Monks Sue to Sell Coffins
An order of Benedictine monks are being told they can’t sell their handmade coffins because they don’t have the proper licenses.
This is a huge problem with BIG GOVERNMENT colluding with BIG BUSINESS. You get those who have made a lot of money in an industry then turn around and create some kind of licensing requirement for people to get in their industry and they lobby for government approval making it increasingly difficult for competitors to get started.
In this case, the monks are being required to pay an application fee, take classes, pass an exam and serve an apprenticeship that is a “primary form of employment” to earn a funeral director’s license.
And this has nothing to do with the fact that the caskets the monks are buulding are less expensive and better than most of the caskets being sold elsewhere?
“We need the income … from the caskets to survive,” said Abbot Justin Brown, the head of the abbey in a news conference held this week after filing a lawsuit. Mark Coudrain, the woodshop’s director, also said, “We just want to do our work without the threat of prison time.”
The monks of the 121-year-old St. Joseph Abbey, in St. Tammany Parish north of New Orleans, charge the state Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors is attempting to maintain a casket cartel, and that board members are mostly engaged in industry they regulate.
They claim the regulations are unconstitutional.
The monks planned to sell their wooden caskets for $1,500 or $2,000 to support the abbey.
They tried to get an exemption from the regulations in 2008 and 2010, but legislators rejected the requests.
So the death industry is colluding with government? Ah…death and taxes together at last.