Tag: warrior

The DNC Convention Looters: We DON’T all belong to government

At this point I’m not even going to venture to guess what Democratic strategists were thinking when they made the statement that “we all belong to government” at the start of the DNC convention. It is clear that those people are not Americans as you and I might think of them, but some other species all together. Read the Washington Times at the link below to investigate more about that strange species of humanoid called “Democrats.” Just keep in mind that most public teachers, firefighters, cops, TSA employees, union workers, welfare recipients, illegal immigrants, race baiters, feminists, IRS employees—virtually anyone who collects a government pay check thinks like these strange Democrats. You would think they would avoid such stereotypes with carefully worded speeches, but no, right out of the gate, they professed their love of government, which is contrary to everything we’d like to believe about the freest country on earth.

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/economic-sophisms/2012/sep/4/dnc-video-government-only-thing-we-all-belong/

I was not a fan of the RNC convention or the machine politics it represents. But listening to the speakers, I can say with all honesty that they at least sound like normal people. The DNC convention on the other hand sounded like beings from some other planet who have a political ideology that is grossly out-of-touch, entirely too emotional, and completely devoid of logic. At the start of their convention the national debt clock marched beyond the 16 trillion dollar mark, which is absolutely devastating. It’s appalling, unequivocally irresponsible, and every single politician involved in that 16 trillion dollar number should be thrown out of office immediately. All Republicans, all Democrats, all old people, all young people, all men, women, white men, black men, Asians, Latinos, everyone—who played a role in that horrendous national debt should lose their job as the earliest possible time.

The Democrats more than any group are most guilty for that number. For the first two years of Obama’s presidency they controlled the House, the Senate, and The White House, and the rapid rise in the debt shows it. The Republicans who were voted into office in 2010 have attempted to propose a responsible budget but it has been blocked by Senate Democrats and The White House with cries of pandering toward a mythical middle-class, the muddy middle of social orthodox.

What is disguised in their political approach at the DNC convention is a love of power, a truly disgusting enjoyment of being members of the political class. The Cincinnati firefighter who spoke at the DNC convention regarding Senate Bill 5 and the union interest against Republican reforms to collective bargaining was never a real conservative. He may have thought he was in the days when he supported John Kasich for governor over Ted Strickland, but many Republicans discovered during the fight in Ohio over collective bargaining that they were in fact progressives who were not traditional conservatives, but had been bitten by the labor union tendency for social looting at tax payer expense. The firefighter from Cincinnati was simply a pawn for the union desire to maintain their political power, which Ohio tried to fix. But the power of the unions, which is legalized theft of tax payer dollars showed how deep into Ohio’s political system they resided. Those were the kinds of people the DNC convention put up to speak as success stories. People like the progressive firefighter are what they consider the strength of their platform. That’s bad.

All through the DNC convention it was public employees like the firefighter, and teachers who Democrates like Barack Obama think are so valuable. Yet I would argue that the “education funding” they hold in such high esteem is worthless if it is taught by the kind of idiots who attended the Democratic Convention. The infrastructure jobs that Obama and his political boot lickers speak of involve government employees who make up the “middle class,” where people in the “political class” rule with legislation. People like the Cincinnati firefighter don’t care to be indentified as a member of the “middle class” because they are essentially un-ambitious, and are happy to trade their freedoms for a union wage that allows them to buy bass boats, $200K homes, and fund their yearly vacations with unused workdays, compliments of the American taxpayer.

I find the designation of being a member of middle class to be an insult. It’s like being told that you are in the middle of a competitive event and you rank in the middle of the pack. It’s an un-American concept, the middle. We don’t celebrate football teams that come in “middle place.” We don’t give awards to runners who cross the finish line in the “middle.” Only in politics do we celebrate being average, because that’s where the voters are, and for the Democrats at the DNC, they cater to the lazy, the unsophisticated, the poor with the promise of stealing the wealth of others through legislation, and giving it to those who don’t have the ambition to even attempt to be the best at what they do. Is it any wonder why the economy is failing? Is it any mystery why the national debt is so large? It’s because of the legalized looting that government embarks on and no group has been guiltier than the Democrats.

As the DNC organizers paraded out Bill Clinton, an impeached, lying president who got caught letting a woman his daughter’s age giving him oral sex in the Oval Office, they clapped as though he were a celebrity. And to the intellectual loser, and morally inept, Clinton is their hero. To me he’s just another scum bag looter who claims the success of his balance budget to his economic wizardry while riding the coat tails of Reaganomics in the 1980’s. Yes Reagan spent too much on defense spending, but we were engaged in a Cold War with the Soviet Union at the time, and it was justified. Reaganomics brought to America cheap oil, cheap gas, cheap homes, job creation, and an economy that produced enormous GDP numbers. In the 1990’s in the wake of that success the tech bomb occurred and Bill Clinton coming out of his cocaine induced sexploits let the Republicans like Newt Gingrich and John Kasich balance the American budget as he went along with it to the benefit of the country.

Unlike Obama, Clinton was a looter that was more than happy to let other people do all the work, because he planned to take the credit for it. Obama plans change and transformation in America and the only people who find that message appealing are those who are too lazy to compete. Obama’s message to the NFL would be not worry about building a championship team, because he would spread the wealth. He’d be inclined to take away the players of a really good team and give them to the team performing in the middle to be “fair.” The result would be of course an NFL that doesn’t even try to win the Superbowl, because the prize at the end of the season would be cheapened by the president’s interference. But that is the essence of Obama’s economic platform and the summary of the DNC convention, and they wonder why they are failing economically.

They must be the most bizarre collection of misfits assembled in one place. Listening to them speak it is shocking that half of them can get out of bed. They are certainly the bottom rungs of society, and are embarrassments to the future of America. Listening to them speak I get the feeling that they should not even have a political party. Who do they represent? Who are the idiots who would vote for such fools?

The answer is that it’s the two faced public employees who will believe anything the people who give them a pay check tell them to believe. The Cincinnati firefighter is not a man of conviction, a pillar of the community. He’s just another looter looking for a government handout, and since he saw that Kasich and the Ohio Republicans—(myself included—proudly) wanted to take that handout of collective bargaining away, he was willing to switch parties and join the rest of the political looters at the DNC convention.

The debt clock breeched the 16 trillion dollar mark because of idiots like what spoke at the DNC convention. They are looters in every possible meaning of the word. They take credit for the actions of others, they make their livings off legalized theft, and they have no personal convictions aside from a progressive political platform. They govern from their feelings, not their heads. They seek fairness instead of siphoning to discover the best among us. It is because of these traits that they will all be failures at everything they do in their lives, except steal from those who are already successful. Listening to them speak as a fellow American, I can’t find any common ground with anything they utter. Fairness, and being nice sounds good, but it is expensive, and when a political platform is built with emotion, it will of course be expensive. Look at public education for an example. In America, progressives in both political parties have blown the great strides made as a result of Reaganomics which at least Bill Clinton had enough sense to leave alone. But since the 90’s, looting politicians have done nothing but act irresponsibly, over emotionally, and put their priorities into all the wrong things to cover up those follies which have caused the national debt to hit 16 trillion dollars. Most of the guilty parties are at the DNC convention and every one of them should be removed from politics as detriments to our national security.

Even when they attempt to dress up their speeches to appear sophisticated their basic message is still more government expansion, more mediocre results, more “middle class.” Their views belong in Europe, not America, because it was people like them who caused “westward expansion.” The move west was not driven by greed; it was to escape the pretentious big government types from Europe who moved here after the brave adventurers paved the way in the 1800s. And the more of them who moved to America and settled in cities like Philadelphia, New York and Washington, the more the adventurers moved west to face off against the Indians in a battle for freedom to be left to govern their own ways. The DNC convention is made up of all those people the brave, the adventurous, and the enterprising spirit have sought to flee as though their lives depended on the evasion, because often it does. There is no more West, so now the looters and the adventurers are forced to finally fight it out, and that’s what’s about to happen. The two sides cannot live together as is evidence from the past. And based on the debt clock, only one side deserves to win, and it’s not the looters at the DNC convention.

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Rich HoffmanClick Here to see what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon 

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE and help spread the word! TELL SEVEN PEOPLE TO TELL SEVEN PEOPLE!

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

“Shoot Extreme” : The fine dining of target shooting in all of America

One of the true delights in life is to have a gun in your hand. Guns are the great equalizers that are among the greatest human inventions, because due to guns, tyranny has a hard time digging its claws into the individual lives of citizens. This has paved the way for a productive society not afraid to invent and to look down their nose at the political class with comfortable disdain. Because of the gun, the political class in America cannot believe that they are superior in any way to the average person. Because of the gun, freedom exists. Because of the gun, diversity of business can thrive in abundance. And because of the gun one of the most interesting businesses I have yet come across has started in West Chester, Ohio, the unusual concept called Shoot Extreme.

As I prepared to enter the Shoot Extreme facility at the corner of Tylersville and Cincinnati-Dayton Road I noticed that The Cone ice cream store was almost right across the street and I felt pride to live in a community that could sell ice cream in a unique specialized shop less than 200 yards from a shooting range that is indoor and set up to practice tactical target shooting with real guns. The concept of Shoot Extreme is a great one–move through a haunted house like maze with live ammunition and shoot at zombies that jump out at you from every direction. It’s a unique way to practice strategic skill, blow off some steam, and target shoot under pressure.

Shooting at fixed targets is one thing, and Target World in Sharonville is a wonderful venue for that. But shooting under pressure, where the shooter only has three seconds in a low light environment to identify a “friend or foe” target is a wonderful benefit to the civilian community of West Chester. It’s a wonderful option to live in a community that allows a person to get a fine steak diner at Jags, then to cap off the evening with a run through the tactical course at Shoot Extreme and take out the frustrations of the day by blasting the hordes of zombies set up throughout the maze. After the shooting is done, all the shooter has to do is turn the guns back in at the counter and Shoot Extreme takes care of cleaning and maintenance. The shooter can then have desert over at The Cone without further worry.

Needless to say, I am deeply impressed with the staff and concept at Shoot Extreme. For a gun loving community like West Chester, Mason and Liberty Twp, I would expect a place like this wonderful shooting range to be packed all the time. It is highly recommended that reservations are made online ahead of time to reserve a spot, and to fill out the release form on the website www.shootextreme.com before arrival because it speeds up the process of getting guns and ammunition just a bit quicker, because that is the goal of shooting at Shoot Extreme, to shoot zombies and to sharpen your senses.

This is a wonderful idea since some of the most popular videos games currently on the market are Undead 4, and Call of Duty. Shoot Extreme allows average people without access to military training and hardware to get a taste of tactical training in real life, beyond a video game environment where the smell of gunpowder and the urgency of the moment are elements of additional danger. For the cost of a night at the movies, a shooter can run the gauntlet of zombies and increase their combat skill level combining entertainment and practicality into a wonderful symphony.

More timid spectators might wonder why such things are important—why people would desire to shoot guns, let alone to do it in such a fantasy environment. The answer is because guns are cool, and are an important part of American culture. For those who don’t like guns, I would suggest that they do not understand what being an American is. Guns are the foundation of freedom, and it is healthy to become competent with them. I would say that shooting guns is as important as eating ice cream at The Cone, or buying new cloths at a department store. Shooting guns is the essence of freedom in America and there is simply no better way to celebrate it than with a trip to Shoot Extreme.

If you want fine dining, in West Chester, Mitchells Fish Market or Jags are the places to go. If you want to shop, then Voice of America shopping complex is where it’s all at. But if you want the fine dining equivalent of target shooting, then it is Shoot Extreme that becomes a must. This is simply the best indoor shooting experience of its kind anywhere, and it’s found in West Chester, Ohio.

The public perception of guns is that they are somehow a taboo subject, and that they should be feared. The timid types who still believe these ridiculous notions are in for a harsh reality as the new shooting range Shoot Extreme is just the tip of the iceberg for what’s coming. America has a youth that has been brought up on films and video games that heavily involve shooting, and as they come into age, thoughts about guns will loosen up considerably. I foresee a day in the not too distant future where guns will be openly carried by civilians like jewelry is displayed today. They will be just as common, and will not raise alarm when seen. And in the near future gun ranges like Extreme Shooting will be more common than unique as this range in West Chester is now.

