Posted on 08/12/2012 7:55:55 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Phoenix officials have until next Friday to apologize for the actions of a code enforcement officer after he stopped Christians from giving out water bottles to city festival participants on a day that reached 112 degrees.
A legal team that fights for religious and civil rights is also demanding a commitment that the city will no longer interfere with the Christian group’s acts of charity.
According to a letter to the city from the Rutherford Institute, the case developed in July during a “First Friday” festival when Dana Crow-Smith was giving “free bottles of cold water to passersby” on the public sidewalk “as a means of exercising her Christian beliefs.”
She “was moved” to offer the refreshment “to people at the festival who were braving the desert’s scorching 112-degree heat,” said the letter to city attorney Gary Verburg.
“According to Ms. Crow-Smith, her group was approached by Neighborhood Preservation Inspector Dwayne Grierson, who told them that they were violating the Phoenix City Code by giving away water without a vendor’s permit,” the letter explains. In fact, Grierson insisted that giving water away was “prohibited.”
The ban, however, violates several significant precedents, such as the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and Arizona’s Freedom of Religious Exercise Act, Rutherford officials wrote.
A woman in the city attorney’s office declined to respond to WND’s questions, and phone calls requesting comment from the city’s public information office were not returned at the time of this report.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
I wonder who represents Phoenix up Washington?
Wow. I can only imagine Comrade “Neighborhood Preservation Inspector” Grierson’s response if this poor lady had been running a lemonade stand.
Dwayne Grierson needs a good old fashioned righteous ass kicking. Just saying.
OK to give to illegals though, [sigh]
Things like this just make you want to bang your head against the keyboard.
If private individuals are allowed to give anything away, it will keep the government from saying they have to take our money away in order so they can be the ones who appear to give out freebies.
People helping other people is competition for what the government thinks should be the job they alone are allowed to fill: to be the sole provider of everything, as if they were God.
It probably says you can obtain water with the permission of the government's water authority for your own personal use or that of members of your household ~ but you can't pass it on to someone else who doesn't have a permit.
Like Oregon, or Colorado, or Texas, or New Mexico (as mentioned) you need a permit to even give it away ~ 'cause it's not really yours to give away, only to use.
Again, the first scene in Lawrence of Arabia has Omar Sharif shooting a couple of guys to death for giving his, Omar's water, away to their sheep!
Everyone in the Rub Al Khalid applauded the action ~ presumably shocking to Westerners who live in well watered environs.
Can all you people grow up?
Phoenix is strict with vendors. Lots of food poisoning from the heat and illegal aliens with stolen shopping carts walking the neighborhoods selling odd things.
He’s just some little person trying to do his job.
He doesn’t have the authority to NOT enforce the law. That takes an elected politician!
Render unto God what is God's, and render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. Sometimes Caesar is due an ass kicking.
Thanks for chiming in with the old “He was only following orders” shtick. That worked out well at Nuremberg.
He’s a little power crazed martinet throwing his weight around making people miserable because he can
nd)Giving something away is not "vending".
If they think giving someone a drink of water makes you a vendor, they have problems at a much more fundamental level than that.
Can we grow up?
How about you GROW SOME first.
(Pssst!) Government does think it is God (in a whisper)
How dare you peons give water to the thirsty without our say-so?
Nanny State PING!
Perhaps they should have said that they were not passing out water but trying to promote the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide. Therefore, it’s not a selling issue but an environmental one.
Sounds like she was giving out bottled water. That’s something you buy from a store, rather than collecting it from your sink.
“Things like this just make you want to bang your head against the keyboard.”
No, don’t hurt yourself or damage that innocent keyboard.
Yes, I’m familiar with water rights & fights in desert country. But that gave this petty Gestapo tyrant no moral authority to do what he did.
