CPSIA won’t let us build a legal bicycle is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

A few things I learned by attending:

• Ordinary bikes (not the motorized kind) are clearly out of compliance with the law because of the leaded brass in certain components, and have been given no exemption. I’m still wondering why the CPSC directed the motorbike dealers to tarp over their inventory but did not do the same with the ordinary-bike dealers. Earlier here; much more (PDF) in this CPSC submission by Mayer Brown for the Bicycle Product Suppliers Association.
• Until I saw their handout leaflet, it hadn’t sunk in that the non-profit and charitable giants in resale, including Goodwill, Salvation Army, Easter Seals, Volunteers of America, and St. Vincent de Paul, have banded together in a Donated Goods Coalition. Good for them, and I hope someone listens.



• Even blogging the subject as much as I have, I’ve somehow said almost nothing about CPSIA’s requirements for batch numbering, labeling and tracking of kids’ products, due to hit later this year. It seems these requirements all by themselves will suffice to wipe out small producers in droves even if the crazy testing requirements can somehow be made sane.  A few write-ups touching on the subject: Handmade Toy Alliance (Word document), Kathleen Fasanella/Fashion Incubator, Publisher’s Weekly.
• The rally happened because of the efforts of grass-roots business people around the country, above all Rick Woldenberg of Learning Resources. (The story of the Oregon delegation could stand for that of many others.) Motorbike people were much in evidence. Also present: people from trade associations from regular businesses not been much heard from in the CPSIA furor of recent months, including makers of shoes and footwear, cribs, and even household cleansers, all of whom turned out to have stories to tell. Who knew there was a whole association specializing in the little items you get when you put in the quarter in the vending machine and turn the crank?
• Kids’-book author (and valued commenter) Carol Baicker-McKee was there and gave a superb talk, making effective use of a copy of Orwell’s 1984. Otherwise, however, among groups deeply affected by the legislation, the book and library trades were conspicuous by their absence. I wasn’t the only one who noticed this; so did Publisher’s Weekly.
• I finally got to meet face to face many persons who have been favorably mentioned in these columns over the past three months. I was not surprised to find a whole lot of nice, dedicated people, the sort of people you’d want to be making products for your children to use. You, Reader, would have enjoyed meeting them too.
• Many members of Congress spoke. All were Republican, and a few were pretty good. For better or worse (maybe some of each) there was a minimum of partisanship, with scant mention of the reports that the Democratic House leadership had ordered members not to attend. Several lawmakers minimized the institutional role in the debacle of Congress (which passed the law last year almost unanimously), instead seeking to throw the blame onto the CPSC’s management, which put them surprisingly close to the position of Henry Waxman himself. One GOP member said it was important to be nice to the Democrats and not alienate them, since they held all the power. This may have been good advice, but I was still a little surprised.
• Amid a great deal of talk about unintended consequences, very little was said about there being actual adversaries out there, who know quite well what the law is doing and support it anyway. If more than a word or two was breathed about the roles of Public Citizen, PIRG, or the various members of Congress who are actively hostile on the issue (and not just “needing to be educated”), I missed it. Which meant (it seemed to me) that some of the good people who’d taken the trouble to come to Washington were going to be surprised and perhaps unprepared when they discovered figures out there like, oh, just to pick randomly, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, whose positions are not so much unreflected-on as deeply hostile (and with mysteriously unsourced numbers too).

Speaking of which, Consumers Union, publisher of Consumers Reports, confirmed once again that it falls into the “hostile” and not merely “unreflective/ uninformed” category with this deplorable hatchet job, which provoked a slew of angry, substantive comments; see also blog posts including those of Carol Baicker-McKee and Sheeshamunga.

More rally coverage: Domestic Diva, Polka Dot Patch.
Public domain image: Yankee Mother Goose (1902), illustrator Ella S. Brison, courtesy ChildrensLibrary.org.

CPSIA: Things I learned at the rally is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Not long ago the U.S. Senate refused to accept an amendment to the stimulus bill by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) that would have reformed some CPSIA provisions and delayed the implementation of others. Last night it rejected a similar DeMint effort in the form of a budget amendment, and this time there was a roll call, which confirmed that the rejection was largely along party lines: every Democrat voted against the measure except for Sens. Mark Begich (Alaska), Kay Hagan (N.C.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), and Ben Nelson (Neb.), while every Republican voted in favor except Susan Collins (Maine), John Cornyn (Tex.), Mike Johanns (Neb.), Mel Martinez (Fla.), and John McCain (Ariz.). Independent Bernie Sanders (Vt.) voted against, while Sens. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) did not vote.

Following Wednesday’s rally on Capitol Hill, small business people who fanned out to visit their Senators brought back many encouraging-sounding stories of the favorable “We hear you!” “We get it!” reactions they had received visiting the offices of Democratic Senators like Roland Burris (Ill.), Joseph Lieberman (Conn.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.), and Charles Schumer (N.Y.). Whether or not anyone in those offices hears or gets the outcry, it sounds as if the members even more clearly hear and get a different message: that of party discipline.

Kimberly Payne feels oddly hopeful: “The original vote on the CPSIA was nearly unanimous – this one was 39-58. I call that progress!”

The WSJ editorializes on the law again today, its third, concentrating this time on the youth motorcycle/ATV ban. More: Montana senators fiddle while small businesses perish (Mark Riffey, Flathead Beacon); the rally and the Democrats (Rick Woldenberg).

Public domain image: Yankee Mother Goose (1902), illustrator Ella S. Brison, courtesy ChildrensLibrary.org.

