Month: February 2015

The FCC Internet Takeover: Why America doesn’t have flying cars, cures for cancer and a functioning government

Now that the FCC has inserted itself intrusively into the Internet let’s analyze the final effect of this travesty—shall we? As many who read here know, I have been a fan of the Amazon proposal of 30 minute or less delivery using drones. Just a few days prior to the FCC vote, the FAA created a number of guidelines directly targeting the Amazon proposal by ridiculously proposing that drone operation of commercial types must keep the devices in their eyesight and not fly over crowds of people, according to the FAA proposals. The archaic nature of the FAA is to assume that drone flight would always be flown like a model airplane, and not become something of an A.I. addition to the human skyline. The restriction deliberately prevents innovation from Amazon to compete with traditional delivery methods like trucks, and vans. The FAA is voting to preserve the status quo and to reject the innovations coming out of the tech sector with the kind of nonsense so prevalent with the federal government.  While members of the FAA may believe they are protecting people from falling drones, or congested air traffic, the real intention of their proposal was control—control of an emerging market to protect traditional, and accepted forms of product delivery.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/faa-drone-regulations-blow-amazon/story?id=28997803

In its most elementary form, the FCC is trying to do the same thing.   Their aim is to slow down emerging Internet markets, and get control of the kind of information reported there. It is about stopping innovation, not protecting its continuation. The federal government wants to tax trade over the Internet and to infuse the pure market capitalism of current online activity with the socialism normally associated with all government infusion.

Tech companies like Amazon became great because of the Internet—because government was out of their way. I use Amazon all the time—mostly to find books that are rare and out-of-print. When I was a little kid I used to get a publication in the mail showing me rare books and prints available throughout the country—and I’d usually have to pay several hundred dollars for such prints. One of those books was a hard to find copy of the Egyptian Book of the Dead which I considered a real treasure at the time. But along came Amazon, and virtually any book I have needed over the last decade has been found and purchased through Amazon.com. I consider them an amazing delivery service and they became that way without an ounce of government involvement.

But now they’ve hit a government regulatory wall—actually two. First the FAA shut down their delivery proposal. Pinheads in the government likely can’t foresee why anybody would want under 30 minute delivery service—but I can report that I’d personally use it several times a year. It would be very useful for me to buy a book without having to leave my house that I would want to start reading that same afternoon once a number of other tasks had been completed for the day. Traveling about takes time, and if I could save that hour of transportation time, I could gain one hour of productive time out of a 24 hour day by ordering a book from Amazon and having it delivered 30 minutes later. That would be extremely valuable to me.

Government workers don’t understand the value of such time—because they spend most of their days wasting it. They are timid creatures—those who work in government. They are afraid of every little thing falling out of the sky and hitting them in the head, and fear dramatically a free Internet without government’s grubby paws within it. So they get into the business of making rules that they can deal with so to limit the rest of the world to their weaknesses. That is what the FCC is doing with Net Neutrality. A branch of government guided by the Obama White House sought to take control of the Internet because in this case, his political party can’t compete with the flow of information that is coming out against his progressive way of thinking—so he brought in Tom Wheeler at the FCC and created an insurrection without any public comment or scope of intrusion—and just like that—the Internet is no longer a free place. Government regulation is coming and soon those who were in favor of Net Neutrality will realize why people like me were against it. The rules that are coming will be noticed, and intrusive.

Of course my interest in this is the obvious impact that a loss of drones will have on the potential skycar market. I am a big supporter of the M400 Skycar which is essentially a large-sized drone that people can ride in. I have been looking to drones to solve the complicated levitation problems that will face that industry. The M400 Skycar works right now, it could fly from one point to another today if there were some support from the American government. But, there are entirely too many hurdles to jump through to allow for such an invention to hit the un-tethered civilian market. Drone delivery services would allow for the human race to accept such things as a potentiality—whereas currently it seems like science fiction. Human beings could right at this moment have a Skycar in their driveway and could fly to their job 50 miles away as the Skycar flies itself using a form of GPS—all the while browsing their smart phones on the Internet in transit. But, due to unnecessary regulation protecting the current automobile, and aviation industry—American regulations are keeping the Skycar grounded.

The Skycar would of course be the next step beyond drone delivery. Once people realized that the drones were reasonably safe, they’d accept that personal delivery using Skycars was entirely possible. Instead of a UPS or FedEx truck driving from one point through countless steams of ground traffic, the vehicle would take off from a distribution center and land at a residence within 10 to 15 minutes avoiding traffic all together. It would be an advance guidance system that would keep track of all the sky traffic without human error contributing to any danger. However, if the FAA won’t allow a small little drone to fly through the air without a human being guiding it by line of sight, they surely will not allow large vehicles transporting human beings around in the sky controlled by Google Earth navigational systems.

The only real restriction is the federal government, and now thanks to America’s first openly socialist president, the only place where explosive innovation actually takes place through unfettered capitalism is the Internet which the FCC just voted itself to control under the careful guidance of the White House.   There are hundreds of wonderful ideas just waiting to be nurtured into existence right now, but the government is impeding them with a mask of safety—and security—yet with a reality of protection of existing, ancient technology.

Imagine if the federal government had prevented the Wright Brothers from taking aviation to the sky so to protect the union workers who made roads back at the turn of the 20th century. Or imagine that a horse breeder was afraid that the invention of the automobile would destroy their way of life, so they lobbied the federal government to make automobiles so controlled by regulation that it wouldn’t be worth building cars—which actually happened. After all, imagine the arguments of giving human beings a guided missile to drive around possibly running into countless other human beings on a massive scale. It would be impossible to develop the automotive industry in modern America—because regulators would snuff it out of existence before it ever got off the ground. That is the cost of the FCC intrusion of the Internet—a government takeover of the freest place on earth that will limit innovation from now on. History will prove it so.

As I’ve said before, there is technology right now that could cure cancer, stop the aging process, and solve world hunger—but because of government regulation—misery, innovation stagnation, and human complacency is sending America backwards instead of toward a promising future. The federal government is against innovation in every aspect of it—and seeks to use their cumbersome management models of extreme simplicity and timidity to squash innovation before the world advances beyond their grasp to emotionally cope. The typical government supporter is content to sip wine against a big city skyline and talk about social nonsense letting rules and regulations guide their non-thinking minds from one moment to the next surrendering thought to the complacency of a bureaucrat. They make fun of the innovator who wants to cure cancer, or send a car into the air to alleviate traffic—or the delivery service who wants to perform the task in less than 30 minutes with an air drone. They pull together like Google, Free Press and New America’s Open Technology Institute did prior to the FCC vote and direct Wheeler how to change his net neutrality plan to better accommodate them, and then wonder why a decade from now the government is looking to use those same rules to shut down their businesses. They thought they were cute and slick in 2015. They’ll beg for mercy in 2025 and the innovation they tampered with and thought they were championing will end up regressing back into the Stone Age.

Yet what few people asked was how those companies, Google, the Free Press and New America’s Open Technology Institute had access to the net neutrality report before any voting American. Now you know dear reader why we still have clunky cars, cancer, and cumbersome delivery systems—because the government picks winners and losers based on their personal preference and comfort level. And that is why the FCC takeover of the Internet is one of the greatest tragedies in our lifetime. It’s equal to the government taking over the aviation industry before Boeing built their first airplane.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

 

Why Obama Wants an Expanded Middle-Class: What the White House ‘Better Education Plan’ is really about

Has anybody posed the question to Barack Obama recently if he still considers himself a member of the “middle-class?” I personally find the term degrading, and insulting. Who wants to be the “middle” of anything? Not me. So I don’t identify with the “middle-class.” I don’t want to be considered in the middle-class, and I don’t want to accept that there is even a middle-class of just average Americans. I believe in American exceptionalism. Acknowledging a middle-class says that we accept a society of average people. It’s like saying we want our football teams to be average, we want our cars and electronics to be “normal” and that there is no reason to compete against anybody else because we don’t care about the final score. It’s like saying to a video game player who is obsessed with a game like Call of Duty that they should be happy with their “average” score instead of playing over and over to increase their rating.

