfishness that can only be supplemented with militant behavior.

The firefighters and police of today who are running the face of a repeal attempt of Issue 2 have changed their militant behavior from what was seen in the video above, where firefighters took illegal strikes and actually started fires burning down homes and businesses, then preventing citizens from trying to put those fires out. In fact, at a recent debate over Issue 2 a labor attorney Steve Lazarus informed us that the reason for the collective bargaining law of 1982, which Issue 2 seeks to reform, is because police went on strike in militant behavior similar to the firefighters. The claim was that too many officers were being killed or injured, but my feeling is that officers were using the deaths of their union brothers to drive up wages for themselves by declaring unsafe working conditions which no witless politician had an answer to. So the politicians did what they do, they threw laws and money at the squeaky wheels of the labor unions.

The militant behavior of the modern age is not much different. The public unions are threatening the violence of the past if they don’t get their way. When they gather, there is a pretense of violence in their behavior. Their collective mass is meant to threaten us. They are using the threat of “safety” or the lack of it to pave the way for behavior yet undefined. They leave it to the imagination of their targeted ads. They implication is clear.

What they are all in denial over is that if the private sector has lost their jobs to foreign manufactures, because the labor costs are much lower in places like China, India or Brazil, and when companies like Boeing needing a stable work force knowing that they can’t get it in Washington because of union radicalism Boeing is attempting to move to a southern Right to Work state, and now find themselves in trouble with the Federal Government because of it. There is no quick remedy to solve this debacle. The unions and their radicalism have brought this situation upon themselves. The private sector is making 43.4% less now than the public sector because the private sector has to make financial adjustments competitive to the world marketplace. The public unions don’t want to change and they certainly don’t want to see what they’ve done to community budgets, and they are threatening various forms of militant behavior if they don’t get it. The union militants want higher taxes to fund their uncompetitive wage demands no matter what the cost to society. (WHO DO YOU THINK IS BEHIND THESE OCCUPY MOVEMENTS) CLICK THIS LINK TO LEARN WHO THE UNIONS ARE BEHIND THOSE PROTESTS AS WELL; IT’S JUST ANOTHER FORM OF MILITANT.

For the unions the battle is about the map shown on this article. The unions want to remove the blue from those states that have Right to Work options for their workers, because union leadership is out for political conquest. Meanwhile states like Ohio are pushing back, so that they can be just as competitive as the southern states and the unions are set to do anything to prevent that from happening.

That leaves the fate of Ohio in the hands of you, the voter. Are you going to cave in to the union militants who will drive up your taxes and reduce the number of public employees you can have, because the current budgets cannot support the number of employees we currently carry, because wages in the private sector are not what they used to be? And there are not enough wealthy people to loot in order to rescue these despots from their own greed which creates a chain reaction of failure of which they are solely responsible for. Ohio is trying to fix this discrepancy in Ohio with Issue 2, which among many reforms; the most powerful one is in returning the “option” of belonging to a union to the employee. If you do not support Issue 2 by voting YES you will be responsible for what follows, because Issue 2 was created to fix the problems coming on multiple fronts, and becoming more competitive on the map between states that are Right to Work and those that aren’t.

For the answer to everything, CLICK THIS LINK:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

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

The Typical School Levy Advocate: A fat woman in a dress….(A METAPHOR)

If your wife asks you, “Honey, does this dress make me look fat?” Then you, the husband answer as you can see the skin dimples pushing through the fine surface of the dress as it hugs her hips, “No, no, you look beautiful.” The husband has committed a sin. You told her she was beautiful when you know in your mind that the correct answer was, “Hell, no, you’re fat. You have let yourself go over the last ten years and I’m embarrassed to be seen in public with you.” The husband answers the way he does out of a duty to his wife that goes beyond truth. He is forced to put on blinders to the truth in order to share a life with this woman, who has gained 40 extra pounds, wants the ability to eat, and eat and eat, but still expects her husband to lust after her for sex. The man, to avoid fighting with his over-weight wife will tell her anything to shut her up and get her off his back, so he tells her, “No, the dress looks great………..dear.”

I see the same kind of behavior coming from these people who support school levies. They have the same level of truth behind their eyes as the man who lies to his wife to avoid a conflict. Case in point, witness the testimony from this woman in Lakota who is supporting the most recent school levy.

Parents who have kids in those delicate years of childhood, who are in their school years, are an insecure lot. They of course want what’s best for their children, and desire every opportunity for them. So they tend to trust the opinions of others over their own knowledge because after all, being a good parent takes experience, and how do you get experience but by raising kids. So during that process, parents tend to believe they can throw money at a “professional” to give them the added security that those professionals will be there to pick-up whatever they miss as parents.

The trend ends up making a voting adult who will believe anything these professionals say in hopes that they can achieve their aim at raising good children. To the parent who believes that by spending money on security, they are more than willing to put on blinders to the actual truth to achieve that security even if it’s false.

The truth is that the “professionals” the teachers, the administrators are actually quite fat and when they ask for a school levy they say, “Look how lean we are? Look how much money we saved? At Lakota, we are operating at less per pupil than other districts, so pay us more money. We are caring for your kids! Give us more money!”

The parents both working jobs and paying a lot of money for a house they bought just so they could send their child to Lakota is no different from the husband who is just trying to keep the peace with his wife. “Yes, you look good to me. How much do you need to do your job better?”

