Tuesday, April 06, 2010

Pioneers would have broken many of today's laws

Let's examine how many of today's laws the early pioneers would have broken if they were settling the west today. First, using ground that is zoned agricultural for a housing development would require many meetings with the planning commission, the city council, and I'm sure would require many additional meetings with attorneys, architects and engineers before final approval to build would be granted. Digging a well without a permit would be a major legal infraction. Don't even think about removing wood, rocks or other building materials from their historic locations without authorization from the BLM. That old worn out old wagon by the side of the house would surely be an eyesore. I am sure it would take the code enforcement people less than a week to ticket the poor pioneering family for that infraction. When a pioneer family was running low on food and went hunting. They did so without a license, which today would result in thousands of dollars in fines and a jail sentence for poaching. Let's not overlook the outhouse. The outhouse today would be considered a major infraction of the sanitation laws and undoubtedly the E.P.A. and Hazmat would have to be called in for a major clean-up. In those days numerous child labor laws were being broken on a daily basis, and you would be hard-pressed to find a pioneering family that wouldn't be under investigation by Child Protective Services today...more

1 comment:

johnr said...

You didn't mention teen age tobacco chewing and spitting, whiskey drinking, swapping horses without a animal behavorists okay, drinking raw milk without certification, packing a pistol on the hip instead of the trunk, gambling without a permit, telling tall stories, the government not withstanding, sleeping in the flood plain, open fires without an air quality notification, and on and on