Yet Obama talks about the “middle-class” like its something good that he wants to expand—and accept more of. He is actually promoting it, and is trying to expand government education to actually make more “average” people. Yet it would be safe to say that Obama considers him and his family as part of the “upper” ruling class. Such behavior was always typical among the communists who wanted to be affiliated with the enforcers as opposed to the commoner. The ruling class always gets better living accommodations, and social status and Obama clearly enjoys his elevated political class status as President of the United States. He will never be considered a part of the middle-class for the rest of his life—so why does he want to promote it to so many people? It really doesn’t make any sense.

The answer comes from deep inside the type of collectivists that Obama is. If they can eliminate competition, they will never be challenged by anybody seeking to actually surpass their social status with actual aptitude. A gigantic middle-class means for people like Obama no challenge to his social status as a member of the elite. So he naturally wants to protect his status with more “middle-class” type people, and the way he performs the task is to propose that the effort is actually good for people.

This is the real nature behind Obama’s new education plan which he actually sent to me through an email. You can read that email promotion from Obama’s White House below where the intent of the proposal is to lower standards for children so that they will be further dumbed down into a compliant “middle-class” of adults giving the federal government more centralized control over students. Of course Obama’s people never tell the whole truth, just as in the first sentence below which attempts to state that students are functioning at a higher level than ever before and that the government education system is actually working. The secret is that the standards have been lowered to make students appear better—without actually achieving anything. For the government, they are successful because they are in the business of making more compliant—average—people. But for the hopeful parent who wants their child to be the next Einstein—there is nothing about the following proposal that will help their child achieve greatness. Obama simply wants to clip their intellectual wings so that in the future—those children will be happy in the middle-class.

 

From: Barack Obama <democraticparty@democrats.org> Date: Tuesday, February 24, 2015 Subject: Stand with me on education, Rich

To: Rich Hoffman

Just last week, Rich, we found out that our high school students are currently graduating at an all-time high, and last

year, our younger students posted the highest scores ever recorded in both math and reading. That’s great news! But ensuring our children get the most from their education in today’s ever-evolving economy

remains one of our most important responsibilities. It’s also a major part of my vision for a stronger middle class,

which I laid out in the State of the Union last month. That’s why I’m making the replacement of No Child Left Behind a priority. We need a better education plan — one that

cuts standardized testing to a bare minimum, invests in our preschools, and gives every kid in every corner of our

country a fair shot. I’m calling on Congress to pass a law that makes this vision of a brighter tomorrow for our sons and daughters a reality, Rich.

 

If you agree with me, then go ahead and let them know right now by adding your name next to mine. This plan is just common sense, and it deserves a vote in the House and Senate. But Republicans on Capitol Hill have their own ideas, and without support from people like you, it will be pretty darn tough to have a meaningful debate about any of this. I’m confident that we can work together and get this done, but I could use your help today to show Republicans that

Democrats are committed to making this level of progress permanent. So sign your name today, and tell Congress to pass an education bill that works for middle-class families: http://my.democrats.org/Better-Education-Plan Thanks for standing with me today, Rich.

I’ll be in touch again soon.

Barack Obama

Now, here is a message from the Liberty Township Tea Party describing what is really going on with Obama’s new education plan. To those who think that the Tea Party is still a group of radicals, the evidence below should be obvious.

The White House and government position in general is to make more compliant “middle-class” people through federal education programs. As any intelligent reader will quickly notice by reading the following additional information deliberately removed from Obama’s letter on the same subject, the attempt is to erode more state sovereignty issues at the level of educationand to give even more central control over education matters to the federal government. Read it for yourself:

 

ACTION ALERT: STOP THE STUDENT “SUCCESS” ACT (HR 5)

 

Congressional Leadership Is Bull-Rushing Through HR5, the 600 Page Reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (rebranded the “Student Success Act”)

 

The House votes on it this week.  Call your Representative and call the Speaker of the House and tell them to vote “no” on HR 5!

 

 202-224-3121. Below are just a few of the problems.

  1.  HR5 Denigrates Parental Rights and Seizes State Sovereignty
  • No program shall “operate within a State, unless the legislature of that State shall have . . . waived the State’s rights and authorities to act inconsistently with any requirement that might be imposed by the Secretary as a condition of receiving that assistance.” (Sec. 6561) (emphasis added).
  • Federal requirements will trump the rights “reserved to the States and individual Americans by the United States Constitution” to lead in the education of their child. (Sec. 6564)
  • Requires states to change laws and regulations to “conform” to HR5. (Sec. 1403)

 

  1.  HR5 Does Nothing to Relieve Children From No Child Left Behind’s (NCLB’s) Oppressive Testing Requirements.

 

  1.  Feds Will Effectively Direct State Education Policy through Enhanced Continuation of Heavy-Handed NCLB Policies

 

  • Requires states to demonstrate to the federal government that their standards, assessments, and state accountability systems meet the goal of “prepar[ing] all students to graduate high school for postsecondary education or the workforce.” (Sec. 1001)

  • Requires states to submit comprehensive state plans, which the Secretary can disapprove. (Sec. 1111)

 

  1. Increases Federal Data Collection To Control Curriculum

  • Empowers the Department of Education to request individual student and teacher data from State and Local Education Agencies.

LTTP Board, Mark, Leo, Carl, Tim, Susan, Christy, Mike, Katy and Denise

: Follow us on Facebook at:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Liberty-Township-Tea-Party/102995346723

 

Just like the situation with Net Neutrality, Obamacare, or any other scandal, the Obama White House cannot be trusted with even small truths—because they will lie and mislead about virtually anything, particularly in regard to education. Their end game is not the same as the rest of the world. It’s rather selfish and full of presumption—they want an expanded “middle-class” to protect the seeds of progressivism created by their radical left-leaning predecessors. They care about the end because it justifies the means—and in this case they want a dumb population full of average, middle-class slugs so they can easily dominate their thoughts and actions over the next century. That in essences is what Obama didn’t say in his email. But if he wanted to tell the truth—he would have. Instead, it took the Liberty Township Tea Party to say what the truth really was by a political class who considers itself well above the middle-class and is protecting itself from future insurrection through poor education and centralized federal control.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

 

uBeam’s Meredith Perry: Changing the world of energy distribution through innovation

Meredith Perry was an astrobiology major in college and did space research for NASA, but at the tender age of 25 years she has taken on the remarkable task of challenging the entire electrical delivery system framework with her very new and innovative company called, uBeam. And, she’s hiring. Her goal is epic and she is just two years away from making it happen. As of this writing she is poised to partner with a tech company with deep pockets like Apple or Google to remove power cords from all appliances starting with mobile devices. Here is the way she describes her company to potential applicants.

Our engineering team is comprised of world-class multidisciplinary inventors, where the word “impossible” is not part of our lexicon. We take pride in solving complex technological problems quickly, across many fields. At uBeam, we go from PowerPoint to prototype in a month or less.

We’re on a mission to untether the world, and we’re in search of new blood to join the team. We’re seeking hands on, dedicated people who are driven to push the boundaries of technology, people who are not looking for a typical 9-to-5 desk job, who are looking to make tectonic shifts in the world of electricity.

About her new technological invention she says according to her website and USA Today, “I started looking into types of technology that harnessed ambient energy, and I stumbled across piezoelectric [material], and I thought, if this can harness vibration, how do I induce ­vibration over the air? Then I realized that sound is vibration over the air. It was a natural “aha.”

“The dream is to replace all electrical outlets with uBeam transmitters,” says Perry. “You’ll wake up and just go through your day with your device and it will be charging in your house, in your car, at your bus stop, at your gym, in your hotel. We want to be absolutely everywhere. And wires won’t be anywhere.”

Here’s how it works. uBeam’s transmitter is a wafer-thin square the size of a salad plate that punches out ultrasonic frequencies much like a speaker creates sound. The receiver, currently in the form of a smart phone case, resonates at the same high frequency and turns that imperceptible movement into energy, charging the phone.

uBeam’s transmitter doesn’t go through walls, so a square tile is required for each room. Although uBeam is still a few years from being consumer-ready, Perry is convinced her “competitively priced” creation will find its way into our homes and any commercial space where devices are used.

“What I’ve seen over the years is people making tiny improvements in existing technology as opposed to saying, ‘Let’s throw this all out and do something new,'” she says. “I know the odds are so against me. But I wouldn’t start a company and bust my (rear) for years unless we were working on something orders of magnitude better than anything else out there.”

