Tag: unions

I Hate the Communist Holiday of Labor Day: A.I. complains a lot less and works much more

I say it every year, and this year was no different.  I don’t like Labor Day, and I don’t celebrate it.  I think it is the only Holiday that I really don’t care for.  It’s a dumb, communist Holiday created by lazy people who don’t like to work.  Personally, I enjoy working.  I don’t have a lot of respect for people who don’t want to work, so I despise and can’t relate to the Union-created Holiday that celebrates taking time off work.  I had an interesting conversation with some brilliant people the other day, and we discussed AI and whether it would take over the world.  And my part of it was that I love AI, because Artificial Intelligence never takes a day off.  It is always ready to do work, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  It never says that something is too hard to do.  It never takes time off with FMLA, or brings a stupid doctor’s note to work, thinking that some pin-headed doctor has authority over the work that an employer needs done.  AI works, and it’s always cheerful about it, which I love.  Work is a measure of productivity, and why would anybody celebrate an unproductive culture?  Why do people think a culture can be good if it always takes off Saturdays and Sundays and never answers their phone during off-business hours?  I think Labor Day is ridiculous, and I’ll repeat it.  If we want to Make America Great Again, we need to start with its work ethic.  We have too many people who are lazy and complain about Mondays while celebrating Fridays because they get a chance to reach the weekend and can be off work. 

I really get tired of people telling me all the great things that unions have done for workers.  That term, “workers,” is a communist term that comes straight from the mouth of Karl Marx, Mr. “Workers of the world Unite!”  The premise of the union mentality is to deny work to an employer and to the market unless compensation is provided at a level they approve of, and collectively applied.  Given to all, equally, no matter how good, bad, or indifferent the worker may be.  So when we hear the Marx phrase about workers uniting, what they are doing is sticking together to lobby an employer to do less work and to get paid more for it.  And this has been a misguided idea that has put many companies out of business.  When workers dread Monday and look forward to Friday so they can escape their work, and then spend all the money they’ve made on leisure activities, such as boating on Saturdays, you have all the signs of a declining culture.  And I hear all this talk about America First jobs, which sounds fine on paper.  However, with only around 200 million workers in America, and a need for employment in an expanding economy of over a billion, having more people dread Mondays and look forward to the weekends so they don’t have to work is not the solution we need.  We need people who want to work and who enjoy working.  Not people who want to be paid a lot of money for barely doing anything.  The entitlement culture of collective bargaining involves withholding labor from an employer through collective force.  Unfortunately, most people have been taught the wrong way their entire lives about how to view work, and it shows up pathetically in their daily work ethic, which has really held back the American economy.

I hear the complaints, but what do I expect?  What do I think is a good example of work ethic?  Well, I would point out the Japanese as an obvious example.  They work hard in that culture, and they take things very seriously.  They have a very balanced culture, low crime rates, and are very industrious as a society.  When you arrive at the airport and a car is waiting for you, the driver rushes to the car to retrieve it.  He doesn’t walk with his pants half down while talking on the phone.  They take everything very seriously, including buying a pack of gum.  The complaints are that they are a stressed-out culture that puts in too many work days, and they don’t have sex enough.  Japanese women are repressed because their men spend too much time working.  That isn’t the case at all; those complaints come from a world that doesn’t want to live up to the expectations of the Japanese economy, which has done so much with a tiny island.  This idea of cheap labor is the union’s pitch to steer employers toward collective bargaining by controlling access to only certain kinds of labor, those who don’t want to work and have a boat sitting in their driveway, paid for after only 40 hours of work per week.  What idiot came up with the 40-hour work week?  And all the overtime rules?  It was union lobbying, and they want a pat on the back for bringing to the Middle Class all these protections from work against the elements of productivity, an employer.  I think we should be celebrating employers who make jobs.  Not workers who deny work to the world so they can sip beer on a lake, trying to catch a fish while listening to classic rock that is probably a communist song selling propaganda through entertainment, such as the dumb Beatles song, “Imagine.” 

Too much leisure time is detrimental to a culture, as well as to the people within it.  When we talk about the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the kids involved through that Discourse app, which is a gaming culture discussion platform, one thing that really jumps out with young people is how much effort they’ll put into their video games, but they don’t want to go to a job and actually do real work.  They’ll work hard and grind it out on a video game to get a new skin for their avatar characters.  But they don’t want to grind it out for a new house, a spouse, and a nice new car.  They live like rats and have been taught to be that way by a lazy society that values leisure time more than opportunities for labor.  So no, I don’t like Labor Day.  I’m not going to like it ever.  I will perpetually see it as an attack on American productivity to see so many people drop off the map and stop answering calls for business because they think the Labor Day Holiday gives them insulation from the realities of a productive society that needs a question answered at 9 AM on Labor Day.  AI answers the calls.  People, not so much so.  Which is why I think AI is so good.  If people want to work less, put in fewer hours, and demand more pay for their time, I’d rather deal with a robot or an AI program that does all that work and then some, without all the complaints.  I do love many of these technical breakthroughs that involve automation, because I hate to see manufacturing facilities with empty parking lots on a Saturday.  Or after 5 PM on a weekday.  To me, success is a complete shop at 2 AM or vibrant work on a Saturday with lots of cars in it.  And the best work environment is one where those who aren’t happy to see Fridays can work without other lazy people dragging them down.  There are too many lazy people in the world, and the world will be a lot better off if people worked more, not less.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?

