Who wants to tell me I’m being an “extremist” for calling teachers of public education socialists, which I have been doing for years now? The video below shows the teachers from the Chicago Teachers Union celebrating their money grabbing victory after their recent strike. Watch carefully. These are the kinds of employees who are asking for a tax increase off of property values in our communities. The time has come to ask if we really want socialist public workers teaching our children at all, let alone at the expensive sum of money they are demanding to do it.
Below is the outcome of the meeting as Jeffery sent it out to the residents of the Lakota School District. For my readers here I have hot linked each item with an article I have written in the past regarding Lakota and their failures to balance their budget. So feel free to click on each item to see what I’ve said leading up to this meeting. As to what’s wrong with public education the Chicago Teacher’s Union tells the whole story. Any public school that has a union like the one shown in the video below should be replaced with a competitive alternative.
Defining a Good School District A Community Conversation 9-13-2012
One thing must be cleared up in regard to Ayn Rand since tensions are rising due to the new Atlas Shrugged movie about to be released in the fall of 2012. But first I must declare my position on Rand’s writing and her philosophy of Objectivism. I came to Ayn Rand’s work only a few years ago, well after my foundation beliefs had been formed. My thoughts about things are not due to any teaching of Objectivism or any book Ayn Rand wrote. But what a relief it was to read Atlas Shrugged for the first time, and see that Ayn Rand over half a century ago had many of the same thoughts that I did. When the truth is pursued on any matter and reality is witnessed with its true value witnessed without any evasion tactics to distort the data, the results are not subject to opinion. The facts are the facts and no encounter group in pursuit of a consensus of opinion can negate the truth for the sake of other people’s feelings. Feelings do not equate to truth.
But there are many who insist on living their lives with shrouded facts and hazy logic. They evade truth at every turn and use their feelings to guide them through existence. They were taught and accepted at face value what instruction they received from the education system they grew up with, and adopted the tendencies of their parents without question. Their life is the sum of the many lives that played a part in molding their core beliefs which is fine for an infinite. But these types of people never take those foundations and apply their own unique individuality to their observations to pursue a truth as it is, not as they wish it to be as small children or puberty stricken teenagers yearning for their first kiss. These types of weak, sensitive beings are attracted to the practices of collectivism and they despise any work by Ayn Rand and her thoughts on individualism. These are the types of people who call Ayn Rand a cult in an attempt to discredit publicly people who enjoy Ayn Rand’s books. This trend can clearly be seen in this movie review of Atlas Shrugged Part One.
I have read many books over the years, and watched many, many movies. I have read books by very left leaning people and there are movies and actors who are extremely progressive on the severely liberal side that I like to this day—Sean Penn comes to mind. I have seen all of Michael Moore’s films and actually enjoyed Roger and Me way back when he was first getting started. I can report that I have never felt anger at someone for something they believed in. I have never felt anger at people who enjoy Michael Moore films or read books by the liberal activist Stephen King. My thoughts are that people who adhere to such beliefs are like children who yet have to learn the rules of the universe, and they have not developed the intellect to comprehend those truths. So I watch films and read books by such progressive minds like I might watch children playing at a park—with mild amusement. The anger comes when collectivists expect my buy-in to something I know to be wrong, because the majority ruled in favor of it. I am not okay with that, and anger erupts often with me under these conditions.
As people get older and more mature, they tend to become wiser—and more conservative. This is why there are so many older people who are in the Tea Party movement. With age comes wisdom, and the gradual acceptance of varying degrees of reality. The reason President Obama panders to young people is because they do not have developed intellects yet to understand what a con artist he is. They are easily seduced into believing in the Obamanation of America. This is why so many young people find themselves wanting to protest whatever their college professors or high school teachers tell them to adhere to, because they have not developed critical thinking to the level of individual thought as of yet, and until they do, they are most likely not qualified to vote, because they are simply too immature to think with reason.
I became interested in Ayn Rand during my well documented levy fights with public education. I always knew my position was correct, but when dealing with people who support public education I quickly realized that the people who supported blindly tax increase after tax increase for a public education system corrupted with collectivist oriented labor unions I needed to check my premise. So I went and read books about education from the pro side and found them dancing around some fundamental flaw in their thinking—since everything centered on collectivism which I have always rejected. In fact there was never a time in my life where I adhered to anything resembling collectivism. So it was a great relief during all this reading about education that I ran into Ayn Rand. Once I read Atlas Shrugged and saw that she predicted much about the world that was happening currently, I realized that Rand had done the hard work of adding up all the facts of an observed life to their logical conclusions.
Ayn Rand was not a mystic who looked into a crystal ball and saw the future even down to the detail of the Obama Presidency, which has been an absolute train wreck rooted deeply in collectivist thought. She simply observed reality and added things up based on the laws that govern everything. I knew she was correct because I had arrived at many of the same conclusions completely independent. Reading her was like meeting one intelligent person in an ocean of fools who actually understood the meaning of things, and it was refreshing. This is why people who work in book stores whisper under their breaths that they enjoy Rand’s work. This is why Ayn Rand is so beloved. It is not a “cult,” it’s a relief to read someone from the past who knew what anyone who is even partially awake knows now. Rand’s books provide the confirmation of truth as it is observed in reality by intelligent individuals. If people don’t understand Ayn Rand or have strong feelings against her, it’s probably because the critics are too stupid to comprehend her basic thoughts, since they have not yet observed such things in their own realities.
People who think individually do not pick up an Ayn Rand book and suddenly start following everything she says like some mindless drone. This falsehood was created by collectivists because they assume all people are like them, and are so easily programmed. Any Rand fans tend to be deep thinkers who have made general observations about reality, and find her work a relief that they are not alone and crazy in their thoughts. The masses that lean toward collectivism can through democracy appear to be in charge through mass threat and intimidation. But what they are is essentially undeveloped mentalities who are either in denial of reality through evasion or they are too immature to be exposed to enough truth so that they can arrive at a conclusion.
The anger at Ayn Rand and the derogatory claim that she has a “cult” of followers are intended to use evasion to hide the world from Ayn Rand’s truth. Socially, these maniacal collectivists have done such a good job of hiding her, and forcing her books underground that I didn’t read one of her novels until I was in my forties. This is quite extraordinary since I do read a lot and know people who are excessive readers and she never came up in conversations until a few years ago. Some people are lucky enough to have a renegade literary teacher or college professor who exposes them to Ayn Rand and those young people become hooked for life, because they recognize the truth in Rand’s work that they can’t find anywhere else, because collectivism has infected much of humanity as it has for the entire duration of civilization. Ayn Rand uniquely has a background that began when communism destroyed her life in the Soviet Union yet she had the intellect to question what was happening around her. She found in America the relief valve to her collectivist frustrations and a very small window to warn, through her books, The United States of what it would become if it did not stop adopting collectivism from Europe and yearn for the merits of Karl Marx and the Bolsheviks who overthrew Russia ushering in communism.
I used to feel that I had to concede my firm beliefs that reality was subjective to democratic opinion, but that was not working when it came to public education and I couldn’t understand why. I knew I wasn’t wrong, but I gave people the freedom to do their own thinking and to disagree with me. I saw that Ayn Rand had pondered the same thoughts and went through the same process I was and a pattern was forming which was very clear to me. Collectivism does not work and to the extent to which it is embedded into public education, politics in general, labor unions, even home owners associations, is truly shocking. I don’t care to spend one more minute of my life negotiating with those who are clearly in the wrong. Ayn Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged based on her observations of the way the Bolsheviks overthrew the largest country on the face of the planet, and she was able to apply those truths to the American experience, and that truth has great reverence to those awake enough to understand the message.
Those who call Ayn Rand and her books a—“cult” are practicing evasion, and wish to use peer pressure to prevent others from reading one of the greatest literary achievements ever created by a human mind. I have read Shakespeare, I have read Hemmingway, I have read Plato, I have read Sir James Frazer, I love and appreciate James Joyce and the poetry of T.S. Elliot and Ayn Rand is one of mankind’s greatest authors. She’s great because she was able to devise stories that reflected a hidden truth projected right in front of our faces, but the multi millennium trend to follow after collectivist pursuits kept us from seeing it. Ayn Rand is a uniquely American writer with a viewpoint that was born in Russia and sought The United States in order to flourish. Her work is unusual and fresh even after half a century has passed because few authors have had the guts to follow the truth as far as she did. Sadly, even supporters of Ayn Rand find themselves reading her books in secret and proclaiming their enjoyment of it under hushed voices because they are afraid of the ridicule by the collective.
