Tag: Teachers Unions

Senate Bill 5 and Francis Fox Piven: Rise of the Entitlement Culture in American History

As I’m writing this article, Senate Bill 5 is making its way through the legislature of Ohio. Listen to Doc Thompson speak to Ray Warrick of the Mason Tea Party from Warren County talk about the courageous bill proposed by Senator Shannon Jones.

Senate Bill 5 will start the process of taking the shackles off the State of Ohio that confine it by collective bargaining. The rhetoric provided by the sector of the population that is “addicted” to collective bargaining which has grown in influence since 1983, so long that many of those people don’t know any other form of life, is sickening. So sickening it makes me question completely the validity of public education, because these people didn’t learn the basics of American life. Their basic premise seems to be that if you can get a job, have a union protect that job for your life-time, then they are willing to sacrifice a life-time of freedom for some mundane “average” life. I personally find their view of the world repulsive and un-American. What I see in those crowded halls of protest at the State House is a group of people protecting their right to be “average.”

It’s no question that “average” people are attracted to collective bargaining agreements negotiated by unions. I made decisions in my own life to avoid such confinements. I’ve spoke often about unions being too similar to “tribal councils” and that isn’t something that’s attractive to me at all. I’m the type of person that would never listen to some “old man” who is the “chief” of a community like Native American nomads had, or exists in many countries to this day, particularly in Africa. I’m also the type of person that would never have found peace in Europe, even to this modern day, because they have kings, and queens, nobility and all that nonsense that I have no value for.

America was founded by people that wanted to be free of that kind of thing, and the Constitution reflected their view of what America should be based on the ideas at the end of the 1700’s. The Constitution worked and America quickly became a place of prosperity. So more moderate Europeans came to America to get on the good thing that was happening here, but they brought with them a certain love for Europe, and the new ideas bouncing around involving Marxism. So around the turn of the 20th century progressivism, rooted in a European love for status symbols and ruling classes penetrated the Republican Party through Teddy Roosevelt wanting revenge on President Taft, which split the party, and through Woodrow Wilson of the democrats. It was in this progressivism that many of our ills in American Government started.

Old college professor hippies such as Francis Pivan, who has spent her entire life perpetuating progressivism is upset at the countries sudden desire to turn back to the Constitution, now that we know we’ve been scammed by people like her for decades.

Pivan is an old lady but she was around in the early days of all this change and she’s always been active in politics. And she opened herself to these name calling tirades when she said. “The strange stories that Glenn Beck creates with his chalkboard gain traction with Americans, who are made anxious by the large changes that have overtaken the United States, including the election of a black president and the increasing racial diversity of the population, deindustrialization and the decline of American power abroad, as well as cultural changes in sexual and family norms.”

Well, of course Americans are upset. Americans, because they are self-reliant or at least have a desire to be, don’t work well in groups. Collective behavior is however an innate instinct and public education goes a long way to developing that behavior, and progressivism has used public education and higher education, through professors like Pivan to apply their philosophy using the peer pressure of group acceptance. America has watched the experiments of these mad progressive social scientists and we did it with an open mind. We don’t like the Frankenstein monster they’ve created. We don’t like the breakdown of sexual and family structure, the deindustrialization and decline of American power abroad because it makes us less safe at home. We were used by the hippie movement to accomplish worse than the ravages of war right under our very noses while we watched with open eyes, but minds that refused to register the audacious lack of respect of progressives for what America is. You hear how proud she is of those accomplishments in her quote. This is a woman that associates with Bill and Hillery Clinton. Bill being the same man that had “sexual relations,” lied to a grand jury, and told us to our face that he wasn’t doing that. These are scam artists that have taken advantage of America’s good nature and preservation of freedom.

Now why are so many teachers subscribers to progressivism? Is it a conspiracy? No. It is a strategy that was implemented from the early days. Teachers need college to get their certificates and people attracted to progressivism became professors in college, so recruitment and training is that simple. Not all of them, but in general, that’s how it happens. These elitist of progressive values have a disconnect between the world in academia and the real world the rest of us live in. I’ve worked with and met many people that have gone through public education and college without become a bunch of brainless hippies. But the weak ones, the people who aren’t firm in their beliefs, or come from families that have strong moral foundations, they are seduced by people like Pivan.

Union leaders are made up of the same kind of stuff as Pivan. Many of them learned from her strategies and other left-winged pundits, and people attracted to unions tend to be happy to trade their free-will for financial security. For these people government officials are our “leaders,” because they see themselves as sheep in need of a shepherd.

So when Pivan rationalizes Glenn Beck and people like him, that have for a long time bounced around in society scratching their heads and wondering why everything is so screwed up, and says they are just paranoid, dumb people that are racist, homophobes, it makes a guy like me very, very angry, because I’ve always been one of those guys that questioned the validity of everything told to me, even religious ideology. I have lived my whole life avoiding groups, pack mentality, even jobs that were very high paying because they would limit my freedom. I recognize no person on this planet as my leader. Only myself.

That’s why it disgusts me to see groups like Progress Ohio say the same type of demeaning terms as Pivan is using to demean everyone questioning her philosophy. See, here’s the thing, people attracted to herd mentality are the ones not very intelligent. And America as independent loving people have allowed the radical left to capture the intellectual ground. But in reality, they are a simple minded group. That’s why they like to break things down to little terms that are easy to understand, like “right winged bloggers,” “cutting taxes for the rich,” “taking rights away from workers,” and that kind of elementary rhetoric. The reason is to get people moving in the direction they desire.

Ross Perot was using charts and boards on TV to show people the same kinds of things that Glenn Beck is using now. Beck isn’t the first to do it. But Beck is a guy able to think outside the box, and he’s not alone. There are millions out there that can too, but Beck has been given the opportunity to have a TV show, write books and talk on the radio. And he is on a personal crusade that exempts him from corruption. He’s had his fall, and he’s rebuilding himself. Put those things together and you have Glenn Beck, and what a great gift. He’s using his ability to see, and his good fortune to help make things better.

But when I watch Glenn Beck I’m not watching my leader. Quite the opposite. I usually am thankful that he’s saying things I’ve always wanted to say, but didn’t have a platform to speak from, because people like Pivan, left-winged radicals, sit in positions of power within the entertainment industry and keep voices like mine on the side-line and on the radical fringe because they control the radical fringe. They control the definition of what is radical because they control the media devices. Again, that’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s been a long slowly growing tendency that filtered through our education institutions and has brought us to the place we’re at today. Americans are looking around and we don’t like the poor qualities of our youth. We don’t like our complacent government. We don’t care if the president is black or yellow or blue. We don’t look at the president as our leader! And for the record, I would have voted for Alan Keys for president in less than a second, but nobody supported him when he wanted to run, because he was a conservative, not a progressive.

The things old lady Frances says are tired old commands that a cowboy might yell out at a cow that migrates away from the herd. Progress Ohio, the OEA, NEA, SEIU and thousands of other organizations want to be our shepherds, and I want them off public funding of any kind. This is America, and they have a right to speak their mind. But they don’t have a right to ANY public money funded to continue their growth. Any tax money that gets funneled directly or indirectly to progressive groups is completely unacceptable.

Sorry Frances, but getting rid of Glenn Beck won’t stop this onslaught, because he’s not the leader. There’s a reason the Tea Party doesn’t have a leader. It’s because American’s despise the term. We love individuals.

Don’t believe me. Go watch a hundred Hollywood films and study the lead characters. How many of those lead characters were “strong” individualists. Then study how many of those characters promoted “teamwork” in their rolls. You won’t find many. American’s vote at the box office and those results say a lot about what the nature of our country is. And it’s not what Frances and her gang of progressives wants America to be. If they can’t handle that fact, they need to go to a country where herd mentality is still popular.

