Politicians Damn the Tea Party to HELL: More reasons for voting YES on ISSUE 2

Maxine Waters and many others of her political persuasion are damning the Tea Party to Hell for wanting to undo all the mistakes those progressive politicians have made over the last century. So before I get into Maxine and the rest of this issue please review the following video which I included on my article about WHY PUBLIC UNIONS FAIL (CLICK HERE TO READ AND VIEW THE FANTASTIC VIDEOS ON THAT ARTICLE) This video paints the picture of our current political situation extremely well. So before you do anything else, WATCH THIS!

What is happening in states like Ohio, New Jersey, and Wisconsin are people like myself, who are absolutely sick of politics, tired of the double-talk, tired of new legislation buried in the back of another bill similar to the practice of EARMARKING and PORK BARREL spending, are hiring strong governors who are not in bed with labor unions to bring down the costs of doing business in our states. I don’t care where a governor like Kasich came from, I hired him to do one job, and that’s to balance Ohio’s budget, and I don’t want the public unions to pull him to their side like shown in that video. That has been the problem for many, many, many years and this is the cause of the strong governors we are starting to see emerge, such as Chris Christie in New Jersey who is bringing public sector reforms to his state. Listen to his most recent endeavor here:

In Ohio, Kasich and the House and Senate in spite of being Republican are attempting for the first time in my lifetime to actually fix something in state government. And that something is a tremendous huge fix that to the labor unions may feel far-reaching, but it’s really not. I think Senate Bill 5, otherwise known as Issue 2 is extremely fair and it has infuriated me that people like Bill Cunningham who have claimed to be a Tea Party leaning American have been so critical about S.B.5 and all this so-called “fairness” he keeps talking about. Where was all this fairness when progressives like Maxine Waters, and Barney Frank and Ohio’s own Ted Strickland and Bob Taft have been stuffing new legislation down our throats for years which only strengthened the public sector union against their boss……..the American People! It was a relief to hear Tom Niehaus come on 700 WLW to defend S.B.5 against all the misinformation created by the labor unions to convince busy voters that this bill is somehow “unfair,” that the process from which the bill was written was bad, and corrupt in some way. Listen to that broadcast here:

The facts of the matter are that Tea Party American’s are finally starting to stick up for themselves. They are tired of being pushed around, lied to, manipulated, disrespected, and over-looked because we don’t stuff money in politician’s pockets to get our way. We are sick of it, and people like Maxine Waters doesn’t like it, so she’s doing the manipulative thing and going to her political base, who she is obviously using to her own advantage, taking advantage of a demographic group that isn’t asking the hard questions but is content to sit with their mouths open waiting for someone to feed them. Those are the people who give Maxine power, and make her believe she has a right to damn Tea Party American’s to HELL! What she is really worried about is that those Tea Party Americans are about to discover just how corrupt and terrible her party has been against all Americans under the light of day.

Barney Frank is worried about the same thing; watch him here pretending that he is somehow superior to his bosses, the American People. He knows that it is the labor union empire, that tyrannical beast of complacency that operates like organized crime lords and stuffs his pockets, and those are his masters. And it is his job to eliminate that threat to his bosses. That’s what he’s doing here.

But this game is over. People like me support Senate Bill 5, (ISSUE 2) because I want this empire off my back and out of my tax dollars. I don’t want them infecting my elected representatives in ANY way. I don’t want them manipulating my school board, my trustees, my city councils, my state legislators, my Governor. I don’t want them in my White House. I don’t want them in my life at all; because history has shown me that they are wrong, misguided and dangerous to the American way of life. And already they are declaring that they are willing to go to war with people in the Tea Party. I find that comment laughable.

It is not they who are the silent majority, the sleeping giant as they claim to be with Senate Bill 5. It is the normal people who are in their garages working on their cars on a Saturday afternoon watching NASCAR, it is the farmer, the engineers, the architects, the businessman, the “masses” out there that are the sleeping giant and they are beginning to stir. Senate Bill 5 is just the start of their intentions, and these new politicians are “their” politicians. We are tired of the back room deals; we are tired of being told that more taxes will solve the problem because it never does. We are sick of the light at the end of the tunnel being drug down the hall so we can never catch it. We are tired of the process and Senate Bill 5 (Issue 2) helps us reset the table so real “fairness” can finally play out in government.

Maxine Waters doesn’t know what she just did when she publicly spoke to God Almighty and asked for the Tea Party to be damned to hell because it is desired to take away the corrupt influence of progressives like her upon the states and nation of our political system. What Maxine Waters and her kind are doing is declaring war against America, which reveals what the intentions have always been from her party. So the time for suspicion of their intentions has passed and it is hoped that through legislation we can defeat these foes against our Constitution. But it looks like legislation may not be enough, because these desperate manipulators are willing to fight for all the “progressive” gains they’ve achieved at our expense and that may lead to real violence if it is not suppressed now, before the situation really gets out of control. Because if she will use that kind of language in public, God only knows what she says behind closed doors, and that’s where the real battle plans are constructed.

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

Why Public Labor Unions Fail: The Science of Stagnation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LAKOTA TAX INCREASE of 2011: If the superintendent wants to be paid like a CEO, act like one

On July 12th of 2011 Michael D. Clark covered the Lakota School Board meeting for the Cincinnati Enquirer about the inevitable tax increase the school district is planning to impose on the tax payers. Here is what he reported:

Voters, who in November 2010 rejected a 7.9-mill school levy, will see the 4.75-mill, continuing operating levy on the Nov. 8 ballot once the board conducts another, state-mandated vote next month.