How about “Look, lady, thank you for your kindness to others in this awful heat. But you need a permit. No, I’m not shutting you down, if anyone asks me I’ll tell them you were giving away bottled water with unbroken seals and that’s OK. But next time please go to city hall & get your permit. I might get in trouble for this but at least I’m not some kind of jerk.”
Too much to hope for.........?
Maybe Phoenix should turn illegals over to Sheriff Joe and have them deported.
was approached by Neighborhood Preservation Inspector Dwayne Grierson, who told them that
WTF? Neighborhood Preservation Officer?? I thought the article was about Arizona not China.........
When regulations get down to that level of detail, there are simply too many regulations. Some things should be left alone simply for reasons of pure common sense.
This level of intrusion should not be treated as an isolated incident because, aside from the poignant subject matter, it’s something that happens every day in one way or another.
Does anyone know the total number of regulations each and every one of us are required to follow? Could they even be counted? We all beat our nose against City Hall, the State, the Feds and now the UN is coming.
This is a symptom of a level of government overreach that has been a long time in the making. It’s going to be a nightmare if we don’t tame it. And soon.
But it’s fine to put water stations out for illegals. Something isn’t right.
We Conservatives need to take back our local governments and remove all of the bureaucratic, heavy handed, freedom diminishing, pocket draining rulings.
WTF? Neighborhood Preservation Officer??
exactly, WTH is a Neighborhood Preservation Officer? No wonder Cities are broke; they are busy staffing these worthless feel good positions
Along with the people who decided there should be such a thing as a *Neighborhood Preservation Inspector*. Just saying.
No, Western water rights have NOTHING to do with the interstate commerce of retail water bottles. When you buy a bottle of water sold at retail, that is a commodity you own and “Western water rights” have absolutely nothing to do with the regulation of bottles or crates or cases of bottled water. Nothing.
Exactly!
It’s obviously time to start breaking the law w/r/t giving people water if you want to. If you are not selling anything you don’t need a vendor’s permit.
Feds would say it’s required.
Sure he can. He can choose not to pay attention to a certain situation. Happens all the time. Too busy, already working somewhere else. They can prioritize what they will allocate time on and what they will let slide.
Who knew a bunch of fatherless teenage boys posted on FR, LOL.
Well since you posted to *all* of us, just keep defending comrade Dwayne Grierson of the Neighborhood Preservation Police, I'm sure the politburo approves of your efforts Little Natasha.
Got to help guard *The Peoples* water.
Many moons ago, I worked for the government. I was not a mindless robot. If you were a mindless robot, and did what made no sense to do standing on some regulation, you would not go far.
Christians passing out water to people at a festival in that extreme heat, would have been over looked by anyone with half a brain - even a government worker. They have an IQ cut off at 80 in Pheonix?
Yes, it does.
And sadly, a lot of people who call themselves Christians can’t seem to tell the difference between the real God and the wannabe.
So even if you buy a bottle of water it’s not yours but the government’s?
What if you buy bottled water in a different state, that has no water rights law? Can that water actually be yours and not the government’s?
Does the government own everybody’s sweat and urine too, or could that be purified down for drinking purposes?
Fatherless teenage boys?
That has to be one of the most classless comments I’ve ever seen on Free Republic.
I looked at your profile, and it seems to me that what you’re saying here doesn’t fit what is in your profile, which talks about personal morality. Recognizing the problem with this nanny-state regulation that defines EVERYTHING freely given from one person to another as “commerce” isn’t a matter of “growing up”; it’s a matter of recognizing that the government wants to FORBID you from being able to live a personally moral life.
When government does not allow you to give a cup of cold water to someone thirsty, just out of the goodness of your heart, make no mistake - they are not going to allow there to BE any goodness in your heart that finds a way to express itself. Want to smile at somebody? That’s commerce. Want to talk to somebody? That’s commerce. Want to give a hug? That’s commerce? When government gets to that level of control, there is no such thing as freedom. Everybody is a robot of the government.
