Rand Paul answers questions during Glasgow visit

By MICHAEL CRIMMINS
Glasgow News 1

While the stage was being erected in front of the Glasgow City Hall in preparation for the 225 birthday celebration concert, Barren County community leaders — members of the county and all three incorporated cities — filed into the small Barren Inc. conference room to ask questions of one of two Kentucky senators.

Scheduled to begin at noon, Rand Paul (R), a senator since 2011 who is a member of the Conservative party but described as have Libertarian leanings, entered the room and promptly took a seat at the head of the U-shaped conference table. The room was filled with a myriad of notable community leaders including Kentucky Representative Steve Riley, Glasgow Mayor Henry Royse, Cave City Mayor Dwayne Hatcher, all seven of the county magistrates, Angela Briggs, a representative of Park City, and President and CEO of Barren Inc. Maureen Carpenter.

For roughly 15 minutes of the hour-long discussion Paul laid out “the good news and the bad news,” turning almost immediately to border issues, federal spending, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court — a specialized federal court in Washington DC referred to by its acronym FISC — Ukraine and Israel, entitlements, in which he said he was in favor of raising retirement age to 70, and the pandemic with regards to the “explosion” of inflation and his proposed cuts involved in his “penny plan.”

“As much as I was a fan of Donald Trump and friends…I was disappointed in what he did under COVID,” Paul said. “Locking us down was a huge mistake. I don’t think we saved any lives from locking us down. I’m not saying it wasn’t a bad disease, I know people who died; it was a bad disease…but I don’t think locking us down saved any lives, but also passing out checks to people is a bad thing. I would’ve not locked us down, I would’ve not handed out the checks and still people would’ve died and we’d be in the same place we are but we would not disrupted so much of the economy.”

Marty Kinslow, Barren County magistrate for District 5, asked the senator what his thoughts are on the medical marijuana that the county and Glasgow have to either opt in or out of soon. Park City has opted out while Cave City has opted in.

“I tend to be somebody who’s open-minded for people to try different things as far as medical marijuana,” Paul said. “Do I know that it fixes anything? No. Do I know it causes problems? Yes. I think there are people [with] intractable nausea that it can help…. In California where you’ve got medical marijuana everyone’s who’s got back pain and got a card and it becomes sort of an excuse for recreation. Marijuana today is much more potent than it was 20 or 30 years ago and I think there are acute psychotic sort of episodes that people are having [so] there’s a lot not to like about it so I think the problem doesn’t go away; maybe the problem gets worse as it’s easier to get but I think kids are already getting marijuana. I’m not sure if medical marijuana changes it a great deal.”

Toby Moss, president and CEO of Farmers RECC, asked a question regarding nuclear power citing a Texas article that stated a “high heat and low wind” day caused electricity megawatt costs to drastically increase.

While in favor, Paul blamed the regulations around nuclear power plants as a reason for their scarcity.

“We should do nuclear,” Paul said. “France is like 70 percent nuclear. There’s even better ways to do nuclear…where you can reduce your nuclear waste by 95 percent. We don’t build [nuclear power plants] because the regulations are too onerous; we should be but we haven’t.”

Paul was also asked his opinion of armed teachers and, more broadly, guns in schools.

“I’ve always been open to it,” Paul said. “I think some people really aren’t comfortable with firearms and don’t want to do it but some are and would like to do it. I like having police and sheriff when we come to town armed and in uniform. I think they’re a deterrent. Firearms are a deterrent for responsible people. It’s very sad and we all are emotionally racked by seeing what happens in these classrooms and I don’t think it’s that hard to have a gun that’s locked in the top drawer of a teacher’s desk.”

Royse asked the senator his thoughts on the R.R. Donnelley building that was at one time “the biggest employer” of Glaswegians. The building used to be a printing company before becoming Contemporary Amperex Technology Kentucky, whose parent company is China-based. It now stands empty and on sale for $27 million.

Royse pointed out that several states are barring Chinese companies from locating in their states. He asked Paul if that was a possibility on the federal level as well. While not strictly opposed to Chinese companies and investments he did say some limitations would be reasonable.

“I think we have to be careful in our rush to stop everything Chinese,” Paul said. “I despise the Chinese government but I don’t necessarily dislike the Chinese people. Should there be some rules? Yes. People have talked about not letting the Chinese buy land next to airports or military installations. I think there are some reasonable rules.”

The Glasgow appearance was one in a series of three appearances across the commonwealth — the others being Lexington and Bardstown.