Rich Hoffman's Blog, page 471
October 24, 2012
The Truth about ODE School Report Cards: Lakota and the Cincinnati Enquirer hold hands and kiss
Since my own personal Judas………Michael Clark of the Cincinnati Enquirer has written yet another apologist’s article in favor of public education it requires clarification of the matter at hand, which is the issue of school report cards issued by the Ohio Department of Education, where the highest grade possible is an Excellent with Distinction. The article Clark wrote can be seen below as it was reported by the West Chester Buzz.
http://westchesterbuzz.com/2012/10/22/last-week-in-west-chester-lakota-maintains-rating/
(Watch an interview I did with a Michigan radio station over this issue)
Based on that article, any intelligent skeptic would deduce that Superintendent Mantia of Lakota is indicating that she is going to let the rating of Lakota drop to just Excellent following what Mason has done recently. Mason and Lakota have very similar demographics, but like Lakota have not passed a school levy for a number of years and have had to change out superintendents due to intense pressure from tax resistance groups. Mason has a strong tax resistance group and now Lakota has two. Yet Mason was lowered by the ODE to push voters into supporting a future school levy. Little Miami was also punished by the ODE because of their multiple levy failures where Fairfield who just passed their levy last year was increased on their report card. The ODE designation is purely a political scheme designed to increase taxes on property owners in favor of the radical union influence, and reporters like Michael Clark who have a personal stake in maintaining the status quo education system as it is, ignore the mechanisms of the scheme hoping that nobody notices.
For the record I have for nearly two years now favored complete education reform with 100% School Choice in the State of Ohio and I want nothing to do with a teachers union. Teachers should have a right to opt out of a union and until that discussion takes place, I am completely against the current education models that the Ohio Department of Education represents. With that said, the report card system of the ODE is a foolish, corrupt, and out-dated system that favors political pull more than actual results and since reporters like Clark won’t do their job and uncover these types of stories because it might make their wives or reporting contacts angry, then I’ll gladly do the work in their place.
I speak with school board members all over the state and am personal friends with several former school board members, and I will relay to you what they have relayed to me. Schools all across the state sometimes win their ratings by destroying the tests of low scoring students. (proof below) Superintendents make it their task to stay on good political terms with ODE personnel and staff so to keep the eyes of that board from looking too closely at the activity that actually produces the test results. In schools like Lakota and Mason where the social demographics produce students who test better than schools like Princeton, CPS, or Lockland, there are more tests that must be excluded from the sampling and the risk of getting caught is much higher. But superintendents have more or less in their power the ability to pass or fail their ratings at will.
It should be noted that the superintendent of Little Miami stated that their testing suffered because of the 8 failed levies in previous years. By saying such a thing he is declaring publicly that he failed in his job as superintendent, and politically he is playing the game of warning the public that if they don’t pass their school levies, their districts will also suffer a poor rating from the ODE. Mason due to their finances need a levy in 2013 so they have been downgraded to attack the egos of the Mason residents with displaying a lack of school pride so that when their next levy is put on the ballot, the residents will pass it. Lakota has a teacher’s contract that is up in 2014 and it will need a tax increase to pay for the bloated salaries of its employees when the pay freeze expires, so Mantia–the effervescent quarter million dollar politician–is planting the seeds for passing that levy by threatening to become downgraded as Mason was.
The Ohio Department of Education gladly puts on the blinders to this behavior, and they are very aware of what they are doing and why they are doing it. They will of course publicly deny that such things are going on, but in the field of public education, it is the radical unions who run everything at every level, leaving the Ohio Department of Education members without any real teeth to hold any real authority. Since most of the people working in education make extremely good money for maintaining the status quo, there is absolutely no desire to change anything, or question anything even when the red flags are glaringly obvious.
Just to show that the ODE is doing their job they will occasionally pick a school to crack down on—to make a sacrificial victim of—and this year they focused on Southwestern Ohio because of all the levy resistance that has went on in the region—mostly by my personal friends and associates. In fact, I am happy to report that we have tax resisters in almost every school district in these regions and yes—we all talk. Recently the ODE targeted the lowly school district of Lockland for cheating on their test scores because the results were so obvious that nobody could claim to turn a blind eye away from the data. Lockland is already on the verge of a major restructuring from the state, so there was no skin off the back of the ODE to crack down on them in order to show the public that the “system works” prompting the media to report the incident in a public relations campaign designed to attract the attention of the public while all the other schools in the region continue the same practice. The ODE operates very similar to a traffic cop who tends to pull over red sports cars rather than family mini vans even though both are doing the same speed. The driver of a red sports car is potential trouble to the status quo, so they usually get the ticket while the driver of a mini van is probably a responsible citizen who is just in a hurry trying to do their jobs in society, at least in the mind of such cops. Lockland was the red sports car, Lakota I wouldn’t be surprised to learn, is the mini van. Mantia in her political wisdom with the wink and a nod from the ODE may allow Lakota to become downgraded in 2013 so that the community will be incentivized to pass a levy by 2014 when the new teacher’s contract must be negotiated.
For the proof of what has just been said here below is the article of Lockland getting caught by the ODE eliminating 36 low scoring students to improve their state score, just to prove that such activity goes on. As school board vice-president of the Lakota school board, Julie Shaffer likes to say about me, that I “rant” when bringing such activity to public light, be it known that Lockland is simply a small fish and punishment by the ODE does little to affect the education culture that is so defective in Ohio. Somehow I get the feeling that Shaffer won’t post this little bit of info on her Facebook page as she has other things that I’ve written here. Enjoy those lattés ladies.
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20120725/NEWS/307250057/State-Lockland-schools-cheated
If my mood about education has become increasingly darker as time has went on it is because I have learned about the many tricks such as the one shown above that are embedded in the big business of public education and I have had to face the reality that the entire system must be completely scrapped and reformed. 100% School Choice is the only solution that I see as it is currently being used in countries like Sweden with great success, and is needed to break the terrible hold that teacher unions have on America’s public schools. Until there are choices like “School Choice” there will continue to be corruption between superintendents, teacher unions, members of the Department of Education, the Ohio School Board Association, state legislators, trustees, even zoning officials who wrap themselves in such a tangled web that they can never hope to legitimately escape honestly.
The sad reality of the entire report card situation is that it is all about job protection and money wrapped up in collective bargaining agreements that are sold on the backs of children. And everyone who has participated in such a folly should be extremely ashamed of themselves. In my first hand experience, the education culture from reporters like Clark all the way superintendents like Mantia is treacherously destructive to a beneficial society because they know better, yet put on the blinders for their own interests that I do not hesitate to describe. I am as aghast at their behavior as anybody and believe me the proof stacks up high. People just choose not to see it. I do not wish to participate in their actions with my endorsement—or silence. The report card evaluations from the Ohio Department of Education have only one purpose and that is to bring in more money in the form of taxes to the schools of their districts. For districts that have shown they won’t pass their levies, the report card scores have been lowered, and for those who have passed their levies, the scores have increased taking into account a one year lag period, such as in the example of Little Miami. And in the case of Lakota, the threat is that the district rating will be lowered as other areas of Lakota’s district show great promise such as the new Liberty Way shopping complex and the 2013 Homearama exhibition in Carriage Hill boosting the real estate world with an inflection of interest that neighboring communities will benefit from. The politician Mantia is positioning herself for another levy run on the backs of these prideful events as some of those same real estate brokers whisper in her ear how best to proceed. And you can bet that The Ohio Department of Education will work with her in every way possible to bring about the results they mutually desire—which is a preservation of an education monopoly that favors the teachers unions at the expense of the children and their parents.
Rich Hoffman
October 23, 2012
Übermenschs are Born: Emerging from the shadows of superstition and collectivism
When studying the nature and evils of “collectivism” the ultimate question comes to mind inevitably—why. Why is it that collectivism is such a prevalent human trait that is the greatest threat to individual liberty? Why are there a large number of people who live in modern society who are attracted to political philosophies like socialism and communism? Why is it that some people believe that for their lives to be successful that it requires my participation in their life so they can feed off my effort just to live? This is without question the duality of modern America and the greatest challenge the human race faces in the 21st century. Some in America like me wish to be left free to achieve whatever our effort and imaginations can conceive while others wish simply to live from day-to-day in a collective pattern of herd mentality living and dying uneventfully with an eye always on the horizon toward some spectacular afterlife.
When looking for answers to the hard questions of the modern age, I like to look beyond the start of the progressive age in America, before the New England Victorians brought to The United States the corruptive disease of a festering European socialist model. To understand why please refer to my article on “Han Shot First” by CLICKING HERE. Even with a popular story like Star Wars there is much debate over a simple aspect of it such as in that example. As the filmmaker George Lucas grew older, and more compassionate as multiple influences affected his world outlook, he has subtly revised a scene in that famous movie that has fans in an uproar. Leo Tolstoy thus also went through a similar transition throughout his life from when he wrote the great classic novel War and Peace, but desired at the end of his life to wonder the streets of Russia as a peasant. People and ideas of time do change a bit, and with their minds can come to reality an attempt to revise history to fit their shape-shifting perceptions.