Progressives wish very much for America to go back to sleep, because while we slept, and trusted, they manipulated our world into the mess we are living in now. The proud changes that Frances mentioned in her quote were implemented, but we won’t be fooled twice, and we’re not going back to sleep. We’re going to fix things back to how we want them, and once completed, we’ll stand guard more skeptically and be mindful of the cancer that is progressivism.

Who are these people that I’m talking about? Is it just people like me, Doc Thompson, Ray Warrick, Glenn Beck or anybody else? No. It’s people like the comment below. This comment came to me from a woman that only knows me from these epic pages. And her comment speaks volumes of who exactly those Americans are that have now been awakened and will not sleep so soundly again. She was commenting on an article I did about John Meyer.

There are people in my life that move me. I mean…REALLY move me. They are few. My father, who gave me the tools to navigate through life..now and then as he was right when he said what I believe would waiver with experience. So right. My husband for letting me move in the direction that drives my heart and soul no matter what. Glenn Beck. Say what you may…he’s my people. He’s been saying what I’ve felt for years. Yes..I cry. All the time. And Rich, who has given strength and voice to those of us out there that share his passion and need for serious change on so many venues. We need you and those that stand by you in the fight for the simple morale and values we were taught to respect. I never thought in a million years I would be here. Last but not least…to John. Kudos to you for just handing it to them. I’m honored that you live in my county and Country. God Bless. You ARE a Warrior! Today..I am blessed.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

The Sexy Senate Seduction of S.B.5: An introduction to collective bargaining reform in Ohio

What’s better than sex?  I’m talking about the kind of sex that people fantasize about in their deepest darkest secrets. It’s Senate Bill 5 otherwise known as SB5

Oh yes, SB5 is one of the most exotic, sexy pieces of legislation ever to grace paper and to come from the lips of a State Senator Shannon Jones. The dialogue and beauty of the text is enough to turn the coldest heart into a lavish, promiscuous, insidious romantic.

So what is this salacious document that I’m speaking so highly of? It’s the first, most aggressive legislation since the infamous 1983 act in favor of collective bargaining implementation, to be enacted in an attempt to stop the bleeding that public employees represented by unions are imposing on tax payers. For more than 27 years this law has remained unchanged and has strangled the State of Ohio in being able to create a positive business atmosphere that will attract business and bring jobs to Ohio. The organizations that stand behind the collective bargaining law of 1983 have little understanding of business and have over those 27 years helped create a complex puzzle that is straining the states pension system and a host of other labor related issues.

This bill is proposed by Senator Shannon Jones of Clearcreek Twp of the 7th District has the direct support of Governor Kasich and will take a major step in the direction of solving that puzzle by taking off the shackles that are draining the tax revenue flowing to the state from the caretakers of Ohio, the tax payers.

Listen to this guy. He’s why we need SB5. It’s people like him that go to those collective bargining rallies.

Among the many items in the bill the primary reforms are:

• Eliminates collective bargaining for state employees and employees of higher education institutions
• Existing collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) covering those employees expire according to their terms
• Eliminates salary schedules and step increases and replaces them with a merit pay system
• Eliminates continuing contracts for teachers after the bill’s effective date
• Eliminates teacher leave policies in statute and requires local school boards to determine leave time
• Eliminates seniority as a sole criterion for Reductions In Force (RIFs)
• Removes healthcare from bargaining and instead permits school boards to govern healthcare benefit plans for employees
• Requires employees to pay at least 20% of their healthcare costs
• Allows public employers to hire permanent replacement workers during a strike
• Limits bargaining for local government employees (including school districts) to issues of wages, hours and terms and conditions of employment
• Eliminates binding arbitration for police and fire
• Abolishes the School Employee Healthcare Board
• Prohibits school districts from picking up any portion of the employee’s contribution to the pension system
• Allows a public employer in “fiscal emergency” to serve notice to terminate, modify or negotiate a CBA
While much of this bill will focus on the state, it will immediately bring transparency to localities. No longer will local school boards be able to blame the state for policies created and imposed on the districts. Step increases by teachers will now be considered raises, as they should be and school boards will be given much more independence on solving their own problems. Immediately SB5 will make changes to teacher’s contracts and benefits:
• S.B.5 eliminates new continuing, contracts after the bill’s effective date.
• The bill eliminates teacher leave polices from statute and instead requires local boards of education to establish general leave policies for employees who are not covered by a CBA.
• The bill abolishes the School Employee Health Care board and instead permits boards of education to govern health care benefits for employees.

For all these reasons and more SB5 is a bold bill that has the kind of power to seduce business back to Ohio and once again make attractive enterprise not only in bringing jobs back to the state, but to reduce the impact of the syndicate style unions that feed directly off tax payer funds, particularly in education, and allows the money to go where it’s needed. Such a step has been needed for many years but lacked legislators and a governor with the kind of courage needed to implement it.

But like any great romance, there is always a jealous lover, the overly dependent jealous spouse that lives like a leech off the life it professes to love. Below is the press release from just such a jealous, over imposing leech of the state, the OEA. They quickly seek support from their members to attempt to strong arm the bold legislative movement occurring in Columbus. Read for yourself their words and bullet points below.

OHIO EDUCATION ASSOCIATION OPPOSES SENATE BILL FIVE

For Immediate Release
Contact: Michele Prater
614-227-3071; cell 614-378-0469
Ohio Education Association opposes Senate Bill Five
Legislation will weaken public service to Ohio’s children
February 9, 2011
(Columbus) – The Ohio Education Association (OEA) is gravely concerned that the Ohio Senate is not making Ohio’s children a priority. In a tough economy and facing a major budget deficit, Ohio must focus on the essentials, and nothing is more essential than giving our children a quality education that prepares them for good jobs.
Sen. Shannon Jones’ legislation, Senate Bill 5 (SB 5), proposes to drastically curtail collective bargaining rights, ban public employee strikes, end collectively bargained salary schedules for public employees. SB 5 targets all state workers and all Ohio higher education employees, including OEA members at Columbus State, Youngstown State and other public colleges and community colleges, as well as OEA’s State Council of Professional Educators (SCOPE) bargaining unit whose members educate incarcerated adults and youths.
OEA believes collective bargaining helps educators pursue the classroom conditions, tools and support that contribute to the kind of high quality 21st century education essential to preparing students for jobs and successful careers.
Collective bargaining is a problem solving tool that shapes working conditions and improves learning conditions. Since 1983, Ohio’s collective bargaining law has created a framework that has made strikes rare and short in duration. OEA affiliates negotiate effectively to avoid strikes and disruption for student learning.
Senate Bill 5 serves to weaken Ohio’s entire middle class. Rather than creating jobs in Ohio, this legislation will hurt local communities stifling job growth.

OEA’s asks you to remember that:
• Collective bargaining allows educators a voice in improving opportunities for Ohio’s students, better classroom resources and improved teaching and learning conditions
• Teachers know best what’s needed to improve student learning , and collective bargaining gives them the opportunity to focus on teaching rather than time consuming employment issues
• Educators, like all public employees, are an integral part of the fabric of Ohio’s communities. Senate Bill 5 weakens Ohio. Rather than creating jobs, this legislation will hurt local communities, reversing Ohio’s positive economic outlook
• Ohio’s collective bargaining law has created a framework for problem-solving that has made strikes rare. OEA affiliates negotiate effectively to avoid disruption for student learning
• In a tough economy, with Ohio facing a major budget deficit, we must focus on the essentials. Nothing is more essential than giving our children a quality education that prepares them for good jobs.