All Unionized Labor Should Be Illegal if Tax Money is Involved: They want to be highly paid without the results to justify it

There is, of course, more to the story.  I certainly heard the exasperation in the Louder with Crowder team as they investigated the horrendous story of the massive mishandling of a Butler Tech intern at the Butler County jail, which led to sex and the corruption of a minor in really disastrous ways.  As the story unfolded and all the adults involved pointed at each other for the blame, I saw on people’s faces and could hear in their words that they were exasperated by the lack of responsibility provided by the adults.  And here’s the thing: just a few days before this story broke, I had a chance to talk to Sheriff Jones quite a bit, and I am sure he and I agree on much more than we disagree with.  If we watched a bunch of old westerns on a Saturday afternoon, we would likely like the same things about them and share a sense of justice that would be enjoyable.  As people, as it is with most people, we agree on most things.  If we had a Thanksgiving dinner together, along with a bunch of other random people, I know there would be a lot more in common than not.  Differences occur when individual people try to bend themselves toward group-oriented consensus, where they toss their values out the window in trade for the power of group rule.  And that is what is going on with this Butler County case and why all the adults are complicit.  And why is the little girl being prosecuted while all the adults slither into the background to hide behind their labor unions and collective bargaining agreements?  This is why they are in labor unions so that the power of the group can leverage responsibility away from them in case something goes wrong, which it certainly did in this case. 

Probably the most guilty person in all this is the Butler Tech teacher, Aaron Fitzgerald, who ran the criminal justice program and was responsible for putting that 17-year-old girl unsupervised into a jail with a bunch of criminals and murderers, so often that she established sexual relationships with them.  Even more, some of the inmates were claiming her as a wife and were trying to “lock her down,” so we aren’t talking about a casual mistake that happened once or twice.  It happened repeatedly, systemically, and it was how Aaron Fitzgerald ran his program and the dangers he put the kids in with his permissive attitude. I would further blame the board at Butler Tech for their permissive, progressive attitudes about sex and their behavior in public, such as Julie Shaffer from the Lakota school board has shown to all the adults in charge, and the breadcrumbs of the blame certainly fall at their doorstep.  The Louder with Crowder crew went to Aaron’s house to talk to him about this case, and he freaked out.  But what was revealed was that he had a nice home in a very nice neighborhood.  That in itself isn’t uncommon in Butler County, Ohio.  But his sense of entitlement is something we had just witnessed on the whole Lakota schools superintendent issue, where reckless sexual lifestyles destroyed that guy once the public learned just how bad they were.  These are unionized employees with a sense of entitlement that is common in most labor union activity, where they want to be paid top dollar for some of the worst results that come from any labor activity.  They want all the money without any responsibility.  And when they get into trouble, as they certainly have in Butler County, Ohio, they circle the wagons and blame everyone who isn’t in the union.  In this case, the only person without a labor union relationship is the little girl. 

Over the years, I have argued this point extensively, and the impact of the disaster hasn’t changed.  I think it should be illegal for any labor union to be connected in any way to a taxpayer dollar.  We went down that path in 2012 when we thought we had a good governor in Kasich before everyone got a hold of him and destroyed him into just another progressive.  Sheriff Jones and I were on opposite ends of that issue, and they managed to hang on to their government unions for a while longer.  These days, President Trump has the labor union vote, so everyone is in a big Republican tent these days on the issue.  But it doesn’t change what labor unions are.  And what you get with them is too expensive, and the performance is terrible.  In this Butler Tech case, the measure of success is whether they have kids to put in the program.  Not what they learn or what happens to them along the way.  Unionized labor attached to government has been a disaster, and what you get from them is a horrendous performance with a perpetual sense of entitlement, like they are owed their jobs.  And they don’t feel they have to compete with anybody else to have them.  Then, when something goes wrong, they collectively circle the wagons and protect each other from the results.  Their goals are not in performance but in concealment and protection from expectations in results. 