The creation of Shoot Extreme is out of a desire for an indoor facility that gives to the public the same type of training only the military had access to before. The fun addition of zombies being the targets instead of actual terrorist insurgents only adds a layer of commercial appeal to a functionally sound tactical course that makes it just more than average entertainment. The desire of the timid to remove guns from society with rules and regulations is to suppress a fundamental American right that is never better present than at Shoot Extreme and the eradication of zombies in a mock apocalypse that can befall anyone with the price of a ticket. And the ticket is well worth it!   Part 2 of this posting will go up tomorrow and will dig deeper into the actual merit behind tactical training and the weapons involved at Shoot Extreme.  I am very proud to be a card-carrying member!

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Click Here to see what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon 

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE and help spread the word! TELL SEVEN PEOPLE TO TELL SEVEN PEOPLE!

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

Being “Vile and Disgusting”: Revealing the lazy progressives behind the teaching profession

Rich Hoffman is a vile, disgusting human being.

That quote comes from an angry mother in the comments section of the following video.

I enjoy comments like that, which I have received in copious amounts, because they say a lot about the kind of people who write them. For perspective, I can’t image writing such a thing to someone unless I’m responding to an attack from someone else. In my case, I have done nothing to the person writing the statement—I have not harmed her child in any way, I have not personally insulted her, I have not brought any ill will to her. The only I have done to cause so much anger, and to provoke such rhetoric is to say no to tax increases at the Lakota School System. The anger does not come from what I have done to her; it comes from what she wishes me to do on her behalf. It comes out of frustration that I am not willing to do what she has designed for me.

To care what someone’s opinion is—is to have respect for the person who gives the opinion. She obviously cares what my opinion is; otherwise she wouldn’t try to alter my direction with insults. To go out-of-the-way to actually insult someone, the goal is to change their behavior with peer pressure, through the condemnation. If the person being insulted does not value the opinion of the antagonist, then the insult has no power, and this is what led to the severity of her comments.

While it is true that I do insult the Obama presidency, unions, Democrats, sometimes Republicans, corrupt politicians, teachers caught in disgraceful acts, along with other issues, my comments come from anger that the people who took money from me as a tax payer are misusing it. If those people did not take something from me at some point, I would not otherwise care about the merit of their actions, but because they do, I am determined to get my money’s worth when something goes wrong. If they waste my money, they are going to hear about it, because honestly, I work too hard to make it. I do not enjoy seeing it squandered away by thieves. This is a big difference from what someone like the commenter above does, and what I do. Her anger derives from me not doing what she wishes me to, and my insults are simply getting back the value of my money spent. When I dish out insults it is to let the people know that I do not approve of how they are spending my money, and if they don’t want to hear it, then they shouldn’t take my money.

When I first became involved in the school levy issues the insults that were thrown in my direction by the same kind of pro levy supporters were that I should try to teach a class so I would know how difficult it is. My response was that I would be happy to teach a class at Lakota. In fact, I told a reporter for Spark Magazine, with the intention of Dean Hume to see it, that I would not only teach one class, but I’d teach three classes at the same time, just to show how easy it was, and to prove those teaching positions were not worth paying employees $60K per year. They didn’t take me up on my offer, so I have done my teaching here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom covering topics ranging from education reform, world history, comparative religion, mythological studies, American history, legal analysts, economic theory, literary review and many, many other issues. Basically, if a reader here wants to know something all they need to do is Google OVERMANWARRIOR, and the “KEYWORD” of their choice. Love, sex, marriage, political theory, science, psychology, just name the category and it has probably been covered here. I have written enough free information here to fill ten 100,000 word books and I have done it in my spare time, really just for fun. For all these highly paid teachers whom I heard so much about how they sacrifice so much to help children on their own time after their 7.5 hour work day is complete and getting paid very well to do it, I don’t see them going to the extra trouble I have to even back up their claims. I have seen them attempt to strike in 2008 and complain about their health insurance costs going up, but their idea of sacrifice is grading papers while they watch TV at home. I wrote ten novels worth of information for free, to help those who want to know the truth–who want to understand how things really work, and to learn what they should be learning in public education. Sometimes I do get a bit insulting, but it’s my prerogative. The bottom line is that those teachers, administrators and levy advocates have been exposed as frauds, as lazy and overpaid sloths that are too specialized and conduct their life as social parasites.

I know there are school board members at Lakota who have master’s degrees in education. I know there are teachers and parents who sincerely do care about the education of the community’s youth, but I am baffled as to why these people have not started blogs like the one I have here to compete with me, to counter my offerings with their version of the facts representing their own viewpoint. If I were a teacher making six figures, I can promise this much, I would have an education blog and I would be trying to teach the whole world everything I knew, since my living would be taken care of by the community tax payers. My proof is in the work I’ve already done. I would expect nothing less from the supposed sacrificial teachers and administrators, who claim they live, eat and breathe the benefit of their students. If that were the case, they would do a lot more for free, and they wouldn’t bitch about it by constantly asking for pay increases.

The real answer to why there aren’t more education blogs and education employees who are volunteering their time and energy for the sake of education is because they are really only in the business of teaching kids because they expect to be paid, and paid well. The reason these people think of me as vile, as disgusting, as the greatest, most diabolical threat to the security of the Lakota School District is because my actions expose their true intentions, which is to make as much money on the backs of children and pretend it’s for the greater good of humanity– that it’s a sacrifice they take at great personal cost. The reality is that those education employees are spouting union talking points, and the parents who support school levies do so because deep down inside, they are simply looking for a babysitter. If they really cared, they would go above and beyond, but they don’t.

Instead, they are using a tactic that was exposed here at this site almost two years ago called The Delphi Technique as a way to hit up tax payers for additional money to pay for their already inflated wages. The advocates of future school levies aren’t even smart enough to not call paying $167,000 for 2 different “facilitators,” to help Lakota pass a levy by name. Again Lakota is wasting money to try to pass a levy instead of just balancing their own budget with cuts to their labor! With these new facilitators they are going door to door into as many living rooms in the district over the next 6 months as possible and giving their speech as to why tax payers should pass a levy. They want a person on every street to have a “facilitator” meeting that includes everyone else on their street. That is the choice Lakota has made instead of doing any real work. The whole process is right out of the Saul Alinsky playbook. The word “Facilitator” in this case comes straight out of The Delphi Technique. They are so arrogant that they didn’t even try to hide what they are doing. Click the link below to see how it works.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/29/the-delphi-technique-how-it-works/

So when these people call me names it’s not because of the comments I make. My anger magnifies when those same people hire “facilitators” to attempt to tell me and the community I live in that the sky is green and the grass is purple and expect the statement to go unchallenged. If those people want to call me names, it comes from their anger at being exposed for what they really are. They desire to keep the truth hidden from even themselves, let alone public scrutiny, and they make statements to such an extreme effect hoping it stops my behavior. The roots of their indiscretions are to prevent resistance with an insane peer pressure tactic that is deeply troubling, and a blatant attack on reasonable thinking.

Contextually, calling me a vile, disgusting human being is more of a plea than anything. It’s a cry out to stop holding up the mirror which shows how ugly these strange collectivist levy advocates behave in the light of day, in full view of everyone. It is just as insane as walking naked in public and expecting nobody to notice, then getting mad when someone points it out. The profanity is simply a mask intended to hide a laziness that is evident to everyone. Never again can a teacher or administrator write me under a fake email address and declare that I should try teaching, because I have already done it. I do it here every day, and I do it in larger amounts than any handful of professionals employed in the field of education. So the argument of the teacher sacrifice has also flown out the window forever, because people outside the school system see how little teachers actually do compared to their own occupations, and how whiny they sound with their silly organized labor pleas. It is for that exposure that the name calling comes in my direction, because the dirty little secrets of the education monopoly have been exposed, and they are embarrassed, as well they should be. For that reason, every insult to me is an honor that I cherish, and the worse, the better because of the meaning behind the act.

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Click Here to see what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon 

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE and help spread the word! TELL SEVEN PEOPLE TO TELL SEVEN PEOPLE!

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

A City of Socialists: Why West Chester, Ohio should stay a township

One of the top 100 places to live in the entire United States is West Chester, Ohio.  In 2012 it comes in at #97 which is extremely commendable.  This is not the first time that West Chester has ranked in the top 100, which takes economic factors, quality of schools, social life, crime rates, and projected demographic forecasts into the equation.  The region around West Chester hosts nearly 100,000 people who shop, work and live in the thriving community that is one of the best places on planet earth to reside.  The real factors for why West Chester has been so successful is because there are smart people who live in West Chester, it’s very pro gun, so crime is very low, and it is still run by trustees, which is very direct representation by the citizens.  West Chester still has a small town feel with big business wealth generation. West Chester as a business community supports very high-tech business, fine dinning, and has within it just about every conceivable chain restaurant known in the country.  It is such a diverse community that it can even support one of the most unusual gun targeting ranges in the entire United States in a business that just open called Shoot Extreme.  CHECK IT OUT, CLICK HERE. 

 

Among the three trustees in West Chester one is a functioning communist, one is a functioning socialist, and the other is a functioning pure capitalist.  The functioning socialist was able to contribute a wonderful library to West Chester with a nice park that was mentioned in the #97 ranking, but little else.  Much of the economic development and diversity could be credited with the fact that one of the trustees is a functioning capitalist, which businessmen and women enjoy dealing with. And the functioning communist managed to build a sidewalk, which was quite the scandal.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  The system is not perfect, and people don’t always know what they are electing when they cast a vote for a trustee, but because the government is small in West Chester, corruption is low, and that is good for the growth and substance of a thriving community.  Also in West Chester is an active resistance to higher taxes which are always the temptations of government employees.  By fighting to keep taxes low, citizens can afford to buy larger homes and spend more money in the businesses of the area, so low taxes are key to the growth of West Chester. 

Like anywhere in the country however the temptation for decline is ever-present, and in West Chester the desire of the “wanna’ be” communist, the “wanna’ be” socialists, the bottomless pit school levy supporters, the endless fire levies, policies levies, and a yearning to loot from every business in the community and the people who work in them contains the same level of addiction as the typical porn advocate.  In West Chester, those types of people are the ones who desire to incorporate West Chester into a city from its current state of a township.  These are the people who desire centralized planning, chaotic bureaucracy to hide the corruption that pads their pockets with extra income, but more than anything a nameplate on their desk which tells the community that they are important. 

The dream of these functioning socialists are to become city council members who control millions of dollars, and ultimately to have their worthless fingers on the value of business owners who are thriving in West Chester currently.  These are the types of people who do not have the ability to produce worth on their own, because they are simply barnacles who act as parasites on society by imposing their will on those who actually create jobs, wealth, and the quality index reflected in the top #100 rating.  The advocates of West Chester incorporating wear masks of civic duty to disguise their power grab and part of that mask are cleverly disguised arguments that conceal their tendency to loot, suppress, and control thriving industries by advocating four primary motivations to move from a township to a city.  They are:

1)      Business’s are not paying their fair share of taxes, (sound familure—Obama comes to mind)

2)      A city would be more efficient, (which is completely false.  The opposite is always true.)

3)      Becoming a city will lower residential property taxes.  (False because the same advocates of a city are the same idiots who support endless school levies, any tax savings will be gobbled up by the radical unionized labor of West Chester’s largest employer, Lakota Schools.  Cincinnati Public Schools and Princeton come to mind, both have outrageous per pupil teaching costs due to their looting school boards aligned with high tax city councils.) 

4)      Becoming a city would be more prestigious.  (What is more prestigious than being one of the best areas to live in the country?  West Chester is already there.  Becoming a city would take West Chester into the other direction–Section 8 housing because it makes people feel “worldly and enlightened,” even though it’s just another form of human slavery, larger government enterprises, and more complicated zoning regulations to justify the jobs created by bloated city councils.)