The collective fears Ayn Rand because they are aware that they are suppressing the facts of existence from their own minds and this is the source of their emotions. If they were so sure of their version of the truth, they would not fear a book or its author. But they do, which is why they have attempted to paint politicians like Paul Ryan as an extreme because he happens to adore Ayn Rand. Even in my fights with the public education labor unions I receive emails and little notes declaring me as a “Randian” as to insinuate that such a term has a negative connotation. These names come from collectivists who follow Saul Alinsky like he’s the second coming of Christ, or Karl Marx the way most of the Obama White House does. The collectivist knows that their edited facts cannot hold up to reality so they hate Ayn Rand for the power of her books to shine light on what they are hiding. It is this trend which states the whole story. Behind the hatred of Ayn Rand is the fear that she’s right and her detractors are every bit the villains of her novels, that she saw through them before they were even born. And that same collectivist hope that if they can rid the earth of Ayn Rand that others will never discover what terrors to the human race the collectivists really are. Through evasion they hope that others who can see as Ayn Rand does and are fully living life awake, alert, and possess the ability to add up the facts will continue to chase their tails in isolation—and keep their crazy conspiracy theories to themselves for the sake of the collective built upon the preservation of evasion.
Ayn Rand is at the center of a war of ideas in modern America. Those who like and enjoy her books whether or not they agree with everything she believed are on one side. Those who hate her with every fiber of their being are on the other. In the middle is a lot of mushy confusion which represents the “undecided” voters. Ayn Rand is as far away from a cult that the definition can conger up. The reality is that people who don’t like her most likely have not yet evolved far enough along in their own minds to grapple with her concepts which are rooted in basic truths. So beware of those who call her a “cult leader” or any other diabolical term. The real villains are those who say such things off their forked tongues disguising through evasion the merits of their ignorance. Such enemies can be crushed with the truth, so wield it at them without mercy and don’t fret when their silly feelings are damaged, because in so doing, you may actually save them from the ignorance of themselves and their grand illusions.
The letter I submitted this past week came back at me and the reporters tried to explain my figure of $160,000 spent on “Community Conversations” was wrong and that if I wanted to revise my statement I could try again in the future. Further, they let me know that the real number for how much Lakota is spending on their “Community Conversations” program was only $40,000, which is true if one only looks at that small piece of the pie. But I explained to them that I considered all the money spent on public relations to be direct factors into how much the school district was willing to spend on passing another levy, and that number was $160,000 as outlined by their own article on the matter seen at the below link.
I told them that if they didn’t want to publish my letter that I’d find another way. From my view point, my letter will be seen by more people if I publish it here on Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom than in The Pulse Journal, but I wanted to give the paper the opportunity to show that they were not lap dogs for the Lakota School System. But their response showed that they are clearly in line with the public relations strategy that the school has formulated for the 2012 school year, which is to clean up their image, and lay the foundations for a levy increase when the LEA contract expires in 2014. By then, they hope that the public has forgotten all this levy failure mess, and they can begin to inject more money into their unmanaged budget with tax increases and smiling faces convincing everyone that it’s “all for the children.”
To get an idea of the kind of lap dog reporting I’m referring to, that hiring public relations specialists will purchase, have a look at the latest Michael Clark article from The Cincinnati Enquirer as seen below. This is what I wanted to give The Pulse Journal the opportunity to dispute, but they obviously showed their leanings, which is perfectly fair. But they cannot wonder why people will seek out other sources to get their news, if the newspapers simply become purchased advocates for the union controlled education system.
My article as I wrote it appears below. I had originally thought the real public relations number was between $165K to $167K but I was willing to concede to the $160K number reported by The Pulse Journal. However, the spirit of the letter was to convey the disrespect the district was showing by refusing to listen to the vote of the tax payers in the previous three levy attempts. The district was instructed in face to face conversations how to manage their finances, which is reflected in the letter below and they have ignored those instructions. Instead, they have elected to purchase advocats for higher taxes to build consensus among just enough voters to turn the numbers in their favor on the next levy attempt which they plan before the 2014 LEA contract is up. As Karen Mantia said, Lakota does not have a levy on the ballot this year, but it soon will, which make no mistake about it, the “Community Conversations” is directly attempting to ease community tensions enough to pass a future levy. That is why my letter below is worded the way that it is:
I find it arrogant that Karen Mantia from Lakota made mentioned she was seeking hosts for the “community conversations” program that Lakota is spending $160,000 tax payer dollars on in order to find out what the community wants. After three failed levies I would have thought they would have figured everything out by now. So let me reiterate what Lakota should have already been doing all along, but need to implement before the LEA contract is up in 2014, where the union employees will expect a restoration of their pay increases, wrecking the budget and dictating another levy attempt.
Lakota is expected to provide an excellent school system that is one of the best in Ohio. Lakota is expected also to lessen its tax footprint on the community for which it resides. Lakota is expected to acknowledge that it has declining enrollment and should have no problem balancing its budget now that fewer students are attending school in a community with fewer households in the district with children in them. Lakota is expected to force its employees to take a 5% pay reduction before it ever considers another levy. Tax increases impact businesses at a much higher rate than the residents will have to pay. And Lakota is expected to push its high dollar employees off the payroll in exchange for younger, cheaper employees to keep its budget under control.
Very easy—and Lakota could have saved $160,000 to learn it. All they had to do was read this paper.
Rich Hoffman
Currently in Chicago the teachers are on strike turning down a 16% increase in wages. They are demanding a 30% raise and are presently marching around the streets of Chicago leaving the children high and dry, proving that the unions do not give a damn about any children. In 2008 Lakota had their union threaten a strike which forced the school board to cave under the pressure and give all the teachers a pay increase, which caused a budget deficit forcing Lakota to attempt to pass three school levies to balance their budget. People like me, fought those tax increases because we don’t like what the union did, and I refuse to give them more of my money for their despicable acts against my community. My argument from day one was not against the Lakota School Board or even the administrators, it was with the unions that control public education and I decided a few years ago that I would not support them any longer. I will not support a system that feeds them even indirectly, and I want their hooks out of my community. My anger comes when the school superintendent and school board members apologize for their lack of management by siding with the unions because they fear the kind of strikes that Chicago is currently going through, and Lakota went through just four years ago more than they do the voters.
When I organized a tax resistance against Lakota’s levy attempt I did it as a citizen strike against the union demands. A “NO” vote is the only voice a tax payer has, and it is the job of the school management to listen. At Lakota when they decided to hire public relations personnel to attack the NO voters, which is what they are doing, they are telling people like me that they fear the teachers union more than they fear my ability to organize against their school levy, and that is an insult.
When after three votes to decline tax increase proposals, the school district elected to spend $160,000 to attack the position of the NO vote, that action is a declaration of support in favor of the Lakota teacher’s union, which is the cause of all the financial trouble. If the school spent $160,000 of tax payer money trying to undo the position of the teacher’s union I would consider the money well spent, but instead they are attacking those who are refusing to pay additional taxes to support a greedy labor union.
In essence, a NO vote isn’t any different than what the teachers union in Chicago is doing when they failed to report to work, or Lakota attempted the same in protest over their pay and insurance contributions, only the NO voters have a right, and obligation to say NO. The unions do not have a right to the money they are asking for and if they refuse to work due to a strike, then the job of management in the school system in question has an obligation to find employees who will do the work, because the tax payers paid for that work, and not for public employees to march around in the street holding signs and demanding infinite amounts of money. When a voter casts a NO vote, they are also on strike against the unions themselves, and for that the newspapers, the television stations and the schools owe those people the same respect they give to the pro union supporters, and if they don’t, they are guilty of supporting one side, and not the other.
That’s when the crime of using tax payer money, like what Lakota did, and The Pulse Journal debated with me over in my Letter to the Editor to attempt to erode away the NO vote, (THE TAXPAYERS STRIKE) becomes a serious matter. All supporters who pick the side of the union have declared that they respect the taxpayers who voted NO less than they do the teachers union who will threaten a strike on a whim to get what they want whenever they want it. And that is a mistake.
