Month: September 2014

How to be a Great Parent: The importance of mentors through leadership

If there is one skill that I have which is strongest, and most valuable, it is that of mentoring—or providing leadership.  I’ve had that ability virtually from the first breath I’ve ever taken.  When I was younger I naturally knew what the next possible action of every situation was, but I often respectfully wasn’t presumptuous enough to disrespect the older generation who thought it was their job to provide leadership.  So I yielded a lot to their failures and figured that I’d just fix things when they were out-of-the-way eventually.  Part of the reason for that decision was that I have always believed it is best to allow people to arrive at conclusions on their own and that the leadership provided by me was to point the flashlight where they needed to go empowering them to take possession of their own destinies.  It is not good to have vanity in such an activity where others feel they owe you gratitude for showing them the way.  A good leader should leave the smallest footprint possible so that the minds affected feel that they arrived at a destination on their own—therefore getting their buy-in as individuals.  Of all the leadership roles that are most important in the human race, the relationship between parent and child is the most important—so naturally I have always been a great parent to my children.  But I’ve never sought to beat them over the head with my parenting ability, but rather allowed them to carve out their individuality based on their own predilections.  The results have been spectacular of course and highly unusual by social standards.  Of all my kids, some who are biologically connected to me, and those who come in by marriage—they are all unique.  However, my oldest daughter has put herself out there a bit and is emerging as one of the best photographers in the Cincinnati area doing many weddings and coverage shoots for expensive real-estate.  For those who are curious, here is my oldest daughter providing a sampling of her outlook on life which obviously makes me very proud.

I never look at those types of things and reflect of my input into helping to shape her.  It was my leadership ability which helped pull out of her way the obstacles that might otherwise encumber her, and to show her what could be achieved.  Since I don’t practice the social evasion of a second-hander there is no secret yearning for public recognition for doing a wonderful job as a parent—not even within our own family structure. The reason is that those receiving mentorship by me should arrive at their destinations on their own merit taking possession of their lives individually without the vanity of public recognition.  No other person, particularly those un-enlightened oafs lacking direction, has the right to take credit for a person’s destiny.  There should never be a temptation from one to another to say, “I made you what you are.”  To do such a thing is to rob from the recipient of your leadership the right to declare their own life for themselves—and thus all decisions which trickle from them in the thereafter.

In this next clip my kids took my grandson on a day trip for no other reason than just to give him the experience.  They left after breakfast and drove across the state for a day of adventure and were back before dinner.  It was the kind of thing that most people never attempt—because they have such poor time management in their lives, they don’t even provide the effort.  When my kids were little children, I always provided them with similar adventures which squeezed everything out of life that there was available—because it is always in those efforts that the gold nuggets of existence reside.  As a leader you never quite know where or when those nuggets might turn up or in what quantity.  What you do know is that the treasures are hidden off the normal path of life and that if mankind wants some of that treasure that they have to step off the paved roads we are all taught to stay on to find them.  I taught my kids to look for treasure off the main roads—and as adults they have done just that.  I can’t take credit therefore for their wonderful lives—they own the right to their decisions and how they spend their time and energy.  So it gives me great pride to see them take my grandson on a simple adventure designed specifically to his age and ability knowing that what they are doing is providing leadership to the young man—which will empower him to wonderful things during his lifetime.

If leadership is done right, it should be as invisible as possible, only recognizable in your absence.  If people don’t learn to do for themselves, they will forever become prisoners of other people’s opinions—which is a chaotic mess of discombobulating thoughts.  If they learn to do for themselves, the potential that is unlocked is endless.  When I was younger I was the hated target of many parents who were doing their jobs incorrectly—and they hated me for the light I shed on their lives which they desperately hoped to conceal.  I was always—and still am—that guy who said to everyone chained to those types of circumstances not to listen to their parents out of obligation or loyalty—but only if they offered leadership that was valuable.    Don’t follow their light if they lead you to the doors of a mental prison or the mouth of a lion.  When I was younger I’d say these things but would often not take it to extreme measures because I wasn’t sure back then if my thoughts were correct as experience had not proven my path to be the right one.  However, as an adult I know without any doubt what the correct path is, and no longer feel that I should hold back.  So I don’t.

In a lot of ways this blog is doing the same things I have always done, only it allows me to do it on a larger scale—giving more people access to the types of things I have always said and done.  I offer the elements of this blog as insight into self-empowerment.  It’s the best parenting tactic that there is.  It is one thing to teach a kid not to touch a hot stove by allowing them to come to that awareness on their own.  The lazy method is to put the fear of God into them scolding them upon an attempt.  The proper method is to make them aware of the danger without fear by getting down on the floor with them—at their level so not to rob them of initiative and let them discover through you that the oven is hot by a simple demonstration—by pretending to be burned.  Of course you as the leader would not actually allow yourself to be burned—but you pretend to be so that they can see the pain on your face and equate that experience to something they’d rather not embark on giving them the self-empowerment to make decisions.  Once they learn to observe the conditions of their environment and make value judgments based on reality—you will have shown them how to overcome any obstacle, anywhere, at any time.

My daughter featured in that first video is the type of person that I don’t worry about getting a flat tire in the middle of nowhere—because she can figure out how to get out of that situation.  I don’t worry about people assaulting her—because she has been taught how to think for herself and adapt to the circumstances given to her—even if they are aggressive.   I don’t worry about her making money, because she has been taught how to gather treasure off the paved roads of life and knows what to do with it once she gets it.  I don’t worry about her because she has the ability to provide leadership of her own to others and can do so as an endless stream of motivation.

Parenting should never be like an Academy Award ceremony where all the members of your life turn out to provide recognition for a job well done.  Most of the time it is a completely thankless job—most of the people most affected by it will not have the ability to understand what it is that you’ve done—if a parent does a truly good job, they will likely be the scorn of the family making everyone else feel a level of guilt for their own inadequacies—that’s alright.  Being a leader is a lonely job that must cut through public opinion with the clear sense of direction that comes from the person holding the light—and trusting their ability to find the proper way in the darkness whatever the obstacle.  The best of these leaders do their job without anybody even knowing that they are doing it.  And there is no greater role for the leader than the parent.  It is important not to shatter the confidence of a young person just to exert a feeling of control over another human being—which happens in most relationships between parents and children unfortunately.  Children are treated disrespectfully primarily because the parents are corrupt with the wrong type of thinking.  And those children often grow up to become menaces of society in various forms.  The failure can most of the time be traced back toward parenting failures and severe lack of leadership.

I only used this example of my daughter because it’s hard to know what a real human being is supposed to be like for those who don’t know any.  By social standards my daughter is exceptional.  But to my standards she is normal—and it makes me angry to see so many people surrendering their lives right out of the gate because of the mental restrictions placed upon their lives by poor family leadership.  Most of the world’s problems begin with that very primal concept—the parent/child relationship.  Most of the world’s problems start with poor leadership and a lack of understanding how important self-empowerment is to each and every individual on planet earth.

