Month: December 2010

Executive Order 10988: The Start of Public Sector Unions

Defeating the Lakota Levy in November of 2010 was not considered a victory, as many would assume. 

We all know what the real trouble is; it’s the wage levels of the teachers that are forcing a re-evaluation of tax allocation.   Prior to the last election, many people in our community didn’t know how much teachers actually made.  Teachers aren’t alone; all public sector employees are experiencing this issue, where the tax payers are paying the servants of the community more than they make.  The tax payers just cannot support the expectations set by public sector unions.  The failure of 1962 is now completely obvious and must be reversed before it bankrupts our entire government.  You see, government unions did not always exist.  In fact, it was FDR that warned us about them in 1937.

 “Meticulous attention,” Roosevelt insisted, “should be paid to the special relations and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government….The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.“

So, how did government unions come to be?

At the federal level, government unions came to being as a result of President Kennedy’s 1962 Executive Order 10988. Unions in the federal government were created not by law but by Executive Order.

So now in 2011 we have arrived at a place where the cost of those unions followed by a recession where funds are short in the private sector, have finally come to a point nobody can afford. 

State funding will be drastically decreased, so Lakota will find itself even more strapped for cash.  The union step increases are set to devastate our community budget.  So the fight is far from over.

The campaign never really stopped.  The LEA should have done the right thing and renegotiated their contract to save the community money.  But they didn’t, so now things will get rough.  To think in terms of wins and losses is to miss the real problem.  The fight will continue until Lakota can live within its supplied budget without breaking the financial back of the community. 

So for the sake of information, I include below Executive Order 10988 for analysts of that devastating decision that has thrust our nation into its current peril. 

   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

EMPLOYEE-MANAGEMENT COOPERATION IN THE FEDERAL SERVICE

WHEREAS participation of employees in the formulation and implementation of personnel policies affecting them contributes to effective conduct of public business; and

WHEREAS the efficient administration of the Government and the well-being of employees require that orderly and constructive relationships be maintained between employee organizations and management officials; and

WHEREAS subject to law and the paramount requirements of the public service, employee-management relations within the Federal service should be improved by providing employees an opportunity for greater participation in the formulation and implementation of policies and procedures affecting the conditions of their employment; and

WHEREAS effective employee-management cooperation in the public service requires a clear statement of the respective rights and obligations of employee organizations and agency management:

NOW, THEREFORE, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution of the IUnited States, by section 1753 of the Revised Statutes (5 U.S.C. 631), and as President of the United States, I hereby direct that the following policies shall govern officers and agencies of the executive branch of the Government in all dealings with Federal employees and organizations representing such employees.

SECTION 1. (a) Employees of the Federal Government shall have, and shall be protected in the exercise of, the right, freely and without feel of penalty or reprisal, to form, join and assist any employee organization or to refrain from any such activity. Except as hereinafter expressly provided, the freedom of such employees to assist any employee organization shall be recognized as extending to participation in the management of the organization and acting for the organization in the capacity of an organization representative, including presentation of its views to officials of the executive branch, the Congress or other appropriate authority. The head of each executive department and agency (hereinafter referred to as “agency”) shall take such action, consistent with law, as may be required in order to assist that employees in the agency are apprised of the rights described in this section, and that no interference, restraint, coercion or discrimination is practiced within such agency to encourage or discourage membership in any employee organization.

(b) The rights described in this section do not extend to participation in the management of an employee organization, or acting as a representative of any such organization, where such participation or activity would result in a conflict of interest or otherwise be incompatible with law or with the official duties of an employee.

SEC. 2. When used in this order, the term “employee organization” means any lawful association, labor organization, federation, council, or brotherhood having as a primary purpose the improvement of working conditions among Federal employees or any craft, trade or industrial union whose membership includes both Federal employees and employees of private organizations; but such term shall not include any organization (1) which asserts the right to strike against the Government of the United States or any agency thereof, or to assist or participate in any such strike, or which imposes a duty or obligation to conduct, assist or participate in any such strike, or (2) which advocates the overthrow of the constitutional form of Government in the United States, or (3) which discriminates with regard to the terms or conditions of membership because of race, color, creed or national origin.

SEC. 3. (a) Agencies shall accord informal, formal or exclusive recognition to employee organizations which request such recognition in conformity with the requirements specified in sections 4, 5 and 6 of this order, except that no recognition shall be accorded to any employee organization which the head of the agency considers to be so subject to corrupt influences or influences opposed to basic democratic principles that recognition would be inconsistent with the objectives of this order.

(b) Recognition of an employee organization will continue so long as such organization satisfies the criteria of this order applicable to such recognition; but nothing in this section shall require any agency to determine whether an organization should become or continue to be recognized as exclusive representative of the employees in any unit within 12 months after a prior determination of exclusive status with respect to such unit has been made pursuant to the provisions of this order.

(c) Recognition, in whatever form accorded, shall not—

(1) preclude any employee, regardless of employee organization membership, from bringing matters of personal concern to the attention of appropriate officials in accordance with applicable law rule, regulation, or established agency policy, or from choosing his own representative in a grievance or appellate action; or

(2) preclude or restrict consultations and dealings between an agency and any veterans organization with respect to matters of particular interest to employees with veterans preference; or

(3) preclude an agency from consulting or dealing with any religious, social, fraternal or other lawful association, not qualified as an employee organization, with respect to matters or policies which involve individual members of the association or are of particular applicability to it or its members, when such consultations or dealings are duly limited so as not to assume the character of formal consultation on matters of general employee-management policy or to extend to areas where recognition of the interests of one employee group may result in discrimination against or injury to the interests of other employees.

SEC. 4. (a) An agency shall accord an employee organization, which does not qualify for exclusive or formal recognition, informal recognition as representative of its member employees without regard to whether any other employee organization has been accorded formal or exclusive recognition as representative of some or all employees in any unit.

(b) When an employee organization has been informally recognized, it shall, to the extent consistent with the efficient and orderly conduct of the public business, be permitted to present to appropriate officials its views on matters of concern to its members. The agency need not, however, consult with an employee organization so recognized in the formulation of personnel or other policies with respect to such matters.

SEC. 5. (a) An agency shall accord an employee organization formal recognition as the representative of its members in a unit as defined by the agency when (1) no other employee organization is qualified for exclusive recognition as representative of employees in the unit, (2) it is determined by the agency that the employee organization has a substantial and stable membership of no less than 10 per cent of the employees in the unit, and (3) the employee organization has submitted to the agency a roster of its officers and representatives, a copy of its constitution and by-laws, and a statement of objectives. When, in the opinion of the head of an agency, an employee organization has a sufficient number of local organizations or a sufficient total membership within such agency, such organization may be accorded formal recognition at the national level, but such recognition shall not preclude the agency from dealing at the national level with any other employee organization on matters affecting its members.

