Young Girls BANNED From Selling Girl Scout Cookies On Their Own Front Lawn

Once upon a time in America, if you were a couple of little girls and you wanted to sell lemonade or girl scout cookies at a little stand in front of your home nobody would give you any problems.  In fact, most of the people passing by would have smiled and would have seen it as a sign of hope that the next generation was being so industrious.  Well, that is not the way that it works anymore.  Today, all across America nightmarish control freaks are seeking to micromanage every single aspect of our lives.  That includes banning young girls from selling girl scout cookies on their own front lawns.  Yes, you read that correctly.  In Missouri of all places, two young girls named Abigail and Caitlin Mills were recently taught a lesson on how to be good citizens in the emerging totalitarian control grid going up all over the United States.  After a complaint from a neighbor, the city of Hazelwood cracked down on the two girls and told them that they must shut down the girl scout cookie stand that they had been operating in their front yard.

So were the girls doing anything wrong?  No.  There are very few things that are more "American" than selling girl scout cookies.  In fact, they had been operating the stand during this time of the year for the past 6 years.  It had become a community tradition.  But according to the city of Hazelwood, the girls were violating a city ordinance that bans "the sale of commodities" from a home.

You see, the truth is that there is a "rule" for almost everything today.  In fact, we have so many "laws" and "rules" and "regulations" in the United States that it is literally impossible to be in compliance with all of them.

However, this incident with the girl scout cookies would probably never have exploded if a nearby neighbor had not snitched on the girls.  Apparently the neighbor did not like the fact that the extra people coming around to buy girl scout cookies made her dogs bark.

This is what America is turning into.  We are all being taught to be suspicious of each other and to "inform" on our neighbors.  Instead of living in the land of the free and the home of the brave, we are suddenly living in a country that more closely resembles East Germany or Soviet Russia with each passing day.

Well, fortunately this story had somewhat of a happy ending.  Philanthropist George "The Shoeman" Hutchins bought the remaining 36 boxes of girl scout cookies that the girls were trying to sell.  He even had the girls deliver one of the boxes to the angry neighbor for free.  But even that turned into a bit of an incident.  A local news report about the story put it this way....

After "The Shoeman" bought the remaining cookies he wrote a special note on one box for the neighbor who had the stand shut down.  The box of Shortbread Cookies read, "Have a nice day.  Sorry for all your troubles."  Mills says the neighbor refused the cookies when her daughters brought it by.  But the girls eventually convinced the woman to give the cookies to a child in the home.

But that is not the end of the story.

The city of Hazelwood is not backing off.  They still insist that those girls (and all other girls in the city) will be banned from selling girl scout cookies on their front lawns from now on.

That is life in America today.  We are taught that we should never try to do anything on our own.  Instead, we are all encouraged to just give up, work for the system, and when we are not working for the system or shopping at their stores we are to stay in our homes watching the endless hours of "programming" on television.

In the old days, the streets of America were teeming with life.

In America today, how many people do you see out and about enjoying life in our neighborhoods?

The country that so many of us once loved is dying.

Unfortunately, the incident in Hazelwood, Missouri is far from an isolated incident.

For example, last year a 7 year old little girl in Tulare, California had set up a little lemonade stand because she wanted to raise money so that she could go to Disneyland.

How could anyone have a problem with that?

Well, apparently the authorities had a problem with that.  They came in and shut her down cold because she did not have a proper business permit.

That is the way it is in America today.  You have to have a "permit" to do almost anything.

Sadly, a growing number of Americans are buying into the idea that life will be better when we allow government to micromanage our lives.

One example of this that I wrote about recently is the new federal regulations regarding light bulbs.  The old light bulbs that have worked so wonderfully are being totally banned and are being replaced by new bulbs that are more expensive, that are more dangerous for children and that are actually worse for the environment.  The following is a brief excerpt from an article I recently posted about these ridiculous new light bulbs....

Back in 2007, President George W. Bush signed a law that mandates the following: "Manufacturers will no longer be able to make the 100-watt Thomas Edison bulb after Jan. 1, 2012, followed by the 75-watt version in Jan. 2013, and the the 60- and 40-watt bulbs in Jan. 2014."  Yes, you read that correctly.  Federal bureaucrats are running wild and the nanny state has decided that you are simply not going to have the choice to buy traditional light bulbs anymore.  So why the change?  Incandescent light bulbs have not been proven to be unsafe and consumers still want to buy them.  The new CFL (compact fluorescent lamp) light bulbs are more expensive and are actually worse for the environment.  So why was this law passed?  The feds passed it because they decided that existing light bulbs use too much energy and have too large of a "carbon footprint".  Instead of giving us choices and attempting to persuade us to change, the federal government is ramming their will down our throats.