The obese professionals caring for our children then take that money given by the enabler and buy more junk food so they can become even more obese. And when the food runs out, they will come back and say, “I need more! I am a ‘big boned’ entity and I need to maintain this large body. I’m hungry. We need a new levy.” The enabler, the typical tax advocate will then say as the woman in the video said, “We need to pass this levy so we can have good schools, so we can maintain our excellence.” But the eyes don’t lie. The public can witness the dishonesty which resides there seemingly hidden. They can see what the enabler is really thinking. “Wouldn’t it be better if the school system wasn’t so obese? Wouldn’t the school be better if it was much thinner?” The enabler is just as guilty as the husband who tells his wife, “Yes honey, you look good. You’re not fat at all.” The husband knows that if he doesn’t tell his wife something to that effect then sex will come with difficulty, and it will be a pain-in-the ass to pass his wife in the bathroom or in the hallways of his home. And thus the levy advocates are in the same boat. They must pass these inflated professionals in the halls of the school their children attend and communicate with others in social events, so they put on the blinders so that they can endure the experience with some resemblance of sanity.

If I knew the husband and he introduced me to his wife at a dinner party and the wife wanting praise from me upon introductions would say in a flirtatious social banter, “Do you think this dress makes me look fat?” The husband knowing my reaction would cup his hand over his face and brace himself for the anger his wife would soon feel. “Please Rich Hoffman, do not say what I know you are about to say. Please for the sake of my life, don’t piss her off.”

I would look at the woman with her body attempting to bust out of her dress and ask, “Do you really want to know?”

The woman expecting praise as she fans her hands down her thighs to straighten out her dress doing her best to look sexy, “Of course, darling.”

I would then say, “My dear, your ass is fat and you are a pain to all the eyes of this room for you should have worn a potato sack rather than do that dress injustice by asking it to hide your blob-like body. There isn’t any amount of perfume, make-up, or cosmetic accessories that can hide the fact that you have visited the potato chip bag about 100 times too many!”

The husband would be breathing through his hands knowing that the hours and hours ahead of him would be spent repairing his wife’s fractured psyche. The wife would of course be upset and would storm off in anger. And I’d have to say as she was leaving, “You wanted the truth.”

It is customary in our culture to avoid hurting people’s feelings even if in doing so we might actually help the person. And this is the case of our current education system, where they collectively believe they are more important, more powerful and ultimately influential on a child’s life. The success of a child’s life comes from the static patterns the parent provides for the child. Education is a part of it, but so are the parents themselves and the grandparents, cousins, nieces, nephews and friends. The teachers themselves are just a fraction of the potential success of a child.

But the mentality of the parent who believes that education will fill all the voids that they as parents lack are the same as the obese woman who drinks diet soda, and then eats whatever she wants expecting to lose weight. It doesn’t work, and telling those people that they are better or more important than they really are doesn’t do them any good in life by feeding their minds with a false sense of worth, of which they then expect us all to pay with increases in taxes.

It’s not against the law, or even wrong to be overweight. But when one is indeed fat, but expects to be lied to in order to further their own waistline without the guilt of public ridicule, then crimes are committed when society must decide between the harsh reality of the truth, or maintaining the status quo in order to avoid conflict.

For the answer to everything, CLICK THIS LINK:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

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

Issue 2 Debate in Ohio: “The Spoiled Class”

The Labor Movement the more I look into it is a sinister aspect of American culture. Their recent promotion of the protests all over America is clearly nudged by the same advocates who look to the rich in order to fill their basket with tax money so that they can loot from it in a mantra they have embraced for years. Now they are using the innocence of our youth to add fuel to the fire of discontent that often rages in a young mind. I will cover this aspect in great detail in another post, since the origins of these protest run deep, but all can be said to be advocated by a new class of American. This new class is not the “upper class.” It is not the “lower class.” It is not the “middle class.” This new class is called the “Spoiled Class,” and I have seen and heard them first hand in my own community.

I was impatient at the Issue 2 debate which took place on October 3, 2011. As my wife and I arrived at the Lakota East Freshman Building at 7 PM to see Bill Coley take on Steven Lazarus representing the local firefighters in a debate over Issue 2, the collective bargaining reform law. I was impatient because my Tampa Bay Buccaneers were playing the Indianapolis Colts on Monday Night Football and anyone who knows me understands how much I love the Bucs! So I had thought about skipping this debate so I wouldn’t miss the game. However, I also like Doc Thompson and the Liberty Twp Tea Party and both were involved in putting on this debate, so I reluctantly recorded my game to attend this event.

As we walked across the parking lot I saw that several firefighters had arrived all wearing matching t-shirts declaring that they wanted to repeal Issue 2. In the flat bed of a large F250 pick-up truck was a sign, VOTE NO ON ISSUE 2! I noted that most of the usual Tea Party crowd did not seem to be present and were replaced with these protesting public workers. This in itself was not surprising. I expected this to be the case, since this was a meeting created for the benefit of public knowledge.

Inside I noted that the public unions filled the seats in the center of the large auditorium, and the people I knew to be the regular Tea Party members of the community took to the outskirts to observe the strange behavior of the collective union body. Doc Thompson was the MC and instructed Senator Coley and Counsel Lazarus the rules of engagement for the debate. There were microphones at each end of the room where members of the community could come up and ask a question. Doc would take questions from each side of the room switching back and forth till around 8:30 an hour and a half later. I had a list of questions to ask in case people were shy to get started, but my focus was to film the event, and get home to my game, while not lingering too long. That video can be seen here. Of course it’s long; my battery power was running out at the end, so I had to be diligent in my power use. I would have brought my AC supply, but in my mind I didn’t want the event to go on longer than an hour and a half, because my game started at 8:30!!!!!