And for those who want to utilize the services of my daughter—here is how you can find her:

http://brooketownsendphotography.com/

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

White House Activism Against Corporations: A ridiculous argument against inversions

This is what happens when you get activists who think like communists in the White House. I received this email from them recently trying to build a consensus against the American corporation desire to create tax inversions for themselves to avoid the incredibly high corporate tax rates found in North America.  This is also what happens when corporations are demonized by a political class who wishes to believe that everyone underneath them is in the “middle class” and willingly submits to their gross miss management of national resources.  What the idiots who wrote the below letter conveniently forget is that it was they who spent too much money—not corporate desire to hang on to the profits they’ve earned that is the cause of the problem.  Read their ridiculous utterances here:

Here’s What Inversions Are Costing Us

You don’t get to pick your tax rate. Neither should corporations.

That’s why, earlier this week, the Treasury Department took initial steps to prevent U.S. corporations from using a tax maneuver to avoid paying taxes in America. This loophole — known as an “inversion” — lets a company avoid taxes by relocating their tax residence overseas while changing very little else about its operations or business.

And it’s costing Americans nearly $20 billion over the next decade — critical dollars that could grow and expand the middle class.

Take a look at why we are taking action to close the inversion tax loophole — then share it with everyone who needs to know.Inversions

Notice what type of presidents were in the White House during the periods of time shown on the graph.  Big government socialist types as opposed to conservatives.  When the White House says that it will cost $20 billion in lost revenue over the next decade what they really mean is that they have already promised too much money through mismanagement to future endeavors that cannot be paid for but through higher rates of taxation.  This is the same lunacy that comes from public school mismanagement when they sneak through school levies to pay for unfunded desires—like inflated wages, elaborate buildings, and ridiculously wonderful benefits packages.  What they all have in common is that they are government enterprises built by government minds that spend too much money so to remain in power—then expect tax payers to cover their costs out of some patriotic obligation.

No…………..

What this is called ladies and gentlemen is “mismanagement” of tax payer resources—not obligatory sacrifices to strengthen a middle class of subjects worshiping the feet of the political class.  When they say this “is what inversions are costing us” they don’t mean……”us” as in you, me, rich and poor—they mean the political class who desires under a socialist mentality to rule over everyone else.  They also want a blank check to waste as much tax payer money as possible then expect payment by their subjects without complaint.  But to make matters worse, because corporations don’t have the ability to vote except through lobby power—the government targets them to pay a disproportionate amount of corporate tax by demonizing them into compliance.  However, corporations in this new international trading system that the government so proudly sponsored is voting with their feet and leaving America for oversea tax shelters to protect themselves from a grubby government desiring to steal all the profits gained through production.  This is the inversion process that the White House is complaining about and rather than deal with the problem they caused they are using email activism to attempt and build an argument of democracy against corporations to protect the financial burdens they already committed America to through mismanagement to pay.

These same fools in government almost in the very next sentence promise that they want to create jobs—yet their proposal is to create more government positions paid for by tax payers forgetting that the only real jobs that directly contribute to the GDP of a nation come from corporations and small businesses.  They neglect to inform anyone that it is their mismanagement that is not only spending too much money, but also pushing jobs out of America making unemployment un-naturally high.  Government is the cause of both problems.

It is truly arrogant for a political class to assume that nobody sees what they are up to, yet there it is directly from the White House to my email inbox.  They are that audacious to complain about the life blood of the American economy—corporations—then promise jobs to people was if they had them tucked away in their back pocket like a condemn intended for use in a whore house.  They are that ridiculously foolish.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Corrupt Politics Behind Lakota’s Boys and Girls Club West Chester: The exploitation of children to fulfill fantasies of vanity

The essence of the Boys and Girls Clubs across America is really an excuse for altruistic latté sipping prostitutes to bath themselves in perfume and take selfies at award dinners to celebrate their bailout of failed parenting and offerings of all day babysitting services to families too busy and ignorant to perform the task of mentoring for their own children.   In spite of the hoards of celebrities which participate in commercials for the Boys and Girls Clubs, the basic message of the organization is that parents fail at raising children and that there is a social safety net out there to catch all those lost children who would otherwise fall through the cracks of civilization.  The idiocy of the message is that an alliance with government schools will somehow miraculously overcome bad parenting and make children complete citizens who will then grow up and “serve” their communities.  Needless to say, I think the whole premise is a bad idea.  So it should come as no surprise that I’m against the one that is being built in West Chester, Ohio in partnership with Lakota schools, which can be seen at the two articles below, one from the Journal News, the other from me where I break down the essence and politics of the deal telling the behind the scenes story of how that ridiculous endeavor came to be and who the personalities involved are.

http://www.journal-news.com/news/news/lakota-looking-to-lease-land-to-new-boys-girls-clu/nhSHs/

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2014/06/26/the-emperor-of-aldersonville-lakota-becomes-the-new-clothes/

However, the focus of this present article should be on the strategy of the Lakota superintendent Karen Mantia—as I am in a unique position to tell the story—which of course she will deny when pressed—but actions always do speak louder than words.  Karen when she was hired and overpaid by Lynda O’Conner, current Vice President of the Lakota school board, came to Lakota to pass school levies.  Up until that point Lakota residents had a strong resistance against tax increases proposed by the school.  So she set to do as she had in Pickerington, Ohio, to unite the business community and get their buy-in to her school system—as school superintendents like to see themselves as CEO’s who run vast corporations.  Coming to Lakota she sought to convert members of the opposition from No Lakota Levy—my group—into her way of thinking but first she had to know the political lay of the land.  She met with us and she and I had a nice conversation about my motorcycle and recent trip to Key West.  She was smooth and unassuming and made my partners believe that she had a head on her shoulders and that she just might approach school business with a mind to savings.

However, what Karen knew and discovered during that meeting, and through subsequent dinners through Lynda O’Conner with members of my No Lakota Levy group was that the builders and developers who were a part of the tax resistance were scorned by the school and not getting any work.  After all, Lakota schools is one of the largest employers in Butler County so it is hard to be in the business of developing things when you are on the shit list of local government employment group, so some of those members of the No Lakota Levy group wanted to repair their relationship with the school because they needed the work and felt vulnerable being on the wrong side of politics.  Mark Sennett was the first to defect out of pressure applied to him, which was revealed during the summer of 2011 when he misspoke to the media that No Lakota Levy would support a 2012 levy under certain conditions.  Of course I corrected that to the media and Mark was pushed out of the No Lakota Levy group.  Other developer types joined Mark, while others stayed with me.  Mark being a former government employee himself didn’t have strong convictions about things and was a member of No Lakota Levy because his affiliation with me saved him a lot of money in taxes—so we agreed on that much.  But on other matters, his reasons for being a part of the group were not as strong as mine.