Now that the government has banned us from selling girl scout cookies in our front yards and is telling us what kind of light bulbs we have to buy, what is next?

Will they arrest us for not recycling properly?

Don't laugh - the city of Cleveland has announced plans to have "trash supervisors" go snooping through trash cans to ensure that people are actually recycling according to city guidelines.

Will they arrest us for smoking in a public park?

Don't laugh - in New York City they will.  The New York City Council has voted to ban smoking in all public parks and on all public beaches.

Will they arrest us for trying to do good to others?

Don't laugh - in Houston, Texas a couple named Bobby and Amanda Herring that had been feeding homeless people for over a year has been banned by the city from doing so.  They were told that they needed a permit to feed the homeless and city officials said that they are not going to get one.

Sadly, the American people do not really speak up much about these ridiculous regulations on the local level.  Instead, we all just keep going back to the ballot boxes and keep sending the same control freaks back into positions of power over and over again.

If there is not a major shift in the political culture of this country, the crazy regulations are just going to become more and more suffocating.

Someday will we need a "permit" or a "license" to take a breath of fresh air?  Will we need a "permit" or a "license" to step outside of our homes?

Wake up and take a look around you.  Our society is being turned into one big prison grid.

Is this really how you want to live?

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How to Protect Against Selling with Options

Listen up, folks; stock markets have had a great run. There may be more upside moves ahead of us, as the economy continues to improve, but this is not a time to be aggressive given the turmoil in the Middle East and higher oil prices. You have made some nice gains and my investment advice to you is to take some profits off the table.

At this juncture, stock markets are pausing and showing some uncertainty. And, while I do not pretend to have a crystal ball, I do firmly believe in adopting strong risk management to protect your investments and hard-earned capital. This is my best stock market advice.

The last thing you want is to watch your gains disappear.

One of my favorite strategies to protect investment gains is the use of put options as a defensive hedge against market weakness. This strategy is called a protective hedge. Don’t be scared by the name or the fact that it employs derivatives, as the strategy is straightforward.

Under this scenario, investors may be somewhat bearish or uncertain and want to protect the current gains against a downside move in the stock or the market with the use of index put options.

For those of you not familiar with options, a buyer of a put option contract buys the right, but not the obligation, to sell a specific number of the underlying instrument at the strike or exercise price for a specified length of time until the expiry date of the contract. After the expiry date, the particular option expires worthless and any responsibility is eliminated.

The buyer of the put option pays a premium to the writer of the option, who gets compensated for assuming the risk of exercise. The writer of the put option is obligated to buy the stock from the holder of the put should it be exercised by the expiry date.

For the writer of the put option, the amount of premium received for assuming the risk is generally directly correlated to the volatility of the stock and market. The more volatile the stock, the higher the premium paid for the option. And low volatility translates into lower premiums.

You can buy puts for stocks and sectors. If your portfolio is heavy in technology, you can buy puts on the NASDAQ. Or let’s say you have benefited from the run-up in gold and silver to record historical highs; then a strategy may be to buy put options on The Philadelphia Gold & Silver Index, which tracks 10 major gold and silver stocks.

If you are heavily weighted in technology, you can buy put options in PowerShares ETFs (NASDAQA/QQQQ), a heavily traded put used for defensive purposes.

It’s that easy. Just take a look at the various indices that closely reflect your holdings or put options on individual stocks that you may have a large position in.

In this market, safety is the key.

George is a Senior Editor at Lombardi Financial, and has been involved in analyzing the stock markets for two decades where he employs both fundamental and technical analysis. His overall market timing and trading knowledge is extensive in the areas of small-cap research and option trading. George is the editor of several of Lombardi’s popular financial newsletters, including The China Letter, Special Situations, and Obscene Profits, among others. His trading advice on stocks and options is also found on his daily trading site, Daily Profits. He has written technical and fundamental columns for numerous stock market news web sites, and he is the author of Quick Wealth Options Strategy and Mastering 7 Proven Options Strategies. Prior to starting with Lombardi Financial, George was employed as a financial analyst with Globe Information Services.

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