Warrant Issued for Mother’s Arrest for Selling Homemade Tamales to Her Neighbors

tamalesBy Matt Agorist

In modern day police state, USA, exchanging goods and services is a crime unless the state gets their cut. So, even though a Carrollton mother was “stunned” to find a warrant issued for her arrest for selling tamales to her neighbors — it was to be expected.

This week, Dennise Cruz was shocked to receive a yellow postcard from the City of Carrollton stating that if she doesn’t immediately submit to their extortion demands, then she would be kidnapped and locked in a cage.

“That has to be wrong. I don’t have any tickets under my name. That’s just my first reaction. Never would have I thought, tamales,” said Cruz in an interview with CBS DFW. “To know that somebody can be arrested over that, that to me is unbelievable.”

The yellow ticket was a “warrant arrest notice” stemming from Cruz’ illegal activity a few months prior. Cruz, obviously a hardened criminal worthy of police action, decided to make her famous tamales and post them on the app Nextdoor for sale. Her neighbors loved them.

“It’s just so common. That’s why to me, I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal,” said Cruz.

However, because Cruz did not pay the state to operate this business, their procedure is to rob her under the threat of violence. She was hit with a $700 fine.

“When it hit me, I was like that is a lot of money,” said Cruz.

When Cruz called the city to protest her extortion, the clerk told her that someone reported her for not having a food permit. However, this is not likely as only the government would know such things.

“I don’t understand because if anything I would have rather them come to me first if they had any concerns,” said Cruz.

The city of Carrollton maintains that extorting Cruz is in the interest of the people. According to a city director, tamales are a danger to society. A director said a fine was issued and not a warning because tamales are considered “potentially hazardous food” due to the cooked corn and meat being used, according to CBS DFW.

This absurd arrest warrant comes on the heels of an equally asinine incident, also in Texas, in which two young girls had their lemonade stand shut down by local cops for not having the correct permit. The good news is that, like Cruz, the girls refused to roll over and opened their stand up again the next weekend.

Apparently, Texas officials take their motto Don’t Mess with Texas quite literally. Aside from threatening to arrest a young mother attempting to make ends meet by selling tamales and shutting down little girls’ lemonade stands, they’ll also throw you in a cage for having tall grass on your own property.

Don’t take our word for it, however. Ask 75-year-old Gerry Suttle, who was stunned when she received a call from the local police chief, informing her that she had a warrant issued for her arrest — because her grass was at a length not desirable for the state of Texas.

In April of last year, another Texas resident, Rick Yoes, was sentenced to 17 days in jail for the length of his grass.

And some folks still have the gall to call this country the Land of the Free. 

Matt Agorist is the co-founder of TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared. He is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world.


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101 Comments on "Warrant Issued for Mother’s Arrest for Selling Homemade Tamales to Her Neighbors"

  1. And the CLINTONS are walking free?!
    When the law no longer protects you from the corrupt, but protects the corrupt from you – you know your nation is doomed. -Ayn Rand

  2. Welkom to Amerika

    Oh, wait. ‘Nothing is wrong’. It’;s all a ‘conspiracy theory’, right?

    • Next the gov. will go after folks that barter with neighbors, etc. which has been going on for thousands of years, which I do quite often (yard work for cooking meals and swapping stuff.) Flea markets on weekends soon will be in trouble.

      • Yard sales are already in trouble as far as I am concerned. It is just WRONG when they can make you pay $17.00, like here, or any amount anywhere, for a damned permit to have permission to sell your own things you already paid for and paid taxes on.

  3. The free market hates competition, unless it’s regulated by the state, then its called capitalism. She needs to pay the fine, get a business license, call the health inspector, fire marshall, and the irs, so she PAYS HER FAIR SHARE!!!

    Think of all the benefits that can be given to the poor with the money she owes the people!

  4. Land of the Fee.

  5. I would bet a local restaurant called on her. I will never spend a dime in the City of Carrolton.

  6. In my best world war II broken english with a German accent…

    Zee didn’t hav ver papas zin orda!!! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!

  7. The US > The craziest country on the planet! Just one huge insane asylum!

    • I beg your pardon, but Canada is the most bizarre country you will ever step into…no kidding. We are supposed to be celebrating our 150 anniversary as a democracy and yet our largest Province (Ontario) secretly passed two laws that effectively eliminate all competition to the drug companies…and few people care. Worse, our Competition Bureau said they can’t do anything about legislated anti-competition behavior…

      • Game of Thrones

      • Thank you for letting us know this is in CANADA. I’m in USA reading this and the author doesn’t say what state, province or even country this is in.
        Secondly, (and I really hate saying this) but it sounds as if Canada is becoming more like USA all the time. People are apathetic, while our country is being stolen from us.

        • In spite of being run by the red Queen, their own genocide against the red man, Canada hosted many of my friends’ stays there during the illegal/immoral war in ‘nam, but you’re right. the synagogue has rotted that nation as badly (or worse, you go to prison there for not believing the hallow’dcaust), as they have ours.

      • Destroyed from within and from abroad. The UK still rules Canada and the Rothschilds own the UK as well as there point man George Soros. This is the group that controls your lives.Literally devils. The same slimeballs that run the USA.

    • Just keep buying sh!t. There’s a method to their madness.

  8. Cut taxes on the rich and then soak the poor
    to feed the coffers for municipal services.

  9. Jesus H Christ, there is a good reason to protect the public from unlicensed vendors. There’s minimum standards that need to be met, and yes tamales are PHF (potentially hazardous food)- meat and corn kept warm all day, likely not held at a safe temperature or regularly probed. You can’t just do food production from your home, it’s absurd. I know this as a chef, but the writer of the article could have easily found out, rather than taking this smug reaction. Yes, it protects the public to maintain standards of food production- grow up.

    • This is not about tamales, but about the actions of those bureaucRats.

      • Sorry, for me and the bureaucrats it’s about tamales. You can’t run a food service establishment out of your house. You probably are not familiar with the idea of hot holding: you have to hold food at a safe temperature and if you do not have the facilities to do that it is not safe. You may not be aware as well of cross contamination if you are preparing food at home any kind of product not intended to be in the food may end up there like there may be someone with a nut allergy and you may have used nuts on those cutting boards most people except trained professionals do not properly consider these things. It is a matter of public health it’s not a racial thing or a bureaucracy thing it is simply Public Health

        • I don’t know how she did it and you neither.