During her meeting with No Lakota Levy Karen learned who the leaders of the group where and who the moderates were and quickly went back to the drawing board to figure out how to divide and conquer our group.  I warned our guys that this was her intentions and that she wasn’t such a nice old lady as she seemed.  For that particular election, they listened to me, but after the third levy defeat for which we orchestrated again saving local business owners millions of dollars—they began to feel the heat of being on the political out within the community and wanted desperately to repair their inside relationships for the exclusive purpose of gaining work from Lakota.  As developers, they couldn’t afford a sustained resistance to Lakota’s constant tax requests and Karen knew it.  So she attacked them where they all shared common ground—through the local socialite Patti Alderson.

Karen nurtured a friendship with the West Chester version of Lovey Howell from the Gilligan’s Island television show which cut directly to my No Lakota Levy members, because many were involved in the Community Foundation with her.  After discovering that Karen seemed like a reasonable women—a titan of industry much like herself–Alderson formed an alliance that would continue well into the next two years.  The purpose of this alliance was to pull the business oriented support of No Lakota Levy away from the ideological elements—represented by me.  I warned our members that this was what was going on, and told them that Karen planned to ignore the voters by going for another levy attempt in 2012 during a meeting right before Christmas in 2011.  They held tight for as long as they could, but really could not stand up to Alderson who put a lot of social pressure on them to buckle, because in essence they needed her more than she needed them.

On cue, Karen made her moves and positioned Lakota for an early 2012 levy push for either May or August when everyone was thinking about summer break—a tactic she tried in Pickerington.  Patti put pressure on my No Lakota Levy guys to separate from my radicalism and join the political moderates who were under the thumb of Karen Mantia joined together through the Community Foundation. Sensing the separation, Karen then worked the radical elements of her levy supporters to come after me personally and smear my name leading to the now famous Kroger Survey incident.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.   Reports of the survey came to me from No Lakota Levy supporters who directed me to the website “Yappi Sports,” which naturally infuriated me.  I agreed to a plan by the other No Lakota Levy members who were direct friends with Alderson to help them with a charity type organization called Yes To Lakota Kids.  Originally, we were planning to join Alderson’s group—but since her real objective was not to help kids, but build alliances against No Lakota Levy in favor of Karen Mantia’s efforts—she couldn’t work with me.  So we started our own group which touched off a firestorm of panic.   Immediately school board member Julie Shafer whom I debated on 700 WLW scoured through my articles and pieced together some of the worst things they could find that I had written to smear me publically—because the Yes To Lakota Kids foundation strategically cut too far into Lakota’s turf—which I knew it would all along.  So they had to take action.  I stood by my comments and felt good about it until the No Lakota Levy guys in direct alliance with Alderson left me stranded at the altar.  I knew the temptation was strong from them to end the levy fight, but I didn’t think they would side with her against me—but in the end, the politics of the deal was stronger than friendships and the rest is history.  Because of the damage on both sides—as I was intensely furious about the incident even more so than what caused me to say the things I had said in the first place—a short cease-fire was agreed upon.  Karen took that time to lick her wounds and try a different approach using a strategy of friendliness to counter all the vile things I had said about them.  Lakota spent many thousands of dollars on publicity to re-invent their image, and tried again for a levy in the fall of 2013 which they won by the slightest of margins.  Karen knew she had to try to get the money during a low year of voter turnout, as there weren’t any big state or national races on the ticket—otherwise she might not get another chance until 2015.  At the rate of spending Lakota already needs to try for another levy in 2017—so her time to take her one and only shot was in the fall of 2013.  My old friends and I joined together once again to resist the levy, but without me in the formal role of spokesmen—the effort failed.  I was better working in front of the scenes than behind and among them they couldn’t find anybody else to do the job the way I had.

I did what I had to do shortly after the levy passage to reduce my tax burden to absorb the cost of the levy, because I simply wasn’t going to spend the extra dollars out of my pocket to pay Lakota.  But for the rest of the members, who sided with Patti, they now have a substantially higher rate of tax to pay because of their wishy-washy behavior and failure to stand for their convictions—which leads us to this whole Boys and Girls Club at the old Union Elementary school.  What’s in the deal for Alderson—she gets to attend more dinners that worship her wealth as spotlights will douse her with attention—which she desperately seeks.  Karen gets a partner to support her in the next levy attempt as Patti pulls a lot of the local Republicans off their small government positions and into her fold just because of the wealth and political influence she commands. The local levy supporters get a free babysitting service so that they can feel the lack of guilt from being such sucky disconnected parents and my best friend from the No Lakota Levy days gets to build the whole thing.  He stood up to them for a while, Lynda, Karen, and of course Patti, but in the end he was locked arm and arm with West Chester’s Lovey Howell after the school board meeting finalizing the deal several months ago.  He was finally, conquered by Karen Mantia’s strategy implemented carefully and patiently.

So when people say about the Boys and Girls Club deal that there is corruption involved, now you know dear reader what they are talking about.  The inside deals are voluminous and run to the deepest cores of politics in Butler County.  Karen came to Lakota paid by O’Conner to do just this kind of divide and conquer tactic—but what all these elements have in common is their exploitation of children to commit the deeds.  Lakota routinely does this to gain money and leverage for their collective bargaining contracts, but in essence the Boys and Girls Club is no different.  They use children and the unfortunate victims of bad parenting to bath themselves in vanity for self recognition that has its roots in their personal religious outlooks.  Children and their misfortunes by all these parties are continuously exploited for the gains of adults who deep down inside want to be adored and loved by the masses for reasons that trace back to their own childhoods and the failures associated there.  That is why when the next levy is attempted by Lakota it won’t be the old cast of characters from No Lakota Levy this time—it will be a much more ideologically driven base that stands in defiance.  I knew what Karen was up to all along, because it takes one to know one, and I am well at work on the next campaign against them and will not again be vulnerable to wavering souls driven only by tax savings and not rooted in firm convictions.

Rich Hoffman   www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

“Fat Han” in X-wing Miniatures: “I’m in it for the money”

When I participated in my first tournament for X-wing Miniatures I was still learning all the rules—but knew enough to build a squad of ships that would be competitive against even the most seasoned players. However, when I revealed my squad to my opponents, they immediately assumed that my use of Han Solo on the Millennium Falcon which encompassed a point build of 55 points out of 100 meant that I was a rookie player who did not trust my piloting ability. The Falcon fires in a 360 degree arc as most of the other ships fire in a 90 degree arc coming off the front of their ship. Most seasoned tournament players at the time if they did use the YT-1300 were using Chewie or Lando and using two B-wings or some other assortment of support ship to save points. Nobody was using Han, which made no sense to me. He was after all one of the highest pilot rating cards in the game and he has a wonderful re-roll ability that makes him very powerful. His card on the Millennium Falcon looked to my eyes to be one of the most powerful combinations in the game, and I thought it would be crazy not to use him in a tournament.

Well, about three months later some of the best X-wing players in the world used almost the same build at the Nationals played at Gen-Con 2014. In reaction to the new TIE Phantoms released at the end of June 2014 a new type of Rebel build called “Fat Han” emerged in the meta game to deal with the incredible maneuverability and fire power of the new Empire faction ships. In fact Paul Heaver who is the current world champion used nearly the same build as I had to climb into the top four at the nationals.

