Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘CPSC’

CPSIA and children’s jewelry

Metal jewelry is among the relatively few children’s products that presents a risk of lead ingestion to children not approximating zero, so it’s not especially surprising that it is treated with special stringency under the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. As CPSC’s guidelines explain, metal children’s jewelry becomes subject to testing and certification requirements on the 20th of this month (its makers do not benefit from the one-year stay) and items with even the tiniest dab of paint are subjected to additional requirements, including a separate testing/certification requirement that is already in effect. Since the law went into effect lead content has been limited to 600 parts per million in both jewelry and paint, and on August 14 the threshold for paint content will drop to 90 per million. Lead in its natural state has in many eras been a popular constituent of jewelry because of the metal’s soft and easily worked consistency. It is also a constituent element of all true crystal and many or most rhinestones — although there is much evidence that it is poses far less hazard to health in those forms because it tends to remain chemically bound into the crystal structure rather than leaching or dissolving out if chewed or ingested.

jewelbox

Given the stringency of its testing requirements and its unfriendliness toward component certification, CPSIA is not surprisingly causing serious economic difficulties in the children’s jewelry business, not excluding makers who have never used materials or components containing lead but must shoulder the extensive cost of testing anyway. HABA, the much-admired German toy company, has already announced the departure of its jewelry line from the U.S. market:

Due to the new CPSIA laws we have made the voluntary financial decision to no longer have the jewelry section in our catalog. The 2009 catalog will not include the jewelry. This does NOT mean that our current jewelry does not meet the ASTM requirements. Our overall jewelry sales are a very small percent of our business and the cost to test these items would outweigh the margins to sell the products.

Rhode Island is the historic center of costume jewelry making in America, and the Providence Business News reported recently on the plight of some of its makers. Keith Barber, partner in Rainbow Sales Inc. in Cranston,

said he has been following this issue for at least five years, since California adopted a strict law banning lead in children’s products. The California law became the model for the federal version, and Barber noted that California included an exclusion for rhinestones and crystals. California, he said, “took the time and did it right.”

Alan R. Green, owner and operator of Argo Products in Johnston, like Barber has thousands of dollars now tied up in unsalable rhinestone items, and believes that plastic substitutions will not be as broadly appealing to customers.

Green says that he could live with going out of business if he were a lousy businessman or as a result of the weak economy. “But to lose my business because of an ill-conceived federal regulation that is completely divorced from reality, that’s really going to hurt,” said Green.

The Fashion Jewelry Trade Association (FJTA), based in North Kingstown, R.I., “represents about 2,500 costume jewelry makers worldwide,” the article says. Its president, Michael Gale,

said his organization several weeks ago submitted a 37-page petition to the CPSC, formally requesting an exclusion for crystal, rhinestone and glass, complete with scientific evidence and a risk-assessment study in what he called a “very elaborate presentation.” … No response has been received yet, Gale said.

In the period leading up to CPSIA’s passage, the most publicized death — even, by some accounts, the only death — of an American child relating to an item regulated by CPSIA was that of 4-year-old Jarnell Brown of Minneapolis, who per the Star-Tribune “died from swallowing a heart-shaped charm made almost entirely of lead” in a charm bracelet that came free with Reebok sneakers bought by his mother; Reebok paid a $1 million fine. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar cited the case in campaigning for some of the law’s most stringent provisions. It can be hard to get a clear account of what happened in the Brown poisoning, and Michael Shaw has tried to track down “numerous inconsistencies in the reporting of this entire tragic business, including the health of the child before this incident, how he obtained the bracelet, and how a child with supposedly no history of ingesting foreign objects did so.” childmermaidAs far as the case for CPSIA goes, it bears repeating that the federal laws already in effect made it punishable for Reebok to distribute the merchandise in question — hence the record-setting fine (as well as other consequences to that company). The main point of CPSIA was to clamp a draconian regulatory regime on products that, unlike the heart charm, weren’t a risk for poisoning anyone. More commentary on the Jarnell Brown case: Deputy Headmistress, scroll also to comments; Kathleen Fasanella, scroll to third example in her response; Valerie Jacobsen in comments at League of Ordinary Gentlemen. On the adequacy of CPSC’s legal authority to address lead in jewelry under previous law, see also Rick Woldenberg/Little Ida.

Children’s jewelry is also produced by many beaders, crafters and other small enterprises for sale at local arts fairs, Etsy, and so forth.* The outcry on CPSIA from small producers, dealers and distributors includes, to pick a sampling, Fairy Tale Jewels, Angie Vinez, Birds and the Beads (“Even if the components have all been certified (such as TierraCast pewter), the CPSIA law still requires that the final product be tested regardless.”), My Aphrodite, Rings and Things, My Charmed Life, and Michon Jewelry.

