To the Editor:

I grow more and more concerned each day as our government seems to be controlling more and more of our daily lives. It started and continues with the assault on banning cigarette smoking and has escalated to a point of no return.

I just read that in San Francisco they want to tax sugared drinks such as sodas. They say to control obesity, but it’s just another intrusion by government and our representatives thinking they are “doing it for our own good”.

Who died and made them the controllers of everyone’s life?

They can’t even agree on day-to-day necessities for local government, but can find the time to intrude in our individual lives?

We have given far too much power to elected officials, or maybe not paid enough attention to their agenda; either way they are becoming the overseers of what is right and wrong with all of us. Just slightly less control than a dictatorship but a far cry from individual freedoms envisioned by our forefathers. Each year more taxes, less freedoms and our right to choose how we live our lives. We are told where and when we can

smoke, what we can and cannot eat, and worst of all how much to pay for fuel so “big” oil industry can line their pockets while the middle class has to suffer.

Why? So these same government officials can line their pockets or their campaign funds to get re-elected to do their bidding to maintain receiving their contributions.

We are now closer to be a communistic country than the Communists countries are to being democratic. One man’s opinion.

Grady L. Williams

Franklin