If voters in the Lakota School System approve the 4.75-mill property tax hike, it will cost the owner of a $100,000 home $145 more in annual school taxes. That will of course be $290 per year on a $200,000 dollar home.

“The schools are the community’s schools, and it will be up to the community whether we continue to move forward or slide backward,” said Lakota Board of Education President Joan Powell.

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Here is the problem with what Joan said in that statement. Lakota has no choice but to continue to be a good school. Speaking for myself, I pay thousands of dollars a year into the school system, and I expect nothing less than an excellent district. Going backward as Joan suggests is not an option. Excellence and quality is required. It is completely expected by me as a tax payer. In other words, I am not spending a lot of money in taxes to get a crappy school system.

However, the school board is citing that a loss of state and federal revenue dictates that the district must go to the voters for more money, and if Lakota wants to maintain a great school, then the property owners of Lakota must pay the difference.

But that’s not what’s going on.

The reality goes back to an October evening in 2008 when hundreds of teachers packed the Lakota School Board Meeting with black shirts showing unity and demanding a 3% increase in pay or they were walking off the job. They were going to strike! You can see the news cast of that video here. You have to click on the link because Channel 5 has disabled the code. It is the events in that video which has caused our current financial crises at Lakota just 3 short years later.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kvPQPJ_F1A

Here’s another link, again this one will take you away from this page, but it’s worth the look. Listen to Kit Andrews report that Lakota’s per pupil amount was just over $8,000 per child. Now it’s almost $10,000 per child in just three years. How long does anybody think this can go on? What’s the plan to reduce the per pupil cost because that costs is almost completely driven off the labor cost of the employees, not brick and mortar costs?

http://eplayer.clipsyndicate.com/cs_api/iframe?windows=1&va_id=726521&show_title=0&wpid=0

To demonstrate just how quickly Lakota salaries went up after the strike attempt of 2008 the No Lakota Levy group has assembled the spreadsheet below.

Now, what does all that information mean? Well…..the average teacher’s salaries by school from the time of the strike threat in 2008 to the present look like this. The year of the strike the average teacher salary was $56,633. Just two years later the average salary was $62,331. The spreadsheet above shows the average rate of pay per school and the amount of increase at those schools. In essence, there was a 10.1% increase in the cost of an employee at Lakota right after the strike.

2007-2008 $56,633
2008-2009 $59,041
2009-2010 $62,331

Lakota currently has over 600 employees who make over $65,000 per year which ties up over $47 million dollars in budget costs. CLICK HERE TO SEE WHO AND WHAT LAKOTA STAFF MADE IN 2010-2011.

The way to fix the budget at Lakota is simple. It must be decided to not have as many employees making such large sums of money, because asking the district to carry that many highly paid employees in a district simply destroys any attempt a district of any kind has of balancing its budget.

To provide an idea just how quickly these costs can migrate out of control in 2009-2010 Lakota started the year at 59K per year and ended at 62K per year. During that year the district carried 434 employees who were paid over 65K per year. However, just one year later, that number jumped to 625 employees who made over $65,000 per year. I’m sure some of those people retired, or moved on to new jobs, but they still showed up on the payroll for that fiscal year and must be counted. The amount of increase in payroll demands from one year to the next, just one year, was $15,647,689.00. (The source for that information comes straight from the Pulse Journal wages edition published each March. Add the numbers up and that’s what you get) It is that number which causes the need for school levies.

Now recently the teachers union came up with a 3 year agreement so they could avoid the effects of Senate Bill 5, which was signed by Governor Kasich early in 2011, which puts a stop to the out of control “step increases” which has caused much of the trouble, because under a step plan, even though the teachers agreed to a “wage freeze” in August of 2009, they still received a wage increase under the “Step” plan which is why the salaries of the teachers went up so much over the course of one year. The teachers union at Lakota and other unions who have negotiated similar contracts plan to get S.B.5 repealed before their current contract expires, thus allowing them to resume back to their normal spending addictions, such as in 2008.

Having teachers making 65K or more is not a big deal if they only consists of the top quarter of your workforce, and in a district like Lakota which employs over 2000 staffing positions for more than 18,000 students the costs can get out of line quickly if not watched carefully.

Lakota has managed to bring their budget under the $160 million mark consistently on their 5 year forecast, but if it doesn’t balance the budget, then it’s not enough.

Tax rates at Lakota are already too high. There are too many homes going into foreclosure and higher taxes just aren’t attractive to potential home buyers. So the task at Lakota is to maintain its excellent rating, while also bringing down their costs and providing some relief to the tax payers, not more burden. If the loss of state and federal revenue forces the budget under $120 million a year, then that means the administration at Lakota needs to tackle their expensive costs, the amount of employees they have that are exceptionally well paid, to balance the budget. If that means letting those positions move someplace else so they can make more money and replacing them with cheaper labor…….fine. That’s the way the process works. Over paying employees is not good business, and does not make a district great. It makes fools of the management to even entertain such thoughts.

But statements that Lakota will be going backwards if we don’t pay more taxes are eerily similar to the kind of nonsense Lakota went through in 2008 when the labor threatened to strike, and got their pay raised as a reward, which the cost was passed down to each and every member of the community. If we are going to have to pay our new Superintendent Mrs. Mantia $165,000 a year, and the school board will justify that cost by stating that she is operating like a CEO of a company, well then we’ll expect her to drive down the costs in the same manner as a CEO does for their shareholders. I expect Mrs. Mantia to maintain Lakota’s excellent rating and current quality while driving down the labor costs to balance the budget. If she must let go of some of the expensive labor in favor of less expensive labor, then she must do that. But raising taxes is not an option. Any fool can do that. I could put my dog in charge of the school district and he could wag his tail to proclaim taxes need to be increased to meet a budget.

