I thought "salaried" overtime only applied to people that made less than a certain amount of money annually. If my memory serves me correctly, I heard it was about $50,000. If that's the case I would not be eligible, but if it applies to all salaried employees regardless of pay, then that's very interesting...
I don't know what would be worse, that you're right or that you believe that's true.
Unfortunately I don't know the US federal and state laws, so I can't really tell you if you're right :) but I can tell you that in the rest of the western world, 40 hours (or even less) are law for everyone, including CEO, CTO and whatever C level you throw at it. Anything after that has to be paid overtime or you're breaking the law.
The shepherds will be brutal as long as the sheep are docile.