Hey, John Hickenlooper is the governor and it’s his state agency that’s doing the crackdown on yoga certification*. Or should it be shakedown? – Because there’s apparently money in regulating this.

Teacher-training programs that are required to be certified must pay fees to the state. The state charges $1,750 for an initial provisional certificate that is good for up to two years, then $1,500 for a renewable certificate good for three years. It also charges $175 for every “agent” authorized to enter into a contract with a student, plus $3.75 per student per quarter. In addition, schools that have been certified must secure a minimum bond of $5,000, which is based on the amount of tuition collected.

You gotta wonder what the victory condition for Colorado is for this one. I mean, liberals like yoga, right? And Hickenlooper’s a liberal. You’d think that he’d do the smart thing and take this as an opportunity to get rid of a stupid set of regulations… and, yes, this is stupid. A remarkable amount of our licensing regime is based on the twin engines of stupidity and laziness: people write a quick regulation instead of making a specific, circumstances-based decision; and then other people expand that regulation to cover something that it had no business covering.  Happens. All the. Time.

So good job, Gov. Hickenlooper. You keep finding those enemies of the State! …As I said: he’s the governor.  Fish rots from the head down, and all that.

Via @Aaron_RS. Image via Shutterstock.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*To be fair, this program started up in 2002, under a Republican governor. To be equally fair, nobody enforced the dumb thing for a decade because it’s yoga.