I would argue that such dramatic changes in philosophy come from minds that have lived in gray areas of their lives, and those shades of gray do allow unstable minds to alter their world-view. This is a prevalent trait in creative people, and creative people are often the ones who interpret history for the more logical businessmen and legislators of any age. So it is for this reason that I tend to trust only bodies of work, creative literature and serious science that predates the progressive era of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and their love of European royalty. It is in just such a book that I went searching for an answer to this problem of modern and historical collectivism—and I think I’ve found it in the below quote.
“Among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia, when the men were on the war-path, the women performed dances at frequent intervals. These dances were believed to ensure the success of the expedition. The dancers flourished their knives, threw long sharp-pointed sticks forward, or drew sticks with hooked ends repeatedly backward and forward. Throwing the sticks forward was symbolic of piercing or warding off the enemy, and drawing them back was symbolic of drawing their own men from danger. The hook at the end of the stick was particularly well adapted to serve the purpose of a life-saving apparatus. The women always pointed their weapons towards the enemy’s country. They painted their faces red and sang as they danced, and they prayed to the weapons to preserve their husbands and help them to kill many foes.” Such is the statement provided after the exhaustive research that went into the great book The Golden Bough written by Sir James Frazer in 1890 under the chapter “Sympathetic Magic.”
When Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed in what used to be my favorite book prior to The Fountainhead, his great work Thus Spoke Zarathustra that mankind was about to move beyond the limits previously experienced as he suggested that humans were on the cusp of a revolutionary point in their evolution and that it was the Übermensch translated as the Overman or otherwise “the superman” that would begin to emerge and transform society into the next great age. Ayn Rand, the great Russian author would take this idea and bring it to life in perhaps the most controversial bodies of literature thus far seen on planet earth, because in essence she was disputing the ideas of collectivism which is rooted in superstition and sought to replace such silly concepts with logical observation that goes back to the roots of Aristotle’s original arguments, before the Dark Ages and many empires along with ruling kingdoms would water down the minds of human beings for centuries through the strong belief in “sympathetic magic” articulated above by Frazer. Nietzsche was attacking the idea that “sympathetic magic” would continue to rule human beings into the future, and that the rational mind was beginning to take over such previous primitive thinking.
As ridiculous as some might think that the behavior of the Thompson Indians were, all one needs to do to see modern examples of it today is to attend a sporting event. In any stadium where football is played, “sympathetic magic” is being used as fans wear clothing and practice rituals that they believe will help their team to victory. Some fans and even players will pray to God to help them attain victory. It is well-known that baseball players often will wear a particular pair of shoes or wear the unwashed socks from a previous “big game” in hopes that the magic of those past events will translate to success in a future, yet un-played game. The name “sympathetic magic” means that the ritual performed in whatever capacity will invoke success through some magical, unknown means, but that the belief that like, or “shared” things have power over fate permeates. Such as the fan who wears the jersey of their favorite player hoping in the back of their mind that such an action will help that player perform better on the field of battle. Fans of the modern age may think of themselves as being more educated and sophisticated than the Thompson Indians of British Columbia, but they aren’t in practice.
We see the same attempts at “sympathetic magic” with politics, and even the way tax money is spent. Teacher unions and their neurotic soccer mom supporters advocate that more money spent on a school will magically make the school better. They have direct evidence that such a thing can’t happen, and even history and logic speak against such a thought. Yet they insist to believe with all the naiveté of a fool that throwing money at a problem will solve it. Their scientific logic has all the merit of a child throwing a penny into a fountain and making a wish, which is “sympathetic magic” yet they adhere to such foolishness with great religious zeal—even violence to protect their desire to retain such beliefs against the face of reality.
To protect themselves against reality, people who have such feeble minds to construct their lives around “sympathetic magic” gather in groups just like the village people of primitive cultures in a shared belief that if they all focus their minds on the same idea using “sympathetic magic” that they can alter reality. This is the root cause of collectivism. This is actually the root cause of much evil in the world and was the warning of Nietzsche and Ayn Rand. It is also why collective orientated people hate those philosophers with religious fury, because the introduction of such a reality contaminates the “sympathetic magic” they are attempting to invoke among the Gods. Collectivism therefore is the mechanism that is holding human kind back into a continuous state of decay and regression whereas the American experiment of individualism produced explosive invention and dramatic wealth production. In America human beings for the first time in recorded human history could think and live without the imposition of having a ruler force upon the individual an insistence of scientific thought bound to the mechanisms of “sympathetic magic.” In America the first of the Übermenschs’ emerged as Nietzsche predicted and like all cultures the birth begins in art—in this case the minds of creative science, authors like Ayn Rand, and filmmakers like George Lucas who in his youth created Han Solo, even if in his older years philanthropy and being a billionaire with the added pressure of old age, created in his mind the hope for a little “sympathetic magic” to reach across the great unknown and hope that the Gods will smile upon his actions on earth. The old George Lucas insists that the young George Lucas always intended to have Han shoot second. But it is in such revisions that all manners of “sympathetic magic” are protected through historical revision so that the minds of collectivists can maintain their illusions in the face of a grim reality—that courses of history can only be altered through individual will by those who most honestly follow their own private bliss as solo participants in their own hero adventures divorced from any collective cause and downtrodden superstition.
Rich Hoffman
October 22, 2012
Labor Unions Back Sheriff Jones: The slippery slope of political compromise
During the debate over Issue 2—the repeal of Senate Bill 5 in Ohio during 2011, many political lines between many established political circles were exposed where at once they were believed to be hard-core Republicans, but learned they were actually very progressive advocates of the same policies that allowed a president like Obama happen. In Cincinnati such stories were Bill Cunningham, Sheriff Jones and Senator Bill Sietz who showed that their public positions of conservativism were actually a mixed bag of progressivism. Sietz was a vocal critic of Governor Strickland as a political insider, Cunningham a big time talk show host for 700 WLW who sometimes does labor work as an attorney along with Sietz—and is married to a government employee—a judge, and Sheriff Jones selling himself as one of the hardest nosed law enforcers in the country on illegal immigration. All three seemed poised to be the best spokesman of our day on conservative principles in the Cincinnati area. Cunningham specifically from his microphone of 700 WLW pushed for governor Kasich to be bold and do the hard things it would take to reform Ohio with a loud mouthed crusade that sounded tough, but turned out in reality to be a ruse.
All three men sold themselves as red rocked Republicans in the past and learned during the election of 2011 that they were just as guilty of many of the country’s troubles as the Democrats masking the socialism of communist infiltrators emerging in America during the Hippie Movement. Compared to the socialist advocates of the 1960’s, Cunningham, Sietz and Jones probably do think of themselves as conservatives. But their support of labor unions exposed the flaws in their logic. Jones and I had in common that we were both frequent guests on 700 WLW. I would come on with Doc Thompson regularly to discuss school issues, and Jones would come on with Bill Cunningham to discuss union issues, especially regarding Senate Bill 5. Their position seemed odd to me since I believed that they were as committed to conservative principles as Doc Thompson and I were. Over the course of the election of 2011 as Cunningham came out in favor of the union repeal going against his friend, the Governor of Ohio John Kasich I learned that Cunningham was simply playing the part of a Rush Limbaugh type over all the years I’ve listened to him on WLW, and that he was just playing the part of a character on the radio. Doc and I however believed in everything we were saying, and weren’t afraid to speak it.
I knew there was big trouble in the Republican Party when I attended a large event with the Governor in the heavily conservative area of Liberty Twp. Every important Republican, financial contributor, and other powerhouses were at this event, yet Jones was not, because he had to come out with Cunningham in favor of the Senate Bill 5 repeal, which would have reformed the collective bargaining agreements with unionized public workers in the state. 
The bill was backed boldly by Governor Kasich. Jones and I ran into one another at different events, but since he and I had a somewhat public debate over Senate Bill 5, we ceased to speak to each other after that as it was obvious we were working for different political positions. The last time we spoke before the election was at a 9/11 event where police, firefighters and teachers all attended a wonderful ceremony at the Ronald Reagan building at the VOA Park. I had to face Jones during the ceremony and I knew as I looked at him that he saw all the public workers around us as a wonderful, patriotic service to his community and country. I on the other hand saw the public workers as a bunch of social parasites that should all be fired to save the tax money. Even though his beliefs were founded in elements of conservatives, his core beliefs were in bigger government where more public workers were given jobs by created government branches fashioned by spend happy politicians. All during the ceremony I thought of my favorite Christmas song by the Royal Guardsman “Snoopy’s Christmas.” Jones to me was the Red Baron and I was Snoopy and we were gathered in a momentary truce under the American flag. Click the link below for review.
I realized after this event that I could not play politics the way Sheriff Jones and Bill Cunningham did. In the hallway after the ceremony I got into a heated discussion with a union worker who actually told me he was entitled to the pay and benefits gained through collective bargaining and that was the end for me. I could not play both sides of the fence the way politics demanded, and Sheriff Jones was a politician. I was not willing to compromise my beliefs to preserve a system that should have never been allowed in the first place—collective bargaining.
