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In the small political battles of our day—the ones over which idea is better than the other, I see such conflicts to be minor squabbles in the scheme of existence. I prefer always the long view of looking at big things with much distance between myself and the object so I can see the situation clearly. When I have to engage against competing tribes of political view who attempt to interrupt my enjoyment of the long view I am all too happy to display their conquered scalps as trophies of war, but I am very aware that such things are small insignificant victories upon the tapestry of living. When battles are raging around you, political or otherwise, there are only two choices, win or become a victim. Choosing not to play is a choice towards becoming a victim.

I will have to thank my friend over at the Atlas Shrugged site Galt’s Gulch, Dr. Brett for being the first to break the news to me that Lucasfilm had been sold to Disney for $4 billion dollars. As any who read here clearly know, I think a lot of Star Wars, and specifically George Lucas, so the news that Lucas has officially hung up a company he built all his life as a sole proprietor was very sad for me, almost as sad as losing a loved one to a death. I respect deeply the creative environment that Lucas utilized to build Star Wars into one of the most recognizable names in the entire world. I respect all the companies of George Lucas because he maintained his ownership of them the way he should have, and he never yielded to pressure to make his films into anything but what they are. He reserved his right to make films like Howard the Duck which were bombs, but he also made wonderfully powerful films like Tucker: A Man and His Dreams, Willow, and of course the Indiana Jones series which has changed dramatically the entire field of archaeology and anthropology. But it was and is Star Wars that made all those films possible, films that couldn’t be made by anybody else no matter how big the studio or the personalities behind them were.

It might seem that no amount of news could eclipse the massive Hurricane Sandy that had shut down the eastern United States, but news that Star Wars was now under the tent of the Disney Company eclipsed the tragedy of that event–even of the presidential elections. The news that Star Wars was now owned by Disney and that the company fully intended to make more Star Wars films rocked the world of Twitter, Facebook and news organizations all over the world with shock and awe.

I grew up with Star Wars; I raised my family on Star Wars. Star Wars is one of the great sacred bonds that my wife and I share. We love it, have watched the movies thousands of times, and read all the books. In fact, she has read every single Star Wars book ever written. They take up an entire section of our home. I enjoy watching Family Guy primarily because of all the parodies that Seth McFarland has done as a tribute to Star Wars. I get along most with Star Wars geeks and adults who aren’t afraid to admit that they love the films. My father-in-law and I have always shared an intense love for Star Wars. My nephews and I have stayed up entire nights playing Star Wars video games, and those memories still bond us as busy adults. Star Wars is always a dominate topic at every Christmas and Thanksgiving Dinner on both sides of the family. It is also the most commonly given gift for birthdays and Christmas in my family on both sides for over 30 years now. For me the love of the films are not an immature reach for eternal youth and fantasy, but rather, the long view at philosophy and life in general that they offer against the backdrop of fantasy in a far away time and space that allows ideas to reside in neutral territory. I find it repulsive when some fans accuse George Lucas of turning Star Wars into simply a cash cow, or that he sold out to the big and powerful Disney—allowing his sole creation to be turned over to some evil empire of the Disney Company. They simply don’t understand the situation and how the dots connect.

I have spent considerable time explaining at this site Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom why some people believe making money is bad—where those ideas came from, and actually how they hold society back. This is why I propose that Ayn Rand’s ideas are far more relevant philosophically for mankind than Karl Marx and that if one idea must be refined philosophically over another it should be those of Rand over Marx. Those reflections can be heard clearly in the opinions of Star Wars by the general public, but one thing that Star Wars does is unite people who would otherwise not be able to talk politics.

For instance, many of the writers of The Huffington Post who might argue with me about the merits of socialism versus capitalism share a love and passion for Star Wars. Many who believe that Star Wars is just a movie don’t understand why it is such a phenomena, but Star Wars is not just a movie intending to make money, but a tool that George Lucas has utilized to create the most important, and powerful mythology human civilization has ever known and it is intended to take Earth from a .7 Type Civilization that it is now, to a Type 1 Civilization on it’s way to an accelerated Type 2 with an intent to become a Type 3 and still have a basic philosophy that will hold up to such an expansion. For people who think Star Wars is just a silly movie, they do not understand that the foundation blocks of any civilization is its basic philosophy that is reinforced by its mythology, and Star Wars created by George Lucas is intended to be a giant mythology. Disney as a company envisioned by Uncle Walt was created to interpret and communicate mythology to the world, not to just make money. What most people miss due to the fact that they have been taught to hate money is that Lucasfilm and the Walt Disney Company have billions of dollars of value between them because they offer a very good product—but the value of that product is cultural enrichment through mythological creation that improves the general philosophy of all human beings. While it is true that Star Wars is geared for children, the messages within that mythology contribute greatly to the improvement of world-wide philosophy. Lucas and Disney both as heads of their companies have managed to perfectly bring together two important attributes necessary to human survival, the ability to produce wealth, and to use that wealth to dramatically improve the living conditions of mankind.

The limits so far with Star Wars is that George Lucas has been the “brand” of his company. He has become so big that anything done in Star Wars as a story, because they are so important mythically speaking to so many millions of people, is distracting, even limiting. I believe Lucas being the “way ahead of the curve” kind of guy that he is has recognized this and has positioned his company, its employees, and the product of Star Wars itself through the television experiment of Clone Wars on the Cartoon Network to make this move with Disney at a very reasonable price. Disney, as a giant company with no direct face that is the “brand” can take Star Wars to places it could not otherwise go being headed by George Lucas. Disney has the ability to build an entire Star Wars park so visitors can actually walk around in the Star Wars Universe. They can expand on the television, the movies, even the video games. Disney has the power to take Star Wars from a household name and make it a room to room name within that household.

To understand why I think this move to Disney for Star Wars might have a severe impact for the positive it would require knowledge of George Lucas as I have, so to know what he is most likely thinking. Back in the 1990’s George Lucas was a board member for The Joseph Campbell Foundation who was being carried on by Campbell’s wife Jean after Campbell’s death of which I was also a member. Lucas has always been interested in using Star Wars to bring young people to the study of comparative religion and world mythology studies. Few people know it, but Lucas always wanted to be an Anthropologist and books like The Golden Bough and The Hero with A Thousand Faces had a powerful impact on him as a youth and he has always planned to use Star Wars as a way to introduce youth to higher philosophical concepts. To understand to what extent Lucas has been committed to this just look at his company Lucas Learning. I would bet everything I have and everything I ever obtain on the notion that Lucas has intentionally planned to inspire young people to reach for the stars with the stories of Star Wars in fields of science, medicine, politics, art, virtually every aspect of society, and Lucas has done this as an anthropology/archaeology enthusiast, not as a film maker. Lucas, never really wanted to be a film maker, but instead used film making to communicate his interest in cultural studies. It is his interest in anthropology that gives the Star Wars Universe such a rich texture, that far exceeds any other science fiction endeavor so far to date. And I believe the result of this investment Lucas has made in civilization will be the necessary mythological tool that is needed to continue the social evolution into a Type 1 Civilization where religious barriers, scientific limitations, and politics get in the way of arriving at these necessary human advancements. This was why George Lucas made Episodes 1 through 3 the way he did about Galactic Republics and the demise of governments in spite of the efforts of the noble Jedi Knights. Lucas solved the political problems of his galaxy that has embraced laissez-faire capitalism but is not regulated by untrustworthy politicians, by using Jedi Knights who are governed by a deep commitment to philosophy, not crony capitalism that goes on between gangsters, pirates and politicians, to maintain order.

In a 1964 article on searching for extraterrestrial civilizations, the Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev suggested using radio telescopes to detect energy signals from other solar systems in which there might be civilizations of three levels of advancement: Type 1 can harness all of the energy of its home planet; Type 2 can harvest all of the power of its sun; and Type 3 can master the energy from its entire galaxy.

Based on our energy efficiency at the time, in 1973 the astronomer Carl Sagan estimated that Earth represented a Type 0.7 civilization on a Type 0 to Type 1 scale. (More current assessments put us at 0.72.) As the Kardashevian scale is logarithmic — where any increase in power consumption requires a huge leap in power production — we have a ways before 1.0.

Fossil fuels won’t get us there. Renewable sources such as solar, wind and geothermal are a good start, and coupled to nuclear power could eventually get us to Type 1. More info can be found at this article.

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jul/22/opinion/oe-shermer22

Nothing ever starts until the human mind can behold the concept. From there, invention and personal innovation will bridge the gaps. Currently, politically, our global societies are locked between a struggle between individualism and collectivism as political systems of all types are struggling to maintain the former power bases of class society indentured to resources controlled by the very few, whether that few are crony capitalists, socialists, pirates, thieves, looters, or kingdoms. The future is moving away from these kinds of regionalized controls and the internet is the first step in that particular direction. But there are still religions that are standing in the way of life expectancy and medicine, and governments that are restricting space travel as the human race is pushing violently against the limits of the past. Star Wars is a giant leap forward, but at the same time, into the past so to join in the minds of mankind with the possibilities of now. In Star Wars the galaxy they are living in is coming close to a Type 3 as they are able to travel across the entire Galaxy through hyperspace routes that are like intergalactic highways through worm holes in space. Such a concept is scientifically viable and scientists are beginning to seriously think about such things—because of Star Wars. And the utilization of the religious aspect of Star Wars, which is the Force follows many aspects that are just being discovered in quantum mechanics and presents them in story form in ways that human minds can find a practical use in the randomness of ideas. I could literally go on and on about this type of thinking, but in short, Star Wars is a big galaxy that has a lot of very fresh ideas in it from communication devices to propulsion systems, and those scientific concepts are quickly finding their way into the everyday lives of our current civilization.

Further, Disney as a company is about to do something that I think Walt Disney always fantasized about–it is about to take a bold step forward from a market driven motion picture market place and become a truly world power that will benefit the lives of the entire planet. For instance, China because it is a communist country only allows 10 foreign films to show in their country per year, which is actually a big step for them. The people of China are already looking forward to the next installment of Iron Man that is gearing up for a tremendous 2013 release—again another property by Disney who is uniquely positioned to take such a powerful mythology as the Marvel Comic properties and present them to a world hungry for the ideas in those stories. This is greatly helping China become more and more prone to the free market in all manners of business, slowly but surely brushing aside the kind of communism that has held those people down for over 60 years now. Star Wars has the potential to communicate those types of messages to a mass audience perhaps 10 times more powerfully, because the texture and depth of Star Wars is so deep and engrossing, and if Earth is to become a Type 1 Civilization, the same idea has to be held in the mind over most of the world. In other words, the people of China cannot think so much more different from those in The United States. But the lifestyle of The United States cannot be brought down just to level the playing field globally, but the rest of the world must be brought up to the level of America. The best way to do that is to export American ideas, like Star Wars to those countries so they can understand what they should be doing, and how to do it.