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/02/23/ubeam-founder-meredith-perry-replaces-cords-with-wireless-charging/23699083/

http://ubeam.com/

http://www.fastcompany.com/3029523/most-creative-people-2014/meredith-perry

I love Meredith Perry’s attitude and the implications for her invention is quite extraordinary. It has a real chance of completely changing the way that power is transmitted from one place to another. It of course highlights the origin of power to begin with where the debate of Thorium as opposed to dirty energy is clearly a better option, but because of politics Thorium was suppressed as dirty energy was highlighted. There is a real danger of Perry’s invention being crushed by the status quo because it will completely change the way that homes and businesses are wired during construction. uBeam is certainly one of the biggest breakthroughs in science and technology that is currently on the frontier of discovery—and it came from a very young and ambitious young woman unafraid of the status quo—or her place in it. She is to me a remarkable young woman.

I would say that the best home for uBeam would be Apple, who has enough fluid cash to purchase all the big three auto companies in America right now. Only from such an innovative company would something as cutting edge like uBeam have a chance of cutting through the massive amount of lobby power that will try to sink them. It would give Apple a tremendous advantage over their competition such as Samsung for a few key years of future product rollouts. Obviously, uBeam would need to be available to all products, from the new Samsung televisions to their mobile devices—but Apple working with uBeam could corner that market to protect the wireless power market from the political machine that seeks to capture and regulate energy to throttle the cost and demand.

A company like uBeam is one step closer to my dream of every car, home, and personal power consumption device pulling free energy out of the air and being self-generated which is a real possibility. In our immediate lifetimes the debate will occur that the current power grid all across the world is old-fashioned and well out-dated. All power lines could be replaced with personal power devices—and that is a debate that will cause current power companies and the governments in their pocket a lot of heartache. Perry’s uBeam company is the gateway to such thinking and once people get a taste for it, they will accept it for everything from their washers and dryers, to their cars—and eventually their homes.

Ambient energy is important because it generates energy from everyday motions in life. uBeam is using ultrasonic waves to create energy, and it is entirely possible that the same could be done on a massive scale—just study an electrical storm during a spring rain where cold air strikes a front of warmer air provoking a violent storm. Such things have been tried before but were struck down politically because money could not be made on generating the power or the delivery method. When it comes down to something like what uBeam proposes, the technology is viable, clean, and much more efficient and reliable, but it will threaten the current infrastructure which will find it a threat to its very existence. So for the next step in wireless power transfer to occur it needs two things to happen—one of which it already has. It needs a fearless, smart, and charismatic young person who doesn’t understand the nature of defeat and is a rebel even by the standard of the Silicone Valley tech companies. Meredith Perry is the embodiment of such a person. The next thing it needs is a protective entity that has an immediate need for such a product as uBeam is producing. Apple or Google are among the only companies with the big guns to protect uBeam from the resistance that will surely come. If those two things can happen, the world just may change for the better.

Needless to say, I’m rooting for uBeam and its founder, Meredith Perry. She reminds me of my daughters who are the same age. There is a lot of hope in her, and I would hate to see that ambition crushed by a world protecting itself from its own insecurities. For that reason alone I’m ready to rip out all my outlets and convert over to uBeam technology. It’s just a matter of time.

Rich Hoffman

CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

 

Why FCC Chairman Wheeler Wants Net Neutrality: Sign the petition today against it

Below is a good video that demonstrates exactly what Net Neutrality is and it should be watched. It’s a very confusing issue because the advocates of Net Neutrality are actually taking the position of the opposition in saying they are defending the freedom of the Internet. However, it is a ruse. The FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is a Obama guy, as will be shown below and is a former lobbyist for the cable companies. The Net Neutrality supporters are trying to make it sound as if it is the cable companies who are pouring millions of dollars into defeating Net Neutrality, but it is the opposite that is really happening. It is the status quo technology that wants Net Neutrality and it is all the upstarts that are against it—because the FCC chairman under Obama’s direction is seeking to make the Internet a public utility—so they can control it—tax it, and unionize it. Just four days before the FCC historic vote, over 200,000 signatures have signed the below letter to the FCC, which can be accessed for yourself at the following link.

https://www.protectinternetfreedom.com/

Dear Chairman Wheeler,

Internet use and online communication is the scourge of autocratic governments that deny basic freedoms to their people. Internet information has proven to be a spark that creates the fire of freedom in the most oppressive corners of the world.

The Internet is one of the most positive forces for improving the human condition the world has ever known. It is the hub of innovation for the economy in America and the world. It’s a source of progress, democratic distribution of information, societal change, personal empowerment and technological innovation.

The attempt by the Obama Administration to control the Internet as a public utility takes power away from consumers, website developers and small business owners and puts it in the hands of Government. This will drive up costs, slow down innovation, and put unelected political appointees in charge of picking winners and losers.

And it will take away America’s moral authority to argue that autocratic regimes have no right to assert control of the Internet in their own countries.

Mr. Wheeler, I am signing my name here today, asking that you and your colleagues vote NO on bringing the Internet under Federal Government control.

Sincerely,

Now watch this video–they are all on the same team.  The protestors, and Wheeler.

It is the right thing to do to sign the letter and send it to the FCC, but be warned, the Chairman already has his marching orders by the president, so the letter won’t have any levity to his decision-making process. All that signing the letter will accomplish is in letting the government know how many people actually stand against them in a fashion to actually put their name to it. By traditional White House analysis, 200,000 signatures is a large number. It’s a small number of the population, but it represents a fairly scary opposition that they will try to minimize, but to a less successful effect. To understand why, study the history and background of the FCC chairman.

Thomas Edgar Wheeler (born April 5, 1946; Redlands, California)[1][2] is the current Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

He was appointed by President Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in November 2013.[1] Prior to working at the FCC, Wheeler worked as a venture capitalist and lobbyist for the cable and wireless industry, with positions including President of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) and CEO of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA).

Originally considered a frontrunner for the position,[7] Wheeler was confirmed as the new Federal Communications Commission chief in November 2013.[8] Despite a letter written by several prominent former Obama administration officials endorsing Wheeler for the position, many people expressed concern over the consideration of Wheeler for the position due to his history of lobbying for industry.[7]

In recognition of his work in promoting the wireless industry, Wheeler was inducted into the Wireless Hall of Fame in 2003, and in 2009, as a result of his work in promoting the growth and prosperity of the cable television industry and its stakeholders, was inducted into the Cable Television Hall of Fame.[5][9][10] He is the only member of both halls of fame.[6] Cablevision magazine named Wheeler one of the 20 most influential individuals in its history during cable’s 20th anniversary in 1995.[5]

During Barack Obama’s presidential campaign Wheeler spent six weeks in Iowa aiding his campaign efforts and went on to raise over US $500,000 for Obama’s campaigns.[7][11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Wheeler

On the current path, large cable companies are becoming extinct, the government cannot get their control around information because of the free and open Internet that exists now, and they want the FCC to begin getting things back under control from Google, Microsoft, and Amazon to actually protect the companies they are claiming to be against like Comcast, AT&T and other traditional communication companies. They are playing the same tricks they did with Obamacare, Benghazi, and open border immigration to overwhelm the system, hamper the minds of the masses with too much data-and to shove through new controls and regulations that nobody will stand against until it’s too late.

Wheeler is going to vote in favor of Net Neutrality because he’s been told to by his boss in the White House to do so. This is a power grab by the FCC for more control, not less. The government position is actually that they want to protect start-ups and porn providers with a free and open Internet by defeating a pay to play system—but what they don’t tell anybody is that they are seeking to control and limit that freedom for everyone, not just the big companies. In that respect the Internet will be “equal,” it s just that everyone will be equally limited and taxed.

So fill out the form, send it in so that guys like me will have ammunition to slam the FCC with later when we can expose the crimes about to be committed. The more people who fill out that form, the better the case will be later to prove that we told you so—so that by the time there are new elections in 2016, congress, the senate and hopefully a new president will pull the FCC back in and defund them into oblivion. That is the best way to strike a blow at this encroaching insurrection. So, make sure to fill out the form today, so that when we fight tomorrow—there will be some statistical information to use in proving what a gross violation the FCC actually imposed on the freest place on earth, the Internet. And they did it all in the name of control, taxation, and much more limited options for a tomorrow they dread to see coming.

