Zany Takes the Cake - Part 5? 6?
Bakers Sue State Because Selling Cake is Illegal and Will Get You Thrown in Jail-Seriously
- (Rachel Blevins is a Texas-based journalist who aspires to break the left/right paradigm in media and politics by pursuing truth and questioning existing narratives. Follow Rachel on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. This article first appeared at The Free Thought Project).
The diligent LJ reader will eagerly refer back to the post, "Don't Let Them Eat Cake~!", wherein it is argued that a business should not be allowed to discriminate against, e.g., LGBTQWERTY, based on religious prejudices, especially if they are fatuous ones. To do so gives sanction by the state to select businesses, (above the desires or citizens, who are only customers second).
Well, in the example above, a seemingly different thing is happening: Small businesses are ebing discriminated against, (and so are their customers), based on the state's double standards concerning, "food safety", which actually favour the bigger businesses. If you don't have a commercial kitchen, you can't sell cake - except you can if, e.g., you are a church... Hmmm - kinda sounds pretty much the same: Legislate morality, against the poor, and for the religiously rich.
Clearly, this case will succeed.
But if it does, it will open up a can of worms... What if you are a girl scout or lemonade stand, and you want to sell cake? You won't have a commercial kitchen but small businesses won't need one, so why should you? I have several posts about police coming down on innocent people trying to sell lemonade, eggs, raw milk, and so on - sometimes with great violence and unfairness. Things have gone way overboard regarding this, (etc.), as if lemonade stands are weapons of mass-destruction. It is just rote, group-think stupidity - robots would do a better job of meting out justice.
Well, this will become an area where officials are going to have to do some thinking, soon. States will have to come up with a rational plan for allowing small sellers temporary opportunity; allowing small non-profits, say a 5-year grace period on not having commercial kitchens, and so forth. If they don't do this, then they will have to withdraw all their special privileges to churches and fraternal organisations, and to groups holding temporary festivals which of course have been benefitting downtowns and tax income.
Otherwise, they will indeed be favouring big business and churches, which has been the supply-side order of the day for the last 50 years or so. To continue on along that failing path would be to further and further punish the less-rich, or "less-moral", towards a state of fascism. When you keep funnelling wealth up to the top, then that means that the lower and middle classes become further and further handicapped, and so more and more in need of fair opportunities, instead of unfair controls and discriminations.
There is another option, which often occurs during such quandaries, and that would be the intervention of the centralised, Federal government. That's the last thing we want. But, this government has rationalised its intervention in such matters based on such arguments that, "growing a pot plant in one's home," or, "selling cups of lemonade on the sidewalk," both somehow interfere with interstate commerce. I guess if I exhale, and the CO2 enters Indiana, which it will, I can be taxed or charged with violating interstate commerce. Indeed, why don't we back and tax Socrates for his own air molecules? Why don't we tax the dead for polluting our cemeteries? Why don't we tax the sun for failing to cool us down, in this time of crisis?
That's all another, fun subject. The pertinent question/s here, though, is, "Can the Feds somehow come in and control local questions so that the double standards, hurting the poor, are somehow maintained, and yet taken off the hands of the states? What would the new rationalisation/s be? Or, is it ever possible for the Feds to come in and truly eliminate these double standards by exertng central or shared control?"
Can the Feds come in and say, "No, small businesses w/o commercial kitchens cannot sell cake although special people can, because... e.g., this is no longer a topic of food safety, but an issue of religious freedom" - ? Or, could the Feds come in and say, "Yes, small business and little families can sell cake, w/o having commercial kitchens, because states have been unjustly discriminating based on religion, political party, race, gender, or etc., and Federal food safety standards and controls will now be enforced above those of the states," - ?
If the federal gov't chose either, especially the latter, then it would most likely use the tax system to extend its regulation of. e.g., lemonade stands. That is always how it has handled everything from Prohibition era mobsters to Obamacare derelicts. Some on the right believe the tax system to be illegal but, as far as I can tell, the tax system is merely quasi-legal.
Finally, here is yet another example of how our rising, niggling little clashes compound to create social and economic and political entropies in our systems, call for further taxation and centralisation, as if to try to plug a failing dam. It doesn't help that so many of us are taking loud solace in the parading of our righteous egos at the expense of others. We live for the push-back. And this only brings the entropy to a rolling boil. I thought we were trying to bake a cake, here.
Anyway, the final solution usually is a lot of spying and pursuing and persecution and conscription and incarceration and crucifixion of the offensive, by whatever jackasses trollopped their way to the bottomless top.
Don't open the oven door cuz the cake might drop.