I have heard in the course of my involvement in education reform virtually every one of those bullet points provided above. They use words like “weaken” and “children” and “hurt” as an attempt to stir up the thoughtless escapades of their followers who will repeat those same lines to the papers and other news organizations. However, the architects of those words have zero experience in creating jobs and creating prosperity. All they have experience in is feeding off society and convincing them that their services are so central to the jobs they are employed by that their reality can’t see the truth. But they have to believe it before they can convince taxpayers how important they are. What they don’t understand is that the regulations they have brought to the State of Ohio have only increased in the last 27 years and the monster they’ve created shows no sign of getting smaller. Under the path of collective bargaining, that monster will require more and more tax money until the system will collapse under the weight of their impositions.

There isn’t a successful formula for collective bargaining in the entire world that has sustained itself over time. The attempts tried have everywhere proved dismal failures, and under SB5 our state government has taken the first bold step to get the state healthy again. The rhetoric of the shallow rooted, selfish protectionists of the status quo will continue to rant the statements similar to the OEA Press Release. But none of them have a real plan. They are scrambling instead to find a way to keep the ponzi schemes going just a little longer because the tragedy for them is that they built their whole lives around those ponzi schemes, and it’s evident now that they won’t get out of the scheme what they invested.

For the rest of us, that chose to work outside that insidious system, and work for ourselves, or companies not tied to collective bargaining, our investment in long term longevity over short term gain proved the wise path. And it is our strategy that must be passed on to the rest of the state for the state’s health and future fortune.

Like all good love-making, sex is best when not rooted in selfish aims, but the mutual benefit of both partners. And the good lover knows what their partner needs even if the partner is obscure to the fact. So the sex is best when not done for the benefit of the giver, but for the receiver.

And that’s why this bill is so sexy. It’s what’s needed even when all parties aren’t aware that they need it. When the bill SB5 is thrust forward into the canvas of Ohio History much to the dismay of the intended object, the real impact will be felt only when selfishness flees the proceedings and both parties work together for mutual bliss.

They’ll thank you later………………..

But as many of you reading this know, sex is not good when third parties are involved and act as agents and matchmakers. That has been the role of collective bargaining in the State of Ohio. And that’s why we need to bypass the matchmakers and head straight for the bed.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

An Act Suitable for Las Vegas: The Public Education Money Scam

On February 8, 2011 Stacy Schuler will resign from the Mason School District at the 7 pm school board meeting. Kevin Bright has made the announcement that he will recommend Stacy be fired, and the board will of course act on that request.  And to make matters easier on herself, Stacy is resigning, much the way George Coates did.  George so far has stayed under the radar even though his actions may be technically much worse. 

Now, it would seem that the firing of Stacy Schuler should be a forgone conclusion. It shouldn’t even be a question.  George Coates the assistant principal felt bold enough to take cell phones from students, apparently in search of nude pictures of the student body from text messages sent to boy friends and girl friends known as sexting. And we know that the assistant principal was sending Stacy nude pictures of himself, at a minimum. These employees felt so untouchable that they abused their positions audaciously. The union provides an unprecedented level of job security, and that leads all too often to various degrees of abuse.

So the announcement of firing Stacy Schuler sounds all too similar to me. The proceedings from superintendent to school board are extremely reminiscent of how levies are introduced to a ballot issue, or how busing and other services are reduced. The formal proceedings are only formalities designed to make the public feel like they are a part of the process, when in fact the real decisions have already been made.

And that’s what’s wrong with education broken down into its most simplified form, and why many people are looking to School Choice as an option to this kind of tyrannical monopoly. It’s the kind of issue I’ve spent thousands of words discussing here in a hope that this chronicle can provide others questioning public education, some sense of support, and a blueprint to defeat their own school levies in other districts.

The things I’ve brought up for years are not only coming out of my mind however. Traditionally the union strong-arm methods have successfully isolated dissent to a defensive position and used the press to radicalize those dissidents in the eyes of the public. Meanwhile those same political thugs capture the high ground of “defending the children,” and use that platform to negotiate lucrative contracts from the public. Doc Thompson had on a guest from the Kato Institute that validates with a professional opinion what many of us in the trenches are feeling. It’s a great interview so enjoy it.

This whole public education game works until someone like Stacy or Ryan Fahrenkemp from Lakota get busted doing something despicable and are caught abusing their positions under union protection. Because the existence of the union is so formidable, it prevents the kind of probing that common sense would naturally question. So questions that might be leveled at a teacher goes by the way side because the perceived fight to act on such questions would be too great and not worth the wrath of the union.

When Stacy goes to court, it will be revealed that the activity within the Mason School System should be on a nationally syndicated soap opera of provocative tradition, not taken as a serious institution that has the aim of educating our students. When board members are engaged in affairs that are publicly known, and other teachers are caught doing despicable, and immoral acts that are known by many in positions of power, the public faces the moral dilemma as to what to do.

What often happens is parents kick the can down the road because their kids are only in the school system for a relatively short time and those same parents just want the system to stay in tact long enough for their children to get what they need from the system. The union knows this, and they calculate that each year some kids leave, and new ones enter and since nobody cares truly for the health of their neighbor, and their communities, unions use that sense of selfishness to conduct a stage play full of smoke and mirrors.

So when Kevin Bright makes his announcement, and publicly chastises Stacy Schuler for her terrible behavior, know that he and the school board are aware of much worse than what Stacy has been involved with. But they will throw Stacy to the wolves like a Roman Emperor throwing a thief to the lions in a gladiator arena to appease the crowd. Their intent is to get past this terrible episode so people forget and get back to their lives, and the school can put another levy on the ballot in November to cover the step increases that the union contract requires.

Ironically, and this gives you an idea how big this story is, this is a video from China showing the Mason School System attempting to distance itself from Stacy when just months ago all was well, cover ups and all.

I say cover ups because these stories were very well-known, and for the superintendent to not know about it is one of two things. He’s really out of touch and isn’t listening to anybody. Or he is just trying to keep the bad stuff hidden so there isn’t any interruption in revenue flowing into the school system. Both options are bad.

We do have choices. It’s up to us to see them and act with courage for the benefit of our children, and leave the adults that have built empires off our tax dollars to find a new scam, preferably in a venue more suitable to their natures, somewhere like Las Vegas.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

So What are you Going to Do About it? Sex, Money and Public Schools

In the face of such scandals as what is being dealt with currently at the Mason School System, and one month ago at the Lakota School System, thousands of rank and file participants within the teachers union crave to put these episodes of unpleasantness behind them. The worst thing in their eyes is for public debate to occur beyond a two-day news cycle. If a story lingers for too long, the value for the service they want to offer diminishes in the eyes of the taxpayer.

But that’s the real problem, isn’t it? For decades public debate has been limited and it was easy for spin doctors and spokesman to proclaim that “it’s just sex, these things happen in every workplace. We’re taking precautions.”

The downfall of those status quo protectionists however is technology. No longer can a spokesman tell a group of friendly reporters a controlled diatribe of manipulation intended to diffuse a crisis till it falls from people’s minds as their busy lives consume commitment to a righteous cause. Now with text messaging, and blog sites like this one, information moves freely without the control mechanism of political machines, and is why the FCC is pushing Net Neutrality.

That’s why what happened on 700 WLW February 4th of 2011 was unique as a story broke on that station throughout the day preceding a major indictment from a prosecutor’s office. It started with Sharon Poe speaking about the crises with Doc Thompson and ended 9 hours later after the indictments were announced and attorneys started to chime in with legal discussion. The story is basically this, a teacher Stacy Schuler of the Mason School System was indicted for 16 counts of sexual battery with 5 students. She is also involved in a sexual way with a separate issue involving the assistant principal George Coates. George called in his resignation on February 2, 2011. The story arch was fascinating and is captured in the video below. It is recommended that you activate the video and finish this article while listening if you are fortunate enough to be able to do both. If not, then give yourself some time. It’s a video that is 2 hours and 7 minutes long but condenses 9 hours of radio news breaking evolution over the day and is a compelling story in itself. So turn off the TV and let the video play and enjoy the theater of the mind without commercial interruption for the drama is as good if not better than any movie available to rent.

