Sheperds Sleeping on a Serta

If there are any of you who do not believe that the federal government is out of control, consider the following from the Heritage Foundation.

Diane Katz of the Foundation recently discovered a new Labor Department regulation buried in the Federal Register. New procedures issued by the Department must be followed by employers who hire temporary agricultural foreign workers to perform sheep or goat herding activities. The rules describe sleeping quarters, lighting, food storage, bathing, laundry, cooking and new rules for the counters where food is prepared.

A separate sleeping unit shall be provided for each person or family. Each unit shall include comfortable beds, cots or bunks with a CLEAN mattress. I suppose that the feds will work up more regulations to define comfortable and clean. If these temporary agricultural workers end up on a better mattress than the lumpy 25-year old thing that I can not afford to replace, I am going to be irritated and take that anger to the polls in November 2012.

Food preparation rules require adequate lighting and ventilation. All cooking areas shall be of fire-resistant material - and be nonabsorbent and easy to clean.

You can not make this up.

Those of us in the Midwest are close enough to range country to know the rigors of the range. Wind, dust, heat, cold, rattlers, blizzards - sometimes all in one day. How long are we going to let ignorant city slickers from Washington DC specify ridiculous regulations? The westward migration of this great country would never have occurred with these kind of regulations in place.

I mean, is it now illegal to eat canned beans, fart around the campfire, sleep on a blanket with a saddle for a pillow under the great Milky Way, listening to the contented "baaaa" of the sheep? Well, that infamous campfire scene in the Mel Brooks movie "Blazing Saddles" may become a distant memory of the country's best days of rugged individuals working in a rugged environment.

November 2012 is coming soon. Get involved now.