Month: August 2013

War in Syria: The real cause of chemical weapons in control of terrorists and dictators

I am not a supporter of military engagement in Syria by America.  If “they” do so, “they” will do it without my backing.  If “my” military must engage in the long mismanaged debacle in Syria, it is due to the incompetence of our own government—driven by progressive politics that does not represent me—but has “progressed” along to do their own thing for global reasons.  By saying such a thing I understand that the “establishment” will attempt to label people like me as a radical for not supporting our military—but so what.  I could care less.  To understand why, watch and listen to every video on this article so that you too may come to understand the real intentions, and meaning of the Syrian military engagement and what is really behind it.

Few recently have even contemplated how Syria acquired the supposed “chemical weapons” to begin with, which has set off this whole debate.  As to the question as to why America must become involved in Syria the reason is that it is highly likely the weapons came from American CIA involvement to begin with.  Here’s why:

As reported in the New York Sun on January 26, 2006:

“‘There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands,’ Mr. Sada said. ‘I am confident they were taken over.’”

“Mr. Sada’s comments come just more than a month after Israel’s top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, told the Sun that Saddam ‘transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria.’

“Democrats have made the absence of stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq a theme in their criticism of the Bush administration’s decision to go to war in 2003…

“The discovery of the weapons in Syria could alter the American political debate on the Iraq war. And even the accusations that they are there could step up international pressure on the government in Damascus. That government, led by Bashar Assad, is already facing a UN investigation over its alleged role in the assassination of a former prime minister of Lebanon. The Bush administration has criticized Syria for its support of terrorism and its failure to cooperate with the UN investigation.”

In September of 2002, Reid is quoted as saying:

“Saddam Hussein has, in effect, thumbed his nose at the world community, and I think the President is approaching this in the right fashion.”

And then in October of 2002, he said:

“We stopped the fighting [in 1991] on an agreement that Iraq would take steps to assure the world that it would not engage in further aggression and that it would destroy its weapons of mass destruction. It has refused to take those steps. That refusal constitutes a breach of the armistice which renders it void and justifies resumption of the armed conflict.”

And then, finally, in 2008, said:

“Now I believe, myself, that the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense…and you have to make your own decisions about what the President knows…is that this war is lost and that the surge is not accomplishing anything, as is indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday.”

I would also be equally nervous if I were Nancy Pelosi, who in December of 1998,said on her congressional website:

“Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.”

And who then said in May of 2004:

“I believe that the president’s leadership in the actions taken in Iraq demonstrate an incompetence in terms of knowledge, judgment and experience in making the decisions that would have been necessary to truly accomplish the mission without the deaths to our troops and the cost to our taxpayers…”

Read more details about this issue at the link below.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/07/14/And-where-did-syrias-chemical-weapons

But how did the weapons get to Iraq?  Well, many have long forgotten that Saddam Hussein was put in place by American desire to send Iraq into war with Iran, and the weapons likely were given to him by America, directly or indirectly, to off-set the Iranians during the Iran, Iraq war.  From 1980 to 1988 Donald Rumsfeld could be seen shaking hands with Saddam Hussein openly showing support for Iraq.

Tensions between Iran and Iraq were fueled by Iran’s Islamic revolution and its appearance of being a Pan-Islamic force, in contrast to Iraq’s Arab nationalism. Despite Iraq’s goals of regaining the Shatt al-Arab,[note 2] the Iraqi government seemed to initially welcome Iran’s Revolution, which overthrew Iran’s Shah, who was seen as a common enemy.[4][25] It is difficult to pinpoint when tensions began to build, but there were some cross border skirmishes, including when Iraqi aircraft bombed an Iranian village that anti-Iraqi Kurds allegedly hid in on June 1979.[31]

After this incident, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called on Iraqis to overthrow the Ba’ath government, and it was received with considerable anger in Baghdad.[25] On 17 July 1979, despite Khomeini’s call, Saddam gave a speech praising the Iranian Revolution and called for an Iraqi-Iranian friendship based on non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.[25] When Khomeini rejected Saddam’s overture by calling for Islamic revolution [17] in Iraq, Saddam was alarmed.[25] Iran’s new Islamic administration was regarded in Baghdad as an irrational, existential threat to the Ba’ath government, especially because the Ba’ath party, having a secular nature, discriminated and posed a threat to the Shia movement in Iraq, whose clerics were Iran’s allies within Iraq and whom Khomeini saw as oppressed.[25] Some scholars have argued that Iranian-backed attacks and cross-border raids on Iraqi territory compelled Iraq to launch a preemptive invasion.[32]

However, Iraq’s regime was very politically secure, and in little danger of being overthrown by alleged plots of revolution-wracked Iran.[17] According to some sources, Khomeini’s hostility towards Saddam was actually milder than his Arab neighbors hostility towards Saddam.[33] Saddam’s primary interest in war stemmed from his desire to right the supposed “wrong” of the Algiers Agreement, in addition to finally achieving his desire of annexing Khuzestan and becoming the regional superpower.[17] Saddam’s goal was to replace Egypt as the “leader of the Arab world” and to achieve hegemony over the Persian Gulf.[34] He saw Iran’s increased weakness due to revolution, sanctions, and international isolation.[27] Saddam had heavily invested in Iraq’s military since his defeat against Iran in 1975, buying large amounts of weapons from the Soviet Union and France. By 1980, Iraq possessed 200,000 soldiers, 2,000 tanks and 450 aircraft.[4]:1 Watching the powerful Iranian army that frustrated him in 1974–1975 disintegrate, he saw an opportunity to attack, using the threat of Islamic Revolution as a pretext.[4][35]

Read all about that war at the link below, which also has a nice picture of Rumsfeld and Hussein warmly greeting one another.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War

It would appear that once the relationship disintegrated between America and Iraq leading to two wars in two subsequent decades, the Iraq’s chemical weapons were stored across the border in Syria so that UN inspectors would not discover them leading up to the war with Iraq during 2003.  America knew Iraq had the weapons because they allegedly supplied them, even if they couldn’t find them.  That was because Hussein’s buddy Assad was storing them in Syria.

But years later after America had finally removed Hussein from control of Iraq, the modern progressives went to work on Assad.  This is how John Kerry as a senator was seen dinning with Assad as their wives gathered to discuss all the fine shopping options in Syria.    A photo is going viral (GO AHEAD, CLICK ON THE LINK) showing the Kerrys and the Assads enjoying quite the intimate dinner in 2009.

Kerry was leading a delegation to Syria to discuss peace in the region at the time. According to French news agency AFP, Assad told Kerry during that visit that America needed a “proper understanding” of issues Syria faces.

Kerry has met with Assad on numerous occasions and once lauded Assad in 2011 as being a “very generous” man, according to the Weekly Standard.

“Well, I personally believe that — I mean, this is my belief, okay?” Kerry said. “But President Assad has been very generous with me in terms of the discussions we have had. And when I last went to — the last several trips to Syria — I asked President Assad to do certain things to build the relationship with the United States and sort of show the good faith that

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/08/28/john-kerry-wasnt-always-so-harsh-to-syrian-president-assad/

Now that all the progressive manipulation in the Middle East region has come to fruition it is time to cash in on the years of investment and wash everyone’s hands of the evidence.  That is the cause of most conflicts between nations, when governments have to clean up their mistakes from the past.  War is the great eraser which wipes away the sins of history—the manipulation of progressives in a region designed to advance their agenda.

The current situation in America is that Obama has a trail of scandals behind him and is falling in the polls.  The Republicans are terrified of getting stuck in a budget battle in September, so all the statists in the American government need something to avoid the justice seeking their careers.  War is the great unifier which often brings together members of all political parties under a common flag.  After all, that is the mantra of the Skull and Bones Society.  Military action of any kind is an attempt by the current government in America to erase years of mistakes they have made following interests that do not reflect The Constitution.  I do not trust the American government to do the right thing, so I certainly don’t trust them to spend lives and limb to erase their errors at a cost I provide with tax money.

I’m all for providing humanitarian aid, but the poor people of Syria are only a small group of people in the grand scheme of the world where millions upon millions of people suffer under governments not advocating capitalism.  Military engagements to help rebels who are built by terrorists to help former friends of Saddam Hussein is a no win situation that will not bring about justice, but only serve to allow the current government in America full of statists, progressives, and open socialists to cover the sins of their mismanagement of the Middle East region.  So I do not support military engagement in Syria.  If the U.N. wants to see justice there, let them use their own troops not supported by America do so, and see how far that goes.  I am not open to allowing the United Nations to believe they have authority over Syria by dragging America into a war so that they can take the credit for justice at our expense.  Syria is a mistake and will only serve to allow the bad guys to hide just a little while longer, and many of those bad guys, are in the American government.  They cannot be trusted to do the right things…………because if they could be, there wouldn’t be chemical weapons in Syria to begin with.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

Doc Thompson Blasts Public Education and Common Core: Entertainment and Education tag team children behind parents backs

The harsher reality to the presidency of Barack Obama is not just that he is a manipulative saboteur of American ideals who supports socialism over capitalism, but he was elected as a representative of a large number of the American public—people who enjoy welfare support, think the Miley Cyrus stunt at the recent MTV awards was cool, and loves intoxication, drug abuse, and alternative sexual practices.  The worse realization about the Obama administration is that it represents a growing number of Americans.  The origin of how those people came to be such a group of degenerates is harder to pin down because it forces an admission that is difficult to acknowledge.  The minds making up the typical modern progressive described started at the same point as everyone else, small children born of a mother and a father.  But the path that delivers such minds to fish net stocking wearing voters dressed in drag voting for Obama and his free government “stuff” is different from those who tend to find such personal philosophies repulsive.  Those differences of course start in a child’s home and are determined by their parents.  But beyond that, it is public education that destroys the minds of young people and corrupts them well into their adulthoods.  Public schools are breeding grounds for progressive philosophy and are dangerous.  They have been for a long time, but it has only been the last couple of years where such admissions have begun to be made.  Doc Thompson and his producer Skip on The Blaze Radio Network dedicated an entire hour and a half to the topic of public education corruption which can be heard at the clip below.  It is worth the time to listen to, because they cover Common Core instruction during the beginning then allow the discussion to evolve into the aim of public schools—which is to educate and create progressive citizens—who wishes to work against traditional America.  Have a listen! This is classic radio and you should take the time to listen to the whole thing.  