In the coming days (per the article) CPSIA is expected to be a major topic of discussion at the annual exhibition of another jewelry trade group, the Providence-based (and fine-jewelry-oriented) Manufacturing Jewelers & Suppliers of America (MJSA), which holds its MJSA Expo at New York’s Javits Center from Sunday Mar. 8 through Tuesday, Mar. 10. Certain newspapers that have dismissed concerns about CPSIA’s effect on small businesses as “needless fears” could even send a reporter to that expo if they wanted — it’s only a few blocks’ stroll.

* Lab testing costs are likely to mount into the many thousands of dollars for many kitchen-table and cottage-industry makers, especially if they use many colors of bead or paint and produce multiple or customized styles.

Filed under: , , ,

CPSIA chronicles, March 4

[Broken link on CPSC surveillance program fixed now.]

  • The internet is a-hum with reactions to a proposal by West Virginia state representative Jeff Eldridge (D-Big Ugly) to ban Barbie dolls “and other similar dolls that promote or influence girls to place an undue importance on physical beauty to the detriment of their intellectual and emotional development.” That idea is predictably going nowhere (at least in West Virginia: Montpelier, Vt. is said to have voted a Barbie ban*), but Eldridge can perhaps take consolation in that CPSIA has already (with virtually no media taking note of the fact) banned the sale of vast numbers of vintage Barbies that pose equal dangers of symbolic or psychological impairment, if not of actual physical dangers. This 1999 New York Times piece describes how Mattel was “beginning an effort to eliminate” the use of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) compounds in the dolls, and that environmental activist groups contended that PVC often included lead as well as (less surprisingly) the plastic softeners phthalates, some but not all of which are banned by the law. dollsanddollclothes As Denise Van Patten noted in an About.com write-up in January, it is not clear what old dolls are still going to be lawful to sell, distribute or give away under CPSIA, if they cannot be fit into the “adult collectible” exception that covers items so expensive they will be kept out of children’s hands. Soft plastic is only the beginning of the problem. Most older dolls have paint as a component — often only in the rendering of the eyes, but that’s enough to count as a resale red flag under the CPSC’s Feb. 9 guidelines. Hair and dyed fabric, both of unknown composition? Buttons or snaps in the garment, or worse yet, rhinestones? About the only such plaything a thrift shop would not advised to discard under the guidelines would be an unpainted and unvarnished rigid humanoid figurine of raw wood or cast aluminum. If your child does find one of those on a thrift store shelf, she’s welcome to cuddle it all she pleases.
  • Carol Baicker McKee is a children’s book author and illustrator who commented eloquently (more) on one of our earlier posts about books. Now she has a great post explaining why, although she “never used to think of myself as an activist,” she’s thrown herself into the fight to change this law. As she points out, some things changed, but other things didn’t change, when the CPSC announced a short safe list of presumptively lawful material for children’s products along with a one-year stay on many testing requirements (but not on the banning of goods that flunk the thresholds). She explains why “the stays provide only the illusion of relief,” and that “when the stay ends a year from now, the destructive testing provisions will still go into effect for all children’s products except the small percentage that have been given a reprieve – the costs of that testing will force the remaining small businesses that have limped along this year into oblivion (and the [requirement for] destructive testing will obviously signal the end of one of a kind products).” Read the whole thing.
  • In a classic 1850 pamphlet, Frederic Bastiat writes of “what is seen, and what is not seen” when people recommend government solution to a problem. Deputy Headmistress writes of “what Congress didn’t see“. More: Patrick Stephens on a similar theme last month.
  • A Georgia newspaper quotes CPSC spokeswoman Arlene Flecha as saying that “her agency will have inspectors make unannounced visits to stores throughout the country and will randomly conduct tests on products.” And if you’re wondering about the CPSC “Internet surveillance project”, in which agents of the commission pose as consumers in order to trap detect persons selling forbidden goods on eBay or Craigslist, you can find out more about that here (link fixed now).
  • At the Heritage Foundation’s InsiderOnline blog, Alex Adrianson has a detail-filled though not lengthy post that would make a good short introduction to the subject to send to (say) a lawmaker.
  • Allison Loudermilk at the How Stuff Works blogs takes a look at the law’s heavy impact on thrift stores (“the selection at your local thrift store just got a whole lot slimmer”), while the PTA Thrift Shop of Carrboro, N.C. regrets to inform its customers that it’s out of kids’ resale entirely due to the law; things are only a little better in Salem, Ore. Manager Lisa Sonnek of the York, Nebraska Goodwill has pulled all the children’s clothing, toys, furniture, and pre-1985 books, in accord with policy from above, but has put aside “some clean children’s clothing, in anticipation of the policy being modified in the near future”. Dunno – that might depend on Henry Waxman’s heart melting or something.

