New Hampshire’s licensing cartels are a thing of legend for folks who’ve been around long enough to read about them, but most folks won’t realize it until a lack of a license interferes with their day-to-day. Things have improved, are improving, but the cartels who control occupations are “out there, Jimmy.”
That’s a reference to The Last Boy Scout and satan Claus. The malevolent evil that lurks in the everyday, waiting to pounce. Licensing boards are like that. Cartels. Occupational fiefdoms define who can legally do what sort of work, with rules that don’t always make much sense. Back in 2019, in a post titled, “In NH You Need a License to Shampoo Her Hair but Not to Perform Her Abortion,” I opened with,
Governments are stupid. How else do you explain this? To get licensed as an EMT in the state of New Hampshire, you must complete 150 Hours of ‘Education.’ To be a Hairdresser the requirement is 1500 hours.
And closed with,
If you want to professionally shampoo a woman’s hair before her abortion (not cut, color, or style, just shampoo), you need a license from the state ($25.00) and roughly 150 hours of training. To perform an abortion in New Hampshire, you need tools and a willing patient.
Something’s not right about that.
There have been some changes. Abortionists can shampoo and cut hair and then perform the abortion without a license to do either. In the last session, the legislature passed a law allowing the state to accept licenses from out-of-state—you no longer need to relicense here. But the Cartels are still out there, Jimmy, and they can be vicious.
The case erupted when the [North Carolina Board of Examiners for Engineers and Surveyors] discovered [Wayne Nutt] was using his decades of experience as a working engineer to offer opinions about the designs of public works. State officials claimed he could be found guilty of a misdemeanor unless he obtained his own engineer’s license from the state.
“State licensing boards nationwide increasingly act as if they are boards of censors, deciding who may or may not speak about the topics they regulate,” charged IJ attorney Joe Gay. “Today’s ruling is a powerful reminder that in this country, we rely on people to decide who they want to listen to. We don’t rely on government boards to decide who gets to speak.”
Wayne had some thoughts about the “municipal plumbing” in an area where several houses were flooded. He used his wealth of knowledge and experience, and some math, to explain what he thought was the problem, and the cartel tried to claim he was “engineering” without a license.
The judge’s ruling concluded that the state board was in violation of the First Amendment with the speech restrictions it demanded. …
“At its core, this case concerns the extent to which a law-abiding citizen may use his technical expertise to offer a dissenting perspective against the government,” the judge said. “Stating that dissent required the speaker to use his expertise in several ways. He had to do some math. He had to apply recognized methodologies. He even had to write a report memorializing his work. Some of that work may plausibly be considered conduct. But it ends up providing him the basis to speak his mind.”
The unelected Board threatened him and demanded he not “publicly offer opinions about engineering without a license.” Had this gone the other way, we expect it would have been appealed, but free speech is in a precarious position and under attack from many quarters. The uniparty machine may be run by the Dems, but it is a bipartisan beast, as is that thing which stands against it. But the latter does not have a police force or standing army or FBI, CIA, or DHS. We cannot send IRS or EPA officers to eat out their substance.
Speaking your mind has become like checking the “company” in a room before telling a dirty joke where you don’t know what “dirty” even means. The cabal has made everything so toxic people self-censor, many without even realizing it or how that rewires your brain toward silence and compliance.
Our congrats to Mr. Nutt and the Institute for Justice for the win. You’ve done the people of North Carolina a kindness, not that this will stop petty bureaucrats, but at least you’ve got recent precedent you shouldn’t need to defend yourselves.
Next up, was his using math in public racist?
