As a conservative first and foremost, I believe that our Founding Fathers were a lot smarter and braver than our current crop of politicians. After all, as Benjamin Franklin said, "Gentlemen, we must hang together or we will certainly hang separately." Those men stood to lose everything they owned - including their lives - and many of them did. They placed EVERYTHING on the line, including the lives of their families.
Our current political class - in my humble opinion - besmirches their memory with every encroachment on The Constitution. And they violate their oath oath of office to "preserve, protect, and defend The Constitution of The United States of America, so help me God" nearly every day. Our federal government has far too much control over too much of our lives today. The United States Constitution limits the powers of the federal government, but thanks to the courts, the New Deal, and the Great Society, the government has grown way beyond the boundaries that our Founders established.
Consider this example of what I mean.
The Founders envisioned a country in which I could make a product, offer to sell it to you at a price, and if you wanted it, you could purchase it.
Today, if my product is gasoline, the government has told me where I can drill for or buy the crude oil, where I can build a refinery, and where I can sell refined gasoline - not to mention that I must make different grades of gasoline for virtually every market. As if that were not enough, I have to pay the government for leases on the land on which I pay the cost of exploring for the presence of oil and the cost of drilling for it if I find some oil. I have to report all of my costs, expenses, and revenues to the government, and that costs me money to prepare the reports and file them. After all of that, I get to make about a 10% profit. Then the government forces me to add on a 20%+ tax, which I must collect from you and pass on to the government.
The government gets more than twice the profit from my efforts, yet I did all of the work and bore all of the risk (and loss when that last well turned out to be a dry hole.) And then the government and the media cast me as the villain because I charge "confiscatory" prices in order to make a paltry 10% return on my investment.
This same scenario plays out in virtually every major industry in our country, including automobile manufacturing, banking, insurance, housing, mortgages... you name it! And now our elected so-called "representatives" want to curtail the pay of the people who run those companies. Those industries that have not been affected in a major way are about to be targeted. That is not the way it was supposed to be.
Can you imagine what it would have been like in Franklin's day if blacksmiths were regulated over what kind of shoes to put on your horse, or what a saddle and bridle characteristics had to be?
Your comments are welcome...