Without the taxpayer, there is no union. Without the taxpayer, there is no school. Without the taxpayer, there are no people to read the newspapers, or watch the news. Without the taxpayer there is nothing. It would be thought that there would be more respect given to the tax payer by all the parties above, but they don’t because in history the unions are far more radical and nasty to deal with, where the tax payer has been peaceful and shown themselves to be willing to be shoved around and bullied.
Right on queue Monroe Schools Superintendent Elizabeth Lolli has indicated that she will be resigning from her position after the levy failure in August ahead of a November attempt. She says that the levy failure has nothing to do with her decision to give up an annual salary of $116,000 so she can work as a consultant for Butler County Educational Services, but the pattern is all too reminiscent of the behavior of the school districts’ immediate neighbor Lakota.
Two months after the levy defeat at Lakota in November of 2010 Mike Taylor retired stepping out of the heat that was brewing as it was revealed that the cause of the tax increase was due to excessively high teacher salaries, and that the superintendent had not even made an effort to manage his costs. In a video Taylor filmed before the 2010 levy attempt Taylor declared that teachers did not make enough for their intense 7.5 hour day 9 months out of the year, and that he thought teachers should be paid more!
Well it is that type of mismanagement of tax payer resources that have caused school districts all over Ohio to effectively go bankrupt, including Monroe which is now in a state fiscal emergency. If a superintendent who makes six figures isn’t going to manage the costs of their employees, then they are failures. Mike was smart to jump off the ship at Lakota because the game had been exposed, and he knew it. So he did the smart thing and retired.
Lakota actually improved their performance over the next 6 months without a superintendent which proved that the superintendent positions are just token occupations designed to shield school boards from direct responsibility when things go wrong. The superintendent is simply a spokesman for the schools and are more comparable to a public relations consultant whose sole propose is to pass tax increases than a CEO who runs a major company. Lakota prior to another levy attempt in the fall of 2011 hired the quarter million dollar double dipping delegator, the former retiree from Sycamore Schools Karen Mantia. Since bringing her on to exclusively pass a school levy Lakota has spent well over $250,000 in compensation on Mantia, plus another $160,000 dollars on public relations in just over a year’s time. Nearly half a million dollars alone has been spent on creating a positive public image for a school that is supposed to be teaching children. But the obvious function of the education jobs are to create government jobs with tax payer dollars and the superintendent is the guardian of that creation, not the regulation of cost. Superintendents are sold to the community as CEO’s, but their actual function is simply public relations. Mantia did nothing after Lakota’s levy failures to present to the education union a 5% reduction in their inflated wages and benefits in order to balance their budget; instead she participated in cutting electives, increasing sports fees, and aggressive busing reductions. The purpose of these measures were not to cut costs, but to punish the public for not passing a levy. (How do I know that? Because I am personal friends with several former and current school board members who have given me their notes from Levy University taught at their yearly OSBA conference in Columbus. Bet you won’t read about that in your local newspaper.)
The same type of extortion is going on at Monroe. Voters just turned down a vote in August yet the school board put another attempt on the ballot for November. Their intention is to keep putting a tax increase on the ballot until the public gives up resisting it. This is radical politics in the extreme and is a popular union tactic that is responsible for how the wages through collective bargaining drove up the labor costs of Lakota, and Monroe in the first place to average salaries of over $60K per year. Collective bargaining is the villain, since it is the “collective” body of the school employees who make demands through threats of strike to get short work days, extremely low health insurance costs, and 2% to 3% increases for all their years of employment. Teachers all through the previous decade would threaten to strike at the slightest mention of health insurance increases sending a strong message to school boards to not even attempt to regulate the wages, so nobody did.
The result is out-of-control budgets in all of Ohio’s 614 school districts and the only way they have to balance their budget is to increase taxes. This is the fault of the unions, and they are hiding in the backgrounds leaving school superintendents to take the bullets for them, people like Elizabeth Lolli who was paid six figures to put up and shut up. Monroe hopes that they can get a levy passed by parting ways with Lolli and blaming all their financial problems on their previous treasurer whom they are currently suing. But the fault is actually on all of them who constantly yielded to the union demands avoiding conflict like truck drivers avoid driving on an icy road.
What nobody has figured out is that these levy failures are the public’s way of striking back at the unions for their constant terrorism invoked through fear of work stoppages over the years, driving up their labor costs. When the public votes down a levy, they are saying, “NO” to the cost increases imposed on a school district, which is their way of managing the costs. The school board has an obligation to act on that vote, not cheerlead on behalf of the union who caused the problem in the first place. A “NO” vote is looked upon by the radical tax grabbers as a greedy, child hating enterprise, but where were the cares for the children when the teachers threatened to walk off the job because their health care was going up by .5%, or they demanded at 3% increase in pay instead of a 2%. Teachers who participated in those strikes are hypocrites and they are the cause of the current financial instability. When the public says “NO” to a school levy, they mean it. And when a public official at the local school board, or the state decide they are going to be arrogant enough to put another levy on the ballot the day after the public voted the tax increase down, they are proclaiming to the world that they are too spineless, and arrogant to listen to the public mandate, and that they will ram the issue down the throat of the public until the “NO” votes becomes a “YES” vote. And every person who participates in that process should lose their job.
Elizabeth Lolli knows she’s caught between a rock and a hard place just as Lakota’s Mike Taylor knew it, and the best thing to do these days is to take the money and run, because the money tree isn’t shaking any more. Tax payers have realized that they are being scammed and they don’t like it. And the unions wouldn’t dare attempt to threaten a strike now that people are on to their game, so the “NO” votes are getting bolder—finally. People for the first time in over a decade are openly voicing their opinion about these money scams coming from public education and they resent having their children wrapped up in the ordeal. There is a real and growing anger at the entire public education funding process. I’m so fed up with it that I think all parents should home school their children, because I don’t like the product public schools are producing. It certainly isn’t worth the massive amounts of money we throw at it. For the $2000 to $3000 I spend per year on property taxes, I’d rather save the money and take my family to Disney World than provide a baby sitting service for the young busy parents who live in my school district and more people are beginning to feel as I do, which is very bad for the public school unions—who I don’t think have a legal right to even exist.
So it’s no mystery that Monroe’s Superintendent Lolli is stepping down, because the writing is on the wall. She knows it and the school board knows it, and the union knows the mud is on their hands. If I were a superintendent I wouldn’t want to be in the situation either, even for a six figure income to simply be a public relations mouthpiece. Because before too long, the guilt overtakes the comfort that the money brings, and the heat in the kitchen is just too great. And the heat is very hot in the kitchen right now, and it’s about to get a lot hotter. Believe me, I know first hand. The only adults in the room on this whole education issue are the people who vote “NO” and deep down inside all the school board members know it, and the superintendents do as well. Because logic is on the side of the people who are declaring that the spending increases on salaries and benefits in public education have to be pulled down to reality, but the unions won’t budge leaving the school superintendent to be squashed in the middle. Superintendents like Lakota’s Mantia puts herself in that difficult situation willingly accepting she couldn’t get a job anywhere else as easy as a school superintendent and make so much money. So the public pressure is worth the financial return for her. But for people like Lolli, and Taylor, who can see where this funding road is going, they have logically and wisely decided to remove themselves from the debate which will be a loss for them no matter which way a vote in November dictates.
Keep in mind before I say what will surely infuriate many that I spent much of my previous Friday evening listening to the pre-season football game between my favorite NFL team The Tampa Bay Buccaneers and The Miami Dolphins. I enjoy the combat of a football game. I understand the drama of sporting events. I have known, and currently know many people who memorize sports stats and pour a lot of personal time and energy into sports as their premier entertainment. I know many people who spend their Friday nights going to football games for their local high school in the fall; have block parties in their cul-de-sacs on Saturdays when Ohio State plays Michigan, then tail gate on Sunday down at Paul Brown Stadium for The Cincinnati Bengals. These same people will rattle off statistics of sport players with great conviction, but couldn’t begin to tell you who Rob Portman is–the State of Ohio Senator who has been a potential candidate for Vice-President of The United States. They drink a lot, and take great pride in losing their senses to drunkenness, and in spite of those human faults, I still enjoy the fanfare of sports.