In the end, the Lakota Administration has not had the heart to do the right thing. They were outsmarted when it came to the labor dispute of 2008 and they are seeking to hide their shame with tax increases. The revenue produced by the community is more than sufficient to run an “excellent” school, but it is not sufficient to pay employees 20% to 30% more than the average income of the taxpayers themselves. The math just doesn’t add up.

Tax increases are an irresponsible measure by minds that lack the wisdom to see where they have made an error. And the greatest error is in pretending that more money will somehow fix the debacle. Lakota needs a long term plan for dealing with “declining revenues” because that is the fact of our age. People will be making less, properties will be worth less, there will be less coming from government and the bubble of tremendous benefits for public workers is at an end. And during this transition Lakota has an obligation to the millions of dollars our community produces to have a great school to maintain that service. Because failure is not an option! Lakota will not go backwards, and it cannot raise taxes. It must do the hard things that balance the current budget, or step aside so people who know what they’re doing can do it for them.

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

VOTE YES ON SENATE BILL 5: If you don’t the results will be your fault

There is a strong desire among many who support Senate Bill 5, to meet those opposed to S.B.5 squarely on the battlefield, which means going behind them on their door to door campaign and telling voters to vote “Yes” instead of “No” which those opposed are advocating. The intent of course is to harass the harasser, to fight back! To be just as creepy, deceitful, manipulative, scandalous, thoughtless, egocentric, yet altruistic all the same, as those who chant, swarm, lobby, and intimidate their opposition to S.B.5 in favor of a spoils system which has enriched them.

The desire to fight back is strong from many who realize that we’ve been scammed for years by public sector unions. The greed of these public union organizations is grossly evident to those of us who dare to look, and many feel that they have been openly robbed, and want to lash out in the same fashion that one might wish to lash out at a thief who had stolen our money in a back alley.

I would say to those people to not wear yourselves out chasing after those harassers. Do not attempt to run into the hiding places that those thieves reside in. Do not play their game their way. Play the game the way we dictate on ground they cannot defend, ground based on the truth. Rip away their hiding places all together and shine light where it has not shown for generations, for the truth will do this to the con artists who are in hiding. It is they who have something to hide from. Playing the game the way they dictate is only an advantage to those who are guilty and must hide themselves behind illusions of good-will to protect the greed evident in their actions. Does anybody really believe Diana Frey acted alone, and is the only case of robbery going on in public sector unions?

The battle to save Senate Bill 5 is a battle for the heart of America. It is nothing less than that. Those opposed to Senate Bill 5 are clearly against the kind of America I want to live in which is one where taxes are lower, government is smaller, and localities have more control over their lives. Opponents believe that they can use a flash mob like behavior to inundate the voting population in mass, getting their message across. It is this behavior that has worked for them in the past, and has placed their wages about 30% above the tax payers who pay their salaries.

In 2008 the teachers of Lakota, the school district I pay my taxes in, threatened to go on strike which is one of the issues that Senate Bill 5 addresses. The threat of that strike is a direct result of the current crises of that district asking for more money from the tax payers. In fact, the same behavior has went on in Ohio for years and is why over 50% of all school districts in Southern Ohio are going to the tax payers for more money in November. In fact, Mt. Healthy, a district to the southwest of Lakota had their levy turned down on Tuesday and by Wednesday morning had made the announcement that they were going back to voters just 3 months later with another request. That’s ridiculous!!!! In Lakota the average teacher makes over 60K per year. Lakota is a district that resides within West Chester, Ohio which was number 33 out of the top 100 of CNN’s best places to live in the country.

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

The AVERAGE median family income in West Chester is $97,971 per year and is considered one of the most affluent districts in all of Ohio. That means in a two income household, which is most homes, the average rate of pay is 49K per year. Yet because of the union extortion which has taken advantage of the good will of the community, they have negotiated wages that far exceed the average in an affluent community! In fact, the average rate of pay for a teacher in Ohio is 55K per year! That makes teachers one of the highest paying professions, yet they are completely supported by the tax payer. One good teacher or one bad teacher they all get paid the same, and a district with a lot of employees will naturally find their payrolls bursting with excessive expectations which leave those districts one option, to go to the tax payers with higher taxes to pay for the union greed.

Many people are angry with the school boards for not regulating these costs, but as many school board members will tell you, and I know many of them all over the state, their hands are tied by state revised code, much of it created under pressure from a union lobby, and they can’t do much to control their costs. That’s why people who want to get control of these costs support Senate Bill 5. That’s also why people who want to continue to take advantage of the tax payer and the chaos of an out-of control system want to say NO to Senate Bill 5. Because they want to continue to plunder the public for everything they can, it’s that simple.

These same influences are what keep the debt ceiling issue from being solved on a federal level. There are just too many hands taking too much out of the cookie jar. The public has to make too many cookies to feed everyone, and that’s not fair to the people making the cookies.

The decision to keep Senate Bill 5 is a decision to do the right thing. It will be a personal choice made by common people. Not a bunch of thugs running around in flash mobs holding up signs to manipulate a lazy public, who spend most of their time watching Dancing with the Stars. The decision to save Ohio from financial ruin will fall on those who are intelligent enough to see where we are, and have the guts in the privacy of the voting booth to do the right thing.

I believe there are 2 to 3 million people in Ohio who are able to vote that understand the problem. And they will all have to show up and vote on Election Day, because those who benefit from the chaos of public sector unions number in the millions, and they won’t vote against themselves. They don’t have the courage for that. The YES vote can see through the tactics, the mob behavior of the unions, the mailings, the “feel good” commercials to the truth. Many of those public sector unions are just after our money and are no different from a Vegas casino. They advertise themselves very similar to a casino, with bright lights and feel good slogans such as “save the middle class,” yet their true intentions are to get you intoxicated so they can convince you to give them all your money.