I was ready with my list to step away from the camera and ask my questions to get the evening started, which wasn’t necessary because a steadily line began to form. Listed below are my questions and I fully expected part of them to be brought up during the event.

Issue 2 questions

1. Why is it necessary to support an extreme labor union position in order to declare support for our Firefighters?

2. Why are the firefighters allowing themselves to be out in front of the larger problem involving the much needed reforms with teachers? It would appear that the teacher unions are using the good name of the firefighters to disguise the targets of the needed reforms brought forth by Issue 2?

3. Why would teachers protest the provision in Issue 2 that prevents striking? Firefighters can’t strike, neither can police, so why should teachers be allowed to strike if their positions are so important to our communities? Without Issue 2, they’ll still be able to walk off the job.

4. One of the provisions in Issue 2 is it makes joining a labor union optional. Wouldn’t we still have firefighters and police and teachers even if the employees didn’t wish to participate in a union?

5. How are overtime costs regulated in the fire and police departments? Is it true that a senior officer nearing their retirements work more hours to boost their retirement amounts, so they can show a higher yearly salary, boosting their retirement amounts?

6. How specifically will Issue 2 take away public employees?

7. How specifically will Issue 2 make conditions unsafe for police and firefighters?

8. (To Lazarus) Do you agree with the level of protests and rhetoric that occurred around Issue 2 when it was Senate Bill 5?

9. Why is it so important to remove binding arbitration?

10. Why is it so unfair to ask public employees to pay a fraction of their health care costs?

11. In what way have public employees made sacrifices when they have an edge of 43.4% in benefits over the private sector that pay their salaries? Wouldn’t a real sacrifice be in equalizing the benefits of the public worker with the private worker?

12. (To Lazarus) According to the recent Monroe City contract with its 33 firefighters the union proposed a 15 percent increase in wages spread evenly over three years — 5 percent in 2011, 5 percent in 2012 and 5 percent in 2013. Why does the union think this is appropriate, because in three more years there will be more increase requests?

13. (To Lazarus) Do you think increases of 3 to 5% a year is acceptable even if the CPI index from the private sector doesn’t provide the same level of compensation.

14. Dealing with 33 firefighters like the situation in Monroe and their requests for good wages for their public service takes on an entirely new meaning when it comes to school teachers where the district must employee up to 1500 employees, such as the case at Lakota. The cost of the teachers on the community is much greater for the teachers because of the number of employees. Without Issue 2, what type of management control would the public employee attorney suggest?

15. How can we continue without Issue 2, because collective bargaining has only worked well for the public worker, leaving the community facing higher and higher taxes? It would seem that collective bargaining has been good for public employees, but not the people on the other side of the table. How is that fair?

However…………I didn’t get a chance to ask a single question, partially because I couldn’t step away from the camera as long as would be required as the union members were not shy about asking questions. Of course I knew the answer to all those questions, but I wanted to ask them to allow the two personalities speaking to answer them for the public benefit. You can see most of those answers in my articles on Issue 2 listed here: CLICK THIS HOT LINK TO READ.

I came to this event with the intention to have an open mind toward the union position. What I witnessed from my unique position as a spectator behind the lens of a camera was a group of people whom I believe are nice people. I think if they were my direct neighbor I might lend them a bucket or a water hose if they needed it. But collectively, what I saw of these people was a deeply selfish group, completely consumed with self-interest. They seemed immature in a juvenile sort of way and it was obvious that what they were doing at this Liberty Twp Tea Party event was to use mass to intimidate the opposition, a mode of operation that they have done for years.

Now I’ve been to these events many times, and I know who speaks and who doesn’t, and during the course of the evening, most everyone sat in their seats and gapped at these public employees as though they were watching animals in a zoo. The behavior of the public employees seemed foreign and un-American. I encourage you dear reader to watch the entire video, because you will see for yourselves how the public unions booed and hissed at the things that Senator Coley was saying. It was a radical behavior that seemed completely out-of-place in a forum of adult discussion.

I feel badly now, for with all that I have said and written about how destructive the public worker has become not only to the national economy, but to themselves. I feel badly because even though many view my comments as harsh and overly critical, I realize now after that episode of the Issue 2 Debate that my comments have not been harsh enough. It is evident to me that the public unions do not represent the middle-class in any way shape or form. They are a new class onto themselves. The name of that class is the “Spoiled Class.” They are citizens of our community who have become so numb to anything beneficial that they no longer appreciate what it took to give them anything at all. They seem to be no different from the spoiled child of the very wealthy who will scream at the top of their lungs, “I DO NOT WANT TO GO TO DISNEYLAND IN CALIFORNIA. I WANT TO GO TO DISNEYWORLD IN FLORIDA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

The entire evening of the debate, even though I thought Senator Coley did very well, was about health care premiums, and the wages of the politicians themselves. The public unions seem to have absolutely no concept as to where the money comes from, because as Lazarus stated, “The public worker pays taxes too.” Those taxes come easier when the wage and benefit differential makes paying the taxes easier. For the public worker paying taxes is like passing the hat in revenue they all share. For the private worker we contribute to the hat, but get nothing back but cry-baby employees who never seem to be happy and are corrupted with union radicalism.