I went on to win my personal political issues, but Jones and Cunningham won their repeal of Senate Bill 5 and the unholy alliance of Republicans working closely with labor unions to support the Democratic Party in a round-about way was revealed and it sickened me to my very soul. I decided that I would step away from politics as a front advocate in the community and cast my extra energy into writing novels and other articles full-time. The political two-faced position required for that game was not something I was interested in. Rather, I wanted to crush the system entirely even if it brought everyone down with it. Sheriff Jones and Cunningham tried to make amends with the Republic Party publicly after the election but behind the scenes Doc Thompson was fired, and 700 WLW took a noticeably leftist direction that coincided with the start of Cunningham’s new Jerry Springer type show. I became a political outcast which actually fit the personal decisions I had decided upon.
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Now it is election time again, and Jones is running for re-election. I noticed that the home he skipped out visiting when Governor John Kasich came to Liberty Twp to speak was displaying a large campaign sign for Jones indicating that he had made up with that portion of the Republican Party and was now back in their good graces. Such sights sicken me a bit each time I see them, as it becomes obvious that nobody really deeply cares about anything, or has personal convictions that they will stand behind, even if it means their complete demise. I don’t want to understand people like that. Cunningham on 700 WLW has come out against Obama on the air and seems to be supporting Romney. Cunningham also seems mystified that Romney won’t come on his show to do an interview–but without question the Romney people have done their homework on WLW’s descent into progressive broadcasting and don’t want to provide the clips that doomed John Kasich during Senate Bill 5 and John Boehner even though Rob Portman has tried to make it happen. But all else appears to be normal. Butler County has anti-Obama signs on almost every street except for public employees like teachers, cops and firefighters who are always voting for more government expansion. In fact labor unions are notorious for pushing their members to vote for Democrats, because ultimately that’s where their money comes from.
If anyone gives money to a labor union directly or indirectly they are feeding socialism in America, because that’s what labor unions are. Those who have drunk the Kool-aid of labor unions, and do not question why firefighters have to have an “International” union backing them, or why police have to belong to the Fraternal Order of Police, or why teachers have to be a part of the NEA other national unions with their connections to international unions are kidding themselves. Unions are socialist advocates for Democracy intending communism. That is their history and that is what any money given to them becomes. So with that said anyone who directly pays a government worker their salary is giving money to a union that intends the progressive manipulation of America from a capitalist country to a socialist one. Sheriff Jones, Bill Cunningham, and Bill Sietz all showed that they support the progressive transformation of The United States with their past actions by supporting labor unions. And in this upcoming election, in the very conservative area of Butler County of which Sheriff Jones is the highest representative of law enforcement that there is, you will see his sign for re-election in almost every yard that has a Romney sign……………………………..except one.
At the union hall near the old American Amusement Park almost directly across from the Speedway on RT 4 is one spot in all of Butler County where Obama signs are easy to see, because unions support the socialist tendencies of Obama’s past record. But also among the Obama signs as can be seen clearly in the picture above, is the sign of Sheriff Richard K. Jones and how mixed the lines of politics truly are. It is in such alliances that ultimately behind people like Jones and Cunningham who talk tough are really just putting on a show for the public. They never intended anyone to take them really serious for having any real convictions as their actions dictate their ethics. People generally vote their pocket books, and in the case of public workers, they want government to give them the kind of money that only the looted money from the IRS can provide with the might of the military at their back to do their bidding of tax collection. People like Jones and Cunningham will advise anyone to play the game or get played—which is why they are both successful politicians who have enriched themselves off the public they claim to serve. To them it’s just business as usual, and anyone is a fool if they think the system can be changed.
But I’m not playing. My decision is not to go down that path. I know from their stand point that I am viewed as a radical idealist who refuses to bend even a little to the compromises needed in a world gone mad. Without question, if I could turn off my mind, I may be able to do as Cunningham has done and become the next Jerry Springer even after spending most of his adult life saying otherwise. People will say about him long after he’s gone that Cunningham was a smart man, and he made a lot of money. He will be admired by all for many years because of the money he made. But I won’t be one of them. Because if I were Cunningham I wouldn’t have taken the New York job that made me look like a cheap suit. And if were Sheriff Jones I’d be insulted that a labor union supported me for office. He would say that he’ll take support from anyone who wants to give it, whereas I would not. That is the reason for the tension at the 9/11 event and the reason we haven’t spoken since. I chose not to involve myself in compromises of any kind. Instead I turn to my other work for clarity. I’d rather live my life from dime to dime instead of rolling in the looted money of a political process that creates such blurred lines and involves such a game of deception as is the standard practice of politics in America. For me it’s black and white and must be that way to avoid the many shades of gray that come from the art of political compromise.
Rich Hoffman
October 21, 2012
The New Miami Traffic Cameras: Sending over $1 million dollars to Optotraffic LLC of Lanham, Md.
And to think that I actually wondered–even after extensive research on my new novel Tail of the Dragon, that exposing the police as unjustified tax collectors with money grabbing traffic citations was fair, or even right. I worried that exposing the practice of “citation quotas” among the Tennessee Highway Patrol was responsible, as I did in my fictional novel so to make people aware that the tickets were not issued under the guise of safety but strictly as a revenue generating mechanism. I wondered about it until stories began breaking in Ohio of small community police departments that have been caught issuing tickets in order to supplement their police operating budgets, so they could avoid tax levies that obviously wouldn’t pass under such harsh economic conditions. Police have turned to traffic citations in order to tax citizens to pay their own salaries and pensions. Police have been caught in a big way in Arlington Heights and other Ohio communities, but now the cops aren’t even doing the work of pulling over residents. In New Miami they are simply setting up speed cameras, taking a picture of license plates; an out-of-state company processes the citation report and sends them back to the police to issue out as mailed citations that require the vehicle owner to pay a $95 dollar offense per citation. This practice is without question taxation without representation.
In the period between October 1st and October 12th 2012 New Miami, Ohio collected over 1000 speeding violations generating more than $101,000 dollars. The village of New Miami then splits the take with the company who owns the equipment. New Miami kept $57,000, while the remaining 40 percent, or $38, goes to Optotraffic LLC of Lanham, Md., who administers the program. Optotraffic gets to sit back in the faraway land of Maryland and collect 40% of every ticket their machines generate without even having a cop on the ground to do the work. The business is extremely lucrative for the thieving natures of politicians who of course set many of the speed limits unnecessarily low all over the state and country so to provide the F.O.P offices as a means to fund themselves with supplemental income at their discretion.
It was only a few months ago that I received a ticket along that same road, RT 127 about 25 miles north of this New Miami location in the town of Camden. An officer gave me a ticket for going a minuscule 88 miles per hour at 12:30 in the morning as I was coming back from an event up in Greenville. The snot nosed kid was about as old as my own kids and had about as much worldly wisdom as a potato, as he attempted to lecture me on the dangers of driving so fast until he saw how pissed off I was. He being still young and idealistic believed he was actually saving lives by issuing tickets. What he has yet to realize is that his F.O.P brothers who were playing cards at their union hall were using the lad to do their dirty work and make the money to pay their salaries so Camden could avoid going to tax payers for a police levy to cover their extraordinary salaries and lucrative retirements. The older cops hadn’t told the wet nurse cop that most of the laws created at the state level were made under lobby pressure from the Fraternal Order of Police to create means for raising money. The stretch of road I was on could easily afford to have a car traveling 100 MPH, yet the speed was set at the turtle crawl pace of 55 MPH, and like the Sammy Hagar song of the 80’s says, “I can’t drive, 55.” I never have been, and I never will. This has put me into courtrooms so many times to face judges and clerk of courts that could equate each instance to all the years of my life times four. I’ve been to court more times over the years than I have sat at my own dinner table—so I know up close and personal what a racket the whole process is. I write about my experiences in fictional stories to let people know what goes on behind the political scenes so that they can know that it is taxation and not safety that are the real concerns over traffic citations. Knowing that, I refuse to slow down out of my own personal rebellion against a system that is foolishly corrupt. Traffic laws are simply a blanket thrown over a bed where a massive orgy is taking place. Under the sheets are insurance companies, politicians, law enforcement contractors, and many government employees—most notably cops.
Ironically one of these camera set ups mentioned above is in the town of Seven Mile where some might recognize as the fictional town of Fort Seven Mile from another one of my novels, The Symposium of Justice. I used the name of that town because I had always liked it, and needed to have a good name for a small Ohio town to serve as a backdrop for my storyline. In that book police allowed a known rapist out of jail and inserted him into the general population hoping to scare the citizens into voting for the support of more police officers. The rapist in my book Symposium was assaulting young women and scaring the female population into a froth of desiring more police presence at any cost. Now with these new cameras, a cop isn’t even needed in a car. The camera runs 24 hours a day all days of the week and doesn’t get paid to even do a job. Instead all the people involved in the scam get to sit back and let the machine do all the work. In many ways, as extreme as my scenario in Symposium seemed at the time of 2004 America, these speed cameras are far worse. At the rate of citations in just 12 days of operation the new speed cameras of New Miami, and Seven Mile are projected to generate $ 3,041,666.67. Of that money $ 1,216,666.67 is projected for the company in Maryland who makes the cameras, and that is just off three cameras. There is a plan to put these cameras all over the state and nation, which is a plot so sinister, it moves beyond the belief of any novel plotline. In fact, I wouldn’t have even considered such a thing in one of my stories, because I would have never thought anyone would believe it—yet here it is in reality.