Sharon (the woman in the interview) and I have known, as most in the Mason community and in neighboring Lakota have known for some time that serious sexual allocations were transpiring in Mason. In fact I have the list of many improprieties, most of them taking place with consenting adults within the system and not directly effecting students. But the number and rank of the participants is alarming for any workplace. This teacher is just the most obvious participant because she got caught. Her actions since they involved students that posted information on Facebook and other online forums could not be quieted by the spin doctors and the info got out into the community.

Check these links for information on all the soap opera issues going on in Mason. There are several articles on those pages. Scroll down to the “Sex and Drugs for All” School Districts section to read the information. This information was published by Charles Foster Kane.

Here are the links:

http://thecincinnatusstandard.com/Whistleblower_Newswire_Friday_February_4_2011.mht
http://thecincinnatusstandard.com/Whistleblower_Newswire_Thursday_February_3_2011.mht
http://thecincinnatusstandard.com/Whistleblower_Newswire_Wednesday_February_2_2011.mht

Home for Kane’s work can be found here: http://www.thecincinnatusstandard.com/The_Whistleblower_Newswire.html

Scott Sloan came on after Sharon and had been working with the same information we all had but Scott had the guts to act on it. After he went off the air with Doc, a caller from Mason came on and defended the district and proclaimed that WLW was behind on the story and it wasn’t a big deal. WLW was in fact the only news organization running with the story. All the other outlets were waiting for the indictment to come down and reacted predictably once the story broke. That particular caller reflected a huge part of the population that just doesn’t want to deal with bad news.

It is because of people like the caller that these problems in schools have continued. They empower the perpetuation of illicit behavior in public institutions with the same careless abandon that a large portion of the population accepted the seductress explanations from former President Clinton.

The target audience of complacency which Clinton, Obama and teachers unions, along with others, speak to know what they’re doing. They hope to solicit more recruits to their thinking by encouraging public drunkenness, sexual exploits and other forms of decadent behavior because in such personalities are future apologists that won’t have the courage or fortitude to confront difficult issues when they present themselves. And on the backs of such weak souls were built the corruption we are finding in public education. In fact, as I was writing this article I received this comment from a reader which fits in the category just discussed.

Author : thompson (IP: 72.173.182.116 , 72-173-182-116.cust.wildblue.net)
URL :
Whois : http://whois.arin.net/rest/ip/72.173.182.116
Comment:
you’re nuts. Salaries have nothing do to with morality. And for the record, teaching salaries are NOT I sugges you collect your thoughts before you put them out there to be read. Hope I don’t stumble onto anything else you rant, I mean write.

That is a guy that doesn’t see how things connect. The misspellings are because that’s how he wrote it, I duplicated it the way I received it. And to respond to that guy, being nuts is to take things at face value, like he obviously does.

You see, it’s not just the sex that is going on with some of the teachers, and administrators. Or principles and assistants that think it’s acceptable to send naked pictures of themselves to co-workers on computers owned by the school. Or child pornography obsessed teachers taking pictures of kids with their shirts off in the classroom. This is about the wholesome advertising of public education services to the community to justify extraordinarily high salaries negotiated by public sector unions. It’s like most things in life, in the end it’s about money.

During the levy campaign back in September after I had made a couple of appearances on WLW the Pro Lakota Campaign had flooded the station with protest letters and accused the station of being disingenuous to teachers and rationalized my questing of the amount of wages being imposed on our community budget as hateful. Their assertion is that because of their educational background and the fact that many of them have master’s degrees that they are better positioned to teach our children and that spending more and more money on public education will yield increased results. Or in the case of Lakota and Mason, it was to keep those districts excellent by approving a tax levy on our properties. We were told, “Wouldn’t you spend just 20 bucks a month to keep your kids safe.”

However, what we are finding is that these people in public positions are just as human as anybody. And these teachers and administrators in these schools are no more qualified to raise our children than our average citizens. This whole issue comes back to the topic of wages and whether or not public education officials should be paid so much and communities should be required to supported collective bargaining agreements.

My day on this historic date started as one of my employees told me about his experience of dropping off his son at Lakota because of the busing cuts. Lakota had stopped using police to guide traffic at the entrance my employee was using as a drop off. Instead a school official named by his son as an assistant principal was directing traffic. That assistant audaciously knocked on my employee’s window and told him to use a different entrance. “You can’t pull in that lot. You have to go to the other side.”

My employee told him that they had a paid parking spot in that particular lot and he had a right to be where he was.

The assistant principal directing traffic told him again to use the other lot.

My employee asked what he was supposed to do about his paid lot, the assistant said; “you should have passed the levy.”

I have instance upon instance given to me about principles at Lakota taking active roles in creating an environment of hostility that if they occurred in my work place, I’d be obligated to address the issue before the behavior corrupted my workforce, but not in public education. They live by different rules than the rest of us. And that becomes evident when you get to know some of them.

That’s why the sex scandals in Mason are important. Even if the teacher is innocent of all 16 counts we know that there is inappropriate behavior that went on between the teacher and the assistant principal at a minimum. As a society do we put up with it, because the taxpayers are the boss in this situation? Or do we just look away? Do we just approve the next levy while the bloated, corrupt monster of public education lingers on under collective bargaining agreements negotiated under school board members trained by the OSBA to carry out to the letter policies created by the teachers unions which are bankrupting communities?

I remember specifically when Lakota threatened to go on strike in 2008. What was their sticking point? Wages. They tried the same general tactic floating the strike word around back in March of 2010. It wasn’t about kids. It was money. Watch that video here. They got what they wanted. It didn’t matter to them if the community could afford it or not.

For those that don’t want to discuss the issue of cost and whether we get the value for the money we spend, I put the blame squarely on your shoulders for the current state of things, public education being just one, but very costly issue. When I hear stories like this sex case, and again, I know there is a lot more to the story which will be revealed, I get angry. I can’t understand why stories like this wouldn’t make people angry. But I also tend to view the world from the perspective of an employer. People that just want to punch their time card and cruise through life tend to look the other way when trouble comes or when taxes are too high and harming the community.

The underlining issue is arrogance. These Mason school employees that are currently in trouble have so little appreciation and respect for their community and where the money comes from that supplies their income that they participate in these reckless sexual activities. That behavior speaks volumes of how public education views the public they serve and it comes out when they are pressed.

The ultimate audacity is revealed in the Mason spokesman Tracy Carson when she was on with Tracy Jones and Scott Sloan putting on a happy face for the Mason District on January 26th, the same day that Stacy Schuler was put on leave. No doubt Mrs. Carson will say that she didn’t know about the teachers coming legal trouble, but what kind of spokesman wouldn’t know about this story, because I was hearing about it, and it’s not even my job to know. I find it hard to believe Tracy didn’t know. The story was out well before implementing the leave and if the spokesman knew anything about what was happening in the school, she’d know about this teacher, because everyone else did.

Yet, listen to her words on WLW. Do you think she actually thought the Mason school system could contain this story? Depending on how you answer that question will determine your ability to think critically. Because the bet from these people is this, you can’t think critically even when the evidence is right in front of you.

So, what are you going to do about it?

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Sex, Murder, Teachers, and the Taxpayer: Ryan Widmer and the Mason Teacher

A Mason assistant principal resigns while Ryan Widmer proceeds through his third murder trail and a Mason Teacher is under police investigation all within Warren County.