          I’m sure though she did not serve poison to the people.
          You think she did ?

          • All I know is she didn’t have a permit if she would have applied for a permit they would have inspected her facility to make sure it was safe and if it was safe they would have let her do it and if it wasn’t they wouldn’t have that’s the way it’s supposed to work. Picture this someone gets food poisoning at that facility and goes to sue this woman and she has nothing so their lawyer says let’s look at the city find out if a complaint has been made and if nothing was done about it Well turns out a complaint was made nothing was done about it those people in charge would be jointly and severally responsible and someone would be sick or dead. The most sick my wife ever got was off a hot corn stand in Mexico. Tamales are potentially hazardous food because they are held hot that is dangerous and needs to be properly monitored

          • There you go, a “hot corn stand in Mexico”. Who traveling to Mexico and eating in Mexico has not gotten sick? I travelled all over Mexico by 3rd class transport, and I watched as bus drivers ate 16-20 burritos and tamales over the course of 30 minutes, climbed back into the bus and started up again. The most sick I ever got was after eating at a 5 star restaurant in the US. If the licensing fees were reasonable, then the government could get their cut, but I do not believe that an inspection assures anyone that a facility is safe, clean and trustworthy. Again, 30 million cases of food poisoning in the US every year from “licensed” vendors. This would indicate that the “inspection racket” really isn’t trustworthy.

          • DrowningInYourIgnorance | August 14, 2016 at 10:42 am |

            Wow someone took a food handlers test at their job didn’t they? If this ever hits the news I’m sure Fox or MSNBC could use you as a “food preperations expert” maybe even put world class chef/expert under your name… Not much I or anyone else can tell you that someone else hasn’t already tried just wanted to comment to say how much I admire your staunch stance on abritary authority and commitment to statism. I mean really this is unsafe I think every home should be monitored or at least forced to take a special government sponsored course to make sure everyone is practicing safe food handling I mean to think of all the times my family could have killed me or all the pot lucks, birthday parties, and weddings I could have been poisoned at.. It really puts things in perspective now I’ve dodged many a bullet… BUT WAIT… I got food posioning at a well known food chain once and my friend once got it at a well known fast food drive- thru.. Yes I can see clearly… People can’t be trusted with themselves, better yet we could have special sterile, state of the art, safe facilities where we can only get our food and not ever have to worry about this ever again. Yes I think that’s the best solution..

          • Hey I just realized something! ALL the private meals made in private homes are unlicensed and unsupervised, there may be hazardous ingredients, processes and temperatures, grunge, bacteria, vermin. Food preparers may be careless with left-overs, etc. I think we need to pass a law for health inspector to review daily meal preparations, after all it will create jobs, and they only want to help.

          • Observing All | August 14, 2016 at 7:46 pm |

            Not a single thumbs up for all your pro-government nonsense. Well done. And while on the subject how are those GMO’s affecting the population because your regulators are keeping a caring eye out for your food safety? Not a very compelling argument by you. Maybe if you re-phrased your speech to say real food inspectors/regulators not affiliated with big-agribusiness and not just a taxing/permit “money” grabbing bunch of bureaucrats should be allowed to regulate food sales. Unfortunately this only exists in fairyland or what was once the non-corporate USA.

        • OK, so you’re the fink who dropped the dime, we get it.

        • So M Saurette, if a person wants to ride a motorcycle, which is clearly more hazardous than driving a car, or skydive, which is more dangerous than both, should the government tell them they can’t? If not, then what gives the government a right to tell people who understand that they’re buying homemade food that they can’t?

          And you think that maybe, just maybe, if someone has a nut allergy, they might think to ask whether there are nuts handled in that kitchen, just like they have sense enough to read the label to find out if their Totinos party pizza was made in a facility that also handles nuts?

          And yes, only “trained professionals” are qualified to decide whether food is safe. That’s why moms making meals for their families and friends and the church coffee and the potluck all have to have a license, or we’d have people dropping like flies every Sunday and fourth of July. Good grief. A little arrogant, aren’t you?

          • god are you ever bad at this! Yes people who sell motorcycles and drop people from planes have proper qualifications and inspections and insurance, and if the government found out someone was dropping people from planes without qualifications and said they had to get proper permits for it, that would make sense.

            Ug, the reason they have strict safety rules is to prevent accidents. No one plans for cross-contamination, what you plan for is that there would not be. You shouldn’t have to ask if there was nuts used around an area when no nuts were in the recipe…this is exactly the problem- people have no idea the precautions professionals take or the reasons for them.

            Not arrogance, not at all. You really have no idea and it’s hard to be patient. When mom makes food for her family she doesn’t keep it warm all day. And some moms do kill their family but no one will sue them but they sure will sue the city that ignored a complaint about a local tamale seller and then someone they loved died. It doesn’t have to be an epidemic of July 4th toilets to be a tragedy which you have to do something about. All you need is one preventable death to make it a tragedy. And that’s what these laws are there to prevent. Church coffee and bake sales are slightly more safe because (while they still risk cross-contamination) the most serious food hazard is food not held at a proper temperature. Baked goods are relatively safe. I’m sure some bake sales and potlucks do cause tragedies, but again, this is a daily hot food service. God, everyone who has ever worked in a kitchen better agree with me or I’m going to be terrified. I have to believe that cooks hold minimum standards. I am a cook, this woman is wrong. Whatever your job is you know the standards and protocols, you would be shocked if someone went outside of them. A layperson may not understand, but this is how you kill people. “I haven’t killed anyone yet”, we joke about that in the kitchen, call it the ode of the future poisoner.

          • Goodness. You certainly live in an awful world, where fear of EXTREMELY rare events dominates your every thought. Does it occur to you that, compared to licensed facilities, there are far far fewer food-borne illnesses from food prepared in unlicensed, uninspected kitchens that serve far more people with far more meals? And you also seem to know nothing of tamale ladies–it’s not a daily hot food service. They make the tamales at home, refrigerate them, and then sell them in packages of a dozen or whatever, usually out of a coleman cooler. I think that people are capable of making decisions for themselves about the risks they’re willing to take without a bureaucratic mommy telling them what to do.

