The news his week featured two different items that involve government control over our lives. The state of Washington passed a law that prohibits using a gasoline powered leaf blower with a possible jail penalty. Stellantis automotive company announced that they are laying off three thousand employees because of California's green laws. The government (both federal and state plus many local) have been increasingly removing freedoms from us and seem to have accelerated their efforts lately. All automobiles have to be electric by 2035 and the use of fuel to power trucks is to be terminated. In the last few years a couple of projects at our local airport required environmental studies. After the first one was done to lengthen the safety zone at the end of the runway by 500 feet another study had to be done for another project which would cover the same area as the first one. These studies require a team of professionals to do them which is very costly and takes precious time away from the original project. We are told that we cannot use wet areas on our farm it they are deemed wetlands and we shut down water usage to save a fish or other animal. We are putting wolves in areas where ranchers are raising sheep and cattle but are not allowed to kill the wolves when they become predatory against their animals. We hear about police agencies that are confiscating peoples' property when they are suspected of a crime but refuse to return it after acquittal. The government is way too far into our lives and the freedom that I had as a young man is now gone.
At the end of WWII, I was seven years old and going into the third grade. Many evenings after dinner we would have a visitor. It would be a man or boy coming to have my mother cut his hair. She would put a chair in the middle of our kitchen and put a cloth apron around him. She would proceed to cut his hair with a hand manual clipper that she had to squeeze with her hand. She snipped with her scissors and comb and charged the men $.50 and the boys $.25. Sometimes she would cut both a father and son the same evening. There was no barber in our small town and her service was convenient for many of the men and boys living there. After a couple of years, the state of New York passed a law requiring a license to barber and also required that it be done in a non-living area with a separate bathroom for use by the customers. It was much too expensive for my father and mother to build another room and extra bathroom for her to make a few dollars a week, so she had to stop cutting the towns' men's hair. There was a problem for the black men and boys in our town. They were not allowed to get their hair cut in the next town and had to travel over 15 miles to nearest barber. It was difficult for them since they worked during the barber's hours and had to try to get there on Saturdays when they were not working. My mother solved their problem and kept on cutting their hair. She never got caught and there was never any problem raised for her efforts. The quarters and half dollars were kept for the next years that she did her barbering until the generation moved on. I was 16 before I got my first haircut from a barber in a barber shop. It was quite an experience, and I asked my mother why she never got one of those hot lather machines. We had a good laugh over it. The government had started its system of increasing control over our lives. Barbers now, have to go to school and pass a test to get their license and the requirements for their shops have increased greatly. I might add that my mother also had women come to her for home permanents and hair set. She had bought a used hairdryer and did this work in our dining room. The same thing happened to her in that endeavor also. The state required a license to run a hair salon and it could not be part of a home.
The infringement of government on our lives in the 40' and 50' was just the start of things to come. A friend of mine tried to start a large container refuse business and was told that he had to have a state franchise to operate and there were none available. He moved his business out of state and now it is legal for him to operate in this state. An out of state business has more freedom to run a business than an instate business. A few years ago, a young man tried to start a taxi business and compete against the taxi company that had operated for many years but was not doing a very good job with very old and decrepit cars. He had to go before the state public service commission and have an open hearing where the older taxi company testified against his new company. He continued to fight the state and finally got another hearing. He was finally granted a franchise to operate in a very confined area. It had taken a year for this to happen in which he had to cancel his order for new taxi cabs and start over. As he started his business, Uber came to town. They not only came to Morgantown but the whole state without any public service hearings or franchise requirements. It seems that Uber that was owned and operated out of state had given a local state senator $5000.00 for his campaign and it was assumed that they had spread campaign money across the state assembly and senate. Uber started across the state almost immediately. Government control can be sidestepped with enough money sent to the right people. It is not going to stop as we see the green movement trying to shut down our way of living with the constant attacks on our energy systems. It is up to each of us to elect more responsible people to our legislatures and stop this infringement before we are really a completely socialist country.
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