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R.Wreck
SFN Regular
USA
1191 Posts |
 Posted - 07/10/2004 : 09:05:50
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Loretta Adams, a "self-described spiritual adviser and psychic consultant" was turned down for a permit to operate at the county fair, and threatened to sue. Upon further reading of the applicable ordinance, the city of St. Charles determined that the psychics act was not fraudulent, supposedly because she charges a flat fee for a reading at the fair.
http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/sunpub/naper/news/n0709palms.htm
The ordinance reads:
"No person shall perform or practice within the city as a fortuneteller, clairvoyant, spirit medium, necromancer, seer, astrologist, palmist, prophet or in any other pretended art of telling past, present or future events of another's life or affairs, to obtain money or property by fraudulent devices or practices."
Apparently the legal geniuses in St. Charles believe that if you sucker somebody for a flat fee at the fair, then you're not a fraud. I don't see how the amount or determination of the fee has anything to do with it. This "spiritual advisor" is clearly in violation of the ordinance as written. Taking money for a service that you clearly cannot perform seems to me to be pretty fraudulent. How they missed the fact that taking money, no matter the rate structure, for such nonsense is obviously a fraud, is dumbfounding.
City Attorney Tim O'Neal said "Adams will have no trouble if she is not fraudulent" How could she not be?
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The foundation of morality is to . . . give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibliities of knowledge.
T. H. Huxley
The Cattle Prod of Enlightened Compassion
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ktesibios
SFN Regular
USA
505 Posts |
Posted - 07/10/2004 : 17:05:35 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by R.Wreck
Taking money for a service that you clearly cannot perform seems to me to be pretty fraudulent.
Well, a lot depends on how you define the service to be performed. For a palm reader, the basic procedure is
1. Look at hand.
2. Spout gobbledygook.
So, in order to be clearly unable to perform these services, you would need to be either blind (step 1) or mute (step 2). And in these cases, the ADA might have something to say about it.
OTOH, we have the ordinance:
quote:
"No person shall perform or practice within the city as a fortuneteller, clairvoyant, spirit medium, necromancer, seer, astrologist, palmist, prophet or in any other pretended art of telling past, present or future events of another's life or affairs, to obtain money or property by fraudulent devices or practices."
I ain't no lawyer, but that sure looks like it just plain prohibits fortunetelling and the other pretended arts outright, and throws in the bit about fraudulent devices and practices as a catch-all for scams that the legislators hadn't heard of yet.
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"The Republican agenda is to turn the United States into a third-world shithole." -P.Z.Myers |
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ljbrs
SFN Regular
USA
842 Posts |
Posted - 07/11/2004 : 17:41:58 [Permalink]
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Oh, shoot -- palm readers can make people feel better about themselves (falsely, of course). (Just kidding.)
ljbrs |
"Innumerable suns exist; innumerable earths revolve about these suns in a manner similar to the way the seven planets revolve around our sun. Living beings inhabit these worlds."
Giordano Bruno
(Burned at the stake by the Roman Catholic Church Inquisition in 1600) |
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