(Via The Agitator 2007-11-04.)

Every spring and every fall for the past two decades, Laura Soelberg has had a yard sale. She is 72 years old and she makes a little bit of money for herself selling her old things in the yard of her late mother’s house. Her friends and neighbors look forward to the event and familiar faces greet her every year. She does no advertising, collects no taxes, and has no employees. And now she faces up to 90 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Laura Soelberg’s fall garage sale began much as it had for 19 years: Friends parked in the church lot next to her mother’s Minnetonka house, greeted her with hugs and gifts, and began browsing.

But within half an hour, the authorities arrived to shut her down.

A police officer and two city workers ordered a halt to the Oct. 24 event, telling everyone to get out, shoppers said.

It was almost like they were breaking up an underage party, said Laurel Elhart, a Minnetonka resident who had attended the sales for at least a dozen years.

Now Soelberg, 72, could face criminal charges — and if convicted, up to 90 days in jail, a $1,000 fine and a year of probation.

The city considers Soelberg’s yard sales a zoning violation, in part because, while the Deephaven resident owns the house, she does not live in it.

Soelberg looks upon her twice-a-year sales as a tradition she started with her mother in the 1980s and merely continued at her mother’s home after her mother’s death in the late ’90s.

I don’t understand. This is such a minor, little thing, she said. Everyone likes a garage sale.

Before each sale, which generally runs four days, Soelberg sends out reminder postcards to those who request them and gives the neighbors a heads up. Andy Martin, who lives next door, wrote a letter to the city in support of Soelberg, saying that his family is probably the most impacted of anyone by her sale. But her events, in contrast to others he’s seen in the city, are infrequent.

Before you sanction her, you would need to sanction many others, Martin wrote.

Yvonne Brown, who has known Soelberg for 20 years, arrived two hours after the authorities did on Oct. 24 and found the few people still there had stunned looks on their faces. It was like the Gestapo had just come and left, she said.

I couldn’t believe it. There are garage sales all over all the neighborhoods. Why this one?

But the city has raised another question: Are Soelberg’s events really garage sales?

In general, the city draws a legal distinction between a garage sale and a commercial venture, city planner Julie Wischnack said: The difference is whether someone is utilizing the sale for an income-generating venture. Is it truly trying to get rid of items around the house? Or is it a commercial operation?

… Her friends/customers, as she calls them, have voiced support for her in letters and a petition. Elhart said most of the shoppers are acquaintances — middle-aged and elderly women who have met at the sales over the years. And most were shocked by the police invasion. It’s odd that it’s been going on for so long and now, all of a sudden, it’s an issue, Elhart said.

—Jenna Ross, Minneapolis Star Tribune (2007-11-02): When is a yard sale not a yard sale?

So there you have it. City cops busted up an peaceful neighborhood yard sale and now they are threatening a 72 year old woman with jail and a $1,000 fine because she might be making a little extra to support herself through yard sales, without first going through the red tape and expense for a city business license. Also because there’s a zoning code, and the peace and quiet of the neighborhood needs to be protected whether her neighbors care or not. If the city government weren’t there to butt in and hassle Laura Soelberg, her happy neighbors, and her willing customers, who would? Without those zoning and business license regulations, just what would save quiet Minnesota neighborhoods from the rapacity of unfettered flea markets?

Bureaucratic rationality, n.: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy without permission.

First the IRS ate your Christmas turkey. Now they are coming to crush your childhood dreams, too.

(Via Technology Liberation Front 2007-01-29.)

From Tom Tomorrow 1995-05-24: Militias.

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — Brian Emmett’s childhood fantasy came true when he won a free trip to outer space.

But the 31-year-old was crushed when he had to cancel his reservation because of Uncle Sam.

Emmett won his ticket to the stars in a 2005 sweepstakes by Oracle Corp., in which he answered a series of online questions on Java computer code.

He became an instant celebrity, giving media interviews and appearing on stage at Oracle’s trade show.

For the self-described space buff who has attended space camp and watched shuttle launches from Kennedy Space Center, it seemed like a chance to become an astronaut on a dime.

Then reality hit. After some number-crunching, Emmett realized he would have to report the $138,000 galactic joy ride as income and owe $25,000 in taxes.

Unwilling to sink into debt, the software consultant from the San Francisco Bay area gave up his seat.

There was definitely a period of mourning. I was totally crestfallen, Emmett said. Everything you had hoped for as a kid sort of evaporates in front of you.

—CNN.com 2007-01-29: Uncle Sam spoils dream trip to space

Normally you would think that winning a contest would be the only way that people other than the hyper-rich might have a chance to experience space tourism in the near future; right now the cash price of a space trip is prohibitiely expensive for anyone else. So prohibitively expensive that just paying the tax on that much income would be prohibitively expensive for anyone else, too.

But if the tax bureaucrats didn’t make sure that you pay for your once-in-a-lifetime chance a trip to the stars, at a rate assessed according to the current, prohibitively expensive cash value of that trip, then who would? Best to keep the rabble away from a chance at being astronauts anyway; hopes and dreams can be dangerous things.

Bureaucratic rationality, n. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy without permission.

(Link thanks to Freedom Democrats 2006-04-03.)

With apologies to Max Weber and H. L. Mencken.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind., March 29 — Angela Hendrix-Petry gave birth to her daughter Chloe by candlelight in her bedroom here in the early morning of March 12, with a thunderstorm raging outside and her family and midwife huddled around her.

It was the most cozy, lovely, lush experience, Ms. Hendrix-Petry said.

According to Indiana law, though, the midwife who assisted Ms. Hendrix-Petry, Mary Helen Ayres, committed a felony punishable by up to eight years in prison. Ms. Ayres was, according to the state, practicing medicine and midwifery without a license.

Doctors, legislators and prosecutors in Indiana and in the nine other states with laws prohibiting midwifery by people other than doctors and nurses say home births supervised by midwives present grave and unacceptable medical risks. Nurse-midwives in Indiana are permitted to deliver babies at home, but most work in hospitals.

Midwives see it differently. They say the ability of women to choose to give birth at home is under assault from a medical establishment dominated by men who, for reasons of money and status, resent a centuries-old tradition that long ago anticipated the concerns of modern feminism.

Chloe Hendrix-Petry’s birth has not given rise to criminal charges, but a prosecution against another midwife, Jennifer Williams, is pending in Shelbyville, Ind. It was prompted by the death of a baby named Oliver Meredith that Ms. Williams delivered in June. But she is not charged with causing or contributing to Oliver’s death.

… According to an affidavit filed by Rick Isgrigg, an investigator with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department, Ms. Williams conducted a dozen prenatal examinations on Oliver’s mother, Kristi Jo Meredith; monitored the fetal heart rate during labor; made a surgical incision known as an episiotomy when she detected fetal distress; performed frantic CPR on the baby when he emerged; and sutured the incision afterward. Ms. Williams charged the Merediths $1,550.

… Oliver Meredith’s parents have showed little enthusiasm for the prosecution, people on both sides of the case said. It’s not like they’re knocking down our doors to pursue the matter, Mr. Apsley acknowledged. They just want to get on with their lives.

—A. J. Mast, The New York Times (2006-04-03): Prosecution of Midwife Casts Light on Home Births

Here we have state prosecutors barging in punish a woman for providing responsible medical care to a willing patient who apparently isn’t interested in prosecuting her for anything in connection with a stillbirth which not even the state or the AMA alleges to have been her fault. Why? Because she dared to help willing mothers give birth without a permission slip from the state government or the doctors’ guild, and because it’s apparently a compelling state interest for guild rules to be enforced and all births to be properly institutionalized. If the state doesn’t protect women from freely deciding to have a cozy, lovely, lush experience giving birth at home, with the help of a midwife whom they’ve selected, after nine months of due consideration, who will?

