A nonprofit publication of the Kentucky Center for Public Service Journalism

Jamie Ruehl: What can I control? Feeling helpless in wake of mandates, take governorship from Beshear


My alarm goes off, I rub the sleep out of my eyes and try to start my day with vigor. The night before, I planned what I was going to wear and I laid it out in my room. I’m able to quietly get out the door without waking up the household and get my 3-5 mile run in before 5:30 a.m. I get back to the house and take care of the dogs and start the process of our school-morning routine with the kids. Through my proactive decisions and disciplined choices I control how the morning goes before I leave for work. When all of us are out the door and on our way to work or school in a timely fashion, it feels good.

I can control when I wake up each morning. I can choose to set my alarm earlier and run a few miles before I go to work. Do I make a healthy breakfast and plan for a healthy lunch? Am I prepared for the day? I get to decide what I do before I leave my house. If I fail to follow through on any of those things, then I no longer control my morning and have only one person to blame for any resulting adverse events: me.

Jamie Ruehl grew up in Erlanger. He graduated from St. Henry District High School, earned a degree in business administration from Xavier University, served the US Army on an ROTC Commission in 2001, attaining the rank of Captain and serving overseas. Back home, he graduated from Northern Kentucky University’s Executive Leadership and Organizational Change Master’s Program in 2018. He served as a Law Enforcement Officer for 8.5 years and was inducted into the American Police Hall of Fame. He has been a staff insurance adjuster since 2019 with a large carrier headquartered in Cincinnati. He is attempting to be the best possible husband to his wife of 15 years and best possible father to their 3 children. They live in Edgewood with their two dogs. He is a life-long distance runner.

Once we leave the house, that is where we start to lose influence over how the day goes. We transition from being almost completely in control to a proactive/reactive hybrid state with its inherent risk. I may be involved in a vehicle collision or some other negative incident that is completely out of my control. There are also the normal travel inconveniences that we deal with albeit with the most amount of patience as possible. School-buses, weather events, student drivers, construction etc.

Do you ever feel like you catch EVERY red light or get behind a garbage truck or seem to get stuck behind that school bus right before it picks up a string of kids? I go from “that good feeling” I had when I left the house to feeling like my blood pressure is rising. Things you can’t control can have a negative impact on your day, especially if you lack the disciplined maturity to appropriately deal with those inconveniences or mildly traumatic events.

Those red lights flashing on the school-bus stop sign can be even more infuriating when it’s the 3rd one in a row where the bus stops, yet there are no kids there to actually get on the bus! I think it’s the inefficiency that bothers me when something like that happens. Because I’m a law-abiding citizen, I sit and wait while the bus needlessly stops, over and over again, not picking up kids. I know it’s the correct thing to do and have to remind myself of that as I wait, needlessly. I can only imagine how the bus driver feels when they are required to stop for nothing! The bus stops, red flashing lights and no one gets on! And then it happens again. Blood pressure rises! We have no control in those helpless situations.

That is what it feels like when a governor mandates we close our church doors; red flashing lights. When an executive order makes it so you can’t earn a living for your family; red flashing lights. When doctor offices are closed by our Governor and you can’t get cancer screenings and heart health screenings; red flashing lights. Our kids’ schools are shuttered by Beshear; red flashing lights. No summer camp income for our teens; red flashing lights. All these things Beshear ordered for almost two full years! Now that we are past COVID19, we can see that all those stops were Unnecessary!

The Beshear administration may be part of the Blue Party, but he sure does like the red lights.

The only green lights that ol’ Andy seems to enjoy are those that assuredly cause inflation: Andy dumped as much federal and state dollars into our economy while attempting to push a “green agenda” which exponentially increased the cost of energy. He champions “equity” in higher Income Taxes (he’s vetoed income tax decreases twice now). He campaigns on expanding government spending for welfare programs, choosing to incur Commonwealth debt.

We as citizens relinquished control by allowing our executive branch to get away with tyrannical overreach during the pandemic. And now we the citizens are paying for that. We can see that indirectly in higher population cancer diagnoses and more cases of debilitating heart diseases that if screened properly would have been addressed in a timely fashion. And we can see direct payments being made with our tax dollars for Andy’s decisions. According to an article by Tom Latek in the NKyTribune dated 15 April, our Kentucky State Government will have to pay $272,142.50 in legal fees to three plaintiffs who sued Andy Beshear over his COVID-19 lockdown policies. Andy isn’t footing that bill, we the taxpayers are.

So what can I control? What can we control? Are we willing to allow a power-hungry Beshear back in office another four years? I challenge you to take control of our Commonwealth by voting for a candidate that won’t be so cavalier with his/her office. Get rid of Andy’s flashing red lights and enjoy living in Kentucky again.


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3 Comments

  1. Bill Adkins says:

    What a bunch of whining. Beshear did what Republicans wouldn’t do and couldn’t competently accomplish: a rational reaction to a global pandemic. Look to Washington DC where Trump botched the response to covid in a manner that couldn’t have been worse if it had been planned Americans died, leaders like Beshear led. Leaders like Trump and Desantis and Roem and others sat on their hands. But we in Kentucky had Three Percenters and Savanna Maddox shouting ‘freedumb!’ and hanging effigies of Beshear while spreading Q theories and calling Beshear a dictator. The right wing cult is selling koolaid everywhere.

    • W. Jamie Ruehl says:

      Rather tone-deaf of you Bill to put down the pain and suffering endured by all the people of our Commonwealth because of Beshear’s extreme policies.

      Especially now that we know via peer-reviewed studies that COVID19 didn’t affect the general population in the extreme way many feared (particularly exempt from symptoms were children).

      Science now proves that natural T cell and B cell responses are more robust and last years longer than any mRNA therapy. There is nothing conspiracy related to acknowledging that science. It takes more blind faith to think that “Andy saved lives” because that cannot be proven in any quantifiable way.

  2. Patricia says:

    You/we will not be in control much longer if the authortarian republican party continues to legislate their police state leadership; whereby, stealing and eroding your democracy away while you and other people (citizens) continue to ignore by not educating themselves on the issues of the republican narrative of lies, untruths and the spreading of conspiracies.

    Beshear saved lives …probably saved yours or someone in your family was touched by our Gov health policies.

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