Just like with school levies, the people who typically run for school board and city councils tend to be left leaning political types who fall in love with the prestige a nameplate on their desk gives them.  This is because they are not successful people in regular life, and they seek to fill those voids with public service.  The smart people, the wealth creators, the right thinking people tend not to run for political office because their time is simply worth too much per hour.  To give away 15 to 20 hours a week to community politics is a waste of their time, so it is usually only the fools who run for office, and have no idea how things work in actuality.  To expand on the arguments above in favor of incorporation consider these more detailed facts:

1)      According o West Chester’s Zoning Dept, about 35% of land in West Chester is zoned for business.  This 35% is about 60% developed.  According to the Butler County Auditor, this 35% currently pays 58% of taxes collected compared to 42% for residential (keep in mind that residential comprises about 65% of available land in West Chester).

                                     % of Land             % of Tax Paid              Index

                        Business          35%                             58%                             166%

                        Residential      65%                             42%                             64%

To further exacerbate the problem, according to American Farmland Trust, for every $1.00 a resident pays in taxes, they take out about $1.22 in services; for every $1.00 a business pays in taxes, they take out about $.45 in services.

The incorporation movement wants to punish the group that is carrying the majority of the burden…talk about killing the goose!

2)      Relative to a city being more efficient a township is the most efficient form of government currently allowed by ORC.  The Cincinnati Business Courier in 2008 ran a list of the largest tri-state governments.  Included in that list were number of employees and total population.  According the CBC, West Chester had 1 employee for every 232 people living in the community.  How does that compare to all of the cities on the list?  See below.

Municipality                Employees/Population

West Chester               1/232

Cincinnati                    1/63

Hamilton                     1/88

Middletown                1/129

Covington                   1/128

Fairfield                      1/153

Mason                         1/156

Norwood                     1/118

Blue Ash                     1/80

Lebanon                      1/148

Newport                      1/115

Oxford                                    1/174

You only have to look in the papers to see what is going on in most cities around West Chester.  The financial outlook is bleak.  West Chester is very healthy.  Our Carryover (retained earnings in the corporate world) has grown from $700,000 five years ago to $13,000,000 today.  You would be hard pressed to find a city that is more efficient than a township.

3)  Lowering property tax?  Don’t believe this for a minute.  Government does not give money back.  West Chester currently comprises less than 20% of the property tax bill received by its residents.  Let’s pretend that by incorporating we can lower our property tax (not likely but let’s pretend).  If we can lower West Chester’s portion of your property tax bill by 20%, it would only lower your total bill by less than 4%.  How do West Chester property taxes compare withy other cities located close by?  In 2008, the effective tax on a $200,000 property in the following communities was:

                        Community                            Tax

                        West Chester                           $3,604

                        Loveland                                 $4,030

                        Middletown                            $3,629

                        Cincinnati                                $3,526

                        Mason                                     $3,453

3)      Being a city is more Prestigious…compared to what?  By being a township, without extra money to spend, we are able to stay focused on our core competencies; Public Safety and infrastructure.  On March 13, 2008, Moody’s Investor Service raised West Chester’s rating to Aa1 for General Obligation Various Purpose Bonds.  This is the highest rating of any community in Ohio!  Money Magazine in 2006 Ranked West Chester as the 45th most desirable community to live in America.  They stated that the only thing hurting West Chester was the lack of medical services.  With the opening of the state of the art West Chester Medical Center, that problem has been solved. 

The proponents of incorporation discuss the fact that people living in West Chester but working in another city currently pay an income tax anyway.  If reciprocity is not granted, these citizens will pay a tax to both communities.  For example, if you currently live in Wyoming and work in Cincinnati, you pay a 2.1% tax to Cincinnati, and a 2% tax to Wyoming, for a total of 4.1%.  Given the state of today’s economy, reciprocity is not a given.  The argument in favor of a city tax is no different from a thief claiming the resident’s money as their own by saying the residents are already giving their money to another thief elsewhere.

Proponents of incorporation also say that by becoming a city West Chester will gain more power and control.  They are correct!  This will transfer power and control from citizens to the government.  As a township, West Chester can not raise taxes without a vote of the people.  As a city, this can be accomplished with a vote of council and is the real intention.  The desire to incorporate West Chester is the desire to loot the public.  The only people who would benefit are the socialist leaning politicians who are advocating it.  The benefits of incorporation are only masks to the sinister aim of more bureaucracy, higher taxes, and more centralized control over community activity.  The aim of that activity is not rooted in capitalism, but socialism.   The dream of these goofy left leaning tax advocating losers would be to see businesses like Shoot Extreme end, while more families would gather on the lawn outside of the West Chester Library to listen to the future city council members pander their socialist dreams with more sidewalks and group hug social events.  The key is that city council members would decide which businesses succeed or fail implemented through tax regulation and zoning ordinances, as opposed to the determinations of capitalism.  This happens to a small degree now as the pub I mentioned here with great reverence just a few months ago went out of business triggered by zoning issues and unfriendly business practices.  CLICK TO REVIEW.  Becoming a city would create more of that behavior not less. 

The essence of such advances toward cityhood are the crux of many spirited debates when communities far into the future wonder where their declines began.  They are concocted in the mind of functioning socialists whose only logic skills are managing parks and other utopian public concepts that are non-profit in their orientation.  Cities are big, and too complex to manage by a part-time staff of trustees, and are attempts at government expansion by progressive minded individuals.  They are a detriment to a thriving economy, and only benefit the political class, as everyone else in such communities find themselves subservient to liberal mysticism.  And that is not the direction that a great community like West Chester should be contemplating even remotely.  The advocates are simply looters with their eye on a potential prize of $20 million dollars of additional revenue that could be tallied up by the politicians and their love of nameplates.  The money is to be spent creating jobs that report to the politicians who stole the money to begin with; so that in their small, futile minds, they can pat themselves on the back and pretend they are job creators just like the rest of the businesses in West Chester who are currently successful whereas the politicians are not.   

For the back-story on this issue refer to the below article:

http://westchesterbuzz.com/2011/10/17/should-west-chester-be-a-city/

____________________________________________

Click Here to see what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon 

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE and help spread the word! TELL SEVEN PEOPLE TO TELL SEVEN PEOPLE!

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

Doc Thompson reviews Rich Hoffman: ‘The Enquirer’ puts one more step in the grave–part 2

“Tale of the Dragon” is a fun ride with a great message! Rich Hoffman is a rare, consistent, true conservative voice!

Doc Thompson nationally syndicated radio host and regular guest host for the Glenn Beck Program  (CLICK HERE FOR MORE ON DOC THOMPSON)

This article is part 2 of yesterday’s posting. CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW. The quote above from Doc Thompson formally of 700 WLW means a lot to me not only because it helps give me a needed testimonial for my new novel Tail of the Dragon, but because his story is one of how the good guys do win in the end if they simply refuse to stay down on the ground. Back in February while on his honeymoon with Dayton TV reporter Yuna Lee, 700 WLW  fired the 5 time Marconi Award winner. The radio world like the newspaper world, or any other business is full of backstabbing, and internal politics that is driven by commercial interests, egos, and FCC regulations. Doc and I had made a living hell for public education on the flamethowing 50,000 watt radio station, and the unions were very, very pissed off because they couldn’t answer any of the issues we brought up.

When Doc was fired, several of the radio personalities whom I knew fairly well assured me that Thompson was not fired because of his friendship with me, but due to his poor daytime numbers. It has been well documented that many of those same personalities where developing cozy relationships with school board member at Lakota Julie Shaffer who is friends with real estate employee Pam Parino who actually attempted to throw her weight around forcing WLW to support the Lakota Levy back in 2010 using her former ties with the Gary Burbank Show. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. Pam was seen on the picture to the right further down school board member  Julie Shaffer’s Facebook page, suggesting to send the story to Julie’s friends at WLW, and of course The Enquirer.  Real Estate sales is the common interest that united many of these personalities from WLW  to the levy hounds. Some of the radio hosts have wives who sell homes and those women are friends with people like Parino and Shaffer so the levy advocates were mounting an offensive that was well known.

Around the time that Clark wrote his Enquirer article against me, picking sides in the levy fight at Lakota, Doc was fired and out of a job, Judge Napolitano on Fox Business Network was cut even with its excellent ratings, seemingly because of his relentless support of Ron Paul, and efforts of No Lakota Levy to reach across the political divide in the community to levy supporters to create Yes to Lakota Kids found many insiders playing extreme politics, that was not in the best interest for the community. But Bill Cunningham at 700 WLW whom I was openly very critical of because of his stance on Issue 2 and a Marconi winner of his own, I suspected had something to do with Doc being fired at WLW. Cunningham just signed his deal for his new television show and had shown a tendency to want to move more toward the political center after building a career bashing Democrats—he was changing his tone, and Doc represented a new generation of conservative. Cunningham also is the owner of Willies in West Chester where the levy hounds were visiting him to advocate his support for the next levy.

In February Doc was fired, and in March I was publicly being raked over the coals by the same people who had formally supported me. All one has to do is add up the elements and the conditions are obvious. Radio, like the print news is a competitive business and like any other business, employees seek to eliminate each other with brown nosing and sabotage in order to preserve their own careers, so none of this is sinister, or unexpected. It’s just a fact of life.

The reality is that the citizen journalism was changing the media business. Radio had adapted by using me as a frequent guest through the Doc Thompson Show, but once Doc was no longer at 700 WLW the influences who wanted to wipe the chalkboard clean of him did what they felt they had to do, much to their own ratings detriment. Like The Enquirer, many of the guilty parties will lose their jobs in the years to come because of the decisions they have made, meanwhile people like Doc will continue to be successful, in spite of the attempts against him. Doc, like Peter Bronson whom I spoke about in my previous article on this subject is a quality person, so by running them out of the business, the business of newspapers and radio have much less quality because of it.  See Peter speak here–good stuff, and well worth the time.

As Peter Bronson’s recent speech at the event above reminded me, the motto in the newsroom used to be “never pick a fight with a person or a company who buys ink by the barrel.” The implication is that newspaper people believe that they can put someone under whom they target at a whim. We’ve seen this for years, when a newspaper gets their targets on someone; they look to bury them publicly. In relation to WLW John Kiesewetter has attempted to put Darryl Parks under many times using a lot of ink. There is an arrogance among newspaper reporters, particularly from old, traditional papers like The Enquirer who have seasoned reporters, that they have the power to make or break careers, or pass or fail levy attempts. They forget that it is their job to report the news so a public can make good decisions; instead they sometimes find they attempt to exercise their power of manipulation to a cause they personally support, or desire as a collection of left leaning public policy advocates.

That was the old world of news reporting, but not the way of the new. In the new, the new adage is that “ink no longer has value. Never pick a fight with a person who can type 1000 words every fifteen minutes and can produce 4000 word articles in an hour, and can do it day after day after day.” And when Lakota as a political entity represented by unionized, radical labor picked a fight with me, and attempted to use the old way to beat me, they had no chance, because I can out write them, out-wit them, out-speak them, and when things get violent and nasty behind the scenes I can give it back to them in doses 100X what they initiated, and that is the new way of citizen journalism.

The attack article Michael Clark wrote about me to put me under and get back on the good side of the Lakota Levy supporters was under the assumption that the game we were all playing were to the old rules, where ink was sold by the barrel.  CLICK HERE FOR A REVIEW.

For an example of how it was that day on WLW, below is the audio from the Bill Cunningham Show speaking with Scott Sloan whom I was on the air with earlier—both having a lot of fun with the salacious Enquirer article, as every radio station owned by Clear Channel, even on the FM dial did. I think on one level they understood what I was doing, even though they played like they didn’t. If it is Cunningham’s idea of an insult to call my actions similar to Rush Limbaugh, then I take it in the opposite regard. But Scott and Bill’s conversation is a fascinating study in what is exactly wrong with public education. Scott Sloan was against me in that broadcast for his own reasons, yet he leans toward my view of things in public education even though he is a lot more socially liberal than I am. Cunningham on the other hand made his living being every bit as boisterous and selling himself as a conservative, but actually living his life as a philanthropic progressive. Cunningham is very much a child of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, and that society is failing in every category. As a radio commentator and attorney Cunningham has shown that he is able to identify the problem, but both men have found themselves bitten by the modern trend of the male population to behave as Beta Men, even though deep in their hearts, they know better. You can hear it in their discussion; they are torn between what society has taught them and what they actually believe.  Caution, the audio below is very salacious.  Listen with caution. 

