Selling Lemonade is Not a Crime!...At least, it Wasn't Back when Bush was President...

So I was out cruising the blogosphere this morning, in the Conservative Blog Ads that Gateway Pundit has in his sidebars, I found a link about the Lemonade stand shut down brouhaha. The "War on Lemonade Stands," it was called. That link led to another blog that was advertising a Lemonade Freedom Event. And that got me thinking.

Around here, it's common that one day a year kids set up stands and sell lemonade. Some of you may have heard of Lemonade Day. Around here, every spring, it's a big thing. Kids set up stands, and make lemonade, enter lemonade contests. Some kids even go beyond the lemonade and sell hot dogs and cookies.

So I was thinking and wondering, 'how long before some loony government official tries to put a stop to Lemonade Day?' and then it hit me like a ton of bricks.

Maybe some one has already said this, so I apologize if I'm plagiarizing. With Lemonade Day, kids are learning to be entrepreneurs. As I've pointed out, some kids around where I live sell more than just lemonade. I've heard it said that this teaches kids about profit margins and other SMALL BUSINESS things like that: How many hot dogs do you have to sell for what price before you've made a profit? And don't forget competition - if the customer thinks that the price for your lemonade is too high, then they can always go try another stand. (Interestingly, more often then not, I see lemonade sell for $0.50 a glass around here. I haven't figured out yet if this is due to inflation or if these kids are trying for exuberant profit margins.)

But anyway, sure, the lemonade stand shutdown is about money. The local governments want their money. (Greedy little buggers, aren't they?) But beyond that, what are lemonade stands teaching kids to do? They're teaching kids to about business; profit margin, expanding into other products, things like that.

What if that's what the government is trying to quash? Our president does not appreciate the private sector and his policy always give small businesses the short end of the stick. I don't have too difficult of a time imagining that he would love to see this Lemonade Day and all these Lemonade Stands go away.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it is just about money, and not about squashing small businesses. Maybe these are too many assumptions, and it's just greed that motivated the war on lemonade.

But what if I'm right?