Those of us who will vote YES, and I will be one of them, know that S.B.5 is the needed measure to save our state and country. Those who vote NO will be exclusively responsible for the chaos that follows, because the problems of the day will not go away.

When the school levies fail this fall all over Ohio, those schools will still need money to fulfill the financial obligations of their contracts to those unions. And the only way they can make payroll is to raise taxes on families who are already paying too much. And those tax requests will come every two years for the rest of your lives if you don’t put a stop to it right now. School boards must be given the ability to keep their districts within the budget the community sets for itself. Those budgets cannot be left to the control of union radicalism, because the end result is uncontrollable budgets which are what is happening everywhere.

Foreclosures on homes, on people’s dreams, are happening all over Ohio. People do not have the expendable income to have their taxes increased, so further increases in taxes are not an option. So we are on the precipice right now of a serious financial collapse. Senate Bill 5 is the only way out of this problem. It’s the only solution to a devastating problem. It’s state law right now, but voters will have to vote YES to keep it. Anyone who does not vote to keep it will be responsible for the misery that will follow.

The best way to fight this battle is to reach out to those voters who are intelligent, and can see the problem. They won’t be reached with rhetoric. The public unions already have the other type on their side, those who are overly emotional and don’t understand basic finance. Instead, we have to provide those who have intelligence and a mind to see it with the proper information because the truth is on the side of Senate Bill 5. And we have to trust the truth, and that there are enough people left who can understand the problem and have the courage to act on it.

The alternative won’t be pleasant, but if you vote YES, at least you won’t be a party to the misery that follows. Saying YES to S.B.5 is the only responsible choice!

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

The American Ruling Class: Turning down a seat at the table

I received from Phil, a frequent visitor to this forum an article from The American Spectator by Angelo M. Codevilla written July 2010. I had not read that article but ironically it summed up nicely many of the issues that Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom is dedicated to, the identification of, dissemination of, and understanding of what is rotting the foundation of America. Whenever I receive evidence that independent minds have arrived at virtually the same conclusion I have in a fashion 100% separate from my personal experiences, validation of those similar conclusions is refreshing. You can read that article here. It is well worth the time of anyone who wants to understand what the problem is behind the picture below. The picture of the newspaper article is an editorial from a Michigan publication and articulates the growing frustration between the two classes of people who exists in American, the ruling class, and the country class, as identified by Codevilla in The American Spectator article.

American Spectator article: CLICK BELOW

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-class-and-the

Matt Clark, also from Michigan, like the articles above contemplates the bizarre behavior of Harry Reid, and Barack Obama from his radio program on WAAM. Two weeks ago I was on the air with Matt and he asked me to predict what would happen in the debt crises. I told him that Boehner would cave, even though I believed that Boehner had all the best intentions, he is now part of the ruling class, and he thinks in that fashion. Any other thinking is foreign to him. Listen to that broadcast here: Listen to Matt’s most recent broadcast by hitting play below:

I haven’t thought of naming these different class types by what Codevilla has. To my mind America doesn’t need social class structures. Such things get in the way of creativity, and have no place in society. The desire for human class qualifications is to me, an archaic desire of an infantile mind. Such desires are something that the human being is destined to outgrow, and America is the first step of that growth. The idea of self-government, even though it never quite got off the ground where even the founding fathers struggled with their own European roots. They knew how freedom should look on paper, but failed to implement it into their culture, and infantile minds craving power have occupied positions of power for two hundred years and created the classes illustrated above.

I have dedicated thousands and thousands of words completely free of charge, with no intention at profit for myself to exposing this class structure in America. I do write books, I have written a book called The Symposium of Justice which was dedicated to exposing how the system worked at a psychological level. You can see that book by clicking here:

I am currently working on another book that my editor is currently scrutinizing through called Tail of the Dragon. The early comments about that book is, WOW, there is a lot of political chaos in this story, hard-hitting stuff! My response is that the point of all the death, the billions of dollars of destruction, the violence, the love, and the adventure is to arrive at the scene inside the White House at the end of the book where the president gives a mighty speech. Early readers have stated that it reminds them of a shorter version of the John Galt speech from Atlas Shrugged, which I consider a high compliment, because that’s the point. Because my intention behind all this free content that I put out each day, and the intention behind my books, is to put a light on this ruling class, and once understood, for common American’s to take that power away from the ruling class by cutting the money which funds the whole enterprise.

The path which took me to this place is a long one. But what confirmed in me the final straw was an experience I had out in Hollywood, while working on a project with a production company. Up until that point I had assumed that politics was a separate thing from entertainment, but when I worked on the set of a development project for a rather high-profile actor, I learned that the same politics were at play in the film industry as in politics, and this is why Hollywood and politics are often holding hands, because both believe they are part of the ruling class. So to illustrate that story I’ll talk about my experience on the set of this project.

This actor is a good guy. I personally like him quite a bit, as I do the director. So I won’t mention them here by name. I’ve worked with entertainment types before so past reference isn’t necessary. What is important is that even in a simple thing like entertainment, politics is very important.

I was flown in to a job to be a stunt stand-in, so I had to be made-up to look just like the lead actor. The lead actor was producing this production so it was his money that paid for my expenses. He really wanted me specifically and he went out of his way to acquire my services. When I arrived on set, I was given my trailer and the producer had accidentally not ordered the correct amount of trailers for this production. So I was asked to share a trailer with the lead actress who wasn’t scheduled to arrive on set till after my make-up was complete. This producer was relieved when I shrugged my shoulders and stated, I’ll dress in the parking lot, it doesn’t make any difference to me. The director and the producer looked oddly at each other like I spoke from another planet. They assumed I’d be very upset.