(b) When an employee organization has been formally recognized, the agency, through appropriate officials, shall consult with such organization from time to time in the formulation and implementation of personnel policies and practices, and matters affecting working conditions that are of concern to its members. Any such organization shall be entitled from time to time to raise such matters for discussion with appropriate officials and at all times to present its views thereon in writing. In no case, however, shall an agency be required to consult with an employee organization which has been formally recognized with respect to any matter which, if the employee organization were one entitled to exclusive recognition, would not be included within the obligation to meet and confer, as described in section 6 (b) of this order.

SEC. 6. (a) An agency shall recognize an employee organization as the exclusive representative of the employees, in an appropriate unit when such organization is eligible for formal recognition pursuant to section 5 of this order, and has been designated or selected by a majority of the employees of such unit as the representative of such employees in such unit. Units may be established on any plant or installation, craft, functional or other basis which will ensure a clear and identifiable community of interest among the employees concerned, but no unit shall be established solely on the basis of the extent to which employees in the proposed unit have organized. Except where otherwise required by established practice, prior agreement, or special circumstances, no unit shall be established for purposes of exclusive recognition which includes (1) any managerial executive, (2) any employee engaged in Federal personnel work in other than a purely clerical capacity, (3) both supervisors who officially evaluate the performance of employees and the employees whom they supervise, or (4) both professional employees and nonprofessional employees unless a majority of such professional employees vote for inclusion in such unit.

(b) When an employee organization has been recognized as the exclusive representative of employees of an appropriate unit it shall be entitled to act for and to negotiate agreements covering all employees in the unit and shall be responsible for representing the interests of all such employees without discrimination and without regard to employee organization membership. Such employee organization shall be given the opportunity to be represented at discussions between management and employees or employee representatives concerning grievances, personnel policies and practices, or other matters affecting general working conditions of employees in the unit. The agency and such employee organization, through appropriate officials and representatives, shall meet at reasonable times and confer with respect to personnel policy and practices and matters affecting working conditions, so far as may be appropriate subject to law and policy requirements. This extends to the negotiation of an agreement, or any question arising thereunder, the determination of appropriate techniques, consistent with the terms and purposes of this order, to assist in such negotiation, and the execution of a written memorandum of agreement or understanding incorporating any agreement reached by the parties. In exercising authority to make rules and regulations relating to personnel policies and practices and working conditions, agencies shall have due regard for the obligation imposed by this section, but such obligation shall not be construed to extend to such areas of discretion and policy as the mission of an agency, its budget, its organization and the assignment of its personnel, or the technology of performing its work.

SEC. 7. Any basic or initial agreement entered into with an employee organization as the exclusive representative of employees in a unit must be approved by the head of the agency or an official designated by him. All agreements with such employee or organizations shall also be subject to the following requirements, which shall be expressly stated in the initial or basic agreement and shall be applicable to all supplemental, implementing, subsidiary or informal agreements between the agency and the organization:

(1) In the administration of all matters covered by the agreement officials and employees are governed by the provisions of any existing or future laws and regulations, including policies set forth in the Federal Personnel Manual and agency regulations, which may be applicable, and the agreement shall at all times be applied subject to such laws, regulations and policies;

(2) Management officials of the agency retain the right, in accordance with applicable laws and regulations, (a) to direct employees of the agency, (b) to hire, promote, transfer, assign, and retain employees in positions within the agency, and to suspend, demote, discharge, or take other disciplinary action against employees, (c) to relieve employees from duties because of lack of work or for other legitimate reasons, (d) to maintain the efficiency of the Government operations entrusted to them, (e) to determine the methods, means and personnel by which such operations are to be conducted; and (f) to take whatever actions may be necessary to carry out the mission of the agency in situations of emergency.

SEC. 8. (a) Agreements entered into or negotiated in accordance with this order with an employee organization which is the exclusive representative of employees in an appropriate unit may contain provisions, applicable only to employees in the unit, concerning procedures for consideration of grievances. Such procedures (1) shall conform to standards issued by the Civil Service Commission, and (2) may not in any manner diminish or impair any rights which would otherwise be available to any employee in the absence of an agreement providing for such procedures.

(b) Procedures established by an agreement which are otherwise in conformity with this section may include provisions for the arbitration of grievances. Such arbitration ( 1 ) shall be advisory in nature with any decisions or recommendations subject to the approval of the agency head; (2) shall extend only to the interpretation or application of agreements or agency policy and not to changes in or proposed changes in agreements or agency policy; and (3) shall be invoked only with the approval of the individual employee or employees concerned.

SEC. 9. Solicitation of memberships, dues, or other internal employee organization business shall be conducted during the non-duty hours of the employees concerned. Officially requested or approved consultations and meetings between management officials and representatives of recognized employee organizations shall, whenever practicable, be conducted on official time, but any agency may require that negotiations with an employee organization which has been accorded exclusive recognition be conducted during the non-duty hours of the employee organization representatives involved in such negotiations.

SEC. 10. No later than July 1, 1962, the head of each agency shall issue appropriate policies, rules and regulations for the implementation of this order, including: A clear statement of the rights of its employees under the order, policies and procedures with respect to recognition of employee organizations; procedures for determining appropriate employee units; policies and practices regarding consultation with representatives of employee organizations, other organizations and individual employees; and policies with respect to the use of agency facilities by employee organizations. Insofar as may be practicable and appropriate, agencies shall consult with representatives of employee organizations in the formulation of these policies, rules and regulations.

SEC. 11. Each agency shall be responsible for determining in accordance with this order whether a unit is appropriate for purposes of exclusive recognition and, by an election or other appropriate means whether an employee organization represents a majority of the employees in such a unit so as to be entitled to such recognition. Upon the request of any agency, or of any employee organization which is seeking exclusive recognition and which qualifies for or has been accorded formal recognition, the Secretary of Labor, subject to such necessary rules as he may prescribe, shall nominate from the National Panel of Arbitrators maintained by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service one or more qualified arbitrators who will be available for employment by the agency concerned for either or both of the following purposes, as may be required: (1) to investigate the facts and issue an adsvisory decision as to the appropriateness of a unit for purposes of exclusive recognition and as to related issues submitted for consideration; (2) to conduct or supervise an election or otherwise determine by such means as may be appropriate, and on an advisory basis, whether an employee organization represents the majority of the employees in a unit. Consonant with law, the Secretary of Labor shall render such assistance as may be appropriate in connection with advisory decisions or determinations under this section, but the necessary costs of such assistance shall be paid by the agency to which it relates. In the event questions as to the appropriateness of a unit or the majority status of an employee organization shall arise in the Department of Labor, the duties described in this section which would otherwise be the responsibility of the Secretary of Labor shall be performed by the Civil Service Commission.

