February 17, 2009
Consumer Product Safety Commission Ascendant
Two months ago I wrote about the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s jihad against swimming pools and hot tubs.
Now, working another law (also signed by Boosh), the product safety nazis are again marauding across the land, wreaking havoc on libraries, used book stores, thrift shops, charities, and the like, all ostensibly to protect children from any and all exposure to even the most miniscule amounts of lead.
The rules, which took the force of law a week ago (February 10, 2009) are complicated, convoluted, and confusing. From the CPSC:
From manufacturers of toys to the kids that play with them, everyone is affected in some way — even those who make and donate products to hospitals and charities.
There are new rules to be understood and adopted for everyone from the largest global manufacturer to the crafter working in the family workshop to the mom-and-pop shop on the corner. Indeed, all children’s products including toys, books, child care articles and clothing are covered in different ways by this law, and there are different rules for different products.
In other words, just about what you’d expect coming from people with no moral compunction about dictating how other’s run their lives and businesses.
And if you think the impact of the law is going to be minimal, better take another look at it.
I’m late to the roundhouse, but will still couple my caboose to the link train.
Ace of Spades, with many links:
So, to recap: Henry Waxman and his accomplices (including, we should note, many Republicans,) have managed to pass a bill which, inter alia,
1) requires the destruction or other removal of huge supplies of secondhand clothes, in winter,
2) may or may not preclude libraries from lending huge chunks of their childrens’ collections,
3) effectively removes as-yet-uncalculated amounts of inventory from salability from small- and medium-size businesses, without compensation.
In the middle of (as we are constantly told) the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. And these examples are just the tip of the iceberg… the economic effects of this legislation reach in every direction, most of which were, of course, unanticipated.
The Post-Tribune (Indiana):
"We have about 90 pages of recall items we check," franchisee Kim Crnarich said, riffling through a list of hundreds of items considered unsafe by government standards.
[...]
Sellers will be responsible for any effects children under 12 may suffer from lead-laden items, anything from clothing to toys and baby equipment.
Fines start at $100,000 and can include jail time, said Adele Meyer, executive director of the National Association of Resale and Thrift Shops.
Some stores that deal in used items have already closed out of fear of liability, while others remain open, hoping the law is amended soon, said Meyer, who is working with Congress and the CPSC to set guidelines by today.
[...]
National thrift stores like Goodwill and Salvation Army, which operate charity programs with their proceeds, stand to lose millions of dollars in annual revenue while disposing of suspect items will add tons to landfills across the country, officials say.
Citing the increased cost of doing business under the new Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, top German wooden toy maker Selecta Spielzeug has ended distribution of its playthings in the United States. German toys often have high educational value.
Good-intentioned law has shops scrambling
Wears like New Consignment Clothier in Le moyne, Mechanicsburg and Hershey has pulled all of its children’s clothing offerings from the racks.
The dramatic cleanout was driven by the new ban on selling any children’s products that contain federally mandated unsafe levels of lead paint.
The owner of Wears Like New simply didn’t know what else to do.
KPTM.com in Omaha:
If you browse through the racks of children’s clothing at area Goodwill stores, you’ll notice half the supply is gone – all because of a new law being implemented by the federal government Tuesday morning.
"What goes into effect on February 10th is a new limit for lead content in children’s products – 600 parts per million," said Patty Davis with the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The new limit affects every single thrift store across the nation. If they’re caught purposely selling a toy, piece of children’s clothing, or book printed before 1985 containing lead, they could face a $100,000 fine.
"CPSC has the authority on the federal level to be enforcing it – we have investigators out in the market place," said Davis. But at the Goodwill near 144th and L, mangers say they’re ready for inspection. "Goodwill has been working with CPSC for a long time, preparing for this change," said Kris Pachunka with Goodwill Industries.
[...]
In order to crack down on online sites such as Craigslist and Ebay, the CPSC says, they are currently working with an internet surveillance team to watch over the online marketplaces.
The list of items that Goodwill will no longer accept as donations or sell include: cribs, playpens, car seats, booster seats, baby walkers, baby swings, baby gates, pacifiers, rattles, children’s plastic dinnerware, teething rings, bunk beds, children’s jewelry, painted wooden or metal toys, flimsily made toys that are easily breakable into smaller parts, toys that lack the required age warnings, bean bag chairs, bicycle helmets for toddlers — and youth, children’s books with foil on the binding, soft plastic pages, embellished books or books with plastic bindings and dolls and stuffed toys that have buttons, eyes, noses or other small parts that are not securely fastened.
People who deal in children’s books for a livelihood now face unpleasant choices. Valorie Jacobsen of Clinton, Wisconsin, who owns a small used-book store and has sold over the Internet since 1995, commented at my blog, Overlawyered: “Our bookstore is the sole means of income for our family, and we currently have over 7,000 books catalogued. In our children’s department, 35 percent of our picture books and 65 percent of our chapter books were printed before 1985.” Jacobsen has contacted the CPSC and her congressional representatives for guidance, but to no avail. “We cannot simply discard a wealth of our culture’s nineteenth and twentieth children’s literature over this,” she writes. She remains defiant, if wary: “I was willing to resist the censorship of 1984 and the Fire Department of Fahrenheit 451 long before I became a bookseller, so I’d love to run a black market in quality children’s books—but at the same time it’s not like the CPSC has never destroyed a small, harmless company before.”
You have to love Jacobsen for that, but one can’t help but fear that the freedom and intelligence she represents is one more toxic asset that can no longer be tolerated in what America (the land of the free, and the home of the brave) has now become.
More at Overlawyered.com