Rich Hoffman

CLIIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

 

The Value of Good Employees: Chick-fil-A showing the best of private sector employment

The biggest difference between workers in the private sector and those in the public is the monopolization of effort that is typically associated with a lack of options. In the private sector there is a lot of competition whereas the public has virtually none. Scientists, teachers, IRS service representatives from the top to bottom get a check whether or not they perform so they are not motivated to do a good job. In the private sector there are other options and a check only comes if the product or service rendered is one that people actually want. Private sector work actually demands performance and those who excel do so because the product they offer is superior to other attempts of a similar value.

I thought I was in for a tough time the other day when I visited the Chick-fil-A at Bridgewater Falls near my Ohio home. My wife and I waited until about 2 PM to visit so that the lunch crowd would die down a bit, but the parking lot was still full. Parking next to us was a couple of “wigger boys” with their pants pulled down to look like rap artists complete with neck tats and a girlfriend belonging to one of them—maybe both. I typically go to nicer places just to avoid those types of people. But this particular Chick-fil-A is near the Hamilton/Fairfield border and there are a lot of these types of people coming from the government subsidized homes in that area—so you tend to bump in to them at the Bridgewater location. But I wanted a chicken sandwich so my wife and I went in any way.

The scank boys and their trashy girlfriend complete with a baby tucked into something that looked like a purse took one look at the crowded dinning room and said, “fu** this” and turned around to walk out. I gladly held the door open for them to leave happy to see them go. As they walked by they smelled like cigarettes, pot, and spit. I watched them walk like penguins across the parking lot back to their car to make sure they didn’t open their door into my own car out of disrespect. Once they were gone, my wife and I resumed our visit to Chick-fil-A.

I had just been thinking about those “wigger boys” trying to emulate a government subsidized African-American existence that has fed the rap culture with so much negativity when a young man of color stood at the counter to take our order. He was excessively polite, well-spoken and very clean-cut. His voice sounded like it belonged on the radio with a deep resonance that held behind each word an articulation of confidence that came from nowhere else but from within a complete personality. He said “sir,” to me about ten times in 2 minutes and was extremely professional. He even wiped the overflow off our drinks as he prepared them. Everything he did the attendant did with professional flair and an appreciation for the quality of his work. He was marvelous.

Chick-fil-A typically has better employees than other similar fast food restaurants which is clearly a by-product of their recruiting practices. But this guy was excessively good even compared to Chick-fil-A employees. I continued to be impressed as we were given our food and I turned to find a table I had been looking at recently vacated, and still dirty. I had been thinking of cleaning off that table so we could sit down—because it was rather messy. But before I could perform the task a woman in her middle years was already there wiping it down clean. She even got on the floor and hand-picked bits of food that had fallen there so that it wouldn’t be messy around our feet. That further impressed me. We sat down and I watched the woman who promptly went behind the counter to wash her hands. For a fleeting second I had the feeling that mankind wasn’t falling off the edge of the earth into an abyss that it will never recover from. I was delighted.

The articulate attendant continued to take orders from the line that continued to be nearly out the door. With each customer he showed the same interest in perfection and left his customers with a fulfillment well above the standard for a fast food experience. As I thought about him, and Chick-fil-A in general I had to contemplate what drew us to the restaurant as opposed to the Chilis just across the pond from our location, or the Wendy’s down the road mixed with an Arbys, Frisch’s, Subway, Pizza Hut and even an Applebee’s all located nearby. At that hour even the Chilis restaurant had a nearly empty parking lot—but Chick-fil-A was full. And the employees seemed excited about working there. The food after all was pretty average. I mean its good, fresh and there’s a decent variety, but the Chick-fil-A experience is different and that seemed to be more of what was drawing people in than anything.

A large part of that experience which sets apart Chick-fil-A is the quality of their employees—which directly carries over into their food and overall environment. It is obvious that Chick-fil-A puts an emphasis on quality employees and this gives them a market advantage over everyone else. It also helps that they stay so busy that quality people tend to be drawn to the place to avoid the scum bags and skanks that are found everywhere else. In the case of my experience, the disenchanted social misfits decided they didn’t want to brave the crowd, but as I looked around most of the people in the dining room were pretty clean-cut types who looked like they might attend church often—and likely took an interest in the lives of their families. It probably had more to do with why those “wigger boys” and their “hoe bag” decided to leave because they felt uncomfortable with the environment. They would be more at home at a Taco Bell, or a White Castle where half the workers behind the counter looked the same as they did.

I’ve worked on the other side of the food counter for a long time and I know what goes on. When I buy food if I see someone working in the kitchen covered in tattoos and looking like they belong in a rap video I am likely to be careful what I order and I will watch them prepare it. It’s not practical to expect a low quality person to prepare food for your own sustenance. Garbage in tends to make garbage—so I am usually careful about stuff like that. I have an extreme reluctance of going through drive thru windows for that very reason.   I like to see what I’m buying and I don’t trust people I can’t see to do the right thing. We are dealing with an entire generation raised on movies like Jack Ass and shows like Beavis and Butthead and they think it’s funny to spit in food and rub their body parts on what we put in our mouths. At Chick-fil-A I have much more trust in the food making process than I do someplace else—especially Taco Bell. McDonald’s I trust more just because they have been the best at taking the human element out of the food making process. There are many fewer opportunities for food tampering at McDonald’s than there is at Burger King or Wendy’s. But Chick-fil-A is the best of them all and they still do a lot of traditional food prep.

A Chick-fil-A would never occur with government workers at the helm. If the restaurant were unionized it would also not have the same level of service. It would at that point be just another chicken place—it would lose its special appeal—its value. Government workers and those coming from union mentality households tend to believe that jobs were created so that employees can buy flat screen televisions and play video games all day—that a job is just something that gives them a check at the end of the week instead of a privilege for earning a living based on their individual merit. It is because Chick-fil-A understands how to recruit and keep good employees that they have such a market edge over a very competitive marketplace.

Whenever I go to Disney World with my family one of the things I most look forward to is the treatment of the customer anywhere within the vast complex in Orlando, Florida. The employees are always very professional and enthusiastic about their jobs, which allow customers to buy into the fantasy setting they try to create. Negative people are a deterrent from positive thought processes, and at Disney World negativity would destroy the fun world created by the theme parks. So I actually look forward more to the positive environment by the workers than of the rides and attractions themselves. But at Chick-fil-A I get the same without the extraordinary expense. And that is what is so magical about the fast food giant. And I have to thank that young man who made my experience so much better recently—who was so much better than the average Chick-fil-A employee—which is saying a lot. He created such a positive environment that he elevated the personal work ethic of all those around him and that is the most marvelous gift of all. It was why that restaurant was still packed even as the other restaurants in the area were preparing for their dinner rush. Chick-fil-A at Bridgewater Falls hadn’t yet stopped being busy from lunch, and the way things looked, they weren’t going to get a break. But the employees stayed positive anyway, which is what makes them so much more special.

Rich Hoffman

CLIIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

 

‘The Delivery’ Graphic Novel: Rob Gunnerson’s dream made into a reality

The creative process is fun and I remember when I first met Rob Gunnerson at a film festival, it was the start of a lot of fun that has slowly trickled in over the years. I was performing a firewhip demonstration for the World Stunt Association and he and Twilight actor Peter Facinelli were watching. A few years later they invited me to Los Angeles to help make a pitch trailer for an interesting story Gunnerson had been thinking about since he was a little kid. We were all kind of the same age, so we had grown up with a love of certain types of movies. We had a lot of fun putting Rob’s vision into a short two-minute trailer introducing the main objectives of the story. Peter was producing and using his considerable fame to draw studios to the project with Real D 3D as a partner. In the back ground was Dave Stewart from the Eurythmics supporting the project so it was exciting. We captured some wonderful images and had a lot of fun. But as I’m mentioned before, it is hard to get things off the ground in today’s Hollywood, even for seasoned veterans and popular pop culture personalities with millions of Facebook contacts. To get the money men to line up to fund projects now requires more than even Peter was able to assemble leaving Gunnerson to turn toward a new direction to get his project the attention that producers now require to put up the kind of money it takes nowadays to make a motion picture. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. The three primaries on the project, Rob, Peter, and Dave Stewart turned toward a graphic novel version of their story which comes out in April of 2015 to tell their complicated, dynamic story about Angels, Demons and The Last Hour before both try to destroy Mankind. Listen to them talk about the project below.