While Jennifer Crew testified against Ryan Widmer, Mason’s High School Assistant Principle resigned his position. Read the article below while you listen to the testimony of Jennifer Crew as reported by Bill Cunningham. Click here:

The rest of this story unified in its nature and occurrence in the same county proceeds in this article from the Cincinnati Enquirer, February 2, 2011

MASON – An assistant principal at Mason High School who was recently placed on paid administrative leave has submitted his resignation from the Warren County district.

George Coates, a nine-year veteran of Mason Schools who makes $88,000 a year, was placed on leave last week for undisclosed reasons, Mason officials said.

Though Coates’ leave began days after a Mason High School teacher – Stacey Shuler – was also placed on leave and is being investigated by Mason Police for inappropriate e-mails, Coates was not part of that investigation.
Coates cited “personal reasons” with his last day of work being Feb. 28. He was unavailable for comment.

What do the stories of George Coates and the relationship that will be revealed with Stacy Schuler the Physical Education teacher also at the High School have in common with Ryan Widmer? Sex

SEX, SEX, and more Sex!

Listen to Doc Thompson discuss the endemic problem that is rampant all over the country involving teachers that seem enticed by young students. If there is any lesson to be learned, it’s that teachers that we’re paying extraordinary amounts of money cannot seem to overcome their all too human frailties. This issue in Mason is going to be very disappointing as the facts percolate to the surface. Lakota just recently had its own embarrassing scandal in the Ryan Fahrenkemp case involving the FBI and that teacher’s obsession with child pornography. These cases in Mason, and Lakota probably have more to do with why those two districts elected not to attempt another levy until these stories fade from people’s minds.

 

George Coates, high school assistant principal made $85,311 in 2010 with 20 days vacation, full retirement and Medicare paid. Stacy Schuler, Physical Ed teacher at High School made $58,520.00 in 2010 and worked 185 days. (These numbers from Buckeye Institute website.) Why would these individuals risk these well-paying jobs to indulge in “inappropriate” behavior?

Well, ask Ryan Widmer who wanted to have a three-way with his wife so badly that he ruined their young marriage. Widmer obviously wasn’t ready to be married and was very immature in his thinking, having an adulterous relationship even so early in his marriage. Sounds like they were having normal marriage issues, but his sexual perversions were too much for his wife to forgive, and he couldn’t handle the rejection of her leaving, so bad things happened when their tempers got away from them.

The reason this Widmer case is so compelling to so many people is that Ryan sitting on that stand reveals the fool in many people that actually let their primal energy, sexual, and predatory, get away from them. Many people fear in themselves the same uncontrolled passions, but most will never completely release to the extremes that Widmer did.

What all this has in common is this, people that take for granted the fortunes in their lives which come their way are all too tempted to abuse those fortunes. Sounds like Ryan Widmer took his wife for granted and thought he could “nudge” her into fulfilling some of his fantasies that were obviously sexual. And these teachers, they are well paid, protected by powerful unions, those nasty little voices that call out from the deep recesses of their minds have the luxury of time and finance to act on their fantasies unlike other people who work from pay check to pay check and don’t have the spare time or the means to embark on “sexual deviancy.” Ryan Fahrenkemp resigned from Lakota in August when it became obvious to him that he was going down in flames, and now George Coates is fleeing the scene of the crime hoping to avoid the fall-out from the case with Stacy Schuler when her investigation is revealed. These stories have in common varying degrees of human fault anchored in sexual exploration and abuse of their specific powers.

Then there is Jennifer Crew in this whole, seemingly unconnected soap opera of warped minds and freaks. Jennifer cringed in her chair during cross-examination and revealed much about her true motif in this trial. There is no doubt that Widmer called her, sent her texts as he did with several other women when he thought she was an attractive woman, and could use his celebrity status to fulfill the fantasies he couldn’t get from his deceased wife. But once he found out that Jennifer was not very attractive, he cut off the relationship. And Jennifer wanting revenge let out some of what Ryan had told her. But her mind took liberties with some of those truths because her own lustful fantasies of being held by a killer would go unfulfilled, and it’s likely that only somewhere deep inside her own mind does the truth reside. Even loved ones near her will want to see everything in her motives but the truth.

The mind is a strange arena. Be careful what you allow in it because the ramifications can lead to various degrees of misery and human decay. That’s what all these stories have in common, human decay of the mind and that they are happening in Warren County, Ohio.

Oh, and for those that think I am making a distant connection here, and that this texting issue at Mason is a new and isolated issue regarding administrative abuses at Mason? No. Check out this video from way back in 2007, which is a precursor to the story that is about to explode upon the Mason School District scene.


It doesn’t matter to me if it’s a teacher, or a murder, if the personalities are up to no good; they deserve to be called out for their bad behavior. The Widmer trial will cost taxpayers over $50K, and I already told you what those two Mason employees cost the residents of Mason. Their bad behavior ultimately cost our society, because they chose to engage in that bad behavior without any respect for the taxpayers that end up having to pick up the mess in their wakes. They deserve the anger that is unleashed upon them.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Even More Reasons for School Choice: My story about the advantages of technology in communication, and education

Just another reason for the application of School Choice was discussed by Doc Thompson as he addressed the issue of the woman from Akron, Ohio that got caught lying about her residence in order to send her children to an “excellent” school.

While residents of “excellent” districts want to keep the status quo, it is nearly impossible for parents that have fallen on hard times to encourage their children to reach for the stars if they are stuck in bad circumstances. School Choice and the options that come with it would help this woman, and thousands like her.

Listen to that interview here:

I have a nephew that is something of a genius; school comes very, very easy for him. When he was younger his parents moved a lot, but for a few years he went to Lakota, and at Lakota he thrived, naturally. He’s a man now, but some of his best memories were of Lakota.

One of his worst experiences were when his family moved to Detroit, and he had to go to a Detroit public school. And in that school, being “smart” wasn’t so cool, or tolerated. Needless to say, he had a very rough time, and violence came his way often.

If there had been a nationwide School Choice program, my nephew could have stayed with the teachers he liked while he moved all over the country with his parents, and he could have avoided the cultural difficulties involved in changing demographic regions. On the other hand, it would work the other way too.

For those of you reading this that aren’t so technically savvy to understand how modern teaching methods are possible to be able to replace the traditional teaching methods, let me bring some personal experience to the matter.

As I’ve talked about, my oldest Daughter is married now, but she has dated the same guy since she was 14 and she met him in England. About a year before she met this young man, she and I had a long discussion after coming off The Spaceship Earth exhibit at Epcot Center in Florida. That is a neat exhibit because they constantly change it to reflect the emerging technology, so it’s always leaning forward, technically.

One of the changes was a room that displayed with cleaver animatronics an English kid talking to a Japanese kid online. She said to me, “Dad, do you think that will be possible?” I wasn’t sure, but it seemed like science fiction even to me, who had been following the technology closely, this was in 2003. Internet carriers were still charging by the hour for many services, and international service seemed to be a technical and costly barrier that would never be overcome.

Yet, one year later a new PC game came out, which I knew was in the making, called Star Wars Galaxies. It is a MMO and allows anybody with a computer to play the game with thousands and even millions of other players in real time. I gave that game to both my daughters for their birthdays, which were only 5 days apart, along with computers to run them and both my kids jumped into the world of Star Wars for the next 4 years. Naturally they met friends and did activities online within the game. A lot of my family was concerned that so much online activity would lead to some sort of sexual promiscuity. But I watched my kids closely and the activity within the game kept their minds busy with things more exciting than sex.

My oldest daughter became good friends with a guy from their online group who lived in England, just outside of London. That friendship went on for a year, again online, and they eventually wanted to meet.

The kid came over to our house a few times a year for about 4 years and the relationship matured to my delight in a traditional way. Sex wasn’t an option, because they lived over 3500 miles apart. So they started the way couples should start, as friends. And that friendship endures to this day.