I never published my build anywhere and Paul and I never spoke—yet to his experienced eyes he picked that particular build to deal with the new elements coming into the X-wing game. And he wasn’t alone at the nationals; there were many other top players who were flying “Fat Hans” in competitive play which changed the game for the better. It is doubtful that Paul Heaver received the same sideways glances that I did when I placed my YT-1300 on the board. I was a newbie, Paul was a seasoned champion. But it made me feel good to see that even in a game where I am not comfortable with all the rules and certainly lack the experience of that kind of competitive play, that I’m able to fairly quickly jump in and identify trends that are out on the edge and not yet fashionable.

This was an important observation as I spend a great deal of time pointing out trends that are coming as opposed to the ones that currently exist. If the ability is gained, it can be applied to virtually everything in life even in areas where others are much more proficient. The “Fat Han” builds are now the complaint of the X-wing Miniatures world because of their extreme effectiveness and they will continue for some time until something else knocks them off in the months to come. But for me the experiment was very telling, and useful.

I left my tournament feeling like I could have done better and that I was close to something big as far as a strategy. The other players were so polished and knew their stuff—citing the rules from top to bottom quickly and were certainly at the top of their game. So I thought there might have been something to their complaints about using Han Solo and the Falcon in such a way as I was. But as it turned out, the best X-wing players in the game soon after turned to the very same strategy because the meta game pointed tactics in that direction. What I’m proud of is in seeing the trend before it occurred. Part of it is that I have a personal preference toward the Millennium Falcon, but when all the cards are looked at, it is beyond refute that the YT-1300 is by far one of the best tactical pieces in the game and that it should be included in any Rebel build.

I know much more about X-wing Miniatures now than I did during my first tournament, and I will know a lot more in a year than I do now. But the trend of seeing strategies and cycles beyond the curve of orthodox thinking is something I have been able to maintain even when others knew a great deal more about something than I did. It’s not some magic act, but simply a confirmation that Robert Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality strategies are employable on every level of endeavor, even in gaming. I do pretty well in life staying in front of the curve of social trends in most everything I do—even leisure. So it was fun to feel the scorn of the X-wing community—even though it was friendly jousting at the time—then find just a few months later that the entire meta game is moving in that direction.

I remember what it was like when I was a kid and I was the one who loved Star Wars above all the other social trends that were occurring at the time. It was considered very “uncool” to like the science fiction epic publicly. But I knew at the time—even as a very young kid, that there was something unusual about the stories and that the values conveyed in them had meaning beyond the social trends of the time. Now, 30 plus years later Star Wars fever is everywhere even to the extent that drones have been flying over the filming locations looking for a hint at the storyline. The only people now who think Star Wars is “uncool” are the backwards thinking lost in time souls who can’t identify with the values of the stories. They are people stuck in the past—in the policies of the New Deal, and progressive utterances inspired from the pages of Karl Marx.

I have a shirt that I like to wear when playing X-wing Miniatures with Han Solo on the front of it—not unlike the kind of shirts I used to wear as a 9-year-old kid that says, “I’m in it for the money.” It is a very capitalist message and I first saw it in Hollywood Studios, Florida while coming off the Star Tours ride. I was surprised that Disney did not filter that pro capitalist message as there are many progressive executives who work for the large entertainment company. But, Han Solo is an unequivocal capitalist—an Ayn Rand type of capitalist in the Star Wars saga and he is one of the most popular characters there is. In fact, while downloading the new Star Wars game Commander onto my iPad I noticed that the characters on their load screen featured Han Solo, not Luke Skywalker because Disney knows where the money comes from in the series. It’s not the altruistic Luke Skywalker that people want to emulate; it is the capitalist Han Solo. This is a trend which will increase now that Star Wars is socially cool—altruism is out, capitalism is in.

That capitalist philosophy has spilled over into the X-wing game as the designers were careful not to weaken the message when designing the Han Solo game card. If played right, a “Fat Han” build can take being shot by opponents while dealing consistent damage during an entire match. It’s a very capitalist build and I think that the hatred for the build early in the game meta can be traced back to the fact that so many people are trained from their educations to hate capitalism. But—the meta of the game has moved by need of competition to utilize “Fat Han” builds just as the new Star Wars films and television shows soon will do the same on an epic level under Disney’s care. They know there in the hallowed halls of “Mouse Town” that capitalism is the key to social order and I could see that emergence as far back as the release of that Han Solo shirt featured at Hollywood Studios. We’re all in it to win, we’re all in it for the money—and that is why “Fat Han” builds have risen to popularity and why capitalism will emerge triumphant from 2020 to 2030 in ways that have never been seen before.image

I’m so sure of it that I’d bet everything I have. With the same assurance that I built a “Fat Han” build in X-wing Miniatures during a time when it was considered too novice-like to even think of bringing it to a tournament—I can see that capitalism will crush socialism under the care of the Disney handling of the Star Wars franchise. Some people may bellyache and complain, but the trend is already emerging. I can see it as plain as a sun in the noon day sky on a cloudless day around the equator. It’s so bright that it burns. Meanwhile, I have to change my tactics to stay competitive. “Fat Han” will no longer work because everyone is using it. So my new build is something I’m called “Dashing Han” which is more akin to how the Falcon actually flew with Han Solo at the controls. It is very difficult to fly, but should provide an advantage that will last a while. Because the name of the game is to always stay out in front of the meta.

Rich Hoffman   www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

The College Menace: University of Boston stupidity

So much has been said over the years of the value of a college education—as if just by attending some institution of higher learning that it naturally equated to intelligence. Well—that myth has been busted more than once over the last decade. College graduates continue to show well into their adulthoods that they have been taught not to think—not how to—and are lacking a very basic understanding of the world and how it works. This is the fault of the education institutions themselves for marketing a product which has turned out to be a complete scam. Colleges have not lived up to their promises but instead seem to have regressed society due to the overly liberal leanings of most of the employees at the hallowed halls of academia.   This has never been clearer than in a recent random sampling of the Boston University students exhibited on a Jessie Waters segment of Fox News. Waters asked the college students there what they thought about the terror group ISIS, which has dominated news headlines for several months—and these were their answers.

A society cannot succeed if people are educated in such an inept fashion. The college kids in that segment are a pretty good sampling of the type of average college kids on any campus in America. I should know, I spent a year living on campus at the University of Cincinnati and got to know well all the layers of life at that particular college from the frat houses to the Alumni association parties. Every college is similar, and produces the type of people shown in the Waters’ World segment above. Democracy—which is so advocated by the political left requires some intellectual curiosity to succeed, but as seen by the sampling of college students at Boston, that curiosity is non-existent. The young people don’t possess any—let alone some.

This is a failure of the blind trust that society has placed in these institutions to do what they promised with the vast amounts of money which has been given to them. What they’ve done is waste it and teach instead liberal philosophy and social collectivism—and spent the rest on parties and opulence. The by-product of this behavior has built a nation of fools in America lacking basic common sense and intellectual aptitude leaving the concept of a democracy completely open to liberal take-over from within.