          • I live in Canada, it’s in the first world, I like it just the way it is. Here in Canada we don’t berate our government for protecting us from poisoners no matter how sweet and lovely and just trying to make a dishonest under-the-table living. You can vote for food inspectors that will turn a blind eye to people selling food out of a bloody Coleman cooler I’ll keep my country you keep yours. When I see product of America on a food package I try to avoid it already but now I will even more

          • I would have thought that the Coleman cooler would be a good thing. Cold holding, you know. But no wonder you’re so rabid about utterly ridiculous regulation. Canadians are even more brainwashed than Americans about how utterly incompetent they are and how much they need a governmental mommy to tell them what color socks to wear and what food to eat. But I wonder how you feel about our psychopathic cops possibly killing some woman while trying to arrest her for selling perfectly good, if uninspected, tamales? Or about her being raped or tortured in jail, as our well-intentioned government apparently thinks is ok.

          • well, if you think a coleman cooler provides cold holding then you really don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t wish an American prison on my worst enemy. No, in Canada we don’t include salmonella in our constitution, but I would disagree with rabid regulations. You live in the country that’s prison happy. I live in the country where people are reasonable. Maybe to celebrate I’ll legally spark a joint and sing Oh Canada.

          • A coleman cooler with a sufficient quantity of ice or dry ice and pre-refrigerated goods most certainly would provide cold holding for long enough to deliver perishable food across town. I’ve done it–with a license and the imprimatur of the health department. And caterers do it all the time.

            But I have to say, if the regulations on cottage food businesses here WERE reasonable–such as requiring inspection of your home kitchen to make sure that it’s clean and cleanable, that there’s running water and a separate place (like a bathroom or laundry) to wash your hands and dunk a mop, that there’s a working refrigerator for perishables, etc., and a requirement for a brief and affordable food safety class, I’d be all in favor. But the way it is, only the moneyed would ever be able to have a licensed kitchen to start a small food business, and it’s ridiculous. No one in their right mind would put $20-$30k into a separate kitchen with four different sinks in the same room, fixtures, appliances, etc., to start a little business making salsa or tamales or the best potato salad on the planet and grossing perhaps $20K per year. And yet, in order to have growth, innovation, and decent local food that isn’t trucked from halfway across the country or the planet, that’s what needs to happen.

            And NO ONE should be arrested, ever (!) for violating an administrative regulation where they have actually hurt no one. That’s part of the problem with law enforcement in this country–they’re sadistic psychos, and any and every law risks everyone and their dogs (literally) being murdered over it. In my view, no one who has a good and saleable product should be precluded from selling it simply by the unreasonable expense of complying with multiple layers of overcautious, pointless, rigid regulation.

          • Dry ice? As if. ROFL
            You keep failing to understand that if these inspectors ignored a complaint and someone got sick or died they would be personally liable.
            It’s all well and good to talk about small business and personal choices until someone’s kid dies of salmonella then everyone wants to know why an easily preventable tragedy was allowed to happen

          • You are a real jackass. Yes, dry ice. To maintain refrigerated temperature, it takes a small amount, put inside a couple layers of corrugated cardboard to keep it from burning the food if it touched it. It’s so ridiculous (ROFL) that one of the world’s most famous premium steak companies in Nebraska uses it exclusively to keep their steaks frozen while shipped all over the world. You seem to know a lot less than you think you do.

            And dear, you keep talking about inspections as though they KEEP someone’s kid from dying of salmonella. They DON’T. According to CDC, more than 9 of 10 cases of foodborne illness in the U.S. are from food that came from inspected kitchens. I just looked up the statistics put out by the USDA, and about half of all meals are eaten at home over the last five years. So, food from inspected kitchens is NINE TIMES MORE LIKELY, meal for meal, to make you sick than home-prepared food.

            But all the rules make scaredy-cats FEEL better, so why not toss people in jail over it, right?

          • oi. I laughed at dry ice, not because I didn’t know what it is, but the idea that this poor little tamale seller who can’t afford a permit is going to find a dry ice supplier.

            Again with the false narrative about inspected kitchens. 9/10th of foodborne illnesses don’t come from “inspected kitchens” they come from food production facilities (which are subject to inspection). This woman is trying to start a food production facility, which means it has a lot of inherit risks. If it was inspected kitchens that were the problem we should by your logic shift all food production for the country to grandma’s house, because it is NINE TIMES safer. Or maybe, by your screwed up logic, it is the inspection that causes foodborne illnesses.

            You should really just take a knee on this one, I’m beating you like a white man in Milwakee.

          • And since you seem to want to split hairs about whether a food production facility’s kitchen is an “inspected kitchen,” how about we just pay attention to the purview of “chefs” like yourself? You know how many of the cases of foodborne illness in the U.S. in the most recent year for which there is a complete report were caused by “experts” like you cooking in restaurants or for caterers or banquet facilities? 73%. And the “sit-down” restaurant accounted for 36 % of the illnesses–higher than any other category. You even beat out fairs, festivals, and food trucks (affectionately dubbed “roach coaches” here in the states) by many, many times. Whereas pathetic hackers like this poor schmo tamale lady, serving about the same number of meals to their families and friends as restaurants do, accounted for 7% of the illnesses.

            In other words, left to their own devices, stupid “laypeople” manage to poison people with their food about 1/10 as often as you “experts” with the help of government inspectors. Great record. Congrats.

          • Don’t know why AP is pending my previous post. Here’s the gist:

            Just about every supermarket in the U.S. sells dry ice from an insulated cooler in the front of the store for about a buck a pound.
            Second, it isn’t a “business license,” that’s the issue. That would be a few tens of dollars just about anywhere in the U.S. What just about no one can afford is a specially appointed kitchen that is required here for resale of perishable food. It’s
            completely unnecessary and ridiculous for a small-scale producer.