SEC. 12. The Civil Service Commission shall establish and maintain a program to assist in carrying out the objectives of this order. The Commission shall develop a program for the guidance of agencies in employee-management relations in the Federal service; provide technical advice to the agencies on employee-management programs; assist in the development of programs for training agency personnel in the principles and procedures of consultation, negotiation and the settlement of disputes in the Federal service, and for the training of management officials in the discharge of their employee-management relations responsibilities in the public interest; provide for continuous study and review of the Federal employee-management relations program and, from time to time, make recommendations to the President for its improvement.

SEC. 13. (a) The Civil Service Commission and the Department of Labor shall jointly prepare (1) proposed standards of conduct for employee organizations and (2) a proposed code of fair labor practices in employee-management relations in the Federal service appropriate to assist in securing the uniform and effective implementation of the policies, rights and responsibilities described in this order.

(b) There is hereby established the President’s Temporary Committee on the Implementation of the Federal Employee-Management Relations Program. The Committee shall consist of the Secretary of Labor, who shall be chairman of the Committee, the Secretary of Defense, the Postmaster General, and the Chairman of the Civil Service Commission. In addition to such other matters relating to the implementation of this order as may be referred to it by the President, the Committee shall advise the President with respect to any problems arising out of completion of agreements pursuant to sections 6 and 7, and shall receive the proposed standards of conduct for employee organizations and proposed code of fair labor practices in the Federal service, as described in this section, and report thereon to the President with such recommendations or amendments as it may deem appropriate. Consonant with law, the departments and agencies represented on the Committee shall, as may be necessary for the effectuation of this section, furnish assistance to the Committee in accordance with section 214 of the Act of May 3, 1945, 59 Stat. 134 (31 U.S.C. 691). Unless otherwise directed by the President, the Committee shall cease to exist 30 days after the date on which it submits its report to the President pursuant to this section.

SEC. 14. The head of each agency, in accordance with the provisions of this order and regulations prescribed by the Civil Service Commission, shall extend to all employees in the competitive civil service rights identical in adverse action cases to those provided preference eligibles under section 14 of the Veterans’ Preference Act of 1944, as amended. Each employee in the competitive service shall have the right to appeal to the Civil Service Commission from an adverse decision of the administrative officer so acting, such appeal to be processed in an identical manner to that provided for appeals under section 14 of the Veterans’ Preference Act. Any recommendation by the Civil Service Commission submitted to the head of an agency on the basis of an appeal by an employee in the competitive service shall be complied with by the head of the agency. This section shall become effective as to all adverse actions commenced by issuance of a notification of proposed action on or after July 1, 1962.

SEC. 15. Nothing in this order shall be construed to annul or modify, or to preclude the renewal or continuation of, any lawful agreement heretofore entered into between any agency and any representative of its employees. Nor shall this order preclude any agency from continuing to consult or deal with any representative of its employees or other organization prior to the time that the status and representation rights of such representative or organization are determined in conformity with this order.

SEC. 16. This order (except section 14) shall not apply to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, or any other agency, or to any office, bureau or entity within an agency, primarily performing intelligence, investigative, or security functions if the head of the agency determines that the provisions of this order cannot be applied in a manner consistent with national security requirements and considerations. When he deems it necessary in the national interest, and subject to such conditions as he may prescribe, the head of any agency may suspend any provision of this order (except section 14) with respect to any agency installation or activity which is located outside of the United States.

Approved—January 17th, 1962.

JOHN F. KENNEDY
THE WHITE HOUSE,
January 17, 1962

Rich Hoffman

http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Dystopia of Public Union attachment to our Government.

I have spoken about groups like Progress Ohio that are progressive oriented groups in states built on advancing progressive ideas. Until 2010 I didn’t even know there were groups dedicated to such a cause. I was still wondering if the word “progressive” was something Glenn Beck made up to support some conspiracy. As it turned out, Beck probably didn’t say enough.

There has also been a lot of discussion about state budget shortfalls and how on earth our local, state and federal government is going to pay for the massive revenue problems that are occurring. Well, these budget problems are caused by public sector unions that have managed to negotiate an average salary of approximately $79,000 per year per employee. That is more than the average American tax payer makes by over $20K per year. The formula is all messed up; where the public servant makes more than the public it serves. And as government has grown larger and employed more and more people, adding more employees to that fantastically high pay scale and the wages in the private sector have been frozen to deal with the recession.

Now listen below to the suggestion from Progress Illinois of how to cover the budget problems. (LAUGH OUT LOUD)

Can you believe that? That’s how out of touch progressives are. That is their solution to the irresponsible spending problem we’ve allowed in government.

The high wages promised government employees create a government that is revenue hungry.

And this video is hilarious. Didn’t these people go to school? Why do they think the steel mills went overseas? Unions drove the costs too high, so those jobs left the country.


Now they have done the same cost increase of labor as they did in the American Car companies and steel industries. But now those costs are in government and government can’t pick up and move to another country. Government exists to serve the people, so the only thing to do is to cut the jobs or reduce dramatically the salary of those employees in order to justify their existence. The videos below are by Armand Thiebolt of the Cato Institute. This isn’t Fox News, but the Cato Institute. It’s an attempt to present the problem cleanly.


Now this is Fox Business, a piece done by Jon Stossel, but I think it explains things very clear.


This is serious business!

What needs to happen is public sector unions should return back to the legal status prior to the Kennedy Administration. That needs to happen in 2011 while a conservative congress can address the issue. Only by dealing with the issue directly can we hope to avert catastrophic budget failures.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Desperate Cries Over Budget Collapse: A preview of what’s to come.

Coming to a budget meeting near you starting in 2011, complete chaos!

It was sadly humorous to listen to the Cincinnati City Council meeting in their vain attempts to arrive at a budget before the New Year. Cincinnati is running serious deficits and in spite of their desire to build a street car, because there isn’t enough money to pay for the current staff of police and fire department personnel. Tax increases to pay for extremely inflated public sector wages is not an option. That has been the type of band-aid fix that has always bailed out these types of problems in the past. But it is not going to fix the problem going forward.

Those two public sectors police and fire departments are essentially in the same boat as teachers. Too much money is tied up in personnel at too high of a cost per employee. And all across the nation public sector employees that are making over $70,000 a year on average are strangling the budgets of states to the point of bankruptcy.
The audio of this clip is particularly revealing about the nature of everyone involved.