I thought Lazarus did well also. He is a very good attorney and it has been an army of people just like him arguing on behalf of public unions for years who have driven up our taxes. Lazarus showed exactly why we need Issue 2. People like Lazarus have made good livings off representing the public worker, and taking advantage of politician who weren’t as cleaver as him, and easy to take advantage of. Coley tried to explain the process, but the public workers didn’t want to hear it. All they wanted to hear was that their health care costs wouldn’t go up, and that the politicians were going to take a pay cut. Speaking to them was like speaking to a child who hasn’t yet learned to read and understand information on their own.

The “Spoiled Class” cannot be reasoned with. They cannot be appeased. They do not wish to negotiate unless it is in their favor. They are selfish, short-sighted, corrupt, and are in need of a basic education to even have a foundation discussion with. They are the epitome of a virus in the human body threatening eternal sickness, even death if allowed to continue. The “Spoiled Class” is a self-destructive group of parasites who negate any potential they bring to society in their public work with 10 negatives for every positive.

They like the spoiled child are not even capable of seeing anything beyond their own concerns. The “Spoiled Class” collective disposition is only out for what they can achieve in mass and even that has a selfish prerequisite.

And that was what stunned my Tea Party friends on this evening. They were thinking just as I was, that yes, these public workers are every bit as bad as we feared they were. They are an uncaring lot who live in a totally different reality than the rest of us.

Issue 2 is about 10 years too late. I think Issue 2 isn’t nearly strong enough and is too late to save our society from the termites of our culture that is the public worker. Even the attorney Lazarus instructed us that the reason for collective bargaining to come about in the first place was to protect the citizens from striking police officers. That is the same as saying that we must take the form of extortion that is collective bargaining over another form of extortion called walking off the job. This tells me that the employees who would consider either option is a radical that isn’t worth the tax money I must produce to employee them. For such people are not worth my hard work. They are not worth one bead of sweat on my brow. They deserve no effort what-so-ever of my labor for their sustenance; for they provide me with virtually nothing in exchange for the great deal that I give them with my taxes.

I feel toward this “Spoiled Class” just as I would the spoiled child who would complain about my choice in vacation spots for their entertainment. Their ungrateful demeanor prompts me to get back in the car and take them back home, for the effort of their enjoyment brings me only headaches.

It is our fault for allowing this “Spoiled Class” to rule as they have. We have allowed them to ruin our lives in toil toward their aims, to shut their screaming mouths for fear that they might embarrass us. We created the “Spoiled Class” and I would suggest that we dismantle it for their own good. Because the mental condition of the “Spoiled Class” is that of a psychological weakling. They are dependents who only have strength in collective numbers which is an insect-like trait, and this should not be allowed to be a mode of operation for any member of the human race.

Issue 2 needs to be passed and passed quickly. The longer this behavior goes on, the closer the human race de-evolves back into a primitive rubbing sticks together for fire, or catching food with a rock, because the path of the public workers will take us in the direction of a primitive where they cheer like hunters who have just slaughtered a woolly mammoth to the demise of everything the human mind cherished as good once upon a time of skyscrapers and industry.

As to fairness in labor negotiations all one must do is look at the 43.4% edge the public workers have over their employers, the tax payers, to see who has benefited from collective bargaining without Issue 2. (IT ISN’T THE PRIVATE SECTOR)

For the answer to everything, CLICK THIS LINK:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

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

The Harsh Reality of the World Economy: Learn about money and why you may be a looter

The greatest peril of an oncoming tragedy is in attempting to convince the people who do not yet see it that catastrophe is about to occur. When watching a football game, it is the really good coach who does not panic, makes adjustments at halftime then comes back out to attempt to win the game after he has educated his team to a new strategy. The bad coaches fail to identify the problem and leave fate to hope that the situation of their team will improve on its own.

Those of us who can see problems way out ahead of most everyone else have been sending out the alarms that America is falling behind for a long time now. Darryl Parks of 700 WLW is one of those “visionaries” and frequently has elements of his programs that are incredibly revealing. We have been attempting to make those halftime adjustments and tell those around us who don’t see so clearly that peril is in front of them. We try to say that if American society does not make adjustments suddenly, there is a very good chance we are going to lose big in the economic game of the world marketplace.

To understand just how severe the world marketplace is, by way of population and the amount of jobs available to those people, listen carefully to this broadcast with Darryl Parks. The facts are broadcast for all to hear, and upon hearing them, you’ll understand more clearly what I’m going to say next. (CLICK THE VIDEO TO HEAR)

20 years ago when I made the decision to stick with manufacturing, many people chastised my decision. They simply didn’t understand, and I’d try and reason with them, that the world does not need more lawyers, it does not need more teachers, technology is making them less important to the education process, and we do not need more doctors, nurses, X-Ray technicians, insurance salesman, politicians, and the like. None of those jobs produce anything. They are simply a service oriented occupation that falls in the same category as a grill cook at McDonalds, “service.” What is needed is manufacturing jobs, things that America actually makes, loads on a truck and is delivered to some paying customer.

Even as a child I would scratch my head at the labor strikes and protests I’d see at places like Armco in Middletown, now known as AK Steel. I saw labor disputes at the Norwood car plant where they built Camero’s and I’d wonder what those people were thinking. But back then manufacturing jobs were abundant and the parents of the next generation who didn’t want their kids to “work for greedy management” (indirect rhetoric created in the union halls of America) wanted better for their kids. So they sent their children to college to become teachers, lawyers, and doctors and now there isn’t anybody to build anything. The Norwood plant is gone now, just like most of the American Steel Industry. And the tax base cannot afford the public employment of the extremely high expectations promised to those public sector people because there isn’t any manufacturing anymore to support government looting with a progressive tax system. America has become like I warned 20 years ago, a service industry and not a manufacturing giant, and it is the labor unions that played a huge role in killing American manufacturing.

