“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” -Thomas Jefferson

With all the political pollution that is happening these days, it’s really hard to decide what to write about. I guess one could surmise that a political volcano erupted in Maine in the last week, and now many are waiting to see if it causes an earthquake or two. At the national level with the quest to be president by Cheech and Chong, politics has become something akin to a remake of the Three Stooges minus one. If one thinks nothing else is happening, pay close attention to what many bureaucrats are up to, especially in our nation’s capital.

There have been far too many times that I have mentioned what our Founding Fathers would think if they could see us today in the United States. It’s not bad enough that it takes federal approval to open a brewery, now one has to get permission to name a new beer. Then, recently I read an article where the federal government has give approval if you want to name a new cigar. Supposedly, that approval is free at this time, but I definitely wonder when it will no longer be free. On top of that, our very own government doesn’t even know how long the approval process will take. I wonder if those same folks were the ones who told us Cuba wasn’t a good place to live. Just maybe it’s a case where our government officials learned the communist way of doing things.

Now federal officials are deciding on what speed limit they will apply to commercial vehicles that carry more than 26,000 pounds (if I remember right and that’s doubtful). I understand many trucking companies already apply some type of speed limit on their own vehicles and that’s fine. Before I forget, this is being pushed because someone’s relative was killed by a tractor trailer truck. The annual figure that I read for fatal truck accidents was around 1,100 which, although disgusting, doesn’t really seem high enough to slam every commercial truck driver with a speed limit of 60, 65 or 69 miles per hour. So let me state that if any driver creates an accident, I don’t care how severe the penalty is  as long as it fits the crime that they committed. Having done two tours of duty in Germany, I drove many hours on the autobahn where in many places it had no speed limit for passenger cars but did for commercial vehicles. Doesn’t sound like a problem until someone traveling well over the 100-mph hits the back of truck that is doing 60-mph. I have witnessed far too many bad drivers and have written about it many times, and the problem gets worse every year.

What scares me is many of these new federal rules are not being legislated by members of the United States Congress, they are being made by bureaucrats that you and I have no control over. So if one thinks such rules will never bother them, please remember that the number of fatalities in car accidents is far higher than for commercial truck crashes. When will some bungling bureaucrat slow down your car? What’s even sadder is that new regulations and controls are being placed seemingly every day. If you wonder why there are so many medications that are getting really expensive, like the recent news about the EpiPen, take a look at what our wonderful federal government does to slow down or halt the process of willing investment in this country.

In just a few days prior to me writing this column, President Obama declared a large parcel of land in Maine a federal monument with no vote either by members of Congress or even worse, the citizens of the state of Maine. I couldn’t really care less, except the National Park Service is short billions of dollars for upkeep of the existing parks we already have. Maybe they need to charge more for admission just like Amtrak needs to be self-sufficient itself.

Lane Hiltunen of Windham is beginning to think that the End of Days is coming sooner.