*Although numerous online sources report as fact a Montpelier Barbie “ban”, commenter Barb says it’s far from clear that the reports have much of a factual basis.

Filed under: , , , , , ,

CPSIA chronicles, March 2

Reading from the weekend:

  • At the American Spectator, Quin Hillyer says his co-thinkers “need to really get up newcriterionin arms about” changing the law, and has kind words for a certain website that is “the single best place to track all its devastation”. At The New Criterion, Roger Kimball finds that the threat to vintage children’s books provides a good instance of the dangers of “safety”. And commentator Hugh Hewitt is back with another column, “The Congress Should Fix CPSIA Now“.
  • Numerous disparaging things have been said of the “mommy bloggers” who’ve done so much to raise alarms about this law. Because, as one of Deputy Headmistress’s commenters points out, it’s already been decided that this law is needed to “protect the children”, and it’s not as if mere mothers might have anything special to contribute about that.
  • Plenty of continuing coverage out there on the minibike/ATV debacle, including Brian O’Neill, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (office of local Congressman Mike Doyle, D-Pa., says most members think, dubiously, that ban “can be fixed without new legislation”); Lebanon, Pa. (“Ridiculous… It’s closed an entire market for us”), Waterbury, Ct. (“The velocipedesadgovernment does stupid things sometimes without thinking”), and, slightly less recent, Atlantic City, N.J. (“I would’ve had three sales this weekend, so they stomped us”). Some background: Off-Road (agency guidance in mid-February told dealers to get youth models “off their showfloors and back into holding areas”); Motorcycle USA (“With right-size models being unavailable to families, we may see more kids out on adult ATVs and we know that this leads to crashes”). To which illustrator Meredith Dillman on Twitter adds: “Just wait until someone gets hurt riding a broken bike they couldn’t get replacement parts for.”
  • One result of CPSIA is that a much wider range of goods are apt to be subject to recalls, but not to worry, because the CPSC recall process is so easy and straightforward.

Filed under: , , , , , , ,

CPSIA chronicles, February 27

Their hands are tied

  • Finally! Today’s Boston Globe covers the thrift-store calamity:

    In recent weeks, Goodwill pulled all children’s merchandise from its nine stores in the state. Thrift chain Second Time Around eliminated kids’ clothing from several of its 16 shops. St Vincent de Paul is currently removing children’s clothing with metal zippers, buttons, and painted fabrics from its processing center, which sends out merchandise to its six stores in Massachusetts.

    It’s exactly the sort of coverage that’s been overdue in the biggest newspapers since Feb. 10: well-reported, making clear the human costs of the law for both cash-strapped shoppers and charitable sponsors, and including words like “devastating” and “heartbreaking”. And on page one.

  • If you missed it yesterday, Overlawyered gets results! Although sometimes the opposite of the kind we intend. Yesterday we hailed as a breakthrough the House Small Business Committee’s willingness to hold a hearing next week on the costs of CPSIA. Within a few hours, as Rick Woldenberg relates, Congressional staffers hastily put out word that they were canceling the hearing and that the idea is “not likely to ever be brought back”. There’s no way for us to know just who placed the phone call, but odds are good it was someone who realized that letting people from around the country get in front of a microphone and talk about this law’s effects would not exactly do wonders for the image of Henry Waxman, Bobby Rush, Jan Schakowsky, Public Citizen, PIRG, or their allies. More on the cancellation from Rick Woldenberg, who reports that this is the third time he’s been disinvited from Capitol Hill testimony. Sounds like someone really dislikes the message he would deliver.