Sheriff Jones, the same guy who talks to me about law and order and not putting up with terrorists coming into our community, took the union position on this Butler County jail case, saying that their prosecution of the girl was based on her admission.  And that all the kids sign a waiver (I don’t think sodomizing kids was on the sheet) and that she was almost 18, so that’s close enough.  She could be hired into the jail in a few months anyway.   And he said these things to reporters, thinking they were perfectly acceptable statements in a sane world.  And I know he doesn’t believe any of those things, yet he was saying them, as all brotherhood members do when one of them gets into trouble.  That’s why those kinds of people seek union membership.  And labor unions aren’t just a disaster in government occupations.  In the private sector, if you call up a supplier looking for your thing, and the person you are talking to can see it on a shipping dock through a window, waiting for someone to put it on a skid to be loaded onto a truck.  But they can’t load it themselves because they need a union guy to do it, so they have to wait for him to come off his 4-hour break, watching Loony Toons on his cell phone to load the truck.  That is how it is with all unionized labor and why they aren’t competitive in the world marketplace.  They cost too much, do too little, and when you need to know who’s responsible, they never admit to anything.  When they get into trouble, they rally behind their brother and sisterhoods to protect each other from judgment.  And that is why everyone involved gets away with horrendous behavior.  The only people who pay are those who are not in the union.  The union members, or those who directly benefit from the unionized labor, get away with everything because it’s part of their collective bargaining strategy.  If you try to pin them down on something then they take the labor away completely, making enforcement of policy nearly impossible.  So everyone just avoids punishment and discipline from bad decisions.  And it’s so disgraceful that it takes logic and good people and turns them into grotesque monsters who perpetuate evil to get easy and unearned paychecks, as is the case with Aaron Fitzgerald and many others.   

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

The Hidden Benefit of ‘Godzilla Minus One’: Understanding Budgets and Costs Imposed by organized labor and anti-capitalist Activities

There is another essential attribute of the new Godzilla film, Godzilla Minus One, at the heart of the global populist movement that is important to talk about.  Probably the most important thing in the world that has lingered always in the background and is now apparent for all to see.  In talking about how good Godzilla Minus One is, the obvious question everyone has is how could Japan produce a movie like this when the same kind of blockbuster produced by Disney in America would cost 300 million dollars.  The average moviegoer could watch Godzilla Minus One, Indiana Jones, and the Dial of Destiny and think they are of the same quality in every category: acting, special effects, music, writing, scale of production, everything.  So how was Godzilla Minus One so profitable, whereas all the current Hollywood productions or movies anywhere in the world these days, especially where the financial influence of the World Economic Forum has its hands in the production, are not able to compete?  Well, this is something I have been talking about for many decades and I said this was going to happen to the film industry for many years.  Unionized labor has destroyed the financial models of movie production, shown dramatically when a foreign film like Godzilla Minus One is shown in a movie theater along with the latest blockbusters produced by Hollywood and other markets.  Because of many market conditions unique to recovery from COVID lockdowns, theater owners are desperate to show anything that the public might want to see.  Just two or three years ago, a movie like Godzilla Minus One would not have played in a movie theater in the United States.  People would never see it, but in today’s market, where Hollywood products can’t keep up with demand, a movie like Godzilla Minus One gets a chance to be seen, which has burst down the door to an issue that can only be revealed by direct competition.   

Much of the way we are told about success in the world has been shaped by labor unions attached to the film industry, the mainstream media, and government reporting.  The ultimate solution to broken budgets and general performance everywhere in the world, no matter the product, is to make labor unions illegal, especially in government work and situations that prevent a competitive environment.  America has gone through just this sort of thing when it comes to the car industry, or most sectors of manufacturing that can’t compete with cheap foreign labor.  Well, it is not that the labor is cheap in foreign markets, but instead that the communist labor unions, all of which were formed out of elements of Marxism, have driven up the cost of labor not just in the increases in headcount but in how much each one actually costs.  When the government reports the numbers, as they do in American and European markets, of course, they will give a spin that suits them, not necessarily one that is reflected in reality.  Then, when the trade journals are either in unions themselves or are very sympathetic, the coverage has been how much studios spend on movies to make, not on their quality.  This has certainly been the case with Disney where to satisfy their radical employee base, all connected to labor unions, the approach has been to just outrun the costs, which have crippled them in 2023.  When it costs 500 million dollars to get a blockbuster out the door and into a theater, disaster is not far behind.  For a lot of these Hollywood productions, a movie budget to satisfy all the labor demands that you see at the end credits of every motion picture, 200-300 million on actually making the movie, then another 200 million in marketing to feed the machine, a film has to make a billion dollars at the box office to get into a profit category, and that just isn’t realistic, as Disney has discovered in 2023. 