In Texas, as displayed to the outside world quite wonderfully in the film Friday Night Lights, high school football is the centerpiece of small town entertainment, and it does bond the community together in ways that defy logic. I could write books on why this is destructive in that it shows a tendency toward collectivism that is ultimately disparaging, but for the sake of simplicity, let’s just say that small town politics in the state of Texas loves their Friday night football. It’s an obsession really, so much so that tax payers in Allen, Texas passed a bond package with 63.66 percent of the vote from the booming suburb of north Dallas worth $119.4 million dollars, $60 million of which was designated to building a state-of-the-art stadium for their high school football team.
For the kids who play football in Allen they will play under the Friday Night Lights for their community in a stadium that rivals what many of the stadiums for professional teams play in. 8,252 people signed up for season tickets ranging in price from $40 dollars a game to $8 and they plan to sell out several of their games in the 18,000 seat arena in a town that has a population of 84,236, which is smaller than the Lakota School District in Cincinnati. The demand for football in Allen is so intense that 1 out of every 4 people plan to attend football games at the new stadium.
The residents of Allen have a median household income of $100,843, which is about $10,000 more than the wealthy area of Lakota due in large part to all the businesses that are locating to the area because of Texas pro-business attitudes. Many of the jobs that aren’t in your town because of intense regulation and high taxes are probably in Texas or thinking about it currently. And when people have plenty of money in their pocket they tend to be generous by passing tax increases on themselves without a thought of future sustainability. The people of Allen have the money and they wish to spend it on a football stadium for their local high school, and that’s that. This has led to severe criticism from people outside of Allen who don’t understand why the people of that Texas town will spend so much money on a football stadium when the state of education is so poor in America. Well, the answer is rather harsh, but must be understood in order to be truthful about the real nature of support a community has for their local schools when discussions of tax increases arise. People like to watch violence and mayhem. They love to see gladiators on the battlefield punishing other players in a quest to score a point. Those same audiences do not show up to watch some kid take a math test.
All public schools and all large college campuses use their sports programs to drive their funding models for their education institutions. “Jocks” are treated as special in schools because the school acknowledges the gladiators as the life blood of their existence. Without the Friday Night Lights, without football, schools are boring places of history, art, math and science. Only a few kids in each grade class excel in those categories and go on to become esteemed world-wide scientists or mathematicians. Most parents would rather give birth to the next Payton Manning rather than Albert Einstein and it shows in schools by what parents support. In Allen, Taxes they are just being honest about their priorities. They are not functioning from illusion. When it comes down to it, people do not care about educating a bunch of inner city kids on how to bake a cake in home economics. They don’t care if a 1000 nerds score a perfect 2400 on their SAT scores. But they do care if a kid is 6-4 and weighs 280 pounds in his junior year and can play as a guard on the offensive line protecting the team quarterback. In essence, they care about their own entertainment on a Friday Night, because once the game is over, they are back to their own lives looking forward to the next game.
On a typical Saturday during football season most men will sift through the political section of a newspaper and read intently the sports stats from the game on Friday. On Monday morning he will be able to go into his workplace and impress his co-workers with his vast knowledge about the tackles that 6’, 4” 280 pound kid had in Friday’s football game. He might even claim to know the boy’s father hoping that such a revelation will impress his co-workers with is access to celebrity. But nobody sits around the water cooler talking about how a kid from their public school won a spelling competition, or won an academic scholarship to Yale due to academic excellence in high school physics.
Schools are very aware of this leverage they have over the community. Locally, around the Cincinnati area the closest thing we have to the Texas Friday Night Lights experience is Colerain Football. Already, the band leaders in that town are letting it be known that if residents don’t pass a school levy this November that there will be cuts to the football program, and the band that plays for them. They know as school officials that the community cares about sports, but not about the positions of assistant art teachers, so the threat is directed and quite intentional. At Lakota in my home district, after three failed levies, the district cut off its nose to spite its face threatening to hurt the parents of the district by charging players $550 per sport for each player in order to force levy passage which has ended up backfiring. Lakota isn’t Allen, Texas; people are more indifferent to their Friday Night Football. If it’s there, fine, if not, they’ll go to a movie and out to dinner instead. The only parents who really feel passionate about football like they do in Texas are the parents who are hoping their kid wins a scholarship to college which will save them tens of thousands of dollars in college tuition. Lakota took bad advice from the classes the school board attended at Levy University in Columbus, Ohio that the OSBA puts on every year. In that class they learned that to pass tax increases that public transportation and sports are what motivate voters to throw more money at a public school. If those things don’t work, then nothing will. At Lakota, to make up for picking the wrong strategy in winning the hearts of the community, they have had to spend $160,000 on public relations to attempt to win back community support, which they won’t get as long as 1500 kids are being charged $550 to play sports.
Penn State covered up the sex crimes they all knew about because they understood that it was Penn State Football that drove new enrollment, and therefore revenue to their university. It is sports that drive education, not academics. In Allen, Texas at least they aren’t trying to deceive themselves in being so high-brow to not wish for the blood lust of violent impacts under the Friday Night Lights of their new $60 million dollar stadium. Nobody really cares about “education.” This is well-known, it’s just not publicly acknowledged. The people of Allen are not going to pour $60 million dollars into a program to help the poor and needy. They are not going to give it to a bunch of fools who want to build solar panels and wind mills. They are not going to give it to a bunch of socialist teachers who want to save the world with world peace. In polite conversation the tax payers will utter support for such things, but when it comes time to put their money where their mouth is, they spend it on blood, broken bones, and drama on a fourth and goal. Everything else is a waste of time and that is the key to the education funding structure. Without the Friday Night Lights, public education is just another stale experience that could easily be replaced with online classes.
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This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon
I know this is a long article but complicated themes require advanced explanation, which is why I provided you with a little music to listen to that sums up the content you are about to read. For ease of review I have linked many of the supporting articles to show clearly the path that brought us to this point in time. If it hasn’t been obvious by now my premier strategy in fighting the Lakota School Levy has been a gradual increase of social controversy starting off small, and increasing with each levy attempt until something snaps. That will continue until the district makes drastic pay cuts in an honest attempt to balance their budget. The reasoning is an admission I came to years ago that the term “political correctness” was created by leftist extremists used to shackle the good manners of millions of conservatives. By holding conservatives to the impossible standard of living by “political correctness” rules, social parasites have been able to advance their own cause with great effectiveness. They often break their own rules while conservatives wither in paralysis by their sheer politeness. I decided not to play by those rules so to show others that what was holding conservatives back was not the superior philosophy of the political left, but the fear that conservatives have of controversy. By embracing controversy, I hoped to show thousands that the way to beat progressives was by not playing by the rules “they” created—and to not fear calling things by their real names.
If I had to do it again, I would home school my children during all their school years instead of just for a couple of years as my wife and I did. I never felt public education was teaching my children the dynamic aspects of life that I thought they should be exposed to. Instead, I always felt public education was teaching them to be “mediocre,” which was not what I desired as a father for my children. So to me, public education at its absolute best is a dismal failure.
Many haven’t figured it out yet but over $110 million Americans receive some sort of welfare, which can be seen on this chart released on The Blaze.com. This chart does not include Social Security, Medicare, or public education, and yes, to me public education is a form of welfare.
The sharp increase in these numbers shows the goal of the Obama White House which has been the goal of all socialists who have been operating in America and that is to buy votes. Currently with all the trouble Obama is in with legal issues and a dismal economy, he still has 50% of the vote, because more than half the nation gets some sort of check from the government as shown by the chart.
Public education is one of the largest socialist scams ever perpetrated on the American people. It in essence attempts to teach socialist values to young people while selling the service to the parents and the adult population as essential to a child’s well-being. If I had to raise a child today I would teach the child at home using the K-through 12 online computer course shown at the link below. This is a much more efficient method of teaching young people instead of attending an expensive brick and mortar school full of socialist union thumping teachers’ hell bent on the destruction of The United States. If any proof were needed that public education is a terrible travesty just look at the welfare numbers. When half the population is on welfare public education has failed to produce self-reliant individuals who are productive with entrepreneurial thinking. Instead, public schools make wishy-washy liberal leaning young people who take too long to grow up. Many of them don’t begin to see the light until their late 30’s these days and by then they have already started to raise misfits of their own, and the damage is already done.