    • About ten colors too many

  • Hair bow makers on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
  • The Examiner, which has a wide readership in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and other cities, is out today with a great editorial on CPSIA which also generously directs readers to this site and its “chilling” reports. It concludes: “This law is an utter disaster. Congress ought to fix it, immediately.” The Examiner also quotes Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), one of the law’s sponsors, as saying “the law allows the CPSC to make ‘commonsense exceptions’ to anti-lead requirements.” This is not the first time I have been obliged to wonder whether Sen. Pryor actually has a close familiarity with the terms of the bill he helped guide to passage, and if not, whose summaries he has been relying on when he talks to the press. arkansasstateflag
    It is precisely because the law does not confer on the CPSC any “commonsense exception” authority that the commission was obliged to turn down the makers of kids’ minibikes in their plea for an exemption the other day. Same for many other instances that could be cited, such as the pre-1985 books and the size 10 winter coats with zippers and snaps that are being yanked from thrift store shelves. Had the commission such a “commonsense exception” discretion, it would almost certainly have acted by now to defuse these sources of public outcry. To repeat the question: who does Sen. Pryor rely on for his briefings?

    • For adult use only

  • Speaking of products with vanishingly low risk of poisoning that have trouble obtaining commonsense exemptions, we’ve been remiss in not staying on the case of ballpoint pens, mentioned in our Feb. 6 and Feb. 13 roundups. Deputy Headmistress has quite a bit more on the legal limbo occupied by the writing implements, which appear now to be unlawful when intended primarily for under-12 use. And visitor “Scott” wrote last week in our comments section:


    What still amazes me is that the story about ballpoint pens being in violation of the CPSIA isn’t getting more notice. The CPSC admits that ballpoint pens intended for children are covered. As it happens, the US trade association for the makers of pens, pencils and erasers has sent a letter to the CPSC that ballpoint pens are not-compliant and no existing alloy satisfies the lead limits. It may take 2 years to develop an alloy, if one exists. I can only conclude that there must be very very very many stores not in compliance and ‘poisoning’ our children with lead. Are these stores not facing strict liability and risking felony criminal liability including 5 years in prison and $250,000 fines? The stay by the CPSC doesn’t help the pen-makers or sellers, because they’re in knowing violation of the lead limits. All they can hope for is that none of the 50 state attorney generals decides to prosecute what would appear to be a slam-dunk case. There is a chance that the CPSC may eventually decide to make an exemption for pens, however the CPSC admits that its staff is ‘not yet aware of any substance as to which the required showing [of no absorption of any lead into the human body] can be made.’.

Filed under: , , , , , , ,

CPSIA: Powersports, crystals, and stranded inventories

With large inventories of kid-sized motorbikes, mini-ATVs, and similar products rendered worthless and unsalable under tarps or in back storage rooms, the Motorcycle Industry Council now estimates that the economic damage from the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act in its sector of the economy alone could reach $1 billion in 2009 if Congress does not act to restore the products’ legality. Joe Delmont at DealerNews has more information on how that figure was arrived at. Two weeks ago we cited an estimate that the frozen inventory alone exceeds $100 million in value; the larger figure adds in the cost of payroll and insurance at dealerships while they wait for the ban to be lifted, lost service and accessory sales, and so forth. It apparently does not count harms to tourism and recreation sectors in parts of the country that draw a family vacation trade based on use of the vehicles (see, e.g., ShareTrails.org, Americans for Responsible Recreational Access). Since the vehicles are intended for outdoor use, the weeks leading up to and including spring — in other words, now — are ordinarily their prime selling season. Some recent coverage previously unlinked: Chico, Calif., Enterprise-Record, WDAY Fargo, N.D., Orlando, Fla. Local6, WCTV Tallahassee, Fla., Gloversville, N.Y. Leader-Herald, Kingsport, Tenn. Times-News. Forums: cpsia-central, VitalMX, Motorcycle Addicts, and many more.

bombardierbrp

The minibikes fall into a category of products for which the drafters of CPSIA made it particularly hard to obtain exemptions, namely products that concededly do contain a more than infinitesimal quantity of lead in a normal and accessible component. Yesterday, the CPSC published (PDF) its proposed rule on the subject. In it, the commission staff explain the stringent legal requirements governing such waivers, and why they often do not allow the commission to grant “common sense” waivers even where risks of harm are very low and costs of regulation are very high (pp. 7 et seq of the document, which fall on pp. 9 et seq of the PDF). In other words, the minibike dealers are out of luck unless they can convince (or persuade Congress to take the issue away from) the implacable Henry Waxman, who in turn tends to take his cue on these matters from Public Citizen and that group’s allies.