Stupidity is what is celebrated at such colleges like Boston University. Nobody wants to be that guy at a party who knows who ISIS is, or who the president currently is—because the culture at colleges celebrates ignorance, not intelligence. It is more popular to be the girl passed out on a floor with her face in her own puke being gang raped by those still standing than the book-worm know-it-all who is up to date on current events and could answer all of Jessie Waters’ comments fluently. The result of that value system is what we see today—a society of fools following other fools over an intellectual cliff which allows a bunch of knuckle dragging imbeciles like ISIS to look like a valiant fighting force.

Those same college kids will grow up unprepared to vote correctly, purchase groceries, or create businesses. It is no accident that many entrepreneurs are in fact college drop-outs instead of those who graduate at the top of their class. Most likely in a free society like America the valedictorian will end up being the assistant to the drop-out who starts and runs most businesses. But the valedictorian in most cases will not be the one to start anything from scratch as they have been taught to follow orders, not to give them from the perspective of vision. They are not taught to see, they are only taught to feel—which is a direct attribute to their college educations. This is the reason that even with all the news about ISIS, most college kids have no idea what is going on half way around the world.   If ISIS were involved in a song discussed in popular culture college kids would know all there was to know about them, because music invokes feelings. But when the situation involves just raw data, knowledge of history, and general philosophy—they are completely lost.

I’ve said it many times—why do we support this public menace called colleges? Is it because we like the sports programs that often come from them, or because we remember the fun parties we had when we were in school? Because colleges are ineffective as learning institutions and do very little to create complete individuals—they are only good for building recruits for liberal viewpoints. Colleges take public money from tax payers and they take vast amounts of American savings accounts in the form of tuition—but for what—so kids can grow up and know nothing?

It is time to consider other options. Because the college path is all but useless and if it is continued will lead to the end of civilization—not the further advance of it. The terrorists of ISIS are in all reality only discombobulated religious radicals not unlike the KKK which used to operate openly in the American south. But they appear to be a superior fighting force when society fails to identify the value of their assaults and in the case of today’s college kids—they don’t even know that ISIS exists—let alone know what to do about them. And that greatly strengthens the enemy—not quells the emotions of radicalism. Colleges have made America weak—and the folly of those attributes is the fault of the education institutions themselves. They own the condition of modern youth and all the stupidity that follows. So it is time to give that responsibility to the proper owners and let the rectification begin for a new way of obtaining knowledge that is not controlled by a liberal viewpoint driven by government preservation.

Rich Hoffman   www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

William Schmidt’s Lakota School Intrusion: The outragious expectations of public sector unions

Lately I haven’t written much about my home school district of Lakota and their runaway budgets dictated by collective bargaining agreements and radical union collectivist philosophy—because honestly I have said much of everything that can be said. It’s been a while since reports of teachers seducing students, and pornography driven nut cases trying to turn their elementary school classes into third world brothels occurred. So Lakota has kept their act pretty clean and have actually tried to manage their budget within the limits that the law imposes. So I haven’t written much about them as it is a tired subject.

However, I did receive the below note from a union radical who has taken notice of Lakota’s attempt at some management of their train wreck salary structure. The disaster isn’t in the lack of pay, but in being too highly committed to mediocre employees. It is that salary structure which causes the need for tax increases so Lakota has been trying to make plans going into the future that will avoid becoming too top-heavy in salary obligations. After the last levy passage in 2013 just a few months later raises were handed out like candy just like I always said they would be—and people learned too late who was telling them the truth all along. But to avoid those kinds of criticisms in the future Lakota as a management team has made some meager attempts to get the situation under control as the next projected levy increase is set for 2017. Those financial burdens are caused by unreasonably high salary structures. But for the pro union crowd—even those radicals not even part of the Lakota district they see such attempts as a threat to their state-wide collective bargaining extortion racket leaving one to write the following to me:

Rich,

I am sure you are thrilled with the way that Lakota is systematically freezing out their employees on the vertical advancement on the salary scale.  In fact, why does Lakota even print a vertical scale?  If a teacher was hired in 2011, they would still be at step 1 on the scale.  At this rate, no newly hired teacher will ever achieve the top of the salary chart.  Did YOU write this part of the memorandum of understanding?  It smacks of a teacher bashing slant.

 

I will be offering my advice to newly hired teachers soon.  Guaranteed that it will include a provision not to make any additional effort to improve instruction beyond what they brought to the district when hired.  To the newly hired teachers, I would advise “work to the contract” as far as hours served until step increases are reestablished.  Unless step increases are reestablished, there is no reason to put forth an extra effort.

William Schmidt

In that letter Schmidt feels entitled just because of his affiliation with a collective bargaining agreement through the state union to impose himself into the local management of tax dollars in the district of Lakota. His intentions are just one example of how such outside people lobby and manipulate the situation to cause local problems due to state-wide collective desire—to see chaos and political ineptitude in regard to public school finance. People like Schmidt want uncontrolled budgets and when they don’t get them they actually encourage teachers to do less.

For every teacher who claims that they are in the profession to help children, people like William Schmidt expose the real desires in the teaching profession. There is no question that there are some who would give their left arm to teach children—but they are rare. Most teachers simply use children as cover fire for their greedy desire for social respect and high wages doing as little as possible to earn them. Most teachers are not worth $60,000 per year to be glorified baby sitters, yet according to William Schmidt if teachers do not reach that high destination within a the union standard time—he is encouraging them to do even less—as if that were possible.

There aren’t many professions these days which allow adults to show up for work at 6:30 or 7:00 AM and leave around 4 PM and make such high salaries. Sure they take home some work to do, which might encompass a few hours per night while they watch television on the couch—but for those who claim to be following their “calling” in helping children, that kind of work shouldn’t be work at all. And here is a union radical openly telling teachers to do less than they already do unless they get paid on a step-increase scale that the state union supports. Such a proposal takes the local management of their district completely out of the equation which is the real desire of William Schmidt.

This is yet another example of how outside radicals inject themselves into the affairs of a government locality to attempt wrecking the budgets tax payers are expected to support. These types of radical correspondences in activism are left undetected by the local media and avoided completely in public dialogue—yet they are one of the most pronounced elements that cause inflated wages in public schools all over the country. The assumption is that all teachers are equal just because they are in the profession instead of graded on performance and that is detrimental because it sets in the minds of children a presumption that the rest of the world operates the way that William Schmidt wishes. Unfortunately they learn too late that the world does not function this way—only government labor unions expect such insanely foolish proposals. And that is what is behind William Schmidt’s grief stricken diatribe against Lakota schools. When it is wondered who is pulling the strings behind the scenes to cause teachers to become radicalized despots—look no further than collectivist radicals like William Schmidt.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

A Temple of Mythology: The Rebel Aces Expansion

imageFor the sheer joy of it, I like to take some time out to relish each new release of X-Wing Miniatures particularly when it involves the Rebels.  My new mediation chamber regarding that game is currently located in my basement which is permanently set-up so that I can play Star Wars: Miniatures any time I want.  I often go to my Star Wars room and sit for hours and hours working out various strategies and mission scenarios because it relaxes my mind.  I enjoy just looking at the models and their complicated paint schemes and browsing through all the cards that make the game so interesting.  For a good part of a year I kept the game packed up in various containers which had to be set up on large tables whenever we wanted to play.  But now, it just stays up and I come and go at will which is refreshing.  The game is interesting enough to use a room for such a thing and it is quickly becoming my favorite place in my house.

