>> Lemonade stands are supposed to come with lessons — about camaraderie, teamwork, entre­pre­neur­ship.

Or, if you are in an elegant swath of Montgomery County, outside the gates of Congressional Country Club and the U.S. Open, the all-American rite of passage might instead become a master class in government overreach and how officials can score some truly atrocious press.
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On Thursday, the first day of the [US]Open, a cameraman from WUSA (Channel 9) captured a county inspector attempting to shut down a roadside stand manned by a half-dozen adorable children. They didn’t have a vendor’s permit, the inspector informed the moms. The result? A $500 ticket.

By the time Rory McIlroy ended opening day at the top of the leader board, the county had backed down, canceled the fine and greenlighted the stand a few dozen feet away, down a side street. But the story of the original fine snowballed across the Web and airwaves Friday, eliciting outrage and amusement.

“Waterboard them!!!” wrote one Web commenter of the kids, who had planned to give half the proceeds to the fight against pediatric cancer.
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Isabella, 13, a big sister standing near Persimmon Tree Road and Country Club Drive in Bethesda on Friday, “just watching the littles” ... “In the first place, I don’t know how a 10-year-old could get a permit.”
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Jennifer Hughes, acting director for Montgomery’s Department of Permitting Services. “We were attempting to do what government is charged with doing, which is protecting communities and protecting the safety of people.”

Not that anyone else was seeing it that way. The vitriol, Hughes said, kept pouring into county e-mail boxes, with officials “being accused of being un-American, squelching children’s entrepreneurial spirit, just plain old, ‘You suck!’ ”
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Norman Augustine, former head of Lockheed Martin and the Red Cross, had helped his grandchildren build the wooden wagon-top stand sitting at the front of the tent, complete with a hand-drawn snowman poster, and he was the one who ended up with the nullified $500 fine. David Marriott, a member of the family behind the Bethesda-based hotel chain, and his wife, Carrie, were among the other adults who helped organize the renegade stand.

“You’re at the crime scene,” said Rene Augustine, a mom and retired lawyer. <<
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/montgomery-t...

Former head of Lockheed and Marriots. Heh. The county messed with the wrong people.

The silliest comment from the county was "The vendor laws “don’t distinguish whether it’s little kids selling lemonade or if it’s some adults doing it for profit,”. You'd think their brains could tell the difference. Other people certainly could.

arrete