The powersports dealers aren’t the only ones stranded. At The Smart Mama, lawyer/lead testing consultant Jennifer Taggart ponders what might amount to “the end of bling” in kids’ wear. Genuine crystals by definition include lead, as do many rhinestones, although cheaper plastic imitations will more often be free of it. Trade groups have petitioned for an exemption, but given the law’s stringency (calling for the submission of peer-reviewed data, for example) it is far from clear that the commission can grant their requests. It will be easy in some quarters to dismiss the whole matter with a wave: who cares about mere embellishments, anyway?
irishdancedress
It’s not so easy to be dismissive if you’re, say, a teacher of Irish step dancing, with a stock of performance dresses in youth sizes (quite possibly with crystals, rhinestones or sequins, since nothing picks up stage lights the way they do). That stock of costumes, which might even be your most costly asset, by law at least may now occupy the same frozen contraband category as those tarped-over new youth minibikes at the sports dealer’s. As message-boarder “GailV” put it, “The dresses are worn for about 15 minutes at a time, the possibly lead-containing parts never touch the child, but it’s still illegal.” For more on the dismay CPSIA has struck into the Irish dance apparel community, see Irish Dance Moms, Fashion Incubator Forums, and Voy Forums comments here, here, and here (“Heidi”: “Most of us would like to be successful and running legitimate (law abiding) businesses. I want to grow my business, not hide in the shadows looking for ways to circumvent the law. Besides, the jealous world of Irish dance is full of potential whistle blowers.”)

More: In comments, Jennifer Taggart reports more distress in the bling sector.

Filed under: , , , , , , ,

CPSIA chronicles, February 24

fenceconversationwithdoll

  • More thrift store and reseller reports, not linked earlier: Blacksburg, Va. (“a lot of customer complaints at the YMCA at Virginia Tech since the thrift shop pulled kids’ toys off its shelves”), Chapel Hill/Carrboro, N.C. (“many patrons are upset” at absence of children’s items), Sioux City, Iowa (“To be on the safe side, Goodwill removed from the sales floors nearly all its used children’s clothing and all its toys”), Le Mars, Iowa (youngster’s outing ends in tears; items in storage for now).

    And yet at many other stores — in other states or cities, maybe even down the block in the same town — decisions on what to drop have been much more selective. Thus New Orleans (large thrift store in St. Charles Parish “no longer accepting small toys, painted wood items or clothing with trinkets or toys attached to them,” those being, of course, a small fraction of the items that could lead to an inadvertent CPSIA violation), and Lufkin, Texas (list of goods Goodwill won’t accept includes bunk beds, bicycle helmets, embellished books, and many others, but a good bit narrower than CPSC guidance would suggest). The shop I visit most often, in a relatively prosperous NYC suburb, had a sparser-looking-than-usual selection yesterday, which nonetheless included items that would raise a definite eyebrow under the CPSC guidelines, such as kids’ athletic shoes with metal lacing grommets. And it’s not hard to find thrift outlets with relatively high profiles in their community — I won’t name names for fear of getting them into trouble — that don’t seem to have dropped much of anything. You’d hardly imagine that CPSIA was supposed to be a uniform national law.
  • Related: Riverside, Calif. Press-Enterprise, “Goodwill Industries International said it could potentially lose $134 million nationwide in the coming year if forced to dispose of all children’s clothing and products, according to spokeswoman Lauren Lawson.” And the Naperville, Ill., Sun covered the headaches of maternity and children’s reseller Connie Ballas (From My Room).
  • Hugh Hewitt’s popular conservative radio show devoted an hour to the law yesterday, interviewing attorney Gary Wolensky of Snell & Wilmer, who represents manufacturers and whose discussion primarily focused on the headaches they face. The show drew a strong call-in reaction and has already led to a flurry of online interest in CPSIA reform.
  • Meanwhile, Jennifer Grinnell of Sherborn, Mass. writes that CPSIA reform needs to be approached as more than a right-vs.-left, blue-red, Dem-Rep political football [Change.org]
  • When the New Orleans Times-Picayune interviewed local toy stores, the independent retailer was finding the law “burdensome” and “very cumbersome” as she tried to communicate with all the producers of items in her stock, while the franchise operator seemed to be having a much easier time of it because he carried only items on a checklist from national and could piggyback his compliance paperwork on headquarters’. Yes, that sounds about right.
  • Don’t toss those pre-’85 kids’ books, thrifters! Set them aside and await orders from D.C.! That seems to be the advice of Examiner columnist (and former children’s bookseller) Diane Petryk Bloom, who’s confident that a law this bad will be amended and suggests that in the mean time some civil disobedience might be in order, advice that might not be taken readily by resellers staring down the business end of those $100,000 potential fines.