When I first began my journey on this education reform path that I am on, it began by simply pointing out that the labor contracts for the public school unions were inflated. Since I had experience in my family after raising my own children that much of the education claims public schools were making toward a child’s well-being were inflated, because I had taken a very active role in teaching my children, I felt it was only fair to challenge the union position. Back on September 20th of 2010 I went on 700 WLW to talk about the real reason that my school district of Lakota needed a school levy, was to pay for the excessive wages of its employees. As I was doing that Kyle Olsen was putting up billboards around Cincinnati exposing the scam of public education. The Ohio Education Association responded to this statement by me and Olsen with a typical response at the time from the union, which can be seen below from the Pulse Journal. To listen to my original report on 700 WLW click here. The response from the OEA shown next made me so angry that I decided after the Lakota Levy was defeated to not take my foot off the neck of public education controlled by the labor unions. After the assault by David Little, a progressive activist, I decided that I had enough of these thugs who had taken over a school where I pay an enormous amount of money in personal taxes—all so people who wanted a quality “free” education for their children could pretend they were being good parents by spending a lot of money on homes to live in a school district that was highly sought after in the real estate market. The goodness of the district was being built by my property value which is in essence wealth redistribution because it was being consumed by value to fund the welfare system of public education. Click here to see the attack from David Little against me shortly after the first WLW radio spot. You can see the entire article from the Pulse Journal at the link below.
By Lindsey Hilty
Staff Writer
LIBERTY TWP. — Representatives of the Lakota Education Association say they hope voters will listen to facts given out by the school district rather than “rhetoric” from a group advertising in the area on bill boards.
“It has become the trend during election campaigns for anti-levy and anti-public education groups like (Education Action Group) to surface, speaking out against public education, and then to retreat again once the elections are over,” according to a statement from the OEA.
“We think that, first of all, it’s an outside group that is anti-public schools and anti-union,” Rodney Bird, labor relations consultant for the OEA said. “We believe the voters in southwest Ohio and in Lakota are intelligent enough to make their decision on a local levy based on the facts given by the district.”
That’s how it was back then; the unions were quoted all the time in the paper because nobody challenged them. People were afraid that the union would vandalize their homes, or that they would be publicly ridiculed within their communities. The force of the unions and the monopoly of their education empires deserved to have their asses kicked. So I started this site, Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom to contrast what the OEA said about people like me during levy elections. When the election was over, I did not go away. To this day, the union has been exposed for what they are, crooked thugs hell-bent on socialist destruction of America. After three years of very public battles the unions hardly have instigated a peep, they haven’t threatened to strike in the entire Cincinnati area primarily because of the constant coverage on 700 WLW.
As it can be seen, a lot has changed in the last three years, and what used to be boisterous dialogue on behalf of the unions now is seeing residents fighting back with boisterous dialogue of their own. In three short years we have changed the argument, and in three more years the brick and mortar schools will be forced to adapt entirely new philosophies. More and more people will begin to take part in the K-through-12 programs online and those people will be much less inclined to pass school levies since they aren’t using the public schools. The unions will be forced to come to reality, because people for the first time in a century are sticking up for themselves and fighting back.
Get ready for the new conservatives……..the old ones were a lot more passive. That won’t happen again, I promise. And Monroe, the ‘League’ has your back.
The Monroe School Levy is about go before voters and I have been hearing since my article last week that the levy opposition in that district under state financial emergency had shabby campaign signs and a poor, broken down group of protestors who were in need of more education themselves. Such comments from the pro levy supporters are normal since they can’t argue the real facts, so they attack the credibility of the people who oppose them. In this case the organized effort to oppose the 7.03 mill levy Monroe needs to stay out-of-state control. The situation is so heated that 25% of all Monroe homes have viewed articles at The Voice forums on Mainstreet Monroe’s website, and it is obvious that levy supporters are not at all happy to see an opposition standing against them.
Upon reading the comments at The Voice I decided to go into Monroe myself to see all these haphazard signs by the No Monroe resistance and what I found were some really nice signs that were well thought out and financed, and they were all over town. That had to infuriate the Monroe School System. It doesn’t matter what school district it is, the government education system does not like opposition to their plans.
With all the discussion on both sides, I will have to say I admire Tom Birdwell of the current Monroe School Board. His argument is that residents either vote for the 7.03 mill 5 year levy in Monroe, or the state will force Monroe to merge with Middletown where there is room in some of their buildings. But the catch is that Middletown already is operating at 47.16 mills, 7.02 mills higher than Monroe’s current mills rate. Birdwell is offering to speak to anybody personally to answer their questions, which is a very stand-up thing to do. But what he is assuming is that the state will be able to successfully force the people of Monroe to pay for taxes that they didn’t vote for in a forced merge with Middletown—that Middletown was foolish enough to approve. At that mill rate, no wonder Middletown is a ghost town these days. You certainly don’t see businesses flocking to locate there. More info on the specifics of the levy is at the link below. The truth is Monroe is not obligated to pay for taxes they didn’t approve of, and a state bureaucrat cannot politically do so. Birdwell made a compelling argument, but it is without any teeth. The state may be able to legally arrange such an injustice, but some politician will lose skin off their back with such a move, and this shoots major holes in the Yes Monroe position that Birdwell represents.
At the heart of the No Levy argument is former school board member Mike Irwin who appears to be attempting to redeem some of his views from the past. Some school board members learn once they’ve been through the management of a district what the problems are, and they do correct their thinking. Often school board members feel they must go along with the patriotism of a district and they ignore the perilous situations that the unions put them in. School board members know there isn’t much they can do about 80% of their costs that are tied up in wages and benefits, and budget items are controlled by union contracts. If a school board shows resistance to the union elements, then the union will threaten to strike. If a school board member does not lie down and play dead before the labor union, then the union attacks the character of the school board member publicly. This doesn’t happen directly most of the time, but indirectly through community infiltration into peer groups. School board members with weak stomachs find it’s best to just get along with everyone. They work closely with the PTA groups who become the voice of the union indirectly and are the source of much community infiltration. (That’s why they call them Parent Teacher Associations.) The people who always get left out of the education debate are the long-term residents who have already raised their kids and pay their taxes, but get sick of being hit up constantly by out-of-control costs driven by excessive labor expectations.
Older residents have learned to brave the multiple perils that come at their children, and have learned not to respond neurotically to every claim a unionized work force claims. Most of the pro levy supporters, teachers included are under 40. Many of the people criticizing the No Levy people on The Voice are in fact in their early 30’s and have very young children in the district. These thirty year olds are children raising children and they must be listened to with caution. As parents they have a long way to go and a whole lot to learn before they get there. Someday, when they become older and wiser they will also be No Voters. But the way the education system works currently is it is the youth who get all the attention, the students in the schools of course, and their young, inexperienced credit card debt incurring parents. In a game of the squeaky wheel gets the grease, the quiet ones get ignored—and those are the typical “No Voters.”
As I drove through Monroe taking the pictures shown on this article it was nice to see those quiet types finally sticking up for themselves and voicing their opinion with some well designed No Levy campaign signs. After I took enough pictures I went on over to Kings Island to ride a few roller coasters and think about the dynamics of the education situation under a setting sun while in line under a mister machine. At Kings Island that night I watched some of the people playing all the games set up in Coney Island–the games where players threw undersized rings around oversized bottles, and tried to shoot basketballs into undersized rims to win prizes. I realized that many of the people playing those games were younger people—and were probably levy supporters in their local school districts. They were doing with their children essentially what they were doing while playing carnival games at Kings Island—throwing money at a chance to win a prize.
Parents who vote for school levies believe that if they just pay a little more money, that they’ll win a prize for their children, and that prize is a good life. What the parents don’t understand is that the games are all rigged. Every now and then someone does win, but most people don’t. Public education is a scam as it is set up now, without competition so they can charge anything they want for their service. In Monroe and every other school district in the country it is collective bargaining that is the real villain of the out-of-control costs. Nobody in their right mind would pay all employees the same level of income based on years of service as opposed to performance. Collective bargaining is what has driven up the wages and forced Middletown to maintain a 47.16 mill levy left over from their heyday of economic activity. The unions in Middletown destroyed their industry, and the Middletown Mall is the ancient relic of that previous economic boom. What’s left now are the high taxes to pay the public employees after all the people who had money packed up and left town voting with their feet. That’s why Middletown has room in their school buildings, because enrollment is down. Now Monroe is facing the same temptation. If they give in to the union, they will find themselves in a slow decline economically with business as usual returning to the administration of the district finances, just as Little Miami did when they finally passed their levy after 9 attempts. If residents say NO to the levy they will put the weight of the financial strain squarely on the union where it belongs to wiggle, squirm, and play the squeaky wheel game. But finances will be forced out of the shadows so everyone can see what’s happening.