Now many people who criticized me about that relationship were concerned that my kids weren’t doing the “normal” things. That my daughter wasn’t “dating” in the traditional way, or running around at school events, and all the things that society believes are important. What I witnessed was that both my children had increased their processing abilities; they’d play that game while they did their homework, and maintained online friendships. Living with me, it was impossible for them to not get outside and do some physical exercise, so that wasn’t a problem, and they still maintained relationships at school, so they weren’t anti-social kids, quite the opposite.

But the computer allowed me to solve a growing problem that I had to unravel as a parent. It was becoming obvious when my kids turned 13 and 14 years old that they were going to look a lot like their mother, so there would be lots of boys wanting to clamor all over them. I did not want to deal with 17 and 18 year old boys desiring to come to my house and pick up my kids and take them someplace that I did not have control. So I hoped to put all that off for a while by keeping their minds interested in other things so their biological concerns could be put on the back-burner.

The result was, no trouble with boys trying to get my kids into their back-seats of cars, and my kids were able to develop healthy ideas of relationships by taking away the physical pressure of being in the company of a young boy. And because Star Wars is about big ideas and is good science fiction fun, my kids with other kids learned about the basic necessities of living, food, economics, science, and emerging technology.

As time went on, my kids had webcams and were able to speak real time to their friends and really didn’t care that they weren’t physically in the presence of other kids, because their reality had expanded beyond the conventions of society. And I am very proud of them and how they turned out. It was a good decision to buy my kids that game and set them in a direction that continues to this day, because such a thing takes away the barriers that hold kids back.

My daughters both had oversea relationships. One worked out, one didn’t, but what they learned was far more valuable than dozens of dates where the pressure for sex would have gotten in the way of really getting to know the boys they were dating. It also allowed my kids to tell their classmates in school that they had boyfriends from England, which seemed to put them on a different level with the other girls who suddenly didn’t have to worry that my girls would steal the boys they were interested in, and it dramatically improved the relationships they had with those little girls.

The reason I just told that whole story is because all it took was for me to think out of the box a bit and try something different in raising my girls. I used the technology to help me solve some tough cultural problems that would have been troublesome. And the same options are available for all aspects of education, and those options are available right now.

We should not live in a country where parents have to lie and spend time in jail because they want their kid to go to a nice school. And Schools should not be able to have monopolies that drive up costs. And kids should be learning in a way that will truly prepare them for the world they’re getting ready for. The traditional way of education is holding us back socially. It is obvious to me that the traditional institutions are not being kept intact because it’s what’s best for our children, they are being held together for the adults involved, jobs, political influence, property values and sports which can be a gateway for kids to get scholarships and save their parents money. If education was truly for the kids it would be adapting to the options that are in front of us, not clinging to an outdated infrastructure that is costly and inefficient.

If you want to see that world that kids want to be in, just visit your local Gamestop store. Technology is here to stay, and learning must occur much quicker than it has in the past. Kids today are just tuning out the adult world anyway because the world they’re really interested in is on Xbox, or Playstation and the friends that play online with them every day. The world we all grew up in is changing fast. Whether that change is good or bad will depend on how we adapt to that world.

The solutions to most of the problems in public education can be solved in competition. And the best way to get competition is to embrace School Choice and the technology that comes with it.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

The Little Miami School District: Standing at the gates of Change

The threats of dissolving the Little Miami School District are interesting. After all, what is a community supposed to do with a district that has refused to pass a tax increase eight consecutive times? Who in their right mind could afford to absorb the students of the district, because all school districts around Little Miami are in budget trouble too?

Lebanon, one of the closest districts, is facing another levy attempt of their own. Mason, also close by doesn’t have the money. They just made major cuts, and are flirting with another levy attempt also. Loveland has already said they can’t afford the students from Little Miami. So the threat is an empty one at the end of the day. It comes from clueless state officials that haven’t had to deal with this issue before. Nobody taught them what to do if a community refuses after all the extortion tactics of pay-for-play sports, busing cuts, and token lay-offs occur. After the perceived manipulation of disastrous property values are dealt with, and a community still says, “NO!” what is the next step?

I was at a School Choice event, which I’ll cover in greater detail, when the Little Miami issue came up with School Choice Representative, Jeff Reed, State Congressional Representative Pete Beck, State Congressional Representative Bill Coley, along with State Senator Gates who all engaged in a lively debate with the audience about the issue of dissolution. Watch it here:

What is the real crisis? Its wages and collective bargaining agreements that have shackled the school district and made the financial situation unreasonable to the tax payers and the residents have had enough. The voters have endured the beat downs and manipulation and held tight against the extortion. This last threat of dissolution is just what it is, a threat. There is no place for those kids to go without collapsing the neighboring districts.

And the fault is in the expectations negotiated behind the back of communities enduring monstrous wages and benefits, along with the power of collective bargaining making the legislative process a nightmare for state representatives. The fault of this situation is clearly on the backs of all who participated in the reckless spending of the district’s money. And when that money ran out, which nobody was prepared to deal with, the clueless minds behind the heist must take responsibility for their pillage of the community’s assets. And a school belongs to the community, not the unions.

The first step to fixing this whole problem is what was discussed in the above video, the State of Ohio needs collective bargaining reform, and it needs it now.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Progressive Politics 100 Years Later: Report Card gets and “F” “Epic Fail”

I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the start of “progressivism” as it emerged in the early 1900’s. I was shocked to learn that the first “socialist” congressman was elected during the election of 1910, that gives you an idea of the kinds of discussions that were taking place during that time. I can understand to some point the hunger to bust up the monopolies that business had over the working population. I admire Teddy Roosevelt for sticking up to the court decision by Simeon E. Baldwin for the ruling of Hoxie v. the New Haven Railroad of 1909 which denied liberty of labor compensation for the loss of a leg of an employee in a collision of two trains. Such stories ushered on its back progressive ideas that sought to regulate “big business” abuse.

Now, after 100 years of asking questions, we know what went wrong, and why it went wrong, and the experiments of “fairness” have caused trouble on the radical opposite end of the political spectrum. And that trouble has literally bankrupted our nation.

Listen to Doc Thompson discuss the State of the Union the way President Obama should have done during his State of the Union Address on Tuesday January 25th, 2011.

Obama should not have said that the state of our nation was “good.” While I understand not wanting to scare people, saying such things is like a football coach telling his team at half time, when his team is down three touchdowns, “hey, you guys are playing good. Keep it up.” What the coach should say if he’s a good coach is, “hey, you guys are down three touchdowns. You still have a chance. Toughen up and win this game!” No, instead the President said America is strong, because he doesn’t want to admit to anybody that changes are coming.

But who can blame him. All politicians at all levels are doing the same kind of put-off game. They behave like children that didn’t study for a big test, and hope by some miracle even up to the moment they have to take the test that somehow they will just wing through it. City council members fail to level with the people on a regular basis. School Boards do the same leaning to preserve the structure of education monopolies instead of looking out for the residents of their communities, like they’re supposed to. Everywhere virtually everyone in elected positions is weak to make the announcements that need to be stated to the voters. Why, because the money is good. The benefits are too good, and the wrong kinds of people are attractive to public service. And the situation was exacerbated with “progressive” thought at the turn of the century over a hundred years ago. Politicians get into public service because of what they will get out of it, not out of a feeling of service. I’ve met a few politicians here and there that are the exception, but mostly the rule of corruption applies to the minds of the elected representative because the quality of their minds is weak to start with. The strong minds make their livings in the private sector. The weak seek the public.

How screwed up is it? Listen to this radio bit about the Death Tax. Here Doc has on an expert about the Death Tax as it applies to Ohio, but the examples could be applied nation wide.