The new release from Fantasy Flight Games which I am quite excited for is the Rebel Aces expansion pack which features a custom painted B-wing and an A-wing.  There are a couple of new pilots namely Jake Farrell, Keyan Falander who are interesting, but what is best about Rebel Aces is the A-wing Test Pilot card and the Chardaan Refit which allows for eliminating missile tubes to save some point cost in using an A-wing in a combat listing.  I currently don’t use A-wings very much because of their lack of firepower, but with the two mentioned cards, I may well consider it.  Probably the most interesting part of these new expansions are the missions that come with them.  With Aces it is a mission called “Jump to Subspace” which features a rebel operative who has captured a high-ranking Moff.  This operative and his captive also happen to be adrift within an escape pod headed toward an asteroid field.  As imperial forces close in on the escape pod, the Rebel Alliance races to the rescue, relying upon the agility of its A-wing and resilience of its B-wing.

It’s in those X-wing Miniatures missions that I find so much compelling drama that is every bit as interesting as a novel.  The big difference is that the game requires your input whereas the novel is a passive experience.  So spending time at my gaming table has for me become similar to reading books, only I love the tactical strategy involved—and with every new release from Fantasy Flight Games, new variations come into the game which have to be figured out.  Rebel Aces as talked about in the Team Covenant video above is essentially a way to dust off the A-wing into new use now that the game has matured.

It’s a fun time to be a Star Wars fan, not only do I have the daily ability to now play X-wing Miniatures but coming up on Friday is the new Star Wars: Rebels premier movie on the Disney Channel.  I have  been proclaiming this as a game changer in entertainment media because it will be, just as Fantasy Flight Games has taken the Miniatures game and exploded it into this exciting new game which I can spend endless amounts of time contemplating in the privacy of my basement.  The makers of that new series are essentially guys like myself who played with all those old toys as a kid and are now applying that kind of play to the real world of their adult lives.  Kids watching the new Rebels show will then grow up with an even greater hunger for that kind of thing than I did—which is a positive.

Growing up I had a similar space in the basement of my childhood home and I often spent entire weekends down there playing with Star Wars toys and as I become older—building Star Wars models.  When I hit driving age my parents felt I needed my own room in the basement so they finished it off which meant that my Star Wars set-up had to come down.  They figured that I was big enough and it was time to out-grow that kind of thing as if it were a pacifier for a baby.  But that space meant more to me than they realized and once the Star Wars set-up was destroyed and boxed up I pretty much left home.  I immediately started traveling all over the country on wild adventures because the kind of imagination generation that I had been conducting in my basement no longer filled that void and I had to fill it with something.  It had been my favorite place in the entire world and looking back on it, it was just a bunch of plastic, cloth, cardboard and glue.  But it was a realm of endless imagination for me, and I simply relished it.

The popularity of the X-wing Miniatures game today is likely due to the fact that there are other people who feel that way about those types of things as I do.  I am much happier now that I have a permanent set-up for that type of thinking.  I was up at 3:30 AM on Saturday trying to get my CR-90 through an asteroid field dotted with Imperial mines all while being attacked by hoards of Imperial fighters and I had no idea that it was so late.  The world was doing whatever it was doing outside, but I was happy to be enjoying the drama of strategy.  Of course when I do return to the world from that place of fantastic mediation, I feel fresh to solve real problems so it is an enhancement to my life instead of a distraction.  Some people have model trains in their basements; I have Star Wars—thankfully.

There are many things to feel negative about, but it is good to have a sanctuary where your mind can get away from the pressure and be itself.  For me a space in the basement dedicated to my favorite mythology is the ticket, for others it may be the garage or the kitchen—but regardless of where or what it is, it is good to have one.  For me, with all the exciting Star Wars news coming out constantly, this new expansion called Rebel Aces is more than a pleasure; it is an enhancement to my life.  I’m really looking forward to it which I intend to pick up by the weekend.  I will likely celebrate the upcoming Friday by watching Star Wars: Rebels on Disney, then playing X-wing until the sun comes up—and for me—the world will be just perfect in that little corner of my imagination personified by my personal temple of mythology.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Cabela’s and Bass Pro Shops of West Chester: Thank George Lang and Mark Welch

Capitalism is creativity—the ability of entrepreneurs to bring ideas to market for people to enjoy.  So I often find great enjoyment in regions of the country where capitalism is on grand display and these days the corridor along I-75 just north of Cincinnati, Ohio has all the trappings of one of the finest developments in the world.  I personally enjoy the stores of the Cincinnati Outlets in Monroe, the Comic book/gaming store Nostalgic Ink at the very next exit to the south, and the book stores and restaurants at Union Center Blvd—of which Aladdin’s and Jags are my favorites.  There are of course plenty of government workers in this region that loot off the efforts of entrepreneurs, particularly the local government school, but generally, it is the conservative hands-off government of Butler County that has allowed these developments to emerge so robustly.  But there are few developments which excite me as much as the announcements from West Chester that two giant superstores of outdoor apparel, Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s are both opening over the next couple of years.  For most communities these types of giant outdoor stores are destination shopping experiences, meaning they are worthy of vacations just to visit one of the stores.  People do purchase plane tickets to visit these types of retail outlets wherever they might luckily be in the nation.  But in West Chester—because of the demographic population which has excellent per capita income, and the type of very pro capitalist government running the show—both giant retailers are dumping significant investments into the area which I will enjoy immensely.

I’m not crazy about the public funding portion of the Liberty Way project, but I am ecstatic about the development and simply cannot wait to see those buildings erected.  I want to attend the movie theater that they are putting there in the worst way.  I simply am excited to see the results.  I was fortunate enough to see the early prints of that development at the beginning phases and have been a fan ever since.  But even better is the 82,000 square foot Cabela’s store which is being built right across from Liberty Center.  That will be one of the most exciting locations of destination shopping in the country—and that includes the Disney World complex off I-4 in south Orlando.  The Voice of America shopping district is already fantastic, but within a few years of this writing, it will be the most exciting place in America to shop and spend suburban leisure time.  The Cabela’s store will just be icing on the cake—a very glorious cake at that!