I fell in love with Gunnerson’s vision because of the actions of his protagonist Brother U who was an Angel who uses a firewhip to perform combat. Facinelli played that character in the short and is the basis for the character in the upcoming graphic novel. I was brought in to do the firewhip work and act as a stand-in for Peter. It was a project that I have always had a lot of hope for, and still do. But it is very telling how difficult it has been for these talented guys to get their project off the ground. Needless to say, I am really looking forward to their graphic novel. Rob told me a good part of the story in my time with him, but I am really looking forward to the visual conception released in an actual printed edition. It has taken nearly 10 years since Rob and I first met at the film festival stunt show to get to this point which he talks about in the below interviews a little bit—and for the director some pieces of his puzzle fell into play during my performance which makes me happy, so I am looking forward to seeing his vision put onto a printed page finally.

The art for the graphic novel looks fantastic. We captured some really cool scenes during the trailer shoot which I’m sure Gunnerson has looked at over and over again, so there are wonderful visuals to provide a template for the artist to pull from. I have always viewed Rob’s story as a kind of modern Highlander project. If Gunnerson had been a director in Hollywood during the 1980s, The Delivery would have been made for about 10 million dollars by a major studio and would likely be a cult classic to this very day. But, in the Hollywood of today where studio executives are much more timid and the cost of a movie is much, much greater—you have to prove there’s a market for something like this before anybody will drop 50 million to 100 million into such a project for a studio release.

The journey is often an adventure in and of itself. Between shoots on the set, the producers and I had fun on Brand Blvd cracking bullwhips on the sidewalk in a part of town that was filming television shows on nearly every city block. My hotel was on the main strip down the road from the Americana shopping complex and a lot of those people had never seen a whip act in real life. Under the encouragement of the small entourage that accompanied me, I pulled out some of the big whips and cracked cigarettes out of the mouths of just casual passers-by, and curious spectators adding to the nightlife that was vibrant. Needless to say it left an impression. When I flew out of Los Angeles that time, I had the feeling I would be returning within a few months to shoot the actual movie. But the project sat around and soon months because years with still no movement. Finally, after quite a lot of time passed, Gunnerson turned toward the tools available these days—such as Kickstarter to produce the story into a graphic novel that would at least get the concept into some art that people could look at, and slowly build up a cult audience, which for something like this—is the best way to go.

I admire Rob for not giving up on his dream of bringing this story to life. He’s an accomplished director and has access to celebrity personalities, but even so, it’s a hard sell in modern Tinseltown and this idea could have died easily on the vine. But, these guys have stuck with it and are still fighting to bring this concept to an audience. If not through a movie, then through a graphic novel, which I personally will enjoy more—I love artwork like the type shown in this upcoming graphic novel and I hope it is successful for them. If they desired to step away from Hollywood there are options out there for them. But it is a tough decision. The business model of the movie business is changing before our eyes, so it’s a difficult moving target to hit. But making The Delivery into a graphic novel to bring this story to an audience more poised to enjoy it—is clearly the smart thing to do.

I am happy to have been a part of the creative process in showing in reality the kind of things that were in Rob’s mind before our meeting. Its one thing to think of something, it’s another to see it come to life. Seeing a firewhip in action obviously helped take Rob’s thought process to the next level. Now, with some footage shot to work from, artists were able to convey that over into a graphic novel with some fabulous artwork. It is the kind of artwork that I tend to treasure and know that I will enjoy immensely. It will always remind me of the time that we brought bullwhips to the streets of Hollywood and kept Burbank awake at night with fireballs and explosions that bounced off the Verdugo Mountains with the ease of unfettered sonic booms at 3 AM.

I’m looking forward to the graphic novel of The Delivery. Read more at the following link.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/172403788/the-delivery-issue-1

Rich Hoffman

CLIIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

A Rudolph Giuliani Defense: Why all the effort

As I’ve said before, there is a very good reason I write all these articles, and they are never intended for the masses. I offer them to everyone, but due to their length, and content, the masses will tend to reject them as too difficult. Purposely I present most of my articles at over 1000 words—because people of poor intellect will avoid the contents—leaving a target audience of approximately 1% to read them. That 1% tends to be the social elite, the news makers and shakers of society who aren’t so easily scared off by such lengthy presentations. They require such explanations as they cannot find in typical 400 word pieces because modern problems require more information for their inquiring minds. The Drudge Report has its niche, which is to present many links to several pertinent articles on a daily basis from one location. Other news sites do a good job of reporting daily events, but they only go surface deep not giving the proper depth of an argument that might typically fill a 12 to 22 minute television or radio segment. Being a person with a background in doing a lot of live radio and television I have a pretty good idea what is needed for a typical interview so I present my articles in a way that will settle the mind of the type of people who find themselves in a position to do important things—by means of shaping the social dialogue.

The general rule is that it takes approximately five years for the typical 1% of the target audience to fully embrace the topics of my articles. This is due to the train metaphor discussed in a recent article I did on leadership which can be reviewed by (CLICKING HERE.) It takes about that long for my target audience to properly embrace the things they read and for the events I report to begin being seen to their eyes. So my task for quite some time is to report the conditions and circumstances as early as possible so that 1% of the target audience can contemplate those observations for a number of years while balancing out their own information obtained through experience.

Going through Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom articles a number of them especially from 3 to 4 years ago are routinely at the top of many Google searches because minds seeking that information start inquiring about the topics about a year and a half before they feel comfortable talking about these controversial issues at a social occasion or even more daring—in front of a camera. I am not the only one providing this service, but I do make sure that I provide each topic in a way that would be able to be discussed credibly during a news segment—because I have the unique experience of performing that task myself. One of my most popular articles is the one about Barrack Obama’s mother revealed through nude photographs taken likely by Frank Marshell Davis—the communist and mentor to the current president which at the time seemed very controversial, but presents enough evidence to declare that there is something really wrong with the mind of the man currently sitting in the White House.

When that article was first written I had taken an article from The Blaze discussing the new book The Communist written by Paul Kengor and provided a means for framing the argument by logical, articulate minds. Anyone who has done live interviews knows that before you can articulate fully a statement during a debate, that you have to know the who, what, why, when and where backwards and forwards otherwise you will stumble through the interview sounding foolish. It’s not enough to provide the observation that Obama was trained as a communist—and these are the facts—you have to paint the story in a way that makes sense to the 1% of the population that actually considers things, and tend to be leaders in their own right.

So it gave me great pleasure to watch former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani defend American exceptionalism and lay out essentially the primary topics presented in my article on Obama mentioning specifically the Frank Marshelle Davis connection on the popular Fox News show The Kelly File. It was an explosive interview by a guy who traditionally speaks his mind and hits hard in his positions. But, five years ago, he would not have dared to say any of the things he did on The Kelly File because of the scrutiny it would have provided him as a spokesman for the Republican Party. Back then, Obama’s presidency was still new, and people like me were being viewed as extreme. Now, the facts are in, and those at the back of the train of thought—not always their fault—are seeking answers. In Obama’s case the foundations of his beliefs point back to a childhood developed by socialist leaning grandparents and a number of father figures scooped up by his sexually carefree mother over many years. These men were Islamic and Hindu in their faith and in some cases were communist radicals shaping the mind of the young confused little Barrack Obama in a way that ruined his mind.

I started out my article on the Frank Marshell Davis character with a sensational headline that typically grabs a reader’s attention, but once they see the lengthy contents they turn away. However, there are plenty of who, what, why, when and wheres presented and by the time those readers finish one of my articles, they are well equipped to seek out support information. I even put the link to the very good book by Kengor at the end for people to read for themselves.   After they’ve done a bit of personal investigation they can then ask the question how we allowed such a Trojan Horse like Obama into the White House to begin with. That appears to be the path that Giuliani has taken-and it was good to hear him double down on The Kelly File when he was being offered a platform to apologize from.   I’ve been in that situation a time or two myself, so I understand and sympathize with what it means, and when Giuliani held his ground, he put himself in a position to lead many others in the proper direction of actually questioning Obama’s intentions in a way that the political left has successfully deterred for six years.