Public schools are incubators for social change—the kind of change that would rather see a child attend a Rocky Horror Picture Show screening at midnight in some dank college campus movie theater rather than attend church on Sunday to worship the teachings of Jesus Christ.  So it should come as no surprise that kids after twelve to thirteen years of public school education arrive at 18 years of age unprepared to do anything of any responsibly as an adult, because progressive education teaches personal irresponsibility.  Public school educations are destructive, and do ruin the minds of the attendees.

The tough admission is that almost every American comes from public schools and to arrive at the conclusion that it is there many of the stupid ideas which lead to presidents like Obama sitting in The White House are born.  Public schools are for most parents free baby sitting services which gives the illusion of positive social instruction, so it is hard for parents to blame the progressive tendencies of their children on “the baby sitter” because it forces acknowledging that they must take action to help save their children.  For many parents this means they have to make decisions that will likely cost them money…………..and time, which often they have neither.  So they are stuck sending their children to their local public school and they put on blinders to the faults of the institution because they do not have the mental or financial capacity to solve the problem.

Public schools consume enormous amounts of tax money which strip away the expendable cash that these same parents could use to send their children to a private conservative school—so to undo the progressive instruction otherwise given.  This leaves parents with no options but to hold their nose and support their local public school just because it’s near their home.  Parents do not have a choice because public education is a monopoly.  They suppress competition and openly destroy the minds of individual children leaving the consumers and suppliers with no choices.  When a child complains to their parent that the public school is a bad place, the parent has only one choice but to instruct the child that life is unfair, and that they need to learn to live with their displeasure.  This begins a chain reaction that slowly begins to destroy the lives of those children from that day on.

Three years ago Doc Thompson did not have a microphone that allowed him to discuss public education to such a degree as he has in the broadcast above.  Radio stations that employed him would have feared losing their FCC license—which further solidifies the public education government controlled monopoly.  Criticism of public education was nearly non-existent leaving millions of desperate souls to anguish over their unacknowledged fears regarding the intentions of public education.  But now, popular radio personalities like Doc Thompson are free to delve honestly into the evils of public education in several game changing broadcasts that are routine on The Blaze Radio Network.  It will take a while to change the culture of acceptance which public education has enjoyed using their monopoly to invoke on witless students the aptitude of a destructive progressive education.  But the start of such dismantling, and reinvigoration comes from the understanding that something is terribly wrong and should be corrected in order to save future generations.  A large portion of our modern youth are lost and will never recover.  They will continue to vote for politicians like Barack Obama because they have been trained in progressive statism.  Many of those same types were seen screaming after Miley Cyrus and her sexual antics on MTV that raised the eyebrows of many concerned parents.  Someday those former students will have children and life will beat their progressive educations out of them, and they will recover to some extent to live decent lives—if they are the fortunate few.  But their minds cannot be recovered fully as they were handicapped as children in public education.  However, if our society acts now, it may be possible that twenty years from now, public education and its impact on society will be greatly diminished allowing more people to rise to new emotional and intellectual heights.  At that time, the voting population will become better and vote for better representatives because the quality of their mind will be improved.

It is not enough to just proclaim the name of the problem.  Once known, it must be acted upon, and slowly over a fairly short period of time, radio broadcasts like the one Doc and Skip produced are changing minds, and forcing admissions.  Those admissions are difficult, but they are healthy.  Nobody said that doing the right things would be easy, or convenient.  But for the health of all our futures, we must do the right thing, and that is realize that public education is a corrosive endeavor that is laced with vile thoughts and teachings—which should be sanctioned from tax dollars.  Any group, even progressives should be allowed to compete equally in the battlefield of ideas, but citizens should not be forced to pay for such things with money extorted from them through taxation under force of a monopoly.  That is the greatest evil of public education, and the reason that it must be changed—options create competition and allows evil ideas like progressivism to be crushed out of existence in direct interaction with ideas which actually work.  Progressives claim that they have the superior mode of thinking, yet they can only convince others of such a claim through monopoly status by eliminating competing modes of thinking.  The first step in destroying such a tyrannical hold on the minds of our society’s youth is to destroy the monopoly that backs public education, and to introduce new ideas—ideas that are born out of the wreckage of the old—a public education system designed to put presidents like Obama into office for aims that are not American.

Now to explain a bit, “artistically” what was going on at the MTV event where Miley Cyrus was paraded about like a slut for the advancement of progressive causes.  Watching her performance I was reminded of two other events, the Janet Jackson Super Bowl stunt where she had her top ripped off to expose her breasts, then the famous kiss between Britney Spears and Madonna.   What all three women had in common was that the “public” thought of them as good girls.  Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears are graduates of the Disney Channel and were examples of nice wholesome teenage girls.  Progressive backed money was poured into entertainment, and it can make these girls do whatever the financiers’ desire like prostitutes working for an escort service.   Miley Cyrus was coached into performing the dance routine which was all very carefully designed.  Cyrus was placed on stage to rip from millions of youthful girls the innocent image of Cyrus as a Disney girl.  The dance routine was set up with the teddy bears looking not quite so innocent so to show on stage that Miley Cyrus had lost any resemblance of her youthful innocence and was no longer a little girl.  The act has been repeated for several decades now and is constructed by the same minds that stand behind Common Core education.  To understand what investors into Miley Cyrus’s record label believe, and MTV’s investment in the event, listen hard to the broadcast from Doc Thompson and his producer Skip shown above.  They have the answer.  Miley Cyrus is simply a paid spokesman for progressive causes, and she was established by an entertainment culture infused with “political progressive” money to unlock the teaching instructed to children in public schools.  Former Disney personalities are targeted because of their naturally high-profile, with foundations in family entertainment that Disney is known for.  This makes them very important in reaching the proper demographic groups with the ritual understanding of merging from childhood to adulthood through sexual practice.  Since the government profits off of misconduct through sexual recklessness, this is to their advantage.    

When people believe that Bill Gates is behind Common Core and is a good man, so Common Core must be good, consider again that Common Core computers only run on Window’s operated machines, Macintosh computers will not work.  So part of the implementation of Common Core in public schools is to support the sale of Windows operating systems over Macs.   That in itself isn’t bad, but the minds who shape the Common Core agenda for which Gates latches himself on to, in order to make a deal that will launch Microsoft driven computers into every school in America are the same minds who take the innocent greed of a young woman named Miley Cyrus and tell her that they’ll fund her record and image if she’ll dance half naked on stage with stoned looking teddy bears and sell herself to the public.  Bill Gates and Miley Cyrus think they are cleaver and astute business people taking advantage of the glories of capitalism to advance themselves.  But what they don’t see is the progressive puppet masters who have shaped the battlefield in both entertainment and education for the same intentions, to break down the traditional American family and revise the minds of youth to sexual deviancy which pushes them away from parental care and into the loving, manipulative arms of mother government, and the sinister plots of doom which were touched up in the classic novel Brave New World.   Now considering those things, listen to Doc Thompson recite the specifics of Common Core education to second and third grade students, and consider what the real intention of public education is in America.   The Miley Cyrus MTV event was the result, but the cause started in the classrooms of America’s government schools, and the plots of progressive politics that are behind nearly every single institution.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

‘For the Record’ On The Blaze TV: Hosted By Laurie Dhue, exploring the depth of the NSA

The Blaze Television is one of the most cutting edge programs produced today and is the latest project of Laurie Dhue.  She left Fox News to work for her new employer Glenn Beck.  Watch this stunning episode and share it with a friend on the extreme depth of the NSA and how it affects your life. 

The level of domestic surveillance in the United States has reached such shocking levels in the post-9/11 world that people will find it hard to fathom, said Laurie Dhue, host of TheBlaze TV’s new investigative series “For the Record.” The show’s first episode, “Surveillance State.”

“I think this is going to open a lot of people’s eyes…people will be absolutely shocked to know that things have gotten even less transparent in the last 10 years — there’s even more surveillance going on than ever before,” Dhue told Beck on his radio show.

The show reveals how the National Security Agency transformed from its stated purpose of foreign intelligence gathering into an arm to listen in on U.S. citizens — all on the taxpayer’s dime.

“After 9/11 the spigots just opened, money continued to flow in the NSA. The NSA got everything it wanted, and the taxpayers basically just got taken to the cleaners,” Dhue said.

What information the government collects, they keep — including in a massive Utah facility slated for completion earlier this year, Dhue said.

“This is all being done in the name of protection, in the name of keeping us safe. But it’s scary stuff when you think about it,” Dhue told Beck.

