The Bullies of Public Education: A cry out for help while few listen
When it is wondered what I have against public education and government in general, I can understand that unless people have seen what I have up close and personal that they may not have context to relate with. Few people look too deeply at any problem, and it requires a cavernous look to understand why public education and their employees are bad for society at large–why they are detrimental to the human condition. Most people are happy to accept out of convenience the opposite–that public education is the savor of society’s children and their parents because government schools offer a glorified babysitting service that has a subtle social engineering objective driven by progressive politics. My problem with public education and the government, of which they are an important part, is that they are filled with participants who are bullies seeking to impose evil with a thug-like imposition of submission against individuals to a collective sum.
Since I stepped into the public education debate in the spring and fall of 2010 with a logical argument against excessive spending I have had many bullies attempt to conform me into some type of collective submission. Those bullies have learned, what over 40 years of a blood soaked past filled with similar bullies have learned about me—that it only gets them more name-calling and violence, not less. In my entire 45 years on this earth I have never backed down from a bully no matter how big or powerful they thought themselves to be and I won’t start now. And there have been a lot of them. Anyone who does some checking into my past has come to that conclusion on their own by now. I never look for these fights, but they happen because I refuse to be moved by any collective force whether it is the federal government, or an entire city’s police force who is taking money off the top of drug sales using kids to sell marijuana to high schools. For me the individual will of every American citizen is the most sacred element of existence and I do not like to see individuals twisted and manipulated into the will of any collective organization no matter what it is. This is why I hate governments, I hate mobsters, I don’t like authority when it seeks to break the back of individuals for some “greater good,” and this is what I have discovered public education to be completely about—breaking down the individual will in children and forcing their parents to pay for it with public extortion.
I would not care so much about the activity of public education evils if I were not “forced” to pay for it, but because of the collective extortion practice called “taxation” I have no choice, so my only recourse is to confront the bullies—which I have done. However, when you get involved and start fighting these bullies, and others see you doing it, you learn about all the individual cases of institutional bullying that are going on around you. I have met since 2010 many victims of public education bullying where the institutions and its servants impose themselves upon the free-will of many individuals. Often I have taken up the banner and offered to fight on behalf of those individuals making some of the fights very public which of course attracts more people from all over Ohio who send me their stories and want help fighting their individual circumstances. The posting I provided yesterday is one of those stories. A family was a victim of institutional manipulation and cover-ups designed to protect the careers of the participants at the expense of a little girl whom I became quite found of in my dealings with the family. The family eventually left the state to start a new life elsewhere, and I can’t blame them. I helped them the best I could, but the institutional imposition of public education is an ominous beast that doesn’t give a damn about the little girl or the family—it only wants to fill its belly with the lives of individuals.
I continue to get these pleas for help, and they have only increased over the years. I would hope that they would trend down, not up, but in the case of a letter I received the other day shown below, they are getting worse. When I read this letter I immediately felt for this family. I hate to hear that a family is about to lose their home, that their children won’t have a place to lay their head at night and study in comfort. I hate to hear that the Social Security tax increases that went into effect at the start of 2013 are putting a family like the one below under financially—that they are only able to buy groceries by charging them on their credit card. I hate to hear that they are trying to fight their school levy just so they can keep their house because an extra $20 a week will crush them, because they’ve already given up their cable TV, and their home phone as needless expenses. And I hate that the only place a family like the one shown below feels they can turn to is my email box. Read the letter for yourself. They are from a school district in central Ohio. I removed their name and district for their own protection.
From: ********** **************
Date: Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 9:38 PM
Subject: Re: School levy
To: Rich Hoffman
Hi Mr, Hoffman, I would really love for you to contact me. I am currently fighting my school against our levy; I am currently tied up in a law suit because I made a political website for voting no on this levy in November. I am speaking for all the poor families that cannot afford anymore money being taken from us. Our so-called American dream is becoming a nightmare, my family can no longer afford our home due to the over spending and taxing of others on my husband’s paycheck and the schools using our home as their personal ATM. I feel like I am fighting a losing battle, the school board wont listen to anything my family has to say. Can you please contact me with some advice because the school is putting up the next levy for May voting. My family needs your help!!! I am in the ****** school district, I am being sued by the campaign manager for the schools vote yes party, I was banned along with two other woman for asking questions, nothing out of line just general questions, so I made a Vote No Facebook page, the law suit is not my concern so much as I do have an amazing attorney, but more my concern is with them trying to pull this levy off again after it was voted down in November by an 11% margin. I am treated poorly by the board anytime I ask questions when the only thing I am trying to do is keep the quality of life at home for families like mine, you see we no longer even have the money to go to see a simple movie with our children, we have already eliminated cable TV, home phone service, the only thing we still have is the internet, it is required as I do have one home schooled child due to the levy in November, I felt scared and did not want my son to be under the conditions at school so I pulled him out. I don’t feel like I can defeat these people, they do not care about families like mine. I know that the first week of 2013 our first paycheck was again short another $63.00 when we currently did not have extra money and the school just wont quit they say they are short revenue, but my house hold is also short revenue so how do they expect to get blood from a turnip, we are wiped out financially and our home is already on the chopping block, if it does not sell by April we may be forced to give it back to the bank. I am so frustrated as a parent I feel so sorry for my children and others children in our situation, while the school admin drives around in their fancy cars and living it up in those fancy houses when so many in our district are losing their homes. I know all of 2012 we had to use credit cards to buy groceries with to feed the kids. Something’s gotta’ give! Please help the families in this district!
When people wonder why I get so angry at the arrogance that is seen in public education it is because I’ve seen one too many letters like the one above. I am tired of a media that refuses to look at what high taxes do to families like the one who wrote me the letter. I am tired of putting school employees who work for progressive labor unions on a pedestal and listening to newspapers and television broadcasts advocate on their behalf when the taxes raised for these public schools are destroying the lives of the tax base and nobody does the hard reporting, because nobody wants to face down the bullies in public education. These bullies think the court system is in their back pocket and nobody will have the guts to call them out into the light. When I came unglued last year in the Cincinnati Enquirer it was because the bullies were making their move at a cost to many families like the one shown above. The levy supporters don’t give one bit of a damn if 100 families lose their homes to the tax increases, so long as they get their way. In my life it was people like Laura Sanders at Lakota who sent me letters advocating for higher taxes that infuriated me with their unfathomable selfishness and narrow-minded perspective. CLICK HERE FOR A REVIEW. I can pick on Laura because she had the nerve to send me personal emails attempting to belittle the value of my own home compared to her own as if to apply pressure on me into believing my tax contribution was less than hers. She also gave an interview in the Cincinnati Enquirer attempting to smear my name because I stood between her and a YES vote for a tax increase by playing the “women hater card” that worked so well against Mitt Romney—only I’m not Mitt Romney. Her position was that she was willing to pay more taxes, so why wasn’t I? It’s the same progressive argument that Barack Obama made against the rich, “if a wealthy guy like me is willing to pay more taxes, then why aren’t you?” That is how these people work, and this is why parents are afraid of the public castigation from people like Laura at church on Sunday finding themselves charging their food for their families on a credit card so that they aren’t called “cheap” by the collective masses who advocate more money thrown into the black hole of public education.
With every letter I get like the one above I increasingly hate the system that advocates more and more of that behavior. I used to be able to maintain enough distance to coolly lay out the argument of why public education has a spending problem, but when they responded to my suggestions with thuggish resistance—well, it only pissed me off. Once it was realized that logic was not welcome in the public education debate, and that the institutional commitment toward collectivism sought to stamp out the lives of couples like the one above, that was the end for me.
I am not impressed with Governor Kasich’s new public education funding model. I see that he has given in to the bullies of Columbus and my respect for him is much less than it was. I commend him for trying to do something, and I think he thinks he’s being clever about his education reforms. But in the end, he will lose because he is afraid to punch those bullies square in the mouth like they deserve. Bullies are bullies when they attempt to impose upon individuals a collective goal, and I have absolutely no tolerance for it—at all. I never have, and I never will—the more I see of it, the worse it gets. With that said if you are a member of the media reading this and you side against the kind of people who sent me the letter above by giving a free media pass to the thugs who cause the trouble, you are as bad as the bullies—because you participate in the destruction of families everywhere one dollar at a time till they are going bankrupt because of a $63 dollar tax increase out of their personal income in 2013. Nobody is looking out for them, and that is truly a sad, and a terrible story in modern America.
I’m sure that people who support school levies from the teachers and administrators to the PTA moms that I have had so much fun with don’t know about families like the one above. They don’t want to know, until tragedy strikes their families with a major lay-off, or another form of income loss. Instead of trying to act as individuals they hedge their bets by befriending the bosses of the collective—who fuel their lives off tax dollars funneled by government. The real motive of collectivism is to hedge against the danger of being an individual, so they have no care for those who have decided to live on their own merit—who fall on hard times. Secretly, they desire to see families like this crushed leaving them no place to turn but a stranger who has a tendency to stand up to bullies hoping that they can do something on their behalf. The collective seeks to make an example of individuals who try to go it alone—like the family above has. To the collective, resistance is futile, and they love to see families suffer who are not part of their public education clique.
I have been shocked as my daughter and her husband have been house hunting to learn how many $170K to $250K homes are empty of their former residents. 10 years ago so many homes in foreclosure were a rare sight that had behind them a social stigma that was negative. It absolutely breaks my heart to walk through these homes and see that the residents left in haste with televisions, refrigerators and toys left behind. In some cases pictures are still on the walls, and these are not isolated homes. Most of the homes are in this condition and it is a sign of bad times that aren’t just coming—but already here. Those homes are proof that there are many who are in the exact same situation as the couple above. The only difference is that the woman who wrote me had the courage to face public scrutiny by admitting that her family is struggling while the others were reluctant to admit such things publicly. Most of them probably kept their financial situation a secret till the very end, till they had to leave their home so fast that they couldn’t even take their pictures down off the walls. For everyone who participates in such an erosion of freedom, they are bullies who deserve their asses kicked, and not tomorrow, but today! I despise such people. The root of my anger is in the knowledge that they are willing to see individual lives crushed so long as the collective good can be maintained and I find that absolutely evil. So I do not care what those on the “other” side think of me. I do not care if they want an interview from me, or if they even want to be cordial with me. I only want to see collectivism crushed under the boot of individualism and the first step in that is to stand up to the bullies of collectivism in glorious fashion—something I’m prepared to do and have spent a lifetime nurturing. For those who hope that I will run out of gas—sorry to say—my engine just warmed up. The fuel I run on is letters like the one above. Families like that deserve justice, and if there is any good in the world, they will eventually have it.
Rich Hoffman
“If they attack first………..blast em’!”
