The Rich Aren't Like You and Me

[tekisui]

Source: Salon

Washington, D.C., is a Potemkin village of alabaster and marble where the perpetually stalled and broken escalators of the city's subway system are a perfect metaphor for the government's inability to generate positive, upward movement. Yet with all the calumnies that are committed on an hourly basis behind the facade of our nation's capitol, what had local media there outraged a few days ago? Lemonade.

Seems a TV news cameraman caught a county inspector in an affluent Washington suburb trying to shut down a kid's lemonade stand just outside the Congressional Country Club during the recent US Open. And if that wasn't bad enough, he slapped the enterprising tikes – who were raising money to fight pediatric cancer -- with a $500 fine.

As the June 18 Washington Post reported, for a while it seemed "the all-American rite of passage might instead become a master class in government overreach," yet public anger was so immediate and vociferous the fine was quickly revoked and the youngsters permitted to reopen down a side street a few yards away.

But these weren't your garden variety, neighborhood moppets, selling drinks from Mom's Tupperware pitcher on a card table near the sidewalk. For one, thing, according to the Post, "There was a tent for shade, five plastic coolers, and a couple of industrial steel ones packed with ice and cans of Coke and Diet Coke. For the fundraiser, the kids' parents had also secured cases of bottled lemonade wholesale…"

more: http://www.salon.com/news/business/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/06/27/michael_winship_rich

[wtmusic]

1. Little parasitic bastards, trying to siphon off wealth from those who deserve it! nt

[dkf]

2. This says more about our government than the rich.