You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy!
shutting down a seven-year-old’s lemonade stand.
That’s not just crazy it’s UN-American.
DATELINE: Portland, Oregon.
Portland Health officials apparently don’t have enough restaurant employees flipping burgers with E-Coli covered hands.
So what do they do? they go to 7-year-old Julie Murphy’s lemonade stand and stick a bureaucratic boot up the elementary school kid’s butt.
Hold on stupid health department employees. This is America. You can’t strong arm a little girl on my watch and get away with it.
According to the Oregonian newspaper, the health Nazis threatened the child with a $500 fine for not having a $120 temporary restaurant license.
Are you serious Portland Health department? I mean are you really serious.
It’s a kid’s lemonade stand. It’s a smiling little girl selling 50-cent cups of Kool-Aid at an art fair!
AT AN ART FAIR!!
How do you have the time to harass her?
What possible health violations are there?
Was the paper cup made from a tree illegally cut down in Paraguay? Was the Kool-aid packaged in China, containing bits of lead paint?
Or, are run by a bunch of ignoramuses who can’t find a taco cart outside your own offices to inspect.
If you didn’t know that this happened in Oregon, USA, you’d ask yourself “where the hell did this happen?”
You might say; North Korea?
But then you’d realize that not even Kim Jung Il is stupid enough to shut down a 7-year-old’s octopus stand.
If he did, Communists everywhere would TWITTER a nation wide protest asking anyone with a pitch fork to stand in front of a tank.
No this happened in the over regulated, highly saturated with stupid, U.S of A. A country where public officials routinely follow inane policies written by imbeciles.
According to published reports, Health Department officials later apologized to the girl’s mother. That’s awesome. I wonder how many diners got diarrhea that day because Portland’s Health Department was shutting down a lemonade stand.
I’m sure there was a Chinese restaurant somewhere on Flanders Street swarming with cock roaches and meat stored at an unsafe temperature.
Local news outlets wanted answers and this is what the official at the health department sputtered.
“Our health department what they were trying to do, I understand … I just feel like we have to be able to distinguish between a 7 year old, who is selling lemonade and trying to learn about business and someone who actually has a business,” Cogen said.
Nice apology Cogen. Who wrote that for you? Mel Tillis?
Let me think about that quote for a second. You should be able to distinguish between a lemonade stand, a cute little girl, and a pitcher of Kool Aid and AN ACTUAL BUSINESS THAT YOU CAN WALK INTO WITH A FRY COOK IN THE BACK SPITTING IN MY BURGER.
What is there to Distinguish health department?
If your inspectors can’t distinguish between a lemonade stand in a neighborhood and a tub of rancid lard in the corner of a Wendy’s downtown, then maybe your inspectors should be working somewhere else.
Maybe the citizens of Oregon should demand higher accountability for how their tax payer dollars are being spent?
Before the apology the girl’s mother, Maria Fife, told the paper that while she sees the need for some food safety regulation, she thinks the county went too far.
“It’s gotten to the point where they need to be in all of our decisions. They don’t trust us to make good choices on our own.”
What choice is there to make? A little girl wants to make 5 dollars selling nice cool lemonade by the side of her house? She was learning a valuable lesson about supply and demand and customer service and helping one’s community. Sadly she also learned at too early an age that our public officials are often stupider than the kids she plays with.
According to published reports; the Portland incident is just the latest example of bureaucrats pulling down their pants and showing their asses.
Last summer police in Haverford Township, Pa. closed a lemonade shop being run by seven children because they didn’t have a permit . The police officer was later found to be wrong, and cops eventually apologized to the kids.
And last August, New York City parks department agents levied a $50 fine against a 10-year-old girl for selling lemonade in an Upper West Side park without a permit.
What message does this send these industrious kids.
If you try to do something entrepreneurial you’ll be stifled by the system so layered in bureaucracy that it is easier to run in quick sand.
And we wonder why our youth sit on the couch playing Madden, and then grow up with their hands out.
Well you know what Julie Murphy, you go girl.
I’m proud of you for caring about your cause and having the “gumption” to sell lemonade.
Tell your mom and dad that you want to do it again some day soon.
You represent the American ideal and entrepreneurial spirit. Don’t let anyone with a time card punching mentality tell you “You can’t.”
Because you can.
We need people like you to lead this country 20 years from now.
And that’s crazy!