Read more here:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/03/13/people-will-be-absolutely-shocked-beck-interviews-the-host-of-for-the-record-ahead-of-tonights-premiere/

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

The Goodness of Being “White and Nerdy”: An untapped resource waiting to explode

Since receiving the new game X-Wing Miniatures, I have been reading the rule book extensively and mock playing several games against myself so I can understand all the different scenarios.  I find the game endlessly intriguing, and an amazing achievement.  It is fun, fast, and free in many ways that sustain the best attributes of a gaming experience.  I simply love it.  My wife with a polite jest asked me as we were logging on the other day to play Star Wars: The Old Republic as I was reading the X-Wing rule book, if we were being “White and Nerdy”—a reference to the old Weird Al Yankovic satirical song.  I told her, “absolutely, and proud of it!”  At the current moment I have a number of very key strategies in real life that are being played out and I have learned that over time, the best way for me to stay engaged and keep my mind sharp enough to deal with things on a large-scale is to give my mind a vacation while in the heat of the events.  By means of vacation I don’t mean a physical vacation which we take often enough—and costs many thousands of dollars every time we do it.  I mean a vacation that the mind enjoys, and during the year 2013 that has been The Old Republic which she and I play often.  We enjoy our short trips to the Star Wars galaxy and they are always beneficial.  But of late, I have found the new X-Wing Miniatures strategy game to be even more intriguing, and infinitely fascinating.

It can’t be missed that even though Weird Al is poking fun at nerds in his music video of “White and Nerdy” that many of the attributes exhibited in the video are good ones, intelligence, moral aptitude, social innocence, creativity among them.  And the humor of that video is that it is more or less true.  I know, and have known a lot of nerds, and they are like the people in the “White and Nerdy” video.  However since that video came out, “White and Nerdy” types have not declined in number throughout American society, but have rather increased.  To get a sample, just visit Gen Con in Indianapolis each August and meet the members of the “gaming” culture, people who enjoy strategy games to a larger extent than I do.  They are people who spend even more time playing The Old Republic than my wife and I, and they are every bit into the new Star Wars Miniatures strategy game.

Outsiders might say that the gaming industry is being driven by a desire for escapism—that many of those “gamers” would rather play Dungeons and Dragons than participate in the political process.  It is highly likely that many of the people who attended this year’s Gen Con did not vote for Mitt Romney or Barack Obama in the last election, and instead played games from Fantasy Flight around their kitchen tables.  So that demographic is being overlooked in poll counts.  These “White and Nerdy” types are not watching Fox News, CNN, or showing up for President Obama’s latest diatribes about education funding.  Most of them find the entire political process repulsive, and have elected to drop out of it all together.  They are either currant Ron Paul supporters, or future supporters of his son, Rand.  And until the political machine gives them the kind of candidate they can get excited about, they will spend their time and effort of leisure playing the kind of games sold at Gen Con.  Listen to the following broadcast about gaming from the guys at Mos Eisley Radio to get some perspective.

Playing these kinds of games is not an escape from reality in the same way that watching television is, or watching sports.  I know a lot of mainstream people who get very excited about their Fantasy Football picks or their latest score on a golf course.  The people who play games like Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures are choosing to spend their leisure time in a very thinking type of scenario.  You have to enjoy thinking to be good at a game like X-Wing Miniatures.  For me that is the grand appeal.  I simply love that game.  At 2013’s Gen Con Fantasy Flight Games who produce the X-Wing Miniatures game made a grand announcement, displaying for the first time they are taking the epic table top game and “going big” with it.  They are producing the Tantive IV corvette and the Rebel Transport in a scale that has not been seen in any strategy game.  The enthusiasm present upon that announcement can be seen in the interview below.  The prospect of playing a game that features those large ships in a strategy format is very exciting to me.  I am already planning giant matches that take up specially made tabletops taking up entire basements.  It was in reviewing these recent announcements that provoked me to read so intensely the X-Wing rule book.

Tantive IV

“Tear this ship apart until you’ve found those plans and bring me the passengers. I want them alive!”
–Darth Vader, Star Wars: A New Hope

The Tantive IV is perhaps the most famous of all CR90 corvettes. Not only that, it is the first starship to appear in the classic Star Wars trilogy. We see it fly across the screen, racing from right to left across the bright surface of Tatooine, firing its rear lasers, until the shape of its hull is nearly lost behind the glow of its eleven ion turbine engines.

Coming soon to X-Wing, the Tantive IV Expansion Pack allows you to command the starship that first hooked us into the greatest space opera of all time!

Designed for use in Cinematic Play and the new Epic tournament format, the Tantive IV miniature doesn’t match the 1/270 scale shared by those starships legal within the game’s standard tournament format. Instead, this carefully detailed and pre-painted miniature is sculpted at a relative scale that feels good on the tabletop, alongside the game’s starfighters and other huge ships. In addition to the miniature, the expansion features new missions that promote deeply thematic play experiences, whether played individually or linked into a larger campaign, and Imperial players will have their chance to try to capture this notorious Rebel blockade runner.

The Tantive IV won’t be legal for standard tournaments, but you’ll be able to bring it to battle in both the Cinematic Play and Epic tournament format. Furthermore, you’ll gain the opportunity to crew it with the indomitable Rebel hero, Leia Organa!

Rebel Transport

“The first transport is away.”
–Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

When the Empire launched a massive assault against the Rebellion’s Echo Base, it dealt the Rebel Alliance a tremendous blow. Still, the Rebellion’s losses could have been much greater. They were lucky to escape with the majority of their command structure intact, and the very fact the Rebellion was able to continue its liberation efforts after the battle owed much to the GR-75 medium transport and the role it played during the famous evacuation effort.

With new rules, one Rebel transport miniature, one X-wing miniature with an alternate paint scheme, and a wealth of new ship cards, upgrades, and missions, the Rebel Transport Expansion Pack allows you to recreate the drama of the Rebellion’s desperate escape from Hoth.

Like the Tantive IV, the Rebel transport is too large for standard tournament play. Smaller than the CR90 corvette, the GR-75 medium transport is nonetheless large enough to dwarf its starfighter escorts. Even though the Rebel transport is depicted at a scale that allows you to maneuver it in battle, it is still so large that it comes with multiple new damage decks to track hits against different sections of its hull.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4312

I thoroughly enjoy the kind of people who attend Gen Con, even though they tend not to be intensely social, or politically active.  For them, playing those types of games are done for the same reason I do it, to preserve their mind in a rebellion against a society that looks down on those who are “White and Nerdy,” or otherwise, those who wish to think, and be genuinely good people.  I have seldom encountered another person who attends Gen Con regularly and spends their spare time playing games like this to be overtly “bad,” or “malicious.” They are genuinely good, as their hobby is “thinking.”  These games just give them the mechanism to do so in an entertaining format.

If games like X-Wing Miniatures were not so popular then the game would not be expanding into a large format with the new ships discussed above.  So the delight is two-fold when hearing these kinds of announcements.  First, it is nice to see creativity permeating our culture in such a positive way.  Second, it is nice to see so many people excited about it.  It is nice to see people genuinely happy about something that doesn’t involve drugs, sex, or debauchery, but does involve thinking.  The demographic of “White and Nerdy” types who love Gen Con, and share with me a passion for X-Wing are a group who at some point will become interested in what is going on in the “outside world.”  That time will come when they don’t have money for Gen Con any longer, or have the ability to stay up all night playing X-Wing or The Old Republic.  For a government addicted to statism, many of these game players use fantasy strategy to give themselves a vacation away from the types of people who are not “White and Nerdy” and are willing to avoid them to keep the peace.  But, when it comes a time that those “White and Nerdy” types can no longer enjoy their leisure time, then the ramifications will not be pleasant for the establishment. The future largest demographic growth sector is not women voters, Latinos, or even African Americans…………it is the “White and Nerdy” types who simply want to be left alone to think, but if prevented, can become the statist’s worst nightmare.    It is unwise to ignore them.  Because they are smart!  And they “think” as a hobby, something that modern politics requires people to avoid.

Mechanisms like these types of games work in tandem with difficult real life strategies because they are essentially “concept” building exercises.  As I’ve explained in these pages on previous articles, before any idea in real life can be understood, it must be held as a “concept.”  A concept is like a bowl holding water.  The bigger the bowl, the more water it holds.  If the bowl is too small, it can only hold so much water.  If a concept is too small, it cannot hold big ideas or strategies that are required to solve complicated problems.  These days, small concepts are advocated by statism so much of society does not have the ability to hold large concepts in their minds.  They cannot wrap their thoughts around them.  By playing games like X-Wing Miniatures or some other variation of strategy game the practice of “concept building” is exercised allowing a mind to hold larger ideals.  This is why these kinds of games are a tremendous benefit to the people who play them, and those who don’t are always at a tactical disadvantage.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

State of the Union at Lakota: The compliment of silance

I know a great deal about human behavior and would happily argue with the most respected minds in the fields of psychology and psychiatry regarding their theories wherever they came from in the world.  I learned what I know because I’ve been around the block so many times that I have every brick, and crack memorized around that block.  On my blog postings I openly invite comments, but there often isn’t any.  This isn’t because people aren’t reading—they are.  Just watch the daily counter off on the sidebar.  However, in the world of strategy, silence is the best compliment.  When “they” can’t beat you—whoever “they” may be, the only tactical option available to them is to ignore you and hope that social castigation will dislodge a deep-seated insecurity taking you out-of-the-way of “their” objectives.