            And I haven’t said the inspection causes foodborne illness–I’ve said it doesn’t prevent it. In fact, it fails to prevent it in spades–about nine times more frequently than home cooking does. What causes foodborne illness is people who don’t observe common sense–like my bosses at the restaurants who would use food that had set out on a counter for several hours to save their “food cost” after an employee made a mistake, or who wouldn’t throw away the bag of flour after mice had been eating at it, or
            employees who didn’t wash their hands after using the toilet. You can’t inspect
            people into having common sense, and frankly, the people least likely to
            have any are the very ones who usually dominate the scene in
            restaurants and production-line food companies–kids and uneducated,
            low-wage people who can’t do better somewhere else. Why do you think
            that the U.S. Government has an entire booklet about how many rat feces
            or insect body parts or rodent hairs are “acceptable” to find in various
            food products? I don’t know about you, but my answer to that question
            for my kitchen is zero. Kind of tells you why inspected facilities make
            people sick so much more frequently than home-produced food.

            And they must have a different definition of winning in Canuckland. The
            statistics belie every rational argument for specially equipped
            inspected kitchens. What does make sense, though, would be exactly what
            I said to begin with–if it were really about safety, they’d require
            small food sellers to take a food safety course–just like they do for
            people to sell at farmers’ markets all over the U.S. But it’s not about
            safety. It’s about revenue, control, and favoring big business–like
            most things the U.S. government does.

          • Well, first, there are FAR more instances of food-borne illness from food prepared in licensed kitchens than unregulated ones, although I’m quite sure that overall, more meals and snacks are eaten from a home kitchen than outside of it. Second, what is the SAFETY difference between, say, my granny, who had ten or twelve ladies to her house every week to eat lunch and play bridge vs. a tamale lady who sells a dozen tamales to ten or twelve families weekly? Why is one allowed and one not? I think the answer to that tells us what all the rules are REALLY about–there is no safety difference at all. My granny could have left the chicken salad out on the counter for five hours, picked her nose while slicing the bread, and let the dog lick her tasting spoon, and the government doesn’t care; and the tamale lady could be a world-class cook with a kitchen where you could eat off the floor and a bottle of hand sanitizer on every horizontal surface, but she can’t sell her tamales. Why? Because the real reason for all these rules is revenue–getting extra for the government, and keeping ordinary people from having any reasonable alternative to job slavery to earn a living.

            As for the rest, I worked in commercial kitchens as a young person. I saw regular infestations of roaches and rats (even snakes at one restaurant–they loved to get warm in the dishwasher), people using obviously spoiled food, people who would drop food on the floor and use it anyway (because it was “too expensive” to just throw it away), deliveries of food left to stand unrefrigerated for hours if we were too shorthanded to get to it, and all manner of health code violations. Not to mention that most of the “qualified” professionals working in those places were teenaged kids who’d never cooked a meal in their lives, ex-cons, and illegal immigrants. For who I’d trust to give me wholesome food when no inspector is standing over them (which is the vast majority of the time), give me a nice tamale lady any day.

          • yawn. You insist on standing by ignorance and low standards. I shouldn’t bother, my replies are all voted down and you are the only one who sees them so it’s a debate with you who’s opinion I care little for. Last time.

            There’s more deaths in hospitals than in operations performed in homes, so maybe the tamale lady should remove my pancreas. There’s that false narrative covered.

            If the woman was a world class chef who wanted to cook from home, she wouldn’t have much trouble passing an inspection. She didn’t get a business license because obviously she couldn’t. i don’t know what s++tholes you worked in as a kid, but I would have reported any of those facilities myself like someone obviously reported this woman. If she’s such a damn fine tamale maker, she can approach a local business and offer to make tamales in their facility.

            You want Mexican standards of food safety? Fine, move to Mexico. Have a salad prepared on an upturned shopping cart (like I’ve seen), and a thousand other horrors. Just take some adult diapers with you when you go. I’ll stick with first world standards and try to raise the bar, not lower it, thank you very much.

          • “There’s more deaths in hospitals than in operations performed in homes,
            so maybe the tamale lady should remove my pancreas. There’s that false
            narrative covered.” Afraid not. I don’t know of people performing operations at home. But there are literally hundreds of millions of people cooking meals in homes, every day. At least as many, and probably a lot more meals are made in homes (with uninspected kitchens) than are made in inspected kitchens, and yet the numbers of food borne illness are always multiples higher from the inspected ones.

            “If the woman was a world class chef who wanted to cook from home, she wouldn’t have much trouble passing an inspection.” Again, nope. In every state I’ve lived in, in order to have a licensed kitchen, it can’t be your home kitchen, no matter how sanitary, well-appointed, or efficient. It must be a completely separate kitchen, so thousands of dollars of investment are required for plumbing, electrical, fixtures and appliances–and then there’s the licensing fees, business permits, sales tax permits, etc.

            ” i don’t know what s++tholes you worked in as a kid” Well, several national chains, one diner, one college cafeteria, and one “fine-dining” restaurant. I didn’t see much difference in any of them–which is kind of the point.

            “You want Mexican standards of food safety? Fine, move to Mexico.” I did. I lived in Mexico for a year as an exchange student. And while there were some rat-holes (much like some of the restaurants I worked in here in the states, there was also a lot of very good food. And the cleanest kitchen I’ve ever seen belonged to the maid that ran the kitchen in the home of my host family. Your comment sounds like a bit of an arrogant racist stereotype to me.

            And it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if you were the sort of rat-fink who would turn in some poor lady trying to make ends meet by making tamales while she looks after her kids and household.

            Now, how about you answer the question: from a safety standpoint, why could my granny (or anyone else’s) serve food to a dozen bridge ladies from an unlicensed kitchen and the government (nor you) cares not a whit, but a lady making tamales for sale gets arrested? HMMM?

          • I said last time and here i go again. You don’t know or act like you don’t know what “hot holding” means. It means keeping food warm at a safe temperature. Twice a year when the inspectors come to my kitchen it is one of the main things they check on. Hot holding is the main issue. When grandma and everyone else makes dinner they make it for that service, they don’t make it to be held all day, every day.

            Please, you should have reported those national chains and fine dining restaurants like someone did with this woman. If someone died at one of those places would you still support your position? People who are trained in food safety are trying to avoid the pathogen chain which can only be confidently broken by strict adherence to protocols developed from a history of tragedies. It happens rarely, but every time it does a new rule is put in place.