Just because a person is President of the United States it does not mean they love the nation. Glenn Beck actually did a good radio piece about Obama in the wake of the Giuliani comments about love for a country specifically and was spot on in his analysis. Obama does not love America the way we might love America. He was raised away from the mainland in a third world developing country by a sleep-around mother who brought many men to the young man’s life leaving a very confused little boy who communist radicals later befriended to send the fair-skinned community organizer behind the scenes to dismantle the “imperialist” monster. They saw America as something to “transform” not to protect so they went about their business of hiding their insurgent behind the protection of racist accusations. Influential Republicans who often tour the talk show circuits held their tongues because of the volatility of bringing up anything negative about Obama’s past giving him a chance to show what he was really about. When they saw his actions over the last six years, they sought out answers to provide some context to their observations leading them to articles like mine that have been out there a while, but are only just now being accepted as a viable examination into the insurgent mind of America’s current president.

Obama is an American president that we’ve never seen before—and there is a reason. He was raised and developed to be a radical within the White House. He was elected through guilt—accusations of an ancient past that involved slavery cast against the political party that actually freed the slaves. Through their timidity Republican leaders stayed away from the controversy and gave Obama a chance. Now, they are seeing what people like me have been saying all along as the facts have caught up to their positions at the back of the train and they can’t hide from the facts any longer. Of those Giuliani is among the first of the top 1% of party leaders and people of means to speak about these matters in front of a camera instead of at social gatherings under hushed voices and for that he deserves credit for his courage. Now that he’s shown the way, others will follow, and it is at that time that a proper exploration into the real motives of President Obama can be understood.

It takes a while for the contents of these articles to do their job, but it’s the nature of the human mind. If I wanted to appeal to the masses, I would write much smaller, less controversial and far leaning articles. But I’m not. I want people like Giuliani to read these articles from his iPhone in a New York café and consider—what if. I want him to think about it for some time with the reassurance of talk radio, books like Kengor’s and to want to add up the evidence and finally do something about it when they get the opportunity. Because guys like Giuliani get in front of the camera often, they get a chance to really break open a story—even if the information is old. The Frank Marshell Davis story is old at this point, but it never really hit the American consciousness, because it is too complicated and deceitful to consider among a busy public. But that was always the plan to place an insurgent communist type thinker into the White House of the freest country on earth to dismantle its power and influence the world over. It’s one thing to present the evidence, it’s another to stake a reputation on it. And for a man of Giuliani’s reputation, it means a lot that he’s finally willing to make such statements. It’s a sign that the type of people who typically find themselves in a leadership role, are finally able to articulate an argument against the Obama presidency that steps beyond the pageantry of the office itself. And that is the first step in solving the problem. The masses of democracy that Obama appeals to have enabled the insurgent to hide his true colors behind a political office meant to be above scrutiny. It takes that unique 1% to take action against such maniacal schemes. And it is for them that I do all this work.

Rich Hoffman

CLIIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

 

A Philosophy for the 22nd Century: iPhone 6 and Glenn Beck’s American Dream Labs

My wife and I have been getting acclimated to the new iPhone 6 for a few days now and the thoughts I’ve had while going through all the subtle new technology and the emerging business model so obvious, have only convinced me that the 21st century will be full of such extraordinary breakthroughs that by the time mankind gets to the 22nd century the world will be much different. As I write this Apple is not only in the market for making fabulous personal devices like iPhones and personal computing systems—but are developing a new car with their nearly 1 trillion dollars in market value. It costs roughly a billion dollars to perform the R&D for a new car, and Apple is at the front of that cutting edge by 2020 because they have the cash to do the job. The terrorist group ISIS is using some of that technology to broadcast to the world their level of Islamic theocracy in a negative way, and the American government is trying to create Net Neutrality through the FCC to get control of the run-away-technology so to slow it down and put it back in federal control. But more than that, my T-Mobile plan informed me that they offer free data streaming for music—such as iHeart Radio. That means twenty-four hours a day seven days a week no matter where I am, I can listen to The Blaze without any interruption in service. I don’t have to worry about consuming too much data from one place to another where free Wi Fi isn’t available which for my lifestyle of motorcycles and other unconventional travel means I can have 100% access to the new radio station for the first time since its creation without any worry. No wonder the FCC wants so much control.

The iPhone 6 is about the size of my iPod but it does so much more as the technology has shrunk to fit into such a small device. Even now if I am rappelling in the middle of Red River Gorge or backpacking to the top of Mt LeConte I can still listen to The Blaze Radio Network the entire time—which for me is relaxing. I don’t always want to hear the birds and the babbling brooks of nature. I like to hear the ideas of mankind and find out what the disputes are against modern philosophy, and The Blaze gives me that kind of information. More than anyone else in broadcasting on such a large-scale with a large and well-respected retinue of current politicians offering their insights Glenn Beck’s The Blaze is positioned in much the same way as Apple is to bring broadcasting, news, and entertainment to the next century while traditional companies shrink away and go extinct because they couldn’t keep up with the technology. Beck through his American Dream Labs is about to unleash several feature films and is unveiling several new innovations on April 4th of this year—just a few days before my birthday—which I am very excited about. There is a lot going on in the world that is truly scary, but there is a lot to be excited about as well. Glenn Beck’s innovations are among them and I will use my new iPhone equipped with a wonderful T-Mobile deal to stay plugged in along the way.

A few friends of mine from a secret Atlas Shrugged type of real life Galt’s Gulch just yesterday were contemplating the implication of the new iPhone also coming in April. I am certain that I will be getting one at some point in time, but just the sheer opportunity that such a device holds in such a small package is a stunning display of technological ability. If you mathematically apply the types of innovations being unleashed just in the last couple of years to the youthful generation that is taking them for granted in their replication of advancement every 18 months or so—that same generation will expect that type of progress in everything from televisions to automobiles. The self-driving cars from Minority Report will happen regardless of political road blocks because these young people will demand it. They want to play Xbox and text their friends while driving and Apple along with Google looks to be among the first companies poised to provide such a thing. I joked to our T-Mobile rep as he was displaying all the unique features of the iPhone 6 that in two years the phone would be outdated and he laughed, because he knew it was true. Things are moving that fast—yet government isn’t moving with it—because they are functioning from the failed philosophies of the past.

During the week my wife managed to convince me to go to Costco with her, which I seldom ever like doing—not because I dislike shopping or Costco—but because time is often short. I have a very busy and packed life—so grabbing a hot dog at Costco and shopping for necessities is last on the list of things to do. But she managed to convince me, and upon arriving I had to marvel at the prices on their 80” flat screen televisions and their new curved screens which were reasonably priced at under $5000. The prices are coming down to the point where every room in a home could have one of those large televisions without any trouble at all. The technology in them is simply incredible. The next challenge is going to fall on production companies to provide content that people actually want because the technology is there. Again, that’s where I think Glenn Beck will have an advantage over even the most deep pocketed traditional studio. The old way of producing video is long gone. The iPhone 6 has a mini camera in it far superior to what even a $10,000 camera cost in the 1990s so everyone with an iPhone is holding in their hands a television studio if they desire to utilize it. Of course that is another reason the FCC wants to create a Department of the Internet—because that notion scares them intensely.

My two-year old grandson is already speaking in complete sentences. Much of that I would attribute to the various learning devices he has available to him such as the television program on Nickelodeon called Blaze and the Monster Machines—which is a cartoon designed to teach kids about language, science, and physics. It is not as clunky as Sesame Street was—nor as agenda driven. It’s just about learning and having fun while doing it. Consider on top of that he has a Leap Frog tablet and other similar devices that allow his imagination to just soak up all this vast information so quickly the education model is obvious. Everything I have said negative about public education just became much, much, much more relevant. I am convinced that kids could learn everything they would typically learn by age 22 in college by age 10 because of the education options available now, that simply weren’t there 5 years ago, let alone 10.

So given all this rapid acceleration in technology, there is nothing in the adult world that is preparing for this onslaught in thought. Fox News is talking every night about the 2016 election where Republicans will likely put up another boring candidate based on the old machine politics of tradition and Democrats will put up Hillary Clinton, another old hippie progressive out of touch and expecting feminist nut cases to carry her into the White House. Neither political party is poised to deal with the typical iPhone user. Just as the car companies are lecturing Apple about how hard it is to get into the car market. But Apple will expect to do in two years what it takes General Motors a decade to perform, and they have the available R&D cash to pull it off. Just this past week Amazon.Com was upset that the FAA created regulations against their proposed drone delivery system, and they also have the cash to challenge the government’s attempt to preserve the old-fashioned way of delivery by UPS, FedEx, and the United States Postal Service. From the government its business as usual reacting to lobby money poured into their offices—but the marketplace represented by Amazon wants their products delivered within hours not days—and the collision will impact the government more than it will the marketplace because the next generation will expect fast delivery-because technology has always provided them with quick and immediate gratification on anything they have wanted.   They will expect the same out of their politics. Politicians standing in the way of that desire will be chewed up and spit out. Trust me. It’s coming fast and furious.

