Aug 23rd, 2008 at 5:15 pm
The Chicken ‘n Egg Menace
Via Dave Alpert, the mayor of Clayton, California takes on the challenge of little girls selling excess produce from their family’s garden on Saturday mornings. Apparently, this violates zoning rules. Mayor Gregg Manning says: “They may start out with a little card-table and selling a couple of things, but then who is to say what else they have. Is all the produce made there, do they make it themselves? Are they going to have eggs and chickens for sale next.”
What’ll be next — a ban on lemonade stands? Probably not. More mayor: “Lemonade stands are technically illegal, but they don’t last long enough to do anything about.” But maybe if future developments allow for more rapid lemonade-detection we can rid ourselves of this scourge.
49 Responses to “The Chicken ‘n Egg Menace”
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August 23rd, 2008 at 5:22 pm
NEW YORK, N.Y. (NBC) — Two young New York City entrepreneurs are back in business after a visit from the boys in blue. A Battery Park Patrol officer shut down Wallic and Arthur Perry’s lemonade stand Monday because the 9 and 10-year-old siblings didn’t have a vending permit.
After the visit from police the children applied for a permit, but were turned down. Their disappointment didn’t last long, however. When pressed about the issue the Battery Park Authority admitted that their patrol officer had “overreacted” and granted the Perry children permission to reopen their stand.
(NBC)
August 23rd, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Around here guys pull trucks over on the side of the road and start selling produce out the back. Should that be legal? Write me the statute that distinquishes between these girls and the guy selling stuff off the back of a truck.
August 23rd, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Write me the statute that distinquishes between these girls and the guy selling stuff off the back of a truck.
Who said you had to write a statute? Police officers and prosecutors have discretion in such matters.
August 23rd, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Police officers and prosecutors have discretion in such matters.
Who says they need it? Consumers have discretion too.
August 23rd, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Welcome to the insanity that is California politics.
August 23rd, 2008 at 7:21 pm
But is our high-fructose corn syrup safe?
August 23rd, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Police Officers have been arresting 7 year olds for school fights. I think any delusions that they have any concept of ‘discretion’ went out the window whhen they decided to stop protecting the people, and instead to burden them.
August 23rd, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Who said you had to write a statute? Police officers and prosecutors have discretion in such matters.
Wha–? You joking? That’s like saying anything a cop wants to be illegal is illegal. Prosecutors have some discretion not to prosecute crimes– not to invent crimes off the tops of their heads. I’m not sure, but police officers in some states also might have some discretion not to investigate suspected crimes in the cases of some minor (i.e., low-penalty) kinds of crimes. But no one in the executive branch of state or federal government has discretion to “invent” crimes anywhere in America. Criminal law comes from hundreds-of-years-old judicial decisions and (mostly) from state legislatures.
Anyway, I think this is just some fluky thing coming from the Man to discourage people from selling their own food. It’s just a lame bluff. People should focus more and more on taking some of the economy away from the corporations until liberalism is strong enough in America that the government can confiscate parts of these industries that are run by unscrupulous corporations.
August 23rd, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Which came first, the regulation against selling chickens or the regulation against selling eggs?
I’m sorry, I really truly am, for saying that….
August 23rd, 2008 at 10:16 pm
More to the point, isn’t encouraging local, self-sustaining agriculture something we should promote, not discourage?
August 23rd, 2008 at 10:30 pm
I would be very careful in your anti-zoning crusade.
For an example of what you might get if you totally succeeded and wiped out zoning, look at Houston.
Houston is a damn ugly city for a city of its size in the US, and no mass transit that is worth talking about. On top of that, brothels are practically legal here.
There is a good reason that most cities have zoning laws. Houston is a good example of why that is so. True, some cities may overdo the whole zoning law thing, but eliminating them….., well….., there is a reason Houston sucks compared to Chicago, and no zoning laws are part of it.
August 23rd, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Police make up crimes all the time. Here in New York, I’ve seen police make up offenses so that they can push around teenagers, people of color, and just about anyone else they don’t like. I’ve had police officers threaten to arrest me for complaining. Police do have discretion. That isn’t, generally, a good thing.
August 23rd, 2008 at 10:49 pm
OK, with that blatantly anti zoning comment, you riled me up about places like Houston.
One of the things that most people who have never lived in a place like Houston don’t understand is that one of the reasons Texas produces so many crazy ass Christian conservative types is because the Texas populace is so utterly screwed up.
