When the government hurts Americans - and millions of them are hurting very badly at the moment, courtesy of the government of Joe Biden and the Democrats - Americans step up to help other Americans, without any “help” from the government.
One such American is Andrew Gruel, who owns Big Parm - a pizza restaurant in Orange County, CA. He is providing free meals to veterans and children whose parents are having trouble finding the money to feed them - many of them because of the money they’re having to spend on gas, courtesy of Joe Biden and the Democrats.
While everyone has been suffering as a result of their "help," the people of California are among those suffering the most. The cost of a gallon of regular unleaded is approaching $7 per gallon in the once-Golden state, two dollars above the current national average of nearly $5 per gallon.
Food, itself, is becoming unaffordable, too - in one of the country's agriculturally richest states.
And not just because fuel is becoming unaffordable. The money people must use to buy both of these necessities has been devalued by some 15 percent over the past two years.
Italicized to make the point that what is usually called “inflation” is more accurately defined as a reduction - in the purchasing power of money - by creating more money and then injecting it into the economy, ostensibly to “stimulate” the economic growth that Democrats like Joe Biden destroyed by forcing “non-essential” people to stop working and small businesses to close their doors for months on end.
Celebrity Chef and former Food Network judge Andrew Gruel - who has won numerous awards for his cooking - was among those small businessmen the Democrats worked very hard to put out of business. So he has a very personal understanding of what government “help” can do to people trying to earn a living. And it's why he’s literally serving the very people the government “helped” into the poorhouse.
He knows he could have been one of them, too.
The Chef recently appeared on Fox & Friends the other day to talk about just that.
“I saw throughout the pandemic that people were struggling. People were losing their jobs, losing their livelihoods, one day after another. They were losing their dignity.”
One of the people in government responsible for both of those things being California’s Democrat-celebrity governor, the multi-millionaire Gavin Newsom. While not calling him out by name, the Chef - as he is known to those who love his cooking - was clearly thinking of him when he told Fox: “Those setting the rules are breaking their own rules,” a pointed reference to Newsome’s having been repeatedly caught not wearing the masks he “mandated” others wear - and sicced "public health" bureaucrats on restaurant owners for not forcing their patrons to wear.
And of course, Newsom never had to worry about his six-figure paycheck - or his next meal - because he could declare himself “essential” and force the people he decreed to be unessential - and rendered unemployed - to pay for it.
The people harmed by these rules for thee but not for me “continue to get swept under the rug,” the Chef told Fox.
But how to help them?
“Obviously, I’m not corrupt enough” to run for elected office, the Chef said.
Besides which, the only "help" government can provide is the kind that hurts other people in the process. It cannot give without first taking. And without asking. Taxation and wealth redistribution never being voluntary. But the Chef, who has been a success, can afford to help others without first helping himself to other people’s money.
He and his wife decided, "giving away free food is really the answer here . . . "
“We can eat that cost in various ways,” he added. With real-deal help from other Americans - who want to help their fellow Americans without hurting other Americans.
“The coolest thing about this is a lot of people from Twitter, from Facebook are writing to me privately and saying, ‘hey, I’m gonna send you five dollars or I’m going to call in an order and I want you to buy somebody else’s pizza.' So it’s not just us, this is the power of everybody across the United States. We’re just a little pizza shop in one town in Southern California. But people from New Jersey, people from Texas are calling and saying buy somebody’s pizza on me, I don’t need any credit.”
Unlike the government - which always wants the credit for what it didn't do rather than accept the blame for the harm it has caused.
Speaking of which.
When Fox asked the Chef, “What has it been like going from the pandemic where you have the restrictions and the rules and everything that went along with it and then going directly into the after-effects of it, which is record-high inflation, labor shortages, everything that is happening right now?”
And the Chef replied - speaking for so many:
“Restaurants were vilified . . . we suddenly became the bad guys . . . we were thought of as 'superspreaders' . . . and now we’ve run into a financial situation where the economics of running a small business are just stacked up against you . . . it’s these larger and larger bigger multi-unit corporations with a lot of cash on the sidelines that are able to work their way through this and play the game . . . so many small businesses are being forgotten about and now with inflation being swept under the rug as ‘nothing to really worry about,’ as people are losing their jobs and their businesses over and over again, it really is a tough, uphill battle.”
But it's one the Chef is helping to win, one slice at a time.
