Comments on: CPSIA chronicles, September 20

By: Emma Blanco

Emma Blanco — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 05:25:42 +0000

Regarding CPSIA, one thing I haven’t figured out is, can charity stores still GIVE AWAY items without penalty? Is CPSIA just overseeing products that are SOLD, or are they eventually going to come and look in everyone’s closets to see what dangers may be lurking there? Last week, my town printed an article stating that the local Salvation Army store had been throwing away 80% of their children-item donations….THROWING AWAY!! Wouldn’t they be better off just giving this stuff to the needy? Or would they still be persecuted ~ oops, I mean prosecuted, even if no money changed hands? I was trying to think of a way resale shops could get around the CPSIA’s overbearing stipulations….what if they charged a membership fee for people to come in and swap items? Would this work? I hope small retailers can think of ways to outfox the foxes of the CPSIA.

By: William Nuesslein

William Nuesslein — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:08:39 +0000

Soronel Haetir may be right but I would bet against it. Companies large enough to bear the burden of the law seem to be in China.

If Unions were interested in jobs, they would fight the lead nuts to paint the Pulaski Skyway.

By: Soronel Haetir

Soronel Haetir — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:28:39 +0000

As for the union/advocate alliance, why would the unions care if tiny businesses go under? Businesses large enough to be attractive to labor organizers are big enough to deal with the new requirements.

By: Amy Alkon

Amy Alkon — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 04:46:15 +0000

Handmade Toy Alliance activist Dan Marshall notes on Twitter, “Just spoke with guy who invented a board game about dinosaurs. He’s paying $2400 to get it tested 4 #CPSIA and is mad as hell about Mattel.”

As I may have posted here before, my “green”/Waldorf parent neighbor who scolds me for eating bacon with nitrites and is otherwise hippie/organic/grow-your-own-veggies, etc., was an architect until she became a stay-at-home mom. To make up for the income she and her husband lost when she quit work to stay home with their two young kids, she designed four board games — out of organic cotton — the kind that comes from cotton plants grown by hippies somewhere in America…not the kind of cotton they dig out of lead mines.

Thanks to this idiotic law, she can’t afford to spend thousands testing each, so they’re going without that income, they’ve lost a good bit of their investment, and in this economy. Nice, huh?