Over the summer while on vacation in Florida my nephews and I had an intelligent conversation about human nature while throwing football in the condo swimming pool.  One of my highly educated nephews argued that human beings are social creatures and needed to be brought together in optimal ways to manage peace and harmony in society, even if those instances are sometimes coerced by government.  Of course I disagreed vehemently with that statement, not because he was wrong, but because that is only part of the issue.  He is right; human beings are a social species.  They learn from babies to mimic others and this is how we all start in life.  99.99999999999999999999999% of all human beings continue that destructive practice well into their adulthood—so he is right, humans are a social species.  But my argument is that humans are destined at some point in their life to graduate from this way of thinking as the mind takes over what the social connections cannot provide and becomes a freely functioning entity of its own.  I am this kind of person.  I do not need the approval of anybody to make a decision, and this is a radical concept to most.  I am able to function without social input based on the product of my own thinking.  I do not need to consul, collaborate, or gain assurances about my decisions about my private life.  It is a learned trait that I would argue every human being should strive for—but it takes courage—like a child learning to walk on their own for the first time.  Human beings need to be able to function off the products of their own mind—but often they don’t.  Instead, they gather together in clumps of social organisms like our primitive ancestors around a fire and wait for some village chieftain to instruct them what to do next.  This is how we get into the political messes we are currently in.

The reason for this elaborate introduction is to explain this next phase in the Lakota school district levy fights and why things are the way they are.  It might be noticed that the newspapers and I have very little to say to each other these days.  I have thoroughly insulted the press and would not expect them to solicit my thoughts, but at this point it no longer matters.  I have made my decisions based on the observed conditions, and the strategy of current was formulated on those observations.  With that said, I offer this small article as an explanation for those curious.  It gets back to me what Lakota administrators say when they think the doors are closed and the phone lines are secure.  I know they are frustrated with me for being a “bomb thrower” and working from the outside instead of partaking in their structured manner, so this is more directed at them than my normal readers so that they can understand what is happening and why.

In past levy attempts I tried to work with Lakota in the traditional way.  I came to the school board meetings and allowed compliance of their silly two-minute rule where the board members pretend to be in control of a courtroom setting by “allowing” members of the community to speak to them as though they were royal nobles of some sort.   When I was acting as a spokesman for No Lakota Levy I put up with this behavior to respect the wishes of the members who wanted to see the levy defeated without fracturing their social relationships with Lakota.  I did not like the social schmoozing that went on in the early days of my involvement.  I also took note that as I began to go on the radio and television to argue the case of No Lakota Levy, those members did not want to sit near me at the school board meetings as they feared members of the Lakota community recognizing that we were all on the same team.  They enjoyed the benefits of my tactics but wanted to maintain their social status with the same people from the other side of the political aisle.  After a couple of levy defeats under my strategy, those fears began to relax a bit.  People were less resistant to acknowledge their association with me as I had several victories under my belt at that time—and people love a winner.  So people began to sit next to me at meetings and say hello in public.  But not until then.

I went out of my way to speak with people from the other side like Ron Spurlock who was the acting superintendent until Mantia came along, Jenni Logan, the treasurer, and Linda O’Conner.  I was happy to speak to them in a civil manner even though we agreed on very little.  But I knew it wouldn’t last because the behavior wasn’t changing which put them in trouble.  As nice of a man as Ron Spurlock was, he felt woefully slack during handshakes and he looked away a lot when I spoke to him.  This was because he was in internal conflict.

At this point everyone in town was trying to advocate that I run for school board and become politically active.  They still suggest the same when it comes to trustee spots and other high-profile political offices locally.  Yet the strategy to the kind of victory I am after cannot be obtained in that fashion, so I never had any intention of indulging in that activity which frustrated people who want changes to the system within the system.  When Mantia was hired essentially by Linda after all the discussions we had, I saw the direction that the school board was going.  They hired a political divider who would come in and play all ends against the middle where Lakota would control the strategic high ground.  Immediately that is what Mantia went on to do leaving Ron Spurlock to retire and stay on at Lakota as a consultant.  Mantia came to a late night meeting with the key people of No Lakota Levy assuring us that she would do one thing if the levy failed, then she did another when that reality presented itself.  Within a month of the levy failure Lakota was in full political mode.  Mantia did not perform as a business mind, but as a progressive radical politician, and went straight to the type of levy passing tactics that was taught at the OSBA’s Levy University.

I came to one of the meetings announcing Lakota’s cuts and as Channel 19 was interviewing me in the main hallway at Lakota East, Mantia stood off to the side like she wanted to speak to me.  When I made eye contact after the interview she looked away and hustled into the auditorium.  It was a strange engagement that I noted for later.  Then I saw Ron Spurlock who was approaching a man who was well-known at Lakota in the band circles—a popular guy who was well-respected.  That man had come to the meeting with me, which I had known would cause trouble—which is why I did it.  I wanted to confirm the moral position that I suspected about the school.  After my television interview this “respected man” stepped next to me and Ron, who had been working his way through the crowd to a warm greeting, immediately stopped and turned away.  Out of all the bad things that were said about me behind the scenes at Lakota, the much discussed Lakota Kroger Survey, the Letters to the Editor in the Pulse Journal, it was this event that bothered me the most.  I liked Spurlock.  I thought of him as a good man.  But he was so terrified of the internal politics at Lakota, even though he was officially retired, that he didn’t want anybody of any authority at the school to see him even shaking hands with me.  It was at that moment when I knew what Lakota was all about, and that the path to fixing it would not be by running for school board, or any other “respected” position.  More extremes would be necessary.

A month later my group started Yes to Lakota Kids under tremendous pressure from community groups to bring No Lakota Levy away from being such a negative social influence on the community.  I agreed to the charity group creation because it was a kind of checkmate against Lakota.  This was confirmed when I organized a press conference.  We were giving a $10,000 check to Lakota to help pay for student participation in sports.  Both sides were talking and were going to be present to issue and receive the money.  I brought the media.  Nobody from Lakota showed up, instead excuses were provided as to why they couldn’t come.   Anticipating this, we staged the press conference within walking distance of Lakota East where many officials especially from the athletic department were.  Even better, the board of education was literally four miles down the road.  It was a 15 minute drive for them, yet nobody showed.  Channel 5 was there, Channel 19, The Cincinnati Enquirer, The Pulse Journal, but there wasn’t any Lakota representatives.

This didn’t surprise me at all.  It simply exposed what was already known.  Lakota couldn’t take a donation from their enemy No Lakota Levy, even to help children and they knew it.   They needed the extortion of children to execute their demands, and would not stand for losing that emotional leverage against the community by my group.  Lakota did exactly what I expected; they went on a full court press to smear me personally because they knew they would never pass a levy as long as I was intimately involved in the process.  If I had been the kind of person who needed group reassurance as the foundations of my thinking, some of the moves made against me at this time might have destroyed me for life.  This appears to certainly be their intention.  They did not care who they hurt, or to what extent they executed their plans, as long as they preserved their strategic objectives, which was a tax increase.  Mantia and others put a lot of pressure on the other No Lakota Levy people to publicly pull away from any association from me.  The reason was that it was believed that in so doing I would feel the bite of being an out-cast and either change my behavior, or be ignored by the public.

Little did they know but I was choking under the “in” crowd and desperately wanted those shackles off so that I could be an out-cast once again, to have the freedoms that come with such a position.  That is where the best strategy is, and what I desired.  I did not want to be a school board member and fuss with people who constantly played things both ways every day of their lives for some perceived “greater good” and at the point I had arrived at, there was no desire to see public education preserved in any fashion.  It’s a bad idea that should have never been implemented, and that is the direction I wanted to argue.  I did not want the burden of being a spokesman for a system I think is destroying our youth even in protest against taxation.

Peer groups are learned in public schools primarily.  The kids who are “in” and “out” are designated quickly.  Kids who are “in” have something to bring the “greater good,” of whatever group is involved.  Kids who are “out” do not.  When I was in school I was certainly on the “out” group because I did not want to be in service to any group.  I enjoyed thoroughly being on the “out” because there are many more opportunities for a colorful life outside of group comfort, which is what I’ve always strived for.  Of course back then nobody really understood what I was rebelling against.  My parents encouraged me to buy a class ring which they said would mean something to me later in life.  It doesn’t.  I never wore it, but simply gave it to whatever girlfriend I had at the time.  They also told me I needed a school jacket, which I never wore—favoring my leather jacket instead.  They also told me I needed to go to my five-year-reunion that was at Coney Island.  So I did and while there they had the usual contests, who had been married the longest, who had the most children, who had the oldest children and that kind of thing.  Out of the five categories in the contest I won three of them, I had been married the longest, (four years at that time), I had two children, three and two years old, clearly the oldest of the participants.  In fact my children were running around playing tag around the podium where the Class President was speaking from.  Yet I didn’t win a single category formally.  I was sitting in plain view of everyone, my wife was there, my kids playing and screaming in delight running around the tables which everyone could see, yet I was as invisible to them all as a ghost on Christmas morning.  Apparently it was frowned upon to bring children and spouses to the Class Reunion and socially I was supposed to know that.  But I wasn’t about to go to Coney Island without taking my children.  I never did things like that without them.  So I brought them without asking if I could.