Monroe will have to decide what kind of community they want, and experience says that growth occurs by saying NO. Saying YES is agreeing to a slow death. Saying NO stops the bleeding. But regardless of what happens on Tuesday August 7th, at least the quiet NO voters have decided to voice their opinion with a spirited debate which is healthy, and very much-needed.
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This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon
I have to address a couple matters, one is fun, and the other is a clarification. First off, the picture shown here is the twin tunnels on I-40 in North Carolina just 4 miles south of the Tennessee border. For those in the media who are reading the advance copies of my new novel and have read the very exciting scene involving the roadblock at the twin tunnels, that scene takes place on the other side of that mountain at the mouth of those two tunnels. It is easy to see why the gunfire and explosions caused so much trouble when you observe how rugged the landscape is in that region.
I put that picture up because currently road crews are closing that tunnel at night diverting traffic through a service road so that the tunnel can undergo much-needed maintenance. For those who have read the novel, the kind of thing that happens in the story is a serious threat in that area, and requires constant maintenance. For those who have not read that scene, you will soon find out. Loud noises and violent behavior are not good for such areas. But it’s a fun fact of the novel to know that such an extreme occurrence is quite possible, and care must be constantly taken to avoid such catastrophes.
The other thing is attached to my new book as well. Some of my readers here–people I respect a great deal–are concerned that I may lose my credibility with the school levy issues by appearing self-serving because of all my promotional efforts over my new book. This deserves a bit of explanation that is needed at this point for my readers who visit Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom every day. To begin, a reminder of what my life was like before I got personally involved in the Lakota Levy in 2010 needs to be seen. The video below is a sample of the kind of life I lived before joining forces with the people who would eventually make up No Lakota Levy to defeat those tax increases. The efforts of my previous book, and several film festivals along with my other exertion in a professional sense had me constantly on the road, going to award shows, trade shows, and many other adventures that come as part of that life, which I put on hold to help solve community issues.
In 2010 I put aside some of these fun occupational endeavors and took a few years to contribute something to the battle that is raging in our nation. I started helping local liberty groups where I could, as I still do. I started this blog site as a way to offset the information that the newspapers wouldn’t cover, and I took on the Lakota School Levy because it was a lie being told on the backs of children, and looked to be devastating to a community I grew up in, and is currently in my hands to protect. I was between books anyway completing The Symposium of Justice in 2004, and was writing Tail of the Dragon and doing my research to make that manuscript into a saleable story that American Book Publishing would eventually pick up.
Working around progressive entertainment types I knew what kinds of things pro tax advocates would attack in my character, so when the Enquirer did the article about me featuring my whip work, I knew how the politics would play out. Believe me; it was very much by design. The pro tax people ridiculed my use of whips which helped me figure out who was who. I used that information to my advantage. I didn’t fight those levies to be mean, or destructive. I did it because it was the right thing to do. My ultimate message was the importance of traditional values versus progressive values being taught in school, and I didn’t then nor in the future wish to pay higher taxes for a “progressive” education. I could have went around the country doing dozens of whip shows trying to promote traditional values, or I could do the unthinkable and apply those skills to explaining Keynesian economics which is how public schools function much to their own detriment. Of course I chose the latter.
Before the start of the last levy campaign I told my friends in No Lakota Levy that I had a book coming out in 2012, and they needed to find another spokesman for the levy fighting effort. I told them I’d still fight the levy, but I didn’t think it would be right to do media stuff for my book, and do media stuff against the levy, because the mixture would appear self-serving. For that very reason I avoided any elected offices, even though many wanted me to volunteer, because when Tail of the Dragon was ready to come out, I would have to put my effort behind that promotional endeavor, and being formerly involved in Tea Parties and other official positions while promoting a book is tacky. I don’t like it when others do it, so I sure wasn’t about to do it myself. I hoped that after two solid years of fighting levies that other people had learned how to do it, and could become the face of those efforts in the future.
In February of 2012 it was time to make a change which had been talked about ahead of time, so I picked the fight that would bring all the rats to the surface so everyone could see who was hiding where. The pro tax supporters conducted a negative survey against me outside a local Kroger store, so the time to act was then. I let my anger go, because it was well justified and it created the opportunity I needed to take this next step. This allowed new people at No Lakota Levy to pick up the baton and carry on. I of course would continue to cover things as I had, but I needed the freedom to move on to book promotion mode.
I know people who successfully have their hands in everything, but I’m not like that. I enjoy my time to myself, so I don’t like being too busy. If I’m going to promote a book, I’ll put my effort into it, since it’s something I already believe in. When the time comes to fight for another community issue, I’ll be there. If the group we have in place is not ready, then I’ll assemble another one to meet the challenge. It’s that simple. But life is always in motion, and especially at my age, it is very busy.
So I am putting out a lot of promotional material. These days, that’s how it’s done. For my daily readers, some of which have already read and loved the book, they are getting tired of seeing all my promotional stuff, because they’ve already been there and done it. It’s a good memory for them, but it isn’t new any longer. But for many people every day who come here for the first time, I put those ads up for them. Today alone I have multiple readers from 13 different countries ranging from Sweden, Romania, and Saudi Arabia to New Zealand and Australia. This is pretty normal, and as it would be thought that these readers are tuning in to see what happened in the Colorado shooting, ironically most of the views come from my articles about school levies. All those countries mentioned each had more than 10 hits each, so the Tail of the Dragon ads are important to gaining international exposure. Even though my daily readers are used to the Tail of the Dragon cover and blurbs, many of these international readers are just seeing them for the first time.
If I were in an elected office, or was an official spokesman paid by someone else to represent a product, I wouldn’t cross promote my personal projects with Lakota stories, or political material concerning the presidential election. But the fact of the matter is that I have deliberately made myself free of those obligations so I can do what I have been planning for quite some time. At this time there isn’t a levy at Lakota to fight, and there are plenty of ground troops in the liberty groups to handle the administrative stuff. I do my part in giving a local voice to many contemporary issues that get missed in the mainstream media outlets, stuff the liberty groups need to advance their positions, being someone who can untangle the complicated web of modern politics so it’s easy for others to see.
I offer the work at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom for free, because there is a need for it. If I make money it is not from memberships, or any donation. It will be because someone bought a book of mine. I work through many of the problems that will be in future stories by putting my thoughts and notes up for all to see, so I can refine those thoughts into more articulate works in actual books in the future. A good portion of these articles are my personal notes that I share for the development of ideas. I figure that if I need to resolve my thoughts on a matter than others do as well, so by putting the articles on this forum, I hope they help others.
But I don’t formally belong to any groups so I can have the freedom to pursue my own path, so that I cannot be accused of indulging in self-serving messages. Once the novel comes out, I may change that, but for the time being, that’s the way it has to be due to the nature of public relations. I support many groups, and I may attend their meetings. However to avoid the accusations of being self-serving, I keep my involvement limited to a supportive role. For me the most supportive role I can think of is to help frame the argument so others can see it clearly, and act on it. I had an open window between projects to offer myself publicly to controversial subjects, and I will have an open window again. But as of now that window is closed. That does not mean I will not write and contribute articles for analysis as I have, but my official spokesman roles for those endeavors will have to be on hold till my window opens once again.
I hope that clears things up for those who were wondering. It is much easier to answer the question this way as opposed to separate emails. When it comes to these kinds of things, constant reinvention of roles is very important so that stagnation does not set in. When you get a chance to work on a project that has national exposure, you take it, because the results will be useful later.
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This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon
I personally think Ben Dibble as president of the Lakota School Board is a better fit than what we’ve had in the past. I can deal with people who don’t think the way I do, since usually the differences are in understanding. But I refuse to deal with thugs who wish to convince me that a lie is the truth. When Ben said “We need more direction from our community on where it thinks our school district should be heading and what level of service it’s willing to fund,” the school board president is speaking from his perspective and political affiliation. Unfortunately flowery progressive types who don’t have much business experience see the world through rose-colored glasses, which corrupts their decision-making. The elements missing from Ben’s statement is that the cost of that funding is up for negotiation. Cost is not a fixed item and that is the heart of the problem at Lakota and every other public school in Ohio and across the country. Public education has a monopoly on education because of government involvement. It is because there is no competition that education costs are so high, and that is why there are not enough tax dollars to fund public education, because the salary expectations are simply too high because there’s no competition to keep the costs low.
