Posted on 05/23/2011 5:04:34 PM PDT by John Semmens
What started out as a hobby for their son and turned into a family side-business grossing $4600 (with a net profit of $200 after expenses) last year has landed John Dollarhite of Missouri in a heap of trouble. For the “crime” of selling more than $500 worth of rabbits in a single year, Dollarhite has been hit with a $90,643 fine and been warned that the penalty could go as high as $3.9 million.
US Department of Agriculture spokesman Robert Crook explained that “if you sell more than $500 worth of rabbits in any given year you have to have a license from our Department. Dollarhite didn’t have a license. So we assessed a preliminary fine of $146 for each rabbit he sold last year.”
Crook added that “Dollarhite would be well-advised to pay what we are asking. We are authorized to impose a fine of up to $10,000 per rabbit. And we could include penalties for earlier years if we so choose.”
It doesn’t matter that Dollarhite was unaware that he supposedly needed a federal license nor that the punishment is way out of proportion to the alleged offense. “Ignorance of the law is no excuse,” Crook reminded. “Besides, we’re being merciful here. The guy can take out a loan or sell his house to raise the $90,000. We could’ve crushed him with a multi-million dollar penalty if we’d wanted to.”
read more articles...
http://azconserv1.wordpress.com/2011/05/21/wrangling-over-the-war-powers-act/
Post them here.
What seems to be your obsession with driving traffic away from Free Republic?
Oh hush; if he wants a more accurate count of how many people are reading his stuff then let him.
I guess the little guy would have had a reduced fine for growning marijuana instead.
Lighten up, Lois. John’s been around here longer than you have.
If it is not “interstate commerce” how does the USDA get in the picture?
Anymore Free Republic just allows excerpts to be posted here and you have to go elsewhere to read the whole story. It has to do with the thugs at Righthaven who want to turn a buck for everything imaginable.
DAMN, had me going that time. After reading your post I went to get the rest of the story and - satire.
Thanks for the raised blood pressure and then the chuckle.
I don’t get that either.
The USDA doesn’t have jurisdiction.
Lord knows how much this will cost that family.
The new tax, fine them into poverty.
Make them loose that farm of theirs and teach those kids to never be in business. That will fix them. /s
So now he's translating that in to blog hit revenue?
Admirable. Using Free Republic that way is a bonzer marketing scheme.
I saw this story on another site, Prison Planet.
This post by John cuts pretty close to the story there.
I have no idea if there are more sources on this.
“Shortly thereafter, the Dollarhites received a letter from the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) ordering them to pay a fine of $90,643 for supposedly violating a mystery law that prohibits the selling of more then $500 in rabbits within a year, even though the Dollarhites were in full accordance with Missouri state law, did not sell their rabbits across state lines, and raised their rabbits humanely and in excess of minimum requirements. The letter outlined that the Dollarhites had until May 23 to pay the exorbitant fine, or else face additional fines totaling nearly $4 million — all for selling about $4,600 worth of rabbits that netted the family a mere $200 in profits.”
Satire aside, the point is well made that Government
fines multiplied quicker than ... er... rabbits.
Money for bunny honey?
If the site is obnoxious and full of malware, go on with the blog pimp stuff.
But this site is a favorite here. Blogs are the new wave of news. Let’s not cut off the source of the new media.
I think you would do better to pick your battles.
Not all sites are going to be objectionable to most Freepers.
http://www.news-leader.com/article/20110521/NEWS01/105210346/Nixa-man-faces-penalty-over-90-000-rabbit-sales?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE (sorry, I don't feel like html-ing right now)
Instapundit has picked up on the story as well. Just follow lninks from there.
Thanks.
More people need to see that this government is out of control.
The blunt force of greedy bureaucrats needs the full light of day.
This is probably not an excerpt. John usually posts the blog entry in it’s entirety, and if you go to his link there are the other entries.
Please, gunney...lighten up on John. He’s one of the good ones. He posts entire blogs, so as not to tease to drive hits. He doesn’t cut off the article words before the meat of the article, as others do. If you want the meaning of what he has to say, you need go no further than right here, and to me that’s the smoke-test.
Oh, that's news. Thanks for educating me.
At the same time, you're schooling both Jim Robinson:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2636843/posts?page=557#552
And also schooling Admin Moderator:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2722423/posts
I'm sure they are both grateful to you for explaining how Free Republic works.
An experienced bureaucrat can explain it easily. Imagine that you sold a rabbit to your neighbor. And imagine that the rabbit escaped. And imagine that instead of setting camp in a nearest field the rabbit decided to run all the way to the state line and cross it. And then imagine that the rabbit, once he crossed the state line, surrendered to a farmer there, who immediately invited the rabbit to a dinner, instead of buying a local rabbit with the same idea in mind. That's when the USDA falls onto the hapless seller as a ton of bricks. The fun part is that none of that has to actually happen; if you disagree, feel free to sue the USDA - you will pay for both lawyers!
If it is not “interstate commerce” how does the USDA get in the picture?
My guess is that the most recent military space module carried special tracking devices just for this sort of thing. This multibillion dollar device allowed the USDA access through receivers purchased for every USDA office throughout the United States, all staffed 24 hours with experts.
As you can see in this story the results of the tracking has brought in thousands of dollars, well worth the modest cost to taxpayers. One of the rabbits crossed state lines.
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