My wife and I laughed about that event for years.  It was a clear example of the social need for groups of pack mentality to preserve their thinking on an issue in order to maintain a pre-conceived notion.  The evidence of who had the most and oldest children was running around the podium during the award presentation, yet I did not win a single category.  That was because I was an outcast even then, and very proud of it.   The only retaliation they had to offer to me was to hope being castigated from their group would make me feel some level of shame, and desire to comply socially.  Of course that concept is horrendously preposterous to anyone who knows me.  Just yesterday I was having a nice lunch by myself taking some time to read a book and enjoy my day.  Another man dressed in business attire sat down next to me, first asking if I was dining with anyone.  I said no.  So he sat down and started talking about the upcoming Bengal season, the quality of the food, the weather, about anything and everything.  The guy was a real chatterbox.  I was trying to be polite, but there was a reason I was eating lunch alone.  I wanted to read my book.  Nothing the guy said was of any value to me, and it was really getting on my nerves.  After about five minutes I told the guy as politely as possible, “You know, it’s hard to read a book and have a conversation.”  He looked at me as if I threw Holy Water upon his forehead.  “Sorry, I just thought you wanted some conversation.  I saw you sitting here by yourself and thought you wanted company.   I guess you don’t…….right?”  I replied as nicely as possible, “that’s right.  I don’t want any company.”  He got up in uncomfortable silence and took his food with him and disappeared into the restaurant.  I was so happy that he left and for the next hour and a half I was alone with just my book, my food and the nice outside air of a late summer August day.  When I was ready to leave, that guy was inside the restaurant sitting at the bar talking to the bartender and anybody nearby who would listen.  Three businessmen were comparing Fantasy Football picks with him and they were all happy as sluts at a navel port gabbing at each other with much fanfare.  The man didn’t look at me even though I had to pay the remainder of my bill with the bartender.  It was easier not to acknowledge each other, and I was grateful that he felt that way.

That same mentality was present when Ron Spurlock turned away from me in the halls of Lakota East to preserve his position in the social structure of Lakota.  Well before I called the levy supporters at Lakota “Latte sipping prostitutes with asses the size of car tires and diamond rings to match” in the Cincinnati Enquirer the wheels of castigation were well in place.  I had tried to work with the Lakota school board and the superintendents to bring down their costs.  I worked with the media nicely to give them entertainment within the context of their acceptability, and I was gloriously successful at it.  I even played the charity game to make my friends happy who stood against the tax increases, but still wanted to maintain relationships with members of the Lakota administration.   But none of them wanted to stand by the truth and deal with the severity of the situation in the manner it called for.  They all separated into their various groups and expected me to facilitate myself to their whims, which simply wasn’t going to happen.  When I didn’t, not even good people like Ron Spurlock wanted to be seen speaking with me in public out of fear that it would put him socially on the “out.”  People fear more than most anything in the world being rejected from their respective “groups.”

I learned a long, long time ago that these groups are more destructive to the human psyche than all the mental deficiencies available to insanity.  They are as my nephew argued part of the human condition generated upon the human mind during childhood when dependency is the only option.  Good parents never allow their children to feel the bite of this dependency so that as maturity sets in, those individuals grown into self-driven entities reliant on their own thoughts and motivations and cast away group participation like a snake sheds its skin.  The human race cannot survive with the mode of thinking that drove Ron Spurlock to walk the other way under the Mantia regime at Lakota, or the class president ignoring my children as they ran around playing at her feet.

When groups of people are at wit’s end and cannot strategically deal with the impact of an individual, they attempt to look everywhere that they aren’t.  They attempt to ignore such people so to preserve their own thoughts and feelings without a challenger.  Shortly after No Lakota Levy and I parted ways after the events described above, I received the following note from a radical levy supporter at Lakota.  The contents are particularly revealing as it confirms everything stated:

richhoffmanhateskids@gmail.com

208.102.50.136

Submitted on 2012/03/19 at 4:40 pm

HA HA HA!  LAKOTA DOESN’T WANT YOU…HA HA HA! Its a sign that you are a nobody when groups start running away from you.

ha ha ha ha ha!!!

That letter writer was an adult who holds a very responsible position within the Lakota school system, and provides insight into the kind of mentality that Ron Spurlock feared so much on a cold February evening at Lakota East.   As mature and sophisticated the participants of the education profession pretend to be, they are still functioning human beings that are deficient of self-reliant thinking, and as far as I’m concerned, behind the evolutionary curve.  The money they ask for with tax increases is to cover the gaps of their thinking and mask their internal neurosis.  It has nothing to do with reality, but only the primal need for group behavior to separate social tasks into blocks of consensus building.  The very foundations that they have built their institutions upon is set to sink in the sand during high tide as it has no philosophical foundation to plant roots of thought.  All they can do when such a reality is presented to them is to ignore the facts to preserve their warped illusions.

That is why this next levy attempt of 2013 will be different.  I will not try to solve the problem from the inside, because it clearly will not work under any condition.  This is a problem that must be solved from the outside—in, because the root of the problem is on the inside and must be starved out of existence.  They cannot see the problem because they refuse to look at it and nobody on a school board or through the mechanism of politics can solve the problem in that insider fashion.  So my new tactic will be to launch the attack from the outside in, to famish the antagonists from within their own walls by starving out their supply chain.  Such strategies brought down the rule of the Mongols in China, and it brought down the Roman Empire.  It can bring down little ol’ Lakota, which is what I intend.  It’s not against education that I rebel; it is the institutionalism of individual minds that I despise.  I love education.  I just can’t stand the process that is currently accepted, and I don’t like the politics connected to it.

As it should be clear by now, at no point in my life did I care to be on the “inside.”  I have been at times when groups wanted to use my talents, but I do not volunteer to go.  They come to me.  And they can go away just as well, but my position does not change, as it has been built upon the foundations of logic and my personal observations.  I will not surrender that position to the illogical perspective of group consensus to preserve the neurosis of established thinking if that thinking is wrong.  My nephew was right from an academic standpoint, human beings are a social species.  They need each other, and seek to speak, touch and interact with others of their kind.  But I am right too, that such behavior is for the human race equivalent to a small child learning to walk for the first time afraid to let go of what props them up.  A human mind needs to learn to walk on its own, free of emotional shackles to inferior intellects and it must grow from there perpetually over a lifetime.  What Lakota does, and other institutions like them is artificially constrain thinking so to preserve political beliefs forged by group consensus, and that is a recipe for disaster that I cannot, and will not support—but will fight as though it was the most corrosive organism in existence—because it is.

Now, if anybody who has read this wish to argue with me, feel free to leave a comment below.  I won’t chastise or belittle you for trying.  I like the mental exercise.  But if you don’t, your silence will confirm all that I have said above.  So have at it……………….

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

The Lakota 2013 Report Card: More excuses from Superintendent Mantia

After reading the recent report card with explanations from the Lakota school district it instantly reminded me of a kid who had been goofing off that was expected to get straight “A’s” who needed to pad the results with explanations to justify too many “B’s” and a “C” in the outcome.  Like the unwitting teenagers they instruct, Lakota blamed their bad grades on the conditions the grades were formulated.  A teenage student might declare that their grades would have been better if only they had more time to study, or had better tools to study with.  Lakota, as a district declared that they could have done better, especially in performance if voters would have just passed their last levy.  Superintendent Mantia in a report seen below did exactly that blaming the poor grade in “performance” on having to make budget reductions.  Here’s what she said, “Our performance index went down after years of increases. The performance index measures the achievement of all students regardless of their level of proficiency. That’s one sign that the budget reductions we’ve had to make are affecting all students.”

No wonder with that attitude the report card came in with much lower grades than was expected.  Lakota plans to get “A’s” by throwing money at the teachers so that they can have more “resources” to teach children.  If Lakota dosen’t have the money they plan to do just as they’ve shown here, let their letter grade drop so to motivate their parents into buying them “better books,” a new computer, and other resources so that the student can get an “A.”  Rather than attack the cultural aspects of the letter grade as a student might buckle down to improve, Mantia immediately relegates her terminology toward the unsaid implications of the 2013 levy attempt which intends to raise taxes to throw money at their teacher base with an upcoming contract in 2014.  Mantia said a lot of things in her released statement on the report card for Lakota.  Her full report can be seen below:

A Letter from Superintendent Dr. Karen Mantia

Ohio’s New School District Report Cards

Report cards on the first day of school. It was just coincidence, but the Ohio Department of Education released its new school district report card Thursday, just as we were welcoming students back to school.

The report card is for the 2012-13 school year, the one that ended last spring. It’s completely different than the old report cards, where districts were rated “Excellent, Effective,” etc. Now, we get letter grades, A to F, just like students’ report cards.

In case you haven’t seen it yet, here’s what Lakota’s report card looks like:

Standards met
Performance index
Overall Value-Added
Gifted Value-Added
Disabled Value-Added
Lowest 20% Value-Added
Annual Measurable Objectives
4-year graduate rate 2012
5-year graduate rate 2011		 A
B
A
A
B
B
C
A
B

We could write whole chapters, whole books even, explaining all those categories and measurements, but we are still working on going over the data ourselves and preparing information we can share with parents and residents to help explain it all. But here’s some information straight from the Ohio Dept. of Education that offers an overview of the report card categories.

I’m pleased, of course, that our students met 100 percent of the state indicators. That’s what the first line, “Standards met,” refers to. That was the major component of the old report card system, the 24 standardized tests that are specific to a grade level and subject. I’m also pleased at our “A” in overall value-added, a measurement of how much progress all our students are making in a year.

But there are areas of concern, as well, and I’ve been talking about them for some time now. We track trend data internally all the time, so by the time the report card comes out there shouldn’t be any big surprises in it, and there weren’t. Our performance index went down after years of increases. The performance index measures the achievement of all students regardless of their level of proficiency. That’s one sign that the budget reductions we’ve had to make are affecting all students.

The one “C” on our report card is also a concern. That grade is for “annual measurable objectives.” You’ll also hear it called “gap closing.” It’s new with this report card, and measures achievement gaps between all students and student subgroups. We have no problem being accountable for the learning and progress of every student in our schools. So we need to do even more in that area.

It will require focused, increased resources in these high priority learning areas. We must ensure the district can continue to maintain its strengths in programming and instructional approach so that we can serve all students. Certainly no one test, letter grade, or rating captures the learning of thousands of students, but it does offer an overview of where we’re doing well and where we can do better.

