This article on The Blaze struck a chord with me today. Long story short, Kerri Smith couldn’t sleep when she was pregnant. So she designed and created a new kind of body pillow that made sleeping while pregnant much more comfortable.
My kids are older now, but I do remember the long, sleepless nights my wife spent during her pregnancy and this product would have been a God send during that time…
So Kerri had an idea. Lets make these pillows and sell them online. Problem. She needed to pay state pillow tag fees. You know the pillow tags that say only to be removed by the consumer. The tags you have likely never actually read since you bought your last pillow.
It turns out 15 states have pillow tag requirements. It would cost her $4,600 a year to keep up with the tag requirements for 15 different states.
Of course, this presents a huge barrier for her business. She is fighting back with a funny YouTube video (at the top of this article) and by bringing attention to this issue.
The obvious takeaway here is that the layers of local, state and federal fees, regulations and restrictions business owners have to navigate to run a business are a serious impediment to actually running a business. Is this the kind of stuff Obama was bragging about?
But the less obvious one is that the states and localities are often just as much a problem as the federal government. Detroit has their own pillow tag requirements!
Virginia is charging her a $100 fee for their pillow tag.
Which is why the Roanoke Tea Party is just as active in local and state politics, as they are in federal. Just because the states are supposed to handle something per the 10th Amendment, doesn’t mean that they will handle it well. Or should be handling it at all.
Just ask Kerri and her pregnant homies. 
