Rand Paul Trashes "Orwellian" Lockdowns, Blasts Gov. Andy Beshear

good morning thanks everybody for coming not everybody could uh get together this morning to talk about a little bit of the problems that small businesses have been having over the last years i want to thank the university and dean shaffer for allowing us to use the facilities here the gatton college of business and university of kentucky i'd like to welcome everyone here today i became the ranking member of the small business committee this year and in that role our job is to advocate for small businesses across the country and i think part of that is listening you know to what kind of troubles that you guys have been having we're acutely aware of the devastating impact that coveted lockdowns have had on small businesses and families instead of what was originally said 15 days to slow the virus these lockdowns became protracted and on and on and on and to some extent they still continue larger businesses were often deemed essential and got to escape the restrictions but the small business community was told do it or else basically certain industries lock down completely and this has caused sort of a ripple effect throughout supply chains washington's spending problem has also contributed to this causing the cost of goods and supplies to skyrocket in some industries while local officials continue to keep many of the large businesses open schools throughout the country including here in kentucky are still not fully operational this has created many obstacles for working parents and families as they try to make ends meet the science is clear though that children are at minimal risk for the disease and not super spreaders in fact when you look at transmission studies in several different countries you find that the children aren't really spreading the disease most of the countries in europe have kept their schools open throughout some of them closed down for a month or so last year and we're back open by may and june and have been operating continuously we've had some private schools in both the lexington area and in louisville area and in northern kentucky and up in the ashland area that were open throughout never had any super spreading events and had really no diagnosed illnesses at school i've always asserted that these orwellian lockdowns have severe consequences we will experience the impact of these lockdowns on our economy and damage to our children for years to come now as vaccine distribution and new therapeutics are widely available it's imperative that we fully reopen the question has now become why are those in power continuing to assert control over people's livelihoods and our children's future as i've said before florida is open texas is open neighboring tennessee has repealed their mandates even new york the king of lockdowns in new york even new york has set a firm date to reopen and yet we still don't have a firm date in kentucky to reopen to make matters worse in our state the state legislature has said that these edicts from the governor should expire they passed a law now the governor openly is defining that law suing in court saying he's not subject to the state legislature this is a very very dangerous sign when you have a governor that will resist the will of the popularly elected people it's in court now but this is very very dangerous to our state and to the constitutional aspect of our state to have a governor that's acting beyond the authority of the state legislature and in defiance of the state legislature i hope we get this sorted out very soon i look forward to our discussion today on the challenges facing businesses and families we have a stenographer here who will record all this this will be made an official transcript of the committee and hopefully people will learn from this and take to heart the different problems each of you have had in your businesses this is a great panel and i think it will be quite interesting to hear from each of you i'm going to uh introduce uh one at a time and i think what we'll do is [Music] okay and actually i've been told that dean schaefer would like to say a few words thank you good morning my name is simon sheather and i'm proud to say i'm the dean of the gatton college of business and economics here at the university of kentucky on behalf of the university of kentucky we we welcome senator rand paul of kentucky to the university and to our magnificent facility here at the university senator paul we appreciate your leadership and your focus on kentucky first there's no better time to inspire creativity and entrepreneurship in our small business owners than now we appreciate all the business leaders in attendance today including gat and alum kailyn query the founder and president of lexington event company and dawn perkins the general manager of the team spirit shop i'm pleased to briefly report on the success of the gatton college and the university of kentucky in dealing with the pandemic for example in spring 2020 our college was able to move over 215 in-person course sections totaling 35 000 student credit hours to fully online in a matter of just 10 days in mid-semester in fall 2020 we delivered courses in a number of different modes 15 were completely in person classes 40 of our classes used technology to provide a highly interactive environment that mixed in person and online 30 of our classes were online with synchronous class meetings and 15 of the classes were too large to offer in person or via zoom and were done online asynchronously i'm proud to report our faculty has done important research regarding covert 19 that helped both on a local and a national level a couple of highlights one study showed how businesses should respond to the crisis with both speed and agility as well as our economists studied the effectiveness of social distancing at the start of the pandemic in february the gatton college hosted the 11th annual supply chain forum with over 200 attendees we brought together national caliber supply chain leaders who are practitioners academics and consultants the forum allowed businesses to share their supply chain initiatives especially related to the theme of thriving in disruption last month the college hosted a conference on business innovation and entrepreneurship three gatten college alumni who are now successful small business entrepreneurs spoke on the first day of the conference on the second day of the conference 22 teams pitched new business ideas 12 undergraduates teams five graduate teams and five non-profits over twenty thousand dollars in prize money was awarded the graduate division winner is an engineering graduate student who had previously completed the gatton college entrepreneurs boot camp something we offer every semester next weekend i personally look forward to to being part of two important commencement therapies for the gatton college it'll be great to have that back in person thank you for your attendance today over to houston thank you dean sheather i think what we'll do is rather than do all the introductions at once why don't we do introductions one by one and then hear from each individual after the introduction so alan uh uh hinks one we start with allen first alan hinks is the owner of dundee tavern in louisville mr hinks has owned and operated dundee tavern for six years he's worked in the hospitality industry for over 30 years including a decade at captain's quarters riverside grill and oh charlie's restaurant and bar uh mr hings why don't you start us off and if you can limit your testimony to about five minutes okay i'm glad to be here thank you so much dr paul for inviting me here to this event obviously we've all had our horror stories when it came to the mandate starting back in march and the tavern and myself throughout the three decades i've been in this business have always always been employee oriented and when all this started my whole goal was to make payroll and we did everything we possibly could do to make payroll and what was really challenging with us in the beginning was the decisions that were made by people in my awesome pen that never had to make payroll before okay and when everything came down the pike the ways that everything was handled not really following the science not really asking for advice from fellow state leaders or basically the citizens of kentucky it was a time that we made a stance and i'm currently involved in a lawsuit right now we had a lawsuit last year against the governor of kentucky about the mandates and about the handling of the culver 19 in our state and i'm just very very honored to be here and i'm proud of kentucky i'm a citizen of kentucky my son because mattress here at university kentucky he's in air force now station wichita falls texas and i have two granddaughters and i don't want my granddaughters to come in when it's their turnaround time around to experience what we've experienced this past year and a half thank you thank you mr hanks and i think one of the points that's very important to hear from that testimony is i think there's a difference between advice persuasion suggestions good ideas and mandates and the problem one of the problems with mandates is one size fits all we're not all the same and every restaurant's not the same and every bar is not the same and every retail outlet is not the same and um frankly there's a difference in spread between rural communities and urban communities and really in a free society a lot of these decisions will be made by the individuals not by the state let's go to don perkins next don is the general manager of team spirit shop in lexington and is a school reopening activist she led let them play kentucky and let them learn kentucky i like both of those which advocate for starting youth sports and restarting in-person instructions and i hope she'll tell us that you don't have to wear a mask when you're playing soccer don hi i'm dawn perkins um i am the general manager of the team spirit shop which is a company that's turned 25 years in november and when the governor shut us down on march the 13th it was like oh my gosh what's next i'm not married i don't have children um that was my husband that was my baby and that has been my life since i did graduate from the university so like everyone else with the first couple weeks i was like okay okay we're fine and then it quickly realized that a couple weeks were a month and then two months and then three months but having a business that's based 98 on spirit wear and pto and activities and organizations i don't have to tell you that the last 14 months there's not been much of a business i have a brother that runs on transport team for cincinnati children's and i have a sister who's married to someone in the military and elderly parents which caused us all to be a little bit separated but in august one of my nephews had a birthday and i was at home and i was home first of all for a funeral on a monday and didn't have the opportunity to really engage with them but on that wednesday i was back home and i could feel the mental stress and the tension of my own nieces and nephews and i thought to myself i've got to do something on that particular thursday is when the khsa was meeting and i thought after watching julian talking in the board of controls we're fine that meeting ended at 3 30 we logged on to the governor at four o'clock and i thought we're not moving anywhere and i wrestled that particular night just if mine feel this way not mine personally but my nieces and nephews what about the other 80 000 that play sports and the other however many that are in public education private education day cares whatever they have to be feeling it and on that friday i started a group called let them play and in two and a half days i found myself on the capitol with 30 000 people in the group and we were ready to go and shortly after that we did let them learn and that has been my focus and i've had to put my business on the side because it's not been about the team spirit shop even though ultimately that is what my life is about it's been about the academic the mental the physical and the social well-being being of the children of kentucky and sometimes we talk academically but most of the time we don't want to mention the other things and those are the things that won't be determined by a test score and they will be years to come so yes i need to get my business up and running in supply chains and employees and working is all factors but right now my primary focus is on the children of kentucky because they are the future of kentucky and they deserve better well we appreciate what you've done to try to get schools back open i think one of the things that's alarming is there are now statistics showing thousands of children who never log on at all so even children we got them internet access we got them a cuter and a computer and they're still not logging on at all they're lost to the system and so i think we're going to find hundreds if not thousands of kids not only throughout kentucky but throughout the the whole country that basically have lost a year maybe a year and a half of education this is a real problem and i personally believe that education is sort of that equalizing for us no matter what your background came from where you were on the social economic matter it's your chance to get ahead if you can get an education it's incredibly important and i think we've lost that and it'd be one thing if we were looking at smallpox and a third of our children were dying you would think that with the hype over this but for kids it's important to say and it's absolutely incontrovertibly true that this disease is less dangerous than the seasonal flu for children now it's the opposite above 65 it's probably a thousand times more dangerous than the seasonal flu so we should be just honest but we decided one size fits all and they were going to treat our 5 and 10 and 15 year old kids the same way we're going to treat 85 our 85 year old parents and that just made no sense at all no science to talk about it no evidence of spreading the schools typically in the past you remember when we'd get the flu the flu can be deadly for children we'd close the school down for a couple weeks when we'd get 10 or 15 cases when we had an outbreak we closed every school in kentucky and every school in the entire country without an outbreak i know of no outbreak where 10 or 15 kids got covered in a school they're just they haven't been reported because no kids went to school all schools were closed and so i don't think we did really basis on the science with regard to athletics there was a story the other day of a track coach in new hampshire fired for not making his kids wear the mask while running outside so it's it's submit to my will or be fired not my will to the state's will will be fired and i think the burden should be on the state to prove that a mask outside is necessary now they've finally admitted after a year and a half that you probably don't need a mask outside and yet people are still wearing them and enforcing it and people are yelling down the the cairns of this world are yelling down at people there was a teacher in a and he was in virginia this was probably six months ago yelled at two fourteen-year-old boys who were grappling on a playground you know wrestling and you know playing a little tackle football or whatever you're you're committing genocide and she started yelling profanities at them she was a school teacher in the public school system and she's yelling profanities at this 14 year old not based on any signs based on sort of opinions and conjecture and so by all means we need to look at the science on this there's a great deal of evidence because europe went right back in they also kept moving the goal post on us they said well we're going to flatten the curve i remember we were going to flatten the curve that sounded somewhat reasonable you're going to close your shop we're going to close all this for about three or four weeks so we don't overwhelm the hospitals we did that and we did it for another three weeks and then it went on and on and on and if you look at the curve of the incidence of the disease and the mandates there's long timeline curves over the last year or so after every mandate there's no evidence that the mandate does anything to the trajectory in fact we had the most mandates on in december when we hit the highest peak of all so i think the virus pretty much had a mind of its own and did what it wanted no matter what we did other than the vaccine and so when people say which i think is malpractice that wearing the maxine is just as good as the vaccine wearing a mask is somehow just as good as a vaccine it's a lie the vaccine does work and people should be encouraged to get the vaccine encouraged and do it of their own free will but it has made a difference the one other thing that they've forgotten also is that about a third of the public has been vaccinated but a third of the public has gotten the disease naturally and they do work in tandem they both have immunity and that combined immunity is causing the curves to come dramatically down but don't get me started all right adam hinton adam hidden is the vice president of hinton mills a group of five retail farm supply stores and feed mills based in eastern kentucky family-owned business is headquartered in flemingsburg kentucky he's also serves as a director of kentucky welding institute a private welding school that trains students from across the u.s mr hinton and his wife melissa own the hinton agency which specializes in group life and health benefits thanks for having us i appreciate having an ear for small business um i have a hard time talking about our business without talking about our origin up we've been in business for 103 years my great-grandfather started the business as uh he was an orphan at the age of six and by the age of 12 he had started his first business raising baby calves from probably from his neighbor and took that money over the course of the next handful of years and in 1918 started our business our business has has not only you know served fleming county but we now have five locations so we serve a good portion of northeastern kentucky so folks that don't understand what a farm supply store is basically if you ate today that's because of because of a farmer somewhere that has grown food and here in in rural kentucky there's a lot of farmers in our our business as businesses like ours serve those farmers with with feed seed fertilizer fencing materials things of that nature because of that we were deemed essential so both hidden mills and i'll speak to kentucky welding institute in a moment we were both uh deemed essential industries um and and like allen had had mentioned earlier one of our biggest concerns is number one is how do we take care of our employees we've had employees that have have stayed with us in some cases 50 years have several right now that have been with us 40 years and more than that have been with us 30 some years so how do we take care of those employees and how do we serve our customers you know one of our slogans on almost anything that you'll see internally or with our employees it says work hard be kind serve others so we have to think about that and we're not medical doctors so we had to take the advice of of whether it's local health department or others and and try to try to follow those guidelines and stay open um it has been a challenge the biggest challenges has been for us is is trying to uh to know what to do and who to listen to number one i think number two has been has been labor we had folks that were apprehensive like probably all of us in this room when the pandemic started had three folks retire and normally we have a workforce at amongst our locations of just over 60 full-time employees and right now we're at 53 so we've got seven positions that we've been unable to feel as those positions were vacated um just because they're either because of fear or now because of the you know the um the benefits of staying home that they're the financial benefits for folks are greater because of some of the government government subsidies as opposed to uh to finding jobs and hitting meals or places like us one of our other big concerns right now is supply chain one of our managers we've got five location managers they're all like family to us and one of those managers called me um you know 6 45 uh last week and he said this one it's not unusual for him to call me that early but he was just you know i'm kind of depressed and uh i you know this is our most upbeat guy he's the leader amongst leaders he's the guy outside of our owners who's number one in charge of our business and he said uh you know i asked him what was going on he said you know it's really hard for us we've built our business over the years on on serving customers and we have customers that come in and when we tell them what the the the price is if we have the product uh or how long it'll take us to get them that product you know how upset you know that that oftentimes it makes them and he said you know i've prided myself and always been able to to uh to take care of others uh serve local farmers and and we're not able to do that to the best of our ability and i think a lot of that has to do and i'm sure we'll get into that later with some of the the government uh uh money that's out there that discourages folks from from working or producing products that that we all buy the welding school kentucky welding institute we've been in business for just over six years um and we've had students from 40 some states so we've turned into a not just a small welding institute but a larger welding institute right here in kentucky because we were training folks for critical infrastructure we were able to stay open we went from running three shifts we were going three shifts to meet demand we were going 24 hours a day three shifts of students in march of last year and and by may of last year we were down to 12 students and one shift uh fortunately right now we're much closer to our normal number which is about um 80 on two shifts and look forward to getting back to three shifts soon so it's been a challenge the again the biggest thing for us has has been uh trying to know who to listen to uh trying to make sure that we have workforce we've had a peer we've had two peers that have had to close because the local health departments have have closed them for some periods of time to quarantine employees and then and then a third competitor of ours who last week had a sign on their door that said that they'd be closed until further notice because they didn't have enough employees to run their business so with that said thank you again for being here and listening to the uh to those of us in small business well adam when your manager called you at 6 45 since you're a farmer you'd already been up an hour and a half right so um you mentioned the essential industries and i think you know sometimes we did it with some intelligence obviously food is essential farming is essential um but there were many people that were affected in a way where they had a small business that was a small retail outlet that competed with a big one like walmart right so walmart became essential and mom and pop's retail was not essential particularly in small town america and the unfairness of that was just you know incredible we had in some states like california where they banned in church in person church but they allowed strip clubs to still operate so i have a friend pastor rob in the la area and uh he has a hilarious video that you can watch where he says well he announces to his congregation we can no longer be open but today i'm announcing we're converting to becoming a strip club and they play the music and he does this elaborate dance taking off his tie he only takes his tie off for something but uh you know the idea that we have a strip club open but but not that and i think it's really um you know hair salons just you know the people who are these small businesses that really have to work and these are hard-working people you know and uh so i think that we really do need to understand that this is a policy and we can disagree i understand you know we have disagreements among all of us in a republic in a free country but really one person not me not you not any of us should be able to make these decisions by ourselves it's usually give and take that if anybody knows the political process usually you don't get your way you have to discuss and persuade other people in the legislature the public you've got to get public opinion behind you but it's really not consistent with the history of our country to have one person decide with no advice from the state legislature and then when the state legislature gives you their firm legislative advice to have it completely ignored so i think we have a real uh problem we're getting hard now chime in on one thing on that you know you talk about the one-size-fits-all policy and there's more people on campus today than there is in our county so sometimes i think that people lose sight of of of that and how that one size doesn't fit off uh aaron anderkin is with us today aaron is the president of integrated sign and graphic isg which is headquartered here in lexington since 1988 isg has provided industry-leading design manufacturing installation and maintenance of signage lighting and architectural elements to construction companies design firms and national brands isg's work portfolio consists of large venue projects like shopping malls mixed-use developments convention centers and casinos all across the united states welcome mr anderson thank you senator paul there we go thank you senator paul for uh for having us today and and for your continued advocacy of of small business owners and small business interests on capitol hill um to build a little bit there on integrated sign and graphic and to shed some light and context on our experience um as the uh the pandemic um you know hit us all in march and april so we were at the time you know we'd worked tirelessly for a number of years we've been open for 30 plus years but we were really gaining a lot of momentum a lot of traction um with projections that um the 2020 would be your best year yet that we were going to be able to add some add to our workforce invest in new equipment and really uh to see a lot of of hard work you know kind of come to fruition in april we had uh april 2020 unfortunately we had uh four million dollars roughly of work canceled just right away um that was 80 percent of our backlog and if you think about it uh in terms of who we supply to um our larger customers are the the commercial real estate developers the landlords the management companies um who you know suddenly obviously got much more concerned about their ability to collect rent from their tenants than you know investing in infrastructure and continuing develop and reinvest in their assets and that that had an immediate uh impact on us we did get creative very proud of of our team and in our just i guess ability to be versatile and that we supplemented a lot of of the lost revenue in manufacturing ppe um so we were proud to be one of the the first in the central kentucky area in particular to be able to get the protective face shields um and sneeze guards and and things of that nature uh to uh the hospitals to the to the senior living centers um and you know those that at the time uh were in need but it was a uh from a small business perspective it was something that you all have all shared is absolutely frightening uh from day to day you didn't know whether you were going to be open you didn't know what to tell your employees you know as as a small business leader one of the things that i take great pride in as i'm sure you all do is your ability to communicate with your employees to be able to tell them whether it's the good the bad or the ugly you want to be able to say hey here's what we're up against the reality was we didn't know you know we were waiting just like everybody at four o'clock every day to hear uh you know what what we had to deal with um you know the our the thing about entrepreneurship and owning and running a small business is that to an extent you are in control of your own destiny if you put in the hard work most often times you're going to get rewards and the idea that that that that element was completely removed and that you were at someone else's uh beck and call was was was was frightening um you know what uh what we are seeing is that you know we were down i think 35 in revenue in both the third and fourth quarters so it definitely hit us hard we weren't able to supplement everything what we are still concerned about moving forward is that you know the the drastic amount of government subsidies and we have been beneficiaries of the the ppp loan and are actually very appreciative of that but we also are afraid that based upon our kind of market research and and uh and what we've analyzed that the the long-term ramifications are going to be significant um that uh just just because there's some comp there's some consumer competence right now you know at a certain point the government subsidies are not going to fuel the economy you got to have confidence from those in the private sector willing to invest and uh and so we we want to try to do everything we can to put ourselves in a position to uh to still be successful in that climate but we are you know fearful that it's it's it's not over anytime soon so uh but again we we appreciate uh the opportunity for you to hear us out today and and for certain uh everything you're doing to advocate so where do things stand you said third and fourth quarter we're down how about the first quarter of this year the first quarter of this year uh was down about 25 it got a little bit better um and then i think we're going to be down about 25 again comparing the second quarter of 2021 to the first quarter of 2020. thanks thank you um kailyn query is the founder and president of lexington event company and lex effect venues llc in lexington ms querrey started her first business when she was in high school and while it didn't have a name at the time it sparked a passion in her for entertainment hospitality and events welcome miss clary thank you for having me like others um we shut down on march 17th so lexington event company produces events conferences trade shows festivals weddings pre pandemic we did this all over the country um that's not the case right now we're hoping soon to get back to that and then lex effect venues owns and operates four venues in central kentucky so folks rent those spaces to host events um similar to you the hospitality industry we were shut down on march 17th with no real direction on when or what or how and similar to dawn i told our clients and our staff it's just going to be a couple weeks and then a couple weeks was a couple months and then after six months i stopped saying when we were gonna reopen um and and clients would call and said i just i don't have an answer um i dreaded the four o'clock calls i would turn my phone off so i didn't get all the notifications um my industry doesn't have an association in kentucky so i currently serve as the small business policy council chair for the state chamber and i relied heavy on them to help navigate some of the noise with you know what was a mandate what was a recommendation what has changed where do we find the information how do we interpret it i'm not an attorney i don't want to be responsible for that um and they were a great advocate and a great source you know resource for us but a lot of confusion and you know we want to be safe i certainly don't want to be a super spreader i don't want to get fined i don't want to get shut down um i've not lost quite as much as him but between our companies we've lost over 400 000 and counting um you know and and the residual effect will be around for several years um so you know we're we're trying to navigate this we did not reopen until july one events were not allowed um everybody kept saying we'll sell gift cards it's like well i rent one of the venues for five thousand dollars on a saturday how do i gift card that um you know i i would love to do carry out or curbside i have nothing to sell i'll give you a chair you gotta bring it back though so you know we were kind of stuck we had nothing to do you know except watch the news so we we navigated and we adjusted and we figured it out we reopened july 1 with very few staff um most of them were on unemployment we did get a ppp loan so we were able to bring some of our folks back um but as soon as we got them back up and running we were shut down again in the winter so just as we're telling our clients we're good to come back we said just kidding stay home uh we'll see ya maybe in april um i do think people are ready to be out they're ready to be back we do have a hard time with mandates and and recommendations because everyone has different information so when they come to the events we're responsible for regulating this um and outside of me physically putting a mask on some people you know that it's just not gonna happen um so we're in a tough spot of what's required and what's not and everyone has different information and we provide copies of the mandates but then they provide me some website they found with something different and you know i get threatened with lawsuits daily at this point which is a lot less scary now than it was in march of 20. um do you own a venue or just book venues i own one and then i manage three others okay and the one you own how many people it's indoors it is and how many people can it hold um pre-coveted 550 seated 750 cocktail what are you allowed to do now currently 350 with spacing and the capacity so venues can have 60 capacity so with spacing and distancing and you know food has to be staff served um not self-served um you know social distancing then you've got to have room for all the stuff and then people you have to have room for them as well right um so has anybody showed you any science that staff serve makes a difference between self-serve no someone just decided these things just popped out of their head and said well we'll get less of it if we do this there might be some logic but there's no science or studies to prove it so and what about outdoor venues what is the rule what are the rules on outdoor venues 100 capacity outside as long as it's a as long as there's one wall open so if it's a tent you leave one side off if it's a barn you leave the doors open um so what i love about the outdoor dining versus indoor dining is that you can be in a tent and you have all these people crowded in a tent with no ventilation but not in the restaurant where they actually have ventilation and ventilation probably does help reduce the the risk of it but an attempt there's no ventilation at all everybody's just breathing into the tent you know but um did you want to add anything else just similar to what everyone said we have workforce issues you know we're now dealing with threats of lawsuits you know on multiple sides we've got um potential for taxes that are going to hurt small business and mandates additional mandates that are going to hurt small business so you know we appreciate you taking the time to hear from us and um and for advocating on behalf of small business we've got to get back to whatever normal is going to look like and so the difficulty we have right now is you have all these mandates by the governor probably hundreds of mandates that he's issued but then you have the law that the state legislature passed that says that his edicts expire after 30 days that is the law of kentucky and yet we have one single judge that is staying the entire state legislature and this should give us pause to think about it that we would have one person in the judiciary stop all of the elected officials i mean we have a hundred representatives we have 38 senators they've all been elected by all the people of kentucky they came together and i think nearly three-fourths of them voted to say that emergency orders should end without the consent of the legislature which to me i think sounds pretty reasonable that one person shouldn't decide that we would disperse that power and have checks and balances but now it goes before the kentucky supreme court alan why don't you tell us a little bit more about the court case and what's going on since you're a part of that well the pacific foundation reached out to three of us three months ago and thomas come from goodwood brewery he has locations in jefferson county fayette county franklin county and then there's um vinnie hawkins she's got a location in georgetown kentucky there's dundee attack in louisville kentucky and when they reached out to us about following a lawsuit against the state of kentucky and governor beshear about unconstitutional lockdowns on businesses not just professional businesses businesses as a whole in kentucky they've had some success we actually the judge of dr paul is referring to is judge shepard in franklin county he basically sided with the governor about the mandates once the general assembly convened and put new laws on the book when that went forward the judge i'm not a political scholar like or excuse me a legal scholar like you or people in the room but basically the judge sided with the governor and basically stop the general assembly from creating new laws to limit the governor's powers and we as citizens voted them in he did so basically legal foundation found loopholes basically in what was going on with the governor of excuse me of judge shepard in franklin county and then trendy's a restaurant in georgetown kentucky they launched well basically our law lawsuit was launched in scott county and there was a judge private who basically overruled to the point of what judge shepard was doing in franklin county so we had four days of freedom the court appeals heard it it was automatically forced the court appeals the goal of the pacific legal foundation and us was to get from the state supreme court because with these new laws the the thinking is how could you as a state supreme court not go by the law and i've been told as recently as last week the state supreme court does not go by the law all the time which okay we got that going on too but the court of appeals uh sided with the governor saying that it was irreparable harm to the governor to let our businesses open up okay now and also the about the um the virus and related to the general public who said kentucky was there's no science so the irreparable harm they're speaking of do not include the small businesses the harm we've been through so it stands right now this the oral arguments are may 25th open arms on may 25th and then june 2nd goes to weather state supreme court right and the thing is is while you can't directly lobby the supreme court it is an elected position and we do get a chance to vote on these things and so i think we should watch carefully what happens the interesting thing is is i don't care whether you're a republican or a democrat or an independent emergency powers most of us could have agreed to some basic emergency powers for the governor when they passed the law they gave him these powers the state legislature gave the governor these powers in the 1990s it was for the things that most of us would probably agree to a tornado hits the middle of lexington the national guard is called to bring in food water blankets we set up tents we set up places for people to sleep in a school or a gymnasium we would all agree to that nobody has a problem with that but if you're going to tell mr hanks that he can only have 25 of the people in his restaurant for a year that's not an emergency that's a policy that's a law that's an edict that should have to go through the normal processes of law so i don't know how anybody can imagine that one person could have that power part of the problem with having that power for so long is that when our session when our legislatures go out of session they cannot call themselves back into session so from march of last year all the way till january there was no way they could do anything and so the governor basically ignored every plea from the legislature that came back in passed the law and then he immediately sued the legislature to say he wasn't going to obey the law of the land this is a very very dangerous [Music] precedent if it is enforced by the courts that we would allow one person to overturn the state legislature of 138 people the will of 138 people that represent 5 million people would be overturned by a court or by one individual and i've said this and i'll say this again i don't care whether the governor would be a republican or a democrat i would have exactly the same position we cannot have anybody of any party have unlimited power it goes against everything historically that our country stands for in the division and the checks and balances on power um what are the current restrictions for uh how many people can be in the restaurant it's at stake kentucky yes right now it's 50 outside is unlimited and of course the world famous a thousand people or less no mask so i'm sorry i was talking to you guys about churchill downs this past saturday what's a thousand people or less no mask what's us yes what's the rule i don't understand what the rule is if you have a thousand people or less you don't have to have them not a mask if you have a thousand people or more you have to ask at all times so if you're seated at your table or you're eating or drinking you don't have to wear a mask any other time you're supposed to wear it unless you have a thousand people or less or unless you're indoors and that rule changes it also depends on where you are what county you're in or you just decide yourself it just depends um where do we stand on with the schools as far as getting back to school i mean do you know like in lexington how much is in person versus how much is virtual i don't know in in lexington but i mean we had to pat speaking of the state legislators i mean it was so bad that we had to have legislation passed even to get our largest school district jefferson county back in school two days a week and they had the opportunity um to pass with their board of education to go back even more than that and turned it down said no so they're about the only district that i know here in the state of kentucky that's in two days most are in four and then of course there is still virtually ironically about the mass the outdoors the derby and all of that fun stuff was that prior to the derby and mayor fisher and governor beshear and the derby jefferson county kids couldn't even go out on the playground without wearing a mask so i think that 3 000 people could come to the derby right in the same county in the same county so that's been kind of crazy most of our schools are back in four days the fifth day is probably about 50 hit you know whether they are there or not and i think it's important to put this in perspective if we were actually to look at the science of what's going on or the statistics of what's going on 85 percent of people over 65 have been vaccinated 85 of the country over 65 has been vaccinated a third of the country has gotten the disease and has natural infections some of them have been vaccinated too some have gotten disease and been vaccinated but we have huge numbers if you want a vaccine in our state you can get it there's no there's really no limitations now pretty much anybody can get i don't know if children are under age certain age are allowed to get it because it hasn't gotten approval for that but the vaccine is out there the numbers if you look at daily incidents have gone through the peak in january or down low the deaths went through the peak in january and are down low there's no real evidence that we should still be doing this and even states that have had significant lockdowns or even new york's going to be ahead of us and opening up so when the governor says that we need to vaccinate 2.5 million people the burden should be on the governor to say why why why that number where's the scientific proof that we need that where's the evidence that we still have a great problem in kentucky everything about kentucky says we don't necessarily have that problem and much of the reason we don't i think is because we're a rural state and the rural states have largely done better than the urban states um but we're stuck in in sort of this place but i think the biggest thing is is it it can't be one person's opinion we really need to be in a democratic uh republic uh multiplicity of opinions that come together and somehow consensus forms government um and that's what we have to i think truly truly be concerned with one of the things about schools that i think puts it in perspective is that more children have died from suicide than from covet can you imagine and suicides are up that suicides are definitely up and that is one of the things i don't like about let them lay i let them play or let them learn is because parents you know have reached out to me and i don't say i don't like it i don't mean it like that but you've had to hear it you know you hear um i grew up on a farm so um in a small rural community about an hour away so i understand the limitations that often rural kentucky and rural america have and um it's just it's just incredible and i don't know what the numbers are now but you were speaking of people not logged on i do know that jefferson county back in the fall was estimated between five and ten thousand that had never logged on i know that the kentucky department of education on their website estimate between fifty and a hundred thousand that don't have internet i know when we went virtual here in fayette county 12 000 kids didn't have a chromebook and we have sent these kids on their way in in homes that maybe aren't as good as they need to be with families that don't have jobs or have made tough decisions and mom's not working because she really is trying or maybe mom's by herself and grandma's helping you know the the information just continues and can we did all this without an iota of evidence of significant spread in schools not one study in fact every study showing the opposite and we also have the experiment in all of our communities of private schools that have stayed open and not had any kind of super spreading event or any kind of surge in the community um among the students or the teachers and our surrounding states have been in much like i mean i think indiana has been in since august i mean they've had a couple you know quirks and things that they've had to do but tennessee's been in i mean virginia west virginia they've all been in at least three times if not four times more than kentucky and we're still struggling to get in i think we're gonna wind up here pretty soon does anybody else have any uh subject or statement you'd like to finish up with before we come draw things to a close i think we need to say that it's i'm not envious of anybody that had to make any of these decisions i think there's a lot of tough choices that had to be made not a lot of information a lot of changing information i in no way envy having to make those choices but i think making those choices and providing some evidence to support it and maybe considering you know options or or just maybe sticking with something and and letting us all know um but we appreciate i think i can speak for everybody when i say we appreciate those who are trying to get us safely reopened and get things back in focus uh it's got to be a tough job to be making these choices and figuring out mandates and pvp and eidl um so you know i am very appreciative of those who are working like you to to get things reopened and to figure this out uh because it's got to be a tough job you know i think you've hit the nail on the head about tough decisions because when you think about it um the way a free society is set up is like if you're accused of a con of a crime you're presumed to be uh innocent so you go before the court and it's the burden of the government to prove that you're guilty you don't have to prove that you're innocent because you're assumed to be innocent it's the same way in a free society you're uh you're assumed to have your liberty and if government wants to take of your liberty it's their burden to prove why and it should be a big and a steep burden to to say to a business person we're going to dictate what you can or to say to someone who's in convention planning and event planning that we're going to do this it is their burden and if it's going to be extraordinary to take away your freedom to make these decisions with the people you contract with it has to be extraordinary there has to be science scientific evidence there has to be proof of it but there also should be the imprimatur or the approval of the legislature you know no no one person should get to dictate to you how to run your business or how many people can be in your store or what your clients can do because here's the danger when you let one person decide that person could make a mistake now the whole legislature could make a mistake but at least now you've had a debate amongst a lot of people and you have this give and take and checks and balances but this has sort of been the argument against the centralization of power all the way down to one person it's sort of why we fought the revolution we didn't like having a king you know we wanted to have that that power dispersed and there would be debate so i think this is an issue of our time not only is it devastating to your individual businesses but this is a real issue of whether or not you're presumed to be free and the government has a burden to prove why they want to take your liberty or if you can have some public health person just write a note and say go arrest them i mean we have lived through the last year where the police were sent to churches to take down license plates i think it's also important to say it's not that i don't care about safety if you ask me in march of last year if you were 85 should you go sit in a church for two hours i'd say i'd advise against doing it so i mean there is advice and i think most people see i tend to think in a free society and our society people are smart enough to take advice from experts filter through it and make a decision but also if you ask me if you were 25 years old and wanted to go sit in the church for two hours last march i probably said you know your risks are much less you'll have some risk you could get sick but the chance of dying is one in a million um so i think people could take that that advice and these would be this would be advice that we give to people um but there's a difference between persuasion and edict and it isn't one-size-fits-all we're not the same i mean one of the things that because we've had this sort of monolithic advice that we failed to tell people and i tell people everywhere i go there is something that can save your life and nobody's telling you it is if you get covered particularly if you get coveted and you're overweight 80 of the people going in the hospital or dying or overweight so if you get covenant weight you need to be much more cautious and careful of your symptoms to look for treatment but there is a treatment it's called monoclonal antibodies president trump got it chris christie got it giuliani got it but there's a window of time if you don't get that treatment and you get sicker and sicker and sicker and you go to the hospital and they have to put you on the ventilator they'll say the monoclonal antibodies don't work you missed your window i don't hear anybody on television telling you that so you would know that if your mom or your dad got sick and they were getting sick or beginning to cough you've got to get them in soon and you've got to advocate to get them monoclonal antibodies the doctor has to make the decision but i promise you being an advocate and a family advocate can make a difference and it's about an 80 reduction in death in fact what they're doing for people if you're if you're living in a house with someone with covet let's say it's two elderly people the woman has it she's 85 and her husband says i'm not leaving i'm her only hope and i'm going to stay with her they can actually give the monoclonal antibodies to him too before he gets it and sometimes it either prevents them from getting it or they get an incredibly mild case and instead we insist on on making a two-year-old wear a mask on a plane and you know making a young kid with autism who's seven or eight put a mask on on a plane and holding them down and kick them on my planes instead of somebody saying there are ways we can save your life you know through medication there are reasonable things you can do if you're at risk to avoid this disease and let people know the reasonable and obvious evidence that we're getting beyond this that everything shows that we are getting beyond the the the part of this and hopefully we'll be getting beyond it soon i want to thank you all for participating we wish you the best of luck in your business i tell people that i think our job in government is to make it easier for you to succeed in business i can't help you with the business but i can try to help keep government out of your way and i think in the last year we've done nothing but put obstacles in the way of of your business we've had family businesses restaurants run for 60 80 years go out of business you know they've gone through several generations of family members and then all sudden it's gone something had been built up for generations that's very sad so i hope we will see some sense very very soon i hope the supreme court will look at this of kentucky and say we cannot you know

Channel: Forbes Breaking News

Views: 1,875,058

Rating: 4.819334 out of 5

Keywords: Sen. Rand Paul, lockdowns, COVID-19

Id: exJt7uYwY8o

Length: 56min 14sec (3374 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 09 2021