Like the school levies designed to pay members of the teachers unions enormous sums of money for their government work, police and fire fighters also look for tax money to supplement their incomes while they sit around their union halls playing video games and cards waiting for something to happen. Their traditional reason for asking tax payers to approve levy requests was to make their communities safer. It has taken a long time for the mask to be pulled off the traffic cops and what their real intentions have been, of course under the guise of “safety.” Now, the traffic cameras prevent even the staffing of trolls in patrol cars. Now a traffic ticket is mailed to the violator without any interaction at all while the police on staff have even less to do, and an out-of-state company makes millions off the backs of tax payers who didn’t even know that their taxes have went up without their approval. Of course portions of that money will find its way into the lobbyists of state and federal governments and will pay for the lap dances of more than a few comb over politicians in favor of lowering speed limits to generate more of these citations and pay for more illicit behavior on their end, and more lap dances and prostitutes while the cameras do all the work. (Firsthand knowledge)
Police and politicians will declare, “If you don’t want to get a ticket, then slow down to the speed limit.” But such statements are of course ridiculous. The world is getting faster, not slower, and the automatic panic reaction to every accident or social complaint by a politician is to put up a new stop sign, stop light, or lower the speed limit to show the public that they are looking out for the concern of their constituents. What they don’t declare is that they like to pass laws to give work to sign manufacturers, traffic light contractors, and now Optotraffic LLC of Lanham, Md., and that the law has nothing to do with safety, but about revenue generation. These relationships are an unholy alliance who protect the labor unions of law enforcement with their radical benefits packages while appeasing power hungry politicians using radar cameras like the ones built by Optotraffic LLC to make boatloads of cash from small towns all over America for doing nothing but exploiting the stupidity of everyone involved, and the never-ending cries for more safety by society’s most docile, and pathetic squeaky wheels.
Rich Hoffman
October 20, 2012
Han Solo from ‘Star Wars’ “SHOT FIRST!”: ‘Atlas Shrugged’ is also about Science Fiction
The release of the latest Atlas Shrugged Part 2 film in theaters all across America has again touched off a firestorm of debate in the media, as the gate keepers of the political left have revealed how deeply entrenched many of the parasite destined proletariats of progressive propaganda wish to propel The United States. They have like demons thrashed about as if involved in an exorcism involving Holy Water and the incantations of a sorcerer priest to dislodge the evil spirit from the body of an unsuspecting victim upon hearing the simple words…………….Ayn Rand—or Atlas Shrugged. The most universal attack against Rand by these progressive thinkers is to say that she was selfish, and that all her work is a mindless manifestation of capitalism that stands at odds with global socialism, and it is not to be tolerated. The characters of Atlas Shrugged have been attacked for being one-dimensional, lacking emotional depth, being self consumed, and in general being angry—reprehensible—and entirely too self confident. In fact, such utterances about the new film version of Atlas Shrugged Part 2 would have viewers believe that the movie was just a boring discussion about the virtues of capitalism versus socialism—that the lovers of socialism find the message of ASP2 a threat to their core beliefs, and their screams over the plot have masked the real nature of Atlas Shrugged as a story—which is that of science fiction. Yet it is, Atlas Shrugged the movies, as are the books, very much about action, adventure, and the unfettered exploration of the human soul against the sands of time, where the villains are those who wish to prevent the full development of the individual imagination. The picture shown above is from the new film, and declares that Atlas Shrugged is not just about political philosophy, but is a magnificent work of science fiction, and the roots of it predate some of the most beloved movies in American culture. In fact, the picture above reminds me of another film that virtually every American knows well—a film that when I first read Atlas Shrugged I felt I had uncovered a long-lost Rosetta Stone from the past. And the most popular character from that film went on to become the most popular film series in history and is a character that is right off the pages of any Ayn Rand novel. The movie is Star Wars, and the character that is undeniably Randian is Han Solo.
Atlas Shrugged the novel was written in 1957 and a young George Lucas in love with Jules Verne novels, Flash Gordon comic strips, and Walt Disney films without question ran across the work of Ayn Rand. You can see her influence in his film THX-1138, and in Star Wars, Atlas Shrugged is all over the very first film A New Hope. Lucas being a smart businessman who knew how to play his cards close to his vest knew not to show too much love of Ayn Rand publicly because of her controversy, so he changed many of the themes and events of Atlas Shrugged and set them in “A Galaxy A Long Time Ago in a Land Far, Far Away” and used Joseph Campbell’s great book The Hero of a Thousand Faces to build mythic themes for his space saga that would tell the vast story arc of Luke Skywalker, the rise of a Galactic Empire, and the sad fate of Darth Vader as a failed victim and perpetuator of a vast and tyrannical political system intent to crush individuality. But Lucas wisely and quietly used the character of Han Solo played by Harrison Ford to help all the giant themes go down the mind’s eye with a character right off the pages of Atlas Shrugged. Han Solo is a combination of virtually every hero in Atlas Shrugged–he’s competent, self-proclaimed to be out for himself, and he’s unstoppable. Han Solo is one of the two most popular characters from Star Wars; the other is Boba Fett, the bounty hunter and nemesis to Captain Solo. Solo is a pirate in the Star Wars films, while Fett is an independent assassin. 
Both characters come right out of the Sergio Leone films that Clint Eastwood played so effectively—The Man With No Name—who are also the type of characters apparently very influenced by Atlas Shrugged in the 1960’s. Bill Whittle below covers an intense recent controversy of how there was a lot of Hollywood pressure to re-edit the scene from the original A NEW HOPE in a classic gun fight scene involving Han Solo inspired from those same Sergio Leone films to meet the modern temperament of progressive thought–much to the discontent of millions of fans.
Lucas after his box office flop THX-1138 knew it was possible he’d never make another movie but his friend Francis Ford Coppola helped him make American Graffiti, forcing Lucas to learn to sell his ideas disguised behind contemporary plot devices. Coppola, was the director of The Godfather and it was the producer of those fantastic movies Albert Ruddy who purchased the rights to Atlas Shrugged in the mid 1970’s just before the release of Star Wars, and worked heavily with Ayn Rand to bring her book to the big screen. The deal almost worked, except Rand insisted on final script approval which Ruddy couldn’t give her. The film was killed eventually when Fred Silverman rose to become president of NBC.
Lucas watching all this activity by his film mentors placed into his Han Solo creation all the gallant traits of Ayn Rand’s classic heroes. But he sold it brilliantly on the screen by having Solo interact with the idealistic youthful Princess Leia, who represented the progressive feminist movement, and served as a vehicle for the audience to fall in love with Solo, just as the young princess did. Also there is Luke Skywalker, who represents the silly yearnings of all young people and their impractical quests built off good intentions. However, it is always Han Solo who saves everybody in the end. It is Solo’s bold rescue of the princess lured by Luke exclusively over money that would eventually save the entire rebellion effort against the evil empire, and Solo would save Luke on many occasions just at the right moment. Han Solo was chastised by Leia and Luke in the film for being selfish–conceited—recklessly bold—and a menace to the life of all mercenaries, but such accusations never pierce the thick skin of Solo.
At the end of A New Hope while the rebels are fighting to destroy the dreaded Death Star Solo is told by Luke that he’s “only out for himself” as Solo takes his reward and threatens to leave rather than get killed attacking the dreaded weapon of the enemy. In the end, Solo saves Luke without violating the rules of self-interest. Solo likes Luke and saves the kid out of self-interest without giving up his reward, or his independence. In fact the Death Star in A New Hope serves exactly the same purpose as Project X does in Atlas Shrugged. And Solo during The Empire Strikes Back would go through a very similar torture scene as John Galt had to undergo in Project F, near the end of Atlas Shrugged. Lucas had done with Han Solo something that no filmmaker in Hollywood has been able to do since; he brought to the screen the best rendition of Ayn Rand’s classic characters since Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood in a work of fiction that would sell the ideas without the contemporary fuss that we see in 2012. Without question the same people who criticize Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged as being a loathing work of selfishness and capitalist propaganda, most likely love Star Wars, and secretly love best Han Solo or Boba Fett—two of the space sagas most “selfish” characters.