That is why it’s important to now focus on a philosophy for the 22nd century because it will take that long for the dust to settle. It has taken a 100 years to arrive at this current juncture, and it will take that long for the intellect of mankind to catch up to the philosophy needed by their recent inventions. Politicians like the Hillary Clinton types who expect to show up and walk on stage uttering a few lines of dialogue to pretend they are in the most powerful position in the world aren’t going to be able to deal with the advantages given to the typical person through all these new inventions. The explosion of invention coming available requires a new philosophy to deal with it all, and one of the first things that will have to go is the old adherence to the political machines of the past. The tools given to mankind currently allow for such a philosophy to develop. The old systems will be swept away in the current—car companies will go out of business as new ones emerge, power generation will change dramatically as more and more people learn of the options kept from them through unnecessary regulation, and stonewalling politicians will be crushed by a coming generation deeply impatient and empowered with knowledge at their fingertips. There’s no way to stop it now. What is needed to help the transition is a new way of thinking—a philosophy for the 22nd century so that when the dust clears, the mind of mankind will be aligned with the products of its innovation.

Rich Hoffman

CLIIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

 

Understanding Leadership: The difference between success and failure

Compared to most everyone else I have some bizarre ideals about leadership that certainly don’t travel well with the currents of civilization. Yet I am so certain of them that I no longer entertain opinions to the contrary because I recognize it as a special gift that is of great benefit not only to myself, but everyone I happen to know. Of course this leads to many matters of conflict which part of me strategically avoids while at the same time seeking it out. Leadership is one of the least understood attributes to modern society even though it should be easily plotted through history. Our best modern attempts is to believe that somehow West Point makes leaders through the military and that somehow the armed services through the concept of sacrifice makes great people. The other belief is that somehow in the classrooms of our colleges a teacher touches the life of a student and magic happens and a leader is born. So the mystical belief is that if society wants leaders, they need more procedures and rules to create an environment for a leader to evolve into the role of a savior willing to sacrifice themselves for a common good—so most schools of thought travel down that path. Yet, that grasp is likely the most ardent enemy of leadership that there is, and ends up crushing such opportunities for such people to emerge leaving in the wake chaos and process driven bureaucracy where everything just grinds to a halt with inaction.

Many times while dealing with a political system from local government to a business of some kind, what is found there is a process driven commitment to a rigid line of thought mystically protecting them from the scandal of inefficiency. The belief is actually as stupid as a group of head hunters from a South Pacific island refusing to allow their picture to be taken because they believe that their soul will be captured in the process. The belief in processes and procedures comes directly from a lack of leadership—it doesn’t act as a substitute. Where it gets really confusing is that some sense of order is needed for mankind to act with one another but to have real leadership it often requires visionaries to break those rules so that leadership can occur.

Readers here know of my thoughts on the work of Robert Pirsig who developed the Metaphysics of Quality and specifically captured the essence of leadership in his contemplations on philosophy. I often refer to his train motif to explain leadership—who is always the character at the front of a long train spotting things at the cutting edge of travel along the tracks. Process driven analysis is usually at the back of the train—away from the leader—as far as possible in most organizations. They are never in a position to make decisions at the cutting edge because by the time the problem gets to their part of the train at the back, decisions are long passed the point of no return. The only way that decisions can be made at the back of a train is for the train to go very slow or to stop all together—so that communication from the front can get to the back of the train in time for decision makers to consider the information and then project it back up to where the engineer is, and the train can turn, stop, or go faster depending on what is needed. It takes courage to be at the front of the train, and when decisions are made there, they can be immediately applied allowing for more swiftness in movement. Most modern organizations, the American military included, function from the back of a train of thought.

The back of the train is safe. It covers up the great mystery as to why some people are naturally better than others at the task of leadership. In fact, it avoids the entire question when process driven analysis can just keep everyone busy giving the illusion of productivity. But frustration often emerges that the train just doesn’t move fast enough—and that is because there isn’t anybody competent at the front of the train because everyone is stuck in the back. Those most able to be great leaders get bored and just step off in frustration leaving an organization even more befuddled than they were before. This is essentially why Apple fired Steve Jobs the first time—before hiring him again to save their company. Steve Jobs was always at the front of the train—and was happy no place else. Most great companies with the most innovation coming out of them have a leader at the front of the train who is most comfortable being there. There are of course people in the back who collect data to analyze, but the train is not driven from there. It is given to the leader to create a history to learn from so that decisions can most fluidly be made at the very front of the train as the future progresses.

I would never make it in todays military. Even while watching American Sniper I kept thinking how stifling the military is on a human mind, and that is for a good reason. When you become a soldier, you become part of a system and surrender your individuality to process driven goals. I could never do that, and I never have been able to. Yet great individuals in the military like Chris Kyle, Chuck Yeager, General Claire Lee Chennault, and General Patton all had a strong streak of individuality in them that sometimes defied orders and acted on their own merit from the front of whatever train they were on. All those characters found life at the back of the train boring and stifling desiring instead to be at the cutting edge of action. For those characters, the orders were less process driven because they were literally on the front lines of combat. However, especially in Chennault’s case when General Stillwell became U.S. Army commander in China during World War II Chennault was much less effective as a leader because the jealous Stillwell insisted on running the war from the back of the train, instead of the front where Chennault resided. This caused constant feuding between the two generals and cost the lives of many soldiers as the end result. Patton was much the same kind of man, and if reading the book Killing Patton is studied, it was likely that someone killed the general because nobody wanted to deal with him in peace time.   Likely it was Stalin who ordered the assassination, and at the time they were supposedly allies with the United States-but Stalin just didn’t want to deal with Patton in a future war—so they killed him—likely. And many in the U.S.—including the White House—secretly breathed a sigh of relief. But why? Because, Patton insisted not only at being at the front of the train, he wanted to be on the sweep at the front—the closest to the tracks as he could get. He was a real, natural-born leader and he often defied orders to do what he thought was best. If not for Patton, it is likely that the Germans would have beat America to the bomb—and the Allies would have lost.

So given all this historical data—why are organizations still insistent on back of the train analysis designed to stifle leadership? Well, it is the same vile human emotion that desires communism over capitalism—the jealous refusal to accept that some people have leadership, and some people don’t. Those that don’t desire process driven rules and regulations to protect them from their own inadequacies—and that pretty much sums it up. They hover like ghosts behind a leader in the back of the train and look for ways to take the credit for decisions made at the front once they think the situation is safe for them to do so. In Patton’s case they of course waited for a few days after the war ended to kill Patton. Authorities did something similar in China with Chennault sending him quickly to pasture once the conflict ended trying quickly to silence the petulant general. Instead Chennault wrote a great book The Way of the Fighter which revealed all his contentious exchanges between FDR, General Stillwell, and Truman up until the publication of the book in 1949. Chennault was irate with frustration saying that the conflict in China was not against the Japanese, but with the encroaching communists from the North. The authorities at the back of the train laughed it off and pulled out the United States surrendering all the hard-fought gains to the communists to become our future enemy. If Truman had listened to Chennault instead of Stillwell, there wouldn’t have been a Korean War, and there wouldn’t have been a Vietnam. And China would to this day be a capitalist country and friend to the United States instead of the holder of its debts and leveraging itself for a fiscal take-over of the American economy. And for a modern context, Chris Kyle would have likely had many less killings if he had always done what he was told. It’s part of the American way to think on ones feet and to make judgment calls from the front of the train. But first someone has to have the courage to reside there—and that is what’s short in most organizations. If they can find someone who wants to be at the front of the train, they are lucky. Those types of leaders are rare, but they are the key to making an endeavor successful or a failure. In classrooms look at the kids in the back of the class as opposed to those who voluntarily sit in the front—and you will see the difference between potential leaders and slugs who want to hide in the masses.