The actor really wanted to meet me when he arrived on set and came to shake my hand. He assumed that I would take great privilege in shaking his hand. Now to those who know me, I make a point to treat everyone the same. I show no special honor to anybody. I would treat the President of the United States with the same attention as a street beggar. To me they are all Americans. And I like to be treated the same. It’s a sign of respect to me. So I shook his hand without a lot of worship. I simply said, “Hey, what’s going on?” He looked at me oddly, with a bit of obvious disappointment. About two hours later he brought his family to me between takes and asked me, “Hey, Rich, do you have your whips, can you show my kids some of your stuff?”

“Sure,” I grabbed my whips and demonstrated some single and double-handed routines and the kids loved it. One of them had a little hat and he held it out to me. I took it from him and put it on his head. His mother, who was a popular television actress, said with a smile, “I think he wants your autograph.”

I smiled at the kid and grabbed his hand. “How about a handshake.” I thought it was the right thing to do, since autographs seemed so presumptuous. I don’t feel comfortable giving them. I never enjoyed doing book signings with my book The Symposium of Justice, and I certainly didn’t think a child of two famous parents should want autographs. If anything, I would think his parents would appreciate downplaying such a thing, since they get bombed with requests every time they go out someplace. So by downplaying the incident I thought I was doing them a favor. The actress looked uncomfortable at me with a smile intended for television and gathered her kids up and left the set.

For the rest of the shoot I caught the actor looking at me oddly anytime he had a free moment. It made me feel like an animal in a zoo the way he was examining me. I blew it off, but the look reminded me of the many similar looks I had received over the years by politicians and company presidents who felt betrayed that they had invited me to the table and were hurt that I refused their invite by not participating in their hazing rituals. It was at the lunch break on the set where all the technical people sat at one table, the support actors sat at another, the stunt men sat at another, the agents at another, and the director, producer and the lead actor sat at the same table closest to the catering truck. Since it was those people who I knew the most out of everyone present I sat at their table. The director and producer were warm to me, but the actor who had been very talkative until I arrived suddenly claimed up. The director following his lead after a few moments stopped talking so openly. All the people at that table finished up their food quickly and left saying they needed to get ready for the next set-ups.

I was left at the table by myself, but the stunt coordinator who was sitting at a near-by table and had struck up several productive conversations with me came over and sat down. “Do I stink of something” I asked him mockingly smelling my armpits.

He laughed. “No man, you have to understand something out here, everything is politics. You are either in, or you’re out.”

“So I’m out?”

“No, you’re in, or they wouldn’t have called you. I think they aren’t sure what to do with your Midwest like behavior. Don’t worry about it, you’re cool. They’ll come around. Give them some time.”

That conversation confirmed what I had been thinking, and it was disappointing. I completed my tasks for that project and when it came time to break and wrap, the actor insisted on driving me back to my hotel to personally thank me for helping with the project.

As he drove me through several neighborhoods back to my hotel there was awkwardness between us. I realized that he did not want to drive me back, but was simply doing it because he had told the crew he planned to. He was simply fulfilling his role in Hollywood politics. He personally driving me back was supposed to be considered part of my payment, and to me it was expected by a friend, or potential friend. When I stepped out of his car I wished him luck on his next project. He said to me, “hey man, you have my email address. Feel free to contact me anytime.” As he drove away I felt relief of being out of that uncomfortable situation. I was happy to be a part of the project, but glad to be away from the politics that was very evident.

About 3 weeks later I wrote him curious to see if he’d respond. His email, which I had used dozens of times before bounced back. He had canceled his account.

It didn’t bother me; I was as uncomfortable as he was once we realized that we were functioning from completely different ideologies. For me, I can deal with people who think different from me, even if I don’t like it. But for people like him and his wife, they had looked for the signs, just like Codevilla spoke about, and I showed that I was not part of the ruling class and had no desire to learn how to be. They were disappointed in losing a potential friend because unless I was willing to join their class, they could not associate with me. When they realized that I wanted to stay on the outside, they stopped investing in our relationship. It’s that simple.

This process is what school board members encounter when they get voted in by the public. Congressional freshman also go through this process. It is very tempting to say yes, because in saying yes, financial security is almost guaranteed. Because it is the ruling class who has the power, and resources to give you, so when they invite you to the table, you accept it as an honor. But for me I see shackles at that table, and I’ve always turned away from it, much to the horror of those who invited me. To them it is a terrible insult to have their helping hand slapped away. They become angry at themselves for ever thinking that they were willing to put their reputations behind someone who doesn’t want to play the game, which is a mere commoner, a peasant destined to be ruled by the ruling class.

I could tell several dozen stories just like that one, and they all have in common the same pattern, an invite to the table of power, only for me to downplay the invite as worthless. Not to slap down the value of the invite, but to display my reluctance to accept power and the game that follows. For me the real value in life I can say I’ve felt on many occasions, and I feel sorry for those in the ruling class who grab so diligently that such concepts for which they are committed are a path of decline and they do not know it. It is why so many politicians are corrupt and so many in Hollywood develop destructive addictions, it is the power of politics that corrupts the mind, because the pursuit of a class of any kind is like trying to fit mankind into the cloths of their youth. The pants just don’t fit, mankind has outgrown such small-minded notions, they just don’t know how to articulate their beliefs. So the questions come out as they do in the newspaper article from Michigan, as a frustrated rant about the way the world should be and the way it really is.