I feel sorry for some of my fellow adults who share my age, but not my youthful optimism. They truly believe that Star Wars is just another movie like everything else designed to make money for Lucas, or Disney. In fact in the days after this big announcement of Disney buying Lucasfilm that was the first thing that most people said to me, “Looks like Lucas just got even richer.” Those same people rush their kids to soccer practice while they update their Facebook accounts religiously and po-poo anything that isn’t rooted in the reality of their current busy lives. Their kids feel the magic on Christmas morning hoping they get a new Star Wars toy, or on Halloween when they get to dress up like a Jedi Knight. The parents feel the magic just a bit when they walk down the isles at Target and look at all the Star Wars toys designed specifically to massage the mind of young people by the toy makers in a plot Lucas hatched decades ago to expand the consciousness of the human race by beholding in their minds all of life’s potential.

When I was a little kid, I wanted the full-sized Millennium Falcon from Star Wars for Christmas like nothing else. This would be way back in 1980. But my parents couldn’t afford it, because it was really expensive. So I built my own Millennium Falcon out of a card board box that I played with for years. Once I got older and could afford to buy it myself, the toy had been off the market for a number of years, so I was never able to get it. But in 1995, prior to the Special Editions in 1997 Lucasfilm released all the old toys only updated with new manufacturing techniques complete with the “battle worn” condition made so popular in the films. That year for Christmas my wife bought me the new electronic Millennium Falcon with the updated paint scheme and everyday since that Christmas I have proudly set it next to my bed where I engage the engines every night before I go to sleep. Every night. And what’s strange is that it still has the same batteries in it from 1995, and they still work. Call it the FORCE! When I have had to fix a number of complicated problems around the house from broken dishwashers to electrical problems I have sometimes stared at that toy for hours pushing the buttons and thinking about the problem at hand which often frames the answer for me with perspective. The toy for me is a symbol of innovation and technical marvel, so it often elevates my logical trouble shooting thinking. That magic has stayed with me my whole life so far and doesn’t appear to be abating. And I know I’m not alone.

Under Disney, these toys, the books, the multiple nick-knacks will flood the marketplace and without question a sector of the population who hates money will call the whole ordeal a symbol of capitalist excess that is just making a lot of money for Disney and its shareholders. But the estimates from people like George Lucas are that the money drives the product and allows more people to experience such magic, and even the most hardened skeptic against capitalism or fantasy stories knows that they too feel a little of that magic when the media blankets the release of a new film, or they hear the famous tune to Star Wars which indicates to the ear that something great awaits the witness of the story at hand, they feel the magic. Lucas has attended many of the Star Wars Celebration events that take place each year, and he has seen the multitude of grown adults who share with their children love for a mythology that makes more sense to them than the reality of their daily life. With Disney now pushing the mythology machine of Star Wars, these events will explode with interest by even more people. Already the Star Wars weekends at Hollywood Studios in Florida that take place from May to June is so packed that the visitors have to use the parking lots at Epcot Center and Animal Kingdom to hold all the extra Star Wars fans. That was before Disney owned Star Wars. Now, it is certain that the parks in Florida will have a continued and much, much larger presence during the entire year and new generations will catch the fever even more than in the past, because if Disney does with Star Wars what they did with The Avengers the possibilities for how big Star Wars may become is immeasurable.

I have my doubts that the new Star Wars films will be as good as Episode 4 and Episode 5. But I have no doubt they can be as good as the other four. The proof is in the Cartoon Network episodes of The Clone Wars currently on television every Saturday morning at 9:30 AM. With that in mind, Disney could make Star Wars movies for centuries, because the material is that rich, and is so vast that the plot lines are literally infinite. I believe that with Disney at the helm of Star Wars, the ideas contained within it will find their way to every corner of the globe and in that way, will put every human being on common ground for the first time since the Tower of Babel separated all human beings with foreign language. That is what it will take to move Earth to a Type 1 Civilization, and Star Wars is the best hope for getting there.

So, in a lot of ways the news announced on October 30^th 2012 has seismic consequences for every human being on planet Earth. Star Wars is not just another movie, and it is not just another product of Hollywood. It is modern mythology that surpasses the work of the Iliad, all the Greek classics, the Book of the Dead from Egypt, War and Peace, or all the works of Shakespeare, anything ever done in literature. It is the next step put into visual form what human beings are supposed to be working toward and they weren’t created superficially by whim from the mind of George Lucas, but are mythic characters dusted off from past stories and placed into the future for all to see with common eyes transcending language, political, and sociological backgrounds. That is the magic of Star Wars and the potential impact that the decision to move Lucasfilm under the umbrella of Disney can explode into uncharted waters never before seen by–anybody.

So I’m a fan of the move even though it does sadden me. The sadness is a selfish one, which I wish to preserve what Star Wars meant to me growing up, wanting to freeze-frame those films in time for my own enjoyment and memory. But I see the strategy and like Lucas I want the same thing. I want to see a world that embraces capitalism, embraces technical advancement, embraces philosophy, and never losses its belief in the limitless potential of the human imagination. There are only two directions possible at this juncture in history one where societies regress backward, or one where they move forward into space, colonizing the moon, Mars, and planets beyond with the effortless propulsion utilized in Star Wars. And the inventors of those future technologies are probably not yet even born, but will grow up in a world where Star Wars entices their minds with sounds and images plunging their imaginations into fantasy yearning for a Christmas toy under the tree to open and play with while they work out all the problems of advanced propulsion systems, gravity manipulation, and medical miracles performed without the added complication of losing their very souls to a shackled embrace of institutional imprisonment which always threatens to cast the mind of man back to the creation of fire.

That is what the Disney purchase of Lucasfilm means, and why it is very good. Also as a side note to George Lucas, when he enrolled in Modesto Junior college to become an anthropologist, and a philosopher he succeeded as both and those titles many years from now will come to describe him once all the concept of filmmaker is lost to the scrolls of time. Not only was he successful in studying the past and developing an expertise of history, but he has also changed the future for the better in ways that are subtle, yet unfathomably powerful for a civilization that is teetering on the brink and may yet survive thanks to Star Wars.

And…………………..for me, Han Shot First!

Rich Hoffman

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

I appreciate the support my readers here provide by clicking on the pictures below. The support expands life in ways that will ultimately create the means to boundless imagination. For a sample of such projects, click here and witness one of my ever reaching projects.

Written by overmanwarrior

November 2, 2012 at 12:00 am

Posted in Hero, Justice, Literature, Movie Review, Philosophy, Rich Hoffman, Space, Space theory, Star Wars

Tagged with Disney, Free Will, George Lucas, institutionalism, overmanwarrior, philosophy, Star Wars

The Film Industry Bubble: Mello Yello pays me a visit before “Prometheus”

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After my article a few weeks ago on the soft drink, Mello Yello the marketing team noticed and contacted me to let me know they appreciated my dedication to their product. You can see their comments from that first contact at the bottom of that posting.I have only ever drank one kind of soft drink, and that is Mello Yello, so I was particularly impressed to come home on Friday to a box from the Coca Cola company in Atlanta, Georgia. Inside the box were a number of Mello Yello marketing items that the company had sent me that made a good day even better.

They sent me a T-shirt, a long sleeve shirt, a hat, a pen, a notebook, and a thank you note, which meant a lot coming from a company that I have silently been very loyal to for a number of years. I had just enough time to open the box and scan through the items before getting ready to take my kids and their significant others out to the movie theater to see the long-awaited Prometheus. So I put on my new Mello Yello T-shirt, and my Mello Yello hat, and I grabbed the Mello Yello notebook with pen to give to my oldest daughter, and we left for the movie.

Of course I looked like a walking billboard for Mello Yello when my daughter let me into their townhouse where I gave her the notebook. She tends to write almost as much as I do, so I knew she would put it to good use. I also knew my kids would get a kick out of seeing all the Mello Yello gear, because in our family, it’s well known my love of Mello Yello. We don’t all get together as easily as we used to because we all have busy lives, so getting the Mello Yello clothing in time for our long-planned movie was a nice addition to a wonderful evening.

For Prometheus my wife wanted to see it on the IMAX screen at Showcase Cinemas in Springdale, which I think is the best movie screen in the Cincinnati area. Of course the film was in 3D like they all are these days, just like film producers promised when they flew me out to Los Angeles a few years ago to do a fire whip sequence and prove out the use of a 3D camera system for Real D 3D with Peter Facinelli. I had at that time a lot of skepticism that audiences would flock to theaters to put on 3D glasses and watch a movie with just a little extra thrill factor. Women who go out on dates spending a lot of time fixing up their hair just right I didn’t think would be interested in putting on glasses that would smear their make-up. People who naturally wear glasses have to now look through two glasses to see anything in a 3D movie, which is a pain in the neck. But Hollywood was committed to the idea of 3D just prior to Obama becoming president because they were pushed by theaters owners all over the United States to justify their investments in state of the art projection systems, giant theaters, and comfortable seating.

Hollywood like the education industry is facing the same kind of economic bubble that the housing industry has already experienced, and it’s bursting. In Hollywood, it was the films of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg in the 1980’s that set the modern idea of what a “blockbuster” was. Every year since the release of E.T. and the last of the original Star Wars films Hollywood has tried to copy the box office numbers of those films by pushing for larger stunts, larger and louder explosions, and faster paced film techniques driven largely by the music video generation created by MTV. Most of the films Hollywood produce each year falls short of executive expectations, but the pressure has been on for quite some time to get larger box office totals as the entertainment unions have driven up the financial expectations higher and higher. Leading actors now for a picture make between $20 million to $30 million, so budgets for a typical summer blockbuster are now up over $150 million dollars routinely. Hollywood has increasingly had to rely on overseas sales to complement their box office take domestically in order to justify their massive up front investments. Revenue streams are changing for the industry as well, as ticket prices have went up to compensate the increasingly high budgets for films, technology has made it so people can often watch films at home more comfortably than at a movie theater. Just the other day I was at Wal-Mart where I looked at a beautiful 70” big screen LCD television that was just over $2,000 dollars. Hollywood now has to find a way to give people an experience at the theater that they can’t get at home, so 3D is their solution. And it’s failing.

I say 3D is failing not with pleasure in my voice, but sadness. I love the movie theater experience, which is why I made a tremendous ritual of taking all my kids to a movie and spending $100 on tickets that cost over $15 each to see Prometheus with my Mello Yello gear on to create memories that will last a lifetime. I wanted them to have a great night out at the movies where going to the theater is like going to a sacred mythic temple as modern mythology is bestowed upon the moviegoer.