In private conversations most of the people on the inside know what the problem is, but they lack the fortitude to confront the situation. So they go on the attack against people like me who point out the problem with varied degrees of coercion. Anyone who knows me personally understands that sending a bunch of latte sipping prostitutes outside of a Kroger store to take a survey against my name with the intention of running me out of the town is not the smart thing to do. That kind of thing is an act of war in my opinion, so that is not the way to solve problems; it will just piss me off. School superintendents and school board presidents know that there are serious problems with the education funding formula and they know it is caused due to their monopoly power. So to close the perception gap and keep people from looking too closely into their affairs without thuggish union coercion is the reason they hire public relations personnel and consultants.
Lakota even though they have agreed to not put the community through another tax increase in 2012 is already making aggressive plans for the near future because they just don’t understand at a fundamental level that the gravy train of the teaching profession is over, and that they must adjust their costs to the market value that is trying to establish itself. Instead, they have decided to fight the community once again and they have loaded up on public relations help in a big way to help put them over the top. On July 16th Lakota approved the contract of Randy Oppenheimer to serve as community relations consultant paying him $67,000 for 50 weeks. It looks as though Lakota was not happy with the work of Elliot Grossman who they paid $73,000 from October 2011 immediately after the $90,000 payout to the previous public relations consultant Laura Kursman, to the present. Lakota has spent a lot of tax payer money on trying to hide their budget management problems which are locked in archaic union contracts that have driven up their employee costs. The public relations consultants are hired to deflect attention away from this problem and place it upon the students who attend the school creating an emotional argument for many parents designed to defy logic.
Without question Superintendent Mantia is excited to see that Oppenheimer worked as a public relations consultant at Fairfield which just barely passed their school levy in the most recent election. Mantia and the Lakota gang hope that Oppenheimer can pull the same strings with his connections to the Middletown Journal and other papers to use those publications as mouthpieces for higher taxes actively promoting the school without journalistic appraisal.
But Lakota didn’t stop there. They are taking the extra public relations step of going on the offense by hiring a very progressive political group called Citizens for Civic Renewal to come from their projects in Over-the-Reign and the Freedom Center to Lakota with a program they call “Community Conversation.” The actual term for this action Lakota is spending tax payer money on, should be “Community Conversion,” because what the Citizens for Civic Renewal are planning to do with “Community Conversation” is just a different name for The Delphi Technique created by Saul Alinsky. For this service Lakota is paying $40,000 to Jeffrey Stec who is the executive director of Citizens for Civic Renewal to “engage” the community and convince them of why they should “step up” and pay higher taxes for the school in their district.
But here’s where Jeffrey will run into problems. What he will run into at Lakota as opposed to his work in downtown Cincinnati is that the people who live in Liberty Twp, and West Chester live there because they wanted to move away from the kind of people Jeffrey is, who is a progressive big government guy attempting to keep all the New Deal and “Great Society” policies progressive politics has enacted over the last century that have driven up taxes, particularly in the metropolitan areas. Jeffery’s group is in denial of those costs and the actual merit of those services. Since he is viewing the world in a progressive manner, he believes that the rest of society has a social contract with each other to always support the policies of those communist leaning programs created during the Cold War in direct reaction to the political conditions of the great Soviet threat. One of those programs was “collective bargaining” for public unions which didn’t start in Ohio until 1983. It has been a failure, and is directly responsible for schools like Lakota to operate at uncontrollably high costs.
There are neighborhoods in Lakota, like Four Bridges, that are filled with younger families who have found themselves in well-paying jobs, but are still immature and lacking world experience. Because they are busy parents they feel insecure in parental roles and wish to believe they can purchase through higher taxes good futures for their children. They tend to support school levies, because they lack worldly experience and just don’t know any better. Jeffery with his group is being paid to further perpetuate that myth. But a majority of the communities in Liberty Twp., and West Chester are older people who have been around and have raised families of their own. Many families are actual entrepreneurs and business managers who have had to make hard financial decisions in their businesses, so they see the truth, and those people will not have any sympathy for Jeffery and his progressive group. Most of the people moved or stayed in Lakota to avoid progressive types like Jeffery, so his “Community Conversations” will not be well received.
I’m sure Oppenheimer will manage to convince the Pulse Journal to write flowery articles about Jeffery’s attempts, and Michael Clark at the Cincinnati Enquirer will eat out of Oppenheimer’s hand, since Lakota has convinced Clark to choose between me, and the school. Newspaper reporters know they need the school stories to keep their livelihoods going, so they will choose who puts money in their pocket 100% of the time, and I don’t put money in the Enquirer’s pocket. The coverage of these “Community Conversations” is already set. It’s bought and paid for with our tax dollars in a hope to convince Lakota tax payers to approve higher taxes on themselves in a district with declining enrollment, where layoffs will become necessary for the next 10 years regardless of levy passage. The housing boom in Butler County is over. There will still be real estate sales, but at nowhere near the levels that the levy supporter, real estate agent, school board members like Joan Powell have enjoyed in the past. They are in denial of their personal circumstances and are hoping that Oppenheimer and “Community Conversation” will supply them once again with the kind of financial gravy they enjoyed in the previous decade.
The cost of that gravy is enormous. In just one calendar year, Lakota has spent a quarter million dollars on four public relations consultants to bring them to this initiative of “Community Conversation” and a structure to help sell it to the public. $250,000 of tax payer dollars has been consumed at Lakota to sell the concept of higher taxes to those same tax payers. At best it is disingenuous to the intelligence of Lakota residents to impose on them more political games by aligning the school of a conservative community to the nonsense of goofy, idealistic progressives whose only answer to everything in life is to spend more money.
My hopes that Lakota would listen to the community and actually manage their finances have just flown out the window. They just can’t get it through their minds that the members of the community do not exist to create jobs for education professionals. We just want our kids to get an education, and for busy parents, they need a day care facility while they work two jobs to live in homes that have $5000 a year property tax obligations. The quality of a school is in the people of the community, not in the employees of the school. As I’ve said thousands of times, every employee at Lakota could be fired and replaced with cheaper new employees, and the quality at Lakota would not decrease, because the kids come from quality households. And those households moved to Lakota to avoid progressive fools who think “big government” is “hip” and an obligation for society. It is in the quality of the people who live in the district that makes Lakota great. It is not the school, or the quarter million dollars spent on public relations to attempt to convince conservative families in the Lakota District otherwise. The problem of education funding is a result of an education monopoly driven by unionized labor resistant to technological changes. The purpose of public relation firms is to hide that fact from the tax payer with glossy, emotional stories about children and community pride. The intent is to survive just a bit longer when the market conditions are demanding changes, so the current employees can preserve their salary demands and meet their retirement options. In the end, it’s far from being about the children, it’s all about the money and the endless desire for more sold behind the mask of “Community Conversations.”
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This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon
Before we get into the 20 reasons Obama is a socialist, here is an early review from the new film “2016: Obama’s America as seen on Rotten Tomatoes.
Saw this last night and loved it. Very gripping. And very fair. The facts are laid out and you make your own conclusions. There is no Obama bashing. Much of the film is in Obama’s own words (from “Dreams From My Father”). See this movie.
As President Obama lands at CVG airport for his Cincinnati fundraiser bashing the rich and declaring to help the poor, it is important to know who he is. Obama’s use of Air Force 1 for a fundraising trip is a disgrace and I’d feel that way even if the president was a Republican. I don’t worry about it too much for the occasional feel good visit, but with Obama, he has consumed millions of dollars in tax money just in fuel to fly him around the country simply to raise money for his campaign which I do not support. So in an inadvertent way Obama through IRS enforcement is taking some of my tax contributions to fund his campaign which I’m against.