George Lucas is a brilliant man. There are not many like him and nobody working in Hollywood today can match his unique ability to create characters like he has in his films. The later Star Wars films produced from 1999 to 2006 did not have a character like Han Solo in them to keep the audience interested in the story, and the films suffered as a result. In fact, there have been few movies made since The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 that have had characters anywhere close to being as strong and personally confident as Han Solo. Solo in the end solves his problems on his own, he wins the girl, and gains his wealth on his own terms, and he stays loyal to the causes he deems are important. When Lucas tried to appease the idealistic side of his sensibilities which he shared with many other Hollywood types then and since, Star Wars lost some of its power.
In The Return of the Jedi where Luke saved Han Solo from the vile gangster Jabba the Hut, something ends up lost in the story. The movie was still fun, but it lacked the honesty and punch of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back—primarily because Han Solo was turned into the role of the victim. Solo also let his old friend Lando fly his beloved Millennium Falcon on another Death Star run which was a form of sacrifice that psychologically was rejected by millions in the audience. Another story failure was the scene on Endor where Solo showed Princess Leia that he could be “compassionate,” by giving her a hug when she was in a state of turmoil. Lucas was by this time trying to show the Han Solo had “evolved” as a character, which is standard fare in progressive Hollywood. He tried to show that Solo had learned to think of others more than he thinks of himself, and the story suffered as a result. Sacrifice as a theme in Star Wars is only accepted superficially in the standard dialogue that religions function. Deep in people’s hearts, it is Han Solo that holds the entire story together which Lucas seemed to learn as he progressed through the story. For Lucas, what started out as a simple plot device inspired by Ayn Rand’s classic novel became the glue that held the entire thing together and separated Star Wars from every other attempt in film history to duplicate, including Star Trek. If not for Han Solo, Star Wars and Star Trek would have very few distinguishing characteristics to separate one from the other. In Star Trek there is The United Federation, which is a socialist idea, and in Star Wars there is the rebellion against individual conquest. However, the means to get there is not through organizations, Jedi Councils, rebel Leaders, and these tend to always fail as they are rooted in collectivism. It is always through rogue pirates like Han Solo, and his belief in himself, for his own preservation that directly results in the success of everyone in his wake. It is because of him that rebellions succeed and wealth is created.
Han Solo is so important to Star Wars that even after over 200 books written since Return of the Jedi when Solo and Princess Leia go off to supposedly live happily ever after, Solo is still alive in his 80’s and still flying his Millennium Falcon, gun slinging bad guys and performing acts of death-defying bravery. His kids, his wife, his brother-in-law Luke, along with all their friends are all magical Jedi with super powers that defy logic. But Solo is always there when courage is needed and logic is in short supply. He has gifts that no magic Jedi can utilize and no author can overcome in plot necessity. If a story wants to be successful it must have characters like Han Solo, and since Star Wars came out in 1977, there have been watered down versions that were enjoyed, but never achieved quite at the same level of love as Han Solo. It was the character of Han Solo that made Harrison Ford a star, and without Solo, there would have never been an Indiana Jones and Harrison Ford would have lived out his days as a carpenter trying to get work in Hollywood as a bit player. Han Solo is the ultimate producer, the fearless advocate of individuality, and the bridge between common sense and fantasy. Without him Star Wars is just another mythic tale that would hit the movie screen, make a little money, then disappear from the minds of mankind forever.
But because Lucas wisely intentionally or unintentionally made Han Solo to resemble Ayn Rand’s classic characters Star Wars will forever be as loved as Ayn Rand’s books are. The film makers of the modern Atlas Shrugged films know they are doing something special and their enthusiasm comes out in scenes like the one shown in the picture above. When I saw the mysterious plane taking off in Colorado trying to escape from the pursuit of a hunter, I thought of the Millennium Falcon piloted by Han Solo blasting off from Mos Eisley in Star Wars: A New Hope. 
The modern filmmakers however are businessmen, so they tend to focus on the politics and business aspects of Atlas Shrugged. Lucas however being a lover of history, comparative religion and world mythology captured wonderfully the essence of what Ayn Rand created in her novels in the much beloved film series called Star Wars. But it doesn’t change the fact that the rules of plot dictate a severe discrepancy between what progressive media types and film makers acknowledge as truths, and stories that show strong characters in a reality that is subconsciously understood. This later idea is where Ayn Rand was functioning from, and this has caused much anxiety from the social reformers who wish to socially engineer these traits from the mind of all human beings. It is the same people who root for Han Solo to win in Star Wars who also try to commit society to the schemes that gave rise to the evil Empires in that galaxy far, far way—a long time ago. Their duality is a result of social sickness that has not yet come to terms with their inner workings and instead have attempted to achieve the work that creative people like George Bernard Shaw, and H.G. Wells tried to create—which Lucas attacked in Star Wars. Atlas Shrugged as a novel was the first of its kind to show what the potential of man can be, and George Lucas was the first to successfully place on the movie screen a character that Ayn Rand would have written if she had been the author of Star Wars. Instead the torch was handed down to the next generation, and yet again a new generation is struggling to maintain such heroes for the preservation of ideas that will propel into tomorrow the magnificent potential of the human race—personified by characters like Han Solo. It is that fight and tendency that critics of the new Atlas Shrugged film scream about in protest, and is also why there has not been another character like Han Solo in any film since 1980.
For the record, Han Solo SHOT FIRST and it will be up to the next generation to make sure everyone remembers it so that all the great heroes of the future can “Live Long and Prosper.” (Star Trek) George Lucas in the quiet of his home I think would agree, and it will take filmmakers like those producing the modern Atlas Shrugged films to help make a Hollywood who will defend Han Solo along with all the men and women like him, and not try to re-write history to fit the agenda of modern politics. Even the best and brightest sometimes lose their way when the wonder they gained from reading a book like Atlas Shrugged in their youth gets pounded out of them in the realities of life. As Lucas has said, sometimes while trying to tell the story of Luke Skywalker you can become Darth Vader lost in the blind devotion to a system not of your own making. And this is what happens to many good people who find through years of philanthropy that they lose the Han Solo in them and become Darth Vader, or even the naive Luke Skywalker–fighting for a sacrifice to something other than themselves. It is in those dark moments of “maturity” that these poor souls need Han Solo to save them from the crushing weight of service to a system that is brainless collectivism paving a way to hell with a brick road each marked with a good intention. It is in those moments when the question must be asked……………………….”WHO IS JOHN GALT.”
To go down the rabbit hole even further CLICK HERE:
Rich Hoffman
October 19, 2012
Obama Hates Money and those Who Make It: The Masks of Communism
The biggest weakness of the Obama Presidency is his hatred of the wealthy, which was an undeniable fact concluded upon after the presidential debate with Mitt Romney on October 16, 2012. Obama has a real problem–that no matter how much he says in an election year that he loves the free enterprise system, and the art of business—his actions speak otherwise. The gist of Obama’s debate performance against Mitt Romney was that Romney was evil because he’s a “rich guy” and that he only paid 14% of his $13.7 million dollars made during 2011 to federal taxes. Obama painted a picture of Romney as a mean, evil, corporate executive that isn’t paying his fair share. The insinuation from Obama is that “fair share” is determined by some mysterious intelligence of a mythical “middle class” and Romney has a moral obligation to pay taxes at the level determined by that mob of democracy. If Romney tries to pay less tax money through deductions and oversea investments with tax shelters, he is in some way disingenuous—even crooked.
Repeatedly during the aforementioned debate Obama stated that Romeny was paying a tax rate that was less than the average person in the middle class. What Obama declined to mention was that Mitt Romney paid in 2011 $1.94 million in taxes to the federal government. The average “middle class” person would be lucky if they even broke paying $10,000 in federal taxes and around 49% of all American citizens don’t pay any federal income tax. So the comment that Mitt Romney and other wealthy Americans owe more tax money—far more than other people who are equal people in the eyes of the law, all use the same roads, the same government services, yet the wealthy are supposed to be happy about paying over $1 million in federal taxes while many Americans simply don’t contribute equally, is preposterous. Obama thinks that by feeding that fire of guilt Romney should feel guilty and inclined to pay even more than he does now which is absolutely laughable.
I have pointed out on many occasions that the root for this kind of thinking comes philosophically from Karl Marx and is by the most fundamental definition communism. Of course Obama doesn’t call himself a communist, but should not be surprised when people call him a communist, because when an argument is made that the “rich” owe the “poor” parts of themselves, their property, and their livelihoods, it is communism behind the mask of progressivism. It continues to be baffling how and why the media and society at large lets politicians like Obama get away with such criticisms. In the scheme of things Mitt Romney is a much more important person than the average “middle class” union stooge who works 9 AM to 5 PM and expects to be paid six figures to do basic labor work. Those ideas are the fantasies of communists, not capitalists, and America became a great country because of capitalism—not crony capitalism, but laissez-faire capitalism—the more pure, the more powerful the economy. Such statements are beyond dispute, and cannot be refuted by a logical mind not seduced by machine politics and half-baked philosophies.
Obama whether consciously or unconsciously is behaving as a communist because of his severe hatred of the wealthy. I’ve always suspected it, but for me the information was 100% confirmed when I realized that Obama and other political progressives were saying the exact same kinds of dialogue sentence for sentence as was used in the great novel called We The Living covering the events of the Red Revolution in the Soviet Union in 1917 through 1926. We The Living was published in 1936 and to this day is one of the most vivid examples of what life behind the Iron Curtain in Russia was in the beginning days of communism in that very large country destined for economic failure. These events brought to America what was called the Red Decade starting with intelligentsia from 1930 to 1940, which was a period where communism was offered to America as an offering to future economic growth. Out of that communist pressure came The New Deal and Social Security from President Roosevelt. The names were changed at the time to reflect the independence of America but progressivism in America has very few differences from the communism of the early Soviet Union. Is it any wonder that Obama is referred to a “socialist” or a “communist?” People who say such things understand the definition of communism and know they have at their philosophical roots a severe hatred of the “rich.”
Obama’s biggest failure is that he shares with world-wide Marxists, communists, socialists and progressives a lack of understanding of the value of money. Keynesian economics reflect this lack of value in their economic models and the same disconnect can be seen in the Obama Administration. This is why the debt has increased in such an out-of-control manner under Obama’s watch. This is also why he thinks it’s fair that Romney pay millions more in taxes than the average everyday person, even though technically Romney is no better or worse of a person than anybody else. The only difference between Romney and the average “middle class” person is that Romney makes millions of dollars each year. Obama views such money-making ability as though Romney is just luckier than everyone else and the money he made is part of some ridiculous finite resource like fossil fuels, water, or air. To people like Obama, money is a mystery to them, so they believe that Romney has a disproportionate amount of it because he’s greedy. It is completely foreign to communist minds that America could support millions of Mitt Romney’s if all Americans worked as hard and were as creative with their money-making opportunities as Romney has been. That is why in America under laissez-faire capitalism we term acquiring money as “making money,” because it is wealth that is created under capitalism, and money is not viewed as a limited resource. It can be made.
Obama clearly doesn’t understand this, and his anger at Romney for being a “fat cat” is obvious. It is no wonder the American economy is faltering, the President of The United States doesn’t even understand the basics of money or the value of it. All he seems able to do is recite the historical communist argument of his party platform as a progressive from the early days of the Russian Revolution. It is too bad that history is so easily forgotten, because the argument at these presidential debates could be elevated if only people knew what the President truly represented as a politician instead of hiding his hatred of money, and the people who make it, behind what is sold as legitimate politics accepted blindly by the types of people whose knowledge of history is as deep as a dried up-stream in a scorching desert. The hatred for the wealthy is the key to why America has a faltering economy, and is becoming more akin to a mob of fools addicted to government services demanding free money from the gods of productivity, and that people like Romney owe the rest of the world the gains of their investments as a selfless testament to existence for the end result of the destitute.
Rich Hoffman
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October 18, 2012
The “Pet Rocks” at Lakota: Teachers and their scam against the public
For my national and international readers, you might be confused by this article, but be assured; the contents of this essay do affect you. My conflict with the Lakota School System, which is my home public education institution, has been robust and much discussion has occurred at this site about it. So it must be discussed now that the State of Ohio has issued the report card for public schools over the more than 600 districts, what the intentions and results are of the report. The timing of the report card of course is to help schools who have a November levy on the ballot pass their tax increases, which is the political band-aid expected to perpetually kick the can down the road of public education sustainability. The report card in essence is a complete scam, and does not even begin to tell the story of why public schools need higher taxes on property in order to provide a baby sitting service for thousands of district parents at the cost of tens of thousands to generate the revenue.
The Lakota School District achieved an Excellent with Distinction rating yet again even after tens of millions of dollars have been cut from the budget and dozens and dozens of jobs have been removed from the work force. Superintendent Mantia knowing that I would point out this issue made a public statement, “When someone says we cut the budget by millions and the results are still just as good, we need to remember these results are from last year. We had many teachers who helped our kid’s learn this material who are not here anymore.” She knew that I would say………”see—I told everybody so.”
http://westchesterbuzz.com/2012/10/17/lakota-local-schools-earns-excellent-with-distinction-rating/
The reality is that Mantia is caught between a rock and a hard place. She is paid by the residents of the district nearly a quarter million dollars to play whatever political, and economic game she needs to in order to ensure that Lakota gets whatever rankings it needs, and to preserve a strong bond rating. But she is alluding to her statement that Lakota may be downgraded in the future because of the layoffs—which at some point she will need to do if she wishes to pass a school levy, because people like me will always point out that there is no reason to pay higher taxes if the district is getting more for less. However, if she allows that to happen she will be a failure as a superintendent, so she is literally caught in a perilous political position between letting Lakota become downgraded, or continuing to prove that Lakota can cut, and cut, and cut without losing the quality of its institutional education power.
Cincinnati Public Schools was downgraded by this same report card and they have spent increasingly more amounts of money on their schools, and they are currently selling their November levy as a fix for returning back to the column of a good school. However whether or not a school district is successful or not has almost nothing to do with the teachers or the school as an institution, but rather the schools are a direct reflection of the community. The myth of higher paid teachers’ equally improve schools has officially been busted. If the situation concerning Lakota didn’t prove it to the world, or the lack or performance in places like CPS or Lockland who was recently caught cheating on their performance ratings to maintain their statuses, money spent on education has virtually nothing to do with the end result of good student production.
I have said often that all the teachers at Lakota could be fired and replaced by clamoring idiots who know virtually nothing of the world around them, and the kids of Lakota would still be good, and the district would still be rated Excellent with Distinction. The reason is simple, at Lakota the demographics mandate that successful children will become somewhat successful adults because per capita, there are more homes with two parents in them who care about the quality of life for their children. There are more children not living in poverty. There are not very many apartment dwellers in the Lakota district allowing residents to move into a nice district without having a direct financial stake in the taxes paid. There are fewer welfare recipients per household. There are fewer homes that have step children co-habiting with mixed marriages. In other words, many of the parents at Lakota take an active interest in their children’s lives, they take personal responsibility for the child’s behavior more so than other school districts with much more chaotic family structures, and the average income of the residents of Lakota are higher, meaning the children have a higher quality of life to grow up in. Districts who have the opposite of the above mentioned qualities will tend to have declining results in education performance standards no matter how much money is spent on the school, because the school is only the tail that is wagged by the dog—the parent. The process does not work the other way around as the unionized teachers would advocate. For clarity on this issue all anyone need do is remember the teacher’s strike in Chicago during the summer of 2012. Virtually every school in America that has a teaching work force that is unionized has the exact same problems as shown in Chicago. The reality is that the teachers of these schools have sold the public a “pet rock” making their services sound better, and more valuable than they really are.
The biggest villain of the entire process is the trend (legal requirement) to only hire as Superintendents of these public schools former teachers who were members of the union in the past, and remain loyal to the teachers union even as members of management. Teachers with more than 15 years or more experience tend to become radicalized by their extensive time served in a labor union, and Superintendent Mantia has been shown clearly, and her comments reflect it, that she is willing to toss infinite amounts of money at teachers’ wages, which are the real drivers of tax increases on private property. The situation becomes simply a loaded scam designed to pay teachers for a job that is grossly inflated with value.
Who says that a teacher is worth $60,000 a year, and who says that they must have a Master’s degree to teach a 1st grader when home schooled children perform better than the public educated one in most every instance? Who says that a teacher should be paid so much for fewer than 8 hours of contracted work and summer’s off? Who says that districts should be required to pay for all this nonsense when the real value actually comes from the families themselves and not the school? The school is simply the benefactor of a good community not the driver.
http://www.pulsejournal.com/news/news/lakota-earns-11th-year-of-excellent/nSfnb/
So keep in mind all these facts when you go to the polls to vote for your local school levy. Understand that the school is simply a parasite to the good deeds of your family. And if your family sucks, your child will most likely grow up to suck. Paying more money in taxes will not change whether or not a child grows up to be a low quality person. Success cannot be purchased with a more expensive teacher. It can only be acquired through hard work, family love, and personal dedication toward the art of success. The correct thing to do would be to take away the money that feeds the radical labor unions behind the teaching profession and force them to come back down to reality. It is irresponsible to pass school levy issues for public education and not force the hypocrisy to the surface with the grim measurements of reality. And that reality is it is not teachers who make a student successful, they are only supplements to the work a parent do. The reality is that if the parent does not do the work of raising a child, no amount of money spent on the teaching profession can save them. And with that said, virtually every statement made by public schools is a bold face lie. For the proof, just look at the Lakota School District in Southwestern Ohio and everything else will be confirmed without effort. Click here for a review.