Prior to our film beginning I watched the previews for the newest rendition of Spiderman, and Batman, and half a dozen 3D extravaganzas that I could see will end up in the same scrap heap as Battleship and John Carter. It’s not to say that those films are bad, or don’t have a market niche to fill, but studios are forced to spend over $100 million to make those films because of expectations, and ticket prices are simply too high, most people will wait to watch those films on video, or Netflix. Every movie cannot be Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Pirates of the Caribbean, or The Avengers. Most Hollywood producers are fearful to attempt these days to develop original material because the risk is simply too great. Even a popular book like John Carter may not be enough to guarantee success. As I watched the previews prior to Prometheus, I knew that 75% of those films would be box office disappointments. They were dead before they have even arrived, because of the laws of quality described in Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The Hollywood producers and entertainment agents more than ever are chasing dreams like the founders of California’s gold rush. They are digging for gold where it’s been discovered instead of looking where nobody has discovered it yet, because they are functioning in the back of the “train” so to speak.

Needless to say the film I took my family to Prometheus was spectacular, and it should have been for $100 bucks. I had no regrets in seeing that movie especially since everyone enjoyed the film tremendously. But as I stood in the lobby of Showcase Cinemas afterward in my bright yellow Mello Yello gear a wave of sadness swept over me realizing that the financial structure that made the whole movie theater business run was about to bust. Prometheus represented the best that Hollywood had to offer, and at $15 dollars a ticket, it barely seemed worth it. I can’t image paying that kind of price for a lesser movie, yet the movie industry is counting on it, and they will be disappointed.

The same holds true in the movie industry as it does with President Obama not understanding that European economic models built around socialism is the cause of their failure, and The United States allowing for a mixed economy of a little socialism here and there sprinkled with bits of capitalism is what has caused Obama’s failed economy during his presidency. He’s as clueless as the typical film executive who will find themselves out of a job in a couple of years because their films failed to meet the market expectations. Hollywood is looking for the Justice League to fill the market void of George Lucas retiring. That was on my mind because just a few days before Mello Yello sent me all that merchandise I received a press release from Lucasfilm stating Lucas was officially retiring, and that Kathleen Kennedy was stepping in to help fill the void at that billion dollar film company. Kennedy is a long time assistant to many Spielberg films and now she’s going to work full-time at Lucasfilm. This is a serious indication that Hollywood’s creative core is aging, and moving on to other things, and the next generations of Hollywood filmmakers and other above-the-line talent are functioning from the back of Pirsig’s quality train, and will fail under the heavy expectations.

I thought it was appropriate that I was wearing a Mello Yello T-shirt on a night when I was having all these thoughts. Way back in 1994 and 1995 I wanted to buy a Mello Yello T-shirt, but then frustrated executives at Coca Cola were upset that the soft drink did not perform equivalent to Mountain Dew, so they pulled the drink for a bit and changed it to the soft drink “Serge,” so I didn’t get my Mello Yello shirt. This went on for a while until executives at the Coca Cola Company realized that this would not boost their sales, so they had sacrificed a very good drink just because it arrived late to the marketing gate, and if they had held strong, they might have made real gains through the late 90’s into the next century. Mello Yello made its triumphant return slowly, and is just now beginning to be purchased in the northern states of America. The same day I went to Wal-Mart to see the big screen television, they had three 12 packs of Mello Yello on their shelf. My wife bought all three of them. A couple of years ago, Wal-Mart in Ohio did not carry Mello Yello at all.

Mello Yello has always been a great drink, but it was judged based on the blockbuster success of Mountain Dew, and it suffered as a result. The same thing is about to happen in the film industry. Many films will suffer as film executives lose their jobs in the years to come due to the entertainment bubble collapsing under the enormous weight of expectation. And like Mello Yello, I have my brands of filmmakers that I support valiantly, and Ridley Scott is one of them. When my “brands” make a film that I know they poured their heart and soul into it, I go and see them. The next film I feel passionate about will be Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit. I will pay top dollar to see that movie as a kind of vote for what I think success in a movie should be, to help curb the disappointment from an industry that expects too much, and is collapsing under inflated opinions. Twenty years from now, like my previous twenty years of supporting Mello Yello, I’m sure some of these very good film studios will re-emerge from the wreckage that is about to become of the film industry, and I’ll be there to support them as I was to see the great film Prometheus and one of the great offerings of the year from 20th Century Fox.

I proudly put my Mello Yello gear away when I got home that night and contemplated all that you read here today. And because of that, it means more to me than the moment that I opened it. In capitalism, whether it’s a movie, or a soft drink, the idea came from the mind of a capitalist, and millions of people enjoy the results of those thoughts—and every instance is a thing of beauty. I cherish Mello Yello because it’s been through so much as a company and even with all that, they still have the swagger about them to send me a box full of Mello Yello fun on the eve of taking my family to see the film Prometheus. It was an evening of ideas, and capitalism, and crushing expectations. But at the end of the day, it is the ideas that burn not so much brightest, but longest that survive. And Mello Yello survives, in the same way that many others will endure as great minds who think at the front of the train emerge to give great ideas a place to materialize. Each time I wear my Mello Yello T-shirt, it will not be out of blind devotion to a soft drink, but out of reverence to a company that I cherish because it makes a great product, and has had the tenacity to weather the storms of economic betrayal to arrive at a day when it can please the taste buds of millions.

____________________________________________________________

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Rich Hoffman
http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Written by overmanwarrior

June 13, 2012 at 12:00 am

“Prometheus”: The Great Ridley Scott and his prequel to “Alien!”

Building Star Trek’s U.S.S. Enterprise: How to create 10 of them, not just 1 with Objectivism

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Dan over at Build the Enterprise.org made national news last week when Yahoo News featured his 20 year plan to build an actual U.S.S. Enterprise that costs approximately $50 billion a year for the next 20 years at a total cost of $1 trillion dollars. (CHECK IT OUT!) Even though that is a huge price tag in a country with an already $15 trillion-dollar deficient, he justifies the cost by pointing out that in 2008 the United States spent nearly that much on the controversial Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Most people can agree who are not involved with politics that many of the bailouts the government spent money on during this depression era economy have been a complete waste, and the money was more or less tossed away with no R.O.I., so why not commit our science and military assets to the construction of an actual U.S.S Enterprise to begin an actual jump into a renewed space race?

Dan has it all figured out regarding how to engage in this massive project. His timeline has the first 9 years dedicated to research of the technology needed to build the project, with component testing followed by 11 years of manufacture and construction in space. At the conclusion of this assembly period the Enterprise will be ready for a moon flyby and be perfectly ready to begin routine 3 month flights to Mars. The benefit of Dan’s Enterprise design as opposed to the traditional NASA approach is that this Enterprise version will allow full 1g gravity for its 1000 occupants using ion propulsion electrically based from a nuclear generator to transport from the Earth to Mars and back again in 250 days. This means that the physical deterioration typically endured on the human body during long space flights will be eliminated allowing space travelers to roam about in an environment that is not much different from how they typically work and indulge in recreation today. For many of the U.S.S. Enterprise travelers their residences, work and leisure would be in a kind of giant shopping mall experience. They would eat, sleep and walk about just as they would on earth, and this would solve tremendous duration problems currently experienced by astronauts in zero g environments.

Dan’s plan is fantastic, and should be explored seriously by private investment. This would be a worthy goal for companies like Google, Facebook, and other giant corporations that have been able to generate tremendous amounts of capital. I disagree with Dan on two basic things which he has overlooked, primarily because he’s an engineer and naturally doesn’t deal with political science—that no government should be involved in this endeavor and that taxes should never be raised, which he proposes.

During this 20 year span of building the U.S.S. Enterprise the people of the entire world need an entirely new philosophy from which to think from. A philosophy is a kind of play book like any football player understands–it’s the way a sports player attacks the game as designed by the head coach. The philosophy of the team and its ability to adapt to changing circumstances will often be the exclusive factor between success and failure on the field of play. In the game of life, the same is true.

Currently mankind’s philosophy is rooted in Plato, and Immanuel Kant. This must change to one based more on Aristotle and refined by Ayn Rand. It will take a massive shift in human consciousness to accept these changes and avoid two hundred more years of stagnation, which is our current path because politicians and world governments think that Star Trek is for entertainment and the minds of geeks, as they hold onto their non rationality based philosophies given to them by Kant.

The process of this happening is already underway. The Ayn Rand Institute is publishing the extensive work of Ayn Rand which is selling well. It has taken most of a century already for Americans to finally begin to accept her work, and her philosophy of Objectivism is just the kind of national strategy that would bring about not just one U.S.S. Enterprise, but many. There is absolutely no reason the United States should settle to have just one of these ships, but ten. But to have them we would also have to reinvent the way our current government in the United States operates. We would have to reinvent education, political science; the emphasis on our wealth creation and many other factors for it to work, but ironically the blueprint was already created by Ayn Rand nearly a century ago. Click here for an introduction into Objectivism.

I don’t propose Objectivsim as a personal preference, but as a viable solution. Dan needs a nuclear reactor to provide power for his Enterprise. America and the world need Objectivism as the thought process to build Enterprise deep space vehicles and space stations. It’s simply a thought structure that is needed to execute the sum desired.

As to the design of the Enterprise opposed to other designs, it is the U.S.S. Enterprise that is so well-known to millions and is a part of the public consciousness. It is true that other designs could be created, but why? Science fiction has already done the work of concept building, and society has come to recognize it. It is no different from NASA using Jules Vern’s classic novel From the Earth to the Moon to model their approach to space craft design over 70 years before the first rocket. Using Star Trek as the model for further space development is perfectly acceptable, and highly justified. The country that creates these U.S.S. Enterprises holding over 1000 people per flight to colonize space, manufacture goods outside of earth’s atmosphere, and mines for rare metals and other resources on other moons and planets solves many of our current worldly problems in a very short time. A vehicle the size of the U.S.S. Enterprise could hold not just one manufacturing facility within it, but many. The future of zero z manufacture and science is of utmost importance, and extremely practical.

For all the sci-fi geeks out there who want to see this happen in their lifetime I suggest you read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead just as you’d read any work of fiction for Star Trek. Forget what your teachers and others tell you about Rand, because there are many functioning in our society who are just as scared of the future as there was during the dark ages of Europe. We are about to experience a tremendous breakthrough that hasn’t been seen since 1492 where adventure and discovery will change the human experience forever. But there were many who insisted that the earth was flat and that sea monsters would eat all ships that left the horizon. And ship building design didn’t change at all for another 400 years. The politicians, teachers, and leaders of science currently on a government pension want to keep the world closed off from new discovery because they are functioning from the failed philosophy of Immanuel Kant and this will hold the human race to the earth for another 400 years of imprisonment.

I spend a lot of time at this site showing readers how cancer could be cured right now, how food could never run out, how energy could be properly harnessed if not for the interference of politicians and world leaders who have broken ideas about how life should be because they are functioning from the wrong philosophy. A few weeks ago there was a similar sensation on Yahoo News about the next generation of flying car, which was cool, but didn’t come close to the great design of Paul Mollar out in California. Paul Mollar’s Skycar is a design that has been around for two decades and it works. But he can’t get our government to get behind him because of politics. There is a lot of money tied up in the current automotive industry, and nobody has the political will to upset the apple cart. So a great idea has been put on the back burner until society grows up, and into the idea of a personal car that can take off in your driveway and land wherever you want it to. This is because people in society are functioning from the wrong philosophy. Objectivism is the philosophy needed to expand our technological and mental barriers. CLICK HERE TO SEE THE REAL SKYCAR.