Dr. Karen Mantia
Superintendent
Lakota Local School District

Spoken like a true levy addict.  When Mantia says, “increased resources in these high priority learning areas” she means that Lakota needs a levy passage so that she can lead her school district to improved grades.  It is equivalent to the teenage student who tells their parents that if they received a new computer, they’d have a better time at their studies and their grades would improve.  Of course everyone outside the school knows better than that.  They know that hard work and determination are what will improve those test scores—and leadership starting with Mantia.  But, when students see that the head of their school is blaming the mediocre report card grades on lost resources due to levy failures, then they will use the same excuse on their own report cards.  Education starts from the top, and Mantia just taught all of Lakota how to use excuses when the results are not favorable.  That is the reason for the poor “performance.”  It has nothing to do with money—but everything to do with attitude.

When Lakota had the previous grading system they essentially gained their Excellent with Distinction rating the way a mediocre student typically got an “A” in their class, by sucking up and becoming a teacher’s pet.  Excellent with Distinction rankings were mostly issued on the bases of political ass kissing, more than actual measured results.  This new system driven by public demanding actual measurements makes that ass kissing much more difficult—which it should be.  It will take more than money to improve the grades at Lakota.  It takes leadership from the top, and based on Mantia’s comments, that leadership is not there.  She intends to fail if the levy doesn’t pass in 2013.  If Lakota gets the money, she will pull whatever political strings she needs to in order to improve those grades in the future.  But if Lakota does not pass her levy, she has already planted the seeds that failure will continue.  They will continue because as a former teacher, she is aligned with her labor, and has their interests first, and she is making excuses for them which sends the message that the criteria for success is less about hard work, and more about getting what you want out of the deal.  Students are watching, and they know what everyone else knows, that the carefully worded statement from Lakota’s superintendent is simply a fancy way to demand more financial resources.  And that is not the way to lead an institution of any kind to improvements.  It becomes clear quickly why Lakota is dropping in their rating, and it has nothing to do with money—but everything to do with the leadership.  If Mantia wants to know why she received four “B’s” and one “C” on the Lakota report card she only has to look to one place—the mirror.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

Government Employees The Same As Benedict Arnold: New intrusions from Obamacare

If anybody doubted all the so-called “conspiracy theories” advocated at this site and many others urging smaller government, the evidence is pointing against them.   Obamacare is an abomination against American ideas of self-reliance and has no place in a free country.  It is a power grab by government to satisfy their desire for statism, and should be eliminated by defunding, and repeal.  It is not the government’s job to parent the citizens of a country, and that is the ultimate aim of Obamacare.  Obamacare is statism at its absolute worst.  It was passed in the off hours of the night during the holiday season under arm twisting and coercion to fulfill a long sacred progressive agenda.  Nobody read the bill as even Nancy Pelosi recklessly advocated, “we have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.”  Anybody who heard her say that without alarm flags rising in the air must be brain-dead sloths from the Mesozoic Era.  Obamacare was forged through corruption and deceit, and advocated with gross manipulation to an end not yet known—except by readers of this site and those similar.  The ultimate aim of Obamacare is to expand government and place them into every home in America.  The evidence is overwhelming as slowly people are reading, and understanding “the bill.”

One new program created, for instance that is emerging as Obamacare nears attempted implementation is the Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program (MIECHV). Since 2010, it has spent $1.5 billion in grants to develop those home visit programs.  The purpose of this program is to specifically place someone from the government into the private lives of all Americans specifically targeting:

  • low-income Americans
  • Americans who have a family member who smokes,
  • Has a child who’s had low grades,
  • Woman who are pregnant before age 21,
  • Have had any interaction with a child welfare service,
  • Has a family member who’s sought treatment for substance abuse,
  • Has someone who is serving or who formerly served in the Armed Forces.

That is a very broad umbrella that covers a large part of American society.  Of course the government plans to offer jobs to fill all the needs for people who will go door to door to maintain the government’s Obamacare concerns listed under the MIECHV provision.  Those jobs will go to our friends and neighbors who desire to give up some of their personal freedoms for a government job that pays 40% more than a private sector job and is protected by public sector labor unions.  Those Americans who take such jobs might as well be of the same caliber as Benedict Arnold who had a wife of expensive taste causing him to betray General George Washington for the better pay of the Royal army.  Americans who take government jobs to support Obamacare are traitors as they will become instruments of statism.  Read more about the MIECHV provision at the following article.

http://junkscience.com/2013/08/23/knock-knockits-the-government/#more-44036

Government workers in modern America are essentially traitors.  They may take such jobs with good intentions, but their action is never-the-less an act of treason against the American Constitution.  Government through every mechanism available to it is seeking to destroy personal liberty; the evidence is just in this latest revelation about Obamacare.  Those who take jobs from the government to further themselves are no different from the likes of Benedict Arnold who craved payment from the tyrannical British instead of the rebel fighting Americans purely for personal security concerns.  The type of people who take such jobs for the government will be used against Americans putting them into the home of virtually every citizen at their whim.

One thing that has always bothered me is the way “the state” gets involved in the lives of a husband and wife who have divorced and gone to court to have the state divide up their assets, including children.  It is the state who collects alimony from a man and gives it to a woman seeking to start a new life with a new man—or these days—a woman.  It is also the state who decides if and when the man can see his children.   The modern man has been castrated metaphorically in the modern age of state imposition of the American family.  If a couple divorces, it is not left to them and their families to solve their problem, the state does, and over time, this has become the accepted practice.  Men have lost their rights to their children, to their wives, to their property and been made to dance before the state like marionettes on their best behavior.  While many women welcome this type of arrangement because they have decided for whatever reason that they no longer wish to maintain connections to their former lovers whom they’ve bore children, it is easy for them to regulate authority over their lives to the state while maintaining a personal illusion of independence.  That illusion is created and stabilized by the state for the state’s purpose.  The female “customer” is simply the facilitator—a way for the state to get into the lives of the couple’s children.

With nearly two decades of this behavior, people no longer see anything wrong with it.  They accept state representatives checking on their alimony and child support checks, and supervising visits between men and their children.  To the children of these parents they see their fathers as powerless—and the state as the true power, which was always the goal of statism in government.   It is the children of these arrangements who voted for Obama, and wish for government health care.  It is to these children that Obama now speaks as his poll numbers plummet and he has no answer but to flee to more friendly audiences–naive college students and young people recently breed in public schools.  It is the safety blanket of statism that Obama flees hoping he can outrun justice—until too many government workers are under his command and dare not stand against him.  Once the hiring starts for Obamacare, and the jobs are created, it is nearly impossible to reverse—because the private sector will not pay voters so much money and people tend not to vote against their paychecks.

The money that pays the government workers is not generated out of profit the way oil companies or insurance companies operate.  It is simply stolen from tax payers.  If the government needs more money to pay all their traitorous employees, they simply steal more.  There isn’t any care given to fairness, or justice—compliance is all that is required and the more people who work for government, the more compliance provided by the American public.  The wheels of statism motion are already well advanced.  MIECHV is only the latest government intrusion which is an increasing trend that is many years in the making.  It doesn’t matter to government the method, only the result.  They will step on anyone who gets in their way and it doesn’t matter if the statists are people like Barack Obama, or statists like Chris Christie, John Kasich, or any other big government monstrosity hiding behind the disguise of Republican politics.  They are all after expanded government in all American lives, and will stop at nothing to achieve such an aim.  It is for that reason that such characters are enemies of the republic and the types of menace warned about when a sacred oath to protect the Constitution is taken.  When it is said that Americans swear to protect our country against enemies both foreign and domestic, it means more than just the obvious terrorist threats like the Boston Bombers or the Muslim Brotherhood.  Most of the time the worst domestic enemy is the government worker who wants to knock on your door to check on the poor grades of your child in public school, and feels they are entitled under the provisions of Obamacare to discover why.  Most of the time the worst American enemy is the one who simply wants to trade away the Constitution of The United States for a paycheck that is 40% higher than the job they had in the private sector, which is paid for by stolen money guaranteed to them by the government monopolies advanced through anti-trust protections.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

What the Blue Indications Mean at Lakota: Home Foreclosures and the threat of high taxes

Lakota forclosuresAt Lakota and hundreds of other school districts all over Ohio school levies are on the fall ballot, and many people will find themselves torn between how they should vote.  The trouble with teachers and public education in general is that most voters know at least one person close to them who works for the industry.  Like any dedicated friend or loved one, it is typical to put blinders onto the reality of public education so not to betray those cherished members of our lives.  This has allowed the radical elements of the teaching profession to capture the message of statism and sell it as value to the communities from which they behave as raw parasites.  Lakota forclosures 6Because of the paralysis in judgment typical toward the teaching profession this has allowed complete falsehoods to be introduced into common language and social acceptance about public schools necessitating continuous higher taxes to substantiate levy requests.  Newspaper reporters, television newscasts, and neighbor to neighbor discussions about public schools tend to always focus on the same union bullet points without ever exploring the harsh realities.  Typically employees of such schools who speak in defense of their industry will say things like:

  • “Due to lack of money things are not well.”  “Of course there is waste and bad teachers, but they are the exception and not the norm, our children need our support.”
  • “If the schools are not supported, the community we are so proud of will end up in deterioration.”
  • “Because of the failed levies morale is low.   The excellent teachers and administrators are jumping ship.”
  • “With the latest cuts, elementary kids get one class of gym or music or art once a week on a rotating basis.  They used to get each one once a week.”Lakota forclosures 7

