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Monday, August 09, 2010
If Life Gives You Lemons...
...the government has no intention of allowing you to sell lemonade:
So when Multnomah County shut down an enterprise last week for operating without a license, you might just sigh and say, there they go again.
Except this entrepreneur was a 7-year-old named Julie Murphy. Her business was a lemonade stand at the Last Thursday monthly art fair in Northeast Portland. The government regulation she violated? Failing to get a $120 temporary restaurant license.
Turns out that kids' lemonade stands -- those constants of summertime -- are supposed to get a permit in Oregon, particularly at big events that happen to be patrolled regularly by county health inspectors.
"I understand the reason behind what they're doing and it's a neighborhood event, and they're trying to generate revenue," said Jon Kawaguchi, environmental health supervisor for the Multnomah County Health Department. "But we still need to put the public's health first."
I shall never know how mankind survived, for millennia no less, without a single health inspector. How it shall survive the coming centuries, with their numbers so abundant, I will not hazard a guess. As Dr McCoy observed at the end of Star Trek IV: "The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe."
Posted by Richard Anderson on August 9, 2010 | Permalink
Comments
I prefer the old saying:
If life gives you lemons...it better give you sugar and water too otherwise you are going to have really bad lemonade.
Posted by: Hugh MacIntyre | 2010-08-09 7:49:14 AM
You'd need a permit for that too....
Posted by: Publius | 2010-08-09 7:55:57 AM
I wonder how much profit a lemonade stand could make. My guess is the cost of the license would wipe that out.
Anyway, I don't know how many lemonade stands I have passed and just kept passing because I didn't trust how clean the gubby hands were that made it. I am shocked now to learn how lucky I am to have been able to figure that out all by myself. Not only that but the peril I would have been in had I actually consumed some of it.
Instead of affordable housing projects and efforts to eliminate poverty, the state should stop restricting people's creativity and efforts to earn an honest buck.
Posted by: TM | 2010-08-09 8:26:34 AM
"My guess is the cost of the license would wipe that out."
No kidding.
Posted by: Charles | 2010-08-09 9:17:19 AM
Fortunately, such petty bureaucrats usually backtrack in a hurry if the heat is turned up, which is exactly what happened here. Discretion is the better part of policy, as it is the better part of most things.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2010-08-09 9:31:33 AM
I am the person who reported the illegal lemonade stand to the authorities.
I was out for a bike ride, wearing my safety glasses and bike helmet, when I stopped to re-secure my life jacket (I was cycling near water) and thought a nice refreshing glass of government inspected lemonade would hit the spot. Imagine my horror when the proprietor of the stand could not produce a licence.
I was so traumatized I tore my spandex in my haste to mount my bike and exit such a repulsive den of disease and free enterprise.
Posted by: BoomNoZoom | 2010-08-09 11:01:47 AM
I was so traumatized I tore my spandex in my haste to mount my bike and exit such a repulsive den of disease and free enterprise.
Posted by: BoomNoZoom | 2010-08-09 11:01:47 AM
I think the lemonade stand proprietor should have been brought before the CHRC not only for offending you by not having a license, but also for employing only children. And CRA should unlease an auditor on the little scam artist.
Posted by: TM | 2010-08-09 11:41:13 AM
Her business was a lemonade stand at the Last Thursday monthly art fair in Northeast Portland.
Posted by PUBLIUS on August 9, 2010
This was not the usual sidewalk, in front of the house, chump change operation. The article did not say whether she was competing against operators that actually spent money (too much) for the temp. permits. If she was the only vendor I would agree with the above posts but a little more information would have been nice.
Posted by: BoomNoZoom | 2010-08-09 11:01:47 AM
Love it.
Posted by: peterj | 2010-08-09 11:44:34 AM
This child clearly had to be slapped down; otherwise she could grow up believing in the free market and entrepreneurship instead of the government knows best.
Posted by: Alain | 2010-08-09 3:15:56 PM
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