            Your argument is in favor of anarchy. Another analogy would be to say ‘some of the best drivers I’ve met didn’t have a license or insurance and the worst had passed inspection, so let’s let people drive without license or insurance’. It is an absurd position, you can barely defend it, so you keep going back to implied racism, as that’s a popular position. Go ahead, take the same stupid position again, and I’ll promise to give you the last word.

          • My “position,” as you call it, is that small, face-to-face sellers aren’t a “public health” issue. They sell to few people, who can decide for themselves whether to trust the individual they see in front of them and buy from. It is not the same issue at all as a large food manufacturing company that maybe makes the frozen dinner that has a different brand name on it–where you don’t know who it is, you can’t ask any questions, and you sure can’t see if it looks like they’re clean or storing the food properly.

            If the issue were actually safety, then you wouldn’t need a particular type of kitchen and licenses to tune of multiple thousands of dollars–you’d need to take a class about holding temperatures, refrigeration, etc. And my point about there being bad restaurants and more illnesses in inspected kitchens is that inspections and licensing don’t translate to safety on the ground. Inspectors aren’t there all the time, and profit motive and day to day reality of business (employees who don’t show up, shipments that come right at the lunch rush even though you’ve told them twenty times not to, etc.) lead businesspeople and restaurant managers to do all kinds of things they know are not sanctioned by health codes. Inspected, licensed kitchens are far more likely to make you sick than a home kitchen–every year–and even though more meals are served in the home kitchen. And even with all the problems that can and do occur, the number of actual food-borne illnesses is vanishingly small from a statistical standpoint. Probably a billion meals eaten every DAY in this country–over 350 billion every year, and perhaps ten or twenty thousand illnesses per year reported. A dozen or two deaths, usually in people highly susceptible to illness for other reasons. It’s not a public health crisis, and it isn’t worth a multi-billion dollar system of extortion to handle.

            And no, people don’t just make food for that meal–that’s ludicrous. People eat “leftovers” all the time, and thus have to properly store, heat to proper serving temperature, etc. It ain’t rocket science, dear, even if it sounds complicated to you.

          • Oh, and BTW, the reason your replies are voted down is because most everyone understands that we all eat most of our food out of unlicensed kitchens and we VERY VERY rarely ever have a problem with it. We also understand that most incidences of food-borne illness aren’t from our kitchens, but from tainted food from restaurants or tainted food that’s supposedly been through government inspection–you know like the tainted peanut butter that they sold even though they’d found the contamination, or the egg producer who kept selling contaminated eggs for months, or the many many instances of e. coli on inspected bag salad products, etc. And many of us also know that, given the government’s track record of misfeasance, malfeasance and non-feasance in just about everything it does, we trust ourselves more than government to decide what to buy, at least when it’s in a face-to-face transaction with the seller, like a tamale lady.

    • Like protecting people from raw milk, when the majority of milk illnesses reported are from licensed commercial dairies? Oh wait, maybe you mean those laws protecting us from pot, while FDA approved over the counter pain meds kill 1500 people a year?

      Last year the police stole more money from citizens than the criminals did, bet you think there was a “good reason” for that as well.

    • You don’t suppose that grown adult people could DECIDE FOR THEMSELVES whether to buy and eat tamales made at home, do you? You do realize, don’t you, that we all eat products prepared in an unlicensed kitchen (our own) every single day, right? And you realize that this woman’s neighbors are buying directly from her, where they can ask her how she makes them, or even ask to look at her kitchen (and assess its cleanliness and her methods for themselves) before the decide whether to buy, right?

    • Take a look at the millions of cases of food poisoning every year, millions, from food bought from licensed vendors and restaurants. There is no protection for the consumer because the licensing itself ensures no safety. Can I tell you all the stories I know about the number of rats running around most restaurants?

      • What a bizarre ad hominem. Because license facilities fall short we should give up on licensing at all? Have you ever been to Mexico and seen chickens in the market unrefrigerated for sale while flies suck on them. Again I do not say that this is some racial thing but there are first world standards which should if anything be held higher not lower. The idea that license facilities get away with crap is justification for other people getting away with crap it’s crap no one should risk anyone’s life with food I can’t believe anyone would defend this position

        • Unlike you, I don’t have the ability to pretend or ignore reality, or jump to conclusions as you do. Like some governmental regulation, licensing started with good intentions. You continue to raise pictures of flies on unrefrigerated meat in Mexico for some reason which I cannot fathom. It leads me to think that you have never seen the whistleblower videos of meat processing plants and chicken and baby chick bashing death houses in the US, most of which are no longer really inspected by the USDA. What I am saying is that your wife got sick eating in Mexico, and I got sick eating at a 5 star restaurant in the US. I know of tens of thousands of US restaurants that should be shut down because of flies and rats and the repeated failure to refrigerate. Unlike you, I believe in rules that are enforced, and the more the rules are not enforced, the more ridiculous the entire system becomes. Allowing some people to live Above the Law has destroyed America. Creating unfair laws and the unequal enforcement of those laws has destroyed America. The problem is far larger than you imagine. The failure to enforce laws has created the most corrupt and despicable Society. I also believe that people should be allowed to have “small” businesses, and not have to pay full fare. Another thing I really hate are snitches and tattle tales, the sanctimonious and officious twits who have never had to try and make a living with few resources. I also understand that neighbors buying meals from another neighbor are in a better position to judge how well their food is made. Criminals, like the Bush Crime Cabal and Clinton Crime Family, walk free and 9 year olds whose parents fail to feed them are jailed for stealing food. Recently, a 9 year old boy was attempting to sell his teddy bear outside a store, so desperate he was for food. So, in this world, things are just not as neat, tidy and simple as you imagine them to be.

    • Yep, we need mindless puppets to tell us that by buying a license, our food is guaranteed to be safe. Our food has never been more dangerous then since the government started their head games. Most food is now 100% chemical poison…ah, but no worries, they have a license to sell that.

      • Well, guaranteed to be safe, except for the 10000 or so people sickened by “outbreaks” of foodborne illnesses in the regulated, licensed, and inspected kitchens of restaurants and caterers and schools, and grocery stores and jails, etc. every year. Compared to the few hundred cases that come out of the very wide variety of unlicensed, completely unregulated kitchens of private homes that feed many times more meals to many times more people.

