By Matt Agorist
Porterville, CA — The State knows no empathy, logic, or reason and will enforce its most asinine decrees—even if it means targeting an innocent five-year-old girl’s lemonade stand. Without resistance, this encroachment upon our everyday activities is as inevitable as the tide.
In Porterville, California, a family is learning this harsh reality of the State after they were issued a citation from city hall for $59—the local fee for applying for a new license—plus a fine.
Autumn Thomasson proudly set up the stand outside her family’s home last June as a means of raising money to buy a bicycle. She sold lemonade, candy, and snacks and raised a whopping $82—enough to buy herself a new bike.
Her family took to Facebook to celebrate the young entrepreneur’s hard work.
“It meant so much to know she earned her own money, that Mom and Dad didn’t need to go buy her. She got to bring her own wallet and buy it herself and pay at the cash register,” DeHaas told Fox26.
However, her entrepreneurial spirit was crushed this week after her mother received the threatening note of extortion in the mail.
“What kind of world do we live in where kids can’t do lemonade stand or any kind of stands for that matter without getting in trouble?!” Gabby Dehaas wrote of her daughter’s extortion over lemonade. “How are we suppose [sic] to show our kids to work hard for what they want and to expand their ideas/entrepreneurship if they need a license for every little thing! I just got fined for my daughter have a 3 hour lemonade a couple months ago, so she could know how to earn enough money, to know a value of a dollar!
I’m not mad about the money for the fine I’m mad about the pettiness of the reasoning. These things are just straight wrong!”
The citation included a print out of Dehaas’ Facebook post advertising her daughter’s stand.
“I was thrown back by that. I didn’t appreciate a screenshot of my daughter sent back to me,” DeHaas said.
After Dehaas’ post began to pick up steam, however, authorities quickly back-peddled once their ridiculous extortion scheme was exposed.
Porterville City Manager John Lollis told Fox26 the letter was sent in response to a complaint filed with the city. He is now apologizing.
“There’s no excuse why it should have been sent,” he said. “We want our youth to be engaged and looking at business opportunities.”
DeHaas told Fox 26 that her daughter learned a valuable lesson about this entire debacle. “There’s always gonna be bitter people or bad people,” she said. “But there’s always gonna be good outweighing everybody.”
Despite claiming that this letter “should not have been sent,” the reality of the matter is that municipalities across the United States carry out similar rackets on a daily basis—especially in California.
As TFTP previously reported, Orange County authorities shut down Annabelle Lockwood’s “small business” and gave her 30 days to get the proper permit and license.
The permit was said to cost around $200, but in order to secure the permit Annabelle was told she’d need to meet a bevy of government requirements – costing $3,500 – just to serve fresh-squeezed fruit juices to thirsty passersby.
Bearing down on the age-old tradition of youngsters setting up lemonade stands demonstrates how obsessed the State has become in “regulating” small business.
It appears that Annabelle made it through the gauntlet, with the help of many who donated to her GoFundMe account after reading her story and Thomasson received an apology. Others, however, are not so fortunate.
In Portland, Ore. an 11-year-old girl wanted to sell mistletoe from their farm at a holiday market to help her dad pay for her braces, which cost $5,000. But the Parks Bureau refused to let her set up without a permit, lease or concession agreement. She was told she could beg instead.
Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Agorist is also the Editor at Large at the Free Thought Project, where this article first appeared. Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter, Steemit, and now on Facebook.
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“Bearing down on the age-old tradition of youngsters setting up lemonade stands demonstrates how obsessed the State has become in “regulating” small business”.
.
No, it shows how far they are willing to go to control your life.
Communists gotta be communists.
Actually, it would be the Porterville city officials, rather than the State of California, who are responsible for this debacle. While the state promulgates general regulations governing food preparation, it is typically a City or County that passes local regulations requiring permits for short term selling and similar activities. So what we have here is a case of brainless over reach – an official seeking to justify their existence and please their political masters (I bet the original complaint was made to a City Council member who called the city manager or applicable department head) and ordering one of their peons to go and take care of this ‘problem’. Events of this kind are therefore attributable to the ‘Lick Up and Kick Down’ school of management that is so often found in government, plus the tactic of using permits to justify the existence of a questionable government function and/or level of staffing.
It does not help States get Federal funds. These Federal funds then cascade down to counties, parishes, towns, villages. I think a clear solution exists.
Realize the People pay the wages of these parasites who claim to represent your straw-man which is a lawful and legal fiction. Don’t like what they are alleging to do in your “name”, stop paying their wages. You can be sure they would/will terminate our paychecks if the shoe was on the other foot.
Poor kid. I had a lemonade stand. It was fun for a month. California is pure communism. Guess the folks living there have had too much Koolaid.
You do know that communism is merely the flip side of capitalism don’t you???
Governments without an immutable/unchanging standard (such as America’s Constitutional Republic) ultimately end up a police state, or worse. Such governments are moreover volatile in that their standard of morality is ever changing:
“in politics, everything revolves around the positioning of right, left, and center. You’re either rightwing, leftwing, or a centrist. Politicians and non-politicians alike employ all three terms as if there’s a consensus on the parameters for those designations. Even if this were true, who gets to determine what’s right, left, and center, and how are those determinations made? Over time, the parameters shift (always further to the left), so how is someone on the right to know he’s now a centrist or a centrist to know he’s now on the left?….
