Toys and Books

CPSIA gives every law that's ever been passed a bad name. It's the perfect example of the stunning damage that can be done at the nexus of national bureaucracy and over-capitalized liability excepted corporations. It gives every law a bad name, in that it can be pointed to as a reason not to observe the better laws that congress passes. It is also the result of a class of elected officials who need to be constantly Doing Something (tm) to justify the salaries they draw, and the money they spend to compete to draw those salaries.

If you held corporations accountable for their actions in the first place, you wouldn't need bad laws like these gumming up the works, and the attendant laws that multiply the negative effect of the forces already in the mix. Like busting up kids lemonade stands over safety concerns, it just leads to silliness.

The law is doing what it was designed to do all along -- wipe out small/micro toy makers. It's yet another barrier to entry in a cutthroat market. Instead of implementing random testing with follow ups, the Big Guys lobbied for a draconian regimen that would hurt small producers. Sadly, one of the last thriving areas of the boutique toy market was the handmade toy niche. And now they're made to suffer for the Mattel's sins -- even though handmade toys are head-and-shoulders above mass-market toys in terms of safety.
The Big Guys always win. Try explaining "crony capitalism" to your kids. If it doesn't make sense to them, you can feel good about your parenting.

Just this weekend, I was shopping at a local used book store, which said it was no longer carrying books published before 1985. This means no out-of-print books which have been some of my mainstays for years, both as suggestions to friends and family, and also the thrill of finding after years have gone by. It's pathetic.

It's really too bad that CPSIA will never be fixed as long as Rep. Henry Waxman is in charge of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He refuses to hold hearings on it, describing it as a "perfect" law because he feels the process by which it was written was perfect. First he said he would hold hearings only after a new CPSC chairperson was appointed. When that happened, he promised on the Diane Rehm show to hold the hearings, and indeed he scheduled one, then promptly cancelled it. Every hearing but one by any Congressional committee on CPSIA has been cancelled, thanks to the Democratic leadership putting pressure on the committees not to revisit it.

What's even worse is that the same people who wholeheartedly supported this law are now against it. The American Library Association endorsed CPSIA when they thought it was a toy safety law, then withdrew their support after it was passed and it was discovered that the words "children's products" applied to-- gasp-- ALL children's products, including books. Too late, though. It would have been really nice if instead of all jumping on each other's bandwagons, these organizations purporting to care about consumers had actually taken the time to find out what was in the bill and think about whether actual consumers wanted it.