Rich Hoffman
If you like my work at this site then check out my books shown below, along with quotes, interviews, reviews, and ways to find them. Clicking the pictures below are your doors to even more adventure:
October 17, 2012
The Cry Baby American Teacher: Reasons why education reform requires a complete change
One of the most laughable documents I have ever read can be seen below, where a so-called “educator” by the name of John Kuhn utters his distorted vision of reality from the point of view of the American teacher. But within the laughs that are sure to come from the minds and mouths of any sensible reader, there are kernels of understanding that can be had from such diabolical diatribes. The most telling revelation to come from the below article is just what teachers instructing the American youth believe the idea economic/education system should be. The answer is that it is Scandinavia that they point to as the world’s most obvious success story. Scandinavia consisting of the countries Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland has developed a particular model of welfare, employment and economic governance based on universal access to tax-financed social services and social insurance. Scandinavian countries currently utilize full employment secured by expansive macro-economic policies and active labor market manipulation, highly organized labor markets, corporatist interest mediation, and so on. In short Scandinavian countries utilize central control of their resources by government with a large public buy-in with their tax resources, and American teachers are pointing to this cluster of countries as the utopian model they wish to instruct upon the future American society.
http://theeducatorsroom.com/2012/09/the-exhaustion-of-the-american-teacher/
Apparently John Kuhn, the author of that article has failed to realize that America is currently in another Revolutionary War, and the cause of the revolution is due to teachers like him. I for one do not wish to follow in the footsteps of Scandinavia, who as a cluster of European style countries are the least of the evil choices that countries long suppressed with kings, princes, and socialism have found that by introducing a few free market ideas—such as IKEA, that they can expand their economic influence. The people of these countries have long been defeated of their individual liberty and outlook for personal freedom. They are often happy to concede their incomes through taxation in exchange for lengthy vacations and hefty retirement packages. But Americans aren’t. In The United States a large number of people have tasted freedom and they don’t want any variation of socialism that Europe has offered, and this is the cause of the current Revolution in America.
John Kuhn complains that parents are not involved with their children, and this is why teachers are more important than ever. But what teachers who think like Kuhn don’t realize is that the same progressive policies that have put teachers as the bastions of democracy and social organization in every community across America, it is those same progressive policies that have destroyed the American family. It is those progressive policies of government intervention, and centralized control of the America family that have told parents that it is the school that will interfere with the power of the father if a child comes to school with bruises on their backs. The American teachers like Kuhn have injected themselves into the lives of many thousands of children and prosecuted parents for suspected abuse often. The modern teacher sees their role as protectors of children from their parents, and as the ultimate instructor of a child’s fate, and in response, parents have surrendered their authority to the John Kuhns in the teaching profession.
To understand why so many parents are on drugs these days and exposing their children to treacherous conditions at home, look to the progressive welfare programs that created no incentive to be productive adults. To understand why the divorce rate is so high look at a college education system that has produced too many lawyers who need divorces to pay for their occupations, and advertise the destruction of the family as a way to put food on their own tables. To ask why parents drop off their child at school and expect a teacher to do all the work look at the social intrusion that the school and their teachers inject in court rooms all over the country and measure that against the amount of money that a family pays in personal property taxes and the answer will present itself. If society is failing it is due to the largest influence in most people’s lives, their public education experience. The fault is on the teachers themselves who bred into society the kind of lackadaisical life approach taught to students in America that has degenerated every year since the inception of the Department of Education in 1979. The education system has been a failure. It has destroyed families, it has taught our youth the wrong values, and it doesn’t lead the world, it follows, and that is just not acceptable.
The reason for the rise in films against the union controlled education system like Waiting for Superman, and Won’t Back Down is because there are many in America who are sick of the job that teachers have done with American youth, and we want to be free of it. We don’t agree with the kind of education modern teachers are providing, and we want to reject the service in favor of something driven from the free market, not centrally located at the Department of Education that is locked arm and arm with The United Nations. We don’t give a rat’s ass what a bunch of stuffy comb-over bureaucrats cooked-up at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2002, where Scandinavia was presented as the education/economic model of the future. It means nothing in a country known for its innovation, where it has been recognized that such education philosophies will not take America were we want to go, and that is to be the “best,” not just a notable player at the table of a world economy.
I personally have no love for the European and in the type of revolution that I see coming, would not hesitate upon that day to plant the American flag square into the eye socket of a European socialist dandy serving on the board of the World Economic Forum. They have a right to their beliefs, but not into forcing my participation—and this is what they are demanding of all Americans, and why there is push-back against teachers. American teachers are the advocates of this European model, this copy-cat approach to education looking to Scandinavia to provide the world with the kind of mixed economy socialism offers in the ultimate utopia with just enough controlled capitalism to make a little money. I reject that approach and I will not participate peacefully. My squabble is not one where intend to impose my beliefs upon my neighbors, but when my neighbors intend to impose upon me with higher taxes, they are forcing my participation in a system that I utterly reject.
Educator John Kuhn is right about one thing however, the anger at education goes beyond corporate donations to education reformers and movies attacking the control labor unions have on public education. The old Bolshevik Revolution mantra about the plight of the proletariat fighting against the wealthy bourgeois is old and worn out, and is always at the heart of what these deranged socialist loving educators utter. It is also what they teach our youth—and it is for that reason that more and more people are beginning to think the way I do—that public education needs a major overhaul and cannot be saved in its current form. It is not the task of America to copy Denmark, Norway, or Sweden, and to a more limited extent, the other Nordic countries: Finland and Iceland. Scandinavian nations are noted internationally for their peacefulness, social and gender equality, strong labor unions and social democratic parties, expansive governments, and high taxes, just to mention a few salient features. They are a socialist oriented cluster of countries that is fine for them, but not right for America and it would be advisable that educators like John Kuhn who are so in love with such places on earth buy a plane ticket and move to those frosty climates to endure the communist dreams of their politicians. In America, I want the youth of The United States to learn from a much different type of teacher and that anxiety will only increase as this new American Revolution churns up past rhetorical ideas and turns to actual military maneuvers. But rest assured there will not be a quiet compliance to the direction intended by the minds of American intelligentsia because they are not acting on behalf of the nation that became the greatest in the world. Instead they wish to be one collective head in a global crowd, which is not even close to being acceptable by the standard of traditional America.
Conflict is unavoidable because the differences in philosophy are too great.
Rich Hoffman
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October 16, 2012
“Sons of Liberty”: ‘Assassin’s Creed III’ and the winds of REVOLUTION
For those who are curious as to what it looks like inside my mind—this preview to the new game Assassin’s Creed III is an accurate representation of my core beliefs.
At the end of my driveway next to my mailbox I have two poles sticking up about four feet tall prompting a couple of young people to ask me as they walked by, “what are those poles for?” I told them that those poles were pikes intended to proudly display the cut off heads of my enemies as I take their bodies into my garage and make belts from their hides. The two teenagers gave me an odd look and promptly headed down the road without looking back. In reality the poles are for displaying the battle flags that the owners of The Tampa Bay Buccaneers gave me a few years ago that I fly on game days. But since its Halloween, I thought a good story would fit the mood of the falling leaves and the cool air so I told the kids something to fill their imaginations. But to be honest, I do think such things and would behave as such if all of society crumbled and I no longer believed that The Constitution in America had any power. Such haunted house rumblings are fun in peace time, but during war, they would become standard practice, and those poles may be easily used for just such a function.
To the timid minds of America in the 21st Century, watered down with years of progressivism, let me establish that my ideas about The Revolutionary War are very dear to me. All through my life, I have flown battle flags from my hand-made forts as a youth, worn patches of American flags on my T-shirt sleeves, and I have been involved in violence in defense of the ideas I hold true, on more than one occasion. I am not a particularly sentimental man. I seldom visit the graves of deceased family members for the simple reason of keeping my mind focused on today and tomorrow and staying out of the past. But there is one monument to the past that gives me great, sentimental reverence, and stirs my emotions greatly when I see it. That monument is the Liberty Tree displayed in Walt Disney World standing proudly across from Tom Sawyer Island. The reason I love that tree is because it’s from the film that gave me my first impression of the American Revolution, the 1957 movie, Johnny Tremain. Listen carefully to this song, it is one of my favorites, and I hum it to myself often. It is the principles of that film, and that song that I think of when I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States of America. And when Walt Disney dedicated the film Johnny Tremain to the youth of America, my four-year old persona swore an oath that I would live by those ideas for my entire life, and that I would defend personal liberty at whatever cost. That cost now is simply name-calling, but if things denigrate any further, I can see a future where those poles at the end of my driveway will host my former statement instead of the later.
I love violence, I won’t misrepresent myself. I have engaged in it in years past, and I will engage in it in the future. But I have learned over the years to use my mind first to avoid the unneeded spilling of blood. Ideas are far more powerful than guns or swords. But let me just say that right now I am salivating and I mean literally drooling over the upcoming video game release of Assassins Creed III set to be released on Halloween 2012, that features a version of my old favorite movie Johnny Tremain that is much more akin to the sentiments of today.
When my wife and I were at a screening of Atlas Shrugged this past weekend, we were easily the youngest in the audience, and we are grandparents now. The youth of today has been programmed through progressive institutions to be slack-minded and physically weak by just about every sector of the global economy, except for video games. They were not at the screening of Atlas Shrugged learning about capitalism from a book written in 1957 and they have no interest in a slow-paced story from 1957 made by the long deceased Walt Disney also in 1957. To reach the youth with the important messages of today it has to be done through movies, books, and especially video games. So it is a great relief to me, that UbiSoft has designated for their newest Assassin’s Creed game a story about The American Revolution, because it will have an even more powerful effect on today’s youth, than the old movie Johnny Tremain did on me as a child.