“There are no answers to these questions because there is no standard for these terms. The terms are completely arbitrary, defined at any given time by finite man and his fickle ethics rather than by Yahweh1 and His immutable morals. Although the following example doesn’t specifically address right and left, it illustrates the disparity between man’s ever-changing standard and Yahweh’s never-changing standard:
‘Two people could have walked down any U.S. street in 1930 – one with a bottle of whiskey under his arm and one with a bar of gold in his pocket, and the one with the whiskey would have been a criminal whereas the one with the bar of gold would have been considered a good law abiding citizen. If the same thing happened in any U.S. city in 1970, the one with the whiskey would be the law abiding citizen and the
one with the gold bar would be the criminal.’2
“In a mere forty-year period, man’s standard had completely reversed itself. The same transposition of ethics has occurred innumerable times under all governments based upon the traditions of man.
“Isaiah 33:22 and James 4:12 declare that Yahweh is the exclusive legislator. There are no others, period! Anyone who claims the title of legislator (particularly when his “laws”—whether commandments, statutes,
or judgments—are inconsonant with Yahweh’s) is a usurper and is perpetuating the sin begun by Adam and Eve. The same is true for any one of us who would modify Yahweh’s triune law….
“Yahweh is the only lawgiver because as Creator He’s the only one with the authority to determine what is good and evil. His morals as codified in His commandments, statutes, and judgments determine what is right and left. Anything left of His right(eousness) is left, liberal, and ungodly….”
For more, see blog article “Right, Left, and Center: Who Gets to Decide?” at http://www.constitutionmythbusters.org/right-left-and-center-who-gets-to-decide/.
Then find out how much you really know about the Constitution as compared to the Bible. Take our 10-question Constitution Survey at http://www.bibleversusconstitution.org/ConstitutionSurvey.html and receive a complimentary copy of a book that examines the Constitution by the Bible.
Governments without an immutable/unchanging standard (such as America’s Constitutional Republic) ultimately end up a police state, or worse. Such governments are moreover volatile in that their standard of
morality is ever changing:
“in politics, everything revolves around the positioning of right, left, and center. You’re either rightwing, leftwing, or a centrist. Politicians and non-politicians alike employ all three terms as if there’s a consensus on the parameters for those designations. Even if this were true, who gets to determine what’s right, left, and center, and how are those determinations made? Over time, the parameters shift (always further to the left), so how is someone on the right to know he’s now a centrist or a centrist to know he’s now on the left?….
“There are no answers to these questions because there is no standard for these terms. The terms are
completely arbitrary, defined at any given time by finite man and his fickle ethics rather than by Yahweh1 and His immutable morals. Although the following example doesn’t specifically address right and left, it
illustrates the disparity between man’s ever-changing standard and Yahweh’s never-changing standard:
‘Two people could have walked down any U.S. street in 1930 – one with a bottle of whiskey under his arm and one with a bar of gold in his pocket, and the one with the whiskey would have been a criminal whereas the one with the bar of gold would have been considered a good law abiding citizen. If the same thing
happened in any U.S. city in 1970, the one with the whiskey would be the law abiding citizen and the
one with the gold bar would be the criminal.’2
“In a mere forty-year period, man’s standard had completely reversed itself. The same transposition of ethics has occurred innumerable times under all governments based upon the traditions of man.
“Isaiah 33:22 and James 4:12 declare that Yahweh is the exclusive legislator. There are no others, period! Anyone who claims the title of legislator (particularly when his “laws”—whether commandments, statutes, or
judgments—are inconsonant with Yahweh’s) is a usurper and is perpetuating the sin begun by Adam and Eve. The same is true for any one of us who would modify Yahweh’s triune law….
“Yahweh is the only lawgiver because as Creator He’s the only one with the authority to determine what is good and evil. His morals as codified in His commandments, statutes, and judgments determine what is right and left. Anything left of His right(eousness) is left, liberal, and ungodly….”
For more, see blog article “Right, Left, and Center: Who Gets to Decide?” Click on my name, then our website. Go to our Blog and search on title.
Then find out how much you really know about the Constitution as compared to the Bible. Take our 10-question Constitution Survey in the right-hand sidebar and receive a complimentary copy of a book that examines the Constitution by the Bible.
And no one ever sues for violating 1st amendment rights on private property..
yes, this facebook page is NOT private, its the F£$%ing internet, but the family have a reasonable expectation that only their “friends” see posts like this
after suing the city government for infringement of privacy, first amendment rights, etc… sue facebook for everything you can get, for infringement of privacy, first amendment rights, etc…
unfortunately the city government might end up having to raise taxes to cover costs, BUT… suckerboy can afford it
Y’all having fun with being “under the feet of Caesar”? YHVH’s Torah is self-contained. In the name of Yeshua, try it instead.