There was no way to explain it to them on March 15th 2012, but I can now with historical context in the wake of the event. I had tried on the Scott Sloan Show earlier, but only time would prove me correct. More money at the state level will not help public education, and property values must be freed from the education debate because it was emotion that placed it there in the first place, due to radicalized unions and voters believing in The Great Society who helped give them power. It is the insecure new mothers and the beta males that has allowed that trend of emotion to take place and it must stop before an intelligent discussion about education funding can take place. Logic must be introduced into the education debate as opposed to the emotion that currently rules, and to my assessment, it does call for yelling and shouting. Pandering to emotional pleas will not solve the problem, and sometimes you have to call it as you see it, which might hurt some feelings. The context of my prostitution comments are explained in great detail in my new book Tail of the Dragon, which was on my mind at the time, since I was editing the final draft when this story broke, so the metaphor was fresh on my mind. For more detail refer to my article about why women like the book Fifty Shades of Grey.

Like newspapers even radio is limited as corporate managers may or may not support public education reform and can put a gag on talk show hosts to exercise their control over the content, and Cunningham has like a shape shifter over time adjusted his beliefs to the powers that control the station he works for.

Doc Thompson on the other hand has been fired by many radio stations for the simple fact that he does his own thing, and this tends to infuriate management. Yet in spite of that, he is a regular guest host on the Glenn Beck Program, and has just signed a deal with CBS radio to go into national syndication while the people who decided to play nicely, and by the old rules, found themselves always in second place behind those who control the rules. The reason Doc and I became friends with a mutual respect is because neither one of us have any love of the old media rules. We do not lick other people’s boots and we treat those old guard media types with contempt. We forge our own path, and do what we think is right for the sake of it. I know that reporters like Clark who are only given 400 to 500 words to make his point in a paper that is turning into a modern version of Wheeler Dealer, or Jerry Springer type radio shows like Cunningham’s comedy act that wants to be taken seriously at times, but has long ago lost his credibility due to his progressive tendencies are being replaced by media like what people are finding here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom, and syndicated programs like The Doc Thompson Show, or GBTV with Glenn Beck.

People don’t want or care about the opinion of a puppet, and when a reporter or radio host shows that they are simply mouth pieces to larger organizations, they lose any power or credibility they thought they had. The desire of management whether it be at Clear Channel, Gannett, or the established political order to maintain their mechanisms of influence are the cause of their own destruction. They may have the short term gain of ratings spikes with sensational stories like the one that involved me, but in the long term people will side with me. They will see the villains are the reporters and talk show hosts who represent the old guard, and that old guard is protecting society from a truth they have helped conceal.

As Peter Bronson told his story of The Enquirer ideocrity letting a reporter of his caliber leave in favor of the average boot licker was the nail that sealed their own coffin, and the decision was not done on behalf of quality, it was done to preserve a political leaning philosophy built on emotion instead of facts, and that philosophy cannot be maintained through hard reporting. WLW did much the same when they elected to preserve the radio tendencies of old by letting new talent like Doc Thompson leave to start his own syndicated show out of Detroit in a competing market. And The Enquirer’s desire to blow my blog out of the water making it seem scandalous and illegitimate as a competing news source backfired in a big way because they failed to realize they were playing by the old rules where I was playing by the new. And in the new, I am free to use the First Amendment to full effect. I do not have advertisers, managers with political view points, aging Marconi Winners fearful of younger Marconi Winners, or any political bureaucracy to hold me back like Michael Clark and other reporters who are unquestionably restrained. Their editors will only give Clark his 500 words because they have to save ad space for the car dealerships, which cheapens the entire news presentation. Adversely, here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom I can cover in as much detail the topics I want, and my talent is not restrained by any loyalty to corporate interest. At the projected rate of my readership, I will hit over a million viewers within the next year or two, because people value news in the style that I report it. Some of it is sensational, some of it is traditional, some of it is non political, some of it is pop culture, but the key is that I can decide if I want to cover it or not, and I am not confined to covering only education.

The success of Glenn Beck, and now Doc Thompson is that these news personalities do not allow their explorations of the truth limit them in just the realm of politics. Sometimes the source of the problems spill over into other aspects of society and using the old media rules are never explored. It used to be that a reporter like Michael Clark would use his ink by the barrel to focus only on the immediate issues of education since he’s an education reporter and not a sociology reporter, and not equipped by his editor to comment on such matters, even though some of the desire for a school levy is a sociological problem and not an economic one. Clark cannot explore that line of thought because The Enquirer will not allow it. So readers wanting to know more about what’s going on in the world turn to my 800 articles with over 1200 words each to learn the real story and that is what’s changing from the old way to the new.

As the newspapers decline more sites like mine are rising up and each have their own spin, and are directly competing with traditional newspapers in the Cincinnati area. All these sites have been created within the last two years and are a direct reaction to the news that “doesn’t” get reported.

http://massdiscussion.blogspot.com/
http://www.bizzyblog.com/
http://www.cincymagazine.com
http://chrislittleton.com/
http://abundanttruth.wordpress.com/
http://www.fairfieldtownshipflare.com/
http://butlercountytruth.org/
http://watchdog.org/category/ohio/ 

http://saveclermontschools.org/

http://eagnews.org/

http://lebanonschoolfacts.com/

http://thetaxpayersvoice.net/

An impressive list and as I think about it, most of them were inspired by the work that Doc and I did on 700 WLW, and Darryl Parks on Saturdays. Listening to us on the radio helped inspire some of them to get involved and do their own thing as a citizen journalist. It may have cost Doc his job but in the long run he is far better off now than he was when he worked as a second fiddle to Willie Cunningham who appeared to be  protecting the “old guard.” My view of all this competition is the more the merrier, the world benefits when there is competition of ideas in a free marketplace. But when there is an attempt to eliminate competition, like what The Enquirer has attempted to do which was picked up by local radio, people can see through the act for what it is.

That is big trouble for entities like school systems controlled by powerful public unions who desire with all their heart and souls to keep the facts of their situation vague, and using Saul Alinsky methods of manipulation have learned how to frame an argument to the 500 words of a Michael Clark Enquirer article so that the truth never gets out, and it never gets discussed on the radio where talk show hosts looking for content to fill their three hour time slots look for new material. In this way the old guard was able to keep problems from being solved and prohibit a competition of ideas through methods such as the ones used against me by the Enquirer and 700 WLW as heard in the interview above. But for a little while, when Doc Thompson was employed at WLW, there was a good run of good material that helped start a new wave of journalism, that of the citizen journalist, where my material was sourced by WLW and the Enquirer until the heat became too great, yet everyone but the crooks benefited. And the window stayed open just long enough to evolve into a new direction which Peter Bronson spoke about as the media is changing before our eyes, and the old way may have barrels of ink, but the paper they put it on is worthless. Now, it is those who can produce 1000 to 3000 words in an hour who may lack knowledge of the rules of the game taught in journalism classes, but have the passion to write things that the rules wouldn’t otherwise allow under the old way.

Competition is good, it is the ultimate referee. If people decide they’d rather read a 1700 word article I write about school levies in Monroe or Lakota than the ass kissing diatribes of the typical Enquirer article emotionally pleading for more money by quoting a looting superintendent who threatens to cut off info to a reporter for not writing articles favorable to public education, then the people have decided, and the numbers on my end are good—very good. When the traditional reporter who looks for softball reporting by reading all their info from a press release given to them by public relations specialists working at a public school, and not doing any hard reporting discovers they are out of a job because they struggled all day to come up with a 500 word article when I can produce a 3000 word article like this one before they have their first cup of coffee in the morning, the fault is on them.

The lesson here is to never pick a fight with a person who can out-write, out-wit, out-maneuver, out-work, out-talk, out-think, and has the physical stamina of an entire news room. Not a good idea because the advocates of such prodding will surely find themselves swimming in their barrels of ink as the papers it was intended for lay unsold and useless in the press room.

Thanks Doc Thompson for the kind words. The Doctor will live on, as will Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom with my latest project, the Tail of the Dragon. As to those other characters, time is not on their side as the sand is almost out of the hourglass. All the ass kissing in the world won’t make the taste of shit they’ve been swallowing and dishing out for their entire careers worth it. And all the dollars in a retirement account or poolside margaritas won’t be strong enough to wash away the taste.  My apoplectic utterances here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom, especially in the wake of Michael Clark’s choice in The Enquirer, can produce more words by the hour than my competition on a  wider range of topics that actually connect the dots, instead of avoiding them.  So what follows now was a choice made from a foolish love of an ancient, and archaic bedfellow–old school politics in a society that is sick of it. 

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Click Here to see what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon 

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE and help spread the word! TELL SEVEN PEOPLE TO TELL SEVEN PEOPLE!

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

Monroe Superintendent is Stepping Down: Being between a rock and a hard place

Right on queue Monroe Schools Superintendent Elizabeth Lolli has indicated that she will be resigning from her position after the levy failure in August ahead of a November attempt. She says that the levy failure has nothing to do with her decision to give up an annual salary of $116,000 so she can work as a consultant for Butler County Educational Services, but the pattern is all too reminiscent of the behavior of the school districts’ immediate neighbor Lakota.

Two months after the levy defeat at Lakota in November of 2010 Mike Taylor retired stepping out of the heat that was brewing as it was revealed that the cause of the tax increase was due to excessively high teacher salaries, and that the superintendent had not even made an effort to manage his costs. In a video Taylor filmed before the 2010 levy attempt Taylor declared that teachers did not make enough for their intense 7.5 hour day 9 months out of the year, and that he thought teachers should be paid more!

Well it is that type of mismanagement of tax payer resources that have caused school districts all over Ohio to effectively go bankrupt, including Monroe which is now in a state fiscal emergency. If a superintendent who makes six figures isn’t going to manage the costs of their employees, then they are failures. Mike was smart to jump off the ship at Lakota because the game had been exposed, and he knew it. So he did the smart thing and retired.

Lakota actually improved their performance over the next 6 months without a superintendent which proved that the superintendent positions are just token occupations designed to shield school boards from direct responsibility when things go wrong. The superintendent is simply a spokesman for the schools and are more comparable to a public relations consultant whose sole propose is to pass tax increases than a CEO who runs a major company. Lakota prior to another levy attempt in the fall of 2011 hired the quarter million dollar double dipping delegator, the former retiree from Sycamore Schools Karen Mantia. Since bringing her on to exclusively pass a school levy Lakota has spent well over $250,000 in compensation on Mantia, plus another $160,000 dollars on public relations in just over a year’s time. Nearly half a million dollars alone has been spent on creating a positive public image for a school that is supposed to be teaching children. But the obvious function of the education jobs are to create government jobs with tax payer dollars and the superintendent is the guardian of that creation, not the regulation of cost. Superintendents are sold to the community as CEO’s, but their actual function is simply public relations. Mantia did nothing after Lakota’s levy failures to present to the education union a 5% reduction in their inflated wages and benefits in order to balance their budget; instead she participated in cutting electives, increasing sports fees, and aggressive busing reductions. The purpose of these measures were not to cut costs, but to punish the public for not passing a levy. (How do I know that? Because I am personal friends with several former and current school board members who have given me their notes from Levy University taught at their yearly OSBA conference in Columbus. Bet you won’t read about that in your local newspaper.)

The same type of extortion is going on at Monroe. Voters just turned down a vote in August yet the school board put another attempt on the ballot for November. Their intention is to keep putting a tax increase on the ballot until the public gives up resisting it. This is radical politics in the extreme and is a popular union tactic that is responsible for how the wages through collective bargaining drove up the labor costs of Lakota, and Monroe in the first place to average salaries of over $60K per year. Collective bargaining is the villain, since it is the “collective” body of the school employees who make demands through threats of strike to get short work days, extremely low health insurance costs, and 2% to 3% increases for all their years of employment. Teachers all through the previous decade would threaten to strike at the slightest mention of health insurance increases sending a strong message to school boards to not even attempt to regulate the wages, so nobody did.