And if recognizing that makes somebody a “fatherless teenage boy”, then I’d say they’re better off than either you or the children that you might be teaching to accept the idol of government, trying to do what only God has the authority to do.
Giving away sealed bottles of water doesn't fall into those areas, though, does it? If she had a giant cooler and was passing out cups of water from that, it might equate, but presumably, bottled water has already been approved by the regulators.
Who knew the posting guidlines tell you not to engage in personal attacks and insults?
When they came into the possession of the United States they did so with very little in the way of pre-existing claims ~ a few hundred unpopulated Spanish or Mexican land grants of course ~ i can talk all day about how unfair the law has been to some of us when it comes to fully recovering property ~ but they also came in with Spanish origin water rights law in place.
These laws were developed over thousands of years in other semi-arid regions. To a degree they are very simple ~ if you find a spot where you can divert water to your use, and nobody else has done that before ~ upstream or downstream ~ then you can use that water and the guy upstream can't divert it to his use and deprive you of water!n The guy downstream can't use it either!
It doesn't matter who owns the land upstream or downstream ~ the rights to the water are dealt with separately under their own set of laws ~ and land is dealt with under its set of laws. Prior-appropriation is one of the terms you'll find has great meaning in dealing with riparian rights.
There are thousands of lawyers in America who make a good living helping settle disputes regarding water rights.
Inasmuch as government can sell and issue title to land ~ government can also sell, loan, regulate and issue title to water ~ even the drops that fall from the sky.
For the most part our Eastern states have enough water on hand that all comers can divert water for their use ~ after all, they'll have to put it somewhere won't they. The water rights laws are entirely different there, but like the Western states government sold land, with or without water and mineral rights, and your title to the land may or may not include water and/or mineral rights ~ but it's simply invisible to you because of the amount of rainfall you get.
In this case someone secured some water under the laws appropriate to that area and then started giving it away to others. If the law gave him the right to drink it himself that's one thing, but if the law didn't give him the right to give it away that's another.
Since when? The law has always been pretty clear on the issue. Not just your possession of water but also your use of it has been subject to intense regulation by law in our Western states.
The only question is whether or not this festival took place under the jurisdiction of Arizona or the federal government.
The water rights issues follow the same pattern ~ which law prevails in this case.
So, up from the bad old days it's still a tough set of laws, but that's the way it is when you have a severe, permanent water shortage.
Bottled water that you buy?
By the same token, a person would have to have “mineral rights” in order to be able to take food they’ve grown on their own land to a potluck. Or actually, they’d have to have mineral rights to take ANY food to a potluck. Or to serve food to any guests at their home.
I hear what you’re saying about the scarcity of water; that’s becoming quite an issue even here in Nebraska with rivers and creeks drying up this year. But if this includes commodities you buy from an outside region and it’s taken to its logical conclusion, the only people who can even eat or drink in those states are people who own land and have land and water rights. How can renters have any right to eat or drink? How can anybody who visits those states but doesn’t live there?
“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted and you create a nation of law-breakers — and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system.”
Quote by: Ayn Rand
(1905-1982) Author
Source: “Atlas Shrugged”, Part II, Chapter 3
“Who knew a bunch of fatherless teenage boys posted on FR, LOL.”
I originally thought that you simply forgot the sarc tag on your original post that supported the government drone. Now, I know you were not!
I am astounded that such a long time FReeper called their fellow FReepers BASTARDS for simply objecting to nanny statism.
I don’t care how cute you think you are for trying to hide the vulgar reference, you simply called FReepers BASTARDS!
With the recent purging that has been occuring, I’d nominate you as a prime candidate. However, I have never hit the abuse button and will refrain from doing so again. I’ll hope to see an apology later in the thread and chalk it up to you having a bad day.
Thanks for the ping!
Giving away sealed bottles of water is not “vending” and cannot expose anyone to disease. Moreover, having at one time lived in that city, I know it as a place where giving away bottled water at public events is a routine safety measure.
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