In regard to the protests over Issue 2 and the other collective bargaining reforms taking place all over the country, I would think many of those people should be grateful every day that they have a job to go to. In fact, the reason we are creating Issue 2 is so we can keep all those people employed. But greed is ruling their minds. They are not job creators. They are employees in a service industry, who maintain what we currently have.

The trouble with trying to convince those who are causing us to lose this game that they are guilty of the act is in their lack of understanding the true value of money. To the public worker, the protester, the teacher who expects to live like a member of some royalty because they are a member of academia I leave for them an article I wrote some time ago, a piece about the value of money, so that they can see where they are wrong, and make those adjustments so they can get back on our team and help us win this game. But until those public workers get a grip on that basic concept, my words have as much meaning to them as if I were trying to explain quantum mechanics to my dog. So please take this moment to educate yourselves. They owe that to the rest of us who have seen this problem for a long time, but have had to put up with the arrogance of their poor understanding.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/04/01/s-b-5-passes-the-good-of-money-whats-missing-in-our-culture/

If they can’t understand that, then there is no way they can help the rest of us win this game.

For the answer to everything, CLICK THIS LINK:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

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

The “Education Bubble”: The enemy gathers outside of it

For those who believe that all is right in the world, the video below is something you should see. I recently had a debate on 700 WLW with Julie Shaffer over school levies and how much she believes people outside the “education bubble” make as a wage, which far off the true mark and goes far to explain why educators are out-of-touch in asking the public to increase taxes to maintain their lifestyles even when the CPI index says those same teachers are extremely overpaid. It is that same “education bubble” of academia where they view the world with rose-colored lenses darkened even more with tenure that they cannot, or will not see that in their typically leftist viewpoint of global unity and focus on “world peace” that our enemies stir. (CLICK THIS HOTLINK TO HEAR MY DEBATE WITH JULIE)

While the teachers inside this bubble teach our youth pacifism, our youth are becoming less inclined to identify evil for what it is. In fact, many of our adults have the same difficulty, as we have all been educated in the same places. It is not the fault of public education so much as it is the fault of those within the “education bubble” to allow themselves to be seduced by the messages of peace that were created by socialist sympathizers early in American history, and should be viewed no differently than when the farmer takes his flock of cattle to the slaughter-house, petting his animals as he leads them to their deaths. The farmer will drive away from the slaughter-house with money in his pocket, but his cows will leave in pieces, their necks slit and drained of the life. Those in the “education bubble” are like the farmer. They don’t intend harm to their flocks, but they do crave that safety from within academia where they chose to reside, and will at great effort labor to stay there and turn their eyes away from what goes on outside that bubble, even if it means selling away their cattle for money.

I would place the blame on why Americans do not seem able to identify this Middle-Eastern threat on the shoulders of academia, because in their methods of self-preservation, they have allowed the arrogance of an enemy to grow to dangerous proportions. They have lulled society to sleep with empty promises and a pursuit of material wealth accompanied by a healthy dose of altruism, all designed to dissect sectors of modern society from their strongholds of belief.

The academic will scoff at my utterances and those of Glenn Beck because they don’t want to believe in those threats. They do not want to consider that the foundations of their beliefs are but blinders to a menace so magnificent that it threatens to erase any progress mankind has made and cast it back to tents in a desert valley, erasing from the minds of all any trace of skyscrapers, Wall Street trading, or even automobiles. For the rage that dwells within the predators of man care for nothing of invention, peace, love, charity, or reaching for the stars. Their hungry eyes are on the fresh meat within that education bubble which they would consume without reverence or mercy.

And they plot like sinister manipulators, walking among us like the wolf in sheep’s clothing, climbing under the fence to get behind that bubble to eat. Meanwhile the academic looks at the predator and says, “look there at the poor, the downtrodden, the oppressed and offer them your hand, your help, your charity! I say to you my young students to beckon your wealth in their direction, to assist them for they are our brothers and sisters of this world, and deem our respect and understanding.” In this way the teacher leads the students straight into the mouth of the predator to be consumed uneventfully.

The media personality is another type of academic within the “education bubble” who looks everywhere but at the predator in hopes to maintain their fantasy of peace. As they prepare their news stories to met the most recent deadline, and news of a predator in their midst proves unmistakable they utter to themselves, “If only I could take such violent minds to the streets of France to dine within sight of the Eiffel Tower and later that night make love on a veranda overlooking the city at night, then these predators would not want to cut the head off the innocent. If only I could save them from themselves then I would be a type of hero who offered myself to save their lives.” Shortly thereafter, the disillusioned media personality will bury their faces into their hands when they realize too late that it was they who left the gate open to the predators to slaughter their friends behind the “education bubble.”

The enemy is now everywhere and our eyes are no longer trained to see them, because the “education bubble” has failed us. They are in our government, they wear suits, and look like everyone else, and they study everything we do. The enemy is so diverse these days that the enemy doesn’t even know it’s the enemy. They believe they are social servants. Thus, the training provided from within the “education bubble.”

As teachers and other public servants chant at the statehouses all over the nation to protect their “collective bargaining” rights, and their view of the world that was built within the “education bubble” they do not see that the fight they are engaged in is one of manipulation. They were taught to provide a military type distraction in two ways, first to bankrupt our financial structure and deplete our manufacturing base; second they are to draw attention away from the real predators as they maneuver into position to attack. Within the “education bubble” we are taught to think in terms of quarters and semesters. The enemy is taught to think in decades and generations.