This is the battle of our age, the reluctance of those who know better to join those who have bitten from the forbidden tree, the knowledge of good and evil, the pairs of opposites where politics ruins society from a lifetime of enchantment and understanding where the citizens do not need a ruling class, because they govern themselves. The politician uses duality to split the otherwise bright mind desiring freedom into bondage of opposites where the ruling class can conduct a psychological war to launch themselves as the peacemakers, and power holders. It’s a game as old as time itself, and it is now outdated and worthless, for the philosophy of our time is not of Aristotle, Plato, or Socrates, but of Ayn Rand. Time does not lie, even if the politics of power and the ruling class that resides in that power do lie. America is at a point where we must go back to the beginning again, and start fresh with the knowledge we have now, and allow the European influence of peaking order and power grabs to leave our society under the guidance of modern philosophy which is specifically American.

We must do this without pause, without the guidance of history, because we are writing that history right now. The home of the brave and land of the free is alive in the hearts of those who do not seek the security of the ruling class. That class, is the path to decline and rot and everything that is opposite of true freedom.

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

The Wisdom of Darryl Parks: What congress and the senate don’t want you to know

It was nice to see that Gabbie Gifford was able to make a vote on the house floor for the epic vote on raising the debt ceiling, but in the back of my mind there was something wrong with the timing and ceremony of the whole affair. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, because I don’t want to believe that Congressman Gifford would participate in such a thing, but it seemed to me that Gifford’s return to the house was designed to take the edge off all the fighting that had been going on in congress about whether or not to raise the debt ceiling, and whether or not there would be “revenue” involved.

Such a thought actually makes me feel bad, to question the honesty of congress. I’m sure in her case she has probably wanted to come back for a while. But it was her friends in the house who probably “encouraged” her to return for this big vote in order to show “unity” to the American people. The games of politics are nasty and costly, but I think the treachery and manipulation that these people are capable of has been dramatically underestimated, and based on what I know now about their activities, I would not put it passed congress to attempt to use Gabby Gifford to help make the American people forget about how ugly business in government truly is. When I think such things I wonder if I’m the only one who sees it, that is until I hear Darryl Parks talk on 700 WLW every Saturday morning from 9 AM to 11. While all this government ugliness was unfolding over the weekend I was on my way to The Annie Oakley Festival and had the opportunity to listen to Darryl on my hour and a half trip to Darke County,Ohio. Darryl Parks thinks much the way I do about most things, so it was refreshing to hear him speak with incredible clarity about our nation’s problems as the summer sun began to heat up the day of that momentous broadcast. I think this particular broadcast was so good, and so historic that it deserved over an hour of transition over to podcast for the convenience of those who haven’t heard it, or to be listened to again for those who did hear it and want to listen again. So do yourself a favor and hit PLAY on the link below. Grab a snack and sit back and listen with the clarity of hindsight, now that the crisis has been averted for the moment, and marvel at the wisdom of Darryl Parks.

Politicians have been a joke for a number of years and culturally we have dismissed them as irrelevant aspects of our lives. Seldom if ever whether it be a Looney Toons cartoon from the 30’s and 40’s, or a film, television show, or novel, is a politician portrayed in a trustworthy manner. It is universally accepted that as a group, politicians are deceitful, life-sucking aspects of our society who have virtually no benefit to our culture. They make rules that we all have to live by, and they make decisions that cost us money. Yet we listen to the same speeches every election cycle and hope that somehow things will be different with the next politician. Then we act surprised when we find out that politicians have enriched themselves greatly while working in public office. This is the gist of what Darryl was talking about, how can a politician like Mitch McConnell get rich as a politician? Or how does Barack Obama becomes a millionaire between the years of 2004 to 2008 while he was just another senator? The answer is they are making deals, and benefiting from insider trading, many of the conditions they create legislation to help along, a practice that should be illegal, but isn’t because it is the law makers committing the crime who would have to create the law.

Many politicians I believe start their public careers with good intentions, where they really want to help. But the money and power available to them is just too lucrative and they quickly turn to corruption for that age-old pursuit of financial security. There are always exceptions of course, but as a general rule in a governmental body that depends on majority rule, if a majority is corrupt, then the body itself is also corrupt, and that is the case with our general government.

I listened carefully to the complaints of politicians on both sides of the political spectrum as the debt ceiling issue came to a close. They are grossly out of touch insisting on even more money to support a political system that is obviously full of thieves. Those thieves don’t consider themselves looters of course, because they are the law. They see themselves as citizens who deserve the highest respect for their service to their country, but by their actions they are simple thieves, seeking for themselves plunder at the expense of the people they represent no different from a pirate.

You can learn a lot by watching people under duress, and America learned a lot about its politicians as the debt crises unfolded. The demand for more “revenue,” a term used to disguise the real meaning which is “taxes,” from the voting population as a way to manipulate the situation to their advantage from a public guilty of trusting them, rang out from many politicians like drug addicts crying for another hit of “speed.”

The level of corruption and financial addiction has shocked even me, a long time big government skeptic. I did not know it was this bad, I simply suspected as much. But the proof is there for all of us to see. We have a big problem in America. We have to rethink the whole political process and the kind of people we want to fill those seats.

We know the enormity of the problem because the vote that just occurred over the debt ceiling increase amounts to nothing. It solves no problems, it still allows government to spend more than it takes in, and the solution of these parasites is just to send more money to them to cover the gaps. Yet there is praise among the thieves and much back slapping going on for all those law makers are proud of themselves and they cheered in unison when Gabby Gifford came to the chamber and changed the story in the media from a “combative congress finally passes a vote,” to “Congressman Gifford cast her first vote since her tragic accident.” And the nation looked at the image of Mrs. Gifford waving her hand to the crowd, collectively all the fights of the last week dropped away from the memory of voters in favor of the more pleasant story of Gabby Gifford’s amazing recovery.

