Economic Meltdown (seconda parte)

[Zenda]

I'm saying that his punishment was too harsh, and that the authorities put two old men in federal prison for the "crime" of not following the Government's rules for shipping flowers

You're not going for the "it's just flowers" nonsense, I hope?

Only Norris ended up in jail (his accomplice fled to Peru). Not for "shipping flowers", but for violating 18 USC 371 (conspiring to commit offense or to defraud the United States, max 5 years), 18 USC 545 (smuggling, max 20 years) and 18 USC 1001 (making false statements, max 5 years), and 5 other offenses. I'm all for less harsh punishment, but it looks as if this Norris got away rather easily.

which after proper licensing of the greenhouse made what they did not a crime at all

In case you didn't know: having a license to sell cultivated plants has no bearing on the selling of other plants, collected from nature. The use of cultivated and thus licensed plants to cover up the smuggling was in fact part of the case against these men.

Our government is in mortal fear of old men growing flowers, and a natural foods distributor.

Either that, or they just needed a lot of guys to load up all the orchids, raw milk, eggs, paperwork, and other evidence