The same fate will befall Dan’s fantastic plan of building a U.S.S. Enterprise as has happened to Paul Mollar’s Skycar, the political will is not there because too many people function from the wrong philosophy. Before the first bit of research can be done on the U.S.S. Enterprise, America would have to change its current path of thinking away from Kant and into Rand, or to put it more technically, away from Plato, and more toward Aristotle. That is the key to being able to arrive at a space port in the middle of Iowa to leave earth and arrive at a future U.S.S. Enterprise waiting at an orbiting dock to leave for a Marriott hotel on the planet Mars within the next hundred years. The future is there, and great ideas like Dan’s are springing up and are conceivably possible. But it is our current human philosophy that is the major impediment, and that must change before any new developments can occur on the long human quest to push the limits of the imagination and arrive at a place of new understanding and high adventure!

____________________________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!! Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

While you wait for Tail of the Dragon, read my first book at Barnes and Nobel.com as they are now offering The Symposium of Justice at a discount which is the current lowest price available.

Rich Hoffman
http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Written by overmanwarrior

May 21, 2012 at 12:00 am

Posted in Ayn Rand, Creative Writing, Literature, Novel, Objectivism, Policial Science, Rich Hoffman, Skycar, Space, Space theory

Tagged with Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, Down the Rabbit Hole, education, education funding, Free Will, overmanwarrior, philosophy, quantum mechanics, Rich Hoffman, Star Trek

NASA Fights Back: The Obama film “2016″ coming soon

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Dear reader, if you are still in denial that Barack Obama is a planted—created personality fashioned by the enemies of America you can stop your skepticism at this time. The new film by Dinesh D’Souza produced by the great Gerald Molen called 2016 will bring to light just how serious and to what extent Obama was placed into our culture to dismantle it. But you don’t have to wait to see D’Souza’s new film. The evidence is all around us. But first, check out a preview and short talk by that director at CPAC.

It is well-known that climate science is the altruistic fantasy of the progressive movement which is why Al Gore was the primary advocate and President Obama is now carrying the torch. To believe in climate science to the effect that the human race is so audacious as to actually overcome the effects of the sun and induce planetary warming with the pathetically small levels of greenhouse gas that our society emits, is preposterous. Yet progressive advocates who desire global socialism seek to use climate science to destroy all of society in an Aztec like sacrificial worship of the divine God called Mother Nature. But those mind-bending, catatonic, progressives are in error and in case you missed the memo, 49 former NASA scientist and astronauts sent a letter to the current NASA Administrator Charles Bolden admonishing the agency for its recent role in advocating that man-made C02 is a major cause of climate change. You can read that letter to Charles and see who signed the letter below. (CLICK THE LINK TO VIEW)

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2870679/posts

This letter went to the same Charles Bolden who was a figure of great controversy a few years ago. In 2010 Charles gave an interview where he revealed that President Obama told Bolden that his primary objective for NASA was not to send more astronauts to the moon, or even to bring about the next generation of the Space Shuttle. It was to reach out to the Muslim world and make them feel good about themselves.

Bolden in that clip obviously eats out of the hand of President Obama and is either so concerned that NASA will receive more budget cuts from Obama’s administration, or Bolden has been put in place to advance the global socialism Obama intends. It is clear that President Obama is not interested in NASA’s former greatness in being the kind of organization that invented Velcro and put men on the moon, but desires the rest of the world to become more proficient in their space programs with the United States out-of-the-way.

Many think that President Obama is a Muslim, although he has said that he’s not. It seems odd however that Obama would put so much emphasis on Muslims. He is not concerned with Buddhists, Hindus, Mormons, Scientologists, or even Christians—but Muslims. The employees who built the reputation of NASA have had to watch President Obama dismantle all their hard work with trivial nonsense and a pattern of behavior that anyone can see clearly.

Obama has purposely put a stop to NASA and done what the Soviet Union during the Cold War only fantasized about—ended the National Aeronautical Space Administration dominance in travel outside the globe in a progressive quest to honor Mother Nature. You see global warming freaks who wish to worship their incestuous Mother Nature desire to make their mother happy by ensuring nobody can ever leave Mother’s home. To make their mother happy, they are willing to cut out the legs of anyone who might escape Mother’s home. In this case it is NASA who promises to take mankind off planet earth, but progressives don’t want to see that happen, because they require captives chained to earth to believe their rhetoric and give them power.

If manufacturing and other industry were to move into space then who would listen to the preachings of the global warming freaks? To what God would the globalists sacrifice to? The progressive globalists would see that the control of their Mother Nature would be diminished as humans colonized the moon, and Mars, and built huge space stations to live in orbiting the planet. Mother Nature would have to look up at mankind as they leave her loving arms and she might be very sad.

The global warming freaks are like those suck-ass siblings who never leave the side of their mothers, and hope to bend the entire family around their illness in sacrificial service to their corrupt mothers. In this case it is Barack Obama who speaks on behalf of the global greenie weenies. His dedication to the Muslim religion is a convenient excuse to deter the efforts of NASA into productive executions of their energy. And then forcing NASA to buy into the global warming conspiracy by threatening to cut even more funding to the agency from the Obama Administration serves both objectives. Global warming advocates get respected NASA scientists to endorse their sorcery, while Obama pretends he’s making reasonable budget cuts. But in essence the action on behalf of the government is the threat of a thug bullying someone to force them to act against their reasonable thinking.

But not all NASA personnel is willing to play along, and that is the nature of their letter to Charles Bolden. It is commendable that those men and women named in the letter refuting the science of Global Warming as used by the progressive machine of Barack Obama and Charles Bolden were willing to stick up for themselves when it has been obvious that they have been coerced and bullied into action that was not in their best interest.

As we brace ourselves for D’Souza’s new film 2016 the evidence of Obama’s treachery is not in some far away conspiracy theory—it is happening right in front of us all. It is noticeable in many small ways. But it’s easy to see it in the big things too. Barack Obama is a climate science voodoo subscriber that desires to make Mother Nature proud of her children by not straying too far from home and cleaving to her breasts for milk and sustenance. The greenie weenies wish to make mother proud and chastise all those who wish to grow away from her grace.

In reality those global altruists are as sophisticated as the ancient Aztecs and their obsession with human sacrifice in a belief that the still beating human hearts ripped from a slain victim will bring water and food to their people. The modern equivalent is Barack Obama, Al Gore and other progressives who deem themselves the priests of a global mass sacrifice. They would see NASA destroyed and every American driving a Smart Car designed for children—because that’s how they see us all—as their children. That is, until a group of NASA scientists decided to stand up for themselves and the agency they helped to build—and told Bolden and his boss Obama—to go to hell.

http://gulagbound.com/28231/major-obama-crony-contributor-company-to-count-and-manage-2012-us-vote-results/

The key to living a full life and solving the answers to all of societies current problems are in the philosophy of Objectivism. CLICK BELOW TO BEGIN YOUR NEW EDUCTION

http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2012/02/15/an-indroduction-to-objectivisim-the-power-of-ayn-rands-philosophy/

Rich Hoffman
http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Written by overmanwarrior

April 14, 2012 at 12:00 am

Posted in Action, Art, Budget problems, Communisim, Computers, Congress, Conservative politics, Creative Writing, Drama, Hippie Scum, Immigration, Islamic, Justice, Literature, Movie Review, Muslim Brotherhood, Novel, Objectivism, Organized Labor, Policial Science, Politics, Progressive, Regulations, Religion, Rich Hoffman, Science, Socialists, Space, Space Shuttle, Space theory, Taxes, Teacher Unions, Technology, The Symposium of Justice, Uncategorized, Union, Wages, Workplace Freedom, writing

Tagged with constitution, Doc Thompson, Down the Rabbit Hole, education, Free Will, Hollywood insight, institutionalism, Lakota Schools, philosophy, President Obama, quantum mechanics, Stupid in America, Teachers Unions, Tides Foundation story of stuff Rich Hoffmn overmanwarrior.com communist education policy, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Lakota Superintendent Discovers Mars: Public unions examined at Hillsdale College

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I take great pride in knowing what the latest scientific discoveries are, but apparently, I missed a big one. Superintendent Mantia of the Lakota School District has apparently colonized Mars and has found a way to fly between earth and that red planet routinely. I read in the Pulse Journal from Thursday March 15, 2012 that Mantia said that the Lakota School District “Is being run better than most businesses.” Very interesting statement, however, you have to read such things with a discerning eye, and keep in mind that Mars doesn’t have any businesses. So what Mantia said was true—from a certain point of view–only if you consider that Lakota is operating better than most businesses on the planet Mars, because here on earth such a statement is preposterous.

I don’t know of any businesses that allow their costs to drive them, where the tail wags the dog like it does at Lakota. In that same article there are a lot of bullet points that read like a resume such as “reduced number of mailings, took advantage of bulk mailing—saved $25,000.” Or, “Implemented an in-house computer and battery backup repair process, instead of renewing warranty coverage, allowing for cheaper parts and no labor costs—saved hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.” There were 44 such points in that article most of them were things that the school should already be doing, yet Mantia puts out those facts as though she should get a pat on the head. The question still remains however—why is Lakota still hemorrhaging money if it’s operating as such an “effective business.” Well the answer is that out of all the costs discussed in the Pulse article, it only adds up to roughly 20% of the total budget.

The rest of the budget—the other 80%–is tied up in labor wages and benefits and according to that same Superintendent upon advice from the school’s legal counsel, are off the table for discussion. After knowing that it’s easy to see why Superintendent Mantia of the Lakota School District thinks her performance is so robust—because she’s not speaking from this planet. She’s comparing the business enterprise of her job with the microbial business of some undiscovered life form on the Martian surface, because there aren’t any other businesses there. On earth however there are, and even a local fast food restaurant would go out of business if it operated the way Lakota does.

But why is Lakota and public education in general in such a fix with their labor contracts? Well, the problem is rather epic in scope and it didn’t become that way over night. The best way to describe it would be the radicalization of the work force by national labor unions that have driven up education costs to unsustainable levels. This overview of how organized labor has taken over our education system is articulated very well in one of the latest Hillsdale College articles which can be seen at the link below, or in full text after the link.