The reason you see so many religious crazies coming out of Texas isn’t because Texans are all that religious, it is because Texans go off and do wild crazy ass things that sane people in places like Illinois wouldn’t believe.
Religion is like a way of attempting to control that craziness. From that attempt to control the craziness begets more craziness, like the idiots Texas elects for national office.
August 23rd, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Don’t you people understand? “Zucchini, melons, tomatoes, radishes” are gateway vegetables. The next thing you know these pre-teens will be freebasing summer squash. Shut them down. Shut them down now! Do it for the children!
August 23rd, 2008 at 11:21 pm
The cops should have the little bastards.
August 23rd, 2008 at 11:28 pm
Those liberals with their zoning and stuff are ruining this country. They could at least exempt little girls from the law, just to be nice and all.
August 23rd, 2008 at 11:52 pm
Bloix: It depends on what town/city you’re in. Zoning isn’t enforced by the police in most places anyway, but that’s beside the point.
What makes sense in rural towns (like unregulated farm stands) might not make sense in big cities (like 20 story skyscrapers). But the radical right and Matt often don’t make that connection.
The idea that all regulations should either be made in DC or not made at all is a little DC-centric, no?
August 24th, 2008 at 12:21 am
People need to be more aggressive challenging zoning laws in court. At a certain point two girls selling zucchini on their front lawn is more about free speech than commercial zoning. What is the ratio of produce sales to the residential property value? 1000-to-1? Somebody should say FU to the zoning fetishists and make a challenge that sales less than say $2,400 (the same as in politics) should essentially be unregulated.
August 24th, 2008 at 12:30 am
Note – I’m not a lawyer and I’m pretty much talking out of my arse when it comes to the law but there is such a thing as first amendment vending and there are a fair number of court rulings in favor of the right of people to assemble and sell something that is in some way related to free expression (books, art, printed materials). These cases take place in NYC but if you asked Wendell Berry if he thought growing and selling produce was free expression I’m guessing he’d say yes. Some people express themselves by writing political tracts. Other people express themselves by growing lettuce.
http://www.nyclu.org/node/753
August 24th, 2008 at 1:02 am
Oh, hell. The only reason I could possibly have written that comment is that every time I read an Yglesias post I want to contradict it. I’m swearing off – no more commenting on this blog for 30 days.
August 24th, 2008 at 1:46 am
Those liberals with their zoning and stuff are ruining this country.
Conservatives — in the form of homeowners trying to prevent anybody from building anything else near them — love zoning just as much, if not more, than liberals.
August 24th, 2008 at 1:49 am
Next up: Cops Tase six year olds to death for refusing to close lemonade stand. Parents outraged. Film at 11.
Do everybody a favor: shoot a cop now. Better yet, shoot a politician.
Hey, I read a story recently where the cops Tased a man WHO WAS ALREADY DEAD! Beat that one!
August 24th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Thanks for wonderful service
August 24th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Joejoe: It’s more about issues of traffic, parking, and public health than it is about the absolute dollar amount. Many states do exempt farm stands when traffic won’t be a problem, it’s not really a restaurant/hot dog cart, and a certain % of products are actually produced on the property (otherwise, people would call any food vendor a farm stand and claim to be exempt).
August 24th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Er, yes, this was my point. If there’s a law on the books that makes it illegal to sell food, or whatever, without a permit, as there apparently is, police and prosecutors can use their discretion in terms of who to actually enforce this law against. You don’t need to be able to create a special law that forbids people you don’t like from selling, but allows little kids to do so. You just have to tacitly let the little kids violate the law, because the law was not created in order to harass small children’s lemonade stands.
And that kind of discretion is, obviously, a good thing.
Well, indeed, there seem to be problems on this front in practice. I was responding specifically to Bloix’ comment about how to distinguish between dudes in trucks selling unregulated produce (which he was presumably against) and little children, and a statement which seemed to suggest it would be difficult to write a law or regulation which would be able to make such a distinction. My point was that if you had good police who were using discretion in a way which they are certainly able to do, you wouldn’t need to write such a statute – you could merely rely on having good police who don’t do ridiculous things. I was not suggesting that police in the real world actually meet this standard.
November 22nd, 2008 at 4:20 am
Actually most of us are already renting our lives. Leases have replaced ownership for many car owners. Home mortgages are never intended to be paid off
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