Then, to make matters worse, these Disney movies have been loaded with content people don’t want to see.  The filmmaking has been lazy, and the product is lackluster when it gets to the screen.  It shows when all the people making the movie are only in it to get paid.  A film like Godzilla Minus One was created by hungry filmmakers full of passion, evident in what ended up on the screen, shocking many people.  But this is the exact reason why government reforms never happen and why budgets get wrecked in all production environments where Marxist labor unions have driven up costs and taken away the ambition of good merit from the products they produce, such as in public education in America that has become useless to most people for all the same reasons.  The labor costs too much and doesn’t do enough of what it’s supposed to.  When labor unions take over the management of an endeavor, they determine the pay rate and how many people need to be involved in the process, which then blows up all the financial attributes.  In a situation like this, where a side-by-side comparison isn’t usually available, the problem becomes apparent in the movie industry.  But this same rot is in just about every endeavor that involves money and financing, even in American intelligence agencies.  I will have some serious horror stories to provide about the CDC and how President Reagan was thinking of cutting the entire department, giving rise to Dr. Fauci’s radicalism.  Most bad things happen when lazy people seek funding not based on performance but emotion, such as fear of a new virus that can be manufactured in a lab and released from Wuhan, China.  That’s a topic all its own. 

The trick in hiding all this from the public has been to control the narrative, and the labor unions have been attached to most of the reporting.  But in 2023, because the declining Hollywood product has most abused theater owners, they have had to turn to direct competition to survive, which has set up this obvious matchup.  The same occurred when the Japanese entered the car market, and the Big Three in America found they could not compete in cost and quality because unionized labor took away competitive factors that could keep the costs down for the consumer.  Most of the problems in the world, including the CRs that Speaker Johnson is trying to work through Congress to keep the government open, are due to the outrageous costs of supporting all those expensive government employees.  Even the funding of Ukraine, which has been a topic, is to spend billions of dollars to pay for the massive administrative state government there to support this globalist employment structure.  All of them are failing under their weight; what they do for the world isn’t worth the money it costs to keep them.  Populism is rising everywhere because people would rather see Godzilla Minus One than the latest holiday offering by Disney and the other major studios.  The labor unions seek to destroy competition to justify their outrageous costs and sluggish performance.  But because of their actions, they have forced competition to overtake them to satisfy the market demands of a hungry public that wants to see a good movie, buy a nice car, or have a government that works for them and doesn’t get in the way of what society needs.  I know we are in a time when union supporters are moving toward Trump, and Trump is pro-union, and it’s not as much of a political issue for Republicans as it has been or should be.  But when you want to know why things are so expensive, why so many useless people perform the work, and how they keep their jobs underperforming constantly, the source is the Marxist labor unions that have embedded themselves in the process.  Where they aren’t, the quality and profit improve dramatically.  And if we are ever going to drain the swamp, the government unions will have to be made illegal.  And any future budget controls taken out of their hands, from the local public school to the control of the FBI and CIA.  Organized labor has destroyed them all. 

Rich Hoffman

The NFL Should Have Never Called Off the Bengals/Bills Game: Woke values are attacking the core of American lifestyles

You gotta know what kind of fight we are fighting and how the enemy is fighting it. I said it the night of the big football game that the NFL should have never called off the event during the first quarter when Damar Hamlin had a heart attack on the field after a tackle made. The Cincinnati Bengals game with the Buffalo Bills was an event of big consequences; both teams were fighting for a top seed in the upcoming playoffs and are two of the best teams in the NFL. I wasn’t at that particular game, but I knew a lot of people who were, and I know they looked forward to it all weekend and were prepared to spend many thousands of dollars to enjoy it. But after Bill’s safety, Hamlin made a big hit; he collapsed on the field unconscious and it looked very scary. It turned out to be a heart attack, and CPR was performed on him in the middle of the Cincinnati stadium, with more than 70,000 people on hand watching and millions more seeing it on live television. After some time went on and they could remove the player from the field, the NFL called the game off, astonishingly, and the night was over as far as football, Monday Night Football at that. I thought it was a terrible decision by the NFL, a terribly woke one. It wasn’t a decision that would help Damar Hamlin, and it would ruin the playoff picture for many teams. The NFL would end up canceling the game for the year, which makes it terrible for all the teams competing because now, suddenly, the two best teams are going into the playoffs playing one less game for the year. That’s not fair to anybody. 