We have a lot of problems dear reader. A lot! But they can all be solved as long as you are willing to do for yourself, and keep the government out of your life. They can help with the big issues, but the reason for the Constitution was to keep government at bay. The central argument in 1787 was between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists and that argument created the Constitution that we have today, and it is the most unique document of its kind the world has ever seen. We should cherish it, because it worked! History proves it!

The hinge-pin of American society is self-reliance however, and people like Teddy Roosevelt knew that. The Progressive Party wasn’t supposed to become the monstrosity of naïveté that it currently is. It was supposed to free people to live good lives. But weak, power-hungry politicians quickly distorted the policies to create jobs for themselves by expanding government to an extraordinary size that it was never intended to become. And now government is collapsing on itself.

America will survive because the people that made up the country are still out there. But the government in the size it is now will not. It would be advisable that everyone unhook themselves from as many Federal shackles they can handle, and to do it rapidly. It will be less painful now than later when you won’t have a choice.

I spent a year reading the Federalist Papers, the Anti-Federalist Papers, and the work of John Locke. It was not easy, because it can be a dull read, and is sometimes repetitive. The volume of that work however is deeply innovative and provable, and far more philosophical and intellectually sound than anything produced in any nation in the history of the world. And if you want to see this nation succeed in the future, America will stick with the blueprint that works. The other social experiments that have been attempted need to stop, now.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Mason School District Gives Community the “Finger”

The Mason School Board in a meeting on Tuesday, January 25, 2011 more or less gave the people of Mason the finger; (figuratively speaking of course) The people of Mason were told that because they didn’t pass a levy in November that painful cuts were headed their way. Basically, they’re going to “extend” the busing routes, along with some “pay to play” initiatives that are designed to cut nearly $6 million out of their budget.

What they didn’t do was what Lakota has done, and that is see what the actual budget requirements are going to be once Governor Kasich eliminates many of the unfunded mandates he’s promised to cut, to give districts the chance to take their fates in their own control. That information comes out in March. What Mason did was decided to point their finger at the community and play the extortion game.

The following clip is from the day after, and on the eve of Jeff Reeds visit to promote School Choice, ironically in Mason on Thursday. Jeff and Sharon Poe, the woman behind defeating the levy in Mason went on the Big One with Doc Thompson to cover the various issues percolating in the shadows of the Big One’s radio transmitter.

Everywhere that monopolies exist, extortion of the consumer of the products monopolies produce can take place. If you’ll remember, the Federal Government during the Clinton Administration went after Microsoft, to bust up the market monopoly Microsoft had over other companies. And at the turn of the last century, Teddy Roosevelt, the Progressive Hero, went after the Railroads. But where are the demands from these same progressives to go after the monopolies of “public education?”

That’s what it is. Mason has no right to play the guilt game with the citizens of its district. However, Kevin Bright is one of the highest paid superintendents for a reason. He’s has been one of the instructors of Levy University, taught at the annual OSBA event in November of each year at Columbus. So he’s the master of getting levies passed, so in his district, they are “choosing to play the game.”

And the game is a thuggish exchange of protecting the top paid administrators and teachers at the sacrifice of the teachers and personnel of lower stature, and the goal is to secure their wages and pensions so as to maintain their monopoly on education far into the future, to protect the livelihoods they’ve manipulated for themselves.

I had a teacher send me an email, “you’re not going to stop until we’re all making minimum wage are you? We’d all have to take a 30% cut to meet the budget at Lakota.”

All I can do is shrug my shoulders to that comment. Nobody said anything about teachers making minimum wage, but a 30% cut to meet the budget is something I suggested almost 6 months ago. If Lakota, Mason, and the rest of the districts that are in trouble, which is everyone, had taken such a step, they would have taken the steps to make themselves competitive for the future. A teacher that makes a $105,000 and takes a reduction of 30% would pay that teacher $73,500, which if they have tenure, and a master’s degree, is much more in line with a proper salary. Does anyone believe that making $73,500 a year with great benefits, summers off, and every federal holiday through the school year is asking teachers to work for minimum wage? On the other hand, I would argue that new teachers should be paid in line with what they are currently making. It’s the top end that is wrecking these school budgets, not the new teachers that are only making $35 to $45K per year.

Yet there is only silence to that obvious problem, and all districts are willing to deal with is the extreme low hanging fruit. And they do that because they are effective monopolies that feel empowered to punish its consumers because they lack competition. A district like Mason knows that parents are forced to use their product, and because of the property taxes residence are forced to pay, are literally pushed into accepting realities that would otherwise be completely deplorable.

In the end it’s more about ego and PR relations than doing what’s right for the community. What would happen if the man who teaches Levy University in Columbus couldn’t even get a levy passed in his own district? What message would that send to the surrounding districts?

Find out soon? The power is in the voters hands.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Yes Lakota is Misleading People: Painting over the dirt

Georgetta
voteyeslakota@aol.com
75.185.0.41
Submitted on 2011/01/20 at 11:14 pm
Evil prevails when good people do nothing. I am a good person and I am about good education. I am doing something: speaking out. Rich Hoffman is misleading people. Teachers teach children so they DON’T end up working themselves into an early grave and barely making payments on a lot in a trailer park. The good teachers will go elsewhere in order to make a living wage. Rich Hoffman raised children and his wife didn’t work. Apparently he is making too much money. Yet, I hear no one attacking him. Some of us have to have both parents work in order to put food on the table.

Georgetta here reflects many of the comments that I get from people who think just like her. The premise is this, that education is a right, they hide the actual numbers in the scribble of government bureaucracy, and if you show that you don’t support it, or if you even question their reasoning, they use “peer pressure” to shape the community to their will, just like kids on a playground. That’s the mentality. They end up sounding like children with their minds wrapped up in extreme assertions to make their points seem to carry more weight.

The first thing they do is attack you “the tax payer” and your ability to pay the increase in tax. They’ll say, “Public education was there for your children, but now that you don’t have children in the school, you don’t want to pay.” They do the same with business leaders, “We built the good schools and you provided the homes, and now you don’t want to pay.” What doesn’t get said is that as all this growth was going on, the LEA, the teachers union at Lakota, negotiated an aggressive contract in October of 2008 that was focused on wages and that contract is bankrupting the community because at the same time, indications were that state funding was on a decreasing trend. So the contract was irresponsible, and what is happening now, is the community is establishing the parameters of future contract negotiations, because we can’t trust school officials to do the job, otherwise it wouldn’t have gotten this far out of control.

These pro levy people will attempt to proclaim that nobody but them can look at the numbers and understand the situation. They sadly put out apologist groups to plead the case like what you will hear in the below interview. What they don’t want to discuss is why there is a financial crises. They simply discuss finance as if it were beyond their control. When listening to this interview ask these questions, if cutting only a million here, or there isn’t much because the numbers are so large, then why is it such a large savings that cutting busing to 9000 students will only save $600,000, then why cut busing? And how has Lakota done everything it can do before cutting busing. Did the LEA come to the bargaining table to renegotiate their contract? And how does the tax dollars stay in the district when the union spends the union dues on political candidates. One of the reasons the LEA wants its teachers to make so much is so that the teachers will want to pay their union dues without hardship. But nobody talks about any of that here. The sum of this discussion is that there isn’t an answer. These are nice parents that just want the system to work long enough for their children to get an education. Nobody wants to play the hot potato game when the music stops, and the music is stopping. All they can really do in an interview like this is paint over the dirt.

