The police in Overton Texas have scored another victory over neighborhood lemonade stands. We have periodically seen these cases where police swoop down on stands run by kids in one of the oldest traditions of American life. I do not blame the police as much as the City of Overton for failing to have a code that can accommodate such kid lemonade stands or a modicum of discretion afforded to police in the enforcement of city permit regulations. In the meantime, Andria and Zoey Green’s business is closed by order of the city.
A video shows the police questioning the mother and instructing her that a permit is required. When a friend went down to city hall to obtain a permit, the family was told that the city was willing to waive the $150 fee for the city’s Peddler’s Permit but would need to contact the health department for permission to operate the stand. This in turn would require an inspection that must be conducted and a permit must be issued in order to sell anything that must be temperature-regulated to prevent bacterial growth, including lemonade. In case you missed the gist of the story, this is a child’s lemonade stand that would require a variety of adults inspecting, permitting, and approving the operation before they can sell their first cup.
Source: KLTV
Jim – were you here when they initiated the “No Snow Play” rules in the mountains? There are literally signs everywhere now that kids are not even allowed to play in the snow at their feet if they are waiting in line to take a paid sled ride.
Too many lawsuits and not enough personal responsibility.
Plus, snowball fights are too dangerous.
Try telling a toddler that he can’t play in the snow he’s sitting on.
Greece rioted when it became completely dependent on benefits that the government finally figured out it could no longer afford. Cypress rioted when bank accounts were seized.
I could go on, but all people have their breaking point. I suspect that the riots that keep boiling over are actually a sign of poverty and reduced chances to succeed than about cops. If enough people get shoved into poverty by inept government, I suppose we will not be the exception to the rule. Civil unrest would be heartbreaking, and the most vulnerable among us would suffer the most. That is why people criticize this trend towards eroding the middle class, and increasing poverty, so strongly. We don’t want a failure or breakdown of our government.
Every single civilization probably thought it would last forever. Every single one decayed and failed eventually.
Karen, I grew up in NY and moved to CA for about 10 years in my 20’s. Me and my brother used to call it the “Virtual reality” state. Everything was meant to only be looked at not functional.
““Businesses should be free to hire young children under 16, even those under 12, to sweep the floors or do other tasks that they are able to do.”
This does not sound more taxing than babysitting, delivering papers, or shoveling snow. Some of those activities are legal in some states, and not in others.
I obviously want to protect children from overwork, abuse, or anything that would interfere with their education. (Here in CA there is a very long history of migrant children dropping out of school to work the harvest.) But anything that is not overly taxing has the benefit of teaching a child a work ethic, responsibility, pride in earning his own money, and hopefully lessons in how to save and manage that money.”
Therefor all the references and photos of sweat shops child labor slavery can be dismissed as absurd and non-consequential to the discussion at hand.
Overgrazing, logging, and de-vegetation changed cedar forests to desert.
Politicians are trying to turn CA into a plastic desert.
“Overgrazing, logging, and de-vegetation changed cedar forests to desert. … Politicians are trying to turn CA into a plastic desert.”
I agree finding the right level of regulation and finding the right regulations (two very different issues) are difficult problems.
But for those who want a reset or a revolution, I wonder what will they use to replace the politicians?
And if they have politicians in their utopia, what makes them think the new politicians will be any better than the old politicians.
I think a key question is: if you can’t gather enough votes and convince politicians in this society what makes you think you will be any more effective at that in the next society.
Further, it seems to me that if you consider the states as the labs for experiments in democracy then we have some real experiments proceeding right now.
We have more than 30 states conducting real experiments related to ACA, Medicaid and public assistance; Education, public and charter schools; the relation of the state, unions and public employees; the obligations of states to retirees and special accounts such as pensions; and many more issues.
Why anyone would talk about a reset when we have all that going on is a complete mystery to me.
This is about two little kids running a lemonade stand. Maybe the reason there is so much passion about this event, is that our republic is collapsing. When Upton Sinclair wrote “The Jungle”, I doubt that he thought that over a century later, that the progressive movement would seek to regulate lemonade stands run by little kids. Are you kidding? Over and out.
One more time because I’m on a roll:
CA pays homeowners $2/sq foot to replace their water hungry lawns with synthetic turf.
Astroturf contains many carcinogens, and is suspected as causal in childhood cancers, such as soccer goalies.
This will replace water hungry lawns with a de-vegetation movement to cover our state with more plastic. That may leach more chemicals into our water system, and will contribute to more rainfall runoff. (See my earlier post about the loss of rainwater.) Plants remove CO2 and produce O2, cool our climate, and release humidity.
True, a lawn designed in Kentucky is not a good choice for our climate.
A BETTER choice would be a Buffalo grass variety, such as UC Verde, which is extremely drought tolerant. Even BETTER, would be a CA native plant landscaping. I say CA, because “drought tolerant” plants that evolved in the prairie with high summer rainfall is not actually drought tolerant in CA.
CA native plants without the use of pesticides or herbicides would feed our declining native pollinators. (Remember, we removed all that native vegetation and replaced it with either hardscape or European gardens that our specialized pollinators cannot eat.) It will also help the Colony Collapse Disorder of our imported bees. Properly designed (See Bert Lancaster’s book on “Rainwater Harvesting” where he discusses sunken landscape design instead of the more typical hill), such landscaping would remove CO2, produce O2, cool the climate, humidify the air, AND allow precious rainwater to recharge underground aquifers. It would only require a water investment of the first 1-2 years to get established, and then need little to no water afterward.
Win – win.
But that is not what the holier-than-thou politicians, regulators, and environmentalists desired. They wanted plastic. Chemically produced, polluting, plastic, just one step lower than hardscape.
Who thinks you can improve the environment with carpeting a state with plastic???
I’d love to see the ‘revolutionaries’ cope with their brave new world, should it ever come to pass. We would see how they would react if their homes, their families were in the line of fire. Anyone who hopes for war on our own soul has a screw loose.
Jim:
“Karen, I have to laugh. On cue, Annie and Wade prove your point.”
I think they are completely unaware of the irony.
Wade – if you have trouble grasping the concept that a well intentioned government agency or regulation can actually be mismanaged or need reform, then there are plenty of resources for learning more about the topic.
You seem to have a Sharia Law-like application of blasphemy laws towards criticizing anything you approve of. If the EPA did anything good, then how dare anyone object to where it’s gone wrong, or want it improved or reformed?
You sound like an extremist. And all extremists act the same, and get outraged at opposing opinions or debate. You can’t or won’t deal with the points sincerely raised. All you seem able to do is mock and deride anyone who has a different idea.
To each his own, but you’re labeling yourself as someone on a legal blog for the sole purpose of fighting with strangers, rather than talking about ideas.
Karen, I have to laugh. On cue, Annie and Wade prove your point.
Here’s another example of regulations and government agencies mismanagement:
Here in CA, there is typically almost zero rainfall runoff of native chaparral. Stand at the base of a native chaparral hillside, such as on my ranch, and there will be no runoff, even though water is pouring off the cleared land nearby.
So massive rainwater runoff is not the natural state of CA. Rain is supposed to soak in and charge those underground aquifers.
And then came people, who covered CA with hardscape, and the Corps of Engineers very efficiently graded and changed the landscape to efficiently drain off all rainwater. Laws were passed making it illegal to collect rainwater in a barrel from your own rain gutter without a permit, because they HAD to regulate that precious rainwater runoff and the waterways. It only became legal 2 years ago to have an un-permitted rain barrel.
So now our underground aquifers are drying up. We changed the lay of the land that created those water resources in the first place, using them up without replenishing them.
Well, oops. Sure, it was all done with good intentions, protecting that precious water runoff that might contribute to the streams that sprang up, funneling all that rare and precious freshwater out to our oceans. We created a habitat for the smelt. And then, we needed to protect that baitfish, so we release millions of gallons of freshwater into the ocean to try to protect that habitat. In the middle of a drought so serious that homeowners and business owners are mandated to cut up to 40% of their water consumption, and farmers’ wells are getting capped, we dumped an absurd amount of freshwater away, only to count LITERALLY 6 smelt at the next survey.
Considering that the natural state of CA was chaparral, serpentine, high desert, Juniper Woodlands, and Pine Woodlands, I have to wonder how much runoff we had hundreds of years ago, and if the smelt habitat was manmade, or if naturally occurred. I need to research that particular topic further.
Oh, and another set of regulations from local and state governments have effectively punished those Californians who already conserve as much water as possible. If you already installed a gray water system, take Navy showers, and replaced your lawn with native plants, then you are screwed. Where are you going to cut 40% more water? Dump your pets at the animal shelter?
Annie,
“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
1) From bondage to spiritual faith;
2) From spiritual faith to great courage;
3) From courage to liberty;
4) From liberty to abundance;
5) From abundance to complacency;
6) From complacency to apathy;
7) From apathy to dependence;
8) From dependence back to bondage …”
Alexander Tyler, 1787
To me, we seem to be leaving 7 and entering stage 8. But hey, enjoy your coveted lazy society while it lasts. Wooo Whooo!
The EPA has been as unsuccessful as the medical establishment has been in fighting AIDS….according to Karen.
I sure do miss all that smog and burning Great Lakes and acid rain and my kid having another asthma attack after playing in the park.
http://us-education.net/uploads/posts/2011-04/1302537422_child-labor.jpg
They look really happy Annie.
I am sure the happy kids and the happy slaves will have much to share as they enjoy the great outdoors picking cotton as long as there is enough light to see the cotton bolls.
BFM, yes fresh air and sunshine, good for those child slaves. The coal mine and sweat shop kids had roof over their heads at least, they were grateful for it, no doubt….
http://myhistoryclass.net/images/seafood_workers_full.jpg
This reminds me of the EPA. It is an agency answerable to no one, and often abuses its authority or mismanages resources. Or there are odd, sweeping changes that no one votes on, such as defining any lay of the land that funnels water after a rain a “water way” and thus subject to permits and regulations.
But any talk of addressing the shortfalls of the EPA inevitably devolve into people hysterically claiming that critics want us to play in a pile of asbestos.
Most government agencies are ponderous, bureaucratic, inefficient, and unanswerable to the public. The EPA is no exception. We DO need to protect our environment and endangered species. But to say that the EPA does not need to be improved, or even start afresh with a new acronym, indicates people are unaware of the many problems plaguing the EPA.
http://www.fundamentalfinance.com/images/child-labor-2.jpg
http://www.victorianchildren.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Victorian-Children-at-Work-Factory.jpg
We had child labor laws when I was a child Karen. Child labor laws were not written with babysitting and newspaper routes in mind. They were written to prevent children working in coal mines and sweat shops.
No Jim, we are not in the 1700’s, as much as you may think and wish we were. There is no collapse imminent, sorry to rain on your revolutionary wet dreams.