[BITList] crazy louisiana

[CT's]

    did you know that in Louisiana you need to pass an exam to be a florist? [it's in the best interest of the public]

    did you know that in Louisiana you need to pass an exam [with apprenticeship] to call yourself an interior designer?  [it's in the best interest of the public]

    now this........................................!

    ct 

    Monks at St. Joseph Abbey near Covington opened a woodshop on All Saints 2007 and hoped to pay for their educational and medical costs by selling the $2,000 cypress boxes to the public.

    But in order to sell caskets in Louisiana, you have to first know how to embalm a body. And you can't know that unless -- similar to the interior designer registration statute -- you take classes, pass an exam and serve an apprenticeship that is a "primary form of employment." At that point you get to call yourself a funeral director. But that's not all. You can only sell those caskets in a souped-up funeral parlor equipped with embalming tools and staffed by licensed embalmers.

    In 2008, Abita Springs Rep. Scott Simon proposed altering the state's definition of "funeral directing," since that definition includes "the purchase of caskets or other funeral merchandise, and retail sale and display thereof." Simon's attempt to excise those actions from definition of funeral directing would have allowed the monks and anybody else to sell caskets. A grieving family could choose a simple $2,000 casket from the monks or pay several times that for a shinier model from a funeral home. But the funeral home lobby made that bill go away.

    The Louisiana Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors dealt with the monks directly and sternly, warning them to stop selling their caskets and telling them that they could spend six months in jail and pay thousands in fines. After the board's letter, Mothe Funeral Home jumped on the pile, saying the "illegal third party casket sales place funeral homes in an unfavorable position with families."

    And, of course, it should be the state's responsibility to guarantee that funeral homes are never ever in an unfavorable position with families.

    The monks fought back Thursday, filing a federal lawsuit pointing out the law's obvious anti-competition effect.

    "We need the income ... from the caskets to survive," Abbot Justin Brown, the head of the abbey said. "We just want to do our work without the threat of prison time."

    Though the letter from the funeral board threatened the monks with prison, we can assume that no state official wants to be the one responsible for a monk being handcuffed and tossed into jail for building simple wooden coffins. Imagine that perp walk! Imagine the deputy, the bureaucrat, the board member who has to justify jail time for that heinous crime.

    Here's your chance, Louisiana lawmakers and funeral board members. Get rid of this law.

    Or in your stubbornness, transform these monks into martyrs.
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