Obviously, the NFL is sensitive to all the attacks on them by woke elements of society, that the sport is too violent, that it’s a gladiator sport that exploits young people for the entertainment of everyone else. The pressure from pressure groups regarding concussion protocols is behind just about everything the NFL does these days, but everyone must understand that those concerns are not about safety. They are exploited that way, but their intent is just to attack another element of American society by trying to change the values we have for it. Such as, in this Bengals/Bills game, one deadly injury is suddenly bigger than the game itself and the playoffs and all the fans in the stands cheering them on. By the modern woke rules of anti-American sentiment, like many things are poised against American activities in business and entertainment, safety is the new club to ruin our country disguised as helpful but maliciously introduced to freeze unknowing executives into satisfying radical elements of society toward compliance. The NFL executives knew that if they played the game after removing Hamlin, the media would have a field day of criticism, which they have experienced several times this past season, especially regarding the Miami Dolphins quarterback who passed out frighteningly, essentially being knocked out for the season. Yes, football is a violent sport; everyone knows that going in. The players get paid a lot of money because of that risk to their lives and health, and fans know what they are watching. But the pressure groups are trying to change that, and the result is bad press for the NFL as a corporate product, and as we all know by now, the attacks against America have been to erode away the values of our corporations, especially in our entertainment culture. 

The result was sickening. I’ve been a first responder for the last three decades and have seen more than a fair share of terrible things happening to people, just as scary as Damar Hamlin experienced. The NFL has thousands of employees who are on a very public stage all the time. Statistically, there will always be strange things that happen, such as 24-year-old kids who have heart attacks that shouldn’t happen to anybody under 50. We will likely learn that the Covid shot the NFL forced on many of the young players has increased their risk of these kinds of things, and for liability reasons, the NFL is very sensitive to their blame for harming the health of so many young people. So they overplayed their hand. Then again, the pressure to force players to take the Covid shot came from the same radical, anti-American elements who were behind the government push and were behind pushing for players not to stand for the National Anthem. Watching the players stand around Damar Hamlin was embarrassing; these were young people raised in a coddled society by all these woke public school elements who were visibly shaken by the experience. And they shouldn’t have been. Bad things happen, and part of the game of football is managing bad things to a successful conclusion, whether inclement weather, physical injury or the pressure of rivalries. To see all these big, tough, young people crying on the field over a heart attack victim was very embarrassing, then to hear the media report that condition as a value. The players should be stoically valiant and supportive of each other through strength. Instead, weakness, sadness, and even panic were featured in the news coverage and looked bad to an equally sensitive audience. Because of the pressure groups, the NFL had to send the world a message that their individual players were bigger than the game, and they put safety and security as the number one priority, so they called off the game.

Even worse, we are dealing with entertainment unions here, and you know what I say about those, which is true. All labor unions are communist organizations, as envisioned by Karl Marx. They are anti-American in their design and are meant to threaten work stoppages to leverage shared protections for workers, which they exploit as ground troops in a different kind of war, in this case, against capitalism and the economy of America. And the labor union has its members always poised against management, and the concussion protocols have forced the NFL to really soften the game to satisfy these radical leftist elements. On camera, we have seen violent conditions before, especially compound fractures. I remember a Super Bowl in which the Bengals were in, where a grotesque injury occurred. The Super Bowl didn’t stop playing. They carted the guy off the field and resumed play as they should have. But over the years, the players union has softened up its members to align with the big leftist radicals in the media who are fully intent on changing the way Americans value things; it’s just another approach to the ESG madness. And for the first time that I can remember, especially regarding such a big game, the NFL caved to those radical elements and called off a game, which set a dangerous precedent. American football is not like the European soccer game; part of the appeal is toughness and fighting through adversity, even fear. And those are the very elements that are attacking the NFL product, through the players union, through liberal media, through regulations that force mandated vaccines that feature safety and security over victory and accomplishment. And for that reason alone, the NFL should have never called off that football game. Because the battle is bigger than the people involved, and when injuries happen, take care of those people the best you can. But the show, as is a motto in America on many fronts, must go on, always.

Rich Hoffman

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Sheriff Jones, The R.A.T.: When Trump comes to town, he will have very clean shoes

Well, you could see why people would be concerned, and they are. Now that there have been whistleblowers who have pointed out things that Matt Miller has been involved in, the superintendent of Lakota schools, of extremely bad character, those whistleblowers are now worried about retaliation from the superintendent’s friend Sheriff Jones. During the transcript of the police investigation into Matt Miller’s very controversial sex life, the scraggly, overpaid, online dating addict name-dropped Sheriff Jones to the investigators to let them know about me and my role in a few recent political campaigns purely to garner favor with the police to support him in the matter. And in all likelihood, it worked. It was out of context to the rest of the investigation when Miller brought up my name in connection to the recent election of Thomas Hall over the Sheriff Jones-supported Matt King.  Sheriff Jones had paraded King around purely out of spite against Hall, and I worked to help the very good incumbent Hall as Sheriff Jones went about to utterly destroy the very nice young man, purely out of vengeance. Well, everyone knows when I support a candidate, they usually win. And Jones has found his brand to be much less influential in these post-Tea Party years. There has been a similar rift between the Sheriff and me over Roger Reynolds, the Butler County auditor. The Sheriff wants him out and to replace him with another friend of mine, Bruce Jones. Why, well, Bruce isn’t as radically transparent as Roger is with the books, and Jones wants to send a message, complete with seven indictments, including jail time. So clearly, for his defense with the police, Mat Miller was doing a little name-dropping from information he would have from behind-the-scenes activity. And people worry that now that Sheriff Jones is helping Matt Miller perceptually with his major social problems, people assume that the wrath of Sheriff Jones and the power of the Butler County Sheriff’s Department will be turned toward them for a destiny of misfortune. 