But wait, there’s more. Here’s the Loyal Opposition, with their solution to the problem:

Peggy Welch, a Democratic state representative in Bloomington, has introduced legislation in Indiana to recognize and regulate lay midwives. She said the issue boiled down to choice and safety.

—A. J. Mast, The New York Times (2006-04-03): Prosecution of Midwife Casts Light on Home Births

… because I guess the problem here is that the government’s enforcement of Birth Guild rules doesn’t extend far enough. Without the government to tell women whom they can choose to help them give birth, or to lock up midwives who haven’t been duly approved in triplicate by the proper authorities, how in the world would we protect choice and safety?

Bureaucratic rationality, n.: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may have something good in their life without your authorization.

With apologies to Max Weber and H. L. Mencken.

IN NOVEMBER 2004, LUCY WIGHTMAN BEGAN RECEIVING anonymous e-mails that threatened to unravel the life she had crafted as a psychologist in two affluent Boston suburbs. It was, by all accounts, a good life. Her practice, South Shore Psychology Associates, was thriving, with an office first in Hingham, then in Norwell. In addition to her adult clients, children came after school, referred by pediatricians, school counselors, and fellow psychologists. She was liked in part because she was more laid-back than your typical psychologist. She didn’t wear makeup, and dressed in flowing skirts and turtleneck sweaters during her meetings with patients. Often her dog, Perry, was by her side. My daughter, says one Braintree mother, fell in love with her at first sight.

… LUCY WIGHTMAN USED TO BE KNOWN AS PRINCESS CHEYENNE, a stage name she was given, she says, by a strip-club owner. Back in the 1970s and ’80s, she welcomed notoriety, but that kind of attention was not going to be as good for her new career. In early 2005, three months after Wightman received the first threats, Princess Cheyenne was back in the news, her story broadcast on Fox 25 Undercover, as the e-mail writer had promised. Three days later, the state Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation announced that investigators were trying to determine if Wightman, in presenting herself as a psychologist, had broken the law.

Then, on October 6, the state attorney general’s office and a Suffolk County grand jury came down hard. Wightman was indicted on 26 counts of felony larceny, six counts of filing false health-care claims, six counts of insurance fraud, and one count of practicing psychology without a license. Michael Goldberg, the president of the Massachusetts Psychological Association and a psychologist in Norwood, compares it to a surgeon operating without a medical license.

… When Al Deluca, 38, began seeing Wightman in the summer of 2003 to talk about his marital problems, he says Wightman told him not to file an insurance claim because she was not licensed. Many patients, however, believed that she was. The word psychology was in her business name, and that, according to Eric Harris, a lawyer for the Massachusetts Psychological Association, is enough to put an unlicensed practitioner in violation of the law. Her e-mail address is Dr. Wightman. Her billing statements are printed with Lucy Wightman, Ph.D.

… While a person can legally practice psychotherapy without a license in Massachusetts, state law requires that psychologists have a degree in psychology from a state-recognized doctoral program and that they be licensed with the state Division of Professional Licensure. Licensed psychologists must also have two years of supervised training. They must take specific courses, pass an exam, and meet continuing-education standards long after they have tacked their degrees to the wall.

… “I HAVE A FULL CASE LOAD RIGHT NOW,” WIGHTMAN E-MAILED IN mid-November. She was talking about her practice, still running and apparently still prospering. The name has changed. It’s now called South Shore Psychotherapy, a notable distinction legally. The people who come to see her don’t care what she calls herself. She made a mistake, I think, in using the word psychology in her business name. But I don’t think what she did warrants all the attention and all the charges that have been levied against her, Al Deluca says. I think Lucy is being used. If this whole thing about her being a stripper had never come out, then this would have died.

—Keith O’Brien, The Boston Globe (2006-01-22): Exposed

(Link thanks to Lori Leibovich @ Broadsheet (2006-01-27).)

