FATS LIMBAUGH AND THE FOUNDERS

Sumptuary laws were originally targeted at luxury or extravagant expenditures and were found in both Emgland and colonial America.  The car pictured above is a Maybach 57S.  Fats drives a 2008 model and the base price is $380,000.  According to Forrest McDonald's great book about the Constitution, many of the Founders would have imposed at least a heavy tax on this car (p. 17):

There was a considerable sentiment in favor of sumptuary legislation throughout America, arising from Montesquieu's dictum that luxury was fatal to republics (Spirit of the Laws, bk. 7, chaps. 2 and 4). The cry against "luxury" can be seen in the "Proceedings of the People assembled at Annapolis, respecting the importation of British goods," 1769, and David Ramsay's "Oration," July 4, 1778, in Niles, Principles and Acts, 255, 375; in the Virginia Gazette, May 21, 1785; in the Boston Gazette, Apr. 18, May 9, 1785; in the letters of James Warren, in Gardiner, Study in Dissent, 129, 134, 182; in Jefferson to John Page, to James Madison, to James Monroe, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd et al., multiple vols. (Princeton, N.J., 1950-), 9:445-446, 8:40, 10:612. As John Adams remarked, "The very mention of sumptuary laws will excite a smile . . . but the happiness of the people might be greatly promoted by them," in The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 10 vols. (Boston, 1850-1856), 4:189-202; see also his desire to banish certain luxury items as expressed in his letter to Abigail, June 3, 1778, in Familiar Letters of John Adams and his wife Abigail Adams, during the Revolution, ed. Charles Francis Adams (Boston, 1875), 334.