But…………….that’s not all.  Just down the road to the south is the Streets of West Chester which is at the Union Central Blvd exit.  I spend a lot of time at the Streets.  If you have to take someone to lunch or dinner visiting for business, you simply cannot go wrong at Mitchell’s, Bravo! Cucina Italiana, P.F. Changs, Red Robin or after a late night movie, Steak & Shake which I find myself at a lot more than you’d think.  Barnes and Noble is like a second home to me—especially since Books A Million left Bridgewater Falls just to the west.  I have felt often that the Streets were too small however—and the plan has been for years to expand it to the south in a Phase 2 development.  Well, this is now happening with Bass Pro Shops serving as the anchor located a football throw away from the giant IKEA store located on Allen Road, directly across from the Mercedes Benz dealership.  Can you say it with me?   …………………………aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. The Plan 2 development will be just the needed ingredient missing from the current Streets location which will make that too a destination shopping experience worthy of an out-of-town visit.  The trustees of West Chester George Lang and Mark Welch along with Bruce Jones have created a climate in West Chester conducive to business investment and the area is just exploding with creativity.  I was not a fan of Judith Boyko when she was working for the former trustee president Catherine Stoker—a vile Democrat who greatly limited the kind of creativity currently going on in West Chester with her big heavy-handed government presence.  Now Boyko under new president George Lang is on board with what makes West Chester special saying, “The development of these two new retail locations represents the largest concentration of boutique-like retail amenities in the West Chester area.  These are the type of retail destinations our diverse and sophisticated residents demand, and we expect both to be very successful footholds in our retail fabric.”  YES…….I agree with Boyko!  Jiminy Christmas—it’s about time that somebody gets it—and in West Chester—they do.  Capitalism is the foundation of America and there just aren’t many places where it’s more alive anywhere than in West Chester and other developments along the I-75 corridor.

But Cabela’s and Bass Pro will be a whole new level of excitement and coolness.  My family used to shop at the Bass Pro Shop at its current location in Forest Park, but the area has been mismanaged by local government and it has killed business investment.  The mall there has died and the retail establishments have fallen into a slumber—the local demographic population just cannot support such capitalist creativity—so business moves to where it can grow.  It cannot be managed the way many trustees attempt—but local government must create a climate of capitalism so to attract investment and thus creativity in diverse product offerings.  This will certainly be on full display at Liberty Center, but the Streets of West Chester will emerge as one of the most fabulous examples of such a thing anywhere in the country. Only Downtown Disney in Orlando may rival it in the years to come as for interesting destination shopping and things to do once you get there.  Bass Pro was already set to move into the area before the Cabela’s announcement, but now that they know a competitor is moving in down the road—they are revamping their original plans from something not just great—but ecstatically stupendous.  They are further revising their plans to include more activity based attractions at their new superstore to have a competitive advantage over Cabela’s.

For capitalism, these are exciting times.  The creativity of entrepreneurs is on full display specifically in West Chester but to a larger extent along a 6 mile span of I-75 stretching from Monroe to I-275.  There are not more exciting things happening anywhere than along that span of highway and capitalism is the reason why.  The key is that local political management has embraced free market capitalism as their guiding light, and this is the result.  Overly managed economies have pushed out these types of investments leaving them to retreat to this capitalist zone which is unique in the country.  When capitalism is allowed to grow it can do wonderful things—and in West Chester—it is.  I can’t wait to shop at Cabela’s and the new Pro Bass Shop at The Streets of West Chester.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

A Plane Crash in Liberty Township, Ohio: The pathetic display of the Butler County police

A couple of pilots in a stunt biplane crashed practically into the back yard of one of my children over the weekend killing both aviators in a raging inferno.  I thought most of the people interviewed in the media circus afterward were well-mannered, and even intelligent about the whole issue describing that the plane had been performing stunts and had been engaged in a backward stall never pulling out of the dive that followed.  The plane could have crashed into any of the densely packed homes in the neighborhood behind Wyandot Elementary but somehow the pilot managed to thread a needle flying between two houses before smashing into the ground in a backyard space only clipping away part of a garage.  The pilot had to know that he was going to die at such a speed but had the courage and wherewithal to maintain his cool saving the lives of the people inside.  Given that my kids were in the proximity I’d have every excuse to panic about such a thing—but I never do.  I enjoy those kinds of pilots and love watching them practicing stunts.  I want to see them continue.  If something goes wrong—like it did in this case the pilot did the responsible thing and minimized the damage.  The two pilots ended up burning up beyond recognition but turned a situation that could have been a lot worse into a minimal amount of damage that was pretty easily cleaned up.

However, the display of the police was pathetic.  It looked like every police officer in Butler County was at the scene and they stood around most of the day following the tragedy.  It looked like a beauty pageant of fat-gutted middle-aged men parading around on a catwalk trying to impress the audience with their authority.  The family in the house that was most in danger was eating breakfast and managed to get out of the house after the crash without any help from any authorities.  The fire department showed up within about 5 minutes to put out the fire—which is expected given that Liberty Township has a fire department every couple of miles holding a bunch of public servants always sitting around waiting for something to happen.  In this case they were needed and the danger was averted within 15 minutes of the crash.  But then came the police who showed up on the scene and brought with them a level of panic that was totally uncalled for.

Of course they started putting up blankets so that people surrounding the area couldn’t see the carnage and they quarantined a section of the neighborhood limiting the freedom of the homes not involved in the plane crash.  The entire escapade was entirely self-serving for the police.  It gave them something to do on a Saturday morning in Liberty Township and they seemed to enjoy the heightened drama too much.  Essentially, a plane crashed, the pilot steered away from the danger as best he could.  The fire department put out the fire, and the coroner pronounced the deaths using dental records to identify the victims.  All that was left after was for the FAA to do their investigation and clean up the mess letting the insurance companies cover the damage to the homes so that the residents could get back to their lives.  End of story.  But no, the police had to make the whole scene appear that a new virus had been unleashed upon the earth and that the crash site had become a quarantine zone that aliens might emerge from at any minute.

It was a rather disgusting displaying showing the gross over-employment of police in Butler County.  There were too many at the site leaving the question to be asked—what do they all do when there isn’t a plane crash in the normally quiet community of Liberty Township?  Because at the crash site there wasn’t much to do and they pretty much stood around all day trying to look important.  On a normal Saturday where have all these police been hiding because they certainly aren’t necessary?

The whole crash could have been handled with a handful of government employees, a small investigation team and the coroner.  The rest of the neighborhood could have gotten back to their business of an early weekend morning in the fall within an hour, mowing their grass, cleaning their garages, and living their lives as normal.  The media could have taken their pictures and been done by noon.  Yet the police overdramatized the entire incident making the media even more dramatic standing between photographers and the crash like protective parents securing the serenity of small children not yet ready to see the gross realities of the world.  It was as if we were all small children going to the movies with a panicky parent afraid to let us see images on the screen that were too violent afraid that we’d have bad dreams after.  Their censorship was over dramatized and unnecessary illuminating their useless employment to a great extent.

The crash wasn’t that big of a deal.  Sure people lost their lives, but likely that is the way pilots like that want to leave the world and they did their best with the situation until their last breath.  Likely I have watched the stunts in the sky from that very same pilot many times and enjoyed it—and I’d like to continue to see them from other pilots who often practice flying over Liberty Township using the Butler County Regional Airport as a staging ground.  There is nothing about that crash that would cause me to feel otherwise.  Sometimes bad things happen, but most of the time they don’t—and those times are worth the danger.  But the display of public employees trying to look important at the crash site was grossly evident.  They had the same fake pretension that is seen at fashion shows where 19-year-old girls are dressed up for an evening on the town only to sell cloths to fat, overly stressed women who look nothing like the girls at the show.  The police were only selling an image of security as the danger had already come and gone—but because they had nothing else to do.  They knew the media would flock to the scene, it was a chance for them to look important for the cameras—and that is all they really did.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

China’s Jack Ma: The Capitalism of Jags Steakhouse

There were a lot of great points made by Rush Limbaugh recently when he noted that China’s Jack Ma spewed nearly identical Reganomics sentiments regarding the future of his country’s economy as what came out of the American 1980s.  Ma’s company Alibaba was ridiculously successful when it was a public offering on the New York Stock Exchange making the young man the richest man in China.   Now that rich man wants to help other people become rich in his country with a similar pro capitalist message.  Meanwhile, the wealthy in America have allowed themselves to be scorned by the lazy, ignorant and needy into stagnation.  It wasn’t the Hong Kong Stock exchange or the Beijing financial district which made Ma so wealthy—it was the capitalism of America that did it—yet Americans have fallen into a disservice of that economic system through guilt provided by an education system that teaches the opposite of what Jack Ma proclaims.   Listen to that broadcast with Rush Limbaugh below.

There is no other blame than the American education system for the obvious embrace of socialism over capitalism which has led to the current crises.  I realized how bad it was when I became involved in local school levy issues serving as a spokesman for some of the very rich in my school district.  They were very happy to let me go on the news every few days and represent them to the media becoming the target of countless controversies until I decided I wasn’t going to take a lot of back-talk from those parasites who wanted desperately to tarnish my public reputation. Even that assumption was presumptuous in assuming that even I after all that I had said publicly that I would even accept the progressive definition of things in America and cave in to the pressure of a bunch of rabid feminists regarding school taxes and deficient parenting.  Those same supporters quickly went underground hiding from those progressive terrorists even though many of them had a lot more at stake financially than I did.  Yet they didn’t defend themselves, instead they used charities and other social events to cater favor from the political class to leave their capitalist endeavors alone.  I pointed out to them that this was essentially communism—that they didn’t have to yield to the pressure of a bunch of saggy assed despots and that they didn’t owe them their time and attention.  But there was a fear in their eyes that defied reason and it was in those movements that I realized to what extent socialism had taken hold in America.

The guilt about possessing wealth starts in public school.  During those same school levy campaigns the general philosophy of the pro tax advocates was one much more at home in Jack Ma’s home country of communist China than in the United States and several generations of people have now been trained to believe that their wealth creation efforts are bad unless they give more money to schools, charities and the needy.  But what never gets mentioned in those same schools is the reason that people become needy in the first place.  Capitalism is routinely attacked in public education institutions which is as stupid as attacking the nature of a human heart for beating in a chest.  Capitalism is the heartbeat of the American economy and it needs to be defended not avoided.

One of my favorite local restaurants in West Chester is the Jags Steakhouse.  It is one of the most expensive dining experiences in the city of Cincinnati and offers some of the best food around.  Michelle Brown in 2013 was voted with the best chef award and she deserves it.  What she puts on a plate is sheer art and worth the $30 to $50 dollars it costs to eat there.  A typical dinner for two will cost anywhere from $200 dollars per couple to around $1000 depending on what kind of wine is used during dining.  And of all my visits during all times of a day—during lunch, during dinner rush, or even late in the evening after a movie the restaurant is thumping with business.  The dining rooms are divided up nicely allowing customers to space themselves out in relative privacy.  The staff from the front podium, to the valet parking to the floor management is always spot-on attentive.  But it’s not just the food that I love—it’s the honesty.  Inside the Jags restaurant capitalism is embraced without fear and I often think that places like that should be a model the rest of the world copies, not resents.

But outside of the parking lot of that fine establishment comes the utterances of the jealous.  When the word Jags is mentioned to the typical gas station attendant they think of the movers and shakers of society and there is a bit of scorn in their dialogue.   That scorn is the hatred of pure capitalism and the sometimes crony capitalism where business owners take a member of government to dinner at Jags to win them over to their side of an argument to get some regulation approved that otherwise wouldn’t occur.  The capitalist often believes they must do such things to stay in business—and they also believe that they must toe some line of progressive belief to avoid a boycott against their businesses which is a real shame.  The outside of Jags to those who are more socialist in their political beliefs than capitalist looks menacing and uninviting.  Because of the cost of entry, many don’t even attempt to dine there.  But once inside, those who are willing to pay such prices for food are typically capitalists in some regard or another and at least while they are at Jags—are not afraid to flaunt it a bit.  It is that standard that I think I like the best—there is an expectation of excellence the moment you step into the parking lot and I find it refreshing.  That experience is often worth a $500 meal when a similar experience could be had for under $100 in a rival restaurant.  Chef Michelle Brown is worth that extra margin and the management at Jags unapologetically embraces capitalism making it in my opinion to be the finest place to eat in the Midwest including many of the offerings in Chicago.  What puts that restaurant over the top is its embrace of capitalism and trickledown economics—which is now becoming fashionable in communist China of all places by Jack Ma.

Without America Jack Ma would have been just another penniless dreamer, just as every government worker in the United States would be destitute if not for the taxes looted off American enterprise for jobs created to further the grips of bureaucracy.  The people who make those American enterprises in the Midwest can often be found dining at Jags on any given night and are a cut above the rest in the way they think.  It is good to sit around such people who at least during dinner service are not afraid to flaunt their wealth and excess.  At Jags they are not afraid of reporters quoting them with a socialist slant to their articles and can relax a bit and be themselves.  But it shouldn’t take a nice restaurant to bring this out in them, they should possess that honesty at the grocery, at public meetings, and at the gas station because capitalism is a standard everyone else in the world should be measured against.  It is a bar that people should rise up to meet, not to chastise because they are too lazy to reach up to the challenge.

Capitalism is mostly an invention of America and it needs its protectors.  Limbaugh is right; Jack Ma should not be the most vocal defender in the world of trickledown economics.  Government parasites don’t create jobs that actually make wealth; they only make jobs that confiscate the wealth that others make.  The people who routinely eat at Jags actually create the jobs that drive an economy and they should not feel that they must hide in a darkened dining room just to be among their own kind.  It is not their fault that most people want to be slugs—and they should not feel guilty to show their excesses.  Expensive dresses, watches, and cars are signs that a person has been more productive than what they personally consume as people—which means their efforts have a trickledown effect to all sectors of the economic spectrum from the poor and needy to the young and hungry.  Without the efforts of the capitalist, nothing happens.  This is a concept refined in America.  It doesn’t need a Chinese guy to explain it to the world—and it doesn’t require the endorsement of the official communist country of China.  It is they who are late to the party and it’s about time that America defend itself once and for all, and stop hiding in the shadows.  Bring Jags to the world, not the world to Jags.  Chef Michelle Brown is already busy enough.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com