So as the teachers and sympathizers of the “education bubble” continue to beat a drum of distraction to preserve their right to shop at Nordstrom’s, an enemy gathers outside of their vision. And as people like me point and say, “there is your end,” they gallantly shrug off the warning.

“Oh, that Mr. Hoffman just hates teachers and so anti-education. You can’t believe anything he says, because he chooses not to join us in the “education bubble.”

And they wonder why I wish to pop that bubble so that they can finally see………………………………

For the answer to everything, CLICK THIS LINK:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

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

The Great Debate at Lakota: Julie Shaffer and Rich Hoffman on WLW

Julie Shaffer who is running for a Lakota School Board seat and representing the Pro Lakota movement came on 700 WLW and debated me on Doc Thompson’s show. Julie had some good points from her view-point, and I maintained my usual opinion. It was the public response to this debate that I think is most telling. WLW is widely heard by all demographics in the adult population all across Ohio so the callers who responded to our debate speak volumes of the values our communities currently embody. Click the video below to listen to that very important broadcast. (BE SURE TO LISTEN TO THE WHOLE BROADCAST)

One thing that came up constantly during the debate is the controversy over numbers. Julie interprets them one way, I interpret them another. But the facts are the facts in spite of what one side or the other wish to see. As to my facts, I look at them without attempting to make them speak slander. And the summary of this whole Lakota Levy Debate is this—what is the value of a teacher and how much should we pay them?

It is my opinion that years of radicalism in the teaching profession have distorted the actual value of the service. This leaves us with the difficult position of discovering what the market value is of a teacher, and that is what these levy defeats all over Cincinnati are all about. We are establishing what we as a community are willing to pay for a teacher.

That teacher radicalism can be seen easily in this recent Letter to the Editor published in The Pulse Journal pointing at me for having a lack of respect for teachers.

What many people don’t understand is just how much teachers cost. At Lakota during the school year of 2009-2010 the average pay of a Lakota teacher was $62,331. The following year it was $63,727 and mysteriously went up even with a pay freeze and step increase freeze under a new 3 year contract. Why? Well, it is because of the teachers laid-off that Lakota cut to meet its budget reducing it by $12 million. How many of those new teachers were really good and how many teachers paid top dollar but aren’t so good kept their job? It was the lower paid teachers who were taken out of the equation, which drove up the average salary. Over the span of time shown above approximately 60% of the teachers received “step increases” of around 3%. This is the kind of thing that has driven up the labor costs and made school levies a necessity, because the schools perceive they need the money because they do not recognize a limit to what is available to them. To put this in perspective, the cost of those increases were around $2.1 million. The savings of the busing cuts is $2.8 million. So it could be said that the busing cuts at Lakota were needed to pay for the increases the teachers received over the last school year.

Even though administrators at Lakota have not received an increase of any kind over the last three years, they do average a pay rate of $80,747 a year. At that rate of pay, who would think they’d need a pay increase. Julie and I discussed on the air two versions of what we believe the average pay to be of a person living in West Chester is. I said the average person is making 50K per year, which included professionals of all types with various degrees. Julie thinks it’s over $70K per year which explains why the people on her side don’t understand the problem.  They live in that “Education Bubble” which sees the world through the eyes of academia, which is idealistic in its interpretation of the information they see, and that view is clearly out-of-touch. That can be heard in the callers that followed our debate.

(BY THE WAY, TO SEE THE REAL NUMBERS FOR YOURSELF, HERE IS CNN MONEY MAGAZING’S REVIEW OF WEST CHESTER. THIS SHOWS HOW MUCH PEOPLE AVERAGE IN INCOME.)

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bplive/2010/snapshots/CS3978246.html

It is irresponsible to ask a community that is suffering from record foreclosures, where business owners have to lower their lease rates to keep their business tenets, because the taxes are so unattractive, then you compare that reality to the world of Julie Shaffer and her Pro Levy teachers and one can only wonder how the teachers don’t see it.

In a late night meeting with Superintendent Mantia where she reached out to those of us in the No Lakota Group hoping to earn our trust in her ability to get control of these crazy costs, that we told her flatly, Lakota should pull the levy, it should then ask the teachers to take a reasonable pay cut to bring that average teacher salary into the mid-50’s. Mantia in my assessment understood our point of view, and she understood the conditions outside of that education bubble, but indicated that the levy was already in the process.

One of the No Lakota Members in our group then said, “Those Pro Levy People have 30K in money they raised from last time that has been sitting in a bank since last fall, and it’s burning a hole in their pockets, and we think that’s why you guys are going through with this levy.”

Mantia shrugged her shoulders. “I just got here, gentlemen. I’m trying.”

We shook her hand and wished her well into the rainy night knowing that we had more in common than we did in differences. The only difference is she’s in charge of that “education bubble” and we want to pop it. Because the people within that bubble need to share in the world the rest of us live in. Because then and only then can a realistic discussion about the value of a teacher be ascertained.

For the answer to everything, CLICK THIS LINK:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

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

Rich Hoffman Hates Teachers: A stick in the waters of life

Naturally I get a lot of email that is derogatory in nature. Taking the positions I have on issues tends to draw attention from the empire builders who drape themselves particularly from the mantles of public service. A good many of those emails I can’t share, because they are too mindless, derogatory, or simply vile. But one email I received and the banter between this guy and myself I would consider to be an interesting study of psychology.

