PRACTICING PSYCHIATRY WITHOUT A LICENSE
UN-REGULATED LEMONADE STAND
Posted on 08/05/2011 8:34:10 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
There’s no more poignant symbol of American childhood than the lemonade stand, evocative of long, lazy summer days and pie-in-the-sky entrepreneurial dreams.
It inevitably was a subject for a Norman Rockwell print, with a brassy kid confidently hawking cups for 5 cents each. If Rockwell were to update the image today, he might have to include an officer of the law nosing around the stand to ensure its compliance with all relevant ordinances.
In various localities around the country this summer, cops have raided and shut down lemonade stands. The incidents get — and deserve — national attention as telling collisions between classic Americana and the senseless pettifogging that is increasingly the American Way. There should be an easy rule of thumb for when enforcement of a regulation has gone too far: when it makes kids cry.
Setting up a lemonade stand has always been the occasion for early lessons about the importance of hustle and perseverance, and some business basics — like location, location, location. It shouldn’t be the occasion for dealing with the unreasoning dictates of The Man.
Police in Coralville, Iowa, a few weeks ago conducted a sweep and shut down three lemonade stands, some within minutes of their opening. The offenders had started their renegade operations the weekend of an annual bike ride across the state. The town requires vendors to have a permit during the days of the event. None of the perps did, including one four-year-old girl who shamelessly made $4 before police intervened.
One mother said she could only laugh when the police told her the cost of a permit was $400. Uncomprehending, her kids cried. They figured only the inadequacy of their handmade signs could have made the city’s law enforcement want to put them out of business.
A Coralville civic eminence subsequently explained that the ordinance was in place to protect the health of the bike riders, who are apparently robust enough to bike 472 miles but might be felled by six ounces of lemonade.
In McAllen, Texas, two kids were shut down and their grandmother threatened with a fine on similar grounds. Audaciously, the youngsters started selling lemonade for 50 cents a cup in a park without a health permit or licensed food handlers to prepare or serve their lemony libation. Hoping only to fund the upkeep of their two hermit crabs, these two children had stumbled into a murky world way over their heads.
In Midway, Ga., three girls were told they needed a business license, peddler’s permit, and food permit to set up a lemonade stand on their front lawn. It might have taken all summer just to navigate the bureaucracy necessary to begin selling the lemonade. The chief of police explained why she had to act to protect the public from the unauthorized sale of the unknown substance purporting to be “lemonade”: “We were not aware of how the lemonade was made, who made the lemonade, of what the lemonade was made with.”
Chances are that it was made of the usual dangerous cocktail of lemon juice, sugar, and water. If children — or their parents — aren’t to be trusted to prepare lemonade, presumably people lured by the prospect of a cool drink on a hot day can calculate the risks on their own and take their pocket change elsewhere if they feel safe only with professional-quality product.
Invariably, the parents of illicit lemonade-stand vendors protest to the authorities, “But they’re just kids.” That should be a clinching, self-evident argument. But not when an unbending legalism is ascendant, and there’s a law for everything. It’s in this spirit that we pat down children in the security lines of airports. People in authority are afraid ever to be caught rendering commonsense judgments.
For now, the lemonade-stand crackdowns are a bridge too far. They usually bring cries of public outrage and embarrassed backpedaling from officials. So belly up to the lemonade stand — while you still can.
— Rich Lowry is editor of National Review.
This is a hugely useful symbol for what we are trying to say. It is about freedom, about stealing the future from those who are now children. People who construct messages need to jump on it. I would love to see a national LEMONADE PROTEST day where children all over the country on the same day put up a lemonade stand with an American flag on the side of the table. Good solid images, good lessons of capitalism and American spirit, good for cementing the freedom meme in the next generation, etc. Americans have always found a way to “make lemonade out of lemons.” What a gift this potentially is. The LEMONADE TAKE A STAND DAY.
Busting those who show an entrepreneurial spirit is a hallmark of the socialist mentality; they’d much rather the kids grew up as dependents of the State machinery.
Nervous nellies too. If a kid sells bad homemade lemonade that should be a private issue between the consumer and the family of the kid. Isn’t the homemade bake sale in similar jeopardy?
Hey, just don’t try to sell your old stuff in a garage sale.
Look out, Ebay!
Not because of the excessive nanny-state totalitarianism, mind you . . . but because any government jurisdiction whose employees have the time for this kind of sh!t clearly doesn't need them on the payroll.
how many of us get a warm and fuzzy from going out of our way to walk down the street to purchase a cup of the cooling liquid, just to show kids what's right in life - self-reliance!
This is such a crock. This is what we 'small government' conservatives fight the fight for. or used to anyways.
“Coralville, Iowa’ os right next to the Uber-Liberal Toilet known as “Iowa City(Home of the “Land-Grant “University of Iowa””) so this is NOT surprising.
The end goal of communists is that no one works for any entity other than “The Party”. In the case of the left in America, they want no one working for themselves especially, but for any entity other than the government in general.
Do we see this pattern with them? Indeed we do, grasshopper.
If a local government shuts these little businesses down, I’m hesitant to complain because there’s hope that local citizens will get involved and produce an outcome satisfactory for the town.
Regarding the health hazard of these little lemonade stands, think of all of the drinks and meals prepared within homes. Those in-home activities represent a million or so times the risk to our health. Maybe our kitchens should be inspected and required to have a $500 licence to prepare food.
RE: Maybe our kitchens should be inspected and required to have a $500 licence to prepare food.
SHHHH! DON’T GIVE THEM ANY MORE IDEAS...
These dangerous criminal scofflaw “children” back-alley “dirty food” profiteers need to be Tased and beaten, and their dogs and cats shot...
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