The result is out-of-control budgets in all of Ohio’s 614 school districts and the only way they have to balance their budget is to increase taxes. This is the fault of the unions, and they are hiding in the backgrounds leaving school superintendents to take the bullets for them, people like Elizabeth Lolli who was paid six figures to put up and shut up. Monroe hopes that they can get a levy passed by parting ways with Lolli and blaming all their financial problems on their previous treasurer whom they are currently suing. But the fault is actually on all of them who constantly yielded to the union demands avoiding conflict like truck drivers avoid driving on an icy road.

What nobody has figured out is that these levy failures are the public’s way of striking back at the unions for their constant terrorism invoked through fear of work stoppages over the years, driving up their labor costs. When the public votes down a levy, they are saying, “NO” to the cost increases imposed on a school district, which is their way of managing the costs. The school board has an obligation to act on that vote, not cheerlead on behalf of the union who caused the problem in the first place. A “NO” vote is looked upon by the radical tax grabbers as a greedy, child hating enterprise, but where were the cares for the children when the teachers threatened to walk off the job because their health care was going up by .5%, or they demanded at 3% increase in pay instead of a 2%. Teachers who participated in those strikes are hypocrites and they are the cause of the current financial instability. When the public says “NO” to a school levy, they mean it. And when a public official at the local school board, or the state decide they are going to be arrogant enough to put another levy on the ballot the day after the public voted the tax increase down, they are proclaiming to the world that they are too spineless, and arrogant to listen to the public mandate, and that they will ram the issue down the throat of the public until the “NO” votes becomes a “YES” vote. And every person who participates in that process should lose their job.

Elizabeth Lolli knows she’s caught between a rock and a hard place just as Lakota’s Mike Taylor knew it, and the best thing to do these days is to take the money and run, because the money tree isn’t shaking any more. Tax payers have realized that they are being scammed and they don’t like it. And the unions wouldn’t dare attempt to threaten a strike now that people are on to their game, so the “NO” votes are getting bolder—finally. People for the first time in over a decade are openly voicing their opinion about these money scams coming from public education and they resent having their children wrapped up in the ordeal. There is a real and growing anger at the entire public education funding process. I’m so fed up with it that I think all parents should home school their children, because I don’t like the product public schools are producing. It certainly isn’t worth the massive amounts of money we throw at it. For the $2000 to $3000 I spend per year on property taxes, I’d rather save the money and take my family to Disney World than provide a baby sitting service for the young busy parents who live in my school district and more people are beginning to feel as I do, which is very bad for the public school unions—who I don’t think have a legal right to even exist.

So it’s no mystery that Monroe’s Superintendent Lolli is stepping down, because the writing is on the wall. She knows it and the school board knows it, and the union knows the mud is on their hands. If I were a superintendent I wouldn’t want to be in the situation either, even for a six figure income to simply be a public relations mouthpiece. Because before too long, the guilt overtakes the comfort that the money brings, and the heat in the kitchen is just too great. And the heat is very hot in the kitchen right now, and it’s about to get a lot hotter. Believe me, I know first hand. The only adults in the room on this whole education issue are the people who vote “NO” and deep down inside all the school board members know it, and the superintendents do as well. Because logic is on the side of the people who are declaring that the spending increases on salaries and benefits in public education have to be pulled down to reality, but the unions won’t budge leaving the school superintendent to be squashed in the middle. Superintendents like Lakota’s Mantia puts herself in that difficult situation willingly accepting she couldn’t get a job anywhere else as easy as a school superintendent and make so much money. So the public pressure is worth the financial return for her. But for people like Lolli, and Taylor, who can see where this funding road is going, they have logically and wisely decided to remove themselves from the debate which will be a loss for them no matter which way a vote in November dictates.

____________________________________________

Click Here to see what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon 

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE!  CLICK HERE and help spread the word! TELL SEVEN PEOPLE TO TELL SEVEN PEOPLE!

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

Building a Real Millennium Falcon: At a cost of nearly $15 million dollars

I will admit this one time that during the entire car chase of my upcoming book Tail of the Dragon that I thought of the scene above from The Empire Strikes Back. Although my chase takes place in a car, it is my love of that space ship called The Millennium Falcon which pushed me along to create what I hope to be remembered as the greatest car chase in car chase history. I have been absolutely in love with The Millennium Falcon since I was 9 years old and I don’t think there has been a day in my life where I haven’t thought about it at least once. Because of the article I did yesterday about building a real life U.S.S. Enterprise from Star Trek and other circumstances of the last couple of days my interest has been renewed for an idea that I have had for many years about building an actual life-sized Millennium Falcon.

My thoughts on these matters are always present, but stronger now that the Star Wars yearly celebration is happening right now at Hollywood Studios in Florida. For a long time I have had in my mind that if I could come up with $15 million dollars extra that I didn’t need, I would build that ship, and for a purpose–to take it every year to the Star Wars Celebration in Orlando and allow it to be toured by the thousands of Star Wars fans who attend every year. My intentions have been to build it as a complete full-scale prop to contain large eye bolts concealed under the armor in the top attached to the frame and to helicopter it from my home to Florida each year.

But that is not my only intention. Years ago I started a company called Cliffhanger Research and Development which was intended to rediscover many of the technologies that we have forgotten from the past. I am of the belief that at some point human beings understood the technology of anti-gravity, and that’s how Baalbek in modern-day Lebanon east of the Litani River was built. No modern scientist in their right mind can rationalize that the tremendous stone foundations of that temple were built by rolling those gigantic stones across logs of timber. It’s simply ludicrous. They might attempt to explain Stone Hinge this way, and even the Great Pyramid in Egypt, but Baalbek would have been impossible. Baalbek is to me evidence that there was a technology on earth that allowed for levitation of rock, which is why many temples and pyramids were built to such extremes, because they could. I believe this technology is hidden right in front of our face and is simply waiting for us to rediscover it. And I started Cliffhanger Research and Development to uncover that kind of technology.

But I found myself in court more than making money and discovered that politics of the current time prohibited such commitment to innovation. It would take a tremendous amount of start-up capital just to pay off the politicians and bureaucrats at the FFA, and other regulatory agencies to get the project off the ground let alone to actually discover it. So I put the idea on hold till some later date when I could return to it more financially viable, and politically able to deal with such a project. Currently one of my old business partners is using the name of Cliffhanger to start a ranch in Southern Virginia. CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE. My hatred over government interference has its roots in my personal experiences. And my recent completion of Ayn Rand’s great novel The Fountainhead had me thinking about this all over again prompting me to actually put my thoughts into words. So this little exercise is more for me than for my readers here. It helps to see it on paper so the visualization process can take the next step.

When I obtain the funds I intend to build my own full-scale version of The Millennium Falcon and it will serve as my permanent office as I restart Cliffhanger Research and Development. It will be a moveable office that I can set up and transport anywhere I wish. But there will be a dual purpose. I intend to hire three out-of-the box scientists who are super Star Wars and Star Trek geeks and have a great understanding of quantum mechanics to use the engine room of my Millennium Falcon as their research facility to discover the secrets of anti-gravity levitation making The Millennium Falcon the test vehicle of rediscovered technology. I believe the actual craft shape of The Millennium Falcon is of sufficient size to generate tremendous electromagnetic fields capable of reversing the effects of earth’s gravity, which I believe contains the secret by reversing the polarity of gravity in controllable increments.

This thought matured during a treasured evening with my family on Saturday night and really ignited in me this desire to build a full-scale version of The Millennium Falcon. I raised my daughters on science and dinosaurs more specifically and we all had a wonderful time looking at the full-sized dinosaurs of Kings Island’s Dinosaurs Alive exhibit. I was actually shocked a couple of times during our tour of the exhibit which is the best that I’ve ever seen. For a long time I was very enchanted by the Jurassic Park exhibit at Universal Studios but this set-up at Kings Island just stunned me. One specific dinosaur called Ruyangosaurus was so massive that I couldn’t believe it was real. The Ruyang Yellow River Dinosaur was 72 feet long, 12 feet wide and 40 feet high, and it moved and made noises. Its chest cavity expanded in and out like it was breathing. I stood there for over 15 minutes admiring this wonderful work of art as my family moved on down the path leaving me there to think. A little boy stood next to me aged 7. He had on khaki pants and a little hat that made him look like a scientist. He held a small notebook where he pretended to write down details. He and I had an intelligent conversation about dinosaurs and how he was going to make them some day like in Jurassic Park. As we spoke a group of teenagers 14 to 16 came by and mocked the noises the animal made. I felt sorry for the 7-year-old, because I realized that his school would probably beat out of him this natural curiosity for dinosaurs and make him into those teenagers, where the mysteries of life are taken from them and replaced with biological impulses of primitive sexual ritual. But then my hope came back alive as a young woman aged 22 stood next to me and the boy with tears streaming down her face. “It’s so beautiful.” She was a paleontologist major at the University of Cincinnati waiting to go on a dig to the badlands in South Dakota. My oldest daughter motioned for me to come up the hill, “Dad, you’re going to love this!” I left the two science hopefuls behind and went to see what she was talking about and behold, there was a Tyrannosaurs Rex in full-scale, and abundant glory. I have words to write for every occasion and every circumstance, but I cannot find them to convey my love of that T-Rex dinosaur at the Kings Island exhibit. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.

As we walked around the park after that exhibit my mind was racing. I thought of the little boy, the young paleontologist and the feeling my family had over just seeing some mechanical dinosaurs set up in the woods. It helped to see those full-scale dinosaurs and I realized that such an experience for those particular young people would probably advance science just a little bit. When I was a kid, nothing like those animatronics dinosaurs existed, not at the level of sophistication shown at that exhibit. It was worth every bit of $5 a ticket. My family was back there on the trails for over 2 hours, and I could have stayed all day reading everything and just looking at the dinosaurs move.

My family knows when I get that far off look that my mind is active and I don’t remember saying two words for the rest of the night. I’m sure I did, but my mind was on the full-sized Millennium Falcon of my dreams and the renewed idea of giving 3 geniuses the work place inside their dream vehicle the commission to make it come to life—to make it fly. Not to make it fly with nuclear power, or fossil fuels, or aerodynamics requiring thrust and drag to create lift. But to make it fly repealing the earth’s gravity instead of being prisoner to it, by making it fly smoothly through the air using earth’s magnetic field to do so. To have The Millennium Falcon fly from anyplace in the United States and land at Hollywood Studios and the yearly Star Wars Celebration without the aid of a helicopter.

It helps to have a visual reference to frame the mind to a difficult concept. The dinosaur exhibit at Kings Island can certainly do that for scientists who want to see the results of what all that time spent in the dirt have yielded. But for Star Wars fans who are striving to make into reality the thoughts that those films have given their imaginations, there is a strong yearning to make it real, because the mind has thought it, and now the hands want to build it. I think having a full-scale Millennium Falcon would capture the imagination of thousands who are on the edge of great scientific discoveries in a world that laughs at them and mocks their passion, like those teenage boys making fun of the Ruyangosaurus. The world is made up of such second-handlers, but the girl with tears on her face, and the young boy with the notebook and passion to discover the next great thing, I want to hire, and free their minds to change the world. I promise to do it as soon as I can come up with $15 million that I don’t need. Because I think we’re close, and all it will take is the love of an object well-known to be seen, to be touched, to be beheld in every way possible to unleash the unimaginable that will carry mankind to the next great discovery.

Everything starts with an idea, and the passion to make that idea into a reality.


____________________________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

While you wait for Tail of the Dragon, read my first book at Barnes and Nobel.com as they are now offering The Symposium of Justice at a discount which is the current lowest price available.

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

“The Fountainhead” Book Review: The hung jury speaks from the past

“I don’t work with collectives, I don’t consult, I don’t co-operate, I don’t collaborate.” These are the words of Howard Roark from the 1943 book The Fountainhead, a book that has now become my favorite novel, and replacing the Nietzsche classic Thus Spoke Zarathustra as my most treasured all time book which is no light achievement.

How I managed to move through 44 years of my life without running into this book at some point is beyond me. I have searched through book stores and libraries all my life. In fact, besides the game rooms, and movie theaters, it was the book store that I spent all my time in as a youth, and somehow I never ran into this classic novel.

