(This is a dual post; regular font is Bee and italics Ell).
Cops shutting down kids’ lemonade stands—so far I’ve seen reports of this happening in Iowa, Georgia and Texas. Food inspectors shutting down church bake sales—Salem, Massachusetts (witch hunt anyone?), has passed an ordinance banning all bake sales; the St. Cecelia Parish bake sale in Rochester, Pennsylvania, was shut down by a food inspector who said the pies couldn’t be sold because they were home-baked and not cooked in a certified kitchen. To add insult to injury, the inspector told the women of the parish that they could get their kitchens certified for a $35 fee. SWAT teams raiding a raw foods co-op—without a warrant, mind you, just storming into the store and, according to witnesses, handcuffing the owner who is now being held for over $120,000 bail. I don’t know about you, but I am perfectly capable of choosing what I eat and far more aware of what is in what I eat than those who pretend to be guarding (herding) me. I don’t need anyone to “protect” me from real food with real nutrients opposed to something processed beyond recognition then put back together (read processed), infused, chemically altered so my body can’t recognize, much less digest, whatever is now in it. I CAN READ, so I can gather information for myself if I have questions. With the plethora of information available, anyone willing to look can find answers. And once you start looking, the picture transforms dramatically.
Has everybody gone nuts? And what is happening on the crime scene when members of a SWAT team are raiding raw food stores instead of chasing bank robbers or drug kingpins? Was it just a slow crime day? And why aren’t more people up in arms about this kind of nonsense? Is it because the mainstream media chooses not to report it? Kind of like the guy who SET HIMSELF ON FIRE on the steps of Keene, NH County Courthouse, USA, in June, this year, in frustration. This happened in the mid east and all of a sudden the whole place is a hotbed of unrest against the standing governments. Over here, you didn’t ever hear about it. How odd and how unbelievable that in the “free” country, hardly a peep about this incident.
America, the land of the free and home of the brave, is rapidly becoming America the land of the officious and home of the cowed. The police chief who personally led the bust on the Midway, Georgia lemonade stand run by three young girls, made a statement to the media that since the kids didn’t have a business license—at $50 a day—and the cops didn’t know what was in the lemonade or who made it, well, “the law is the law.” Nonsense, balderdash and horse feathers (since I am restrained by my own sense of decorum from using the language I would like to use)! A stupid law is a stupid law. Applying a law meant for food vendors to a kid’s lemonade stand is simply unwarranted overzealousness on the part of the cops—who, if they don’t have better things to do, are probably overstaffed if they have time for that sort of ridiculous activity. If you don’t have enough common sense to figure out the lemonade is made in about three possible ways, by kids, you’re stupid. If it doesn’t taste good, don’t drink it, it’s called personal responsibility, a trait sadly lacking in this world. Ever check out how many in Congress are attorneys? Scary—. And talk about a public relations issue. Here’s the chief of police making it clear that she considers it appropriate not only to shut the kids down but to go on the raid herself. Whose law is law? What exactly is that teaching your kids? Not right from wrong obviously, since no one is raiding the pesticide producers, farmers and legislators in California who have been given the green light to put a proven toxin and carcinogenic, methyl iodide, on strawberries shipped to your grocery store for human consumption (California produces 90% of the strawberries grown in the US). What a nifty double standard. Because you are small and easily intimidated instead of large and politically connected, you are the one that gets “enforced”. Sound like anything else going on in this country right now? We will spend until the cows come home and you, taxpayer, get the bill because we say so. Um, hello, I thought I elected you to represent me, not spend my grandkids into the grave. According to the latest poll, Americans in general are not having their interests represented by a wide margin. Go figure.
I know I’ve said this before, but has common sense taken a holiday in the USA?
The irony that the Rawsome raids occurred on the same day as a major food recall (tainted meat that sickened hundreds of people) is rich indeed. A person died from eating that contaminated meat, but no one involved in that mess will be charged with anything, or have their business raided by armed thugs.