As Superintendent Mantia was sending out her resume to The Pulse Journal hoping that nobody would ask the question—“but what about the other 80% of the budget,” and I was defending myself in the Cincinnati media as not being a sexist, due to Mantia and her “employees” saturating their email networks with links to this site and my controversial statements, (thanks by the way—a lot of people got an eyeful of good information) in an effort to discredit me, William McGurn was speaking at the Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Newport Beach, California. What follows is the result of that very informative discussion, and will explain clearly why Superintendent Mantia is either reporting her information from the planet Mars, or she has no idea what efficiency in the private sector means and is simply comparing her version of businesses to other government-run facilities—like perhaps the license bureau. It may seem like a lot to read, but it’s worth it and very good.

http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2012&month=03

March 2012
William McGurn
News Corporation

What Public Employee Unions are Doing to Our Country

WILLIAM MCGURN is a vice president for News Corporation and writes the weekly “Main Street” column for the Wall Street Journal. From 2005 to 2008, he served as chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush. Prior to that he was the chief editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal and spent more than ten years in Europe and Asia for Dow Jones. He has written for a wide variety of publications, including Esquire, the Washington Post, the Spectator of London and the National Catholic Register. He holds a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame and a master’s degree in communications from Boston University, and currently serves on the board of Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics and Culture.

The following is adapted from a speech delivered on February 15, 2012, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Newport Beach, California.

MANY SCHOLARS ARE better versed on the history of public employee unions than I am, but there is one credential I can claim that they cannot: I am a taxpayer in the People’s Republic of New Jerseystan. That makes me an authority on how public sector unions—especially at the state and local level—are thwarting economic growth, strangling the middle class, and generally hijacking the democratic process to serve their own ends rather than the public.

Now in my experience, when one says the words “New Jersey,” people for some reason think it is a laugh line. Perhaps you know us from The Sopranos or Jersey Shore. You might think that such a state has nothing to teach you. If so, you would be very wrong. New Jersey offers something that can profit the entire nation: We are the perfect bad example.

As conservatives, of course, we believe in virtue. We like to point to policies and practices that work—low taxes and light regulation for the economy, a strong national defense to keep us safe from foreign attack, and social policies that favor community over government. These are all valuable. But the bad example has its honored place as well: It’s how we illustrate our warnings.

As parents, for example, selling virtue only takes us so far. To make our point when we see a character trait we don’t care for in our kids, we’re far more likely to say something like, “You don’t want to grow up to be like Uncle Bob, do you?”

This is the reason Governor Chris Christie’s reforms have had such resonance. Almost anywhere he points, he has before him an example of how New Jersey’s bloated public sector is hurting growth, limiting the efficiency of government services, and squeezing middle class families. How many state governors and legislators might be more inclined to do the right thing if before they acted they first said to themselves, “We don’t want to be like New Jersey, do we?”

These days, when conservatives get together to discuss the debilitating role played by government workers, we reassure ourselves with statements by FDR and labor leader Samuel Gompers about the fundamental incompatibilities between a union of private workers working for a private company and a union of government workers laboring for our city, state, or federal governments. We also trace the line of expansion to various events, including John F. Kennedy’s executive order that opened the path for collective bargaining for public employees at the federal level.

I don’t want to rehash that today. Today I want to talk about the situation as we find it, and suggest that the first step toward a cure is to diagnose the illness accurately. This means changing the way we think of public sector unions. And in what I have to say, I will concentrate on public sector unions at the state and local levels.

It’s not that I don’t consider the unionization of federal workers to be an issue. Plainly it is an issue when the teachers unions represent one of the largest blocs of delegates at Democratic conventions, when the largest single campaign contributor in the 2010 elections was the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, when union money at the federal level goes at an overwhelming rate to Democratic candidates, and when the Congressional Budget Office tells us that federal employees earn more than their counterparts in the private sector. Nonetheless, I believe that the greater challenge today—to state and city finances, to democratic representation, to the middle class—is at the state and local level. This is partly because state and city unions have the power to negotiate wages and benefits that their counterparts at the federal level largely do not. More fundamentally, it is because we cannot reform at the federal level without correcting a problem that is bringing our cities and states to bankruptcy.

When I say we need to change our understanding, what I mean is that we have to recognize that public sector unions have successfully redefined key relationships in our economic and civic life. In making this argument, I will suggest that the elected politicians who represent us at the negotiating table are not in fact management, that our taxing and spending decisions at the city and state level are in practice decided by our public sector contracts, and that when you put this all together, what emerges is a completely different picture of the modern civil servant. In short, we work for him, not the other way around.

Who is Managing Whom?

Let me start with the relationship between government employee unions and our elected officials. On paper, it is true, mayors and governors sit across the table from city and state workers collectively bargaining for wages and benefits. On paper, this makes them management—representing us, the taxpayers. But in practice, these people often serve more as the employees of unions than as their managers. New Jersey has been telling here. Look at our former governor, Jon Corzine.

You Hillsdale folks are a genteel sort. When you speak about the unions being in bed with the Democratic politicians, you mean it metaphorically. In New Jersey, we take it to Snooki levels: Mr. Corzine once shared a home with the New Jersey leader of the Communication Workers of America, Carla Katz. Back when he was running for governor, he was asked whether that relationship would compromise his ability to represent the taxpayers in negotiations with outfits such as CWA. “As the governor,” Mr. Corzine responded, “you represent eight-and-a-half million people. You don’t represent one union. You don’t represent one person. You represent the people who elected you.”

That’s the way it ought to be. In real life, it turned out that during heated negotiations over a contested CWA contract, Mr. Corzine and Ms. Katz had a long email chain—subsequently published by the Newark Star Ledger, despite the governor’s legal attempts to keep them private—in which she pressed him on the union issues.

But it wasn’t just the CWA. Scarcely six months after he was elected, Governor Corzine appeared before a rally of state workers in Trenton in support of a one percent sales tax designed to bring in revenues to a state hemorrhaging money. Not cutbacks, but a tax. Naturally, Mr. Corzine’s solution was the one the public sector unions wanted: Get the needed revenues by introducing a new tax.

The twist was that there was someone in the New Jersey government who understood the problem—who understood that a new sales tax wouldn’t do much to fix New Jersey’s problems, and that the only way to get a handle on them was to get state workers to start contributing more to their health care and pensions.

These were the pre-Chris Christie days, so the author of this bold proposal was the Senate president, Stephen Sweeney. Mr. Sweeney is not only interesting because he is a prominent and powerful Democrat. He is also interesting because in addition to his political office, he represents the state’s ironworkers. And what Mr. Sweeney proposed for the public sector unions was something private union members such as his ironworkers already paid for. It was also common sense: He knew that if New Jersey didn’t get a handle on its gold-plated pay and benefits for its government employees, it would squeeze out the private sector that hires people such as ironworkers.

If the leader of an ironworkers union could realize that, surely so could a governor who had earlier served as a high-powered executive for Goldman Sachs. But Mr. Corzine was having none of it. Instead, he told the crowd of state workers: “We’re gonna fight for a fair contract.”

The question is, whom was he planning on fighting? Wasn’t he management in these negotiations?
Six months later, Governor Corzine proved this was not simply a slip of the tongue. When workers at Rutgers University were planning to unionize, he turned up at their rally. This was too much even for the liberal Star Ledger, which—in an article entitled “Jon Corzine, Union Rep?”—noted that Mr. Corzine’s appearance at the rally raised the question whether he truly understood that “he represents the ‘management’ side in ongoing contract talks with state employees unions.”

Manifestly, the problem is not that Mr. Corzine and other elected leaders like him—mostly Democrats—do not understand. In fact, they understand all too well that they are the hired help. The public employees they are supposed to manage in effect manage them. The unions provide politicians with campaign funds and volunteers and votes, and the politicians pay for what the unions demand in return with public money.
In New Jersey as elsewhere, most leaders of public sector unions are not sleeping with the politicians who set their salary and benefits. They are, however, doing all they can to install and keep in office those they wish—while fighting hard against the ones they oppose. And until we recognize the real master in this relationship, we will never reform the system.

The Tail Wagging the Dog

My second point relates to my first. Not only have the public unions too often become the dominant partner in the relationship with elected officials, but the contracts and the spending that goes with them are setting the other policy agenda. In other words, even when we recognize that the packages favored by public employees are too generous, we think of them simply as spending items. We need to wake up and recognize that in fact these spending items are the tail wagging the dog—that they set tax and borrowing decisions rather than follow from them.

Take the case of Northvale, a small, affluent town of about 4,600 people at the northeast tip of New Jersey. Its median income is about $99,000, comfortably above both the New Jersey and national levels, and its budget is $21.8 million. Of this, $13.2 million—or nearly two-thirds—goes to the schools. The lion’s share of that, of course, goes to salaries and benefits.

Northvale’s school budget is voted on in the spring. That’s part of the scam, because turnout for these elections is much lower than it is in November for the regular elections. With lower turnout, it’s easier for teachers and other interested parties to dominate the elections. Thus the great bulk of Northvale’s budget is not determined in the regular elections, or by the mayor and city council. Effectively, it is determined by the education lobby and school officials—who in turn are chosen in elections involving only 20 percent of the electorate.

From the other one-third of the budget, Northvale has to run its police force and fire department, remove snow, arrange for garbage pickup, and so on. That means there is not much discretionary spending left. Even when voters rebel—last spring Northvale voters overwhelmingly repudiated the budget—they are frequently ignored, and the back door system ensures there is little in the way of accountability.
But there are consequences: This dynamic helps explain why, in the decade before Chris Christie was elected governor, the property taxes of New Jersey residents went up 70 percent.

Mr. Christie is not in charge of local spending. But he understands that this is part of an exceptionally unvirtuous circle. So he’s made some changes. Last year, for instance, with the help of allies such as Mr. Sweeney, he pushed a reform through the legislature that required public workers to start contributing to their health care and up their contributions to their pensions. It’s not nearly the same percentage as their counterparts in the private sector, but it’s a start.

Mr. Christie also put through a property tax cap that forces cities to go to the people for a vote if they increase property taxes by more than two percent. And just last month, he signed a bill that will allow towns to move their school budget votes to the November ballot—not only saving money, but also ensuring that more citizens vote, not simply those who have a vested interest.

At the same time, Mr. Christie has begun to campaign against abuses using language that people can understand. His most recent target is the practice of awarding six-figure checks to public employees who are allowed to accumulate—and cash out—unused sick pay. In New Jersey these payments are called “boat money,” largely because retired government workers often use the money to buy pleasure boats when they retire. Across the state, cities have liabilities of $825 million because of these boat checks.

And what’s been the opposition’s response? Instead of agreeing to reasonable cuts, the Democrats keep thumping for a millionaire’s tax. New Jersey being New Jersey, the millionaire’s tax aims at people making far less than a million dollars. But even if it didn’t, it’s hard to see how driving millionaires out of the state will help it meet its huge and growing unfunded pension liabilities.

To summarize my second point: You and I make spending decisions the way all households do. We take our income, and we live within our means. In sharp contrast, public employee unions have introduced a whole new dynamic: They negotiate pay and benefits in contracts we can’t rewrite. When the revenues to meet these obligations fall short, they push to raise taxes to make up the difference.

The Corruption of Public Service

That leads me to my third and final point: If I am right that the public employee unions are in fact the managers in the relationship with politicians, and that public sector spending is driving tax and borrowing policy, the inescapable conclusion is that you and I are working for them.

That’s not how we usually understand and speak of public service. Traditionally, the idea of a public servant is someone who is working for the public, with the implication that he or she is sacrificing a better material life to do so. But can anyone really define today’s relationship this way? Especially when health care and pensions are included, government workers increasingly seem to live better than the people who pay their salaries. How many of you walk into some local, state or federal office these days and leave thinking, “The men and women here are working for me”?

In some ways the change has been driven by larger changes in union life. From one out of three workers at its high point in the 1950s, today fewer than one out of 14 private sector workers belongs to a union, and the percentage continues to drop. Conversely, the unionization of government employees continues to grow, to the point where public sector union members now outnumber their private sector counterparts for the first time in American history.

In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Fred Siegel notes that public sector unions have
become a vanguard movement within liberalism. And the reason for that is it’s the public sector that comes closest to the statist ideals of McGovern and post-McGovern liberals. And that is, there’s no connection between effort and reward. You’re guaranteed your job. You’re guaranteed your salary increase. There’s a kind of bureaucratic equality.

“This vanguard,” Siegel continues, “becomes in the eyes of many liberals the model for the middle class. Public-sector unions are what all workers should be like. Their benefits are the kind of benefits everyone should get.” So instead of the private sector defining the public, the public sector is thought to define the private.

As public employees unionize, their dues—often collected for the unions by the government—fund a permanent interest constantly lobbying for bigger government. To pay for this bigger and more expensive government, they advocate for higher taxes on those in the private sector. Only when they are threatened with layoffs are they inclined to compromise, and sometimes not even then. That is what I mean when I say that we work for them.

Where to Go From Here

One of the few silver linings of our tough economy today is that it is forcing tough decisions. Big city mayors and governors are having issues with their public employees, because we’ve reached a point where we simply cannot afford business as usual. With a sluggish economy—and fewer taxpayers—the problems that have piled up are becoming too difficult to ignore.

Across the nation we have governors and mayors trying to solve their public employee problems with varying degrees of seriousness, from Chris Christie in New Jersey to Jerry Brown in California to the great experiments going on in the Rust Belt—in Indiana, which has done the best, and Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan. Only Illinois, led by Democratic Governor Pat Quinn, has opted for business as usual with a mammoth tax increase that is now being followed up, in today’s typical way of Democratic governance, with tax breaks for large companies threatening to leave Chicago because of the tax burden.

In most of these places, there’s probably little we can do about the contracts that exist. What we can do is bring in new hires under more reasonable contracts and pro-rate contributions for existing employees. Even marginal changes can have a big impact, as Wisconsin found out when Governor Scott Walker’s collective bargaining reforms for public workers helped restore many of the state’s school districts back to fiscal health.

My father was a federal employee, as an FBI agent. I spent some time as a government worker in the White House. I also know many fine and devoted people on the public payroll who work hard, are good at what they do, and earn everything they get. But there are also those who work without results. I believe Americans are a generous people who can recognize the difference. We need to restore our public sector to a place where those in charge can make those distinctions and allocate rewards and resources accordingly.

In the meantime, I think the best thing we can do is speak honestly. That is what Mr. Christie is doing in New Jersey. His style isn’t for everyone. Yet his popularity suggests that Americans appreciate a politician willing to talk about the reality of public employee unions today—and the unreasonable costs they are imposing on our society.

We’ll never return to the ideal of public service until the rest of us start speaking honestly as well.
________________________________________

Oh, and a special message to the public relations boy at Lakota. You can’t make crap look like a diamond as much as you might try, and you can’t make a diamond into crap, as per your work on Thusday March 15th. Bad move.

Rich Hoffman

http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Written by overmanwarrior

March 19, 2012 at 12:00 am

Posted in Action, Archeology, Budget problems, Butler County, Communisim, Computers, Congress, Conservative politics, Creative Writing, Drama, Education, Justice, Literature, Objectivism, Organized Labor, Philosophy, Policial Science, Political Theroy, Politics, Progressive, Regulations, Religion, Rich Hoffman, School levy, Science, Socialists, Space, Taxes, Teacher Unions, Technology, The Delphi Technique, The Symposium of Justice, Transportation, Uncategorized, Union, Wages, Workplace Freedom, writing, Yes Lakota

Tagged with Arizona Law, institutionalism, John Kasich, Lakota Schools, overmanwarrior, philosophy, President Obama, Rich Hoffman, Self Help, Stupid in America, Tea Party, Teachers Unions, Tides Foundation story of stuff Rich Hoffmn overmanwarrior.com communist education policy, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Agenda: Grinding America Down–and The Naked Communist list of 45 goals from 1958

with 20 comments

When I came home yesterday a Christmas gift was left on the front porch from one of my readers here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom. It was a large tin can filled with a multitude of presents which was a pleasant surprise after a rather difficult day topped off with a cold ride in the rain on my motorcycle. I had gotten caught without my rain suit and it was raining hard just days before Christmas, so my cloths were soaked to the bone. So as typical on such days I undress on the front porch so my wet cloths don’t ruin my wife’s carpet and hardwood floors inside the house, and that’s when my wife showed me the present.

Inside were a number of wonderful presents and cards for both my wife and I, but one of the gifts jumped out at me in particular. It was a DVD of the documentary film Agenda: Grinding America Down by Curtis Browers which won Best Film at the Jubilee Film Festival in 2010. It surprised me that I hadn’t heard about this film because it covers much of the content I’ve written about here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom, which is the history of the communist movement in the United States and how many factions instigated by the Soviet Union KGB in the 1950’s and 1960’s sought to dismantle American culture from within. Here is one of my many articles about this very important topic.

http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/do-you-believe-in-spies-review-of-the-film-salt-and-how-sleeper-cells-have-corrupted-america/

I immediately watched Agenda and found it compelling and consistent with my own observations. I realized long ago that the sudden rise in the divorce rate, the ignorance of our youth, the rise in the welfare culture, the focus on sexuality, race relations, and feminism were suspiciously coordinated, and I have resisted, analyzed, and come to virtually the same conclusions as Bowers did in his very good film which you can see a preview of below:

One of the most potent aspects of that film was the revelation of the 45 communist goals outlined in the book The Naked Communist that Bowers learned about in a Communist USA meeting he attended at Berkley University in 1992. A lot of people don’t know that there is a very strong communist party in the United States and they have been around for much of the 20th century. As I have reported here even Ronald Reagan petitioned to be a member of the communist party in his youthful days, till he grew older and wiser. Read that article here:

http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/08/25/ronald-reagan-was-a-communist-yes-the-president-was-once-a-union-leader/

But people don’t see communism in America because it is not part of their static patterns. Culturally, America sees itself as the opposite of any communist country, but that is partly by design. I have studied social cultures my entire life, so much so that I intended fully to become an archeologist or anthropologist in my life profession, and in 1992 while I learned that communism and smaller degrees of socialism was quite alive and well in modern America at many meetings that I like Bowers attended, I decided to dedicate my time and energy to not studying why cultures from the past failed, but I would apply my studies to preserving the American culture that I saw being destroyed in front of my eyes while it was still alive. To understand what I mean by static patterns refer to this article on the subject:

http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/08/28/dynamic-intellectualism-and-the-tea-party-the-battle-between-the-spider-and-the-wasp/

The communist party in the United States was set up by the KGB during the Cold War had a two pronged plan to defeat America in that war. They planned to spend America into oblivion with the nuclear arms and space race, but while we were following rockets to the stars and sending men to the moon to beat the Soviet Union, KGB agents and sleeper cells were being established within the United States to destroy American culture from within. This is difficult for many people to see who only look at their own lives and the small part they play in American existence. But if you look at American culture with the big eyes of an archeologist outside the static patterns of normalcy it is easy to see how Communist USA has slowly over time accomplished many of the goals they set out to do way back in 1958. The list that Bowers addressed in the film Agenda is shown below for your convenience. As you look over the list consider what roll you have played in helping to make it possible and don’t lie to yourself and believe that the below information is a part of some radical conspiracy theory. Every one of these items is listed in the book The Naked Communist and has been routinely discussion in communist groups within the United States since the 50’s.
The following is the list of Communist goals contained in The Naked Communist 1958:[3]

1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament by the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces.
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums.
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture—education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand or treat.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity, masturbation and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use “united force” to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.

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

If you’d like to know more, see my article on The Ten Planks of Communism here:

http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/04/24/if-you-vote-for-a-levy-of-any-kind-youre-stupid-the-ten-planks-of-communism/

As you read that list dear reader you are probably asking yourself, “how did I not see this?” Well, there were a lot of other exciting things happening that took up our attention. Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the Bell X1 in 1947, 11 years before the book The Naked Communist was released. The Soviet Union knew once they got a glimpse of American ingenuity breaking the sound barrier that they could not beat the United States on the front end directly, so they had to defeat what Americans thought of themselves from within and destroy the entire concept of Americanism. You can read more about this period of time here:

http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/11/06/social-value-education-walt-disney-and-the-great-chuck-yeager/

Most people think of war in terms of bullets and violence, but that is not the case. Sun Tzu author of The Art of War says distinctly that “it is best to defeat those who are already defeated.” And the Soviet Union played this game with the long view of culture in mind. While America fought the Soviet Union with rockets, military, and Ronald Reagan bravado, the Soviet Union fought America with the feint of keeping up with the United States with all those topics, but knew they would lose in the end, so they sought to destroy American culture itself.

Enemies of America have done to the United States culture what scientists have done to a frog in experiments involving hot water. If a scientist puts a frog into scalding hot water, the frog will of course struggle and attempt to jump out. But if the frog is put into water at room temperature and the heat is gradually turned up slowly, the frog will stay in the water comfortably for a long time, until of course it’s too late. The gradual heat of the water will slowly rob the life of the frog till its muscles no longer work and it cannot escape. Defeating a culture is the same kind of thing and the Soviet Union knew this. They knew Americans would always fight and would beat them in a head on fight, so slowly over time communists have sought to dismantle what American Culture is so that the defeat of America will come not from China, Russia, Cuba or any other place of rampant communism, but it will come from college professors, school teachers, politicians, and media producers educated at the institutions the communists controlled as established in The Naked Communist.

But fret not dear reader, America is not gone yet, and the ideas that made it great will live on. It takes people like Curtis Bowers to make films like Agenda to teach how we arrived at this point in time. And I can speak for myself, I write here everyday so that American culture can be preserved and all those of you who are reading this that have forgotten what being an American is, can relearn. That’s why I write articles like this one:

http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/12/18/the-flying-tigers-learning-what-america-is-by-looking-at-the-past/

I write here everyday to restore America and to counter the efforts of the pretentious communist academics of which our current president is a proud member. But it’s not just him; there are thousands upon thousands of these communist sympathizers functioning right out in the open these days. And I plan to be their worst nightmare in the years to come. Even if through the NDAA Act these communist lovers gain control of websites like this one, I am currently writing books that will compete directly with the propaganda they have inflicted upon our culture like The Naked Communist and Rules for Radicals. So the game is not up for America. We are learning that we have been scammed, and the wrath of that realization will be one of great anger. Right now it’s embarrassment, but as the truth comes out, it will evolve into anger and America will overcome this enemy from within. Hopefully this will be peaceful in a battle of ideas. But if the communist types with all their various names continue to stomp all over the United States Constitution I will promise that violence will be assured for their kind. Because our future under communist philosophy will look something like this–remember the frog.

So take head my dear American reader. Yes, communist have infiltrated our culture and has successfully destroyed much. But there are a lot of people who are waking up, and fans of this website, Glenn Beck, Alex Jones, and filmmakers like Curtis Bowers are starting to turn the strategy of the communists against them. After all, it worked for them against us, so the same can be used against them to destroy the communist culture. The difference between American traditional culture and communist culture is that their culture is built upon lies, and ours is built on history and in the game of culture building, America will always beat the lie of communism. It might take a little time, but the healing process is already beginning, which is evident in the very good film, Agenda: Grinding America Down.

You can do your part in fixing America by watching that very good film and taking some notes. I recommend it highly.

SEE THE WORLD THROUGH HOFFMAN LENSES:

http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/socialists-live-hoffman-lenses-on-urban-meyer/

Rich Hoffman
http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Written by overmanwarrior

December 24, 2011 at 12:00 am

Posted in Action, Archeology, Ayn Rand, Budget problems, Citizen Kane, Communisim, Computers, Congress, Conservative politics, Creative Writing, Drama, Education, Fahrenkamp, Feminisim, Finance, Gas Prices, Gay Rights, Glenn Beck, Guilt, Hippie Scum, Immigration, Islamic, Jewish, Justice, Literature, Muslim Brotherhood, Mystery, National Debt, Nature, Organized Labor, Policial Science, Political Theroy, Politics, Progressive, Regulations, Religion, Rich Hoffman, School levy, Science, Social Networking, Socialists, Space, Taxes, Teacher Unions, The Delphi Technique, The Symposium of Justice, Transportation, Uncategorized, Union, Wailing Wall, writing

Tagged with 10th Amendment, 700 WLW, ACLU cases, Agenda: Grinding Down America, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, Down the Rabbit Hole, education, education funding, Free Will, George Soros, Glenn Beck, Illegal Immigration, institutionalism, Lebanon Schools, overmanwarrior, philosophy, President Obama, Rich Hoffman, Senate Bill 5, Stacy Schuler, Stupid in America, Tides Foundation story of stuff Rich Hoffmn overmanwarrior.com communist education policy, western arts, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Kepler — 22 is Discovered by NASA: The pivot point of human history

with 12 comments

A marvelous discovery was made by NASA, a new earth like planet called Kepler -22 was discovered by the $600 million Kepler observatory and is the first hint of what is to come regarding space exploration. It has long been suspected that there are many unknown planets in space that will be discovered by this new space oriented observatory. To date it appears that there are 2,326 potential planets that have been discovered within the first 16 months of Kepler’s observations. Darryl Parks of 700 WLW discusses this exciting planetary find in a very fun broadcast on his radio program where he makes the information of how this planet impacts the everyday person understandable for those who don’t normally pay attention to news of a cosmic significance.

To see the original press conference from NASA you can watch it below. NASA is a government organization that I believe is the only one that actually is a good investment of our tax dollars. Where I complain and point out the many discrepancies of all other government programs and how they are inclined to always fail, NASA is the one really big bright spot that gives back to our society much more than we put into it. For an article about just how much NASA has given us refer to the piece I wrote around the time of the last Space Shuttle mission:

http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/the-ghost-town-of-kerr-city-a-metaphor-for-planet-earth/

The rest of government seems obsessed with socialism which permeates virtually every activity and causes government to fail as a workable organization in virtually every capacity. The reason governments enjoy socialism is because it benefits their ideology of being members of a superior political class. Capitalism does not benefit career politicians. Socialism does and that’s why they have been using it to virtually rob the wealth and resources of every organization they touch.

I have reported to you dear reader many exciting developments in the realm of science that are very beneficial to a much brighter tomorrow for all of us. The reason I am so angry with public education and the socialism that it teaches, as well as how government also subscribes to that failed political philosophy is because socialism is very corrosive to innovation, which are the needed components to continue with the kind of discovery that delivered us to this age of exploration and made Kepler observatory a reality in the first place. To my mind socialism on a global scale is holding back Skycar travel which I have spoken in great detail about. It is preventing regenerative medicine because socialism has made deals with the current pharmaceutical companies to maintain the current profit structure. I have reported wonders in horticulture only to have socialism prevent food supply in agriculture. I have spoken about the future of space travel and how deregulation at the level of NASA will create an explosion of off-world industry. I have spoken at great length of the education options in innovation but the socialism of the teachers unions prevent innovation from being discussed. I have spoken about how the archeology of our age is completely wrong and new discoveries are begging for attention, but the socialism of the university system prevents new information from being accepted into the fossil record. I have demonstrated completely unexplored islands in the Pacific Ocean that hold keys to human civilization’s past, that are not even officially explored scientifically, I have brought to light the fossil record of just my home state of Ohio and how a species of giant human has been unearthed, yet the socialism of the universities and museums are not sure how to report the new findings since they don’t fit into established theories. You can read some of these articles below for review. (YES, I WROTE THEM ALL)

SKYCAR: WHAT IS IT?

http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/fly-a-skycar-today-the-future-of-transportation/

REGENERATIVE MEDICINE

http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/the-future-of-medicine/

GROWING FOOD THE CORRECT WAY

http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/01/29/epcots-the-land-and-the-celebrity-farmer-a-look-at-the-wonderful-and-important-world-of-horticulture/

EXPLORING THE REAL BEGINNING OF THE HUMAN RACE

http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/10/12/my-love-of-real-science-and-the-adventure-of-discovery/

WHO TAUGHT HUMAN BEINGS FIRST?

http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/08/30/ancient-aliens-and-the-tea-party-koyannisquatsi/

THE SECRET OF MALDEN ISLAND IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN

http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/08/13/secret-of-malden-island-why-public-education-is-hiding-history/

GIANTS IN OHIO

http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/20/giants-in-ohio-the-hidden-history-of-the-human-race/

THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION

http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/the-guts-to-be-bold-the-option-of-school-choice/

THE NEW AGE OF SPACE TRAVEL

http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/10/22/jonathan-west-the-nameplate-god-be-thankful-for-virgin-galactic/

PRIVATIZATION OF SPACE!

http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/03/11/the-space-race-is-just-beginning-as-the-space-shuttles-end/

Even though many who read here know this site as an anti-tax site, as an education reform site, as a whistle-blower site, my anger at all those government entities which are the targets of my complaints are because they stand in the way of scientific understanding and invention. I see them as standing in the way of where mankind is, and where it needs to go and I am at war with their ignorance. Even if I am the only member of that war on my side I will gladly take on every ignorant socialists there is because they are in my way to arriving at the human evolution that is our destiny.

The discovery of Keplar – 22 is a big deal. To put it in perspective, Keplar – 22 demonstrates that there are other earth-like planets out there, and the human race can continue on when earth ends, which it will eventually. There is no question in my mind that much of the strange archeology our society has discovered, has it’s roots in a civilization much like ours who around 100,000 years ago saw earth from one of these sister planets that we share in this small arm of the Milky Way that is 600 to 1000 light years across and decided to attempt to explore our planet. To understand how big everything really is and to begin to wrap your mind around inter-dimensional travel, watch this video:

Those other planets sent beings to check out earth, to land and interact with our culture at that time just like we are planning at this very moment to visit Kepler – 22. If we could, we would. There is no doubt in my mind that these other planets who are probably 2000 to 10,000 years more advanced than we are now have figured out how to travel to deep space and were able to visit us. They explored us for their own benefit and returned back to their home planet to report what they saw here. But while they were here, just like we will when learn to travel in the same fashion, they have a natural effect on the cultures they study just by being there.

If you want to understand how space travel will evolve you can learn a lot by this documentary. The last quarter of that documentary talks specifically about interstellar travel, the kind of travel that we will have to uncover before we can ever entertain traveling to places like Kepler – 22. And it is possible, and we will figure it out, as sure as you are reading this. In the documentary they introduce tachyons which are a hypothetical subatomic particle that always moves faster than light. In the language of special relativity, a tachyon would be a particle with space-like four-momentum and imaginary proper time. A tachyon would be constrained to the space-like portion of the energy-momentum graph. Therefore, it cannot slow down to subluminal speeds.
You can read more about tachyon’s here:

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

There is no question in my mind that civilization in our own past used anti-gravity devices to build massive structures all over the earth. Somewhere along the line of human evolution we lost this knowledge. If we understood it once, we can relearn the skill and uncover it once again. When this happens escape velocity off earth will no longer be a problem. And once we can perform science in space and travel becomes cheaper there, exploration into tachyon technology will be within reach, and from there, we will be able to travel to Kepler – 22 and all the new planets that the Kepler observatory is about to discover.

The reason that societies fail however is they generally collapse on themselves when they become too top-heavy with government power, and the thief of science is always some variation of socialism. The fact that anti-gravity technology existed on earth at one time and has been lost to all future science, probably in the burning of the library in Alexandria which I spoke about during the recent riots in Egypt demonstrates how artifacts and ancient understanding can be erased forever by the vandals of war. See that article here:

http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/the-real-crime-in-egypt-history-lost-to-ideology-and-quests-for-power/

The decision of our day is are we going to look forward to even more scientific discoveries like we are experiencing in Kepler – 22 or are we going to worry about the pensions of public workers who simply expand government? Are we going to continue to work all our lives for an opportunity to retire and finally become free once our bodies are broken beyond repair, or are we going to embrace regenerative medicine and live for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years? Are we going to focus on global warming for a planet that is going to be gone in 5 billion years anyway, or are we going to start the process of leaving mother earth and finally move out on our own as a human race………..I mean isn’t it time?

Socialism is that overprotective mother who never wants her children to leave home, and progressives are those spoiled children who still cleave to their mothers breasts for milk, even though they are fully grown adults. If left to socialism, no child will ever leave their mother and they will die still cleaving to their mothers warm embrace, never to have lived, never to have explored, never to have loved, never to have sorrow, but they will be safe in their mothers embrace. Those who act in such a way are socialists and they do not speak for people like me who want nothing to do with that mother. I want with every essence of my being to jump into space; to capture the mysteries of the tachyon’s so I can travel to far away stars and see what adventure awaits us there. And for those scared children called progressive socialists who cleave to mother earth and say, “but you will die soon…..why worry about such things?” My response would be, “I don’t want to live forever, but why can’t I live for 500 to 1000 years. Noah was 950 years old. Moses was 120 years old, it is obvious that human beings knew something then that they have forgotten as empires rose and fell around the concept of socialism.” We are on the cusp of being able to repair our bodies indefinitely, so why wouldn’t we? And why would we not reach for the stars instead of a pension check and a slow death in retirement in a Florida condo?

All that really is holding us back is socialism and other collective oriented philosophies. Subscribers of those political theories are short-sighted scared children who wish to keep the world at a constant that they are comfortable with. And such people do not have the right, or obligation to hold me to their lack of vision. There are many Kepler – 22’s out there and I want to see human kind explore them all, even if it takes 5000 years to do it. Our society is on the cusp of that kind of breakthrough. The pivot point from which we all rest in the other direction is the kind of social de-evolution that will erase all the breakthroughs we’ve experienced of late and drift back into the mentality of the dark ages, which is what progressive socialism intends, to the demise of us all.

The assumption of our day is that human kind will always advance forward, but that is not the case. The evidence of modern archeology shows that our distant relatives actually knew more than we currently do about a great many things, and it is the cultures of empires that erased those sciences under the rule of tyranny. And as we have just discovered or rediscovered a new planet very similar to our own earth, that same tyranny of the past is upon us again and threatens to halt our progress into a slow regression of thought and innovation. The decision is ours to make, and the merit of that decision will determine thousands of years of future human existence.

SEE THE WORLD THROUGH HOFFMAN LENSES:

http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/socialists-live-hoffman-lenses-on-urban-meyer/

Rich Hoffman
http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Written by overmanwarrior

December 8, 2011 at 12:00 am

The Key to American Exceptionalism: It’s not what you think it is

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Fresh off a full day at my daughter’s house celebrating her 22nd birthday and indulging in a Pirates of the Caribbean movie marathon which was one of her birthday wishes, my thoughts returned to the genius of Walt Disney and his foresight to create the original ride of which that film series is based in his Disneyland amusement park so many years ago. This love of pirate lore has deep roots in American society and for good reason, because pirates are one of America’s parents, and to understand America, you have to understand the role that a pirate plays in the process.

http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/11/26/avast-there-matey-birthday-pirates-and-freedom-at-all-costs/

Before indulging in that deep abyss of psychological exploration all one must do to witness the world as it always has been before rebellions of courage have lashed out against tyrannical static patterns of thought, the current Obama administration displays clearly why I have always considered it more important to teach my kids about the value of piracy than the importance of getting a doctorate in medicine, or political science. Because to me, the thieves, the scallywags, and the politicians of this world are those who seek to control others through rules and regulation and they should be fought as an enemy to individuality. President Obama to date has been the worst, yet best example of what such thieves and looters are capable of and why the world should run in the opposite direction of such moochers and social parasites.

Walt Disney knew what few people were ready to acknowledge when he designed Disneyland, then his much larger theme park Disney World. When I was a kid, I marveled at how Disney got away with having a theme ride about rapists, terrorists, and drunken bastards robbing and looting in an aimless life, and placed that ride within a very short walk from the Liberty Tree in Liberty Square as if both sections of his park were equal in some way. I always felt that Walt Disney was trying to tell people something important. Even though he sold the Disney image with Cinderella Castle there was something under the covers he wanted to instruct every American alive of the importance, and the sign posts are everywhere in Walt Disney World.

This became very evident to me about a decade ago when I was at Disneyworld with my wife and most of her family. The Park had closed except to employees and their families at 9 PM after the light parade, so for the next two hours the whole park was ours, since my niece was an employee at the time. So my wife, daughters my niece and two nephews went on a quest of adventure those next two hours that cleared up the whole problem for me. We had free access to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, before Disney reinvented it with the film franchise, and the ghost of Walt Disney spoke to me as we rode that ride 8 times in a row from 9 PM till 10 PM. The line was so short we had it virtually to ourselves. We could get off, get back in line and do it again almost immediately. After 4 times in a row the employees let us just stay in the boat and continue on for the next 4 times.

http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/pirates-freedom-and-key-west-whats-more-important-order-or-happiness/

http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/05/23/pirates-of-the-caribbean-on-stranger-tides-a-movie-review-and-commentary/

At this time I was reading a book I knew populated the libraries of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams with considerable respect, and I knew that it was a key to the wording of the American Constitution. It was also the book that created the very first libel law suit in the history of mankind, so the Founding Fathers being interested in the laws of England were very much aware of its importance. The book was called The Buccaneers of America written by Alexander O. Exquemelin who served under Henry Morgan’s command on those Buccaneer exploits that took place on the Caribbean oceans of the 1670’s. Morgan was a privateer serving the kind of England with the profits from his loot in raiding the Spanish and their hold on Central America. To England, Morgan was a privateer. To every other nation Morgan was a bloodthirsty pirate. Since the King of England Charles II was becoming very wealthy under Morgan’s exploits the English Jamaican colony town of Port Royal was left alone from the long arm of English law and the Governor of Jamaica gave Henry Morgan free rein to do as he pleased. This was the birth of freedom, even though the results often ended in prostitution, drunken orgies, and other decadence, freedom from the laws of kings began in this small Jamaican port.

Well, another important figure to the foundation of the United States also played a part in all this. The very young John Locke who was serving as Secretary of the Board of Trade and Plantations for Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury a very close confidant to the king. Locke was in a unique position to see how the behavior in the far away land of Jamaica influenced the politics of England to the highest rank. What Locke learned in these observations became the Two Treatises of Civil Government which Thomas Jefferson and James Madison would use to modal the Declaration of Independence after. You see, John Locke became a philosopher based on all these observations, the most pivotal in America history up to that point, because John Locke and the exploits of Henry Morgan occurred a hundred years before the American Revolution and set the foundation of thought that would become America. The seeds of rebellion had been planted by Locke and nurtured along by patriots like Sam Adams and Thomas Paine. But the ship that carried the seed for Locke to plant was Henry Morgan.

After Charles the II died, England sought to make peace with the French, Spanish and Dutch, so English heroes like Morgan were suddenly cast into the light of piracy and were hunted down for crimes that just a few short years ago made them wealthy. Fortune hunters who sought to live the “pirate’s life” of Morgan took to the seas and found themselves bandits as the governments of the world outlawed the practice of privateering.

But the new world of America had attracted all the adventurers and discontent of the world’s countries, many of them coming to America to settle in the various pirate towns, such as New York, and especially New Orleans to be free of people like Obama’s contemporaries, they were every bit as alive and well back then let me assure you. Pirate captains like Black Sam Bellamy continued on in the tradition of Henry Morgan for as long as they could. Politics being the nature of static patterns attacked the dynamic social patterns of the pirates by settling the new world themselves, and buffering out the effect of the wild outlaws who occupied this strange new world called America.

But some men, the raw adventurers who would rather die than lose their freedom, even if it was the chains of hell itself they fought against continued to pillage and plunder long after the laws of civilization had pulled tight the noose of control. This is precisely the same pattern that occurred in the American West. Politicians used the adventurous spirit of its wild and wooly class to settle the frontier. Then once the blood of their enemies had been shed they turned on the adventurous and killed them. This is how Black Beard came to be. Black Beard just thirty to forty years prior would have been a hero for England. But in 1718, he was an enemy to the world because he refused to acknowledge the laws of politicians, and proved far too difficult to socially control.

The great classic movie The Buccaneer with Charlton Heston playing Andrew Jackson and Yul Brynner playing Jean Lafitte was about the unholy alliance between Jackson who teamed up with the pirate of New Orleans in Lafitte to fight off the English in the War of 1812. Jackson wisely used the unpredictable static patterns of the pirates around New Orleans to defeat handedly the English troops who occupied the city. Did you not know that Mardi Gras was brought to Louisiana by early French settlers and the rituals of wearing masks and bringing single women to elaborate masked balls was started by the French pirates and prostitutes of New Orleans?

This is why Walt Disney recreated a New Orleans town to place his new ride Pirates of the Caribbean into at the very first Disneyland. Being a natural patriot, who had dropped out of high school, and never had any formal education of any kind, Disney had taught himself, and this is what made him a unique thinker. Disney obviously loved The Buccaneer movie, but during that same period of time the great classic novel called Atlas Shrugged came out, in 1957. In that classic book one of the key characters is the pirate Ragnar Danneskjöld who serves as one of the three main protagonist’s who raids and loots the “looters” of society. In the case of Atlas Shrugged the “looters” were politicians like Obama in the very first clip. Ragnar stole back from the politicians the loot they plundered from those who had originally earned the money. There is no question that Ragnar’s character in Atlas Shrugged, Yul Brynner’s adaption of Lafitte in The Buccaneer, and the many stories of Henry Morgan and how the Founding Father’s adored Morgan and his band of Pirates led to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. So as I was reading at the time of traveling down that boat ride for the sixth and seventh times that night the words of Exquemelin and Locke were clearly written on everything I was looking at.

In those two short years, 1957 with Atlas Shrugged, then in 1958 with The Buccaneer the static pattern of the pirate as a villain, as depicted in Captain Hook, or Captain Flint was suddenly shattered and a new way to look at piracy emerged, which was not shaped on Christian values of morality, but on the true intentions of the human soul. This is why the Disney ride is so popular, and why the movies are so enjoyable.

This is also why pirates are the keys to understanding what America was supposed to be, and what it still can be. This is also why films like Pirates of the Caribbean, and books like Atlas Shrugged are absolute keys to dusting off American Excepetionalism and becoming once again what we were in the beginning, when freedom was an idea created on a pirate ship, written down by a surgeon, witnessed by a philosopher, studied by revolutionaries, and translated for us by artists. It is why we root for blood thirsty killers like Jessie James even though publicly we chastise them. Deep in our hearts we know that the key to our inner desires is to not fall in line with what society tells us to do. The key is to cast off the control of the politicians and their rules, their laws, their meager attempts to control human beings as though they were cattle. The key to American Exceptionalism is in being…..well exceptional……exceptionally free, and living with a passion to protect that freedom, at any and all cost.

We like pirates and outlaws because they have the courage to question the rules that bind the human soul. We may call them unholy, unethical, unpatriotic, but deep inside we call them bandits and mean it as the highest compliment. I have yet to meet a man and especially a woman who doesn’t love a bandit in their lives whether they admit it in the light of day or not. Because the bandit seeks freedom as the highest goal, and adventure is but the vehicle that takes them to their destination. It is the rest of the world who watches in envy as those with courage take their freedom and live each hour of the day by the fruit of their valor. For the rest, they just watch Pirates of the Caribbean and fantasize about a world they could have lived, if only they weren’t such gullible fruitcakes with one foot already in their coffins.

For the answer to everything click the link below!

http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/the-answer-is-c-who-runs-society-the-engine-or-the-boxcar/

Rich Hoffman
http://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Written by overmanwarrior

November 27, 2011 at 12:00 am

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