Why do sick individuals so often populate local boards of health?
Dan Doherty of Norwood, Mass., explained to his mother that he wanted to work this summer. His idea involved opening up an ice cream stand. She told her 12-year-old son that to do so he must donate half of the profits to a charity of his liking. (READ MORE from Dan Flynn: Tim Walz Is a Lumberjack and He’s Okay)
He served ice cream to about 20 friends and neighbors. Proceeds went to the Boston Bear Cubs, a hockey team comprised of kids with various disabilities. Doherty’s brother competes in the club.
It all struck as a wholesome endeavor. Some unwholesome types disagreed.
Someone, perhaps upset with COVID-19’s decline limiting outlets for busybodyism, allegedly complained. The Norwood, Mass. Department of Health sent the 12-year-old a letter. The group said his unlicensed stand violated its rules. Doherty shut down his operation.
“The first time we raised $62 for them,” the youngster explained of his brother’s hockey team. “It was nice to help out them and stuff…. I don’t understand it because there are so many lemonade stands out there and they don’t get shut down.”
Young Mr. Doherty, don’t give them any ideas.
Departments of Health Seem Bored. That’s Scary.
Cops in Alliance, Ohio, closed an eight-year-old’s lemonade stand two years ago. The youngster operated his enterprise without a license. That she did so close to a festival perhaps upset, somewhat understandably, the vendors who rented space.
Earlier this year in Pinedale, Wyo., a code-enforcement officer imposed a $400 fine on a Girl Scout for selling cookies. The Girl Scout claimed she sold from her grandmother’s driveway; the code officer, who snapped Officer Obie-like pictures, says she veered onto the city’s sidewalk. “Sometimes I just think that government can be unreasonable,” 13-year-old Emma McCarroll told Cowboy State Daily. “It wasn’t reasonable to be fined $400 for selling cookies in front on my grandparent’s property.”
In 2021, a Richmond police officer and a representative of the Virginia Department of Health informed Maleah King, 11, and Milan Keith, 10, of a five-day deadline to file excise taxes and obtain a business license for their lemonade stand, designed to raise capital for a lip-gloss business. The girls shuttered their enterprise. (READ MORE from Dan Flynn: The Second (Rate?) Gentleman)
Fortunately, Girl Scouts normally sell cookies unmolested by authorities covetous of tax money and children work lemonade stands without harassment from regulators. Alas, the heavy-handed abnormal closes the gap on the live-and-let-live normal. That’s scary.
Who wants to live in a country where government agents harass third-graders for selling lemonade in front of their houses?
If they shut down money-making ventures of children so zealously, then logic suggests that they act more ruthlessly against adult capitalists. Evidence does more so. Regulations, bureaucracy, and tax-funded meddlers hamstring the economy by putting businesses out of business. When they fine Girl Scouts and quash a 12-year-old’s fundraiser for his disabled brother’s hockey team, they signal a lack of better things to do. Taxpayers bankroll bureaucrats to hassle minors who generate income or accrue good work habits, which seems bad for society. Those kids grow up to experience worse from the government as adults. (READ MORE: Transgender Politics Shouldn’t Trump Science)
Ronald Reagan identified the nine most terrifying words in the English language: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” In a summer school lesson of sorts, a youngster in Massachusetts learned the truth of this.