The failure to recognize such people is the problem, and they are often concealed behind jealousy, inflated egos, and overly educated process driven knuckle-draggers. Even the best leaders were hated even when they were loved. People love the results, but they hate that they can’t emulate a leader through processes, graphs, and structural definitions. There isn’t a class at West Point that can properly teach leadership and there isn’t a single course anywhere that can teach the proper behavior. It comes to some people naturally who love to stand in the fire at the front of the train. Leadership takes a natural courage that is vacant from most people, and if a society wants more leaders—it has to create an environment that produces more of them. But more often than when potential leaders are discovered within government schools they are beat into submission before they get out of the fifth grade and destroyed like baby seals surrounded by sharks that just want a meal. Most leaders are destroyed before they ever make it to adulthood. Today’s real leaders are taught early and often to stand at the back of the train and to shut up. So, not knowing any better, they do—and live desperate lives unfulfilled quietly screaming in silence to words that can’t be articulated.

For more on this topic read my article “Making Omelets: The essence of leadership” which features several videos of Gordon Ramsay the popular chef and television personality who is famous for fixing failed restaurants. There are millions upon millions of people who can cook, and there are hundreds of others who have made successful television careers out of cooking. But Ramsay is different. It’s because he makes decisions at the front of the train instead of the back—and that skill is one of the most unusual in the world—the culinary world is much, much better off.   Whether its food, war, or just aspects of manufacturing, real leaders are hard to come by, but when they are found, they are more precious than a treasure trove of wealth discovered.   They have the ability to see and guide others through dangers not yet seen and can create what’s needed before anybody even understands why. But before one can be a leader they must have courage—because the front of the train is scary. And that is why organizations without good leadership languish in bureaucracy. Because they have to go slow enough for the cowards in the back to make a decision—and that is a promise of inevitable failure—because the competition out there will likely happen across a leader—and they won’t be moving slowly—they’ll travel fast because they have a leader at the front of the train. It’s not the size of an organization that makes it successful; it’s about the quality of their leadership. And to understand that, quality has to be understood—which is the topic of a whole new article.

Rich Hoffman

CLIIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

 

Net Neutrality and Castro: Both lied to achieve their political objectives

Anyone claiming that Net Neutrality is a good thing is a political insurgent within the United States and they are lying. They are up to the same kind of lies that history has seen before, and they are after control of information and the taxation of the Internet with the creation of yet another government department. They are following a pattern very similar to one that was seen in Cuba when Fidel Castro overthrew Fulgencio Bastista to bring communism to the small island occupied largely by American businesses. The very same people who currently support Net Neutrality watched and supported Castro’s use of communism as a weapon and are still seeking to apply the same methods to capitalism wherever it flourishes. In 21st century America, there is no place that capitalism is more alive than on the Internet—so those who advocate that the FCC take control of the Internet are using nearly the same strategies as Castro did to win the hearts and minds of supporters to execute the task at hand—the spread of socialism. To illustrate my point watch the clip below where Castro promised during a speech that he was not bringing communism to Cuba. Of course in hindsight we now know better–just as it will be with Net Neutrality. Castro lied openly that he and his party were not communists. He also lied that he did not want power for himself. He’s still in charge in Cuba some 60 years later—and people are still dirt poor and crumbling away into dust because of socialism.

Castro became a communist during his jail term from Bastista after the failed attack on the Moncada Baracks. It was in prison that he formed a revolutionary group with Che Guevara and his brother Rual Castro—who just worked out the deal with Obama to reopen Cuba to Americans. American intelligentsia particularly on college campuses openly supported Castro as a hero of Marxism and thought of him as a rock star. Castro was treated with the kind of fanfare that might only be seen today from a Hollywood celebrity. Yet all during this period Castro denied being a communist, until he was in charge. It was then that he made the subtle announcement shift and began to lace his speeches with references toward socialism. Please take the time to watch the next video, which is a pretty good documentary about Castro and the whole Cuban situation on the world stage. After watching it will become clear what the strategic desires for communism were and what a thin line America really walked on—and still does. For instance, when Castro created the “boat people” as a way to infect the political leanings within America with socialist trained insurgents trying to reach their families already in America the move was a tactical one—just as the push for open boarders is today. The third world countries to the south of the United States are poor because of the open utilization of socialism, yet they are being encouraged to move into the United States to infect the political process with socialist voters. It is the desire of most on the political left in America to see communism spread globally, and to eliminate capitalism everywhere. Go ahead; the history is clear in the following video.

Net Neutrality advocates are performing the exact same strategy and are openly lying to the American people so the FCC can create a Department of the Internet. Their intentions are first to put on the breaks to the open capitalism currently so prevalent there. They then intend to tax the Internet so that they can increase the amount of revenue to the Federal government. Then, most importantly of all, they want to control information. For those on the left who have captured our education institutions, the media and even the values of the American nation with sentiment, they are still a party that looks like its going to be extinct within a few years, just because they are mathematically a minority party. Just look at their upcoming field of candidates for the 2016 elections. They really only have Hillary Clinton as a viable progressive. There are no other challengers—whereas the Republicans have a dozen or so. There is a lot of competition in the Republican Party, but hardly any within the Democrats and most of them are within the groups mentioned. Mainstream America still leans toward the right and toward capitalism. The only way the progressive left can win elections is through voter fraud, or by encouraging right thinking people to just stay home and not vote—because it’s a pointless exercise, which then cuts into the voting numbers.

 

The desire by the left to allow amnesty to illegal aliens is the same strategy that Fidel Castro imposed on the United States when he used his own people to infect the Florida political system with socialist Cubans so to slowly rot America from within. It was a strategy that even modern communist loving progressives still want to continue—because it’s working. It’s a way that Democrats can turn red states into purple states and continue to do the work that Castro started in the Western Hemisphere—the end of capitalism and the spread of communism.

Communists can’t have an open exchange of ideas on the Internet. China regulates what people can see, and there is a desire for the same in America. After all, the political left has control of the current media—including Fox News. Fox would be a lot harder hitting if they didn’t want to play fair and so not to threaten their White House press pass. And anybody who has worked for media knows that editors and program directors trained in liberal institutions lean to the left as opposed to the right. Those on the right often find themselves clamped with FCC regulations that target the removal of such characters with surgical precision—which is how the left managed to take over the media in the first place.

They wish to do the same with the Internet. Because the left controls the media citizen journalists have risen to challenge traditional broadcasts-and information is getting out that the government clearly is embarrassed by. For instance, take this article for example. No broadcaster on the air today would dare make such comparisons to Fidel Castro and Net Neutrality—even though the strategies are clearly the same. Castro to achieve power lied about his support of communism until it was too late. In the same manner the producers of the below commercial are doing precisely that—denying the real intention of Net Neutrality by attempting to capture the position of their opposition—which progressives do all the time. It was Republicans that ended slavery in America.   Yet to this day, it is thought that Democrats are for all people of color. During the Iraq War, the left pounded President Bush for American involvement. Now, under Obama, they are calling for war to attack a group of radicals they helped empower in Egypt, Libya and the entire Middle East. Now suddenly the left-leaning media is pounding the drums of war. When people like me point out the hypocrisy, the political left is embarrassed, so they seek to remove the observer so they can continue to hide in the shadows behind lies. If they can regulate me out of existence, they can continue to rule politics as a minority party. That is what Net Neutrality is all about—control.

This is typical among communists; they are second-handers who live through other people. They falsely expect others to do the work while they benefit and in Cuba once Castro took possession of all the American businesses there, their economy died and they essentially currently live in the stone age, until fellow socialists in America desired to come to Cuba’s rescue with an insurgence of American investment hoping to further spread the message of communism to the heartland of the United States through vacations and interaction with the landmass south of Florida.

Net Neutrality is about destroying capitalism and the advocates in favor want control—just as Castro wanted control of Cuba. The political left has already destroyed an entire generation through public education and sappy entertainment options from a Hollywood no longer supporting capitalism. This has given rise to the value of the Internet and created a desperate need by liberals to capture and control the Internet for their own survival. The only way they can perform the task is through a Trojan Horse insurrection, just as Castro did in Cuba-by openly lying about their intentions until it was too late. For the Internet that time will come when the FCC creates a Department of the Internet and seeks taxation and permits right out of the gate to destroy their philosophic rivals—just because they can’t compete. Because that’s the real secret between those who support socialism and communism, and those who support capitalism—the capitalists aren’t afraid of competition because they are always striving to get better. But the socialists are already of the weak type and just want to be told what to do because they are too lazy to think. Those are the type of people buying into Net Neutrality—and due to the lies being spread—historically the perpetrators know that the results will likely reside in their favor.

Rich Hoffman

CLIIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT