Posted on 01/29/2015 5:20:42 AM PST by Enlightened1
Earlier this week, Matt Molinari and his friend Eric Schnepf, both seniors in High School, were going door-to-door advertising their snow shoveling services in advance of the storm. School was out, and instead of sitting inside and playing XBOX, these two young entrepreneurs felt the fire of enterprise and decided to turn their down time into an actual dime.
However, Molinari and Schnepf apparently didn’t realize that in order to make a dime you have to pay a quarter — to the state. When the two boys were out trying to rustle up some business during what they saw as an opportunity, along came the uniformed agents of the state, to put this unapproved business venture out to pasture.
“We weren’t looking to break the law. We just didn’t know the law,” Molinari tells Jim Smith on his WCBS 880 radio show.
The cops then gave these two kids a lesson in statist economics, which consequently ended their high school snow shoveling business.
“They need a permit, unpermitted solicitation is not allowed,” Molinari said, recalling what the police told them.
In this particular county, anyone selling goods and services door to door must apply for a license that can cost as much as $450 for permission that is valid for only 180 days; after all freedom ain’t free.
Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cops-shutdown-high-school-kids-earn-money-shoveling-snow/#mxj5uyWccCAog7gj.99
(Excerpt) Read more at thefreethoughtproject.com ...
The greedy, leftwing DemocRAT politicians want their cut. This is a damn shame. We really need to bring back tarring and feathering to America. Since elections do have consequences, we may also want to consider doing away with them.
“not the cops fault obviously, it’s the local law makers who made that dumb law.”
Teenagers, male and female, came to the front door of an elderly WWII Army combat veteran and his elderly wife to solicit. After opening the front door and talking to the teenagers, they knocked him down to the floor, brutally beat and kicked him until he was mortally injured, beat and kicked his wife until her ribs were broken and a lung was punctured, looted their home, and left them both for dead. The husband died, and the wife survived with permanent injuries.
The laws discouraging soliciting on private property and homes are justifiable for far more important reasons than just the nuisance factor.
What needs to be done is to provide a middleground which protects homeowner safety and privacy while also encouraging initiative among the honest and hardworking youth.
Put this in the “nobody’s in charge of common sense anymore” category.
I wonder who the busy body who called the cops was.
I agree, they were just following orders, like the guards at Auschwitz.
Exactly my thought.
You’re probably right on both counts. In Chicago, though, there are ordinances in place that require home and business owners to shovel snow. This can be a problem for the elderly. Thankfully, I don’t get fined for shoveling my elderly neighbors’ walkways and stoops. I’m in my 60s and the neighbors I help are in their 80s; no young folks (teens or twenty-somethings) volunteer to help them.
It was the act of going door to door to “advertise” their services that required a permit, cost $450. If they would have just shoveled her sidewalk without knocking on her door... no one would have been wiser.
Don't know about being shut down, but I'm sure the IRS would have had something to say about it.
That’s why I like living in the country.No pissy neurotic neighbors to contend with.
The Jehovah Witnesses never quit,and my dogs never tire of “escorting”them back to their car.
Good post. As a kid growing up on Long Island in the 60’s-70’s we would go door to door offering to shovel snow or cut lawns for some small price. The neighbors often appreciated the services and never ever did any of this commie-like govt. Interference carp occur. This is the govt. The founders warned against.
So the neighbors will just have to hire a permitted landscaping company if they want someone to shovel their snow. Of course, the landscaping company will be staffed with illegal immigrants, but hey, at least they will have a permit and won’t be breaking the law. The kids are forced to sit on their asses at home watching TV or playing X Box while illegals do the work. This country is so screwed it isn’t funny.
get a permit for a lemonade stand?
Also, since the economy turned south a few years ago, we've gotten more door to door salesman than at any other time in the nearly four decades we've lived in this neighborhood. It's a nuisance and many other neighbors and I do call the police on them and the cops scare them out of town, because they never have a permit.
In our town, it's legal to leave a flyer in the doors with your name and number. Leaflet people's homes the day before a storm and the people will call.
And we’d all be safer if our government would only be more like Cuba. I also like your (ab)use of an anecdote. It goes along the logic of, “A Roman Catholic priest abused a kid, therefore, the Roman Catholic Church must be banned.” You don’t look at individual culpability, you try to “fix” one event by assuming all other events will follow that pattern, no matter how anomalous and no matter how absurd the consequences of that “fix” become.
“Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.” -Franklin
“If you love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.” -Sam Adams
Yes it is the cops fault as much as it is the law makers fault.
You fill all the teen jobs with illegal aliens and then you put the teens out of the labor market by forcing them to pay off the mafia to shovel their neighbors' snow?
I would bet you a million dollars if these kids were Mexican illegal aliens, the cops would have just looked the other way.
” but having strangers knock on the door can be scary. “
My grandma found driving scary. She never got a license and didn’t like anyone driving. Since driving can be scary, it should be BANNED.
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