Utah woman jailed for selling flowers from her home
February 06, 2011
Translation by Autumnson Blog
A day once existed in America when a woman like Dena Long-Christensen, 44, would have been celebrated, admired for her “can-do” spirit, and held up as a role model for others.
有這麼一天曾在美國，當一個女人像44歲的代納龍克里斯滕森，會已是很出名，欽佩她的“自力更生”精神，並高舉她為別人的楷模。
That day is sadly past. Now Long-Christensen—and others like her—are treated by the new America as criminals to be fined and jailed.
可悲的是那一天已成過去，現在龍克里斯滕森 - 和其他像她一樣的 - 都被新美國視為應處以罰款和監禁的罪犯。
她的罪行？
Her crime?
Dena Long-Christensen was discovered selling flowers from her home.
代納龍克里斯滕森被發現賣來自她家的花。
A struggling entrepreneur, Long-Christensen was unceremoniously trundled off to jail over a dispute with authorities who accused her of not having acquired the proper permits to start and operate her small business.
一位掙紥求全陷的企業家龍克里斯滕森，被毫不客氣地掟入監獄，為與當局的糾紛指控她沒有獲得合適的許可證，去開始和經營她的小生意。
In other words, she didn’t obtain the government’s permission to have her own business—any kind of business—in the first place.
換句話說，她在第一身沒有得到政府許可去有她自己的事業 - 任何種類的業務 。
自由人之地
Land of the free
Long-Christensen case is just one of the latest in a long string of cases of attacks on liberty and an oppressive government that is hamstringing people and eliminating choices until a once-free society will be bound within a straitjacket of rules, regulations, laws meant to limit instead of protect, social engineering schemes and a burgeoning, mindless bureaucracy that has become so overbearing that Franz Kafka himself would be shocked.
龍克里斯滕森案件僅是最新的其中一宗，在一長串對自由攻擊和暴虐政府的案件，政府切斷人民的筋和消除選擇，直到一個一度自由的社會必將被收緊在緊身衣的規則、法規、法律中，意味著限制而不是保護，社會工程計劃和一個新興、盲目的官僚機構已變得如此霸道，即卡夫卡自己也感到震驚。
Over the past decade outrageous episodes of innocent citizens’ encounters with authorities have filled daily newspapers. The 12-year old girl who was handcuffed because of eating a candy bar comes to mind, and so do dozens of other similar cases across the country.
Justice in America is fast vanishing replaced by civil courts that have become adept at interpreting laws in such a way to mutate them to their own advantage. Many of the legal machinations churned out by the people running such state-sponsored entities—such as the notorious “justice courts” in Utah—seem to exist mainly to confiscate, intimidate and generate as much cash as possible through fines and fees.
Real justice and common sense—if any—are side-effects.
荒唐、瘋狂的不公正
Wild, wild injustice
“Unfortunately, the ‘wild, wild West’ is alive and well in justice courts,” Kent Hart admitted to Utah’s KSL-TV. Hart is the executive director of the Utah Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys. He was one of the few the TV station news team could get a comment from as most were afraid of retribution or a political backlash from the authorities.
That’s how bad it’s become as the system of legal justice in the U.S. continues to slowly creep towards the type of justice meted out in the old Soviet Union.
Hart agrees that some cities and counties priorities are to generate revenue rather than concern themselves about defendants’ rights.
“Without checks and balances, we’re going to have abuses,” he told KSL-TV.
我們的國家出了問題
There’s something wrong with our countryDena Long-Christensen knows all about abuses. After being tossed into jail for selling flower baskets she shared a cell with career criminals. One cellmate of hers was charged with aggravated assault.
“Instead of being further in shock, it was like, there’s something wrong with our country,” she told the TV news crew.
“Fighting the city got me put in jail,” Long-Christensen asserted. “We were doing everything we could to comply with what we were told by planning and zoning.”
The small business woman and her husband were careful to conduct their growing business according to the dictates laid out by the West Jordan Planning & Zoning board in Salt Lake City, Utah. The board is another typical, top-heavy government entity designed to inhibit the creation of businesses and then make the ones that do overcome all the bureaucratic hurdles pay a price to stay in business.
In years past it was known as graft and blackmail. Mafia thugs were prosecuted for such behavior. Now such activities have been re-named “government.”
“We were not allowed to sell anything other than what we grew, except for once a month as a garage sale or bazaar,” she said.
How did America, who’s citizens built the country through innovation, risk-taking and starting small businesses, reach the point where the government decides who can and cannot have a business and how what the current rate is for the legal bribe to be “allowed” to start a business?
The bureaucrat who testified against Long-Christensen via an affidavit—the West Jordan business license coordinator Marsha Lancaster—testified she “personally observed the defendant selling hanging baskets out of her home.”
黑手黨高利貸息
Mafia vigorish
Such government malfeasance would have precluded some giant companies today from ever having existed. Many entrepreneurs decades ago literally started in kitchens and garages—Microsoft, for one and the telecommunications giant of the 1970s and 1980s, MCI.
None needed any government’s permission. Nor did they have to pay a Mafia-style “vigorish” to fend off the bureaucratic parasites.
When asked how it can be that a couple that was only making and selling legal products from their own property call fall into the categories of criminals—and worse, a 44-year old American who committed no serious crime could be locked up with dangerous felons—Hart responded, “The judges have basically unfettered use of the jails,” Hart said. “In other words, nonviolent people are being sent to jail where there are many violent people.”
The astonished investigative reporters from KSL-TV took it upon themselves to go back and dig up all the Salt Lake County Jail records for every individual incarcerated from 2004 through 2010. What they found was deeply disturbing.
狗散步、去坐牢
Walk a dog, go to jailThey report that although “…the vast majority of defendants who are sent to jail from municipal courts commit drug-related crimes, there are others who do go to jail for business license violations as well as other petty crimes such as jaywalking, lack of a dog license or having tinted windows.”
So the moral of the story is don’t get caught selling flowers while walking an unlicensed dog outside of a cross-walk after stepping out of your vehicle with tinted windows.
If you do, the justice system may well sentence you to life imprisonment.
http://island-adv.com/2011/02/utah-woman-jailed-for-selling-flowers-from-her-hom...
http://current.com/news/92963426_utah-woman-jailed-for-selling-flowers-from-her-home.htm
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