The unions are refusing to see that they need to rethink their contracts. In the audio clip, the head of the police union is reacting violently to the facts presented by council and how much of the budget is taken up by her union. Just like teachers, they are all well-intentioned people who have become accustomed to a certain level of income. And the city council is ill-equipped to make the hard decisions needed. Just like school boards, and township trustees these local level political entities are not able to handle complicated problems. Public sector unions have had their way with these naive political bodies for such a long time that the budgets have bulged to these critical levels.

In 2011 I see that teachers are going to deal with this reality as well. Striking won’t help because there are too many job shortages, so teaching vacancies could quickly be filled with teachers that make far less than tenured teachers do. But it will be painful. During the Lakota Levy of 2010, a slight reduction in state funding caused a fiscal crisis at Lakota, because the step increase schedule was plotting the Lakota Budget on a perilous collision course. In 2011, that same step increase schedule is in place, but under the Kasich administration, public education funding may decrease another 15 to 20%. And local communities will not cover that large discrepancy with tax levies, because it doesn’t fix the problem and is a completely unreasonable cost to communities. It only buys a little more time for the tenured teachers to hopefully get to their own retirements while their pensions and wage rates are still intact. That is the desperation you hear from the head of the Police Union, it’s the realization that life as they have always believed it, is coming to an end. And that desperation is only a preview of the neurotic fits that public education employees will soon reveal.

It’s not that I don’t have sympathy. But remember that public employees chose their professions, and the time that’s coming will be bad for all people who work in public sector work. However, those of us that have stayed in the private sector, which pays less because competition sets the costs, will find that these desperate cries won’t affect us. The cries will come from those employees wanting to be paid from our tax money. And the noise will be intense, but it’s not members of government employment that support our society. It is the tax payer that does. So don’t let that noise confuse the situation. The pain is simply a result of necessity. Our nation needs a smaller, less intrusive government so our economy can expand. Once the smoke clears, it will be a stronger state, and a more resolute nation.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

The Delphi Technique: How it works

Have you ever been to a public meeting, like a school board meeting, or a city council meeting, or a trustee public hearing on a zoning change, only to find out that the decisions had been made before the meeting ever began? And on your way home from those meetings where you had stood up and voiced your opinion, but the group preceded anyway in spite of your protests and asked yourself why you even bothered. It’s because of The Delphi Technique or some variation of it which is designed to build group consensus for a desired idea while creating the illusion of community participation. The Delphi Technique is something that everyone needs to understand. Since intellectuals began to implement these types of manipulative studies, which require specialized training to use and understand, techniques like the Delphi have subverted our election process in a subtle way nationally by subverting common sense logic in favor of a socialist oriented group conscious founded on illusion, because the end results are most of the time pre-determined.

So enjoy the information below and use it in your communities to begin to take back your local government. Only when we can diffuse the effects of The Delphi Technique can we return the actions of government to the people it is supposed to serve.

Source article for below information: http://www.eagleforum.org/educate/1998/nov98/focus.html

The following information is written by Lynn Stuter.  Her home web site is linked at the end of this portion.   The photographs come from the PDF page also listed at the end of this article. 

Using the Delphi Technique to Achieve Consensus
How it is leading us away from representative government to an illusion of citizen participation

The Delphi Technique and consensus building are both founded in the same principle – the Hegelian dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, with synthesis becoming the new thesis. The goal is a continual evolution to “oneness of mind” (consensus means solidarity of belief) -the collective mind, the wholistic society, the wholistic earth, etc. In thesis and antithesis, opinions or views are presented on a subject to establish views and opposing views. In synthesis, opposites are brought together to form the new thesis. All participants in the process are then to accept ownership of the new thesis and support it, changing their views to align with the new thesis. Through a continual process of evolution, “oneness of mind” will supposedly occur.

In group settings, the Delphi Technique is an unethical method of achieving consensus on controversial topics. It requires well-trained professionals, known as “facilitators” or “change agents,” who deliberately escalate tension among group members, pitting one faction against another to make a preordained viewpoint appear “sensible,” while making opposing views appear ridiculous.

In her book Educating for the New World Order, author and educator Beverly Eakman makes numerous references to the need of those in power to preserve the illusion that there is “community participation in decision-making processes, while in fact lay citizens are being squeezed out.”

The setting or type of group is immaterial for the success of the technique. The point is that, when people are in groups that tend to share a particular knowledge base, they display certain identifiable characteristics, known as group dynamics, which allows the facilitator to apply the basic strategy.

The facilitators or change agents encourage each person in a group to express concerns about the programs, projects, or policies in question. They listen attentively, elicit input from group members, form “task forces,” urge participants to make lists, and in going through these motions, learn about each member of a group. They are trained to identify the “leaders,” the “loud mouths,” the “weak or non-committal members,” and those who are apt to change sides frequently during an argument.

Suddenly, the amiable facilitators become professional agitators and “devil’s advocates.” Using the “divide and conquer” principle, they manipulate one opinion against another, making those who are out of step appear “ridiculous, unknowledgeable, inarticulate, or dogmatic.” They attempt to anger certain participants, thereby accelerating tensions. The facilitators are well trained in psychological manipulation. They are able to predict the reactions of each member in a group. Individuals in opposition to the desired policy or program will be shut out.

The Delphi Technique works. It is very effective with parents, teachers, school children, and community groups. The “targets” rarely, if ever, realize that they are being manipulated. If they do suspect what is happening, they do not know how to end the process. The facilitator seeks to polarize the group in order to become an accepted member of the group and of the process. The desired idea is then placed on the table and individual opinions are sought during discussion. Soon, associates from the divided group begin to adopt the idea as if it were their own, and they pressure the entire group to accept their proposition.

How the Delphi Technique Works

Consistent use of this technique to control public participation in our political system is causing alarm among people who cherish the form of government established by our Founding Fathers. Efforts in education and other areas have brought the emerging picture into focus.

In the not-too-distant past, the city of Spokane, in Washington state, hired a consultant to the tune of $47,000 to facilitate the direction of city government. This development brought a hue and cry from the local population. The ensuing course of action holds an eerie similarity to what is happening in education reform. A newspaper editorial described how groups of disenfranchised citizens were brought together to “discuss” what they felt needed to be changed at the local government level. A compilation of the outcomes of those “discussions” influenced the writing of the city/county charter.

That sounds innocuous. But what actually happened in Spokane is happening in communities and school districts all across the country. Let’s review the process that occurs in these meetings.

First, a facilitator is hired. While his job is supposedly neutral and non-judgmental, the opposite is actually true. The facilitator is there to direct the meeting to a preset conclusion.

The facilitator begins by working the crowd to establish a good-guy-bad-guy scenario. Anyone disagreeing with the facilitator must be made to appear as the bad guy, with the facilitator appearing as the good guy. To accomplish this, the facilitator seeks out those who disagree and makes them look foolish, inept, or aggressive, which sends a clear message to the rest of the audience that, if they don’t want the same treatment, they must keep quiet. When the opposition has been identified and alienated, the facilitator becomes the good guy – a friend – and the agenda and direction of the meeting are established without the audience ever realizing what has happened.

Next, the attendees are broken up into smaller groups of seven or eight people. Each group has its own facilitator. The group facilitators steer participants to discuss preset issues, employing the same tactics as the lead facilitator.

Participants are encouraged to put their ideas and disagreements on paper, with the results to be compiled later. Who does the compiling? If you ask participants, you typically hear: “Those running the meeting compiled the results.” Oh-h! The next question is: “How do you know that what you wrote on your sheet of paper was incorporated into the final outcome?” The typical answer is: “Well, I’ve wondered about that, because what I wrote doesn’t seem to be reflected. I guess my views were in the minority.”

That is the crux of the situation. If 50 people write down their ideas individually, to be compiled later into a final outcome, no one knows what anyone else has written. That the final outcome of such a meeting reflects anyone’s input at all is highly questionable, and the same holds true when the facilitator records the group’s comments on paper. But participants in these types of meetings usually don’t question the process.

Why hold such meetings at all if the outcomes are already established? The answer is because it is imperative for the acceptance of the School-to-Work agenda, or the environmental agenda, or whatever the agenda, that ordinary people assume ownership of the preset outcomes. If people believe an idea is theirs, they’ll support it. If they believe an idea is being forced on them, they’ll resist.

The Delphi Technique is being used very effectively to change our government from a representative form in which elected individuals represent the people, to a “participatory democracy” in which citizens selected at large are facilitated into ownership of preset outcomes. These citizens believe that their input is important to the result, whereas the reality is that the outcome was already established by people not apparent to the participants.

How to Diffuse the Delphi Technique
Three steps can diffuse the Delphi Technique as facilitators attempt to steer a meeting in a specific direction.
1. Always be charming, courteous, and pleasant. Smile. Moderate your voice so as not to come across as belligerent or aggressive.

2. Stay focused. If possible, jot down your thoughts or questions. When facilitators are asked questions they don’t want to answer, they often digress from the issue that was raised and try instead to put the questioner on the defensive. Do not fall for this tactic. Courteously bring the facilitator back to your original question. If he rephrases it so that it becomes an accusatory statement (a popular tactic), simply say, “That is not what I asked. What I asked was . . .” and repeat your question.

3. Be persistent. If putting you on the defensive doesn’t work, facilitators often resort to long monologues that drag on for several minutes. During that time, the group usually forgets the question that was asked, which is the intent. Let the facilitator finish. Then with polite persistence state: “But you didn’t answer my question. My question was . . .” and repeat your question.

Never become angry under any circumstances. Anger directed at the facilitator will immediately make the facilitator the victim. This defeats the purpose. The goal of facilitators is to make the majority of the group members like them, and to alienate anyone who might pose a threat to the realization of their agenda. People with firm, fixed beliefs, who are not afraid to stand up for what they believe in, are obvious threats. If a participant becomes a victim, the facilitator loses face and favor with the crowd. This is why crowds are broken up into groups of seven or eight, and why objections are written on paper rather than voiced aloud where they can be open to public discussion and debate. It’s called crowd control.

At a meeting, have two or three people who know the Delphi Technique dispersed through the crowd so that, when the facilitator digresses from a question, they can stand up and politely say: “But you didn’t answer that lady/gentleman’s question.” Even if the facilitator suspects certain group members are working together, he will not want to alienate the crowd by making accusations. Occasionally, it takes only one incident of this type for the crowd to figure out what’s going on.

Establish a plan of action before a meeting. Everyone on your team should know his part. Later, analyze what went right, what went wrong and why, and what needs to happen the next time. Never strategize during a meeting.

A popular tactic of facilitators, if a session is meeting with resistance, is to call a recess. During the recess, the facilitator and his spotters (people who observe the crowd during the course of a meeting) watch the crowd to see who congregates where, especially those who have offered resistance. If the resistors congregate in one place, a spotter will gravitate to that group and join in the conversation, reporting what was said to the facilitator. When the meeting resumes, the facilitator will steer clear of the resistors. Do not congregate. Instead gravitate to where the facilitators or spotters are. Stay away from your team members.

This strategy also works in a face-to-face, one-on-one meeting with anyone trained to use the Delphi Technique.

Lynn Stuter is an education researcher in Washington state. Her web site address is www.learn-usa.com/.

For a much more detailed paper on the Delphi Technique, one wrote by academics very much enchanted by the process, check out their paper here: That PDF file represents much of what my experience with the Delphi Technique consists of, primarily in business applications. However, to my experience as well, such consensus building almost always fails to some degree making the Delphi Technique good for public manipulation but not in true process improvement as Six Sigma would evolve into. The reason is explained in this article written by me.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

American Imperialism: The Great Myth of Powerhungry Fools

I was reading about the radicalized Weather Underground this morning when an important question came to me. If America was functioning as the Constitution intended, how is America an imperialist evil cast upon the face of the Earth?

The rhetoric that has uttered forth from those pathetic creatures that radicalized public education as a “pressure cooker” of socialized ideology is purely planted subversion initiated by the KGB during the 50’s which struck American culture in the 60’s. The result is that in 2010 many of the foundations of American Culture are scrutinized to ridiculous levels, to the point where the supposed strength of our society, the baby boomers have divorced more, put themselves in debt, cheated, lied, dropped religion from their lives, and have become an ignorant voting block. They can’t take firm positions against drugs because they corrupted themselves as young people in college, so they do not properly instruct their children. That is the result of the hippie movement. It has been far more destructive than if we had become involved in a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. And the KGB knew that it was possible to destroy their enemy without firing a single shot. Such a concept is the premier strategy in the classic book studied by virtually every leader in the world, The Art of War.

For those of you that will insist that the above is paranoid fiction, I can’t help you if you cannot see the obvious. For you chose to be ignorant and short-sighted, our American Culture has been ripped to shreds over issues that are relatively shallow, such as Civil Right, Racism, and Feminism. The situation is so bad that one cannot even discuss those topics in a negative way without drawing a tremendous amount of criticism. That’s because all those topics are rooted in socialism’s social justice. Those are the projects of Marx and they have found their way into our culture through many back doors.


Nobody is going to argue that America shouldn’t try and be as fair to everyone as possible. And America has, as far as a nation can. The problem is when the above topics are used to create bloc voting, and to manipulate the election process. It’s not by accident that blacks tend to vote democrat. It’s not by accident that feminist vote democrat. It’s not by accident that Latino’s tend to vote democrat, because democrats tend to support open borders.

Folks, there is an open warfare on our society, and many people have been sleeping or just chose not to see it, because acknowledging the problem would require action that people just aren’t willing to get involved with.

We’ve let it go so long that radicals have control of what is considered normal and anyone that challenges their hold on American ideas is ridiculed so that peer pressure may kick in and conform the challenger to a consensus, and will be nudged back into obscurity.

These radicals came to power under our own complacency and trust. And they used the mantra that America was an imperialist nation. If the American people understood their own Constitution they would have known that such a statement was a complete lie. It is these same radicals that seek to expand government. Constitutionalist, as America was designed was to have a small government that would not be capable of imperialism. The growth of government into a “pig” state, as those radicals proclaimed throughout the 60’s, was advocated by groups like the Weather Underground, and the Black Panthers, and many other groups that used extreme radicalism to force weak kneed politicians to buckle to their wishes with more legislation, which equated to larger government to maintain the promises.

The new radicalism advocated by modern groups has given up the car bombings, and mass riots in favor of a more subtle method. In 2008, I watched the teachers at Lakota High School have a mass demonstration at the Board of Education and threaten to strike. There concern was wages. Two years later, when the average wage for those teachers was $62,000, the 160 million dollar budget was not enough, and the school board is trying to pass a levy to pay for the extortion that the teachers lobbied for, because the cost for those teachers are just too high now. When the levy failed for the second time, the school board made the announcement that they’d cut busing to the school, which is under 3% of the total school budget. They do that to inconvenience parents and extort their vote on the next election. The behavior is still just as radical as the tactics of the Weather Underground. The root cause of the behavior stems from socialism. But the method is not one of violence, but of economic extortion. The thinking is that if the people of the community won’t pay the extra taxes, and then wait till they have to pay for the fuel to take their kid to school, which is considerably more expensive. Lakota isn’t alone. That tactic is used all over the nation and the radicals that run many of the unions are just following the formula established from the Weather Underground.

America is not an Imperialist nation the way England was during its reign of an Empire. But radicals wanting power needed to shape public opinion in such a way to make a complacent people believe they were actually doing something wrong, so they’d support the expansion of a welfare state, and civil rights issues that subtly expanded the growth of government. The goal was an expansion of government to promote social justice and fulfill the dreams of Carl Marx. It really is that silly.

Quite the opposite, America is the only place on Earth that offers hope for all people of all races and religions. It is pathetic that the general population doesn’t go out of their way to educate themselves on what is true and what is false, instead of surrendering their logic to the ghosts of malodorous old hippie’s.

Rich Hoffman

http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Opinions of the Blind

Progressives can’t argue facts because all their positions are based on emotion. So when commentators and writers point out the facts of progressive ideas, those people are attacked in an attempt to lower their credibility.

Jon Stewart is a comedian, yet he currently has the type of credibility in the media that professional politicians usually have, to the effect that President Obama endorse the Stewart Rally in October. This is because these personalities serve the progressive agenda, and they are encouraged to attack anyone that threatens that agenda.


Listen to this dude. He’s as clueless as a frat boy looking for a six-pack. It is impossible for a guy like this to understand why Glenn Beck is so upset on the phone call. Beck is an emotional guy that believes in what he says, and sometimes he can’t hold those emotions back, especially when the people on the other end of the phone are as blind as the woman he’s talking to. Yet this dude thinks he has a right to criticize Beck. Having a belief in something real is a foreign idea to the guy, so he can’t understand why an issue would case so much passion.


Listen to these kids. Why is it that young kids either still in school, or just out of school are so liberal? Because they are taught to be. Later in life, most of them grow up and become more conservative. But in the meantime they do an enormous amount of damage to our country with their ignorance.

The primary problem here is that many people functioning in our society are effectively blind.  They can’t see the obvious.  Yet they are given the ability to help shape public opinion, which increases the failures of our government.  It was Clare Boothe Luce that said “Politics is the refuge of second-class minds.”  True as that is, it’s the first-rate minds that end up defending themselves from the foolish second-rate minds.  And the masses accept it because in their hearts they are lazy, and enjoy with secret jealousy watching the first-rate minds get their chips knocked off their shoulders.  It’s far easier to be stupid and to maintain a second-rate mind. 

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Hard Road Reveals the Truth of all Things

Most of the time, doing the right thing, and I don’t mean the cosmetically correct thing, but truly the right thing, you will find that such an act is lonely and perilous. When I came up with the term Overmanwarrior in my novel The Symposium of Justice I was thinking a bit of Nietzsche’s Übermensch and Ayn Rand’s position in some of her fiction written in the late 1940’s through the 50’s. Because doing the right thing is not obvious and can only be seen best by those who have the ability to look with eyes beyond self gain.

The definition of the Übermensch according to Wikipedia is: The Übermensch (German; English: Overman, Above-Human, Superman) is a concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche posited the Übermensch as a goal for humanity to set for itself in his 1883 book Thus Spoke Zarathustra (German: Also Sprach Zarathustra).
There is no overall consensus regarding the precise meaning of the Übermensch, nor one of the importance of the concept in Nietzsche’s thought.

The trouble with such a concept is people like George Bernard Shaw, and Adolf Hitler and even Ayn Rand used the Ubermensch idea to justify their thoughts of purging society of a weaker race. Shaw and Hitler hungry with power and their own neurosis obviously misread Nietzsche and used their fragmented understanding to evil ends.

I’ve read Thus Spoke Zarathustra extensively and I don’t take from it that a dominate race should be established and the strong overman will rule all others. Such a thought is still rooted in the human need for control. What Nietzsche is trying to get mankind to understand, which the character Zarathustra frustratingly attempts to bring to the village from his mountaintop perch, only to have the village make fun of him and reject his ideas, is to help mankind see past their didactic necessities and consider the larger scheme of things.

I have found that much like Zarathustra, who had tremendous revelations to share with mankind, that the same mankind routinely rejects such advice in favor of the much more short term fixes of material need. And the journey of understanding what others refuse to grasp is a lonely one.

When critics point out to me such as in the Lakota Busing cuts issue about how they are supposed to get their children to school since the levy failed, or challenge me to teach a class of students and that if I did I would somehow see that teachers are worth over $60K a year and justify the enormous impact on community budgets, they truly, and naively believe that they will somehow catch me in a lie, where I say one thing and do another. So I thought I’d take a minute to provide a bit of background history, and how I arrived at this term overmanwarrior as the only title I find value in.

My daughter reminded me just prior to Christmas that she didn’t know how I did it when she was growing up, how I managed to work 80 plus hours a week and she still remembered me being a huge part of her life as a kid, most dads according to her that would work that much would be brain-dead and uninvolved.  (Check out my daughter, Brooke here)  I did the extra work so my wife could afford to stay home with my kids and be available for them as a stay-at-home mom. My mom was the kind of woman who got stuck on the edge of the women’s rights movement where a career helped define the modern woman, and she painfully resisted falling into that social trap. The result was that all the kids in my school wanted my mom for a mom because all their mothers had bitten into this modern notion of a woman can do and be everything to everyone, and kids were being neglected. So I made sure my wife had the same chance with my kids because the impact on young children of having a mother around was obviously extremely positive.

It was a rough road, but we managed. We could only afford one car at the time, and I didn’t want my kids to have to ride the bus if they didn’t want to, so my wife drove them to school. The school bus can be a rough environment for children, especially girls. So I wanted my kids to not have to worry about that kind of thing. But that meant that my wife would need our car. So in order for me to get to work, I used to ride a bicycle to and from work which was 8 to 12 miles one way. I did that every day for about 10 years. While doing all this I worked an average of 16 hours per day, sometime 7 days a week.

Yet I always spent time with my kids. I never resorted to any kind of alcoholic abuse or any other substance abuse like smoking or over-eating. I managed to read approximately 1 book a week during all this time, depending on the book. Some books were so involved that they sometimes took a month to complete while reading on my 10 minute breaks and lunch periods.

I’ve always reached for more beyond my primary income however and have been a part of many business startups, many of which failed for various reasons. These experiences put me in contact with many people that consider themselves powerful and I learned that in comparison to the life I was living, many of these people were soft, and being soft costs money. When looking at a balance sheet, it quickly becomes obvious that luxury written in a contract is money. And every day off, every compensation statement centered on self-preservation and unproductive time off, costs money.

I managed during all this time to go to college three different times, each of them felt like a waste of time. The environment was too juvenile for an institution that was supposed to take people to the next step. I observed when I was in college the intent of the exercise was to learn a trade, achieve a reasonable income for that trade, and allow that convenience of income to provide leisure time activity. What many of my peers were doing with that leisure time was wasting it on pop culture activities. I decided I learned more through trial and error of doing things, and had no desire to convenience, because it was making the people around me soft mentally and physically.

I’m still married to the same woman after over 20 years. We’ve had plenty of up’s and downs in our relationship but we never let those issues keep us from putting our children first. Many of those up’s and down’s were caused by lack of money, and social expectation pushed upon us by family members who wanted the best for us, but their unit of measure was a faulty social model shaped by progressives.

Even after all these years, I still ride a motorcycle to work, even in the rain and extreme cold. I do it to stay tough. It’s all too easy in middle age to get soft, and I won’t allow that to happen to me.

I’ve been injured numerous times, sometimes where steel pieces would go through one side of a finger and come out the other, I’ve been cut so bad that the end of my fingers were completely pulled away from the bone, and I spent over 5 years walking around with a torn ACL suffered in a basketball game where it was just me against three other guys, a bet I made for the right to play basketball at a park. Until I tore my ACL, I was winning. During that time I still rode my bike to work; I never missed a single day of work, or took workman’s compensation. I’ve changed primary jobs over 5 times yet never took a single unemployment check and my part-time jobs have literally been everything under the sun, everything from janitorial work to sales. I worked part-time for about 7 years as a tree climber and trimmer, and that was difficult work when you already put in 8 to 10 hours at a primary job. I’ve thrown my back out, torn muscles in my back, and had it seize up from stress and overwork so bad that I couldn’t even get off the couch. Yet I always managed to get to work and suffer through the pain without missing a beat. To this day I don’t take a single item of medication. My blood pressure is child-like and healthy. My weight is fine. I can still run and touch my toes. I can still crawl on the floor and play with the dog or little kids. I seldom if ever get sick. Everything mentioned is true without any exaggeration. I’m actually holding back a lot of information so not to sound pompous. Needless to say, I set the bar extremely high for myself.

The benefit of all of the above is that my wife and I have always craved to keep our debt obligations minor both financially and emotionally because our ultimate goal and the goal we’ve tried to teach our children was to pursue freedom. Not to become a slave to an occupation. You use the occupation to secure your finances, but you don’t use the occupation to create your identity.

As you might imagine trying to teach your children such a concept sounds easy, but consider that most of our society uses that measuring system of occupational value to establish the hierarchy of human value. Trash collectors are at the bottom, and powerful politicians are at the top. So taking such a position leads to big trouble, leaving family members baffled. When someone introduces themselves they often say, “I’m a CEO,” or “I’m a data entry technician,” or “I’m an investment broker.”

So to do the right thing and to go for the lofty goal of true freedom, not just financial freedom but emotional freedom as well is a lonely course to plot.

It’s not as if you can sit down and have a beer with someone and explain to them that what is most important to you is complete freedom, to be free of the burdens mankind gives itself.

Zarathustra realized that the people’s ears were not yet ready for what he had to say. So he returned back to his cave.

When you make decisions that leave it so you can’t rely on a mom or a dad, a brother or a sister, a friend, a boss, a politician, or anyone else, you find that you have to always dig deep and rely on yourself, that is a overmanwarrior. A warrior because it is always an uphill battle because all those types of people, even though they may mean well, have something corrupt in their nature, usually. It is difficult to separate a person’s inner desires for themselves from the needs you have. So when we talk about an overman, someone trying to be more than just a human being it is easy to see.

Films like the old Porky’s, or the modern version of that, American Pie, I find myself lost to the humor. I’ve seen people I know well laugh profusely while watching those films, but I don’t understand why. Sex is fun, but I don’t see making an entire film about the adolescent notions of sex and passing gas. Those types of grotesque human behavior are disgusting to me, just as I have absolutely no clue why a person would desire to get drunk, or high. I don’t understand bachelor parties or lap dances when you have a perfectly good wife at home. Why would you do that?

Those are just a few of the differences that I have with most people in social interaction. Now the “normal” person will look at what I wrote above and say, “That guy is a stiff. No fun!” And that’s why an overman concept is a lonely road, because there is no way you could ever explain to a person the value of being free of vices like alcohol, sex addiction, social acceptance, free of craving power, free of fear because fears are used to control you, free of self-doubt, I could go on and on. And from what I understand of Nietzsche that is how you get to god is seeing beyond the vices that hold mankind back. And religion often plays to people’s fears. A belief in religion is better than nothing. Spiritual faith is extremely important. But when Nietzsche proposed the idea of the Übermensch that’s what he was talking about, moving beyond the things that hold back mankind.

The benefits of developing that position are that thinking outside the box is easy because of the freedom from all the things that hold people back. That thinking outside the box is how you solve the social problems that inflict the human race.