I would say, fear not. I have known Sheriff Jones for over 20 years. While he might be vengeful, he’s generally a good man, and I would vote for him again for Sheriff. I’ve had these kinds of rifts with him over that entire span of time, and my impression is that he’s been a good sheriff. We’ve worked together on things like immigration issues during the early days of the Tea Party. Then we’ve been enemies regarding public sector unions. I’m against unions altogether, while he thinks they are the greatest thing in the world. People can have disagreements without things getting out of hand. What is going on with Matt Miller has been an investigation into criminal wrongdoing. So far, the evidence points to bizarre sexual practices with adults who think about kids. And that’s for the public to figure out if they are comfortable with. But for the police to suddenly become Matt Miller’s personal hit squad led by Sheriff Jones, that’s not going to happen. People should not worry about the fear of political wrath in the aftermath of all the events of 2022.

Many people say that Sheriff Jones is the biggest RINO in Butler County. (Republican in Name Only). I wouldn’t say that. I think Sheriff Jones is a Democrat most of the time, that he plays a Republican on stage when he gives a speech or is on WLW radio with his friend Bill Cunningham, a fellow Democrat also. When there are Democrats in the White House, Sheriff Jones is a Democrat in public. But I can say that when Trump was in office, Sheriff Jones was very much a Republican. He was one of the early supporters of Trump. And from 2015, there was great harmony in the Butler County Republican Party for the first time in years because of Trump. And during that time, Sheriff Jones and I were even friendly with each other in public. I even saw him at Ace Hardware in Liberty Township and said hi.

So if Jones isn’t a RINO, then what is he? I would say he’s a R.A.T.  (Republican Around Trump). When Trump makes his announcement soon that he is running for president again, then Sheriff Jones will start acting like a Republican again. And Republicans aren’t known for abusing their authority to use the power of their office to fulfill political hits like Matt Miller is obviously hoping to cover up his bad behavior from public opinion. So even if today Sheriff Jones is acting like a vindictive Democrat with all the power of the police at his disposal, fear not, Trump will be running for president again soon, and Sheriff Jones being the very political creature that he is, will want to be on the right side of history. After all, Trump used to be a Democrat, so moderates who spend most of their lives on the fence between liberalism and conservatism find Trump very appealing. And the Republican Party of Butler County will be united again. I certainly didn’t spike the football when it came to Thomas Hall. Sheriff Jones put his personal brand all in behind Matt King. I thought Matt was a nice young man, but I supported Hall, who worked like a saint amongst sinners in Hell to redeem their very souls before an apocalypse to win that election. And Thomas won despite all the wrath of Sheriff Jones. And the same thing will happen when it comes to Roger Reynolds and any other character Jones has taken aim at for purely political reasons. Once Trump announced that he was running again, which he will do because the FBI has raided Trump’s home and gone through the personal clothes of his wife, Melania. Sheriff Jones will rediscover his Republican nature, and the world will be much better off.

And when Trump comes to Butler County the next time, he will have very clean shoes from all the bootlickers who want a picture next to him. People who today are denying that there was election fraud and have been saying that Trump is too mean to be president. I’ve seen Sheriff Jones around Trump, and when he is, the Sheriff starts glowing like a little boy. The bootlickers do line up to be near real power, and Trump has that real power that comes from inner self-confidence and a sense of purpose in life. The top of the food chain in political sentiment. It’s very interesting to watch. But by the time Trump returns to Butler County, Ohio, for future political events, many of these fears about Matt Miller will long be over. People don’t have to worry about the police following them home and harassing them to no end. Just put a Trump sticker on your car, or wear a MAGA hat, and you will be fine. Because when Trump is running for office, and when he’s in town, Sheriff Jones the R.A.T. will be a valuable ally. He will be less inclined to support scandalous characters and will quickly adapt to the Trump agenda. A lot of the trouble mentioned here has come from the power vacuum of Trump not being in office and the thought that progressive politics would be making a comeback under Joe Biden in the wake of the Covid lockdowns. But that is not the future. Trump is the future, and when he is in Butler County, Ohio, his shoes will be clean, and the personal vendettas will be directed elsewhere for the good of the Republican Party. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Lakota School Levy and the Infamy of Bad Decisions.

