"He might have been, you know, cited," said Gerry Connolly, a county government employee in Virginia.
John Stossel has a column about a church with a soup kitchen which was nearly shut down because it didn't meet the county health department regulations. The regulations, of course, are intended for businesses which are selling food to people, but are still regularly applied to charitable organizations like the First Christian Church of Falls Church, Virginia.
Stossel points out that if it weren't for the soup kitchen, the homeless would be eating from dumpsters and garbage cans.
"They've never stopped me from eating out of a dumpster or a trash can," says James, an astute homeless man who understands Henry Hazlitt's "economics in one lesson," namely, look for the secondary results of government policy.
After this story hit the news, the county health department decided to exempt churches from the regulations. That's fine in the immediate, but it doesn't really solve the problem.
In a year or so, a new health inspector could decide it was his duty to shut down the soup kitchens which don't have a three-compartment sink. Then the homeless will be eating out of the dumpsters. Again.
Cross-posted at Common Sense Political Thought.
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