All businesses whether they are service oriented or manufacturing oriented have a responsibility to keep their costs in line. One way that businesses do that is to use the 10-80-10 rule as it’s applied to labor. That rule states that 10% of your workforce will be your typical “top” performers, and they will get the most dramatic increases, 4% to 15% depending on the situation. 80% of your workers are average, and will typically get a standard 2% to 3% increase, otherwise considered a “cost of living” increase. And of course every place of business has approximately 10% that are poor performers and they won’t get an increase of any kind. Why? Because those bottom 10% you want to look for another job, and you want them to leave so you don’t have to pay them. It gives you a chance to hire somebody that might want to compete for the top 10% percentile. If you manage things correctly, your bottom 10% are the kind of people that your competition is hiring at the middle 80%, and you want that so you can maintain a competitive edge.

What you don’t do is uniformly advance everyone in your place of business with some socialist “everybody is equal” policy like what we have in school systems, and unions advocate. That’s a disastrous concept and gives employees like Ryan Fahrenkemp time and the luxury of job security to participate in an evil deed like child pornography. I would argue from experience that if Ryan had to fear for his job, and didn’t feel comfortable hiding in the muddy 80%, he probably would have not indulged in his warped perversion while at school. He might have done it in hiding, or in his mother’s basement, but not with his students, and not with school equipment. And he certainly wouldn’t have been making 70K at only age 42 no matter how much experience he had with the amount of tenure he’d accumulated in a relatively short time.

I used Fahrenkemp as an example because he belonged in the bottom 10% and somebody didn’t do their job in the review process of weeding him out. And that didn’t happen because he was protected by the complicated process created by the OEA which the president of the LEA had been a big part of, and knew how to manipulate the system to the advantage of her members.

So I’d say to you Yes Lakota people, who say that I am misleading people. Who is doing the misleading?

I’d say you are, by telling the tax payers that the budget just “grows” on its own. That the school system had no way to deal with people like Fahrenkemp, and that all teachers are worth over 62K, and if the community doesn’t pay it, those beloved teachers will leave the district for another one.

I would say any teacher that would leave Lakota is only in it for the money, and those are personalities that I would rate low on a review, and may be tempted to put them on the bottom 10% anyway, so for them to leave would be desirable.

All the Yes Lakota people have to argue with is emotion,
• “The money is for the kids.” No it’s not, if it was, the LEA wouldn’t have threatened to strike in 2008 to get more money, and again in the spring of 2010.
• “We have to offer top pay for top teachers or they will leave.” No they won’t because the other districts are broke too and are getting ready to go through the same process Lakota is.
• “We have to protect property values by voting for the schools.” No you don’t. If taxes keep increasing that will kill real estate values anyway, tax payers in the district already pay $11 per $1000 assessment on their property.
• “I’m for education.” No you’re not. If you were, you’d keep the budget under $160 million. Throwing money at something doesn’t mean you’re for education. It means you don’t value the source of the money but want what the money can buy.
• “We have had explosive growth and must adjust to it.” Growth, like budgets can be controlled. If the cost is too high, growth will slow down, and growth will slow down because of the economy. Growth will also slow down from parents wanting to go to Lakota who aren’t willing to pay for the extra things they want, too. One of the reasons Yes People want sports and extracurricular activities is so enrollment will increase, so parents looking for those items can move to the district and participate cheaply. It’s all about job creating and getting parents used to programs that the district tax payers fund collectively. No different from colleges with NCAA programs that are nationally known for their sports, will see increases in enrollment. It’s always about increased enrollment so money can be justified.
• “The state is forcing us to all-day kindergarten.” No, the OEA lobbied to get all-day kindergarten passed, and the Republicans in the state house are getting ready to eliminate that unfunded mandate along with many other mandates lacking funding. So that anticipated requirement will be taken away from district budgets.
• “We have to spend $50,000 dollars to get the best superintendent we can get.” No, you are throwing money at the situation like you do everything else. It’s that kind of mentality that locked us into the contract with the LEA that is causing the current financial crises. Money does not equal quality. It seldom does. Money can be used to create competition, but it is useless without competition. If money is not getting you dramatic results, it is simply killing your budget.
• “Paying for a school levy keeps your money in the community.” No it doesn’t. The union dues collected by school unions are directly applied to liberal politicians that further perpetuate the bureaucratic mess creating expensive economic necessity. The OEA had revenue of over $62 million dollars in 2008. Where did that money come from? They don’t make any products that they can sell? Check the info for yourself here. http://teachersunionexposed.com/state.cfm?state=OH All that money comes from union dues, paid from the salaries of teachers that are paid exceptionally well by the local tax payers. The average pay at Lakota for teachers is 62K per year. So the money doesn’t stay in the community.

Those are just some examples of how the Yes Lakota people are misleading the good people of the Lakota District. And they will continue to treat the voters like the fools they believe they are as long as it works.

Get ready for the next levy announcement for May. They’ll do it because they don’t know how to do anything else but ask for more money.

And you Yes Lakota people go ahead and leave your comments. I’ll post them, and I’ll use them. People need to see your thoughts. For those of you wanting to see some of them, read the comments here. I am quite aware that there are many people at many levels reading all the posts I’ve put up here and you’re looking for a way to spin it to your advantage. For an example, have a look at the work David Little from Progress Ohio attempted. I’m happy to fight your sloppy facts with the truth and if you want to spin the community around and make them so dizzy they can’t tell which way is up or down, I’ll continue to prevent it, as I have. And I’ll do it because I love my community, and I want to see education continue to be an option for families in the future. But it won’t be in a form controlled by organized labor. Those days are over.

Don’t believe me; read this from your parent union the OEA, this is how bad the financial situation is. Even the union staff is threatening to strike and the union itself is participating in union busting strategies.

The Ohio Education Association and Its Goose

The executives of the Ohio Education Association sent a memo informing local presidents that if the union gave in to striking staffers’ demands, it would require an $80 to $90 dues increase per member. Such an increase would raise roughly $10 million. That sounded familiar to me, so I checked the archives and found this, in the May 8, 2000 EIA Communiqué:
Ohio Education Association in Severe Financial Straits. The last time the Ohio Education Association negotiated a staff contract, in September 1997, it resulted in a two-week strike, restraining orders against picketers, and a lot of bad publicity. That contract expires this year and it’s bad financial news all around for OEA, its members, and the staff. OEA recently informed its local presidents that the union is facing a projected deficit of $6.3 million for next year. The union is asking staff to accept benefit cuts totaling $4 million. The rest of the deficit would be eliminated through a dues increase of up to $25 per member.

“Specifically, and regrettably, we can no longer afford to sustain the current number of OEA employees at their current level of compensation and benefits and continue to provide the expected level of services and programs without significantly raising OEA dues for you and every other member,” reads a memo from OEA President Mike Billirakis and Executive Director Robert Barkley.

Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.eiaonline.com/intercepts/2010/09/03/the-ohio-education-association-and-its-goose/

If our community is going to continue to be a “great” and “excellent” district, we have to get in front of this problem. Not avoid it by tossing more money at the problem. And the Yes Lakota people need to listen to the No Lakota People, because the solution is in good business strategy. The same tired old bullet points won’t be valid any longer. I’ll make sure of it.

Now, these video links exist elsewhere on this site, but I’ll put links here for your convenience. These are radio spots specifically dealing with education issues. Feel free to listen to the hours and hours of debate so you can form your own opinion about things. There are many radio personalities here, so the view points are varied. But the topics and discussions are fantastic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sIDwFW6tFA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxd5XO54o68
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPwhFbsTmww
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXEIUPRRxAQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r09fAoSAQhM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbJETAE1iXw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAX20OsiIS0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHPjBY8UY98
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7f6iBfFxV0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDvFo_v24Y0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG9vYWHO6OM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RynERHb3jBU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU57EDXLxtw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhAeyuLovtk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoviASrmQBw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDW98mhSyPQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vtoC9QosaA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w9zXhNdw_M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrblE1gu4lU

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com