That’s why I use the term overmanwarrior.  Don’t think when I make a statement about how something could or should be fixed that I can’t back it with action.  Failure is not an option……ever.  It is not acceptable to say, “I’m only human,”or “I’m no superman,” as proclaimed in the song from “Scrubs,” or “I’m not strong enough.”  My basic feeling is that if the situation calls for a superman, then you better learn to be one.  Leaning on the frailties of imperfection as an excuse for inefficiency and justification for corruption is never an acceptable answer and will not be tolerated. 

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Battle Cry from the Fly Over States

It was an absolutely frigid day in the streets of Wilmington, Ohio just to the south of the Murphy Theater when Glenn Beck came onto the frozen stage and proclaimed that he thought the term “We Are Wilmington” could become the mantra of the entire nation. He said this because of Wilmington’s tenacious nature.

Inside the Theater during the 8 PM show, Beck made the announcement of his E4 Project to be launched in 2011, and it was these words that intrigued me from the moment I first heard them. Since my day in Wilmington at that event, I haven’t been able to shake the simplicity of the terms, yet at the same time the potential power they could possess in a restoration of our national value. They are Enlightenment, Education, Empowerment, and Entrepreneur. I explain them as I heard them in the video below.

As the snowy days passed and I worked out in my back yard with my bullwhips, I began to feel the urge to step onto this battlefield and help anyway possible.

I can start by spreading the message at a grass roots level. After all, progressives have built a complicated infrastructure that hides behind contemporary art and media that seriously confuses the position of most Americans.

On one hand Americans are viewed simply as faceless consumers, with advertising and didactic entertainment aimed at manipulating the consumer to their various products. But at the same time, we ask the same overly stimulated minds to be reasonable and vote with intelligence. That’s where progressives take over on the tired minds of the modern American.

So a focus on something like Beck’s E4 Project can help bring the issues to the mind of those weary consumers, and provoke them to think about the world around them that exists in a more subtle way.

2011 will be a lot of fun, and a time to proclaim to the world, “WE ARE WILMINGTON!”

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Meet Ayn Rand: My Kind of Woman

Here is one of my favorite writers. For those that think the current push against the intellectual controlled advancement toward of collective society based on Sir Thomas More’s book from the 1500’s is a recent development, here are some old interviews of Ayn Rand.

I enjoy her work even though she wrote in the 1950’s. It is quite refreshing to hear her speak thanks to this old footage, another one of the great miracles of the internet, and another reason Net Neutrality would enjoy regulating the content that we can find on the internet using the FCC.

Here you can see a person from the 50’s talking about the collectivism push from “intellectuals” prior to the pathetic riots on the campus of Berkeley on December 2nd 1964. It is extremely unfortunate that liberal professors stand at the gates of higher education, and that the push for moving society in that direction is a form of programming for entire generations.


Saying such things as Ayn says here or someone like me 60 years later may sound conspiratorial, or even paranoid. Yet the evidence of what Ayn speaks about then is all around us now. Look carefully and the evidence is abundant.

Are we lambs or the wolf? If you identify with being a flock of sheep waiting to be led, you can be led to a slaughterhouse. If you are the wolf, you hunt the sheep and even the shepherd.

Social programs are designed to make people identify themselves into sheep.


Where Rand proclaims herself as an atheist I think that is too general of a term. She puts her faith in reason. I would say that currently the idea of god exists within the 11 known dimensions of our existence, so it is foolish to proclaim that there isn’t a god. But her message of self-reliance is a key to personal happiness and social responsibility.

I like this following clip because the guy makes some nice arguments. However, I would say that he became sensitive to social issues while in college, like has happened to many college attendees instructed by liberal professors which over time has had a devastating effect on our populations ability to vote intelligently.


The institutions of control and social sensitivity use Colbert and the Daily Show to appeal to younger audiences so to diffuse free market tendencies like the increase sales of Rand’s books in response to the Obama presidency.

Maybe the guy makes a nice sentimental point. After all, it is easier to be accepted in a group environment as one would be in a flock of sheep. There is safety in numbers, and many would be willing to trade away their freedoms for a chance of such a safety net.

But I am something of a wolf, and I don’t have any desire to hunt in a pack. The concept of such flock like behavior is disgusting in the confines it places on personal liberty.

And I would say that Ayn Rand was a fellow wolf.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Speed! Update on the Tail of the Dragon

I saw a video today of a Corvette accelerating to 195 mph, supposedly. It’s a 1000 HP modified car that the guy is trying to sell by showing off its speed. I understand that he was given citations for his speed which will have to be contested in court because he was not actually pulled over by an officer.

This reminded me of a book that I’m working on. I’m talking to a couple of different publishers right now, so it’s on my mind. The book is the Tail of the Dragon, and it features a car that is a 700 HP car that runs off a diesel conversation to vegetable oil. Anyway, watching that Corvette reminded me of what the acceleration would look like in my car chase book.

Here’s a reading from me of the first couple of pages.


This morning I had to revise part of the package of questions one particular publisher sent me for some market analysis of my novel to figure out if it fits into their 2nd quarter lineup. It’s a long time consuming process, but I thought for the sake of fun that I’d put up the contents of my correspondence today in tribute to that speedy video.

Dear Gail,

It occurred to me after I sent back the questionnaire for publication of my Tail of the Dragon novel, that the answer to item 24, what is the most compelling aspect of your novel, was not fully explained until I thought about it over the last few weeks.

The answer I provided was decent enough, don’t get me wrong. I would like to add to what I provided.

The most compelling aspect of the novel is something equally grand, but philosophically less obvious. Its felt more than explained, which explains the lack of articulation on my part. Tail of the Dragon involves our heroes going on a destructive romance through the entire state of Tennessee and North Carolina that results in the deaths of many police and National Guardsman. Not on purpose or maliciousness, but as a by-product of the experience. It also results in hundreds of millions of dollars of property damage and captures for a time the entire nation. Such events traditionally end in the death of the characters, such as in Bonnie and Clyde, but not in Tail of the Dragon.

In my novel the heroes live happily ever after. In fact the lead character gets a contract to begin racing in NASCAR because of his sudden fame and marketability. What happens is the same public relation firms that are criticized heavily in the Tail of the Dragon are employed at the end to re-shape public opinion, and within days of the destructive incidence, the same people that suffered at the hands of the heroes, are now in line to get their autographs, and that is the true parody to the story, and is the most compelling aspect to the Tail of the Dragon.

I hope that you will send this forth to be included with the other information I provided in regard to publication of my Tail of the Dragon. And I hope that you and your family have a delightful Christmas and fantastic New Year.

Rich Hoffman

http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com