Such comments go on to infinity from there with the commentators never contemplating openly the causes.  There is a willingness to take the cause and effects of public education at the presented value allowing the radicals of government schools to get away with crimes of extortion driven by anti-trust violations.  So often the reason is because most people have somebody close to them who works in the business and nobody wants to hurt the feelings of those people.  This is how the crimes are committed, crimes of open looting of the public treasury for the solitary purpose of plunder by the state for the goal of statism.  The truth about school levies and higher taxes are easy to see for those with the courage to see them.  It has been proven that the best thing a community can do to maintain a healthy district is to vote down higher taxes, not cave into the emotional arguments provided by the employees of public education.  (CLICK HERE for more detailed explanations) The reason is that higher taxes destroy property investment, the higher the taxes, the less investment into business and residences.Lakota forclosures1

In my community of Lakota the result of a harsh economy is quite evident.  On the surface of course everything looks nice, there are well-kept homes, the roads are paved well, there are lots of consumer options, the schools are rated well—everything appears to be in order—and in relation to other places in America it is.  But if the façade is pulled back just a bit the reality can be seen for what it truly is.  The pictures shown here are from Zillow and display with red markers property that is for sale.  In the Lakota district there are quite a lot of homes for sale, some of which is normal.  Some of it is driven by occupational changes, and changes to household income.  But a lot of it is driven by taxes that are just simply too high.  The more alarming indicator shown in the included pictures are those marked in blue.  These are homes that are being foreclosed upon—meaning their owners could not keep up with their mortgage payments.Lakota forclosures2

When first checking, it would be assumed that there would be a few of these, but the actual number is quite shocking.  As shown, there are a lot of homeowners who have been barely hanging on through tough economic times who are finding themselves going through the disgrace of losing their properties to circumstance.  Because I have made myself a spokesman against higher taxes, pro tax advocates see me as being in the way of their goals, and get very angry with me.  This causes them to send all kinds of useful information out of anger.  One such note was from a typical levy cheerleader who has placed their own personal neurosis into the care of their children out of guilt for a series of other mistakes they’ve made in their life.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.   That particular person said to me, “I pay $5400/year in taxes. How much do you pay? $2800? If you don’t want to live in an affluent community with good schools, then move!”  What they were clearly attempting to do was make me feel like they had the upper hand because they pay a higher tax on a home that is over 300K in value.  The thinking is flawed because what they miss is that many of the people suffering foreclosures are people in the most affluent neighborhoods in the Lakota district–their neighbors.  Seen in the picture here, several foreclosures are occurring in the Four Bridges community and there are a few that are in the $1.1 million dollar range in other neighborhoods.  Because Lakota is on a downward trend with enrollment as only well-to-do families can afford to live in such an affluent district, there are fewer children to attend the schools, leaving many homeowners regulated to selling off their homes to move to areas of the country where taxes are not such a burden.  The only people who want to pay large taxes are the type of neurotic parents like that letter writer who are using the public schools to mask their deepest insecurities about their parenting ability.  Once that same type of parent has children leaving the public school they will typically pack up and move to some other district in the United States to carry out their social psychosis—their innate desire to be busy-bodies.Lakota forclosures3

The cost of allowing people like that to run a community into the ground uncontested is the unseen result of these Zillow pictures—too many people selling homes by choice flee the high taxes, or are forced out of their homes because they can’t keep up with the payment.  The frightening aspect is what is not shown on Zillow are the many thousands of homeowners who are just barely hanging on, where one more increase in taxes will either push them into the red indications, or worse yet—the blue.  When Lakota cheerleads the value that a school has on the community, they are speaking union bullet points that mean nothing.  The value of a community is in its ability to make people want to live there.  A school only attracts one kind of investor, people like the spoiled brat letter writer indicated above.  Those types come and go within a ten year span during their children’s upbringing.  They are not long term investors in a community unlike people such as myself who lived here before many of them were even born and will still be here long after they’ve bought up Florida condos and put those same children through college as empty-nesters. The way to ruin a community is to lure too many neurotic parents to a community to pay for homes they otherwise couldn’t afford if not for a strategic FHA loan from the government, or purchased with a variable interest rate that drive up their monthly payment quicker than the tax impositions of the public school.  Or fools who think paying $5400 a year in taxes gives them emotional leverage in an argument.  In discussions with their neighbors upon hearing such things nobody would reveal that they are struggling to pay their taxes, so they silently allow themselves to be foreclosed upon becoming one of the unfortunate blue indications on Zillow.  Not wanting to admit failure to their friends, family, and neighbors who utter such half-baked endorsements of public education monopolies, they quietly purchase lottery tickets hoping for a winner right up to the last day when the bank comes to reclaim their property for default.  Then and only then do they move and disappear from the earth and away from circles of Jabba the Hutt like socialites who think paying $5400 in personal property taxes is “good” for a community.  Zillow has the truth. Lakota Forclosures4

Being polite will not save a community from the destruction of parasites who think public education under the current funding model and anti-trust operation is sustainable.  But silence will destroy it, the kind of silence seen on these Zillow pictures.  Most people living near the blue indications have no idea that their neighbors are struggling because nobody takes the time to really get to know each other.  One week everything looks fine from the outside, the neighbor is mowing their lawn, wearing an Ohio State t-shirt while doing some minor landscaping, and the children are playing outside.  Nothing seems amiss.  Then the next week there is a bank owned paper stuck to the garage and the family is nowhere to be seen.  The home is empty overnight and an uncomfortable sensation engulfs the entire neighborhood as though a death just took place.   Lakota forclosures5In a lot of ways one did, a bit of the life that makes up a community died—the hopes and dreams of property ownership that was robbed from them by changes in finance.  Among those changes are the difficulties in keeping up with their taxes among all the other concerns they have in their lives.  Paying $3000 to $6000 a year in taxes just to send a bunch of spoiled brat kids raised by neurotic parents to a free education starts to wear on the mind when it is realized that having that money for personal needs is much greater.  Upon that realization, homes go up for sale or are lost because the admission that such properties cannot be afforded comes too late in the game.  Luckily for the Lakota district the residents have managed to fight off the corrosive public school since 2005.  It can only be imagined how many new blue indications will show up on Zillow if Lakota manages to raise taxes the way they desire.  But one thing is for sure, it will be a big number, and that is not conducive to a thriving community.    The value of a school district does not come from the school, the teachers, or the buildings themselves, but from the people who invest their money, and are motivated to continue due to financial incentive.  Higher taxes are not an incentive, they are detriments—ones that have a direct relationship to the blue indications on Zillow.

 

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

The Lakota Levy of 2017: After they try the 2013 attempt

Lakota is currently trying to pass a 2013 tax increase so it probably will come as a shock that the school will be planning a 2017 levy attempt as soon as they can.  In the chart shown in the following video, I use another “bullwhip economic” trick to demonstrate how targeted cuts to the Lakota school district could maintain the profitable trend they have shown over the last couple of years.  Yet, the school apparently resents greatly their operation of maintaining a budget surplus and has very immediate intentions of escalating their spending as soon as they receive levy passage.  In the following chart, the red line represents the tax revenue that the Lakota communities of Liberty Township and West Chester Twp provide to the school.  The blue line is the budget for Lakota.  Watching this video it will be clear that the recent levy defeats have forced Lakota to bring their costs in line with the tax revenue supplied.  As explained, the teacher’s contract the district has with the Lakota Education Association has maintained a wage freeze lasting through 2014.  This is why the district has operated in a surplus.  However, it is also clear that the intention of the levy of 2013 is to throw money at the new teacher’s contract because the blue line spikes up dramatically and predictably until 2017.  The green line is the amount of funding the school intends to inject into their financial dynamics upon levy passage in 2013.  As it becomes terribly obvious, the green line and blue line intersect during the year 2017 meaning that Lakota will have to pursue another tax increase at that time.

It is terribly obvious that Lakota has been forced by the voting community to live within their budget with levy failures, which is good.  Yet they have been promising that the summer of 2014 would reap a payday to school employees because the blue line spikes sharply upward countering all the positive gains that have been made since 2010 to the present.  It was always my intention to bring Lakota’s operating costs in line with community revenue without raising taxes and this chart shows how well the effort has worked.  The NO votes have been the most useful tool in forcing the school district to operate the way they should have always functioned, with a keen focus on their expenditures and operating with a slight surplus.  But they seem to not have learned their lesson and have been promising their employees large raises in 2014.  Their spending projections reflect this as the numbers making up the data on the chart are generated by Lakota’s own statistics.  There is a reason they must disclose all their information to the tax paying public—it is for just this type of analysis.Historical & Projected Revenues & Expenditures

Lakota has been able to maintain a positive balance by making the forced targeted cuts due to the levy failures, which is also reflected on the chart, which is why I find my “bullwhip economic” demonstrations to be so effective.  It’s my own unique way of explaining such dry material that has a tendency to bore people to death when they are forced to attend the kind of meetings it takes to ascertain the data that makes up such charts.  So I like to put a little metaphorical zip on the information to present it in an entertaining way, otherwise the information goes in one ear and out the other.  But relevant to the Lakota levy of 2013 and all future levies, the information couldn’t be clearer.  The data speaks for itself.  Lakota plans to go on a spending binge in 2014 like pent-up sailors who have been at sea for many months approaching a whore house.  The projected numbers that make up the blue line can be obtained from Lakota’s treasurer or anybody involved in the financing structure at the school.

In October of 2013 Lakota will have to produce a new five-year forecast which will involve many of the same numbers seen in the chart discussed during the video.  However one thing that has not been yet included in Lakota’s blue line forecast is the grim reality that I have covered extensively which is that Lakota is set to lose another two thousands students between the present time and the year 2022.  This will force the layoff of around 80 teachers.  CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW.  It will be interesting to see if Lakota includes these declining enrollment numbers into their projections, which they will have to address at some point in time.  But for their pro-tax levy attempts, they will hope to bury that information deep in their forecast because it will clearly show that they do not need more money.  Instead of the blue line projecting upward, it needs to be in a further decline from where it currently resides.