I have said a lot about education, and the danger of institutional behavior.  But this is not intended to further analyze that issue.  This is to cover the Lakota School Levy which is on its second attempt in 6 months and promises to be a particularly bloody fight this time around. 

So let me set the stage:

The teachers have just agreed to a pay freeze under a union contract that took months to arrive at.  The districts developers are looking at a tanked economy where many, many properties are left without tenants to support the tax requirements.  The public in general are also feeling the heat of the recession, which after the smoke clears in historical context, is probably a legitimate depression, and many are barely hanging on to their homes as they are victims of the housing bubble.  Lakota has been around a while, so there are a large number of senior citizens in the district that are on fixed incomes and without children in the district, and their charity is strained to a breaking point.  There is a governor in Strickland that is a big government guy, who is tight with labor unions as his base support, and is very close to the president of the United States, who shares much in common with Ohio’s governor.  To both men, Ohio is a battle ground state where much is at stake politically and the nation is watching closely.  And in that context, Lakota is the 7th largest school system in the state.  It is Ohio’s largest “Excellent” district nine years running with distinction two years in a row. 

I contemplated this heavily while practicing in my back yard.

And it really is that simple if you take the emotion away.

The opponents of the levy have joined together, with myself being in that category.  We’re against it for all different reasons.  Mine are that I see the school system displaying the same types of problems we have in government, where accountability is hard to come by, and everything is fixed by spending more money.  And the school government is so big; it’s folding over its own weight financially.         

The Pro Levy people are typically residents that have children in the school system, and many of them moved to the district because of the schools.  And they are threatening to move if the levy fails to a district that supports levies.  The rest of the supporters are employees of the school system in some way and of course they are concerned about the passage of the levy for their own financial stability. 

I listen to the values of the school system and the things they are proud of, like a 90% college attendance rate, a graduation rate of 94.7%.  A student attendance rate of 96.5%.  During 2009-2010 there were 11 National Merit Semi-Finalists.  There was 1 Presidential Scholar in 2008.  They operate at a spending rate per pupil of $9,503 while the State average is $10,253, so on paper, everything sounds profitable. 

But to my thinking, all those statistics are a smoke screen.  All the attendance stats are to the credit of the parents, who obviously care enough about their children to buy a home in a great school district, so naturally, those kids will go to college, attendance will be great, and there will be national honors in a group that has parents that takes education seriously.  And while it is commendable that the school district does operate under the average, it does not question whether or not $9,000 per child actually translates to true excellence.  It doesn’t take much to poke holes in the aspects of their public service that they take pride in; because most of the merit is simply items they are taking credit for.  In fact, I think it is cowardly, to ride on the back of exceptional students, and caring parents, in order to secure funding for an institutional giant that serves as a catalyst for a powerful union. 

That is the beginning of the problem.  Over the years, the Lakota Education Association has grown in power and influence, and this of course leads to the overall problem of political backing of the National Teachers Union which is an organization that I don’t wish to endorse, because the money given to this organization often goes to political agenda’s that I do not support.  Judy Buschle, who just recently announced she was stepping down as the LEA President, has served as the Ohio Education Association board of directors and the National Education Association Resolutions Committee and is a particularly powerful influence locally, and has successfully negotiated many contracts with a bewildered Lakota board of education committee and lap dog superintendants obviously intimidated by the power of the LEA.  In fact, Buschle has been so successful, that the average wage for a teacher at Lakota is $59,000 without any further benefits considered.  And I make that assessment by attending a school board meeting.   I did so after the last levy failure to see if my opinion of the whole situation had been wrong.  I left that June meeting utterly disgusted.  The board was completely outmatched by the union presence.  Don’t believe me, watch the tape.  They film it and have it available for you to judge.  The union people including Mrs. Buschle sat right behind me and were absolutely disrespectful during the meeting.  It was so bad that a parent took the podium and shouted down the union people, blaming them for the anger from the community as to why the levy failed in May.  I left that meeting realizing that everyone in the administration was over their head with the size of the problems they were trying to solve, and the union controlled everything.  So there wasn’t anything they could tell me that would earn my vote until they made serious changes to their leadership structure and outside influence.   

If you’re like me, a person that loves traditional American values, small government, and is suspicious of institutional influence, it is not an option to indirectly supply money to an organization that will then support a governor like Ted Strickland, or a President like Obama.  Even if I did want to give money to the school, because I don’t want my money indirectly converted to union support for a politician that will then in turn come after the way of life that I personally value.  The presence of the powerful union creates a barrier between a person like me, and the school system that I value because I disagree with the philosophy of that union and the politics they represent.  They certainly have a right to exist, but not from the funding of my tax dollars.    