I am fully aware that millions of people over the years have read this novel, and loved it dearly. But I can only say that I feel The Fountainhead was written by Ayn Rand all those years ago while on a remote island of thought and she placed the novel into a bottle addressed to me and sent it to sea to be read by my eyes only, because that’s how I feel about Howard Roark and the overall message of the novel.

I have lived that life of Roark in much the way that Roark has lived it, and until I read this novel, I had never heard or understood that anyone else in the human race had comprehended the conclusions I had arrived at on my own. It is not a book that will be understood widely by the masses, even though they may find enjoyment in it. It is a great work or art that is the skeleton key of American civilization and is absolutely remarkable.

I will admit that after I read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, I did not think that The Fountainhead would be nearly as good, so I simply put it on a list to read at some point in the future when I finally got around to it. I didn’t want The Fountainhead to ruin the taste of Atlas Shrugged for me. Also, I was already being accused of being too Randian by my political enemies, so I avoided reading the novel so to avoid the unparalleled comparisons with objectivism that I also write about.

Reading the words were like drinking water after walking in the desert for over 40 years, because as long as I’ve been alive I have thought like Roark, and been every bit as stubborn as Roark in a quest for freedom. The above quote from the architect Howard Roark as he was being interviewed for a committee to design for the World’s Fair, where he was to serve on a panel of the world’s greatest architects, was a commission that would have brought fame and fortune to him. He turned it down stating that he would work alone or not at all, that committees do not work. Of course he was told to take a hike, which he happily did in order to maintain his integrity and freedom.

I don’t mind saying that out of all my years I have heard from no place else, these kinds of values held to the same type of standard I have always lived by, so to say that I love The Fountainhead because of the way it was written, or the complex story, or the historical context, is to sell it short of what my actual feelings are. I can see why many on the political left fear Ayn Rand with a terror that seems insane, because every one of those motives were covered in The Fountainhead.

Ayn Rand I think went much further than she did in Atlas Shrugged which many consider to be her greatest novel. The Fountainhead is a piece of work that is deeply meaningful. As I read it I kept reminding myself that when this book was written and published in 1943, John Wayne was a box office star, and Superman was a very popular comic. Society had signs of great strength that is completely vacant today. I love old movies, old songs, and old books because I do not like what has happened to the world over the last century, a trend that is called The Great Beast in The Fountainhead. But Ayn Rand doesn’t just name “The Beast” in The Fountainhead, she shows in intricate detail how it works against the ideas of individualism and society in general to destroying the idea of Superman.

The truth about individualism is that those who possess such traits function on their own. They do not need validation from society, or even from a book. I could have functioned the rest of my life just fine not reading The Fountainhead. But it is refreshing to see that at least one other person in human history feels the same way about things as I do.

My wife bought me the book for our 24th wedding anniversary while we were out at our favorite book store. I was waiting for my own novel called Tail of the Dragon to come out in book stores soon, so I wanted to read something deeply intelligent and thought-provoking that I haven’t yet read. So it seemed like a good time to read The Fountainhead. After all, my work at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom had already drawn the comparisons with Rand, so there was no reason to avoid reading another book of Rand’s just so I could say I hadn’t read all her books. There was a part of me who wanted to keep my ideas completely mine, and to not be confused with another writer, even one from the distant past. And that seemed like a stupid reason to avoid a really good book, which I thought The Fountainhead would be. But I had no idea it would become my favorite book. It said what I had been doing for many years was not isolated to just myself. Roark is a character in The Fountainhead who does not look back and regret anything, he is a character who loves himself, and is therefore capable of loving others fully, he is a character of complete self-assuredness, he is a unique talent simply because he does not look to anyone else to measure himself against, he is in all practical purposes a perfect person.

The villains of the book I have met all before—every single one of them in real life. Their motives are no different from from The Fountainhead, and I have never read such a description of characters anywhere in any piece of literature fictional or non-fictional, film or play. There is a truth in this novel that cuts through to the invisible barriers that holds back everyone.

Like Roark I have always been told that my lack of “sharing” was wrong, and that I needed to “get with the program,” and my response has always been just like what Roark said and that includes my political work with No Lakota Levy, that I have been so well-known for. In that group I had a free hand to run the campaign the way I wanted, but recently, there were attempts to change the direction a bit. I tried to play along nicely, but I just couldn’t do it. I had to call my political enemies Latté sipping prostitutes to keep things right in my mind knowing it would probably end my relationship with the rest of the No Lakota Levy group because the assemblage had become more inclusive.

My hatred of public education itself is rooted in this idea that committees do not work. Many minds cannot achieve anything but a mess, and our society reflects it. Professionally, I have always excelled when left in the sole leadership position, but I have lost interest when I have to consult with others. I gave up my desire to be a film director when I realized I did not have it in me to be a “collaborative” person which traditionally is the roll of the film director. Instead I have decided to write books, for all the reasons that Ayn Rand did, because I wish to report to nobody, I want the world to be done my way, and I consult nobody to do it.

I have worked in business long enough to learn to work with other people without compromising myself, and Roark learns to do this also in The Fountainhead. The wonderful aspect of this story is that he does not bend his integrity to do it. Such a concept is very difficult, but Rand pulls it off wonderfully in this novel. I cannot say how many times I have heard that integrity must be bent to “compromise” my beliefs to merge with others, and I have never done it. Like Roark, I have never identified myself with groups, or any form of collectivist mentality, and this has given me an authenticity that I value very much in my life now. Unlike Roark, who simply avoids all groups through his life, I was told by everyone around me that I had to be a part of them. I have been an active member of the Joseph Campbell Foundation, V.P. of the Suzuki Owners of North America, Ohio Chapter, participated in many writing groups and taken courses including one of Sol Stein’s regiments, I’ve been a member of the Society of Whip Artists, the Wild West Arts Club, numerous local liberty groups, high adventure groups, tax fighting groups and in every instance I find a way to sabotage myself on the rise to the top, as all the members of these groups tried to make me their leader, or collaborate with me on a level that I felt confining.

I always start pulling away from groups when they start inviting me to lunch, and start wanting to spend time around me not because I dislike their company, or even their groups, but I find the clutter of their lives conflicting with my daily intentions. My favorite thing to do in a day is to “think” and I love to be alone with my thoughts. In every professional capacity I’ve ever been a part of I always turn away from any collaboration with others. I have only ever been interested in top down leadership or nothing. I know how to respect the opinions of others without being needlessly imposing because I have never had a desire to rule other people, even when I’ve had many employees working under me. Being the ruler for the sake of power was never interesting. But having the ability to mold an idea from my head to a product guiding the people under me has been a successful formula many more times than once, and it has always worked best when I alone made all the decisions.

Once you are successful, you find a parade of moochers who are suddenly your friends and want to share in your success. That is when they offer for you to join a group of their making, and when they want to be involved in a committee of which you are a part. What they really want is to share in the success of your thinking, which makes them a simple looter.

I once infuriated one of my past employers by ripping to shreds the validity of Six Sigma as a means to creating more efficient production methods. I stated that Six Sigma was garbage and would not yield positive results–that big companies had simply fudged their numbers to get the results they desired, to show that collectivism like Six Sigma would actually work in companies. I have been in a lot of companies, and it doesn’t work. It can only be made to look that way on paper. It does not work in reality because workers must buy into Six Sigma and invest their individual value into their work, which does not happen without applying some sort of fear.

I have wondered many times if I was the only person on the face of the earth presently or in the past who thought these things, because everyone, everywhere I went seemed to think the same kind of things—their thoughts were rooted in collectivism. Mine never have been and I have never cared a damn what somebody thought of what I did and because of it I have always found myself in some type of conflict with someone.

Ultimately my resolution after all these years is to completely give up on groups. I have tried to get along and play nicely, and it never has worked. I have observed that it’s not just because of my opinion or preference, but because the science of collectivism is a failure right out of the gate, and my desire to work alone is due to the realization that only individuals create anything worthwhile. I have seen this process up close and personal at every level of human endeavor and it NEVER works.

Yet our society and our world today are corrupted with the belief that it does, and it has infected virtually our entire population. The 20th Century is the century of communism and the infection of the virus called Marxism.

The appropriate metaphor for The Fountainhead is the occupation of architecture as its primary theme. I know a few of those types and have fired my share of Peter Ketting’s for all the reasons he was a worthless piece of garbage in the novel, so I know something about architects. I was looking recently at the skyline of Cincinnati the last time I was down there and I thought about all the cities across the nation. Cincinnati’s skyline hasn’t changed much since I was a child, and that’s the case with most of the big cities. Occasionally, a new skyscraper is put up, and there used to be a healthy competition to see which city could boast the largest skyscrapers, because they were a symbol of that city’s economic power. Most of the skyscrapers in the cities of America were started long ago when the nation was functioning as close to pure capitalism that there ever was, and now bits of socialism have diseased our cities growth as communism has been knocking on America’s door. It is clear to me that the threat of communism has stopped the growth of those skylines. It is in that stoppage that America’s growth has been reflected. The newest skyscrapers in the world are now in Dubai, and China, not in America and this is part of the global socialism push, to spread the wealth to the far reaches of the earth by implementing “fairness” at the expense “growth.”  America should have ten Donald Trumps for the one we have now.  It has only been Trump that have built anything in America recently.  The other potential men and women of Trump’s nature have been consumed by communism. 

I could literally write a 2 million word essay on just The Fountainhead. The themes and wisdom of the book are simply unparalleled. It is the great American novel. It is everything that Americans should strive to be, and it accurately portrays the terrible evil that is eating our country and has destroyed entire civilizations for centuries. If I had to say what book most accurately reflects my personal beliefs, I would now have to say it is The Fountainhead.

It is because of the themes in The Fountainhead that I write here every day. I don’t do it for money when many have asked me why I do not sell advertising, or solicit funds to keep it going. I write here because I do it for myself, because I wish to own my words without the influence of anyone. I am very possessive of my thoughts because they belong to me with the same passion that Howard Roark felt about his architectural drawings. It’s worth more to me than personal wealth, again for all the reasons of Roark, and very few people understand that. In fact there are only six people who understand my feelings about these types of things, my wife, my two daughters, my son-in-law, and Ayn Rand as confirmed in this message she sent me in a bottle over time called The Fountainhead.

As I closed the book I felt as though a public trial over my life consisting of four decades had just concluded and all the members of the jury had decided that I was guilty of radical individualism and a yearning for personal freedom that was dangerous to society and the only one on the jury to speak out in my defense was Ayn Rand in her wonderful novel The Fountainhead. And because the jury could not come to a unanimous decision, I am able to go free.

After reading this book I feel autonomy to double my intentions. If I knew before that I was right in my thoughts, it is now that I have confirmed my suspicions. In many ways I am glad I did not read this book any earlier, because it cannot be said that it influenced my direction in life. I’ve lived my life as authentically as possible, and been told that I was wrong to do so, which I never believed, but certainly felt the crushing weight of their judgment. I always told myself that it was truly the masses that were wrong, that millions upon millions were wrong and that possibly only I was right. I now know that at least one other person shared those thoughts with me because I received the message in the bottle on my anniversary, and it was the confirmation of a hung jury with Ayn Rand being my only supporter, and that means a lot. Actually, I take that vote as a commission to really pour it on now; because the real enemy, the “second handlers” are clearer to me than they have ever been before, and it’s time to slay the beast once and for all. It’s time to hunt the “second handlers” where they live and eradicate them from the terror they intend upon the human mind.

Unfortunately, if The Fountainhead is to be enjoyed, the book must be read. The 1949 movie starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal, screen written by Ayn Rand herself is quite good, and can be seen below. It’s a great film, but only touches on the surface of the novel’s themes. For me personally, there was a line in the novel that struck me particularly hard—“how do you like it now superman,” in relation to the torture that Howard Roark had to endure at a particularly dark moment in the story. For the entirety of my life in every phase, and at every occupation I have been given almost that exact line—“why do you work so hard superman,” “who do you think you are superman,” “you are making us look bad—superman.” It is because of those lines that I named Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom what I have and committed my own versions of modern “supermen” to literature, because they need a voice too. I’ve never desired to be anything else or to apologize to anyone to be it. And that type of conviction in another human being I have never seen before anywhere until I read this fantastic novel.


____________________________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

While you wait for Tail of the Dragon, read my first book at Barnes and Nobel.com as they are now offering The Symposium of Justice at a discount which is the current lowest price available.

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

Take the Rich Hoffman Challenge: Individualism rules the world

I challenge you dear reader to give me one instance in the comments section of this posting to show me where in human history greatness was ever achieved under the mob rule of the collective. The answer of course I already know—never in human history has the mob ever proved to be the correct, most innovative solution. It has always been—and I mean always—that individuals drive an idea, a team, or a company to greatness. And once that individual is removed, the whole organization falls apart. Never does a rule by committee create something new. They can sometimes maintain greatness for a period of time before the quality the individual leaves behind gradually declines into oblivion, but they never create it.

The common mantra of our day however, particularly in sports is there is no “I” in team. Yet there is, because when it comes down to it, it is individuals who achieve the best and brightest statistics and drive their “teams” to victory through leadership. Sacrifice of individuality does not produce victory; it produces weak-minded, slush piles of worthlessness. Go ahead—I challenge you. Your silence I will take as a concession to my statement. I want all you collective minded utopians to prove me wrong, or attempt to do so. Go ahead—I’m waiting.

Public education is worthless because it teaches young people collectivism. Government is wrong because it behaves along the principles established in public education, of collectivism. And most companies fail when they adopt the “No ‘I’ in Team” mantra. They almost always overcompensate with faulty spreadsheets to keep their board of directors from digging too deeply while they fudge the numbers for 8 or 9 business quarters before eventually failing after the leadership of a strong personality leaves the company.

Collectivism as it is taught to our young American children is the most evil thing in existence. It is dooming entire generations to failure, by believing in the wrong moral principles. Our young and our old take these foolish notions into their adulthoods and they vote based on collectivism, they purchase goods based on collectivism, and they socialize based on collectivism. They worship based on collectivism. Most of the evil committed on planted earth is from collectivism.

You know you’ve committed this evil if you catch yourself saying “what would so and so think,” or “what do ‘they’ say is fashionable.” You are evil because what you are doing is hiding the solutions to problems by using the coverage of collective responsibility like a child uses blankets to hide under from the monsters concealed under their beds. The solution is not in the collective, but in individuals taking responsibility for their actions on the merits of their existence.

An excellent example of this collective mob rule is the Zimmerman case in Florida. Zimmerman is being tried in the court of public opinion not based on the rule of law by his peers, but by the democratic mob mentality of peer pressure. President Obama is not dealing with the economic tragedy of our age by dealing with reality, he is instead proposing more tax increases to slow the bleeding with an infusion of cash by inciting the mob of the collective against the rich, because obviously the rich are fewer in number than the masses of the mob. Obama is wrong, and his thoughts will lead to eventual destruction, just as the mob is wrong to publicly try Zimmerman without due process attempting to make the entire issue about race relations, to advance policies that benefit a collective group. On that same note, often evil politicians use women as a collective body to advance polling numbers in their favor by attempting to paint all women under the umbrella of public opinion through collectivism. This is done because advertisers have already conditioned society to understand that women are the primary decision makers of an economy, so women are targeted with various ads hoping to lure these demographic groups to their products. But on the downside, politicians like Obama and his gang of thugs do the same, pandering to women’s fears and weaknesses as a collective group hoping to win 50% of the vote of all Americans in the process. This is one of the reasons a majority party can win in our nation even if everything the party represents is fundamentally wrong, because decisions are made not on logic, but on emotional neurosis utilizing fully mob rule.

Most of the instances of bullying that go on in public schools are because this process of beating individuals into submission through group behavior is going on. Groups in public school are created socially, and the function of the school is not to teach our young how to be great innovators and out-of-the-box thinkers, it’s to find their group and to stick to it. Children are beaten into submission by their teachers, their classmates, and their parents into conforming to the will of the masses. A common aspect among the rich and successful is a tendency toward rebellion of compliance, displaying a tendency to break the unspoken rules of society. Public schools do not produce leaders of the pack. It simply produces members of the pack.

Companies are never run well by a committee of weak-minded fools. A board of directors never does a good job of advancing the strategic aims of anything—ever. Success always consists of strong individual personalities and the mob that licks at the heels of leadership carrying out the commands of the leadership by an individual. The ass kissers of the world do the work, but without the quality of thinking that comes from an individual who possesses leadership, the work is worthless. This is especially true of government, but can be seen in all its disgust wherever groups gather and the masses rule through democratic peer pressure.

The myth of the 99% is just that. Without leadership, they are just a mob of collectivists awaiting the determination of a leader to guide their lives. They are worthless without the 1% who take responsibility and lead all others. In America these days we breed these 99% types like cockroaches in a dark moist basement called public education. We drop these poor children off at day care before public education even begins at age 5 to begin the pounding of their young minds into the submission of mob rule. And by the time these young people are 15 to 16, they have given up. Their minds are no longer their own. They are at that time the 99% who will always in all phases of their lives be at the mercy of a leader to guide them about like little army men on a pretend battlefield. The worst of these collectivists are the idiots who go to college and attempt to join a fraternity hoping that their networking connections through those infantile organizations will land them with a good job so they can lick the heels of a leader all their lives, till their miserable lives ends in the grave of their choice. For these collectivists that’s the only choice they have left in their lives–where their burial plots will hold the empty carcass of their lives upon death. All other decisions in their lives are at the mercy of someone else.

Most leaders in the world of the human being have openly rejected this process of collectivism. Most people at the absolute top of an organization are raw individualist who do not care what people think of them, they do not worry their minds what is fashionable in Paris, or what is going on in New York. They do not worry about trends of popularity because it is they who set the rules. They are the trend setters for the masses, and without them, the collectivist will perish, 100% of the time.

So why do we embrace collectivism in America? Why do we endorse it as a “good” thing? Because it’s not, it’s pure evil and nothing less. Our institutions are breeding soulless human beings vacant of originality, vacant of courage, vacant of leadership and we are praising them for becoming part of the great evil goo of nothingness. We praise our children for surviving their hazing rituals in their college fraternities, we praise the women for voting with the girls doing exactly what advertisers told them to do, we praise entire sports teams for their victories, but within each article it is the work of an individual who almost always presides to carry the team over the edge of victory with leadership.

But why do we do these things?

The reason is that those who wish to rule, but lack the ability of leadership use the masses to compensate for their personal failures. This is how America got President Obama, who would amount to nothing if he did not rely on collectivism to carry him like an Egyptian pharaoh on the back of slaves across the Nile to tombs dedicated in his honor for the aimless appeasement of the gods. In Obama’s case it is the God of Mother Nature that he represents and millions of weak-minded collectivist built-in public education with our tax money carry him willingly hoping to get some of that “Obama Money” that is looted from the public, from the leaders of society who actually create jobs.

The evils of our current world can in almost every instance be traced back to collectivism to the principle of mob rule. Mob rule believes it can make something right due to their superior numbers, that they can deny a truth just in denying its existence through superior numbers in believing something. And such idiots will always have superior numbers, because there will always be more of them than the leaders of the world—the 1%. Mob rule, such as what is going on in modern politics is no different from the violence of the Vikings, or the Mongols, the Nazi, the French under Napoleon, the Greek under Alexander, the Romans under Marcus Aurelius, or the Americans under Franklin Roosevelt. Society has always, and will always be driven by the strong individuals of creative thought. Collectivism will never create justice, equality, or any primal form of a utopia. That is why in America, we should reject collectivism completely in every instance. Collective mob rule is the gateway to our own destruction and is of no good to anybody, even those who think they are the nobility of our culture. The so-called nobility are simply those who licked the most boots of a real leaders—the head honchos, the leaders of the pack, the one percenters, the visionaries who find they need people to carry out their visions, and as they look down, they see these boot licking followers offering to do anything to touch their grace of leadership.

Go ahead, give me one instance where I am wrong—–I dare you. There are certain rules to nature, the sun is hot, snow is cold, and it is always individuals who drive society. Once that is understood, America can realize that they could eliminate hundreds of thousands of government jobs, and save a hell of a lot of tax money and have a better society, not a weaker one. All it takes is the power of individualism, and the courage to use it.

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Check out more by CLICKING HERE!

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

New Novel Set in the Great Smoky Mountains: The Famous Matt Clark interview on “Tail of the Dragon” with Rich Hoffman

On Sunday May 6, 2012 I spent some time with Matt Clark of the Clarkcast Radio Network to talk about my new novel Tail of the Dragon which is about to hit book stores everywhere. Matt had read an early version of the novel before I signed with my publisher and enjoyed it so much he called me personally to say just how much he loved the story prompting us to discuss it well in advance of its release to the public. When the book was close to release, we spoke about doing the interview heard and seen below as it aired on Talk 1600 WAAM in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  Check it out!

On a special note, during the interview, I say “WE” quite a bit. This is in reference to either my wife who has been on many adventures with me and has been a big part of the writing process–or its in reference to my publisher and the team who has worked with me to bring this book to life. Its a process that involves a lot of people, so saying “WE” seemed appropriate.

Even though Matt and I spoke about a lot of topics that make Tail of the Dragon a unique and timely novel, where the events of this intense story are paralleling the tensions of our current nation, a lot of what we wanted to discuss didn’t make it into our interview. If it had, our talk might have gone on for hours. So to further elaborate the content of the Tail of the Dragon I have a longer version of the interview to enjoy while the final stages of production are completed prior to the release of the book in The United States and International markets. 

Enjoy!!!!!!

Q: What is your new book Tail of the Dragon all about?

A: I set out to write the book I’ve wanted to see written for a number of years, an action packed good ol’ car chase that was filled with excitement. They used to make lots of those films in Hollywood years ago, and of late, even with the strong video game market from the Need for Speed series and the popularity of the Fast and Furious films, studios have been shy about tackling those types of projects.

When I was growing up it was films like Smokey and the Bandit and The Dukes of Hazzard that dominated movie and TV sets and I always felt that those types of entertainment mediums were healthy for American culture since questioning the merit of the law is important to our checks and balances as a society. And for me, it is kind of sad that one of the greatest car chase films of all time is The Blues Brothers which was made back in the 70’s. So I set out to write a story to contribute to this starving deficiency, and I purposely set out to write the most exciting, and intense car chase story in the history of car chase stories. If early readings of the book are any indication, I’d say that mission was accomplished.

Q: After reading this novel it seems that there is more to it than just a car chase. These characters are in deep peril. The politics of the novel seem to be a very direct commentary to real life.

A: I think of this story as a modern pirate story, where the main character Rick Stevens has been hired as a privateer much the way England and France hired privateers to harass the Spanish Main during the 17th century leading to the golden age of piracy. This gave rise to the great privateer/pirate called Henry Morgan. In a way I see Rick Stevens as the modern counterpart to that historic character. Stevens has been hired by political interests to harass the Highway Patrol in Tennessee for political reasons—to prevent a presidential run to the White House of the current Tennessee governor. So in that respect, there is a contemporary storyline.

Q: But you don’t deal with party politics, you keep it neutral.

A: That’s right. I make no mention of Republicans or Democrats because to me they are all kind of the same thing. If there is a political meaning to be taken from this particular story it’s that the political system is broken beyond repair and a small number of characters are intent to correct that system with a rebellious upheaval which causes this grand car chase.

Q: Isn’t it a hot dog that starts all this in motion?

A: Yes, Rick Stevens accepts the bet of a hot dog in a race that triggers off the chain reaction of events that lead to the next civil war in America. This time the battle lines are drawn between those who want government to continue to expand, and those who want to see it withdrawal from their lives. But yes, the whole thing starts over a bet for a simple hot dog.

Q: But this isn’t just a tough guy car chase; you have romance in it too.

A: Yes, Rick Stevens and his wife are on a trip to Gatlinburg to shake the dust off their marriage, which is a very popular destination for that kind of thing, and while there Rick wants to run his new motorcycle on the Tail of the Dragon which is a road on the western frontier of the Great Smoky Mountains that has 318 curves in just 11 miles. It’s considered one of the most extraordinary roads in the world, so it’s a very popular destination for high performance bikers and automobiles. In the novel this is the destination for this middle-aged couple as they reconnect romantically now that their oldest son is off and married.

