Tuesday, May 24, 2011

A Small, Furry Story From the Police State

I shouldn't joke about this.  Facing a $4 Million dollar fine for selling a few (dozen) bunnies is not funny and could completely ruin this family.  It's not funny.  It's just that it's at least a little better than executing them on the spot, as the police state did with Jose Guerena in Arizona the other day or Erik Scott in the Las Vegas Costco last summer, or (you can insert a list here).

The story is from Bob McCarty on BigGovernment.Com (link just above).  It begins:
...John Dollarhite and his wife Judy of tiny Nixa, Mo., have been told by the USDA that, by Monday, they must pay a fine exceeding $90,000. If they don’t pay that fine, they could face additional fines of almost $4 million. Why? Because they sold more than $500 worth of bunnies — $4,600 worth to be exact — in a single calendar year.
At this point, my chin hits the floor.   Selling $4600 in bunnies warrants a $90,000 fine?  And enough penalties to raise that to $4,000,000 - almost $1000 fine per bunny?
  

The story continues:
By the year’s end, the Dollarhites had moved approximately 440 rabbits and grossed about $4,600 for a profit of approximately $200 — enough, John said, to provide the family “pocket money” to do things such as eat out at Red Lobster once in a while. That was better than the loss they experienced in 2008.
Let me get this straight: they sell 440 rabbits for $200 profit, or under 50 cents each, and somehow that warrants $1000 each in fines?  It's worth reading the whole thing.  Just another example of the worst of what this country has become.  As one commenter put it:
And this is how they do it. By going after the little guy because it's easier to go after a law abiding citizen than to go after a big factory farm with lots of money and lawyers at their disposal.
Another commenter posts the laws, passed in 1989, that stipulates selling over $500 worth of rabbits is a federal offense.   The insanity that is the police state.  

4 comments:

  1. Hard to believe that a revolution once began over a tax on tea. (Oh, that and an attempt to disarm some colonists.)

    Harder still to believe that this is really the United States of America described in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

    We've gone way down the rabbit hole. No pun intended.

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  2. Oh, and if they *don't* pay those fines, they just might meet the same fate as Mr. Guerena.

    Just sayin'.

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  3. Oh, and if they *don't* pay those fines, they just might meet the same fate as Mr. Guerena.

    Exactly!

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  4. This is sickening, and part of a "long trail of abuses" that needs to be corrected, ended.

    In Unintended Consequences, by John Ross, when ATF was being targeted for their abuses, other agencies began to be targeted as well. EPA, in this instance for fining and shutting down a dry cleaners for a small spill of dry cleaning fluid (owner lost his business, and his employees lost a job), FAA for their harassment of pilots their examiners took a personal disliking to, IRS agents, etc.

    I bet there are a lot of farmers, ranchers, livestock raisers, dairy goat and cow milk producers who would love to take a whack at the USDA and the FDA. From what I have read about what they have been doing to small producers of goat milk especially, they would richly deserve it.

    Any time a government agency uses its regulatory "authority" to ruin lives where there was no ill intent, nor even negligence (think David Olofson), the bureaucrats involved deserve an equal response. Or worse.

    Carl Drega will ride again.

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