If we didn’t have the State to enforce guild rules and save us all from the dire threat of people calling themselves psychologists instead of psychotherapists without a permission slip, who would? If the government won’t stand up to keep people from suffering unauthorized conversations about their problems with a smart, warm, laid-back adviser that they like to talk to, then who will?

Bureaucratic rationality, n.: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may have something good in their life without permission.

Two deploying soldiers and a concerned mother reported Friday afternoon that the US Army appears to be singling out soldiers who have purchased Pinnacle’s Dragon Skin Body Armor for special treatment. The soldiers, who are currently staging for combat operations from a secret location, reported that their commander told them if they were wearing Pinnacle Dragon Skin and were killed their beneficiaries might not receive the death benefits from their $400,000 SGLI life insurance policies. The soldiers were ordered to leave their privately purchased body armor at home or face the possibility of both losing their life insurance benefit and facing disciplinary action.

… On Saturday morning a soldier affected by the order reported to DefenseWatch that the directive specified that all commercially available body armor was prohibited. The soldier said the order came down Friday morning from Headquarters, United States Special Operations Command (HQ, USSOCOM), located at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida. It arrived unexpectedly while his unit was preparing to deploy on combat operations. The soldier said the order was deeply disturbing to many of the men who had used their own money to purchase Dragon Skin because it will affect both their mobility and ballistic protection.

We have to be able to move. It (Dragon Skin) is heavy, but it is made so we have mobility and the best ballistic protection out there. This is crazy. And they are threatening us with our benefits if we don’t comply. he said.

… Recently Dragon Skin became an item of contention between proponents of the Interceptor OTV body armor generally issued to all service members deploying in combat theaters and its growing legion of critics. Critics of the Interceptor OTV system say it is ineffective and inferior to Dragon Skin, as well as several other commercially available body armor systems on the market. Last week DefenseWatch released a secret Marine Corps report that determined that 80% of the 401 Marines killed in Iraq between April 2004 and June 2005 might have been saved if the Interceptor OTV body armor they were wearing was more effective. The Army has declined to comment on the report because doing so could aid the enemy, an Army spokesman has repeatedly said.

… One of the soldiers who lost his coveted Dragon Skin is a veteran operator. He reported that his commander expressed deep regret upon issuing his orders directing him to leave his Dragon Skin body armor behind. The commander reportedly told his subordinates that he had no choice because the orders came from very high up and had to be enforced, the soldier said. Another soldier’s story was corroborated by his mother, who helped defray the $6,000 cost of buying the Dragon Skin, she said.

The mother of the soldier, who hails from the Providence, Rhode Island area, said she helped pay for the Dragon Skin as a Christmas present because her son told her it was so much better than the Interceptor OTV they expected to be issued when arriving in country for a combat tour.

He didn’t want to use that other stuff, she said. He told me that if anything happened to him I am supposed to raise hell.

… Currently nine US generals stationed in Afghanistan are reportedly wearing Pinnacle Dragon Skin body armor, according to company spokesman Paul Chopra. Chopra, a retired Army chief warrant officer and 20+-year pilot in the famed 160th Nightstalkers Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), said his company was merely told the generals wanted to evaluate the body armor in a combat environment. Chopra said he did not know the names of the general officers wearing the Dragon Skin.

Pinnacle claims more than 3,000 soldiers and civilians stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan are wearing Dragon Skin body armor, Chopra said. Several months ago DefenseWatch began receiving anecdotal reports from individual soldiers that they were being forced to remove all non-issue gear while in theater, including Dragon Skin body armor, boots, and various kinds of non-issue ancillary equipment.

—Nathaniel R. Helms, DefenseWatch (2006-01-14): Army Orders Soldiers to Shed Dragon Skin or Lose SGLI Death Benefits (via TruthOut)

Once again, with apologies to Max Weber, H. L. Mencken, and myself, I think our theoretical lexicon needs revision. Thus:

Bureaucratic rationality, n.: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may have something good in their life without authorization.