But as I think of Obama I am currently ecstatic over the upcoming release of Dinesh D’Souza’s new film “2016: Obama’s America.”The Hollywood Reporter and The Blaze featured clips of that upcoming film which delves into the past of Barack Obama and explores the relationship of Frank Marshall Davis in the life of the future tax abuser, Barack Obama. The Blaze specifically has a wonderful feature on the new Paul Krengor book, The Communist which goes into great detail about Davis. Read that article at the below link and buy that book on Tuesday, July 17th!
Dinesh’s new film is being produced by Gerald Molen who produced Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park, Minority Report, and Rain Man and is based on the book The Roots of Obama’s Rage written by D’Souza. If you have not read the book, you should. To get a sneak peek of what the book is about, and what this film will be about, check out this Forbes article.
The movie will be a very hard hitter, and it will be fair—probably fairer than a person like Obama deserves. Based on D’Souza’s writing style and the very good producer credentials of Gerald Molen who has worked very closely with Steven Spielberg—an Obama supporter and someone I think a lot of in spite of his political beliefs, this film will be well done and balanced.
But that does not mean that it won’t reveal that President Obama is the first president in American history that is a representative of Communist Party USA, and he achieved penetration of the highest office in the world through subversive tactics taught to him by Frank Marshall Davis who was a card-carrying communist who set out in 1931 to spread communism all over the world. Davis using the disguise of civil rights activism set the stage for what many on the political left adhere to today particularly in many media outlets utilizing open endorsements of communism—which is the mortal enemy of the American way of life and capitalism in general which is the life blood of the American economy. Obama was introduced to Davis through his grandfather—the only stable male figure in his young life—Stanley Dunham with the intention of mentoring the young Barack Obama into a subversive communist that they could slide under the protective barriers of American society—which they hated—to undo it from within.
Stanley Dunham raised in Barack’s mother a radical leftist who would spend much of her life hopping from man to man on a quest for Marxist radicals, which Barack’s biological father certainly was. Barack’s mother got naked for Davis on several occasions in what has been documented as wild sexual exploits. It says a lot that the most stable figure in Obama’s youth was his grandfather who was drinking buddies with Frank Marshall Davis. It makes you wonder what kind of man Stanley was to let Davis drink with him then embark on wild sexual adventures with his daughter, Barack’s mother, who was old enough to be Davis’s daughter at the time. If a friend of mine came to my house and wanted to seduce my daughter, there would be big trouble for them. But apparently Stanley enjoyed the activity, enough to encourage his grandson Obama to learn all he could.
Davis had a FBI file 600 pages long due to his communist activity with the National Negro Congress—a communist front organization, and the Civil Rights Congress cited by President Harry Truman’s Attorney General as a communist subversive organization. In fact, in a 1950 FBI report states that members of a subversive element in Honolulu were “concentrating their efforts on infiltration of the Democratic Party through control of Precinct Clubs and organization.” Robert M. Kempa was a Communist Party informant who agreed to cooperate with government investigators back when the government itself was not yet infected with communism and stated, “Late in the fall of 1950 I started contacting Frank Marshall Davis in connection with Communist Party matters, and relaying to him information received from my superior contact in the Communist Party. During a portion of 1950, 1951, and part of 1952, I continued contacting Frank Marshall Davis and also transmitted dues from the Communist Party received from him to my contact above. During the period of my contacts with Frank Marshall Davis, he advised me that his wife, Helen was a member of Group #10.” Frank Marshall Davis was the primary contact in Hawaii for subversive communist activity and this is one of the primary influences in Barack Obama’s young life, so much so that Obama would trace the steps of Davis in South Chicago as a community activist many years after Davis had performed the same role in Chicago. It was Davis who started The Star in Chicago, a labor newspaper that was committed to subtle communist propaganda which was very prevalent in the labor unions.
Obama was surrounded by radicals his entire life, so he never had a chance. If he was not President of the United States, I might feel sorry for him and try to help him find his way, but in his role as president he is a subversive seeking to rob from me a way of life I cherish and I personally don’t take that lightly. One of the strategies that subversive communists used which was partially invented by people like Frank Marshall Davis through his newspaper work and literature was to attack anyone who questioned their activity. For the communist the best defense was an aggressive offense, so if anyone questioned their activity, they would publicly ridicule their attacker as a racist, a selfish mean person, a rich out-of-touch socialite, or a stiff. They of course used other words, but in short, nobody wanted to be called names, since it’s a primal desire that many have to receive some sort of social acceptance from their peers. Communist subterfuge experts exploited this tendency to silence America through their communist advancements out of fear from name calling.
Obama’s presidential ascension was designed by people like Davis, and Bill Ayers to penetrate the White House like a Trojan horse and destroy it from within. They avoided the communist designation by calling themselves progressives and hiding behind the Republican commitment to progressivism started by Teddy Roosevelt. People not privy to history do not understand how these games are played. Most people look for obvious signs they can measure actions to. The communist subversive has denied spectators of this evidence using means developed by the KGB to undermine American culture over a long period of time without obvious signs of antagonism. They literally kill you with kindness behind symbols of “peace.” The Soviet Union hoped that America would crumble from inside before they ran out of money in the late 1980’s. Lucky for America, we hired a radical right-winged president in Ronald Reagan to yank America back to its capitalist ways for a short period of time paving the way for one of the greatest growth spirts known in the world.
When I grew up in the 1980’s jobs were plentiful and economic growth was constant. It was the policies created by Reagan that allowed Clinton to balance the budget and bring down the deficit enjoying the economic relief created by Reagan and the destruction of the Communist Soviet Union. But Clinton after 8 years had brought progressive policies back to the national and international stage, and the progressive George Bush and now Barack Obama have restored the communist dreams started by radicals like Frank Marshall Davis back to America.
Most people do not know that they have accepted communism in their lives, which is by design. Communists like Obama have learned to use careful language to hide their true intentions even from themselves. As agents of communism they have had to teach themselves to believe everything they say. Obama’s grandfather and Davis clearly used the young Obama to carry out their dreams of communist radicalism by teaching the young future presidential plant to slowly seduce the masses into accepting anti-capitalist propaganda.
A communist is coming to Cincinnati to raise money for his intended destruction of American society. He comes with a message given to him from Frank Marshall Davis in a plan hatched in the mid 50’s ahead of the book release The Naked Communist. Davis and his FBI file which will be revealed in the movie 2016: Obama’s America will show to what extent communists worked to undo American society. In Hawaii, Davis successfully avoided arrest by the FBI and used a group called The Democratic Revolution to disrupt industry, organize large strikes and oust “white rule” among the plantations and businesses and was successful. His mentorship of the young Barack Obama would take the same attack mode used in The Hawaiian Dock Strike of 1949 to put a communist radical in The White House and bring the imperial nation of America to its knees forever.
These facts cannot be disputed, and the evidence is overwhelming. This is the person who has been president for 4 years and is looking for 4 more—which the nation we all know and love will not survive. Obama in spite of his carefully crafted charm and pleasant demeanor is a created man by radical communists intent on fulfilling the dreams that climaxed in the 1960’s but fizzled short because of the Reagan Presidency. Communists infected the media; they infected movies and television, book publishing, government and to a large extent—public education. Because of those infestations, communism is a big part of the life of most people reading this whether they know it or not. They cannot see it in their day-to-day lives unless they compare their world view of today with those of their own grandparents. It is only then that they can see how far they have fallen, and how effective Davis and his insurgents were in undermining American society. It is to that ignorance that Obama speaks. It is the message of subtle communism hidden within the Democratic Party under the banner of progressive politics that he advocates unconsciously, because he knows of nothing else. It is because of him that today’s America is facing a financial collapse similar to the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980’s, because like those Russians, America is being led by a devout communist personally mentored by Frank Marshall Davis. Because of his actions, Obama is being more and more referred to as a socialist, which is really just Communism Light. But under the tutelage of Davis, it would appear that Obama and his staff is even further to the political left than avid socialists which the video at the start of this article indicates with 20 points. The undercurrent of his political belief is communism as it was advocated by Davis and the radical insurgents of the Soviet Union to end America and its powerful economy being driven by capitalism. The communist goal was to stop the blood from flowing in that economy, killing the nation. By examining the economic conditions of today, the results are obvious as our nation is near death. Obama’s visit to Cincinnati should be viewed as a dysfunctional family member coming to the nation’s death-bed to visit a loved one that is on life support. But Obama doesn’t come with flowers begging for forgiveness for what he has done to put the nation on that death bed. He’s coming to pull the plug.
