Rich Hoffman's Blog, page 450

Making of ‘Tail of the Dragon’ The Novel Part V: Morality beyond the limits of political law

Many people used to say that someday I would learn my place, and stop being so rambunctious.  They said that someday I would turn down the music and place my foot lighter on the accelerator.  They used to say that once I did some jail time, or paid enough fines that I would “settle down.”  That was nearly three decades ago, and those people if they are still alive themselves, have stopped tapping their foot waiting for it to happen.  They have had to accept that after all the many, many times that I have stood in front of judges, all the countless times I have had patrol car lights behind me, and even the times that I represented myself in court because my legal representation was incompetent and not able to defend my cases to my satisfaction, that their dreams of defeat would come.  People who have stood against me, or wished for me to fall in line with typical human acceptance of authority have had to give up on their dreams of my compliance.  What they never figured out was that I learned when I was very young that the American legal system was made up of social looters who were more interested in making money, than justice, and the intent behind law was not the protection of private property—as its supposed to be, but in the rule of a political class over the “common man,” and I have fought that tendency since I was a 5-year-old child with my Big Wheel.  And I haven’t kept my opinions to myself over the years.  Instead I have taught them to my kids which can be seen in the below video, which is Part 5 of the Making of series chronicling the creation of my latest novel Tail of the Dragon.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS.  In the video, my daughter and her husband accompanied my wife and I to the Indie Gathering Film Festival in Cleveland, Ohio to accept an award for a short film I had entered for competition titled The Overman, for the best experimental film category.

Because of my thoughts about speed, and the legal system I had no problem telling the operators of the film festival that I would arrive at 10 AM that morning from Cincinnati.  My daughter and her husband wanted to go with us, so we planned a motorcycle trip for the weekend up to Cleveland.  I wanted to take a break from the writing of Tail of the Dragon to accept the award, so we decided to leave on a Saturday morning, spend the night at the Holiday Inn at West Lake where the film festival was being held, then return on Sunday.  At 5 AM in the morning, we hit the road on my Boulevard motorcycle.  My son-in-law rode the GS750 that he bought from me the year before, and my daughter rode their Kawasaki Ninja.  However, my daughter had never ridden a motorcycle on her own.  Previously she had ridden on the back of the Ninja with my son-in-law, but that was the extent of her motorcycle riding experience.  So I promised her we’d take several breaks along the way.  Her only real concern at the time was that she only had a temp permit, and was concerned that she’d run into trouble with the law being so far away from home on just a learners permit.  This was the way I came up with the plot line in Tail of the Dragon where Rick Stevens gets pulled over by the police while on a learners permit in Tennessee.  My daughter was taking a big risk riding a very fast motorcycle as her first real riding experience, and over such a vast distance.  But as I’ve always taught her, without risk the rewards are often not very profitable, so she desired to take a risk in hope of rewards and push herself in a way she had never done before.  600 miles over a weekend on a motorcycle at over 80 to 90 MPH the entire time as a beginning rider with only a motorcycle temp license was challenging, and I was proud of her.

We stopped short of Columbus well before the sun came up to get a feel for how she was doing.  Early in the game, she was getting used to the bike and the speed, so we were able to move on up the highway making a few fuel stops and a traditional breakfast at the Cracker Barrel—which we tend to do when traveling as a family.  Much of the time we were traveling at over 90 MPH as the sun was coming up which was spectacular.  It’s the kind of experience that cannot be explained to people who have not participated in that kind of activity.  With me the speed is necessary.  I was scheduled to arrive in Cleveland at Lake Wood around 10 AM to get my booth set up and report for the screening of my film.  But I set such deadlines knowing the pace I typically travel at, which is faster than flight if TSA lines are accounted for.  I can often travel to far-flung cities quicker than an airplane can load passengers, takeoff, and land dispatching their customers.  So I often take full advantage of that ability.

Many people over the years have told me that my driving tendencies are reckless, but this is based on the perspective of “average” people who desire to be led around like cattle by a political class afraid of their own shadows.  Never-the-less, my attitude has put me into a lot of trouble with the law.  The goal of these legal altercations has not been justice on behalf of the safety of mankind.  The goal is to use the law, which has set speed limits unnecessarily low so that politicians can have the opportunity to have a tax increase against the public in the disguise of “justice.”  The point of my new novel was to illustrate this fact based on my many experiences in front of judges and police officers.  My editor at American Book at one point challenged one of the confrontations that Rick Stevens, (the protagonist of Tail of the Dragon) had with a police officer—as there were several—and didn’t believe that a cop would behave in the way I described in the novel.  I explained to her that I had been in nearly the same exact circumstance in real life which involved a gun, and that Rick Stevens story had its roots more in reality than in fiction.

We arrived in Cleveland  to meet the day ahead of the other contestants even though many of them were already staying at the hotel.  We were the first to arrive in the networking room, which is the way I like to perform my business.  We set up our table and did our work at the festival.  I shook hands, signed autographs, posed for pictures and received my awards.  When the other filmmakers went to a party at the hotel bar that night, my family was in our hotel room working on philosophy concepts and taking notes from the day.  My son-in-law does a lot of thinking of his own and had many thoughts to capture from his observations, and my daughter naturally does as well.  She often stays up late every night writing down ideas, editing pictures and doing research, so we don’t attend many parties.  We socialize in a festive fashion on VERY rare occasions.  I spent many hours after everyone went to bed working on a re-write of the completed Tail of the Dragon manuscript based on some of my observations from the previous day.

The next day, we awoke, had a nice breakfast and said goodbye to everyone in Cleveland.  We hit the road with the same fury for which we came.  At a fuel stop, my very fatigued daughter let the Ninja fall over as she was extremely tired from the hard riding the previous day and so far during our trip south.  The bike’s fall bent the shift shaft that went into the gearbox preventing the Ninja from shifting out of second gear.  This essentially halted our progress as it would be impossible to do any highway driving without the ability to shift out of second gear.  My son-in-law and I went to fix the bent shaft and get the bike operating again.  My daughter felt terrible.  She was tired, strained to her limit, and still nearly 200 miles from home.  She was caught between the tough spot of wanting to complete the journey and hoping that the motorcycle was broken beyond repair to relieve her of having to ride it back home.  For people not used to such long rides, a 90 MPH journey on a crotch rocket over 200 miles of highway is tough.  The wind beats at the body in terrible ways and there is no way to shift a seating position to become more comfortable.  She was tired, and her legs weren’t working very well from being deprived of movement which is why the bike fell over during a fuel stop.

But she toughed it out once we got the bike operating again.  We stopped just above Columbus for dinner after spending most of the afternoon fixing the bike in a parking lot.  Once we arrived above Columbus we were close enough to home that she knew she could do the last hour and a half on a full stomach.  She swore to me that she’d never ride that far again, and it took her a long time to get back on a motorcycle.  She was never so glad to arrive home as she was that day.  The first day had been fun, but tiring.  The second day had been too much.  It did occur to me on the way home to back off the gas, and drop down to 75 MPH or even 65 MPH.  But I was worried that if we yielded to the circumstances that my daughter would always feel that the situation had conquered her, instead of her conquering the situation.  As a father, I did worry about her blanking out from the strain and crashing all over the highway.  But I wanted her to know that I trusted her, and her desire to not let me down was a gift from me to her in delivering her to a conquest that she will know all her life as one she didn’t walk away from.

When my daughter was a little girl, a bully spit on her while she played with her sister and friends at the playground.  He had been showing off for his friends and was older by several years.  My kids were targeted because I had been known in our neighborhood as the most vicious advocate against marijuana sales anywhere in southern Ohio.  I caused such a ruckus over the sale of marijuana in my community that I knew all the cops by name as they came to my house so often.  After a while I gave up calling the cops because it was revealed to me that they were involved in the pot sales directly and passively.  In fact I had a next door neighbor who was a cop and he fought me viciously as he thought I was a NARC, and made sure everyone knew it, not only in the neighborhood but also on the police force.  I gave up on the legal system when it was realized that it was corrupt beyond repair, and my experiences thereafter became my novel The Symposium of Justice.  Once it became known that I would not yield to my neighbors who wanted to buy and use marijuana we went into a stalemate since the law was technically on my side.  So they sent their children after my children which is how the little boy spit on my little girl.  My daughter has always been a very confident person, full of life, and the look on her face when she came home with spittle on the front of her shirt was one of the moments that could have shattered her for the rest of her life.  The intention by the boys was to impose their will upon her with force and push her into social compliance.  They were bigger and meaner and the message to my kids was that they would have to submit to the thuggish authority of the neighborhood bullies or suffer the consequences.  So I packed my kids and their friends into our car and tracked down the bullies at their house where I “forcefully” made the guilty boy apologize to my daughter in front of his father—who had actually encouraged the behavior.  About a month later some much older boys, from 18 to 20 years old gathered in front of our house across the street in a mob of about 30 young people and harassed my 9 to 10-year-old children for riding their bicycles on the sidewalk.  My wife called me at work, so I rushed home and instantly engaged the boys in “aggressive confrontation.”  The police never came, the owner of the house stayed inside looking out their upstairs window hoping that the fight would go their way, but it didn’t.  The boys were forced to disperse in retreat.   The next morning there was a broken egg at the end of my driveway where some smartass thinking they were tough threw an egg from across the street to land on my driveway behind our family car during the night.  They were testing the waters to see if I would let it go.  That night when the sun went down, I bought two dozen eggs and lunched them at the home blasting the windows and doors with slimy yoke and broken shells.  The homeowners were in their living room watching TV, but never came to the window or even opened the door.  And they certainly didn’t call the police, not with the amount of pot they had in their house which nobody wanted to address.  The cop next door was friends with the owners of that home, and did not make a move either.  Watching all this activity my children learned about justice in life, and what sometimes has to be done to get it.  This is why my daughter exhausted from 600 plus miles of riding a motorcycle across the state of Ohio twice in two days struggled to keep the bike upright and conquer her exhaustion to arrive home save and sound.  The whole point of riding the bike herself and not just sitting on the back with my son-in-law was so that she could prove to herself that she could achieve the feat. And she did.  If I had interfered with her as an adult, I would have done her a disservice.  It was my job when she was a child to interfere and kick the crap out of some neighborhood kids that were harassing her because I was teaching her not to give up…….as a father.  But coming back from Cleveland, Ohio after a weekend film festival, she had to live up to what she had become as an adult.  It was hard, I was worried she might not make it, but I was more worried about what would happen if she didn’t fight through it and conquer a lingering fear.

These thoughts and history are what went into the fearless nature of Rick Stevens in my novel Tail of the Dragon.   When we arrived home, I again wrote pages and pages of dialogue and thoughts about what I had witnessed.  I was proud of my daughter, and everyone who had traveled those roads with me that weekend.  The climax for many would have been getting the award at the film festival.  But for me, it was only a footnote.  I like getting awards, and enjoy the company of people at those kinds of events.  But it was the journey I remembered most from that weekend which is why there isn’t more footage of the actual festival in my video.  For me, it was the boldness that my daughter tackled in her challenge of riding a motorcycle to Cleveland and back during a weekend on a learners permit at high-speed that mattered.  The experience would have been denied to us if we stayed within the parameters of the law, as concocted by politicians.  I have learned over the years such as in the situation with my neighbor and the many trips to court that I have personally endeavored in; that the law is more adequately used to restrict the lives of people more than it is dedicated to justice, or “fairness.”  So I typically consider law as a second-hand notion.  This attitude is reflected in my characters from Tail of the Dragon exceptionally well.  It also makes it a unique work of thought. Readers of Tail of the Dragon get the rare opportunity to climb into the mind of outlaws like Rick and his wife Renée Stevens to discover aspects of themselves that long ago yielded to the parameters of fear that has been imposed upon them tragically.  The idea of freedom is as foreign to them as the surface of Jupiter is to a villager in the Congo.  It makes me proud when my family goes on trips like the one to the film festival with me and overcomes a number of obstacles to enjoy a fine meal in utter exhaustion just north of Columbus on a hot Sunday afternoon an hour and a half away from home.

Some might read what I’ve said here and think that I am a bad parent for encouraging my daughter to break the speed limit, and drive under improper endorsements.  Those are the same type of people who spit on that same child and earned my wrath when the police had conspired with them to clear me from a neighborhood so that marijuana sales could flow without opposition.  And it is that type of utter hypocrisy which causes Rick Stevens in Tail of the Dragon to thumb his nose at the government of The United States and take his fight to the death under the mantra “live free or die.”  For Rick Stevens, he meant it.  And the way to make the words come to paper came from rides like the one to a Cleveland film festival with my daughter who was stepping into her adulthood with the fearless conquest of obstacles that most cower from in trepidation only to punch through the other side in a life of illumination that shines through in virtually every action of human endeavor.

It was never my intention to grow up in a typical fashion to become a nice compliant adult that does whatever a political class determines in their infantile wisdom to be sufficient to the human experience.  In that regard, I have always been on a quest for the “super human” experience.  I have taught my children nothing short of living their lives as “super humans” themselves.  And upon delivering my children into adulthood I am not done with parenting.  Only now, the students are not my biological children but the inquiring minds of those who know there is more to life than what they see before them, and lack the faculties to meet that life.  For such minds, being an average human will not be enough.  They must become more so.  For them, I present Rick Stevens and the greatest car chase in the history of the world in the novel Tail of the Dragon.

Rich Hoffman

CLICK HERE to see what my publisher had to say about my novel Tail of the Dragon.

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 “If they attack first………..blast em’!” www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Pull Your Children From Public School: I DARE ANYBODY to argue the “statism” behind Common Core

When many years ago my wife and I pulled our kids out of public school to teach them at home there was a fury among our friends and family members that really never ended.  I have never been a fan of public education.  I rebelled against it as a youth with every fiber in my body.  I’ve always seen public education as dangerous, brainless, and a menace to the human race.  But while I was raising my own children, I was willing to give society the benefit of a doubt, so I let my kids attend those indoctrination centers knowing that I had the ability to deprogram them with copious amounts of fatherly advice.  But when the obvious intentions of public education made themselves known, my reaction has been either to pull my children from their tyrannical grip, or starve the beast by denying them funding through taxation.  And those true intentions have never been more evident than they are now over the issue of Common Core instruction.

I am obviously not a supporter of Common Core in public schools.  Common Core is an honest attempt by the political class to bring the standards of all public education establishments up to the same level so everyone attending a government school is getting the same knowledge.  The intention as it always is–is a good one.   I sincerely believe that the characters involved truly believe they are doing well for humanity and the world’s children.  That is because their own educations have taught them to think in such a fashion, and their ignorance as tribal leaders of the human race has misguided their logic.  The result of Common Core is and will be that good schools will be pulled down to the level of bad schools making all schools “bad.”

For most adults they want their children to get out of public education the “social” experience of making friends who are their age, have exposure to team sports, and gain the basic abilities to read, write, and do some math.  Outside of those basics, they also want out of public education a free baby sitter to watch their children during the daytime hours while the parents pursue “other” activities.  This was not my goal upon raising my children.  I wanted to raise philosophers and great thinkers, and they were not going to get to such a lofty height of mental acuity listening to some raving lunatic stand at the front of a room preaching to them the merits of liberal philosophy, so my wife and I pulled them out of school.   The protests that came from our family and friends were because they had all bought into Lyndon Johnston’s Great Society idea of strong central government and a persistent yielding to the village chiefs of politics.  Such yielding assumes that “other” people know better and are smarter, so they are equipped mentally to shape the lives of our youth.

I have always been weary of public education, but I tried to suppress that sentiment when I created No Lakota Levy to stand against my own neighborhood school system’s bottomless pit of tax requests.  After successfully defeating three consecutive levies, my group demanded that the administration ask the employees of the teacher’s union to take a 5% cut in pay as the average wage was $63K per year—which was too much.  They ignored those demands and revealed that their impact strategy as an institution under the command of modern politics was not in the education of children otherwise they would not have attempted to hurt children with pay-for-play sports, cutting electives, and other hardships.  Their impact strategy was to fulfill the desires of socialists, communists, and Fabian Socialists who infected American education through the Department of Education many years ago, changing their names to “progressive,” and “democrats,” then seeking to pull the wool over the eyes of America by conning us all into funding our own destruction eroding away the values of our property for the “good of children.”  Once this was understood by facts rather than theory, I was officially done with support of public education of any kind.  I am no longer an advocate for reasonable fiscal spending in public schools.  Instead, I am an advocate for the complete dismantling of public education to be replaced by competitive replacements.  I do not want “the government” to teach the youth of America.  They cannot be trusted.  The evidence is in and it is everywhere.

The news revealed by the Glenn Beck program and other sources is not new to me.  I have been where they are currently for a long, long time.  The unintended consequence of Common Core instruction for anybody who is on the fence currently will be 100% the advancement of “statism” to the youth of America, and that is not acceptable.   Government does not understand any other concept besides “statism.”  It’s not that they can help it……………they can’t.  Statism is the result of all government to seek ways to preserve itself as a collective unit.  Statism is an old, archaic social idea that has outlived its usefulness.  It is a shackle upon the human race, and has no place in the minds of mankind.  Common Core in American schools is “statism” instruction, which is why it must be rejected not only as a federal program, but also the premise of their entire education system.  It must be scrapped and completely re-thought from the ground up for it’s a menace to children’s minds.

For my needs public education was never sufficient.  It wasn’t when I went to school, and it wasn’t certainly for my own children.  Public education was so unimportant to my wife that she didn’t even graduate with her class even though she was an honor student.  She simply received her graduation certificate in the mail skipping the ceremony completely.  And we’ve only been to one class reunion.  We went to my fifth and realized that we had grown so far away from all those people that we had nothing in common with them.  We’ve never attended another one in over twenty years now, and never regretted it for a single moment.  My children did the same.  Both of them spent their senior years traveling Europe as their school friends were attending their graduation ceremonies and getting drunk with senseless mental evasion techniques (smoking pot, drinking alcohol, and watching mindless programs on television—all things that I am adamantly against).  I remember that my oldest daughter had sent me a text message with pictures from the Terracotta Army on display at the British Museum of Natural History she was attending on the same night that Lakota was graduating their students from her senior class.  She wasn’t missing anything by skipping out on the ridiculousness of public education and the Fabian Socialist attempts to dumb down the students so that they all grow up and become willing servants to the kings and queens of politics.  She was living real life and studying real history up close and personal.

Common Core is everything and more that Glenn Beck has stated in the above videos.  Most everyone reading this will likely have difficulty understanding since they have accepted that public education is some kind of civil right, and that it’s all about friends, school jackets and a sense of belonging to greater concepts than oneself.  I call public education collectivist indoctrination.  For virtually every modern problem coming from the minds of human beings everywhere from their sexual dysfunction, to their lack of mental capacity in the field of business, to their family issues, to their utmost failures in politics, to the growing acceptance of socialism over capitalism, it is the fault of government-run public schools. Common Core is just the most recent debacle that has good, pure, intentions which in reality turn out to be destructive to the minds of children because the idea came from statists taught their values through the political philosophy of socialism.  With that in mind it deserves to be met with resistance, revulsion, skepticism, and tenacious defunding of the program so that it doesn’t spread to another generation of young people and destroy their minds like a rotten apple that has fallen to the ground and been consumed by parasitic insects.  We already have more than three generations of rotten apples, and another one will end American culture, which is the Fabian Socialist plan, and has been from the beginning.  Common Core is a parasite to the mind of mankind because it is a statist policy that will instruct children to grow up with a statist mindset.  And statism leads to perpetual war, perpetual tax increases, perpetual expansion of government, and perpetual regression of the creative mind for all human beings.  That is why if you truly love your children, they should be removed from any school that is accepting Common Core as their new standard.  And because of the federal money involved, most schools will be accepting Common Core.  That leaves American society with a difficult decision to make—one that I understand completely.  I’ve been there myself.  But I’ve told the story of what I did and why, and I can report that my family is better for it.  The question is what will you do dear reader?  Will you take the easy path of blind acceptance in government leadership, or will you carve your own path through the wilderness of uncertainty?  I’d recommend the later, and your children will be much better for it.

If you are uncertain, I suggest watching all the videos above thoroughly, and do your own research.  The evidence is extremely easy to see for eyes willing to see it.  And if you disagree, I “DARE” you to argue with me.  I’ve been at this a long time, and I know what’s behind the education system.  So if you think I’m wrong, make your best argument.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Being Super Human Against Public Education: Meet Isabel Paterson–’The God of the Machine,’

I remember vividly what the conditions where when I first went on 700 WLW several years ago to discuss the problems of public education funding.  I knew what kind of turmoil it would stir up and I knew what the end game would be.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW SOME OF THOSE RADIO BROADCASTS.  Since that far away time I have learned that my instincts about public education were 100% correct, that it is a corrosive endeavor concocted from the worst of human reasoning, and should be abolished in its current form.  Government should not be permitted to forcibly remove children from their homes and subject children to training and procedures which parents do not approve.  Citizens should not have their wealth expropriated to support any school anywhere and to pay for children who are not theirs.  After the recent comments by MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry urging society to think of child rearing in a more collective sense, the jury is officially in, and public education is GUILTY of crimes against The United States and every citizen produced within its borders for over a century now, and it must be stopped.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW Melissa’s comments.  The position that MSNBC and other progressive organizations have taken in regard to public education brings back the bewildering claims from the opposition made in my first WLW broadcasts, and puts a light on them that I only suspected before, until the facts have been made more clearly as time has evolved.  Public education currently in America is a menace to a capitalist society.

But this isn’t a recent development.  Public education has been broken from the very start, and for proof I offer as testimony the words of Isabel Paterson from 1943, where the public education system was almost as bad and corrupt as it is today–in order to display that the phenomenon of failure is not new.  Her comments below are from her book The God of the Machine, and have resonated with me for some time.  When she says that it will take a superhuman task to break the education stranglehold over the lives of Americans she was not kidding.  I knew that before I ever did the first WLW interview or set up this site with the name I used.  It takes more than human strength to stand against such oppression—she knew it then, and it has only gotten worse.  When she wrote her book, it was still 35 years before the creation of The Department of Education which would show it to be openly committed to socialism as a federal institution, and advance all the fears she uttered 70 years ago in a book nearly forgotten from the American tapestry.

“Educational texts are necessarily selective, in subject matter, language, and point of view.  Where teaching is conducted by private schools, there will be a conservable variation in different schools; the parent must judge what they want their children taught, by the curriculum offered.  Then each must strive for objective truth…Nowhere will there be any inducement to teach the ‘supremacy of the state’ as a compulsory philosophy.  But every politically controlled educational system will inculcate the doctrine of state supremacy sooner or later, whether as a divine right of kings, or the ‘will of the people’ in ‘democracy.’  Once that doctrine has been accepted, it becomes an almost superhuman task to break the stranglehold of the political power over the life of the citizen.  It has had his body, property, and mind in its clutches from infancy.

“Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends… when millions are slaughtered, when torture is practiced, starvation enforced, oppression made a policy, as at present over a large part of the world, and as it has often been in the past, it must be at the behest of very many good people, and even by their direct action, for what they consider a worthy object.” (The God of the Machine)

Isabel Paterson (January 22, 1886 – January 10, 1961) was a Canadian-American journalist, novelist, political philosopher, and a leading literary critic of her day. Along with Rose Wilder Lane and Ayn Rand, who both acknowledged an intellectual debt to Paterson, she is one of the three founding mothers of American libertarianism. Paterson’s best-known work, her 1943 book The God of the Machine, a treatise on political philosophy, economics, and history, reached conclusions and espoused beliefs that many libertarians credit as a foundation of their philosophy. Her biographer Stephen D. Cox (2004) believes Paterson is the “earliest progenitor of libertarianism as we know it today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_of_the_Machine

Education has not improved from her day to the present and was a travesty for many years leading up to 1943.  Education must be competitive and function from the same rules that are applied to sports.  Nobody will argue that just anybody can be the quarterback of a football team.  There are methods of capitalism which determine who is the best athlete to lead a football team through practice, skill assessment, and the kind of toughness that is only developed on the field of play.  It is preposterous to assume that education will be good if a means for bringing about the best teachers, the lowest cost of education, and the greatest curriculum is not explored through success and failure.  Not everyone can be a quarterback, a running back, a line backer, or a defensive back, and not everyone can be a leading physicists, an engineer, a visionary, or a gardener.  Education must be able to bring these elements out in children and the present system does not, instead it seeks to make all children equal out of a misplaced sense of fairness that sounds good on the surface, but is destructive as a social ideology.  Public education believes today as it believed over 70 years ago, that the chubby kid who plays defensive tackle on a football team can play quarterback, and the quarterback should be able to be an offensive lineman.  Their effort is to give the defensive tackle a chance to be the hero of the game by throwing winning touchdowns so the young man doesn’t feel left out.   But they achieve it at the expense of victory, and performance, because the best player is not standing in as quarterback.  The marketplace for football doesn’t have much tolerance for a quarterback that can’t throw a ball accurately more than 10 yards so the quality of the game is weakened because of the attempt at fairness.  This is what public education in America has been for over a century and it has failed.  It needs to be reinvented with competition in mind.

I understand that it will take superhuman strength to change the hearts and minds of the education empire, but it must be done.  It will take not just one overman, but overmen and overwomen to pull it off.  But make no mistake, failure is not an option.  Not addressing the education problem is simply not on the table of discussion, and putting up with it as it has been for so long is not tolerable.  Many people use as the crutch when they are compelled to confront a problem that is so difficult to state, “but I’m only human.”  Well, such rationalizations are not acceptable any more.  If it takes being more than human to solve this complicated problem which is imposed on the human race, then it must be done.  This means that the first thing that must go is public education as a government controlled entity.  It’s time to privatize and form it in the fashion of our sports franchises.  It’s time that our education system focus on discovering what individual children are good at instead of trying to make them into a mash potato meal for government to consume the human race.  If superhuman effort is needed, then it is that which we must do.  We must do so to remove people like MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry from education in any capacity, and we must do it before they ruin the lives of even more children with the progressive ideologies that have always led to the destruction of humanity time and time again.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Glenn Beck’s New Book ‘Control-Exposing The Truth About Guns’: coming to the Cincinnati Freedom Expo April 19th

When Doc Thompson comes to speak at the Cincinnati Freedom Expo on April 19th, 2013, he is going to bring with him copies of Glenn Beck’s new book titled Control-Exposing The Truth About Guns which isn’t released until April 30th.  Ann Becker is planning to offer the books in a raffle door prize as a chance to win for the guests who attend.  Doc Thompson is the morning national radio host of The Blaze with his on-air partner Skip who will be in attendance with him. 

 

The Cincinnati Freedom Expo will be an excellent chance to get the new book well before anyone else in the country and the money raised for the raffle tickets will go toward a good cause announced at the event.  Beck’s new book is timely, and very important.  It’s all about the real story behind the progressive push for gun control. 

 

When our founding fathers secured the Constitutional “right of the people to keep and bear arms,” they also added the admonition that this right SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.

It is the only time this phrase appears in the Bill of Rights. So why aren’t more people listening?

History has proven that guns are essential to self-defense and liberty—but tragedy is a powerful force and has led many to believe that guns are the enemy, that the Second Amendment is outdated, and that more restrictions or outright bans on firearms will somehow solve everything.

They are wrong.

In CONTROL, Glenn Beck presents a passionate, fact-based case for guns that reveals why gun control isn’t really about controlling guns at all; it’s about controlling us. In doing so, he takes on and debunks the common myths and outright lies that are often used to vilify guns and demean their owners:

The Second Amendment is ABOUT MUSKETS . . . GUN CONTROL WORKS in other countries . . . 40 percent of all guns are sold without BACKGROUND CHECKS . . . More GUNS MEAN more MURDER . . . Mass shootings are becoming more common . . . These awful MASSACRES ARE UNIQUE TO AMERICA . . . No CIVILIAN needs a “weapon of war” like the AR-15 . . . ARMED GUARDS in schools do nothing, just look at Columbine . . . Stop FEARMONGERING, no one is talking about TAKING YOUR GUNS AWAY.

Backed by hundreds of sources, this handbook gives everyone who cares about the Second Amendment the indisputable facts they need to reclaim the debate, defeat the fear, and take back their natural rights.

The book can be ordered in advanced at Amazon. 

http://www.amazon.com/Control-Exposing-Truth-About-Guns/dp/1476739870

 

Tickets for the event are available at:

 http://cincinnatifreedomexpo.com/

 

Some of the Exhibitors include:

 

The NRA

Cincinnati Right to Life

FreedomWorks

Americans for Prosperity

Heritage Action

Ohioans Against Common Core

And many, many more!

 

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Labor Unions Should Be Prosecuted Under the Sherman Act: The largest coercive monopolies in the world go unpunished

To prove that the government is involved in a coercive monopoly with labor unions both private and public, examine the evidence, and the path of behavior which delivered us to the conditions of 2013 where much is made over the size and ambition of virtually any company or financial entity endeavoring to make money.  The landmark case of the government against private business establishing the terms of what “the government” considers a financial monopoly can be seen in the United States v. Alcoa case from 1945.

United States v. Alcoa, 148 F.2d 416 (2d Cir. 1945), is a landmark decision concerning United States antitrust law. Judge Learned Hand‘s opinion is notable for its discussion of determining the relevant market for market share analysis and—more importantly—its discussion of the circumstances under which a monopoly is guilty of monopolization under section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

During the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Justice Department charged Alcoa with illegal monopolization and demanded that the company be dissolved. Trial began on June 1, 1938. The trial judge dismissed the case four years later. The government appealed. Two years later in 1944, the Supreme Court announced that it could not assemble a quorum to hear the case so it referred the matter to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In the following year, Learned Hand wrote the opinion for the Second Circuit.

Alcoa argued that if it was in fact deemed a monopoly, it acquired that position honestly, through outcompeting other companies through greater efficiencies.

Learned Hand J held that he could consider only the percentage of the market in “virgin aluminum” for which Alcoa accounted. Alcoa had argued that it was in the position of having to compete with scrap. Even if the scrap was aluminum that Alcoa had manufactured in the first instance, it no longer controlled its marketing. But Hand defined the relevant market narrowly in accord with the prosecution’s theory. Hand applied a rule concerning practices that are illegal per se. It did not matter how Alcoa became a monopoly, since its offense was simply to become one. In Hand’s words,

“
It was not inevitable that it should always anticipate increases in the demand for ingot and be prepared to supply them. Nothing compelled it to keep doubling and redoubling its capacity before others entered the field. It insists that it never excluded competitors; but we can think of no more effective exclusion than progressively to embrace each new opportunity as it opened, and to face every newcomer with new capacity already geared into a great organization, having the advantage of experience, trade connections and the elite of personnel.

”

Hand acknowledged the possibility that a monopoly might just happen, without anyone’s having planned for it. If it did, then there would be no wrong, no liability, and no need to remedy the result. But that acknowledgement has generally been seen as an empty one in the context of the rest of the opinion; because of course rivals in a market routinely plan to outdo one another, at the least by increasing efficiency and appealing more effectively to actual and potential customers. If one competitor succeeds through such plans to the extent of 90% of the market, that planning can be described given Hand’s reasoning as the successful and illegal monopolization of the market.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Alcoa

The basics of the case were that Judge Hand decided that Alcoa Aluminum was guilty of operating as a monopoly because their superior manufacturing techniques had deemed them so much better than their competition and they had to be stopped so that other companies could compete.  This case set up the history for which much of the modern business landscape has been established for the worse, and is the direct example of “the government” sticking its nose into the business of potential revenue generation to micromanage Alcoa into become less threatening to its competition so that other, less productive companies could gain a helping hand from the government to stay in business.  These days we would call this “wealth redistribution,” as wealth and potential profit were stolen from Alcoa through the court system and delivered to its business rivals.  Many today have long forgotten about these antitrust laws allowing the government to behave in such a fashion.  Most people assume that things have always been as they are now.    But the government intrusion attacking capitalism with Karl Marx inspired socialist tendencies began roughly 40 years after the Communist Manifesto was published for the world to read paving the way for that collective based philosophy.  In Russia, the communist movement came on the heels of World War I and through the seductive words of Lenin in 1917.  In The United States because of the independent nature of the average American, it came subtly through government regulation beginning with the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890, which was the measure used in the Alcoa case.

Sherman Antitrust Act, basic federal enactment regulating the operations of corporate trusts, passed by the U.S. Congress in July 1890, through the efforts of Senator John Sherman of Ohio. The act declared illegal “every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations.” Criminal penalties were provided for violators of the law, and aggrieved persons were entitled to recover three times the amount of losses suffered as a result of the violation. The Sherman Act has been amended and supplemented by several subsequent enactments. Most notable among these enactments was the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914. See Monopoly; Trusts.[1]

A few years later with the rise of progressive politics in America following the aggressive behavior of President Teddy Roosevelt, who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but never learned to make any real money of his own, progressives applied antitrust laws against “big business.” The Clayton Antitrust Act was passed in 1914.  Woodrow Wilson was president at the time and represented the most aggressive push in history where academic intellectuals attempted to gain power through regulation, as their theories could not compete head to head with the titans of industry.  So they used the government to perform coercive monopolies against any organization who thought they were too big to bow at the feet of the political class.  Wilson and the Roosevelts both Teddy and Franklin a few years later were deeply in love with European politics and were inspired by the works of Karl Marx and used progressive action by government to further strengthen the Sherman Act.

Clayton Antitrust Act, legislation passed by the Congress of the United States in 1914 to prohibit certain monopolistic practices that were then common in finance, industry, and trade (see Monopoly). Sponsored by Alabama congressman Henry De Lamar Clayton, the Clayton Antitrust Act was adopted as an amendment to the Sherman Antitrust Act. Designed to deal with new monopolistic practices, the act contained provisions covering corporate activities, remedies for reform, and labor disputes. Unfavorable court interpretations weakened the act, however, and additional legislation was required finally to carry out its aims.[2]

Fair Trade Laws, in commerce, legislation permitting manufacturers to set minimum resale prices for their branded products sold by retailers to consumers. The proliferation of chain stores prompted attempts to introduce such legislation in the 1920s to prevent the price-cutting policies characteristic of the chains, but passage of regulatory state laws did not occur until California led the way in 1931. By the 1940s all but three states had enacted fair trade laws governing intrastate transactions. Although the Sherman Antitrust Act prohibited all price-fixing agreements in or affecting interstate commerce, it was amended by the Miller-Tydings Act of 1937. This new act permitted resale price maintenance agreements on trademarked commodities sold in interstate commerce in states where contracts between manufacturers or wholesalers and retailers were sanctioned by state legislation. A 1951 Supreme Court ruling released all merchants who had not signed such contracts from the requirements of this act. The McGuire Act, passed by Congress in 1952 , reestablished the requirement that nonsigners abide by the same terms as signers of contracts. Although subsequent Supreme Court rulings upheld price fixing, the laws were challenged in state courts and enforcement became increasing difficult. In 1975 President Gerald Ford signed in law an act repealing the Miller-Tydings and McGuire acts, again making all resale price-fixing agreements affecting interstate commerce a violation of federal antitrust laws. Most states subsequently repealed their fair trade laws.[3]

This of course brings us to the modern age where companies terrified of being accused of a monopoly status must send lobbyists to Washington to pad the pockets of politicians with riches hoping to avoid the dreadful designations and court proceedings which can come out of an antitrust case.   Now, before anyone states that the events so far discussed are “ancient history” and not relevant to the modern age, let us examine the most recent example of government trust busting where it used The Justice Department to prosecute Microsoft for being too big using the Sherman Act to do so.

United States v. Microsoft Corporation 253 F.3d 34 (2001) is a US antitrust law case, ultimately settled by the Department of Justice, where Microsoft Corporation was accused of becoming a monopoly and engaging in abusive practices contrary to the Sherman Antitrust Act 1890 sections 1 and 2. It was initiated on May 18, 1998 by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and 20 states.Joel I. Klein was the lead prosecutor.

The plaintiffs alleged that Microsoft abused monopoly power on Intel-based personal computers in its handling of operating systemsales and web browser sales. The issue central to the case was whether Microsoft was allowed to bundle its flagship Internet Explorer(IE) web browser software with its Microsoft Windows operating system. Bundling them together is alleged to have been responsible for Microsoft’s victory in the browser wars as every Windows user had a copy of Internet Explorer. It was further alleged that this restricted the market for competing web browsers (such as Netscape Navigator or Opera) that were slow to download over a modem or had to be purchased at a store. Underlying these disputes were questions over whether Microsoft altered or manipulated its application programming interfaces (APIs) to favor Internet Explorer over third party web browsers, Microsoft’s conduct in forming restrictive licensing agreements with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and Microsoft’s intent in its course of conduct.

Microsoft stated that the merging of Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer was the result of innovation and competition, that the two were now the same product and were inextricably linked together and that consumers were now getting all the benefits of IE for free. Those who opposed Microsoft’s position countered that the browser was still a distinct and separate product which did not need to be tied to the operating system, since a separate version of Internet Explorer was available for Mac OS. They also asserted that IE was not really free because its development and marketing costs may have kept the price of Windows higher than it might otherwise have been. The case was tried before Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The DOJ was initially represented by David Boies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft

It can be argued that Microsoft has never been the same company since that case.  A few years later, Bill Gates retired to philanthropy to become a guilt ridden ex-capitalist attempting to further expand the government education empire of which he rejected as a youth to wash away the sins exposed by the government prosecuting him for his lack of business altruism.  Microsoft prior to that case did not effectively use lobbyists in Washington to pay off the trolls of legislation, which is something they remedied after that case and many companies followed.  The message to business in America was that if a company decided that it wanted to corner the market through competitive superiority, then they would be punished—unless however a company sent representatives to K-Street to grease the wheels of politics away from prying eyes.

The government established itself as a crusader for “the people” in an attempt to create a “fair” business environment, as defined by socialists, communists, progressives, and other Karl Marx fans.  Yet their attention only gazes in one direction—toward money making enterprises.  They ignore however the antitrust of the labor unions who hijack business labor, especially in the public sector with excessively aggressive examples of coercive monopoly.  Unions avoid the ridicule because the antitrust laws have been designated toward the bourgeoisie producers of products to use Karl Marx’s term and ignores the actions of labor which is inserted as a competitor within any organization dealing with labor unions.  This action is most evident in the public sector unions of education where their behavior prevents competition, deliberately drives up the wage rates outside of market parameters, and is the grossest modern example of a coercive monopoly.   As defined by the government in their cases against Alcoa back in 1945 and Microsoft in 1998, teacher unions and education institutions in general are the absolute worst forms of coercive monopoly in existence.   Based on their behavior, they may be the worst to ever exist in the history of the world.  Education unions steal tax money by striking, preventing competition through force, protest, and lobbying having a sole purpose of maintaining a labor monopoly by excluding entry into their markets with “force.”  In this way, modern unions are far, far worse than Alcoa ever was as a monopoly power, or Microsoft ever came to be, yet no politician thinks to attempt prosecution against the labor unions in a way that Senator John Sherman of Ohio did back in 1890 toward business or Henry De Lamar Clayton did in 1914.  But why?

We have seen in Ohio and Wisconsin what happens when legislators attempt to apply such rules to unions; the unions use their coercive monopoly to apply physical harm to legislators who attempt to designate their actions in such a fashion.  CLICK HERE FOR AN OBVIOUS EXAMPLE BY THE SEIU IN OHIO.  Businesses like Alcoa and Microsoft didn’t act in such a fashion.  That is why they were picked on by the government.  Government like the labor unions of which both are products of socialism, achieve their goals trough coercive monopolies and they use their power, and desire to use force to extort from those too placid to fight back.  In the case of businesses like Alcoa and Microsoft, they were producers who have everything to lose; the government has nothing to lose since its sole function is to steal from others to fill itself.  In a conflict, this gives the government the upper hand.  This is the cause of the lobby influence in Washington to this day.  The goal of the lobbyists is to keep the government in their offices and away from prosecution using the Sherman Act to attack their companies with antitrust violations.  Yet the same doesn’t work the other way as it should.  Legislators fear applying the same antitrust terminology to a firefighter union, a police force, or any of the teacher unions even though they engage in exactly or worse antitrust violations than have ever occurred—anywhere, because the unions operate through fear, intimidation, and extortion.  Legislators instead of confronting them, attack people like Bill Gates, a computer geek who became wealthy inventing the computer industry from his garage as a college dropout.  No threat there.  Or they attack Alcoa for simply being too good at their business.

The hypocrisy is obvious, and demands serious analysis.  Labor unions in The United States are parasitic entities that only exist through coercive monopoly status.  They are the cause of continuous tax increases and unmanaged local budgets.  They don’t get paid based on the quality of their work, but from the fear they inspire into the political machine.  They, unlike Microsoft or Alcoa are not the best in their fields of endeavor, they are simply willing to use force to achieve their desires—and that means they should be prosecuted to the furthest extent of the law with the same gusto that The Sherman Act was created and for the same reasons.  The only reason they are not is because legislators are afraid to put such words into the public for fear that they will be examined by history for taking away the “rights” of such people.   What those politicians don’t know because they lack a study of history is that such rights do not exist—except in the mind of Karl Marx, where the labor unions were born using tactics that have built the worst coercive monopolies in the history of mankind—all on the backs of the American taxpayer, while the innocent are hung like thieves by the murderers of capitalism—labor unions and their government conspirators with their coercive monopoly which involves the legal system.

[1]Encarta® 98 Desk Encyclopedia © &  1996-97 Microsoft Corporation.

All rights reserved.

[2]Encarta® 98 Desk Encyclopedia © &  1996-97 Microsoft Corporation.

All rights reserved.

[3]Encarta® 98 Desk Encyclopedia © &  1996-97 Microsoft Corporation.

All rights reserved.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Making of “Tail of the Dragon” Part IV: The meaning of Freedom and how it’s lost to obligation

In front of a seafood restaurant in Delaware flies the flag readers of this website will proudly recognize, pictured on the left.  At the base of that flag pole are items the owner of the establishment greatly treasure, pictured on the right.   These pictures were posted by a fan of my new novel Tail of the Dragon.  The rum is a reference to an article I wrote about pirates a few weeks ago.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  She has let me know that these are some of her current favorite things, and her idea of an exquisite evening is drinking some of that rum while reading Tail of the Dragon from her nightstand so that she can crawl into the mind of the novel’s hero Rick Stevens and enjoy his rebellious charisma from the greatest car chase in the history of car chases. About halfway through the first draft I realized that I wasn’t just going to tell the action packed story of a modern car chase, but the philosophic underpinnings of a society struggling under the pressure of “statism” and a rebellion against it.  This article is Part IV of a Making Of series for my recent novel which explores the path I took to arrive at its unique philosophy of freedom.  CLICK HERE to review the previous installments.  I had clear in my mind the locations I was writing about, and I understood the rebellious nature of the main protagonist, Rick Stevens, but one thing that still lingered in the back of my mind was the notion of freedom versus collectivism and how those two things are so closely associated sometimes within the same context.  For me, there is no greater example of this duality than in motorcycle riders who claim to be free and independent, yet tend to travel in gangs riding their motorcycles in formation whenever they gather.  This trait was as I saw it a failure of American philosophy so I wanted to become more acquainted.  This was the reason I joined the Suzuki Owner’s Club of North America and quickly became the Vice President of the Ohio Chapter.  One of the tasks of such a leadership position was to organize new membership drives, so the President and I organized a small ride to promote the organization.  The President was from Cleveland and I was from Cincinnati, so we agreed to meet up at a McDonald’s just south of Cleveland and head across the top of Ohio to the Fremont Suzuki dealer south of Sandusky and set up a booth to recruit new members.  It was a planned day trip that seemed like a simple endeavor on paper taking place just a few months after my wife and I traveled to Key West, from Part III.  The trip ended up being a 500 mile adventure that took us to many places throughout the day and would prove to be a memorable escapade that was more epic, than simple.

We left our home at 4:00 AM to meet the President and some of the other Suzuki Owner members at 7 AM.  It was not difficult to cover the vast distance between Cleveland and Cincinnati by motorcycle in such a short time.  With an average speed of 77 MPH, and just a few stops, we arrived at the designated McDonald’s ahead of the other riders.  I enjoyed my affiliation with the Club, but in the back of my mind was the nagging sensation that I felt constrained by my involvement.  I knew I shouldn’t feel this way, yet the closer to Cleveland we became, the more tense I was.  It wasn’t that I didn’t like the President or his riding partners, but it was the feeling that the closer I came to Cleveland the more I lost my individual identity.  I was honored that they invited me to become the VP of the Club after only a few short months, but VP was still a subordinate role, and I’m not a very good subordinate.  Typically if I’m not the leader of the pack, I’m not interested in any endeavor.  I just can’t stand taking a passive role on anything in my life, no matter what it is.

We arrived at the McDonald’s, ate a well deserved breakfast, and met up with the President and his riders outside.  After some brief introductions and typical motorcycle talk, we planned our route to the Fremont dealership roughly 70 miles away across very rural farmland.  There would not be any highway access, so we’d be traveling relatively slowly across God’s country of the Ohio north 40 to 50 miles south of Lake Erie.  Once the route was established on a map spread out across motorcycle fuel tanks we were off.  The President in such groups usually takes the point position on such rides which is slightly off-center to the left of the road.  Riders behind the leader take up positions of formation staggered behind.  I migrated to the back so I could observe the behavior and noticed that the other riders worked very hard to maintain the closest position behind the leader possible.

We traveled across the top of Ohio by many farms and several rain storms before arriving at the dealership right around 9:30 AM.  We were scheduled to arrive at 10 AM so we were a little early.  Once at the Fremont location the President set up a booth for the Club to promote itself.  We spent from 10 AM to 2 PM having lunch, telling biker stories, and talking about various wild adventures.  The company was good, but all the while I had a terribly uneasy feeling that was difficult to shake.  There were three times in my life prior to this bike ride where I had a similar feeling.  The first was in the fifth grade when some girls I knew set me up to “go steady” with the class beauty at the time.  She was a pretty girl, but I didn’t want the obligation to have to speak to her every night on the phone like boyfriends and girlfriends were required to do.  In the fifth grade I had just won the pull-up contest in the Winter Olympics and many people were projecting me to be a star athlete as I was clearly the fastest kid in the entire school.  I could shoot basketball, play hockey, and I was untouchable in dodge ball.    But I hated all those group sports, even though I was excessively good at them.  This drove my gym teacher nuts as he didn’t understand my reservations.  Because I was so good at these sports, this little girl wanted to be my girlfriend so her friends arranged it by nagging me until I said yes.  I went steady with the girl for about 2 hours.  Once I came home from school and was eating dinner and planning the activities of my evening which involved, reading, drawing pictures, playing war with my brother outside, and building a model car, I did not have time for the little girl when she called and wanted to talk on the phone for an hour.  I reluctantly told the girl I wanted to break up.  She cried, all her friends were mad at me for years, but I was free—and that made me happy.  I was free to read my books, draw my pictures, write my stories, and play outside—and that’s all I wanted out of life.  I reasoned that the only reason I wanted to go steady with the girl was because I wanted to see her naked—but that wasn’t a good enough reason to imprison my soul to another person.  When I broke up with her I was greatly relieved.  The second time was when I allowed myself to be talked into trying out for the Lakota soccer team during my freshman year.  I had a reputation as “The Animal,” because I was so vicious when I played the game.  I would often head butt other players intentionally to take out their star players.  I was good at disguising the effort as going for head balls to avoid the yellow cards, so many of my couches and parents who watched me often talked me into trying out for the school team.    The first day of tryouts I was miserable.  I thought the coach was an arrogant bastard and I couldn’t stand the body language of the guy.  He was clearly looking for butt kissers on his team, and that wasn’t me.  He didn’t like my aggressive playing style, or my rebellious attitude.  I also didn’t like the girls who seemed attracted to the school soccer players, the girls who hung out around the practice field and were always being passed around by the other players.  They were short-legged stubby girls with square faces and potato asses, not the kind of girls I was interested in.  So I became more and more belligerent as the tryouts went on for two weeks.  During a scrimmage I head butted our goalie who had called off the ball because he made fun of my haircut in the locker room.  My mother always cut my hair, but she did it in the classic “bowl cut.”  So I sent him home with a bloody nose that day and a loose tooth.  The coach made me run laps hoping I’d pass out, but I didn’t.  I stubbornly completed his assignment, but our relationship deteriorated.  I was relieved to learn that I had not made the team.  I knew everyone would finally leave me alone about trying out for all the stupid team sports, and I could go back to my books and stories without the constant nagging from the adults in my life who kept telling me to grow up and do something “productive.”  A few years later the high school football coach hinted that I should try out for the football team to direct my “aggression” in a positive direction.  But I had a reputation in school as a person who fought way too much, and was utterly unmanageable socially so their urgings quickly ebbed once they saw no light in my eyes over their promises of college football lights and easy girls.  I had no problem with girls, and the lights didn’t impress me, so they didn’t have much to offer.  The third time was when I was 18 and I had a modeling agent who booked me to do a lingerie show with a stage full of beautiful girls.  I had just met my wife and had a choice to go see her for the evening or go to the paying gig that my agent had set up.  The money was good, and there was a chance to meet not just a few beautiful women, but several.  Not the stubby fingered, potato butt girls, but the kind I liked, with long legs, round lips, eyes just perfectly spaced—the kind of girls who strive to become actresses and fashion models.  So I took the job and my future wife cried because she was afraid she’d lose me to the job assignment.  I found out prior to leaving my apartment that my task at the show was to “dance” around the girls lip-synching to David Lee Roth’s song, California Girls.   I was en route to the event, but instead of taking I-75 south, I took I-275 east and went to my future wife’s house.  My agent was furious as she had a stage full of beautiful fashion models but no David Lee Roth impersonator to dance on stage around them.  The show tanked, and I never worked as a model again.  But I did get married to my wife a year later.  She drew a line in the sand and told me that she didn’t care about making money if I had to make money doing stupid things like dancing on a stage to David Lee Roth songs.  Once I arrived at her house, I felt free of that social pressure to perform to expectations that the media culture valued, but were at odds with my own beliefs.

Now, that nagging feeling was there again in the motorcycle group at Fremont.  I was helping to register new members to a group that I was Vice President of, which I became a part of in much the same fashion as in the stories just told.  I was a reluctant participant.  My talents were desired for various reasons to serve collective institutions, and I have ALWAYS been reluctant to surrender my sovereignty to anybody ever, no matter how beautiful, how lucrative, or under any amount of pressure.  I have always turned obligation away in favor of freedom.  I often say yes initially because I like to help people, but when things get too cozy in the collectivism department, I always look for a way out.

I pulled my wife to the side and suggested to her that when the event was over at 2 PM that we not ride back to Cleveland with the Suzuki group but instead go up the road to Cedar Point and ride roller coasters the rest of the day, since we were close.  She shook her head knowing what was driving me, as after twenty plus years of marriage she had come to understand my decision-making processes.  When it was time to take down the tent, I informed the guys that my wife and I were going to Cedar Point, and not riding back in formation to Cleveland.  I got some puzzled looks, but they agreed to go on without us.  We spoke in a friendly manner as we parted promising to touch base by email when we all returned home.  The minute I was back on my motorcycle going north as they traveled east I felt the shackles coming off me and I enjoyed freedom once again.  That was the last time I would ever see those guys, and the email messages never came or went either way again.  That was my last day as Vice President of the Ohio Chapter Suzuki Owners Club of North America.

My wife and I had fun on the bike trip, but our day really opened up into a wonderful experience once we arrived at Cedar Point about 45 minute later.  It was a relief to not have to ride in formation, to recognize a leader of any kind, to adhere to any kind of pecking order, to go where we wanted when we wanted to go, and to have the freedom to make a decision and to act on that decision.  We spent the rest of the day at Cedar Point until the closing time of 10 PM that night.  Once they closed the doors on us, we got on our motorcycle and headed for home.  We arrived back around 3 AM–23 hours and 500 miles later.   It was a cold ride home, so we were fairly frozen.  We warmed up in our hot tub and I wrote notes on my laptop from the day while they were fresh in my mind as I hung over the side of the Jacuzzi typing madly.   The thoughts of that day made it into my opening chapter which went on for nearly thirty pages.  My editor had me cut it down to roughly the first 5 pages of the final Tail of the Dragon draft.

Freedom is a difficult concept to understand, especially for those who aren’t nearly as stingy with it as I am.  People find themselves agreeing to things they otherwise wouldn’t do because some collective force applies pressure to them to say “yes,” then once they do, they are stuck in rigid confinement.  Most people become used to accepting this gradual loss of freedom, so they don’t see the effects of socialism seeking to subtly impose itself upon their lives.  I never developed that problem, so it’s easy for me to see.  In Tail of the Dragon I had to create in the characters of Rick and Renee Stevens two characters who valued their freedom to such an extraordinary level that they would not yield to those tiny encroachments, so that their refusal would cause the next Civil War in America in an understandable way.  I wanted readers to see what freedom was supposed to look like, how it felt, and how tasted, because most people don’t know what freedom is at all—as they are encumbered with too many obligations.  Freedom is the essence of what Tail of the Dragon is all about, freedom from clubs, from socialites, from agents, from coaches, from all the pressures of life which desire to steer a human mind in a direction that is not authentic to the individual.  My experiment to investigate a collective entity had proved fruitful if it did only last about 2 months.  They were two months well spent, because the result found its way into literature for all time, and many years beyond.

And a special thanks are deserved for Kathy.  I appreciate her flying that flag in front of her Delaware seafood restaurant, and I appreciate the effort she put into making my day a little better by displaying Tail of the Dragon so proudly.  It was for such people I wrote the novel and I am happy to know that Captain Morgan is going on the adventure with her.

Rich Hoffman

CLICK HERE to see what my publisher had to say about my novel Tail of the Dragon.

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 “If they attack first………..blast em’!” www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The Lakota Levy Cheerleaders: Ignoring facts, spewing hate, and spreading lies all in the name of children

“Even with these cuts, Lakota schools are still worth “cheering” for.  We are not part of a losing team, but our children and grandchildren could lose out on future opportunities if there isn’t more financial support.  So, let’s drown out the Rich Hoffmans of our community by making the next levy a successful one.  If that happens, we all win.” 

“GO TEAM GO…….HURRAHHHH”

The above statement was written by Lakota Levy cheerleader Laura Sanders, who responded to my Letter to the Editor in the Today’s Pulse April 14th edition.  The letter she is responding to I have placed below for ease of review.  As to Laura’s fantasy that she will drown out the Rich Hoffmans of the community, I have very bad news for her.  I can swim longer than anybody she knows and I can shout louder—far louder than I have so far displayed.  So if that is the path she and her levy cheerleaders wish to follow, I am looking forward to it.  I have also placed below the letter she put in the paper for analysis.  I will answer her assertions following her text.

First the letter I submitted:

The Lakota Levy Cheerleaders

Combined with the Lakota Superintendent’s articles here in the Journal, the “Community Conversations” program, along with a few pro Levy speeches, and I can’t help but feel that I’m watching a football game where the home team is losing 45 to 0 yet the cheerleaders are still on the sideline with their pom poms in hand completely oblivious to the events happening on the field of play still reciting the “cheers” they learned in practice.

Much to their dismay, the “Levy Addicts” who are pounding the drums for another tax increase this year and are attempting to soften the resistance with new strategies, the score up on the board is not in their favor.  Lakota as a district is about to see an influx of income from the Liberty Way Development, the Carriage Hill Development, and the continued growth of the Union Center corridor.  All the tax revenue coming in from these activities will be more than the previous year.  Combine that trend with the 10 year projection of declining student enrollment due to the number of homes in Lakota without children increasing–balancing the budget without a tax increase should be easy.

The old mantra that education is for the “kids” is old and worn out.  Nobody believes it any more just like nobody believes the home team is going to win when the score is so lopsided yet the cheerleaders are still on the sideline saying the same mindless drivel that they have the entire game.  What the levy supporters want with tax increases is simply a glorified community babysitting service.  What I have learned about public education these last couple of years does not lend credence to any kind of education quality even for so-called great schools like Lakota.  For the 18,000 people who have turned down these levies over the years for multiple reasons, we have no choice but to support the product now, which is currently too expensive.  It is simply unfathomable to ask for more, especially when the score is so lopsided—in spite of the mindless cheers.

Rich Hoffman

Now, Laura Sander’s response:

Lakota Schools Still Worth ‘Cheering’ For

Here we go again:”……levy addict…glorified community baby-sitting service.”

Wasn’t Rich Hoffman already discredited by the media one year ago because of phrases like this and previous comments such as “…crazy PTA moms and their minions of latte drinking despots with diamond rings the size of car tires and assess to match…”

Maybe Mr. Hoffman thinks its clever using metaphors comparing levy supporters to mindless cheerleaders (another attack on women).  Unlike his approach, I prefer to use facts.

Mr. Hoffman claims that Lakota will “see an influx” of tax revenue after new developments are built.  That sounds great, but it’s not reality. Commercial property contributes very little to school funding and has not kept pace with residential growth.  Gov. John Kasich cut $1.8 billion from schools over the last two years and his current budget increases funding for charter schools and proposes additional vouchers on private schools, once again depriving public education of money.

Ohio’s charter schools received $775 million from the state last year.  That amount of money could fund numerous public school districts.

Lakota Treasurer Jenni Logan predicts the district will face a $1.8 million dollar budget deficit by 2014.  This is after $35 million in cuts over the last three years, which has resulted in minimal bus transportation; larger classes; fewer days for art, music and gym; no reading specialists; a dismantled gifted program, etc.

Even with these cuts, Lakota schools are still worth “cheering” for.  We are not part of a losing team, but our children and grandchildren could lose out on future opportunities if there isn’t more financial support.  So, let’s drown out the Rich Hoffmans of our community by making the next levy a successful one.  If that happens, we all win.

Laura Sanders

Now to address Laura’s points:

I never said the cheerleaders were women or girls.  Isn’t it sexist and presumptuous of to assume that all cheerleaders are “women?”  Just because they are traditionally women does not mean that cheerleaders are not men too.  They have men sometimes, especially in college.  Whether there are men or women, cheerleaders have a job to do and that is to engage the audience with positive entertainment no matter what the actual conditions of the game.  That job is more difficult if the score is so bad that it is obvious the team they are cheering for is going to lose.  It helps the cheerleader’s task to not pay too much attention to the facts on the field and just repeat what they have been taught in practice, no matter what the reality on the field displays to them.  It is a proper metaphor for what is going on at Lakota with the cries for yet another levy.  Laura and a handful of others have behaved very similarly to the metaphor I used.  But I never said the cheerleaders were women.
Laura’s plan might have been to discredit me in the media with her fellow cheerleaders but what she didn’t understand was that rules have changed. (TO READ WHAT LAURA SAID ABOUT ME IN THE ENQUIRE CLICK HERE) For instance dear reader, have you ever been in a classroom atmosphere where a question was asked, and you knew the answer, but you were afraid to raise your hand for fear that you’d answer incorrectly and look like a fool.  Then as you look around you discover that only one guy in the class was raising their hand.  The rest of the class felt just as you do, and kept their hands down.  Then that one guy is called on and answers the question and then you are angry with yourself because he said the same answer that you had in your mind.   If you had only had the guts to raise your hand, you would have been right.  Well, I’m that guy with his hand up, and when I say something I am saying the same thing that most of everyone else is already thinking.  Most people agree with me.  After I called levy supporters “latté sipping despots with diamond rings the size of car tires and assess to match” I was saying what most everyone else was thinking, but was afraid to speak it public.  (CLICK TO READ MORE)  I brought up the PTA moms because I knew of a few cases, especially one at Cherokee Elementary where boycotts were organized against businesses that did not support the school levy.  (That would be the J.D. Stackerz Bar and Grill situation between a high-ranking administrator  calling PTA members personally to organize a boycott in direct violation of Ohio Revised Code ORC 3315.07 (C) (1) and (C) (2) described below.)

(C)(1) Except as otherwise provided in division (C)(2) of this section, no board of education shall use public funds to support or oppose the passage of a school levy or bond issue or to compensate any school district employee for time spent on any activity intended to influence the outcome of a school levy or bond issue election.

(2) A board of education may permit any of its employees to attend a public meeting during his regular working hours for the purpose of presenting information about school finances and activities and board actions, even if the purpose of the meeting is to discuss or debate the passage of a school levy or bond issue.

I sat on the story because the owner was terrified to come forward in fear of losing her business.  Well, guess what, she lost her business a few months later.  I took the story to The Enquirer—who didn’t cover it and I took the story right next door to the Pulse Journal who wouldn’t touch it.  With the kind of power the business owner felt was against her, she asked me to sit on the story, which I did.  Surely all the Levy Cheerleaders know all about it.  That kind of behavior is extortion, and is an attempt to win elections with coercion which if this wasn’t a government school would be considered criminal activity with jail time attached.  Because it’s a school with a tremendous public relations budget, no court would attempt to enforce Ohio Revised Code ORC 3315.07 (C) (1) and (C) (2).  I find stories like that one appalling, and made even worse because they are done behind the cover of children.  I consider anybody who would engage in that kind of activity to be morally bankrupt and a detriment to society.  You are lucky I held back my tongue on that comment because a lot more descriptive dialogue was on my mind.  Now, for the other case which I have document release, CLICK HERE to view. 
As to my being discredited let me shed some light on that little topic.  WLW was running dry, we covered education till we were blue in the face and it was starting to drag on the ratings.  They wanted to swing more toward sports talk radio; I wanted to take the rhetoric to a higher level because of the behavior by the school board after the third levy failure and the decision by Karen Mantia to not engage the teacher’s union with a pay reduction.  So we were going to part ways anyway, especially after Doc Thompson left.  Traditional newspapers like The Enquirer and The Pulse were stuck between pro levy people and me and they had to pick a side.  After Michael Clark’s behavior with the exclusive I gave him regarding Yes to Lakota Kids, I knew where he was going, in the direction where his wife was employed—in public education.  So traditional media did pull away, and I had been holding my tongue to keep them in my corner until I had a suitable network built that could sustain those loses when they occurred.  Once I had it secure, I let my tongue speak.  In addition apparently Laura missed this Channel 19 interview once it was announced that Lakota wouldn’t be seeking a levy in 2012.  CLICK HERE TO SEE FOR YOURSELF. So much for discredit.  

I.            I knew when Karen Mantia arrived in town that she would seek to attack No Lakota Levy diplomatically and split us from the inside.  That is after all what she did in Pickerington and the people from up there warned me ahead of time what her mode of operation was.  In a personal meeting I had with her I got a wonderful feel for how she was going to play her hand.  So I started to set up my operation independent of my partners in No Lakota Levy. If they stayed, great, if they broke, I could still proceed on as planned. They had showed signs of cracking earlier in the year, so I didn’t think they’d stay the course through a fourth attempt.  On the third levy, they handled the sign delivery around the community during the last two weeks of the campaign and little else.  I took care of all the media work, the blog postings, the debates and anything else that came up.  If I lost them politically for the fourth levy attempt, which I felt was Mantia’s strategy—based on our meeting, I would have to maintain my ability to continue.  In future levy attempts I would need the more radical members of the No Lakota Levy front to continue the fight.  Many of them were frustrated that I didn’t hit the school hard enough often enough.  My response was that a day would come when we would be able to hit as hard as they wanted.  But for now, in the early stage of these levy fights, we had to save the best tricks for later—which we have.  Most of the primary members of No Lakota Levy wanted to form Yes to Lakota Kids which I wasn’t crazy about, because they were tired of being called selfish businessmen—again by the PTA community.  The threats of boycotts and other harassing measures were unconscionable in my opinion, and I couldn’t get Michael Clark from The Enquirer to cover those stories either.  This left those members to strive for a public image campaign with Yes to Lakota Kids, which I felt was just feeding the monster.  The sports fees shouldn’t have been put in place and even though we were raising $10,000, it felt to me like a drop in the bucket.  So I wasn’t happy, but I represented their interests out of friendship.  In private, on my blog, and elsewhere I voiced my opinion.  Laura’s desire to make some of those comments one of sexism is a surrender on the pro levy position.  They know they cannot win based on their arguments, so they played the progressive “feminist” card in an attempt to remove me from the debate.  But, as predicted, there were a lot of silent handshakes and smirks about my comments from people who had been thinking the same thing.  I just gave them a vehicle to vent their frustrations.  A lot of the votes that the pro side wins from arm twisting, extortion, and other forms of coercion came back my way due to my controversial comments, which is what I needed to do on my side to prepare for the next try.  Voters were just waiting for someone to articulate what they were already feeling.

II.            Now as to facts………….I have delivered facts, upon facts, upon facts.  Laura’s statement that she is dealing with facts whereas I am not is typical of the pro education debate where they ignore all facts except the ones they wish to see.  It’s that cheerleader mentality again.  If they look up on the scoreboard they don’t want to see a 45 to 0 score.   They simply look at the clock to see what time it is.  They ignore the actual score because they have a show to perform, and can’t let the facts ruin their desired reality.  So here are the facts as she addressed them.

Laura ignores in her statement that Lakota has a 10 year declining enrollment projection which means that student enrollment will be decreasing.  That means Lakota will have to lay off teachers, consolidate schools, and roll back their staff to accommodate the lower student levels.  With tax revenue staying the same, and enrollment going down, any idiot should be able to balance their budget.  That is unless they plan to give away the farm on the 2014 labor contract that is coming up with the LEA.
Laura obviously doesn’t know anybody with commercial property who has to write a check on their property values at $1.5 to $5 million dollars.  Businesses are taxed at the same rate as residences, and there is a lot of business in the Lakota district.  To say that commercial business does not contribute much to school funding is like saying that the sun does not contribute to sun burn.  It’s a statement based on levy propaganda and a denial of the facts.
Kasich did not take money away from Lakota in 2012 and the spending on school vouchers and charter schools is a very good thing which I support 100%.  Public schools need to become profit motivated and drive their costs down, not up.  I want to see a chart that shows the per pupil cost at Lakota going down each year, not trending up.  Education options are what drive down costs, and I am happy to see that Kasich put more money into charters.  To speak otherwise is to be a stooge for the labor unions who wish to maintain a monopoly status on public education.  If Kasich had thrown the $775 million dollars she discussed at Ohio’s public schools the unions would have gobbled it up like a black hole.  They’d be hungry for more money the very next year.  $775 million dollars does not go very far in public education.  Not when the budget just at Lakota is near $200 million with undeclared costs added of course.
If Lakota is predicting a $1.8 million dollar deficit in 2014 it is because they have mismanaged the money the tax payers have already sent them.  The fact that Karen Mantia cut bus transportation, dismantled the gifted program, reading specialists, has fewer days for art, only says that she did exactly what she was taught in Levy University at the OSBA Conference in Columbus point for point.  If Lakota decided to cut those types of programs instead of doing what No Lakota Levy told the school board to do, and that was present a 5% reduction of wages to the union, they are guilty of mismanagement.  They have let the “tail wag the dog.”  They have failed to handle their labor contract, it’s that simple, and that failure is on her management style.  As a former teacher herself, Mantia aligned herself with the employees of Lakota and not the community who pays the bills.  That is her failure and if there is another levy, it will be due to her mismanagement of the finances provided, especially since student enrollment is on a sharp decline.

I spent a good part of this past Friday evening speaking to a reporter about virtually everything that I’ve said here.  We are living in a new age; traditional media doesn’t hold the same power that it once did so creativity and innovation favor those on the side of the truth.  The only thing that has held back others from jumping on the No Vote bandwagon was fear, because they have truth on their side, which is what I explained in a speech recently to a group I spoke to in Oxford.  CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW.  My hope after the third levy attempt was that I could inspire more people to step forward so that it wasn’t always Rich Hoffman doing everything, because that can only go on for so long.  To have a healthy resistance, the formations have to constantly change, and new players have to be rotated in and out just like in a military engagement—because that is what we are fighting.  Public education is not a nice institution that is protecting children as it’s sold; it’s a government propaganda machine and a babysitting service for parents too busy to care for their own children.  I really don’t care if that makes people angry, because it’s true, and there are enough residents at Lakota who have grown children who know that it is.   In the next levy attempt it is my hope that there are 20 levy fighters doing what I was doing in the first three at Lakota.  I think that will be the case, and if it’s not, then I will pick up the slack……………..gladly.  I’m happy to be civil if the pro levy people are, but if they wish to be uncivil—like they usually are, I will respond—as I have.  Meanwhile, my advanced position on all public education is that it should be abolished as a tax payer funded entity off property tax.  If Laura Sanders wants certain things for her child to learn, then she can pay for it.  I’m tired of paying money for people like her to benefit, while they constantly complain that other people should pay more taxes.  CLICK TO REVIEW THE KIND OF THINGS KIDS ARE BEING TAUGHT ABOUT EDUCTION FROM THE LAST CAMPAIGN. That kind of thing makes me absolutely sick.  And when she states that commercial businesses do not contribute much in property taxes, she’s clearly not up to speed.

So go ahead and test me Lakota people.  Go ahead and think that people are going to fall for the same old emotional arguments of the past, the accusations of sexism, selfishness, and compassion, and see where it gets you.  I have saved a lot of people hundreds of thousands of dollars around Lakota and I purposely kept the budgets low in the previous three levy attempts so that the coffers would be there when I needed it.  So when Laura Sanders says as she did in the opening of her letter………….. “Here we go again” that’s right.  If they want to go again, they will see more fireworks than they’ve ever seen before……especially since my next campaign will be using new media, not traditional media.  I don’t have to worry about offending people in the next attempt, now that the resistance network is built with fresh faces.  For me this is a moral argument now, not just a financial one.

I would say this to Lakota.  I am happy to do as I promised at the beginning of the deal in 2012 when it was agreed to not put a levy on the ballot.  I am happy to leave Lakota alone in my crusade against public education if Lakota keeps its head down and out of the voting booth.  Take the declined enrollment and ride off into the sunset, because if Lakota puts itself on my radar, it will be their own fault.  That is a bit of friendly advice.  Or, Lakota can listen to the winds of war from the pom poms of Lakota’s Levy Cheerleaders and see who can swim the longest and shout the loudest.  And I know where the Vegas odds makers will put their money—and it isn’t on Lakota.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

George Lang on 55 KRC with Brian Thomas: Success in West Chester, Ohio and why

It shouldn’t be astonishing to hear, but Brian Thomas of 55 KRC had difficulty hiding his surprise during an interview with George Lang, who is a trustee from West Chester, Ohio.  Lang was fresh off a vote where he stood against the other two trustees on the board who wanted to file for a federal grant to build a new sidewalk in the community he represents.  During the interview Lang explained to Thomas that building sidewalks was not a part of the core competency of local government and was irresponsible.  Brian Thomas has a history of advocating such small government positions and was noticeably impressed by Lang in a conversation that should be the standard for every politician in America.  Hear it for yourself at the clip below.

One of the most remarkable aspects of Lang’s comments is that he didn’t attempt to do as almost every politician has done for decades and take credit for the success of West Chester as a township due to his political leadership.  Instead George Lang made it known that the success of West Chester is not because of any policies of government.  The success of West Chester is not because of any law that was created by the trustees.  The success of West Chester is because politicians like Lang have managed to create an environment where businesses can make money, which brings jobs to the township, creates tax revenue, and feeds the economic life blood of the community.  Without jobs, there isn’t any money for anybody to spend on restaurants, shopping complexes, or on any form of charity.  George Lang understands that the secret to success in any community is to keep government off businesses backs as much as possible so that a friendly commerce environment is conducive to growth.

It is very tempting for a typical politician to declare that the success of a community like West Chester is due to the construction of sidewalks, or the quality of the schools.  But the truth is that communities are not built by government in any fashion, they are established for good or bad by the quality of the residents who live there.  In the case of West Chester, where there is a pro business environment, investment makes sense to entrepreneurs.  They come to West Chester to make money, not to serve some altruistic purpose.  The only reason that a business would endeavor to set up a place of exchange where they offer goods or services is for the benefit of profit.  The byproduct of that profit is in jobs provided to the community, and money to spend on other businesses.  Without business, a community is a failure.  There cannot be success if there is no business.  If there are no jobs, there is no money for other businesses, and there are no taxes for the government to loot from.  In essence, there is nothing without business.

Brian Thomas was surprised that George Lang understood this very basic economic principle, since it would appear that most of society at large has failed to come to grips with such an elementary idea.  The school system Lakota in West Chester is one of the largest in all of Ohio, and they are proud of their Excellence with Distinction awards obtained for over a decade of consecutive years.  The government workers at the school wish to believe that the cause of their excellence is in their wonderful skills as employees.  But they are wrong.  The cause is that the children who come to their schools and attend their classes are better than children from other classes in other schools.  With government schools, one teacher is not better than another since they are all trained the same way and are motivated by the same profit structure.  Collective bargaining in union contracts means that bad teachers get paid the same as good teachers so every school has good and bad teachers proportionately no matter what the school or the pay rates as pay is primarily dictated by years of service and not performance.  This means that the elements that make one school better than another is the quality of the children who attend, and that quality starts in the home.  In West Chester there are an above average number of homes with two parents, most of which have traditional families.  Unemployment is low with government dependence on welfare being nearly non-existent.  The children who show up at Lakota come from families that value private property and respect responsible behavior, and have parents who participate in children’s lives.  As I have said many times, all the employees of Lakota could be eliminated with a RIF and replaced with employees fresh out of college from every position, and Lakota would still be ranked Excellent with Distinction.  The children would perform the same, because the parents tend to care about their kids, and those parents tend to work in jobs in and around West Chester.

The quality of a community begins with the number of businesses in it, and the amount of money they can make.  For proof look at any community anywhere in the world where government has stuck its nose into the affairs of entrepreneurs and it will quickly be noticed that these places have empty buildings with signs in them looking for suckers to lease them.  But nobody in their right mind would sign a lease in a community that has a looting government that wishes to stick them on a cross to suck out their life in service to the altruistic aims of a pathetic name-plate addicted politician.  Most of the time politicians attempt to do as all government does, especially schools–they take credit for the success and efforts of others with collective ownership.  These types of politicians are like those football fans who leave a stadium after the quarterback of their favorite team throws a last second touchdown to win the game.  Upon leaving these fans declare, “WE WON.”  They are mistaken.  The quarterback won with his individual effort.  The fans simply sucked off his success to share in the glory of victory.  Government schools do this all the time, and politicians are notorious for performing such social looting.  They wish to believe that just because a business posts a profit after four quarters of activity that they had some input into that success because they built a sidewalk, or created some foolish zoning ordinance regulating signs and other forms of advertising.  But the politician is actually worthless.  All they can really do for their communities is fulfill their core competency obligations which is to protect private property.  Anything more than that is theft and looting of other people’s effort.

George Lang is only one of three trustees in West Chester.  One is a registered Democrat who is no different from the typical fan at a football game.  They proclaim “they” win but the reality is that they only sit on their ass and watch others do important things.  The other one is a registered Republican, but behaves like an extreme socialist from Greece.  That particular politician is the kind of football fan that watches the game at home and falls asleep in their chair with a bag of nachos lying across their bloated belly and wakes up four hours after the game is over and declares, “WE WON.”  Meanwhile the warriors on the field of battle who actually played the game have long showered and are at home playing video games on their Xbox unites.  With only one trustee of any real worth understanding that creating a pro business friendly environment is the key to economic growth and community prosperity West Chester has thrived.  If those other two trustees could be replaced with other politicians like George Lang the success West Chester could experience would be explosive.  But any community could have success if they thought like George Lang.  It is because they don’t that Brian Thomas was so surprised by an elected politician who actually understood that the key to success in politics is to sit down, shut up, and let the players on the field play the game.  Stay out-of-the-way of business, and politicians will bring wealth to their communities.  The more they tamper, the worse their economies will be.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The NRA 500: I will be proudly watching!

I normally spend a lot of time articulating my thoughts on a matter, but to CBS This Morning, and Senator Chris Murphy on their reaction to The NRA 500 I will only say this……………..don’t be a pussy.

I support the NRA 100% and do not appreciate the kind of liberal extremists who seek to capitalize off the death of children in Connecticut by spewing their weak-kneed rhetoric on the nation’s airwaves and assuming that the values of Central America are the same as the latte sipping East Coast. A pussy is the only word I can think of for such pathetic, looting politicians and television commentators, and I have a rather extensive vocabulary. For goodness sake, what a bunch of wimps.  No wonder that kid in North Korea thinks he can attack The United States………………………and win.

A lot of America is made up of people like Ted Nugent seen below.  Most of the people I know are like him, and they are not the extremists.  They may seem that way compared to people afraid of their own shadow like Senator Murphy, but that is not a good measure of reality.  It is the Karl Marx loving pussies from the East Coast who look for every tragedy to advance their careers and they should be ashamed of themselves. Because of their comments I may actually watch all four hours of the NRA 500.

And I’m looking forward to the six guns at the end. Enjoy the show Senator Murphy!  NASCAR is obviously not your thing.  Enjoy a game of ping-pong, its more your speed.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Barack Obama’s ‘The Road We’ve Traveled’ : Support given to Fabian Socialism’s “Free Enterprise into ‘X’”

How dangerous, and to what extent is Barack Obama a threat to The United States?  Well, if you happen to be a Fabian Socialist, he is a dream come true.  But if you happen to be constitutionally minded traditionalist who takes great pride in the history of America, Obama might as well be Satan.  Barack Obama appears to be so in love with Fabian Socialism that he named his Hollywood produced campaign video shown below after the famous book by socialist Stuart Chase, titled The Road We Are Traveling.  Obama called his video The Road We’ve Traveled, hosted by none other than Tom Hanks.  The comparison is more than a coincidence; it’s an insider’s nod to the kind of economic theory by Chase who helped give FDR’s New Deal its name – an act that Barack Obama reveres greatly.

The biggest difference between a Fabian Socialist and a regular socialist is that the Fabian believed in a long gradual, patient change to society rather than one brought about by revolution such as the method used in the U.S.S.R. to deliver that country to communism.  Fabianists rather took the slow route which was the preferred method of Stuart Chase.

 

Fa·bi·an (fâ¹bê-en) adjective

1.    a. Of or relating to the caution and avoidance of direct confrontation typical of the Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus. b. Cautious or dilatory, as in taking action.

2.    Of, relating to, or being a member of the Fabian Society, which was committed to gradual rather than revolutionary means for spreading socialist principles.

[Latin Fabiânus, after Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus.]

— Fa¹bi·an noun

— Fa¹bi·an·ism noun

— Fa¹bi·an·ist noun[1]

Fabian Society, British socialist educational organization that advocates social change through democratic reforms. It was founded in London in 1884 by a group of intellectuals who rejected the Marxist theory of class struggle but wished to promote equality through collective ownership and democratic control of the nation’s resources. Devoted primarily to education and social research, the Fabians never constituted themselves as a political party. However, in 1900 they participated in founding the Labour Representation Committee, now the Labour Party.[2]

Stuart Chase (March 8, 1888, Somersworth, New Hampshire – November 16, 1985) was an American economist and engineer trained at MIT.[1] His writings covered topics as diverse as general semantics and physical economy. Chase’s thought was shaped by Henry George, Thorstein Veblen and Fabian socialism.[2] Chase spent his early political career supporting “a wide range of reform causes: the single tax, women’s suffrage, birth control and socialism.” [2] Chase’s early books The Tragedy of Waste (1925) and Your Money’s Worth (1928) were notable for their criticism of corporate advertising and their advocacy of consumer protection.[3]

Chase was among the dozen or more prominent members of the temporary committee which conducted the affairs of the Technical Alliance which later formed into Technocracy Incorporated, (Technocracy movement).[4][5]

Although not a Marxist, Chase admired the planned economy of the Soviet Union, being impressed with it after a 1927 visit. Chase stated that “The Russians, in a time of peace, have answered the question of what an economic system is for”.[2]

It has been suggested that he was the originator of the expression a New Deal, which became identified with the economic programs of American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He wrote a cover story in The New Republic entitled “A New Deal for America”, during the week that Roosevelt gave his 1932 presidential acceptance speech promising a new deal, but whether Roosevelt’s speechwriter Samuel Rosenman saw the magazine is not clear.

His 1938 book The Tyranny of Words was an early (perhaps the earliest, predating Hayakawa) and influential popularization of Alfred Korzybski‘s general semantics.

Chase supported the isolationist movement and was against US entry in World War II, advocating this position in his 1939 book The New Western Front.[1]

In the 1960s, Chase lent his support to the Johnson administration’s Great Society policies.[1]

Chase is famous for the quote at the end of his book A New Deal, “Why should Russians have all the fun remaking a world?” — a reference to the “socialist experiment” in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).[6]

He is quoted in S. I. Hayakawa‘s Language in Thought and Action as having said, “Common sense is that which tells us the world is flat.”

On pages 95 and 96 of The Road We Are Traveling, under the heading of “Free Enterprise into ‘X’”, Chase listed 18 characteristics of political economy that he had observed among[8] Russia, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Spain between 1913[9] and 1942. Chase labeled this phenomenon “… something called ‘X’”.[7] Characteristics include the following:

A strong, centralized government.
An executive arm growing at the expense of the legislative and judicial arms.
The control of banking, credit and security exchanges by the government.
The underwriting of employment by the government, either through armaments or public works.
The underwriting of social security by the government – old-age pensions, mothers’ pensions, unemployment insurance, and the like.
The underwriting of food, housing, and medical care, by the government.
The use of deficit spending to finance these underwritings.
The abandonment of gold in favor of managed currencies.
The control of foreign trade by the government.
The control of natural resources.
The control of energy sources.
The control of transportation.
The control of agricultural production.
The control of labor organizations.
The enlistment of young men and women in youth corps devoted to health, discipline, community service and ideologies consistent with those of the authorities.
Heavy taxation, with special emphasis on the estates and incomes of the rich.
Control of industry without ownership.
State control of communications and propaganda.

Source Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Chase

It is clear that after watching Barack Obama for nearly five years as of this writing, he is attempting to bring to America the implementation of all 18 items on Stuart Chase’s list.  For political insiders, who Obama’s title for his campaign video was a wink and a nod to their real intentions as most Americans had no idea what a Fabian Socialist was, the intentions are extraordinarily clear.  Most people don’t even understand what the history of the Labour Party in England was, which was the party of Tony Blair who got along so very well with George W. Bush, so they won’t understand the subtle messages Barack Obama’s team used to communicate their intentions to the Fabian loyalists who currently make up so much of the current federal government in modern America.  The American people have been sideswiped by a modern president that is clearly working from the playbook of Fabian Socialists like Stuart Chase.  But the goal of the Fabians is not only as deep as Obama, but go back to the time of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnston.  It is the Fabian Socialists who put their mark on The New Deal ushering in the era of “Social Security” and the “Great Society” which gave us Medicaid and Medicare.  Those programs are now off the table of discussion as most Americans have found themselves using those socialist government concepts in some fashion, and as they will all say – “Of course I’m going to use the program.  I paid into it, so I’m going to get out of it what I can.”  Thus…………you can see the work of the Fabian Socialist—patient, calculating, manipulative, smug—knowing that once they made America addicted to socialism, voters would never turn it away.  The same mentality has been at work behind Obamacare.  The goal is not affordable health care, or even helping the poor.  The goal is gaining federal control of 1/5th of the American economy so that the government can dictate what we eat, where we go, what kind of jobs we perform, and what type of relationships we conduct ourselves with.  The recent endeavors of Mayor Bloomberg in New York City are just the tip of the ice berg when it comes to what the Fabian Socialists wish to do with the government of our American Republic.  In the video below, Glenn Beck provides video research into more aspects of Fabian Socialist, Stuart Chase, and their connection to modern-day President Obama.

The strategies of Stuart Chase were not the intentions of The American Revolution, our Declaration of Independence, or our state and federal Constitutions.  Rather, Fabian Socialists have sought a legal way to supersede our traditional governments with scams designed to erode away our sovereignty slowly over a long period of time.  The success in America that built the skyline of present day New York City, or virtually any business in The United States from “old money” came from the laissez-faire capitalism tendencies during the period directly after the Civil War.  What the Fabian Socialists originating from London, England did with their version of socialism has been far more destructive than their direct attempts to destroy America in either The Revolutionary War or the War of 1812.  Through the progressive era just ahead of Stuart Chase’s time, they have managed with patience to put the brakes on American economic development by saddling our politics with gradual elements of socialism aimed at specific demographic voting blocs.  The aims of the 18 items listed by Stuart Chase are being actively pursued through the American education system, nearly every government office, and nearly every business in America who must deal with federal audits and inspectors to whatever degree.  Fabian Socialism is in the life of virtually every American in every corner of the country, and they were put there with the Trojan Horse of kindness, compassion, and manipulative schemes.  They have been furthered in recent times with videos like the one produced by the Obama White House delivered with the pleasant voice of Tom Hanks and presented in a way that any logical viewer would conclude to be reasonable, and even beneficial.  But what the nice voice of Tom Hanks does not tell you with Obama’s subtle nod to one of his economic mentors in Stuart Chase was that David Axelrod, and the others who appeared in the video are the modern equivalents of the traditional Fabian Socialists.  They don’t call themselves such things by name for fear that the American public would reject them, but they believe in the kind of government Stuart Chase discussed in his book, The Road We Are Traveling.  So now dear reader, you know as Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of the story when you see propaganda films done about Barack Obama titled, The Road We’ve Traveled.  Obama intends to say that the road mentioned in Chase’s book has already happened.  In Stuart’s day America was traveling down that road, but under Barack Obama, Stuart’s goals have been obtained.  That is why Obama’s public relation handlers changed the title from “we are” to “we’ve.”  So observe what the enemy of capitalism is all about and their weapons which are in those 18 points.  They are already here, and will stay unless they are defeated and vanquished.  That is the reality of the Obama Presidency and the hidden intentions of its administration.

[1]Excerpted from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition  © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed from INSO Corporation; further reproduction and distribution in accordance with the Copyright Law of the United States. All rights reserved.

[2]Encarta® 98 Desk Encyclopedia © &  1996-97 Microsoft Corporation.

All rights reserved.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com