  10. Best tamales I ever had I bought from a little old lady that sat in front of a country convenience store every Saturday. Restaurants today pull some out of the freezer and nuke them.

  11. Soon it will be time to go in force to our would be masters, overcome their defenses, and kill them.

    • Better still, why vote them in in the first place?

      • The politicians are nothing, just theatre to keep you amused.
        “Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organised, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”
        – Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States (1856-1924)

        “The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes.”
        Felix Frankfurter (1882-1965), US Supreme Court Justice, (1939)

        “So you see, my dear Coningsby, that the world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes. ”
        – Benjamin Disraeli, British Prime Minister
        (1804-1881)
        “There is something behind the Throne greater than the King himself.”
        Sir William Pitt (1708-78),

  12. …meanwhile in Russia, People are encouraged to grow gardens or operate small farms and they can take their produce to the Markets and make a little money. Russia will soon have Farmers Markets in every town, Village and City. Eighty Percent of Potatoes are from these kinds of People and I don’t the State would dare stop Babushka from selling a little Borscht or something at these Markets either.

    If Texas was so concerned about People’s health and welfare, they would outright ban GMO crap, (hopefully the corn was not GMO), Aspartame, MSG, Fluoride etc.

    Bring on them home-made Tamales, Senora Cruz!!!

    • When I was in Arkhangelsk a few years back, my local magazine (market) carried primarily local produce, eggs, and cooked meals. This is how many babushkas supplement their retirement funds.

    • Russians are practical, rational people. They realize some things drumpf the profit motive.

      • Russia is finally taking their place on the World Stage, no longer controlled by the Bolshevik scum that were set upon Russia to keep her backwards and enslaved. Once People who have endured 60 million deaths by the Communist filth, the loss of another 50 million in a War they didn’t want and having been enslaved for 7 decades, they will never go back.

        The average Russian does not want War. They know War and what it means. They want Trade, Friendship and Peace. The Western MSM is trying so hard to smear Russia and Putin, but in this day of the Internet, we are seeing who is being honest and who are just filthy Liars.

        Mr. Trump has pointed that out. Good for him!

        Russia is not the USSR, but the Media puts one in a mindset of the Cold War days. Russia is fast becoming a light for freedom in this rotting World that is being foisted on Western People.

        Putin ain’t perfect, but he certainly has one helluva track record. What Russia has achieved in such short time is almost miraculous, but really, the Russian People are rational and practical and have endured so much.

        The Light is shining on Russia. This could be the only beacon left as the lights go out in Ratchilds Western Puppet States.

        Cheers!

        • Not to mention they would kick our @zz in a real fight; they have static electricity generators on fighters that can dud all our electronics and they’ve demonstrated its effectiveness. Their own weaponry uses old-style radio tubes that are hardened & immune. As for Drumph, meh; he’s an empty suit and probably broke.

    • Putin won’t allow any GMOs in Russia either and he’s the one who began the push to set aside massive amounts of acres of land so the People could grow their own organic, healthy food.

      • Putin has put together a task force that is set to prove Vaccines are harmful and are a scam by the Corporate Fascists in the Pharmaceutical Industries.

        I can hardly wait for that bombshell!!! Funny how Monsatan hasn’t said diddley squat about their loss of their Criminal Enterprises in Russia.

        And George Soros, total vermin, has gotten his filthy enterprises booted out as well. If he goes to Russia, he will be arrested.

        Mr. Putin and Russia is doing what our “elected” Puppets should be doing. We know who is serving whom, now don’t we.

        Cheers!

    • More than that… the Russian Govt wants it’s people and communities to be as self sufficient as possible. I’m also pretty sure few in the US know the Russian Government does not operate on a debt model like the US and most other western nations do. Last I heard, they have no national debt. China is now in the process of reducing its national debt. When the books are cleared, look out.

  13. Of course, if the baker/cook was Above the Law like most of the Washington D.C. Insiders, then there’d be no fine. There would be a reward and applause. Let’s face it, there are two serious concerns here. One is that ordinary Americans are being treated like criminals for activities that 20 years ago would have been perfectly ordinary too. The other is that other Americans are not only spying on their neighbors, they are running to tattle and snitch at every opportunity. Both of these matters were clearly predicted in the playbook for the Modern World,. Orwell’s book, 1984. We live next door to the most heinous folks who get off on snitching and tattling. Remind you of Kindergarten? 65% of Americans work for a government, local, state, county, federal, etc. Most Americans wouldn’t be able to afford to live if they didn’t have their government job. Government jobs are welfare, and one of the Mind Control techniques is to ensure that all those government employees know they owe the bread on their table to Big Brother. Some of us couldn’t get a government job if we were qualified to get one, which isn’t saying much. Some of us must resort to free enterprise to make a living. People are so apathetic, passive and dumbed down, they have already forgotten that all of the Big Corporations started with an enterprising, inventive soul who made that hair dye in his own kitchen and peddled it door to door, or made that computing device in his/her own garage, etc. You get the picture. By treating Americans like slaves, and because Americans have accepted that they are slaves, at least those not Above the Law, it has become the Norm.

    • Government jobs are all you get since red blooded capitalist became red star hat wearing communists because slaves work for less and you “wanted too much.” Race you to the bottom!

  14. The beauty in this? Since Sewer Nation
    has done such a bag-up job dumbing down this culture to all things
    including Jury Nullification and she doesn’t have a shill like Comey
    in charge of the political swine @ the FBI to run interference as
    does Killary, she’ll be ridden hard and put away wet.

  15. This $700-Tamale fine is just one of an untold number of laws on our nation’s books, making them a part of the supreme law of land according to Article 6–at least until repealed.

    Think about it: Had Moses come down Mt. Sinai with America’s Supreme Law, he wouldn’t have come down the Mountain with two tablets but with a hernia, a broken back, and an untold number of wagons pulled by both donkeys and elephants alike. And some Christians have the audacity to declare Yahweh’s moral law as burdensome, despite what the Apostle John wrote:

    “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.” (1 John 5:3)

    For more on how Yahweh’s perfect law of liberty (Psalm 19:7-11, 119:44-45, James 2:12) applies today, see free online book “Law and Kingdom: Their Relevance Under the New Covenant.” Click on my picture, then our website. Go to our Online Books page and scroll down to title.