    Let’s assume she’s right that most people in the thrift store business can’t bring themselves to leave perfectly good children’s books out on the curb, and instead tuck them into storage for the time being or look the other way while an employee “borrows” them for home use. What happens next, as the weeks turn into months (or perhaps years) with no action from Henry Waxman & co.? The main mechanism by which we will lose older books is not so much that thrift stores will toss them in the trash, as that they’ll refuse to accept them as donations or consignments in the first place, while other outlets worried about legal liability (such as online auction sites) adopt similar policies. Once there’s no convenient way to dispose of the books even as donations, families will simply discard most of them (with occasional collectible/rarity exceptions) when the kids grow up, when moving house, or when winding up a family estate. It’s not as if there’s likely to be much press coverage of these micro-events, which doesn’t make them less than real.

    ParentDish and Etsy also have active threads in progress on the issue of older children’s books.

  • Some other blog talk: Blue Rose Girls, Kora in Hell/WordSmoker (rude language), Lex Fortis (satire), and of course leading CPSIA-watchers Deputy Headmistress/Common Room (on press coverage, Consumers’ Union and dragons) and Valerie Jacobsen (what? you mean CPSC would target small business with punitive actions?)

    • yorkiebarrette

  • Sorry, even if your little girl has been saving up her allowance for one of our pretty hair barrettes, we can’t sell it to you, unless you want it for her dog [MaidenUS]

Public domain image: Grandma’s Graphics, Mabel Betsy Hill; dog image from MaidenUS.

Filed under: , , ,

CPSIA and print-on-demand

sisforstrawberry
Print-on-demand technology has many promising applications for children’s products: it can keep low-sales-volume children’s books from falling out of print, for example, and it can make available T-shirts, posters or school supplies customized with the name of a particular child or family or that of a particular teacher’s class. Unfortunately, in the absence of a green light for component testing, each tiny “run” of goods may need to be lab-tested separately at what will often be prohibitive expense. The CPSC’s enforcement stay as to new-item testing bought a year’s time for most product makers, and its narrow and hastily granted exemption for newly printed books (which, alas, did not extend to countless other printed products) may have saved that particular product category. zisforzinnia For many other users and potential users of the technology, however, the problem has merely been kicked forward to next year in the absence of any willingness by Congress to clarify or change the law. Some discussions: Will Benton; Adam Dewitz, Print CEO (via Book Journeys), WSJ forums (dilemma faced by Tennessee printer). More on book exemption: AAP request, PDF; Etsy thread.

Filed under: , , , ,

CPSIA: N.Y. Times runs three letters

[Title of post revised to reflect the paper’s printing of two more letters in its online (but not physical) edition on Monday.]

When I blasted the New York Times for its wretched editorial on CPSIA Wednesday, Patrick (SSFC/Popehat) made the following prediction:

Those tempted to write the Times to inform its readers about where this editorial gets it wrong will find that, no matter how many letters in opposition are received, the Times will print exactly one. The Times will also print one letter of thanks, from Greg Packer or someone affiliated with PIRG.

It is too early to say whether Patrick’s prediction will come true [see below for update]; the Times did print one short letter today from Nancy Nord of the CPSC, which fits the scheme, but there’s no way of knowing whether it will return to the subject in days to come with a letter supporting its editorial view or additional letters from critics. Before according the Times’ editors any credit for running this one, remember that having called for the removal of a named federal official, they really had to publish a letter from her in response; today’s letter as one would expect is mostly devoted to defending her record while also containing exactly one sentence disputing the Times’ ludicrous and much-derided assertion that fears of harm to small businesses are “needless”.

For the ordinary Times reader who knows little about this issue and is glad to skip to the next item, it will be easy to dismiss a short letter from a Bush appointee seeking to defend her managerial record. What else would you expect a Bush appointee to do? It would be a different matter — something to pause at, maybe ask questions — if a challenge to the Times’ assertions were to appear from wooden toymakers in New England, from apparel crafters in New York City’s garment district, from people who manage thrift and consignment stores, or from someone who deals in used children’s books. But — so far, at least — Times readers have been spared the danger of hearing any such discordant voices.