Q: Ok, so that brings up the question, how much of this story is real? How much of Rich Hoffman is there in Rick Stevens?

A: There’s a bit there, especially in the first couple of chapters where the couple is traveling on their way to The Dragon for the first time. I’d say those chapters are a bit autobiographical. When my wife and I traveled to the actual Dragon I was amazed by the culture that was there. There was a real hunger for personal freedom that I found refreshing so I knew I had to make my next book about that extraordinary place. That same summer my wife and I traveled over 10,000 miles on our motorcycle as I started writing this book so that I could get my head into the mind of a character like Rick Stevens. We traveled from the shores of Lake Erie to the tip of Key West by motorcycle and many places in between. On those trips this story was born in every aspect. When you travel by motorcycle and speak with other motorcyclists at gas pumps and rest stops there is a respect that is undeniable. Where Rick Stevens and I part ways is that Rick does not have the same outlets as I do. I write, and read a lot, but Rick invests his time in cars and engines and doesn’t have mechanisms to relieve the stresses he feels in his life. I would never snap the way Rick Stevens does, but there is a part of me that really understands his reasons and motives for the behavior that becomes the greatest car chase in human history.

Q: So you and your wife rode 10,000 miles on a motorcycle all over The United States to research this novel?

A: Yes, but our riding stayed on the eastern side of the Mississippi River because most of the traveling was on long weekend trips that were close to our hometown of Cincinnati. But yes, our trips to The Dragon being some of the most interesting experiences I have had on a motorcycle. While on the road you meet a lot of people who want pretty much the same thing that you do, a sense of freedom, which is the appeal of traveling by motorcycle, and are the reason that motorcyclists wave to each other when they pass on the road.

The character of Rick Stevens is such a freedom loving person and to understand him correctly I found that he came to life for me somewhere between the Smoky Mountains and Key Largo, Florida. In fact, my wife and I stopped by a McDonalds in between Key Largo and Key West after several days on the road with our tent and a weeks worth of supplies stacked our motorcycle luggage rack and there was a profound sense of freedom that I felt at that moment that I used to create the character of Rick Stevens. I had to ask the question, what if a person lived like this every day? What would happen if a man who had such a profound sense of freedom and a determination to stay that way found himself pulled into a political whirlpool involving a presidential run to the White House. The result is this novel, Tail of the Dragon.

Q: Didn’t you have a lot of trouble with the law yourself, so isn’t there more of Rick Stevens in you than you’re admitting?

A: It’s true I grew up in trouble with the law quite a bit. I’ve received about every type of speeding ticket, and reckless operation citation a person can get, and I’ve been to court more times than I can even remember. Like Rick Stevens I had lost my driver’s license under state mandated suspension till my late 20’s. I do love speed, which is very obvious by the pace of this novel. But after I started raising a family and was driving family type cars, I drove just as fast–I never did slow down—even today. But I stopped getting tickets because the police do pull over a certain kind of driver, and certain types of cars. This is what confirmed my suspicions that the law was crooked in selective enforcement, and that traffic violations have nothing to do with safety, and everything to do with “revenue enhancement,” which is one of the central themes of this novel.

But Rick Stevens unlike me expects the world to be fair and he refuses to budge off the line of what is right and wrong. He’s a very determined character who expects logic in the law, and when he doesn’t get it—watch out.

Q: That brings us to another compelling character in Tail of the Dragon. We’ve talked about motorcycles, but this isn’t a motorcycle chase with the police, it’s a car chase. The car in this novel is unlike anything ever created.

A: That it is. In the story Rick Stevens has been trying to save up the money to fix up an old 1977 Firebird he has from his youth, but he could never come up with the money to restore it, since he was raising a family. So the car was in the garage collecting dust waiting for Rick to come up with the money. He gets it from a political enemy of the Governor of Tennessee who gives him $20 million to fix up his old car and turn it into the supercar that’s in the book.

Q: And it truly is a supercar.

A: Well, it had to be. Again, I think of it as the ultimate pirate ship for the ultimate pirate. Stevens takes the $20 million dollars and converts his old Firebird into an armored tank that can travel at speeds of over 200 MPH, which would be needed if he was going to pick a fight with the state of Tennessee and their highway patrol. He knew that the police would use lethal force to stop him once the chase got started so he put so many gadgets into the car that it would make James Bond jealous.

As a kid I always loved the car in Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang, where the car could do just about anything, including fly, so in that spirit the old Firebird in Tail of the Dragon is a tribute to those great cars designed by Ian Flemming in his literary works that became the early James Bond films and set a level of expectation that hasn’t been matched. So with this story, I wanted to top it. I kept imagining how cool the Hot Wheel car of this Firebird would be in the toy aisle for a 10 year-old-boy, and I designed the car to appeal to all the children under 12 and adults over 30 who have old cars in their garages that they are trying to restore for all the reasons that Rick is, and are finding that money is hard to come by. This is the kind of story that fathers can share with their children in equal joy because both young and old love a cool car that is a strong character of its own.

Q: But what’s most unique about this car is that it’s the first hot rod of its kind that’s “environmentally friendly.” It doesn’t run off fossil fuel, but off of “vegetable oil.” Is that right?

A: Yes, the car has had a Lemans race car engine installed that is based on real technology from Puguet where they have had great success in developing diesel racing engines that can run on biodiesel. They have one engine that they currently use that produces 700 HP, so that gave me the idea to use that technology to solve a unique problem that always comes up in car chase stories—how do the bandits get gas, because in long, involved, and violent car chases, the last option of the police would be to shut down all the fuel stations along the chase route to starve the bandits of gas? So if a bandit/runaway pirate like Rick Stevens wishes to survive a massive car chase, he has to solve the problem of how he can refuel, otherwise he will simply run out of gas and he’d be gunned down with no place to go.

One thing that is very common, especially in the American South are lots of free-standing fast food restaurants that have plenty of waste veggie oil they keep in large containers behind their buildings. Rick hopes that by resurrecting his beloved car to a diesel engine power plant with a vegetable oil conversion kit, which is actually technologically feasible, then he can solve his refueling problems no matter what the police do, because law enforcement won’t be able to deny him of that source of fuel while on the run.

Q: So this is the first car chase in history that is “environmentally friendly.”

A: You could say that. Veggie oil is an alternative fuel that makes no sense to me why we don’t explore it as an alternative to diesel fuel. If I were a truck driver in America, I’d be pretty upset by the cost of diesel fuel, and I’d be looking for alternatives. So I wanted to make that technology known to a wider audience by making it a central story point in this novel, so people could learn that there are options to traditional fossil fuel available right now. Using those alternative fuel sources will help drive costs down by relieving demand and creating a more competitive market in the fuel processing businesses. So it only makes sense as an option that I think people should be utilizing. In Tail of the Dragon Rick Stevens uses veggie fuel to stay one step ahead of the law.

Q: I don’t want to give anything away, but I will have to say that I didn’t know how this story would end. It’s intense right up to the very last paragraph and I couldn’t put it down, especially the last 80 pages. There was just one cliffhanger after another and the story didn’t stop. There were action scenes that were just incredible, that’s the only way I know to describe them.

A: Well, I’m glad to hear it, because that was my intention. When I was a kid I played with a lot of toy cars, and I imagined every imaginable chase sequence possible by the human mind, so when I sat down to write Tail of the Dragon, I was able to go back and relive those childhood moments with the wisdom and reality of being an adult that has spent over 20 years traveling at a high rate of speed. So the car chase in this novel is a culmination of 44 years of playing on my behalf with the idea of the car chases that are in it. I wrote the scenes the way I’ve always wanted to see them, but so far every other story ever made has fallen short in some way.

I’ve read a lot of books, and car chases don’t typically play out well in literature, but as a tribute to my favorite car chases from movies, I wanted to apply one to literature as a mechanism to advance a very intense plot. So I thought of the great car chase stories like Road Warrior, Thunder Road, Vantage Point, Smokey and the Bandit, Hooper and many others and wanted to bring them into the modern world of advanced police tactics and superior technology. I didn’t want the police to be stumbling buffoons like they are typically in the old 70’s car chases, but worthy adversaries, which greatly increased the level of tension and made this story one of a kind. I’m very proud of what ended up on the printed page and the images it congers up in the mind.

Q: And that brings us to the point of the book. Without giving anything away, what is the point, because to me this novel works on many different levels? I mean you can blast through this novel in one sitting, or over a weekend. And you can read it several times and still take away more on the third and fourth reading. There are messages in it that seem to resonate to a much deeper philosophical yearning.

A: For me the point of the book is to get to the final pages, literally the last four pages. All the billions of dollars of destruction, the carnage, the audacious disregard for the law is to take the characters and the readers on a journey to a place beyond the law of mortal human beings to a place I believe all of humanity is clamoring for, but they just don’t know how to get there. We have a culture that is addicted to safety, to laws; too many chains we willingly place upon ourselves in a grand scheme to have an advanced and fair society. But that’s not what we’re getting; we’re finding our freedoms being eroded away slowly and beyond our control, and the common cause is in our tendency to be driven by our fears by politicians and social do-gooders.

So the characters in Tail of the Dragon decide that life is moving by too quickly and they have a shot to pull those chains off for the first time in their lives, and they make the leap for freedom even if it means their death. This is why the planned provocation of the highway patrol takes place on the Fourth of July because the characters are declaring their freedom, even though they are fully aware they probably won’t live to see a sun set. The yearning for freedom is that important to them.

As a literary device I used many mythological symbols to take the characters to the edge of social acceptance to arrive at a life beyond the laws of mankind to learn the meaning of their existence, to touch the face of what they were meant to be. To step beyond the limits that all the social devices of our age place upon us as shackles, the characters had to break all the rules and reach for their human potential beyond the reach of the law to truly understand. The point of the chase is actually a metaphor for how society as a whole seeks to hold individuals to the limits of the law. And to the point of Tail of the Dragon, the law is made up primarily of social reformers who have control and manipulation in mind, and not the needs of the people in general. So the conflict works at many levels, and the characters are both running to it and from it so they can smash through some invisible social barrier they have no way to understand, until it’s too late.

Of course if everyone in society acted on these impulses, there would be chaos. But in the name of art, we can explore these emotions through these characters so that the reader can break free like Rick Stevens into the world beyond politicians, legal manipulation, and guilt ridden morality to a place where the human being can be everything that it was meant to be. And in Tail of the Dragon, even though the results are tragic, the hero quest is in the pursuit of this freedom that is uniquely American, a freedom I touched on so often during my motorcycle trips, that exists just out of our reach.

Q: So when does it come out and what’s in the future for Tail of the Dragon? What about a sequel, or a series? This has to become a movie.

A: Well, again, not to give anything away, I don’t think there could be a sequel. That’s all I can say about that. But the book should be out within months. The publisher has not given me a firm release date yet, which was pushed out in the last-minute because of a change by me to the manuscript during my final reading approval. But it will be very soon. As to a movie, I think that may be a possibility. But for now, I mean for it to be a literary experience that is very personal to the reader. This is a journey that is intended in a language only a book can provide. I envision that there will be many readers clamoring for a taste of freedom on long motorcycle trips like the ones my wife and I enjoy going on that will pack this book in their side bags and pull off at that McDonalds between Key West and Key Largo and just rest for a while and cool off while reading Tail of the Dragon over a Big Mac like I’ve enjoyed doing over the years on many occasions. I have no doubt that the visitors to the mountain cabins around the actual Dragon will buy the book and enjoy reading it in the early morning mist that hovers around the mountains and contemplate the grand adventure of Rick Stevens and his epic car chase. A book is a personal journey that is deeply intimate for the reader, and as a lover of books, I put everything the written word can articulate into Tail of the Dragon to provide for readers an adventure they will never forget and yearn for again and again.

Stay tuned!!!! –And pass this on to a friend!

For more information and video about the actual Tail of the Dragon from The Discovery Channel and Good Morning America, CLICK HERE.

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!!  Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Check out more by CLICKING HERE!

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