The frustration, anger, and in-trench warfare that sometimes goes on behind the scenes with the pro levy crowd is predicated directly off their lack of desire to acknowledge the facts driven off numbers shown so clearly in charts like the example I used in the video.  I call them “levy addicts, “levy zombies,” and more derogatory “latte sipping prostitutes,” because of their destructive desire to hurt an entire community with corrosive taxation as they belong to a group of people who desire to throw large wages at employees who aren’t needed, but for emotional reasons.   The desire to increase taxes for the solitary reason of injecting money into a group of employees that have a perceived value which is too high, or are not needed is simply stupid.  Many times the only reason is because the levy supporters are friends with those employees, or hope that by throwing money at the school, the money will off-set their terrible parenting skills.  They hope the school will give their children what they can’t because they are plagued with so much self-doubt as individual people; they have nothing to offer their children but social connections and a big mouth that advocates bigger and better schools to teach them in.  The root cause of the problem is that those levy advocates do not have faith in their own parenting and hope that they can hide the fact behind their chants for higher taxes, and more community spirit, and they have no restraint in demanding the community fund perpetual increases in the blue line based strictly on emotional neuroses.

It is a shame that so many young reporters who work for the local papers cannot see the benefit of the numbers shown in charts like this example, because many of them are children themselves.  This is why they support school levies.  If they are under the age of 35, they are likely still new to the ways of the world and do not understand how things connect, so they make their decisions based on pure emotion—on the backs of children who are used by the levy addicts to hide the reality of the blue number—the desire to throw money at district labor based on an anti-trust criteria. (Click Here to Review)  Then of course many people find such information daunting, and beyond their grasp.  So rather than do the hard work of analyzing data, they choose to subscribe to the emotional position of the levy addicts.  That is why the Lakota administrators are working blindly toward a 2013 tax increase knowing full well that another attempt will have to be made in 2017, because they do not target cuts unless forced to with levy failures.  Beyond 2017 there is no question that there will be more levy attempts and that within 15 years of this current time Lakota plans to add at least 10 more mills of levy to the current rate of 33, pushing the rate of taxation to a level over 40 mills, which is very unattractive to long-term real-estate investment or business growth.  That is why it is reckless, and devastating to a community to insinuate uncontrolled taxation, which is what Lakota is guilty of.

So the tax increases will not end in 2013.  They will continue until the school is forced to cut their costs the proper way with controlled cuts made without emotion.  Since Lakota will not regulate themselves, they must be forced to with failed levies.  The Levy Zombies do not run the community.  They are often young people between the ages of 25 and 35 and are functioning from personal insecurities.  It is dangerous to allow them to dictate budgets, which is why Lakota believes that nobody will ever challenge their blue line projections well into 2017.  The same logic left unchecked will pillage the Lakota community until there is nothing left but a high tax zone of residents and empty business establishments driven away by the bottomless pit hunger of the levy addicts.  Against those specimens targeted cuts is the only defense and I use bullwhip economics to highlight the point.  But aside from the spectacle of my whip tricks the situation is actually quite serious, Lakota is a parasitic organization that is selling itself as the savior of community value when it is practicing the opposite effect.  Under the Lakota plan seen on the chart, the financial imposition that public school will place on the community will be devastating and end the thriving business culture that currently exists.  Anyone who supports a school levy is crazy, especially when given the facts that show the proof.  The best thing anybody could do for Lakota and the community that surrounds the school is to vote “NO” on the levy and force Lakota to live within its means, instead of their projected path of deficit spending toward a future resulting in economic collapse.  The data tells the story.  All anybody need do is look at the data to reach the same conclusion.

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!  

Lakota Should Be Prosecuted for Anti-Trust: Public Education is exempt from monopoly status through “state action”

If Lakota as a public education institution were viewed with the same standards as Microsoft, Apple, or the railroads of the 1890s, they would be guilty of anti-trust violations according to the Sherman Act.  Lakota as all public education institutions backed by the federal government are monopolies, and the cost imposition that they inflict against communities is directly related to their anti-trust status.  Using logic, Lakota should be judged by the same standards that private industry has been prosecuted under.  CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE SHERMAN ACT of 1890.  Public schools are monopolies and they openly stand against competition which is why they cost so much in tax money.  The obvious solution to this dilemma is to prosecute public schools under the Sherman Act or something like it so that competition could be implemented.  Yet it would appear that all government entities under state control are exempt from The Sherman Act.  This means that government can prosecute private business behaving in an anti-competitive fashion, but private industry cannot prosecute government for performing in a same manner.

In 1943, the Supreme Court first created the “state action” exemption to federal antitrust law in a case called Parker v. Brown. The California Agricultural Prorate Act of 1933 had established special marketing programs for agricultural commodities to restrict competition and raise prices for producers. Porter Brown, a raisin packer, sued W.B. Parker, the California Director of Agriculture, charging, among other things, that the California statute violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Supreme Court disagreed: “We find nothing in the language of the Sherman Act or in its history which suggests that its purpose was to restrain a state or its officers or agents from activities directed by its legislature. . . . The Sherman Act makes no mention of the state as such, and gives no hint that it was intended to restrain state action or official action directed by a state.” States are thus exempt from federal antitrust law, even though California’s agricultural producers would certainly have been in violation had they made a private agreement to restrict production and increase prices.

The result of that 1943 Supreme Court case is that government has been allowed to monopolize as an anti-trust entity against the public without fear of ramifications.  In the case of public schools, property owners have no choice but to pay for the public school that happens to be in their district, as designated by government—the state.  The state created a monopoly status for these public education institutions to ensure their continued funding regardless of performance because there is little to no competition against them.  This allows public schools like Lakota to continue to raise the prices of their service as no other competition exists to drive down their per pupil costs except for other public schools also set up with monopoly status and protected by the state under the “state action” exemption.

In a just world where the courts pursued “fairness” this practice would be highly illegal.  But the courts are not intent on justice.  They are intent on protecting such monopolies for their own preservation as even the courts are part of the monopoly process.  They too are protected from cleaver lawyers by the “state action” exemption, and are free to provide support to the anti-trust practices of government—particularly public schools like Lakota.  Lakota and their fellow public schools are every bit as guilty of anti-trust practices as the railroads of 1890 provoking the creation of the Sherman Act in the first place, as statism philosophy in government desired to control the capitalism being unleashed by the industry tycoons of the era.

For the protection of private business and residents who pay the taxes there needs to be a version of the Sherman Act introduced that protects society from the monopolies of public education.  Personally, I don’t believe there should have ever been a Sherman Act—that the government overstepped it’s boundaries upon its creation.   But as the current Supreme Court looks upon the case-law of the like–1943 Parker v. Brown case, they provide a way out for prosecuting their fellow public workers with anti-trust.  Such excuses for statism need to be removed.  If the government can prosecute industry for anti-trust violations than private interests should be able to prosecute the government with the same intention—to influence competitive options and supposedly keep costs down to the consumer.

The solitary reason that costs are out-of-control in public education institutions like Lakota is because they are monopolies.  They are functioning anti-trusts protected by government to eliminate competition which drives up their costs against the communities they supposedly serve.  For the protection of all tax payers, anti-trust legislation should be brought to fruition protecting all against the violations of monopoly status in public education.  If the Sherman Act exists to prosecute businesses supposedly guilty of anti-trust, then a new act needs to be created so that future Supreme Courts do have the language to prosecute public sector interests that is operating as an anti-trust—such as public education.

Lakota in 2013 is seeking a new levy and they expect that nobody will question the merit of their tax demands.  They can issue any financial information to the public they wish and we are stuck with the results because there is no competition.  If a property owner has possession of a business or residence near the Lakota school system, they must pay taxes to the public school because of their monopoly status and lack of competition mandated by the school.  When Lakota states that they have done everything they can to save money and in order to continue being a good school, they must have more money; they make those kinds of comments knowing that they have no competition to prove otherwise.  Private schools and neighboring schools are not competition when they are not working to solicit the business of the same student base and when it comes to public education at Lakota it is not Lakota East against Lakota West regarding finances.  One does not try to outperform the other in a race to perform the best service for the lowest cost.  The reality is that Lakota as a district is under the control of a monopoly.  Their costs are driven by a labor union and that group does not want ANY competition.  Their mandates are created by politicians, not the free market.  They are the worst kind of anti-trust there is, and it is criminal that they are allowed to exist as monopolies under different rules than what the private sector witnesses.  If there were any justice, Lakota and all public schools would be prosecuted as monopolies by the federal government with the same fanfare that was shown against the railroads, Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, or Microsoft.   The trouble is the prosecutors would be the same people who built the current monopolies, the public workers who are the employees, lawyers and politicians who built the public education system.  With the same vigor that the government proved in court that Rockefeller and the other “monopolists” who fell victim to the Sherman Act would not do the right thing and allow fairness in the marketplace, the public workers will not regulate themselves—so they must be made to do so with law—or some other method.  To stand as an illegal entity with the backing of the federal government to impose their will against the tax payer as a monopoly is simply unconscionable.

For more on this issue read about it extensively at the links below:

http://apps.americanbar.org/dch/committee.cfm?com=AT320250

http://www.byupoliticalreview.com/?p=192

http://reason.org/news/show/1013238.html

Rich Hoffman

 www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

Give yourself the gift of ADVENTURE.  CLICK HERE!