Update Monday a.m.: the Times online edition, though not the physical paper, runs two more letters today, and in doing so slightly (but only slightly) falsifies Patrick’s cynical prediction. The letter favorable to its own position, and ascribing no fault to the law other than its lack of tougher enforcement, comes not from PIRG but from David Pittle of Consumers Union (better prestige that way). And the Times also prints a mildly critical letter from the Toy Manufacturers of America, a group that 1) endorsed the law as a matter of general principle; 2) is often described in press coverage as closely aligned with giant toymakers who can live with its terms; 3) is cautious if not bland in its objections (“unrealistic”, “unwarranted”, etc.); 4) from its name and niche, reinforces the misimpression that “toys” are mostly what are at stake here, rather than a far wider range of children’s products ranging from books to apparel to minibikes. For all readers can discern from this TMA letter (and we do not, of course, know what the Times chose to condense or cut) the main economic costs of CPSIA might take the form of a quarter of down profits at Mattel or Hasbro. I have more to say in this earlier post about the tendency of CPSIA advocates to designate large and politically cautious industrial concerns as “the other” side for the press to consult, even though their interests and viewpoints may diverge widely from those of the smaller and family firms that dominate much of the children’s product trade. As of Monday, persons whose sole news source is the New York Times (especially the paper version) still have no idea that the law imposes any unusual burdens on this latter group.

Public domain image courtesy Grandma’s Graphics, Anne Anderson.

writelettersallyouplease

Filed under: , , , ,

CPSIA chronicles, February 21

digdeeper

  • For the Handmade Toy Alliance, Jill Chuckas responds to the NYT’s ever-so-clueless CPSIA editorial. The Alliance also recently published a Myth vs. Fact sheet. Among the points addressed: “Myth: Violations of the CPSIA this year will not result in penalties.” “Myth: Further clarification is all that is needed.” and “Myth: Products Tested to European Union Standards will Satisfy New US Standards”. And did you know it’s now unlawful to donate to a charity (let alone sell) a children’s item with paint on it, even if you painted it yourself using lead-free paint, if you haven’t put it out for third-party testing?
  • It’s my impression that beyond the precincts of the “consumer”/Litigation Lobby groups, the bill’s original sponsors on Capitol Hill, and of course the New York Times, it’s getting harder to find all-out boosters of the law who still maintain there’s nothing wrong with it. On Tuesday, however, the Houston Chronicle did publish a perfectly inane editorial taking this view, the refutation of which is left as an exercise to the reader.
  • Deputy Headmistress at Common Room has taken the lead in blogging many angles of the law and her latest must-read examines the legislative history of CPSIA’s enactment, including the roles of Public Citizen, the Consumer Federation of America, PIRG, and Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), as well as business groups like NAM, the latter of which warned against some of the law’s more extreme provisions as placing various advantages into the hands of plaintiff’s lawyers. This makes a good jumping-off point for further research on whether the ongoing CPSIA calamity should truly be regarded as a case of “unintended consequences” and, if so, unintended by whom. One tidbit among many: she says that Travis Plunkett, testifying for the Consumer Federation of America, spoke in favor of rules (not adopted) under which “all product sellers [would] be required to post bonds sufficient to cover the costs of a recall in advance of any ‘potential’ recalls.” Typical New York Times coverage of the day, by the reliably pro-regulation Stephen Labaton, can be found here.
  • Tom Pearson, Punditry by the Pint:

    I’ve written before how law and regulation can be an insurmountable impediment for the weakest, poorest and most powerless in our society. In this case at least we will partly realize what we’re missing when the great independent thrift and book shops start going under and fewer people make handcrafted clothing and toys for children. Still, we’ll never see what could have been in this small niche of our largely self-created social order. This is how the American dream of hope and opportunity dies, one well-intentioned, but misguided rule at a time.

    Life is a messy and wonderful experience. If you try to hermetically seal life, even children’s lives, from risk, you will kill all that messiness and creativity that makes life worth living. Yes, risk can be damaging, painful and even fatal, but, in this case, the cure is worse than the disease.

    Another libertarian view from J.D. Tuccille in the Examiner: “In the name of the children, we cut the kids off from their own history.”

  • Yesterday (Friday) the Consumer Product Safety Commission published a bundle of letters it received pro and con on proposed exemptions from the lead rules. Plenty of raw material here for CPSIA-watchers (long PDF file);
  • Since many people these days visit Overlawyered for the ongoing coverage on this topic, I’ve added a new display on the rightmost sidebar (under the red teddy-bear-as-St.-Sebastian icon) with sub-category tag links for libraries, apparel and needle trades, toys, and so forth. I’ve populated these categories with old posts somewhat in haste, so if you see omitted posts that aren’t tagged with relevant labels, give me a shout.

Public domain image: Grandma’s Graphics, Ruth Mary Hallock.

Filed under: , , ,

New York Times on CPSIA: “needless fears that the law could injure smaller enterprises”

blowingbubblesatus
Clueless. Disgraceful. Grossly ill-informed. And cruelly hard-hearted toward families and businesses across the country that are facing economic ruin.