The game will teach game players—adults alike—about the period of The American Revolution, and the politics that led to creating the freest country on earth. It takes fictional liberty by creating the Assassin character that will interact with famous revolutionary generals, like George Washington, and will paint the picture of what it was like in 1773 on through 1776 in Boston, Massachusetts where the American Revolution was born. Progressives have tried to paint those of us in the Tea Party movement with the derogatory name of “Tea Baggers” and finally there is a story that will show that the European influence that pushed the colonists in America toward more and more imperial control used much the same methods to ridicule the original Tea Partiers, of which the modern Tea Party gets their name.
If a simple story like Johnny Tremain from Walt Disney can create a resonance that gives me goose bumps to this very day whenever I hear the song, “Sons of Liberty,” and provoke me to visit the Liberty Tree every time I visit Walt Disney World like I’d visit the tomb stone of a long-lost family member, I can only imagine what effect a game like Assassin’s Creed will have on a society of youth purposely depleted by their educations to be restrained, progressive, and lack-luster, to learn suddenly that they have an obligation to fight for their independence, and to do whatever they must do to keep it.
As the teenagers walked away from my house I thought of them playing Assassin’s Creed in the weeks to come and finally putting together in their minds that the Tea Party they keep hearing about in the news, and on the tongues of their parents is from the same Tea Party that was shown in the game Assassin’s Creed, and that when the government decides to exercise an Executive Order of martial law, or utilizes the NDAA Act on the suburb streets of America that those same youth will be coming back to my house and asking me, “mister, can you teach us how to put our enemies heads on those poles at the end of your driveway?” I will respond, “Sure kids, step right up, I’ll teach you all you want to know and more,” and I’ll enjoy doing it.
This is where my gray-haired friends in the Tea Party and I differ. I know it makes them wonder about me why I don’t go to the phone bank meetings, and the various seminars about various political activities. I do keep my distance, it’s not that I’m rooting against them to succeed, but there is a part of me that hopes they fail to bring about a peaceful resolution. Because I do spend my time sharpening my swords, cleaning my guns, and staying sharp for the day when the word “RISE” will be more than a marketing campaign for a new video game. It will be the call of the land, and in that time, the plot of Assassin’s Creed will no longer be a fantasy. Because we are all “Sons of Liberty,” and that liberty cannot be maintained in the face of evil that lives and thrives through the phantom menace of collectivism.
Until that day, I will be playing Assassin’s Creed III and enjoying the fantasy of putting something other than flags on the poles at the end of my driveway.
Rich Hoffman
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October 15, 2012
Million Muppet March at the Mall: ‘Sesame Street’ and PBS demand tax money
PBS received $445 million dollars of the $3.8 trillion dollar deficit in outlays during 2012 and because there has been discussion over cutting that aspect of the budget, this has progressives up in arms, since it is their belief that by taking away that $445 million dollars it would mean the end of PBS. Michael Bellavia, 43, an animation executive from Los Angeles, and Chris Mecham, 46, a university student in Idaho, have responded to such a suggestion by separately coming up with the idea for a Million Muppet March on the mall in Washington D.C., just three days before the election to protest the cuts.
This exhibition of progressive ideology is exactly the kind of thing that has ruined America, and you know you’re in trouble when it is not possible to attack the $3.8 trillion dollars applied to the 2012 deficit by dealing with the easy stuff like Public Broadcasting. Rather than have PBS commercialize like everyone else to allow the marketplace to determine winners and losers, progressives insist with the same vigor that they advocate for public education that somehow, some way Sesame Street has a right to be on television, and that the programming done on PBS is of such importance that it be beyond competitive refute.
I personally like PBS. I occasionally watch documentaries and I do listen to the various radio stations since many of them play classical music, which is about the only kind of music I listen to on a regular basis. But the danger is that PBS has become, as it has always been intended, a mouth piece for progressive politics that directly feeds an expanding government. Taking for instance the issue of Sesame Street, which has been relatively creative in how they attempt to teach children, they have made themselves cultural mainstays among America’s youth, is not necessarily good when studied contextually against the back drop of results.
I don’t believe it is good for children to be exposed to the kind of fairness, and socialism that is displayed on Sesame Street even though the intentions are innocent. Big Bird is a social mediator in the lives of the Sesame Street neighborhood in a similar way that social parasites who push school levies and more regulation pry into the lives of their friends and neighbors in reality, and for many of these cellulite infested panicky parents of the future, they received their first impressions that such behavior was okay from Sesame Street where their busy parents plopped them down in front of the TV to watch instead of doing the parenting themselves. Oscar the Grouch is certainly a representative of the poor and downtrodden—after all he lives in a garbage can. Is it not the intention of Oscar to give young people an altruistic view of the poor so they will grow up and accept socialism as the primary driver of fairness in the economies they will contribute to? Is it not true that Bert and Ernie is a homosexual couple living together in complete neurosis and emotional dysfunction? How many young people before the age of 5 have set in their minds that they might want to be homosexual like Bert and Ernie when they grow up, instead of finding a wife or husband of the opposite sex to marry, and have children? Sesame Street is only 43 years old, so it is hardly a staple of American values, tradition and an advocate of self-reliance. It was a concept born out of the hippie era of the 1960’s and reflects many of the values of those gray-haired flower children who were bra burning scallywags in their youth.
All that is fine for First Amendment free speech, and if mothers wish their kids to see that kind of soft core progressivism, it’s certainly an option for them. The question is, if parents had an alternative, or if Sesame Street had to compete with other programs to gain hold of their share of the PBS operating budget coming from the $445 million dollars–would Sesame Street have survived for 43 years? Most likely not, because the product they are producing would have been crushed by competition, because the message they advocate would have been rejected by the public. But because PBS received tax payer money, just like the post office, just like teachers and their public sector unions, just like the deodorant saturated BMV workers, none of them care about market value because they are living in an entitled world where the money just drops out of the sky by mother government, and the content they produce reflects this anti-capitalist trend advocating socialism openly.
Isn’t there a connection between how screwed up and uneducated the youth of today are with the rise and popularity of Sesame Street? Have parents allowed Sesame Street and public education to do the job of parenting, because it was available, and surrendered their authority to the chaos of serving a career that led to splits in the family since the two spouses put their time and effort into values outside of the home? Hasn’t this left young people vulnerable to more government employees in the form of school teachers away from the home, and public employees on their televisions, because that’s what PBS workers are—they are public employees getting a check from the government.
Sesame Street has toys and a whole marketing wing designed to appeal to children, and if the money they generate is not enough to support their product, there is something wrong. I would happily see Sesame Street move from PBS over to Nickelodeon or The Learning Channel if for no other reason but to teach the filmmakers of Sesame Street that it is capitalism that rules in America, not socialism. The tax payers should not be forced to give a public television station propaganda money to work against traditional American values, and for PBS the temptation will always be to advocate for more and larger government, promoting young people to take part in government programs displaying the values established by progressive politics—because that’s where their money comes from.
Like all socialist and communist supporters, progressives when they want something protest in the same collective, squeaky wheel manner that labor unions employ to show democratic consensus. This is what Michael Bellavia, and Chris Mecham, age 46, a university student in Idaho, are doing. Consider the plight of Chris Mecham, a 46-year-old student—what the heck is he studying at 46 years old? When is that bird going to hatch and move on into the big scary world beyond Sesame Street and become productive? Unfortunately, there are a lot of grown adults like Chris Mecham who are not comfortable in the world of capitalism, since all their lives they were taught socialism was good, and they arrive at adulthood only to become professional students—afraid of the world around them. And when they can be students no longer, they cling to the teaching profession because it’s the next best thing to being able to live in the socialist imagery created by Sesame Street where everyone is singing, and playing well together in a world of bright colors and pixy dust. What they forget to notice is that the entire world is made up of puppets, just like the politicians who advocate socialism in the real world. This is what is behind the march on the mall by the advocates of PBS funding. This is also why the public money should be removed, so that the people desiring to advocate progressive policies using tax payer dollars should be eliminated from doing so. The kind of programming the money is spent on may be a drop in the bucket from a financial aspect, but the social damage done is far greater when plotted against the direction society has taken since Sesame Street first aired over 43 years ago. As innocent as it might appear, it would seem that Sesame Street planted too many seeds of socialism in the young fertile minds of children that stays with them well into adulthood only to be rejected when that same mind reaches their middle years and upon the first signs of gray in their hair begin the long process of becoming more conservative as maturity has finally instructed them with experience, the error of their progressive thinking—and the billions of dollars of potential economic damage they have instigated by supporting indirectly socialism which weakens American society through PBS funding.
Rich Hoffman
If you like my work at this site then check out my books shown below, along with quotes, interviews, reviews, and ways to find them. Clicking the pictures below are your doors to even more adventure:
