Tag: effort

The Tornados of Mayfield, Kentucky: Government using tragedy to grab more power for themselves

The Government Power Grab after the Tornados of Kentucky

It’s more than worth it after the media tried to portray Rand Paul negatively after asking for tornado disaster relief for his state to tackle a usually obscure issue of government interference.  Paul has a history of speaking out against every little bailout, but I understand Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell’s problem in Kentucky.  In many ways, it’s the only thing they can do now that the government has embedded itself into people’s lives the way they have.  They really have no choice.  Saying no to federal money would be like denying people surgery after they’ve lost a leg.  The only option but to bleed to death really isn’t practical. This topic deserves some analysis for the many evils that come after the tornados ruined the lives of many thousands of people in Western Kentucky, an area I know very well.

In some cases, there was a tornado on the ground for over 200 miles, so the level of destruction was enormous, even to the point where Rand Paul had to put his differences aside and ask for federal money when he clearly, otherwise wouldn’t.  There is something else at work here that is much more sinister than the tornados themselves.  In a drool of excitement, the media revealed it, and it’s something we must all contend with while dealing with these issues in the future.  The media and their partners in government ultimately want a universal wage to pay people and control them totally. To get there, they have an anti-work attitude about everything hoping to rob people of their joy of work so that the universal wage can become possible.  Where people would just accept the government check, accept what role the government gives them in a heavily managed economy, and lower their standard of living to such an extent that the government could justifiably become everybody’s parents from the perspective of a panel of experts who themselves are nothing but lazy slugs looking for a government check. 

The instant target was a candle factory in Mayfield, where reports were that the management there ordered workers to continue working even during the tornado sirens.  The communist governor Andy Beshear has stuck his nose into the situation to promise an investigation.  The media and government both quickly jumped into an anti-work sentiment indicating that safety is always first, no matter what.  Now, I have a long history with this kind of thing, and honestly, I would have kept working.  When there is something to be done, nothing comes between me or it.  However, the rules say that you are responsible for their safety if you employ people, so I would have let the employees seek shelter or even gone home.  If it had been me in charge that night at the candle factory, I would have been tracking the storm on my phone, and when the red part of the cell hit our area and moved on, I would have then had everyone return to their jobs.  The whole tornado drill would have lasted about 15 minutes.  The employees could have worked a little overtime to compensate for the lost time.  But, I can see why the management would have been skeptical of the storms and the weather reports.  Usually, the news is wrong about these kinds of things, just as they have been over Covid.  So when the media cries wolf too many times, people just stop listening.  Tornados in December are pretty rare, and I can see how management would have thought it a safe bet to ignore the news and keep working.  After all, some things needed to be done, and just because the media says something, it suddenly doesn’t make everyone who hears it culpable.  You see, that is the little secret that is really behind all this.  The media wants to do the bidding of the government and claim powers it doesn’t have, such as telling people when it’s safe to work and when it isn’t.  And they use every little tragedy that might come along to gain that power little by little.  So the management of companies that did not run for their lives when the media reported a tornado warning is under attack not just for not believing the news or ignoring the information, but in putting work and the need of it over all else.

I’ve ridden bicycles in tornados, I’ve worked through serious tragedies, I’ve steamrolled through every kind of problem imaginable.  There have been times when my wife and I only had one car, and I’d ride a motorcycle through snowstorms to get to work.  I am one of those never-call-off types.  Work is always the most important thing to me, to hell with what the rest of the world thinks.  And yes, I have been in charge of many workers under dangerous conditions, and everyone has always gone home without harm to their families at the end of their shifts.  People might get angry with me, but so what.  If there is work to do, that is always the highest priority, end of the story.  The media and government have been trying over a long period to gain control of work through socialism, regulation, emergency powers such as they did with Covid, and to throttle productivity into something they control.  Every time there is a tragedy like these tornados in Kentucky or a hurricane in the south, the government can’t wait to pass out confiscated wealth to the victims so that they can then set new rules against the qualification of money because they have become so litigious that all human resource departments are now slaves to every little government whim.    And in that way, Rand Paul had no choice but to take money from the federal government to help the victims.  Because that good ol’ fashioned “can-do” spirit that is quite well-known in regions like Western Kentucky is destroyed under the liability of making the wrong decision according to the government.  And nobody wants to take that chance. 

The government stuck its nose in our economy over Covid, and we have never recovered.  That is why fast food lines are taking too long, shipping is stuck in ports, and planes are canceling flights.  The government creates a liability to alter behavior and, thus, to tamper with the enthusiasm to be productive.  Most of the time, the media gets tornado warnings wrong, and even though that candle factory was pressed to fulfill orders during a holiday season, and the Amazon plant there was trying to stay on top of things, tornado or not, everyone would have gone home except for this extraordinary situation of a perfect December storm.  Without question, it was wrong not to let workers seek shelter, and people did die.  But, the government doesn’t really care about those deaths; what they want out of this tragedy is more control.  The management had the liability to follow the storm and to listen to what the “experts” said.  And because they put productivity over safety, according to the government, they are now accountable for what nature did to them.  And companies all across the country are watching and taking note.  When people wonder how companies become so “woke,” this is how.  They overreact to every government action because it’s really the only way they can stay in business.  And when compliance to the government becomes more important than the productivity of industrious effort, you have an economy that is moving more to the static. You are putting up with government interference that is far worse than the death of a freakish storm.  You have tyranny that is disguised behind safety and a government that looks to eat all innocent people in its perpetual desire to grow and dominate our lives from behind a desk of bureaucracy and wants to rule us all without the risk of a physical, risky takeover.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Truth is You Did Build That: How government creates legalized theft to mask their uselessness

Yes, You Did Build That

I always say that the rules are made by the losers, just like in the NFL.  Great teams from the previous year are penalized the following year with draft picks and schedule strength so that weaker teams can have a chance to win too.  There is a lot of socialism in American football, precisely the corporation that is the NFL.  Rules generally exist to help make things equal for those who aren’t so good in life.  And that is essentially the case for everything that government sticks its nose in; they use rules to associate themselves as regulators to economic creation so that they can loot off the productive efforts.  To mask the true nature of productivity, the government creates the roads through confiscated wealth in taxation. They regulate the power grid to manage its distribution and many other things to associate themselves with a concept of teamwork whenever something is created.  When they say teamwork and consensus-building, they mean they want to rob you of your effort and redistribute your success to those not so successful.  When they say fairness, what they mean to do is penalize you for success so that others might also bask in the glory.  And they do so with the false premise of justice in retaliation for how things work in the world. 

This has been on my mind since I watched the various activities of the G20 Summit, which was essentially a bunch of losers in the world looking for justification for their crippling socialism.  They have a friend in the Biden administration who is willing to play along with their game of effort redistribution.  They want American effort to drive their globalist desires. Still, now that Trump is gone, they want America to stand at the end of the group photo so that they can now take credit for the efforts of the G20 gathering.  Leaders in the center of the picture look all stoic and essential when they do nothing to contribute to the success of the venture.  They like Biden because he allows them to steal from the efforts of America, which makes them look much more courageous and essential in the world.  It’s similar to the classroom of people who are asked a question and only one or two hands go up.  Once a few people break the ice, more hands go up because they are followers.  They knew the answer when asked, but they didn’t feel comfortable holding up their hand until others did before them.  That is the way it is in the world.  There are very few people who lead, there are lots of followers, but when things are done, it is never the groups of followers who start the effort; it’s those few people who are confident enough to stick up their hand when nobody else has. 

When the socialist Obama said during his American presidency, and still whispers into the ear of Joe Biden, that “you didn’t build that, you had to have help,” its because his kind of government has always stuck themselves into the middle of a process so that they would have something to do while the real risk-takers did all the heavy lifting.  I was recently at a zoning meeting where a community resident wanted to build a barn for his various recreation equipment and was promptly lectured about how it wasn’t the community’s job to accommodate all the property owner’s toys.   The hatred toward the successful property owner couldn’t be more precise.  Here were some zoning officials who wanted to use their government power to force the property owner to beg like a dog for the right to do what he wished on his property and enjoy his success in life by playing with toys he had acquired.  But because of the zoning rules, the bureaucrats of the community were able to be associated with the property owner’s success.  So instead of the property owner just building the barn, he had to ask for help to allow the community to enable him to build the structure.  The same rules apply to roads, infrastructure, and even economies. 

Back in the Gilded Age, which has more and more value for as I study history, if Thomas Edison wanted to light up a city with his new light bulbs, he would also create his own infrastructure to do it.  Railroads did the same; the government needed them; they didn’t need the government.  The government back then had not yet figured out the value of all these mass inventions created during this exciting period, so they didn’t know to stick their noses into the business of the entrepreneurial efforts.  But like the United Nations of today, all government has learned to hide their own timidity by looting off the bold and courageous efforts so that their type can appear to be part of the effort.  The politicians might even show up to a ribbon-cutting ceremony to get a picture taken of their support for a project even though the owner did all the work, worried all those sleepless nights to make it happen, and ultimately have to run everything.  Meanwhile, the politicians go to lunch and forget about it.  They have their picture that they can use for campaigning and quickly move on to something else. 

So when it is said that someone didn’t build something and that they had to have help, it’s not true.  The reality is that all groups of people do get in the way. Their purpose is to rob off successful efforts, like what the United Nations is doing presently, and the Biden administration is set to accommodate.  In truth, if you don’t build that, or some individual is the first to stick their hand up to initiate a process, then nothing happens.  Nothing gets built.  Progress, all progress is started by the few.  The fewer people involved, the more successful something is.  When you have to drag a bunch of looting personalities along, things slow down and become much less by the time everything is done.  Group consensus is a limit, not an asset.

The United Nations are the last people in the class to hold up their hands to answer a question, but they want the world to think of them as “leaders.” They want to lead by title, not by all the efforts that make things happen, like leadership, embracing risk, and putting forth tireless effort.  The miracle is that even with all the government’s limits on people, anything happens at all.  But imagine what kind of world we could have if people were left alone to build and create without the looting efforts of the governments of the world?  Imagine the innovation and advancements to civilization?  But to mask their intrusion on success, they have stuck themselves to everything and tried to create the illusion that you need them to do anything when in reality, they need you for everything.  Always remember, if you don’t do something, it likely will never get done.  Much of what everyone would like to see, those who sit around waiting for someone else to do something, never happens.  You don’t need help to build something; what is really needed is for the losers to get out of the way.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business