While all this was going on the thieves took a deep breath of relief as the media attention focused on the recovering congressman and allowed them to scurry away to the cracks they all hide in to figure out some way to spin the situation to their advantage, and attack those darn “tea baggers,” “talk radio hosts,” and “TV personalities” who are telling the public all about the scam they have been employing for decades.

Yet the whole structure is supported by the “revenue” that Americans give those thieves, so we are guilty of subsidizing criminal activity knowingly. After this episode and the information available to the American public if they allow it to continue, they are guilty of a real crime, not one created by corrupt law making politicians, but one of the moral code of the human race, where we are supposed to treat each other fairly, and with honesty and not with the heart of a predator in favor of a life of respect and valor. Because if that’s the case, then all those corrupt politicians are accurate representatives of the demons which reside inside each and every voter, which makes us all guilty in the eyes of the universe.

Thank goodness people like Darryl Parks gets it…………what’s wrong with everyone else?

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

Memories, Friends, and 8 X 10’s: The Annie Oakley Western Showcase!

The yearly meetings at the Fairlawn Steak House in Greenville, Ohio are becoming something of an American tradition, where a nearly extinct breed of human being, who do things because it puts a smile on the faces of children without ever considering money as a primary concern, gather. The Fairlawn looms directly across from the Darke County Fairgrounds and every year during the last weekend of July the City of Greenville celebrates the life of Annie Oakley with a tribute to the western arts that made her an American treasure, and most of the western performers in the nation make the pilgrimage to Greenville each year to run their act, compete against each other, and gather at the Fairlawn at the end of the day for beer, steak, and tales of the years adventures. See a montage of the weekend’s events here:

The air conditioning in the Fairlawn works nicely in the little side room where this group of western arts performers gathers late into the steamy night. Outside the setting sun fills the big sky in this part of the country in a spectacular way. The orange neon lights that advertise the steak house to passers-by on Sweitzer St was a welcome sight to all of us who spent the day cracking whips, throwing knives, spinning guns, throwing ropes, singing, performing magic and answering questions to a curious crowd. As we stagger up the path to the restaurant and the cool air inside greets us, nostalgia is the overwhelming emotion. This year the bar’s television had on a Reds game, just like last year only this time as my wife and I ordered a beer, there was a news flash that came up over the bartender’s head to announce that congress and the senate is close to a debt ceiling deal.

“Thieves,” an old man uttered over his beer looking from the TV to my wife then to the sweat soaked Australian outback hat on my head that has seen the world and looks like it. “They’re all a bunch of crooks and thieves, every damn one of them.”

“You’re right,” I said to him. I noticed that old man was looking at my whip holster on my belt and he was curious. Then behind me came the rest of our clan, all western performers openly wearing knives, whips, and guns as they wearily went to their seats in the party room where our reservations placed us away from the rest of the crowd in the main dining room.

The old man watched them approvingly. Then looked back at me, “You all from across the street?”

“Yeah,” I replied as my wife smiled a bit at the man. My wife likes older people because they no longer feel the need to engage in personal politics, and they have a life-time of wisdom to pass on to a generation who throws them away like trash. She likes older people for all the same reasons that I like my western art friends. There is truth in their eyes and wisdom in their hands. And I could see the wisdom in the hands of the old man as he nursed his beer and looked over the rim at an image of President Obama talking about how people need to work together to solve this national crises. “Damn thief,” he uttered again his eyes on the screen.

And he’s right. Many people have asked me how I can speak out on the tax topics the way I have, and go on TV speaking out so openly about how broken our political system is, my roots in those statements come from the type of friends I have, the people with me at the Fairlawn Steak House, who live life with honesty and perform an art form rooted in valor and goodness.

As the night wore on, there were stories from the old days, back when old Hollywood stunt men and Las Vegas performers were the guiding lights for all of us young guys, a torch that has been handed to us to preserve. But that was a different age. Divorces, financial hardships, and entertainment politics have put western arts on the downside of American priorities and what used to be many thousands of western art performers is down to a mere handful, many of them at Annie Oakley and eating steak at the Fairlawn. We talked about the many personalities who have come and gone over the years, some still working in western arts, some giving it up because of financial necessity, but many of us sitting there at the end of a day of performing have the feeling that we are the end of a breed. A kid whose mom drove him up from Alabama named Luke and was just 16 was a bright spot to the rest of us who are all 40 and older. Having young people wanting to get involved was refreshing.

The reason these western artists gather at The Annie Oakley Festival, and not Las Vegas or some other place like it has in the past is because of my good friend, Gery Deer who runs a bullwhip training facility in Jamestown,Ohio. It is because of Gery, who is a western arts supplier and occasionally provides material for the film industry, has worked with me for over a decade on independent features, he has a band who performs folk music all over the Midwest by tour bus, and he has the only indoor studio in America dedicated to the training of bullwhip artists. So as the western has declined in Hollywood, and the need for Vegas shows with a western theme declined as well, it is Gery’s studio in Jamestown that has kept that tradition alive in America, because he is the only guy around who has a studio designed to preserving that tradition, and that includes Hollywood.

Most of the top Western Performers in the country have passed through the Annie Oakley Western Showcase at some point in the last 9 years since the event was first implemented as a supplement to the big event out in Las Vegas. But over time, the Vegas event finally folded when the great stuntman Alex Green, who was a big part of organizing that event, passed away. That left only The Annie Oakley Western Showcase and Gery Deer to keep the torch lit.

Many of the most dependable participants travel the country in their motor homes and live like gypsies much of the time. Robert Dante, a long time bull whip performer and World Record holder fits this lifestyle. His van was parked outside of the performance area and in between acts he simply goes back to his van to catch up on sleep. Leading up to Annie Oakley he traveled from Minnesota to South Carolina performing shows then “stopping by” Ohio to spend time with us, as he usually does. When I asked him about his lifestyle, if he got tired of always being unsettled waking up in different cites all the time and living out of a van he said, “Variety is the spice of life.” He said it like a seasoned Shakespearian actor knowing full well that he was part of a dying breed and he wasn’t about to apologize for if.

Kirk and Malodee Bass are also long time friends of my wife and I. Kirk started throwing knives the same weekend I did at an Annie Oakley event about 7 years ago. He stuck with it where I didn’t and he’s now one of the best in the country and has his own show called Bass Blades. They are old theater veterans from the great outdoor production called Blue Jacket which went out of business almost a decade ago after its critically acclaimed performances that featured live gunfire during the show couldn’t support itself financially. They are very dedicated parents who are home schooling their kids which impresses me greatly. They assembled the curriculum for their children’s education based on a friend of theirs who has a master’s degree in education. Their kids are lucky to have such interesting, and dedicated parents who happen to spend their spare time throwing knives at each other.

Richard and Donna Best were there as usual. Richard was hired by the Annie Oakley Committee to be the official Buffalo Bill for the week since he looks so much like Buffalo Bill. Richard and Donna are old timers in the Western Arts and have performed everywhere, particularly in Vegas. Their act is an archeologists dream for it is an authentic recreation to the type of entertainment that thrilled audiences in the 40’s and 50’s. They are wonderful people and occasionally their grandchildren have come to Annie Oakley with them and participate in rope tricks and whip work. You can’t help but look at those young children and think how lucky they are to have grandparents who travel the county, where grandpa makes a living cutting targets out of the mouth of grandma. Such figures in a child’s life are paramount to positive adult development.

In the outside world, away from the smiling faces, the cotton candy, the hot dogs, popcorn, corn dogs, snow cones and other carnival food, the world looks down its nose at this group of aging cowboys. For the world has become more progressive. The art of American tradition is something the political establishment has frowned down on.

After my trip to the Fairlawn last year it was Chris Camp who put the idea in my head about performing The Whip Trick to Save America (see that video by clicking here). Chris is such a fantastic whip artist that he travels the country full-time and stays booked, which is why he couldn’t make it this year, because he was simply too busy. The trick I did in that video is one that he performs in his live show, and he told me how to do it, and I put my own spin on it. It was conceived in the dining room of the Fairlawn using cups and salad plates. After I did that video and released it to the public it got the attention of The Cincinnati Enquirer and I used the metaphor from that video to explain why I was against higher taxes, because like the old man said to me at the bar, “they are all thieves.” Why would we give a thief more money? It’s easy for us to see who the thieves are at the Fairlawn in the late hours of the night as the sweat from a whole day are caked to our bodies in need of a shower, where the beer tastes good because we earned it, and even a simple salad before a steak dinner tastes like exquisite cuisine, because freedom is openly celebrated at Greenville, Ohio and everyone can feel it. And freedom is best celebrated in the art of freedom, and that is the western arts of my friends.

As society has moved away from freedom and those celebrations, progressives have looked down their noses at the western arts in an attempt to rewrite history with a focus on the civil rights movement of the 60’s where progressive policies really began gain acceptance. Celebrating the arts of westward expansion was not what progressive politics desired; they simply want to move beyond those memories to more recent times.

But I don’t. One of those life altering decisions happened for me shortly after The Enquirer did a feature on my Whip Trick to Save America where the organized elements of the unions and other progressive groups came after me calling me a “hick,” “hillbilly,” “kook” and other derogatory terms simply because I wore a cowboy hat and used bullwhips to help explain the need to cut taxes on an over-taxed society. (CLICK HERE TO READ ALL ABOUT IT) The personal attacks infuriated me to the level that convinced me to create this website, Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom. The personal attacks persuaded me that traditional arts and lifestyles needed a voice that I was in a unique position to provide, because of my background in western arts, so I started this site as a result.

The art of a culture reflects the culture itself. This is how anthropologist and archeologist come to understand ancient cultures. But using the same measurement with our present culture we can see easily the state of our country in our art. That is why the old men sit at a bar and utter “thieves” to the TV over their beer glass because their values were built by the type of arts my friends perform on a regular basis. But the young people who were watching the Reds game, noticeably turned away from the TV when the President came on, and were indifferent to what was being said. They were also the type who looked oddly when my friends arrived at the restaurant and eyed mysteriously at how they were dressed, because those young people have been taught to reject tradition, so traditional art is something to ridicule.

But in the grandstands all through the day, the crowd that gathered young and old enjoyed themselves thoroughly as the politics of the age dropped away at the gates, and visitors were able to forget themselves on a stroll back through a more innocent time, where cowboys weren’t afraid to be men, women were proud to be women and a young lady named Annie Oakley set the imaginations of American’s everywhere with the values of the greatest nation on Earth by her trick shooting in the Buffalo Bill Wild West show. A century later the same type of performers touched that same spirit in all who witnessed this unique event through smiles and bright eyes regardless of age, for the jaded judgment of the age was suspended as the crack of whips and the fire from guns ran out often across the Darke County Fairgrounds to a public hungry for substance in their art.

For my wife and I that substance came with our dinner and the friends we shared it with as the night encroached the evening and reality returned to those western artists who faced the loneliness of an art form which transcends the greed of money, or the power of politics but is simply about memories, friends, and 8X10’s.

Rich Hoffman

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

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