Local News in Brief : Health Inspectors Clamp Lid on Libertarian Protest Soup
San Fernando Valley Libertarian Party members cooked up more than they had bargained for Monday when they set up a soup line in Van Nuys to protest income-tax laws that they claim finance a meddlesome government.
Los Angeles County health inspectors cited the group for dispensing food without a permit and ordered a halt to the noontime soup-serving to crowds visiting the Van Nuys Boulevard federal building for tax forms or to mail tax returns.
The action left more than 10 gallons of chicken-vegetable soup steaming on a camp stove. It left the Libertarians steaming mad. “This simply represents one more example of the omnipotent, ubiquitous state of things,” said John Vernon, 45, who prepared the soup at his Van Nuys home.
Health officials said they spotted the soup from their office across the street. “It was out there in the open, susceptible to flies and people coughing into the kettles,” said Frank Litick, chief sanitarian in the health department’s West Valley Health Center.
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