The indirect nature of course comes from the union dues of the teachers, which are paid with our tax dollars.  And because their contracts make them very secure, and keep the highest paid workers the longest, letting go of the teachers with less tenure when they must, those union dues are then funneled to political activity.  Not the kids.  Nothing against Mrs. Buschle, but my political affiliation is much different than her’s, and I don’t wish to support her activity with my money.  So for me, that is the number one reason for not voting for the levy.  No matter how many presentations they present to plead to the public, they still have a costly union that stands between the school system and the public.  As long as that exists, it prevents my full support in a school system.

This isn’t new for me.  I’ve been against union activity for many, many years.  I worked for one once, and it was very contentious and filled with many stories that will be told around water coolers for years.  Many of those stories involve conflict.  I have no tolerance for thug like behavior that comes from pack mentality that often comes out in strikes and threatened union stewards.  I personally blame that type of organization for making America less competitive and responding slowly to changing economic conditions which have resulted in exporting jobs to China, and India.  And such an organization even locally migrates influence up the ladder to large global affiliations that conduct political movement that by-passes our ability to vote.  I can see a time when unions did some good, but as they’ve evolved, they just kept growing to where they became as bad as the companies they originally sought to protect people from.    

But many dissenters to the levy are voting strictly on cost.  They may have been generous in the past, but can no longer say yes because now they are hanging on in a tough economy.  And while many would love to pay the levy, they simply can’t because the taxes are just too high.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a business, or a residential property, the taxes have reached a place where too much is just too much. 

In response the school system is doing the predictable thing; they are making threats, by passing out on the first day of school literature for kids to send home to their parents lobbying for the levy.  Such literature professes that the school system will have to cut an additional $12 million to the $13 million that have been made already.  There will be increases in class size, cuts to two thirds of the athletic budget including elimination of junior high athletics, the termination of 130+ additional teachers and staff, and many other issues.  Superintendent Mike Taylor made the comment that people can’t expect to see the same good school system if all these cuts are made. 

The reality is that the State and Lakota are pointing to one another.  The state needs Lakota and its success.  And Lakota blames the state for unfunded mandates as a rationale for funding.  And they count on the naïveté of the public to not look closely at the shell game.  The confusion has essentially created a revenue stream that is very lucrative to those who work in education.  And because of the union contract, most of the district’s funding is locked up.  So they can only be minimally efficient. 

Stories like we’ve heard of Butler Country Auditor Roger Reynolds who just refunded $502,186 back to the community, won’t happen in Lakota.  In fact, Lakota is getting back $120,600 from Roger’s office.  Roger achieved this savings by reducing overhead and administrative costs by 35% or otherwise $2.1 million since he took office in 2008.  When Lakota cuts, they say we are losing services.  When Roger does it, he is giving money back to the community.  That’s the philosophic difference.  The cuts Mr. Reynolds did were true, efficient cuts and quite extraordinary taking into account that the size of the Auditor’s office doesn’t come close to the enormous size of the Lakota school system.  The cuts Lakota did are cosmetic cuts that should have been done all along. 

For my support, Lakota would have to separate itself from a teachers union.  There is nothing about that relationship that I feel good about.  I simply don’t want my hard earned money going to union support that will be used against me politically.  That would be foolish.  But I suspect that the rest of the community would require a business manager that could come into the school system and dramatically cut costs in a way that Jack Welsh did for GE, and similar personalities have done when costs migrate to unsustainable levels in large organizations.  The community just doesn’t have the money to support levies the way they have in the past, and now we’ve reached a diminishing return.  The growth was caused by aggressive development, and the school system grew because the people moving to the district came here for the schools.  The funding problem comes from the fact that wages migrated out of a zone that a community can fund, and the school system, and the rest of public education is guilty as well, did not stay within a reasonable budget, but allowed things to get out of control.  Dramatic restructuring of their funding practices and revenue stream will have to be implemented, and they’ll have to do it while still performing at a high level.  And the state of Ohio has to properly fund our schools, because we also pay taxes to the state and expect that money to be used where we need it.  And our schools need it.    

If the levy fails, and the pro levy people leave, like they threaten I know the district will survive.  I lived in the district back in the days when Lakota was rural.  Lakota was a good school then, and it will always be, because a school reflects the community, and the community has good people in it.  If the new comers move out, they’ll just overload another district the way they have Lakota, in search of quick and easy answers which never come.

It is naive to even consider that throwing money at Lakota’s problem will solve anything. The solution to the problem will be tough, but starts with understanding that the school system is not the community.  The community will always be good if the people in it are excellent.  It is only natural that kids that come from good people will make a school system good too. 
But the teachers and administrators don’t make good kids or good people.  Parents do that.  Don’t let them take credit for the things you’ve done as a parent.

Rich Hoffman

www.overmanwarrior.com