    Then find out how much you REALLY know about the Constitution as compared to the Bible. Take our 10-question Constitution Survey in the right-hand sidebar and receive a complimentary copy of a book that EXAMINES the Constitution by the Bible.

  16. A warrant…??…..and WHAT was the horrible crime committed…?? It just gets crazier and more insane by the minute…!!!

    • I don’t know if hill dog used the tamale lady defense she probably just threatened to kill comey or offered him a sweetheart position. Let’s let the local bureaucrats keep the tamale lady from poisoning us and we’ll let Donald Trump keep Hillary from the White House

  17. Well, maybe this is what it takes for Boobus Americanus to ENFORCE the constitution upon the enforcers?
    Discipline and re-train the hired guns ( LEO’s ) then arrest and prosecute the the elected or appointed chain of command fraudsters in a public venue.
    people, it is time to pull your head out and get active for these rogues will only escalate victimless crimes till you’ll have to register for a bathroom visit ! No kidding ! Here in our county bolschevik Washington State they plan to tax our rural septic systems and meter our water wells.
    When the ” Feel the Berne ” lemmings morph into Hillarytator and have wrested full control, nothing is left unscathed.

  18. The Constitution mandates that the function of government is to “promote…and provide for the general welfare.”
    Food inspections on commercial food which has the potential to be hazardous is certainly a necessary step to insure public safety.

    I have eaten a bad tamale! A few hours in a warm room and the meat turns toxic!

    Many states have “cottage industry” laws to allow home food buisinesses, but it does not apply to potentially hazardous foods, such as meat and cheese.. A government which failed to insure food safety in commercial food would be betraying its duty!

    i
    A California home baker was banned from selling his bread and he began ” researching other states’ cottage food laws, which allow homemade food to be sold. To qualify as a cottage food, it must be designated by the state as “non-potentially hazardous,” meaning it has a low risk of spreading bacteria

    Stambler helped Assemblyman Gatto draft the California Homemade Food Act (AB 1616) to legalize cottage food. AB 1616 was overwhelmingly popular with lawmakers, passing the California State Assembly 60 to 16 and unanimously passing the state Senate in August 2012. Upon signing the bill, Gov. Jerry Brown praised AB 1616 as a way to “make it easier for people to do business in California.”

    In January 2013, just a few days after the law went into effect, Stambler became the first person in Los Angeles County to sell homemade food legally. Since he’s re-started his business, he hasn’t received a single complaint from consumers.

    More home bakers have followed. In Los Angeles County, there are almost 270 cottage food businesses. Statewide, over 1,200 homemade food businesses have been approved.”

    Potentially harmful foods prone to bacterial contamination such as meat and cheese may not be allowed: generally, foods which must be refridgerated are not allowed, and California has along history of food poisoning from unauthorized vendors. The state has the oblivation to prevent us from getting poisoned.

    My daughter and son in law have a home kombucha business in Arizona. They were required to get a permit and follow rules….and periodically, their product is inspected. They found this process useful; they learned from the inspector, whose goals was to insure a safe product. If people get sick from your food it will destroy your business. The government, in permitting cottage food businesses, is actually your friend.

    I do not doubt there are cases of abuse, as in all phases of life. But I, for one, demand that my government do reasonable food inspections to protect my health.

    THE USDA says: “One of the most common causes of foodborne illness is improper cooling of cooked foods. Because bacteria are everywhere, even after food is cooked to a safe internal temperature, they can be reintroduced to the food and then reproduce. For this reason leftovers must be put in shallow containers for quick cooling and refrigerated within 2 hours.
    You’ll find similar statements from government agencies around the world. The safe limit for raw or cooked food is 2 hours in the danger zone (40-140° F or 4.4-60° C).”

    Let’s go after the government not for doing its job but for NOT doing it! No one has the right to defy health and safety laws. The idea that allowing vendors to sell potentially poisonous foods is a denial of freedom is infantile.

    The problem is what the government is NOT doing, allowing GMO and many other harmful products to market. The government (at varioius levels) should be doing MORE to insure our welfare.
    We have a fundamental freedom…freedom from being poisoned by unregulated food production.

    “CDC estimates that each year roughly 1 in 6 Americans (or 48 million people) get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die of foodborne diseases.” Regulating commercial food production to insure public health is a requirement of the US Constitution (provide for the general welfare, of which health is probably the most important).

    • The FDA and the USDA care not one bit about the health of the consumer. They are paid and/or bribed to look the other way as long as the seller of the dangerous/unhealthy products are a big corporation. Many foods they allow cause a wide range of ailments, disease, and even cancer. The bottom line is the regulators were put there to protect us but as in all phases of government the regulators have become more dangerous than having no oversight at all. The people were far healthier before Big Gov. stuck there noses in every facet of your lives.

      • You make a good point, but the partial corruption of these agencies through the revolving door does not refute the need for health and safety standards. If you open up a cottage bakery or kombucha facility at home, you will be visited most likely by a county employ with specialized training. He will likely be very helpful and has nothing to do with the corporate corruption of the FDA and USDA.

        The EPA is much less corrupt and the right wing wants to get rid of it not because it does not do its job but because it does. The EPA
        (originally founded by NIxon) has cleaned up our air and our water, and is seeking authority to regulate jet fuel emissions as it does on the grounds.

        When I was a kid, the air in LA and Pittsburg, etc would make sick and if you breathed it regularly, it would kill you. l Today, both cities are relatively healthy. Before the EPA, rivers would burst into flames, the air in big cities was sickening…here are a few achievements of this agency:

        1. In the 70s, acid rain was ruining lakes and rivers and killing fish, destroying the environment, harming human health, and even (being acid) washing off the surfaces of monuments and buildings. Today acid rain is no longer a problem. EPA
        2.EPA thinking has changed the waste industry from one that pollutes to a source of energy and recycling, working with state and local govts.
        3.Removing lead from gasoline (lead is why the healthiest Romans died at 35)…
        4.Reducing pollution from cars by 75-95% and the current subsidies of electric cars projects into a future with NO pollution.
        5. Safe handling of toxics, etc etc.

        THe EPA as an example of a relatively uncorrupted agency has fulfilled the mandate of government to “promote and provide for the general welfare.”