A guy named, Mike took exception with the comments I had made about Ryan Farhenkemp, the Lakota teacher recently found guilty of child pornography while on his teaching job. Mike didn’t like that I associated the teaching profession in a negative way by insinuating that the perversions of Farhenkemp made other teachers guilty as well. So he sent me an email to “correct” my thinking as I suppose he fantasized his action to be. For two days he and I bantered back and forth on the topic and I thought it was going in a productive direction, only to end unfortunately on a negative.

Below are the contents of this discussion:

Mike Stefanov has sent you a message On Tue, Sep 27, 2011:

You have some good messages but you really devalue them with statements such as this; “When they want to be paid well, they all stick together. But when one messes up and does something stupid, like the pedophile at Lakota, then the teachers act like he acted alone and they should not be judged because of him. So which is it? All for one and one for all………..or, judged by independent merit?)”

Your insinuation that the pedophile may not have acted alone is deplorable. You should be ashamed to equate other teachers with the trash of a pedophile. Your message is getting lost by some of your attacks on teachers. I think that you would have many more sympathizers to your cause if you did not spew the vile hared that you so often do. Putting all teachers in the same basket with the other pedophiles is classless. It would be like someone putting all Catholic priests together because there have been a few that have abused kids. Pedophiles can be found in every walk of life and in every occupation. Keep spewing your hatred and your message will soon be falling on deaf ears.

On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 12:29 PM, Rich Hoffman wrote:

Don’t count on it but thanks for the comment. In the case of that particular teacher, people knew what he was up to, and didn’t say anything. That doesn’t make them as bad as the pedophile, but they aren’t innocent either. The statement was a general statement on collectivism, but your interpretation is fascinating.

Keep in touch,

Rich

Mike Stefanov wrote:

Rich,

Thank you for the reply back. Just FYI; it was the Lakota SD that brought this particular pedophile to the attention of the authorities. If it were not for some at Lakota that alerted the authorities, this sick teacher may still be amongst the students.

As I alluded to in the other email, some of your messages are good but do not cause them to be viewed as untruthful by distorting the facts that you are presenting. Smart people will see through your distortion of facts. I view myself as a Libertarian but the bending of facts can be construed in the wrong way. Your enthusiasm can be commended but it must be tempered with truthfulness. I do not appreciate your attacks on teachers that actually are honest and hard working. I see through your distorted message. Keep bending the truth and spewing hatred and the message will be lost. History will back me up on this. Ronald Reagan must be turning in his grave when he sees what the GOP has become.

Mike Stefanov

On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 5:37 PM, Rich Hoffman wrote:

Good points, Mike. I’ll keep those views in mind and in perspective.

Thanks,

Rich

(Now here comes the going south portion)

On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 7:57 AM, Mike Stefanov wrote:

You do that, Rich. Keep those views in mind. I am one that may have given you support but will not because of the manner in which you degrade teachers. I have been fortunate to have had good teachers. Teachers have made a positive influence on my life and they have had a positive role in the life of my children as well. There are some bad teachers but there are many more that are good. Bad and incompetent workers can be found in every occupation. Education is not alone in this.

I have been blessed that I have had a good life and have been able to afford just about whatever I want to. I have an income that is in the 99th percentile. I have a nice home. A lot of this success can be traced back to having quality teachers. From what I can glean about you it appears that you are most likely unemployed and have had bad experiences in school. If you are employed you occupation is most likely menial and you more than likely have a middling income. This misfortune has caused you to become bitter. If you think that the Lakota SD is so poor and you don’t like it, just move to an area that would be more to your liking and more affordable for you. In the meantime, don’t continue your attempts to lessen the quality of the schools. Additionally, you are having a negative impact on the value of my home and that is not welcomed by me. The amount of additional taxes that I will pay is nothing compared to the amount that my home will depreciate by because nobody wants to move to either Liberty Twp or West Chester due to a school system that is subpar.

Believe it or not, I like minimal government. I am a Libertarian. I don’t like any more than you do. However there are no free lunches and paying for a quality school system is money that is well spent.

Mike

Rich Hoffman Replied:

You were doing so well, Mike, then you had to come back with that.
I am certainly not unemployed, or underfunded. That’s cute that you’d make that assumption. As for school, I don’t think it does enough and gets in the way of the ambitious. I wouldn’t say I had bad experiences or good ones in school. I think it wastes the time of children to create jobs for the adults. I find it hard to believe that you are in the top 1% with your beliefs.

Bitter, me? I’m not bitter about much of anything. Don’t confuse lack of respect for bitterness.

Rich

——————————————————————-

Mike seemed in the end more concerned about proving to me that he had value as a person, and he sadly associated that value with money. This tells me a lot about the contents of his mind. He represents many of the teachers whom he is defending in this exchange with an assumption that money equals value. He misses completely many of the points I have been making because he does not have a mind to understand them. So he came back to me at the end of this exchange with accusations that I’m unemployed and somehow bitter about the teaching profession as a whole.

The unsettling aspect of this discussion is that Mike believes so strongly in this exchange that he took considerable time to try and convince me that I’m wrong, and even when I gave him an honorable way out, he came back for more.

There are many Mikes out there and they vote. They bounce around life like twigs in a raging river. They go with the flow of popular sentiment even if that direction is one of destruction, and they forget that once they were part of a tree that had broken away from their roots and now find themselves soaking wet and directionless going wherever the river takes them.

