The Bottom Line: American Dream deserves better

The American Dream deserves better

Since the American Dream began, people have been inventing things, working hard, attempting to crush their business enemies, consolidating with others, cornering the market and a dozen other strategies toward becoming a success.
Then one bright day in Fairy-tale Land a sore loser spoke to his manipulative and opportunistic cousin the lawyer who spoke to a few dozen other lawyers who wrote a new law and got it passed, and it was all because they were in cahoots in this big palace in Washington, D.C., officially called Congress.
Let's take the lowly Dung Beetle as a commodity for an example.
Now, I have relatives in the hills of Washington state, who happen to raise and sell dung beetles and one day a "commodities export" official told them they can no longer export these creatures to China, India or anywhere in Africa because Congress made a deal to allow only registered dung beetle lines to compete for overseas contracts.
The original sore loser wanted his grand champion genetic line of dung beetle to be the only one available to the vast populations of Asia and Africa. Of course at a premium price. He convinced his cousin and his friends that they would each get a nice chunk of campaign donations for making federal regulations favor only the sore loser's poop-pushing blood lines.
Shazaam! Because, as President Trump has said in the past, many of the importing countries are "sh-holes," allowing this miracle of corruption the potential to take place. That's the one thing they have plenty of, the need to move mounds of excrement, but they need the workaholic dung beetles to do the dirty work.
Normally, the market makes decisions about competitors' products and a winner/loser emerges, but because of the government involvement in over-reaching regulations, the original American idea of entrepreneurship risk and reward are turned into a joke.
My hillbilly relatives are now POL (poop out of luck). They couldn't afford to level the business playing field because they didn't know enough about how to lobby government officials, including all three kinds: elected, appointed and regular civil service.
Now the casual observer might opine that civil servants are not prone to corrupt behavior, and they are most likely right for the vast majority of America's civil servants. However, these same civil servants are subjected to orders, policies, regulations, HR rules and a huge variety of threats to their own financial well being, that they must comply with any zany Dung Beetle producer's wishes because the genetic line of the very best of these hard workers is partially owned by that same bunch of poop-pushers, the aforementioned members of Congress.
Elected Congressmen and their appointees exert all the pressure on the civil servants to make them regulate what they want, whom they want and how they want.
The American Dream is kaput. It is no longer a level playing field. The potential Field of Dreams has turned into a field of potholes and landmines. The regulations are based on the whims and wishes of the shareholders of the Golden Dung Beetle Corporation.
All the fat cats share in the profits as the little dung beetle producers are stepped on like the bugs they are. Manipulation of the civil service is poison to the shared glory that is American Capitalism.
If the Little guy can't exist because of draconian government over-reaching regulations, then the only Americans left to live the Dream are the friends of the Congress.
Conservatives ought to be staunch supporters of American-style Capitalism, not a hindrance to same.
When Americans invest money, blood, sweat and tears into their labors, they don't and won't always win, but at least we as a society ought to give them a fighting chance at doing so.
Someone has to pay for all of these social services government provides for non-citizens, but that's another story for another day.
NCW Managing Editor Gary Bégin's opinions do not necessarily reflect that of ownership. To comment on the record, email: gary@ncwmedia.net.