Saturday, November 20, 2010

Young Entrepreneurs Learn Harsh Reality Of Anti-Business Police State

Many had not heard the names of Andrew DeMarchis, Kevin Graff, Zachary Bass and Daniel Katz before some busy-body town councilman went after them.
The four boys are middle-school kids in New Castle, New York.
The youngsters had an idea to make some cash.
Not one thing wrong with that.
What the youngsters came up with was selling cupcakes. Cupcakes that they made themselves. The cupcakes were sold along side brownies, cookies and Rice Krispies treats.
Two of the youngsters, Masters. DeMarchis and Graff, were selling the treats at the local park. Gedney Park to be exact.
The boys were having a pretty good day of sales. The first day the budding entrepreneurs made a cool $120 bucks. It was enough that they were able to buy a cart for $60 at the local Target. They even were able to add Gatorade and water along with the treats.
The next day, they had about a $30 haul when the local constabulary came upon them and told them they had to shut down their enterprise.
Why, you may ask?
Because you have to have a permit to sell in a park in this town. And a local town councilman thought what these boys were doing was such a horrific crime, he called down the constabulary.
Incredibly, town councilman Michael Wolfensohn went to the kids, asked them about their budding business and then whether they were raising funds for charity. The boys were honest and said no.
OMG! ! !
Mr. Wolfsensohn then made a beeline and called the cops.
And the police officer was pleasant but had to shut the budding entrepreneurs operation because he was following up on a complaint.
Needless to say it was a rather traumatic experience for these youngsters who are all classmates at Seven Bridges Middle School in nearby Chappaqua.
But, the story does not end there.
Friends of the DeMarcis family asked the local newspaper, The Journal-News, asked the newspaper to file a New York state Freedom of Information request and found that the complainant was Mr. Wolfensohn.
When asked, Mrs. Wolfensohn said that he could have handled the situation better. Mr Wolfensohn said the following:

"In hindsight, maybe I should have done that, but I wasn't sure if I was allowed to do that. The police are trained to deal with these sorts of issues."

Really? Wolfie, you could not have simply found out who the parents were and told them the situation? Did ya think the boys might have been packing heat?
And it gets worse for poor ol' Wolfie.
Wolfie tries to pin the blame for his actions on the town supervisor, Barbara Gerrard.
Really? Are you that much of a chicken s--- that you had to blame someone else for your over zealousness?
In the end, Wolfie had to admit that he was the one who called the cops and it was his action alone.
Now, there is no question that there are rules to selling in the park. The boys nor the parents did not know that. All that had to be done was a call placed to the parents and this would have never gotten out of hand.
Oh, did I mention that Wolfie is a Democrat?
Now you may wonder, what does that have to do with the price of tea in Red China?
Because I firmly believe that it goes into the mindset of this kind of Democrat.
What are these boys doing? WHAT! Not raising money for charity? For themselves?! I'll show them! I'll sick the coppers on them. That will teach em!
This is not the first time this has happened to a youngster trying to earn a buck.
Julie Murphy is a seven-year old in Oregon City, Oregon.
She was trying to earn extra money selling lemonade at a monthly art fair in Portland. People were buying before she even finished her first batch.
Until the lady with the clipboard came by.
The lady with the clipboard was asking about their licence. Where was their damn licence! Of course, they did not have one and did not know that they had to have one.
Ah, but to live in libertard utopia.
It appears that Oregon law says anyone selling lemonade must have a license under state law.
It does not matter if you sell it at the art fair or on your own front lawn.
What is happening is busy-body adults are once again ruining things for children and things that many of us did as kids. And we are alive to tell about it!
These young people should not be punished but commended.
They are trying to actually earn money on their own. They are not asking their parents to give them allowance. They have bigger ideas and aspirations. These are the future potential business leaders.
But their dreams are shot down by elected and unelected bureaucrats.
Policemen and women have become nothing more than glorified tax collectors for the government leviathan. One that has grown so large that common sense flies out the window.
But for both stories there is a good ending.
In the case of the New Castle Four, Lev Ekster who has his own gourmet cupcake shop in New York City, is going to help the boys out by selling their cupcakes out of his food truck in the big city. And they will be able to use his bakery to boot.
In the case of Julie, she got an apology from the chair of the Multnomah county board of supervisors, Jeff Cogen. Mr. Cogen himself said that he was a lemonade entrepreneur in youth. And a radio station wants to sponsor Julie and her lemonade stand.
In a clear anti-business climate that stems from the top down in the United States in 2010, these youths became victims of an over-active government.
What better way to turn young people into future conservative Republicans!

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