Mike obviously wanted to prove to me that he was a person of value, which actually makes me feel for the guy. There are so many people like him that it would be easier to count those who are unlike him.

This doesn’t make him right or wrong, but simply an interesting scientific behavioral study which can provide insight into the kinds of nonsense “thinking” people shake their heads at in contemplation. It must be a terrible thing to have no control over one’s destiny, and to just go with the flow. I personally can’t imagine such limitations, so it never ceases to amaze me to observe the conditions of such types, and the utterances which emanate from their condensed lives as they travel aimlessly down the rivers of life.

For the answer to everything, CLICK THIS LINK:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

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

The Money Hole: Facts and Facts and more Facts about why Issue 2 is needed in Ohio

I have been a fan of John Stossel for years, particularly when he was doing work for 20/20 which I watched every Friday night. Stossel is what a journalist should be, he digs deep for a story and he never takes anything at face value. For my money he has produced some of the most stunning documentaries over the years which have been a tremendous service to American society. One of his more recent documentaries, The Money Hole is one of his best. In that documentary which you can see below, John Stossel shows why America is in a financial hole, what has caused it, and how do we get out of it. For my readers in Ohio, or anywhere else in the world where government spending is out-of-control, I’d urge you to watch John’s documentary so to gain insight to the problem. If you are in Ohio and are confused about ISSUE 2 this documentary will help you. It is the kind of waste that John outlines in this video production that Issue 2 is seeking to get control of, and why Issue 2 is so important to the future of our state, which will then have implications for the entire nation.

John Stossel is not a Republican. John is not a Democrat. John is what might be called a “libertarian” a person who believes in extremely small levels of government. Stossel would most likely tell the story that he didn’t start off this way in his journalism career. He like many in the media who studied from institutions where pictures of Walter Lippmann loomed like a God down the halls of journalism, had a progressive view of the world until his reporting drove it out of him. His conclusions observed in the fields of living did not match what he had learned in college, and he made adjustments to his belief system to incorporate this new data.

This adjustment of political sensitivity occurred for the same reason it occurs in other journalists who continued to push the edge like Bill O’Reilly. Journalists who actually go against the grain, like they are supposed to, learn what works and what doesn’t. Unfortunately, a majority of the journalists out there know what John knows, but they don’t act on it because the editors and producers they work for not only admire the picture of Walter Lippmann, but they wear his picture around their necks like a religious icon. This is why more reporters don’t do as John Stossel has done, and that’s forged his own way, and do hard hitting stories like you can see in The Money Hole.

Stossel isn’t unfair when he does a report. He sits down with all sides to get a story and you see that in The Money Hole. He sits down with union leaders, democratic politicians; in fact he sat down with a representative from every side of the Wisconsin dispute over collective bargaining reform, which is similar to what Issue 2 in Ohio is doing.

A lot of people didn’t know until a few years ago, just how bad the public sector unions have been on our government. It is reporters like John Stossel that has exposed this cost for all to see. It is only a matter of time that the public unions recognize what an imposition they have been to the tax payer and join the rest of us in that negative assessment. But the beginning of that assessment came from the reports of John Stossel, who did this kind of reporting before it was fashionable.

I became interested in education reform when another documentary by Stossel called Stupid in America showed me how ineffective our public education system had become, and what stood in the way of fixing the problem. He did that documentary before there was ever a film called Waiting for Superman, or Glenn Beck was a household name. Stossel has been doing this kind of reporting service for a long time, and it’s always been unpopular, but he has never wavered from stepping into the fire to bring back a story to share with the rest of us.

As to Issue 2 in Ohio, if the evidence present by John Stossel, who has no skin in this game, and is certainly not a “republican stooge” or “corporate crony” can arrive at the conclusions shown in The Money Hole, then why can’t all tax payers see it? Well, like John showed in his documentary, politicians have spent a lot of money on ads which program the fleeting mind of the average person to repeat like a parrot whatever message those politicians intend. The trouble is that to preserve a free society, or even to eliminate corruption within a government, it requires the people of that government to think, and ask questions. But just as thousands and thousands of students graduate from journalism in college each year, there are only a few who end up like John Stossel, the same ratio can be seen among the tax payer base. Everyone knows the problems, but few have the courage to face the problem squarely, even if it personally affects them, to do the right thing. Many of these union members in these public unions who are double-dipping, and abusing the “rules” for their own financial advantage know they are doing wrong, and they hide their guilt in the collectivism of their unions, for it is easier for them to live with themselves when they know their union brothers and sisters are also “gaming” the system for all it’s worth. And they don’t want to see the documentaries that John Stossel produces.

This is why even when the facts are placed out in the open for all to see, there are still people who will not see those facts. They refuse to see because the realization of those facts will indicate that they are bad people to participate in such a bad system and they believe that if they just shout louder, then they can prevent people like John Stossel from putting the truth in front of their faces to look at. But Stossel doesn’t budge, and he’s not going away, and now that it’s been exposed, The Money Pit of government, it is only a matter of time before major reforms are enacted. Many of the crimes shown in The Money Pit were done while the public wasn’t paying attention, and now, thanks to reporters like John Stossel, a few of us are now looking at this problem armed with facts, and not just intuition. And it is what we do with those facts which will bring about the dawn of a whole new age.

When new age happens, be sure to give thanks to people like John Stossel for his part in exposing the truth when there were many who tried to drown it from ever being seen, even by their own eyes.

For the answer to everything, CLICK THIS LINK:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

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