Matt Schonert's Blog

“They say we’re the ones who caused the earthquake. But we know ourselves that we didn’t cause the quake, because it was a natural catastrophe,” said Willer Jassaint, one of the priests, or houngans, leading the Voodoo ceremony.

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Mayor Michael Sessions has brought an ugly tone to an otherwise genial mayoral race. A few weeks ago, the mayor publicly endorsed Tony Vear and embarked on an effort to criticize Douglas Moon, but his motivation for doing so is not clear.

Perhaps the only valid concern he has raised is Moon’s vote against rezoning the hospital, which Moon said was done to protest the way that Sessions prematurely ended discussion of the issue and forced it to a vote.

Sessions has also argued that candidate Doug Moon’s employment in Coldwater will make him unavailable to respond to emergencies in Hillsdale.

If Sessions truly believes that Moon will be unable to give his personal and immediate attention to such crises, it is only fair to ask Sessions what specific crises have required this type of response in his four years as mayor. Specifically, what mayoral crises have required a response time of 30 minutes or less?

In comparing the candidates, Sessions has suggested that the value of Moon’s city council work pales in comparison to Tony Vear’s work on the planning commission.

In order to take this seriously, we must ignore the irony of quibbling over which candidate’s city government experience is more applicable to mayoral duties that were previously carried out by a high school student.

Sessions is free to endorse any candidate he pleases, but it seems vindictive to endorse one candidate so forcefully and attack the other without a severe reason for favoring one over the other.

If there is a serious reason why Doug Moon is unfit to be mayor, then let us hear it. The petty grievances Sessions has raised do not explain the excessive zeal that he has shown in his attempts to undermine Moon’s campaign.

(originally appeared in October 30 edition of the Hillsdale Daily News)

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Last week, the Michigan Department of Human Services ordered a West Michigan mother to stop babysitting her neighbor’s two children each morning before they board the school bus. Lisa Snyder said she watches the children for less than an hour and receives no compensation. Around the same time as Snyder’s run-in with the nanny state, UK officials confronted two working mothers who cared for each other’s children on a reciprocal basis. The women, both police officers with Thames Valley Police, are said to have violated the 2006 Childcare Act, which requires non-relatives to pay a $164 annual fee, attend training sessions, and conduct risk assessments in order to be registered as childminders.

Although Britons are growing used to the Orwellian way of life, few Americans would expect that a mother could be threatened with fines and imprisonment for watching a friend’s children without a commercial license from the state. Thanks to occupational licensing laws, the state can protect us from good neighbors like Ms. Snyder. She suspects that a close acquaintance reported her “illegal daycare” to the authorities. She alludes to a personal vendetta, but it just as likely might have been a jilted day care provider who lost a customer thanks to Ms. Snyder’s generosity, or an industry shill who wanted to send a message to unlicensed providers.

Of course it is within reason to regulate and license some professions, particularly those where liability or human welfare is a concern, such as medicine, debt collection, and indeed, child care. But a quick look at Michigan’s Licensing Services portal confirms that regulation is not limited to these critical professions. The State of Michigan licenses 116 occupations, making it one of the most heavily regulated states in the country – ranked 6th overall, according to a Reason Foundation policy study. It is unlikely that all of these occupations are regulated out of necessity, especially when one considers that occupational licensing is often nothing more than a form of industry protectionism. Often enacted at the behest of industry lobby groups, these laws restrict competition by creating procedural and financial barriers that shut out people without the means to acquire a license.

Those who dare to ignore the laws face substantial fines and in some cases, incarceration. This may seem unfair, but without such harsh penalties, how will be be spared the ineptness of unlicensed interior designers, auctioneers, and hair braiders? How will we punish the college dorm resident who gives $2 haircuts? We might as well prohibit any activity which causes powerful lobbying organizations and their protected constituents to lose profits. The Louisiana State Florists’ Association succeeded in this task when the Bayou State became the first nationwide to require a florist license. Aspiring florists must pass a test with a failure rate that exceeds that of the state bar exam and is written by the florist’s association itself. It is true that public safety is sometimes a motive for regulation, but greed is the perennial factor.

UPDATE: By a unanimous vote in each chamber, the Michigan House and Senate passed legislation which exempts free babysitting from the license requirement. (12 Nov. 2009)

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Thoughts for the back-to-school season:

The real intellectual life of a body of undergraduates, if there be any, manifests itself, not in the classroom, but in what they do and talk of and set before themselves as their favorite objects between classes and lectures. You will see the true life of a college…where youths get together and let themselves go upon their favorite themes–in the effect their studies have upon them when no compulsion of any kind is on them, and they are not thinking to be called to a reckoning of what they know.

— Woodrow Wilson

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I was reading Wikipedia’s article on melee weapons when I encountered the sjambok, a traditional South African cattle prod made from the thick hide of the hippopotamus. Thanks to apartheid, it’s often synonymous with public beatings and police states. (This fact, however, should not deter a person from owning one for law-abiding purposes.)

On Amazon, I found the Cold Steel Sjambok, a $12 synthetic model available in 42″ and 54″ varieties. Here’s a demonstration:

Surprisingly, this video did not diminish my desire to own a sjambok for hiking and home defense.

It’s worth noting, however, that a Czech product reviewer by the name of Bartok Kinski said his sjambok failed to protect him from a pack of wolves in the wilderness. He posted the same negative review four times. I thought he was out of line for posting an identical review multiple times, but he may have been boasting about surviving not one, but four wolf attacks.

This summer was the first time since 2006 that I’ve had a first-floor bedroom, and it was a difficult adjustment after having spent three years on the much safer second floor. I’m back in two-story apartment now. Maybe it’s paranoia, or maybe it’s the fact that a white supremacist allegedly slit a man’s throat in my neighborhood on move-in day, but I still feel safer now that I’m on the second floor again, with my sjambok in arm’s reach.

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The Fresno Bee reports on the damage to natural resources caused by outdoor cannabis crops:

Volunteers are going into the gardens to clean up trash, dead animals and pesticides to return the land as close to its original condition as possible. But it could take years for the land to recover, because little can be done once fertilizers and pesticides seep into the ground or stream beds.

George Anderson of the California Department of Justice added, “For every acre of marijuana grown, 10 acres are damaged.”

The State of California has struggled for years with so-called “guerrilla gardens”, perhaps most notably in the 1.1-million acre Sequoia National Forest, where authorities seized 10,000 plants last year. According to the National Parks Service, the Mexican cartels left a sizable chore for police and volunteers: 5,800 pounds of garbage, which included 75 propane canisters, 5.8 miles of hose, and empty containers of fertilizer, pesticide, and rodenticide.

In an underground cannabis industry, guerrilla growers have two short-sighted objectives: 1) produce as much cannabis as possible and 2) don’t get caught. They don’t care what happens to the land, because they can always find more land—especially in California, where parks make up at least 15% of the state’s land area. In the absence of long-term responsibilities that come with property ownership, it’s easy to see why the guerrilla growers burn through natural resources with such wanton neglect.

Farmers of legal substances like corn and wheat improve and preserve their land by employing crop rotation and other modern agricultural innovations and by using chemicals with caution or not at all. If cannabis were legalized, these tax-paying farmers would have the option to grow cannabis in a way that does not threaten natural resources and park visitors.

Related links:

• Cartels Use Sequoia National Forest to Grow Pot (NPR)

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My band, Ten and Six, released our debut music video today:

Our new album is also out today. You can download it free, or buy a CD for $4.95.

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1929-2009

Born, lived, and died in Middle Branch Township, Osceola County, Michigan

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