        But the real issue is that most health and safety issues are handled at the local level, the only level in our fake democracy which actually is part of a democratic local system.

        If you open a bakery in your home, the rules will make you a better baker and the inspector will be very helpful. They have zero to do with the corruption in the USDA.

        If we do not have accountable big government, we will have unaccountable big business. We need a government big enough to do its job. Certain issues, such as pollution and disease, cannot be handled on the local level effectively , as germs and pollutants do not observe borders: only a national government can deal with certain issues, and even a global government (I do NOT mean the NWO, which through the influence of bankers, fossil fuel corporations, etc does not represent the best interests of the people. I mean a democratic alliance of nations to deal with pollution, migration, global warming, etc. These issues cannot be solved except at a national or regional or global level.

        So I take your point…I have written often about the revolving door of the USDA and Monsanto…but the EPA has real achievements and most health and safety is done in the much more democratic environment of a city or county. If you build a house, they will help you build it safer. Etc.

        Government is not a monolith but rather a complex arrangement of many layers (local to global) and splinter in a thousand ways. When we speak of government, especially if we criticize, we must specify which government we are talking about.

        Meanwhile, if someone offers you tamales in a setting where they are not refridgerated (or just cooked), don’t take it!

  19. beware those social sites like Nextdoor….apparently they are spying on us

  20. Murray, west Ky here…Rand McNally says we are the friendliest small town in theUnited States, although most here would challenge that moniker…here the City will send a cop to your door if someone cal!S them and says your grass is over 10 inches, or you have things outside your home that they don’t think should be there…such as folded lawn chairs, gardening accessories and what not. Failure to remove said rubbish can result in a $1400 fine and possibly a lein on the property if you can’t pay it. How’s that for small-town friendliness?

  21. This is where the cops lose the backing of the people. They need to step up and ignore the BS laws that
    hurt little people and go after the real criminals. Example: A fine for selling tamales but no penalty at all
    for selling weapons as well as giving weapons to be used by terrorists (ISIS) by Hillary and Obama. Sound
    like the America you grew up in?

  22. Government has completely gotten too big for their britches when we can’t even buy a tamale from our neighbor without them putting their big noses in our business…!!

  23. A lot of talk about temperatures and kaint do that. I say if you get sick from her tamales don’t buy any more. I bought a burrito 2 or 3 times a week from some guy that would stand on the corner and sell them out of his cooler. They were purdy good and I never got sick. I don’t get vaccines.

  24. ah, yes, the Queen of Israel, I mean…Great Britain. Good point!

  25. I wonder if this article will get the word out about her wonderful tamales. If it’s good enough for you and your family to eat it certainly is good for others to purchase from you. I know she’s just a mom in a kitchen, but here in our “free” country they are arresting those who feed the homeless good food made in people’s home kitchens. It seems the day could come when they shut down everything and confiscate everything so the people will starve unless they go to get the govt. provisions of GMO processed crap they call food that makes people so sick they will be weak and eventually die and they will arrest those who eat food off the land, even the natural foods of the area. Wonder if they will burn all the land to prevent people from getting food. This is an incredibly wicked government in this generation. Seem we are now under martial law. Feeding the hungry and homeless is now a crime in many places and being homeless is getting people arrested. This is tyranny! This is dictatorship! This is martial law, already! Citizens shouldn’t be treated like this. AND Obama and the Clintons are walking free, along with all of their truly lawless cohorts. A whole lot of blood is on their hands already….and the plans they have for the future.

  26. Sounds like time for a recall…

  27. “when there is a food borne outbreak and recall, and it shows up on
    wikipedia for geniuses like you to make inferences from, who gets the
    blame?”

    On the list that I’m using, if the food was assembled at home, the home gets the blame. This report doesn’t separate by source of contamination, only location where the food was eaten.

    “trained professionals are expected to know how to handle it safely as the last chance before it reaches the public.”

    Yes, that’s what would be expected. It doesn’t always happen. And it doesn’t happen for them far more than for home cooks, as the statistics show.

    “You know what’s considered a restaurant? 711, Mcdonalds, the local
    coffee shop that’s got the tamale lady in the back room next to the rat
    poison.”

    Yes, that has been exactly my point all along. Thanks for noticing. While 7-11, Mc Donalds and the local coffee shop are all “inspected,” all have “business licenses” and all are supposedly complying with the law. Yet, as you say–they’re not the pinnacle of cleanliness, nor good food service practice. In other words, inspection and licensing doesn’t fix the problems–knowledge does. Therefore, the law shouldn’t require a bunch of meaningless nonsense like dictating the number of sinks (as it does here in the US), but should focus on requiring TRAINING–just as I’ve said.

    “and I just saw your dug up statistic which lumped restaurants, caterers, and banquet facilities in one great swath”

    Well, no, the report listed them separately, and then subtotaled them. But of the three, the highest rate of illnesses by far was in sit-down restaurants–you know, the kind that “chefs” run. Fast food, with its contingent of, as you say, “under-educated entitled idiots” actually has a much lower rate than you and yours. And so do caterers.

    And no, the tamale lady wouldn’t be a caterer, since they don’t provide ready to serve food–they provide cold, refrigerated plain tamales that you take home, heat up, and put sauce and cheese on. So she’d be a food-production facility.

  28. “When tamale lady buys a bag of spinach or alfalfa sprouts or shredded
    cheese, where do you think that comes from? That’s right buddy- a food
    production facility.”

    Yes, the tamale lady gets food from a food production facility, just like a restaurant does. So, given that about half of all meals in the U.S. are eaten at home and half are eaten “out,” at some form of licensed, inspected facility like a restaurant, how is it that the home cooks manage to use the same-sourced food, feed the same number of meals each day, and still manage to poison fewer people? My explanation is that home cooks must take greater care (and have at least as good practices) with each meal made than a restaurant worker. Otherwise, since they serve the same number of meals, home cooks would have close to or equal number of poisonings, wouldn’t they?

  29. I just do not get this idea you have of half of all meals being cooked at home. What Universe are you living in who the heck Cooks at home? Instead of coming up with an hypothesis on why more food borne illnesses happen in restaurants don’t you have a magic statistic for it and while you’re looking that up can you see if it excludes tamale ladies

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