Yes, after months of silence, the editorialists of the New York Times have finally weighed in with their view of how CPSIA is going. How bad did you expect their editorial to be? It’s that bad, and worse.

nytimes

In a six-paragraph editorial about toy safety, exactly one paragraph is spent informing readers that anything about the law might have aroused any public criticism. And here is that paragraph:

Unfortunately, the commission has yet to implement important aspects of the new law. The delay has caused confusion and allowed opponents to foment needless fears that the law could injure smaller enterprises like libraries, resale shops and handmade toy businesses.

Got that? “Confusion” about the law, and “delay” in implementing it, are the real problems. Fears that small business will be hurt are “needless” and are being “fomented” by presumably sinister opponents.

Or, put differently: anyone who imagines this law might be impractical for libraries, resale shops, handmade toy businesses, or other small businesses is just imagining things — fooled, perhaps, by misinformation spread by the law’s opponents.

Libraries are just imagining things if they listen to people like Emily Sheketoff, associate executive director of the American Library Association, who spoke to the press last month about the choices facing libraries if some sort of exemption could not be found. (“Either they take all the children’s books off the shelves,” she said, “or they ban children from the library.”) Or people like Chip Gibson, president and publisher of Random House Children’s Books, who spoke to Publisher’s Weekly about the prospective effects of the law: “This is a potential calamity like nothing I’ve ever seen. The implications are quite literally unimaginable. …It has to be stopped.” It’s true that the CPSC’s last-minute stay of enforcement did save the new-children’s-book trade from calamity — but remember, to the Times, “delay” has been one of the problems in implementing the law, not something that has (so far) spared us its worst effects.

whirlpoolgame

Thrift stores are just imagining things if they listen to people like Adele Meyer, executive director of the National Association of Resale and Thrift Shops, who said, “The reality is that all this stuff will be dumped in the landfill.” They should ignore all the reports, no matter how numerous and from how many sources, of local Goodwill operations and other thrift stores’ closing children’s departments or sweeping more than half their contents off the shelves, and of kids’ resellers and consignment shops taking massive financial hits or closing down entirely. All of these episodes are either imaginary or, if conceded as real, an instance of overreaction to the needless fears those moustache-twirling opponents have “fomented”. (Some more thrift-store coverage not previously linked: North Carolina, Nebraska, Minnesota with Goodwill pic, upstate New York (“We can’t be sure of the risk unless we take everything off the shelf”), South Dakota, Colorado). They should also stop predicting that the pursuit of their charitable missions will suffer a major blow from the loss of children’s resale revenue, because that sort of thing just undermines morale.

handmadetoyalliancelogo1

Handmade toy businesses are just imagining things if they listen to anyone like the Handmade Toy Alliance. It’s not as if anyone like them is on its list of members.

The Times editorialists warn against “needless fears” that the law “could injure” smaller enterprises. Got that? Not only will they not be driven out of business, they won’t even be “injured”. So small enterprises from coast to coast are just imagining things if they plead desperately for places like the Times to notice that they have already closed down, or will have to do so in the foreseeable future, or have lost thousands of dollars in unsalable inventories. Motorbike dealerships around the country are just imagining things if they think they’re staring at massive losses from the inability to sell their products, even though news-side talent at the New York Times has in fact covered their story well — coverage which the editorial studiously ignores.

For as long as anyone can remember, the New York Times has unthinkingly taken its line on supposed consumer-safety issues from organized groups like Public Citizen and Consumers Union. In this case, the result of such reliance has been to render the nation’s leading newspaper a laughingstock.
Public domain image: Grandma’s Graphics, Ruth Mary Hallock.

(& welcome Virginia Postrel, Christopher Fountain, Patrick @ Popehat, Carter Wood/ShopFloor, Mike Cernovich, Katherine Mangu-Ward/Reason “Hit and Run”, Jonathan Adler @ Volokh Conspiracy, Memeorandum, Above the Law, Tim Sandefur, Mark Thompson/Donklephant, Alison Morris/Publisher’s Weekly Shelftalker blog, Jacob Grier, Amy Alkon/Advice Goddess, Joe Weisenthal/ClusterStock, Valerie Jacobsen/Bookroom Blog readers. And: Deputy Headmistress at Common Room, Faith in Truth, Amy Ridenour/National Center and NewsBusters, Charles Kuffler/Off the Kuff.)

And more: Forbes.com liked this piece and has now reprinted it in slightly altered form. And I’m particularly grateful to Robert Ambrogi/Legal Blog Watch for his generous coverage.

Filed under: , , , , , , ,