Senate rejects CPSIA reform on budget vote, 39-58 is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

CPSIA chronicles, March 30 is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

CPSIA and (regular) bicycles is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Early coverage of the Riverside, Calif. motorcycle great’s civil disobedience at Supercross (auto-plays 12-minute video), DirtRider and more, ATV Rider, Motorcycle.com, Cycle News, American Motorcycle Association. More: Covenant Zone.

CPSIA: Malcolm Smith’s protest is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Carter Wood at ShopFloor has a very useful compilation of what are probably all the current bills introduced in Congress related to the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. (More, of course, may follow as the crisis continues.) Of the 10 bills, one is an omnibus appropriation bill, while the other nine (six in the House, three in the Senate) all appear from their descriptions to be aimed at reforming the substance of the law, its timetables and deadlines, or both.

Significantly, there was introduced this week the first bill with a Democratic (i.e. majority) sponsor, a bill by Montana Democratic Senator Jon Tester to overturn the dirtbike ban.

The three bills in the Senate are S. 608, the Tester bill on motorcycles and related vehicles; S. 374, the much-discussed bill by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) that would have injected common sense into several areas of the law, and which Congress (under pressure from Public Citizen and others) refused to incorporate into the stimulus package; and S. 389, a bill introduced by Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah) “to establish a conditional stay of the ban on lead in children’s products, and for other purposes.”

The six bills in the House are H.R. 1510 and H.R. 1587, introduced by Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.), both relating to cycles/vehicles; H.R. 968, by John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) and H.R. 1465, by Brad Ellsworth (D-Ind.), both of which are described as providing “regulatory relief to small and family-owned businesses”; H.R. 1046, by Adam Putnam (R-Fla.), to “ensure the effective implementation of children’s product safety standards under the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008″, and H.R. 1027, by Bill Posey (R-Fla.), to “exempt second-hand sellers of certain products from the lead content and certification requirements”.

CORRECTION: I erroneously listed Indiana Congressman Brad Ellsworth above as a Republican, but he is a Democrat; fixed now.

CPSIA: a scorecard of reform bills is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

• Today’s the day (4 PM Pacific time) that motorbiking legend Malcolm Smith intends to publicly break the law by selling youth motorcycles and ATV at his store in Riverside, Calif. in defiance of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008. Smith starred with Steve McQueen in the 1970s documentary On Any Sunday, which did much to popularize motorcycle sports. More details at KidsLove2Ride.com:

  As a sign of support, a group of small business people and high-profile motorcycle industry celebrities, including racers Jeff Ward and Jeremy McGrath, Glen Helen Raceway owner Bud Feldkamp, and motorsport design guru Troy Lee have all agreed to be on hand to purchase banned units for use by their own children and grandchildren.

  No word on whether Public Citizen, or perhaps some on the staff of California CPSIA sponsors/defenders Rep. Henry Waxman, Sen. Barbara Boxer or Sen. Dianne Feinstein, will show up to perform a citizen’s arrest. More from Rob Wilson (“A year ago I would have been shy about supporting ‘illegal’ activities”), Pashnit Motorcycle Forums (“A stupid law that must be defied”), Motorcycle.com, Motorcycle USA, Cycle News, Racer X, Eastern Dirt (Smith has had so many offers of support that he changed the time of the protest to the afternoon so that more could attend).
  
  Advance press notice has already been strong: Daniel McDermon, New York Times “Wheels” blog; USA Today (CPSC has gotten as many as 5,000 emails, letters and calls in one day protesting the ban); Riverside Press-Enterprise. Earlier here.

  Update: Early protest coverage at DirtRider and at Smith’s KidsLove2Ride.

• Meanwhile, affected crafters, small business people and dealers are making plans to attend the Washington, D.C. fly-in rally, public hearing and CPSIA outreach events in Washington, D.C. April 1. A new website is up on the event titled AmendtheCPSIA.com (not “Repeal”?) and Rick Woldenburg has many updated details at his site. More: David Foster, Chicago Boyz.

CPSIA: a season of activism is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

In the powersports world, DealerNews reports that on March 19 — that’s this coming Thursday — “California motorcycle dealer and industry icon Malcolm Smith says he plans to sell kid’s ATVs and motorcycles to consumers” in defiance of the law. No word yet on whether or not PIRG or Public Citizen will try to have him arrested, but the penalties for willful violation of the law include five-year prison sentences as well as prohibitive fines. (More: Read Deputy Headmistress to learn more about Malcolm Smith and the history of kids’ dirtbiking and BMX (bicycle motocross) — Steve McQueen figures in it — as well as Sen. Klobuchar’s defense of the law)

Finally, those doing CPSIA activism may be interested in the colorful word-cloud poster/graphic that Whimsical Walney did up the other day.

CPSIA “people’s hearing” in D.C. April 1, and other protests is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

On Wednesday the CPSC confirmed that (per its lawyers’ advice) it was turning down an exemption for youth power vehicles, in that it could not certify what the law requires it to certify, namely that keeping them legal would not result in “any” absorption of lead by a person under 12, ever, or any other risk to public safety or health. Cycle News delves into the details here (with a funny picture) and here. Ryan Leyba at ESPN/FMX also surveys the situation in Congress — where they’re refusing to do anything and, like Klobuchar, blaming the CPSC’s lawyers — and quotes one dealer:

“Business was already slow, and now we’re just dead,” says Gus Saba, general manager of Corona Motorsports in Corona, California. “A lot of people want to get back into the sport [ATVs or dirtbikes] with their kids, and if they can’t buy a bike for their kid, they might not buy one for themselves, either. It’s a mess. We can’t order parts, we can’t service anything. We don’t know what’s going to happen; no one can put a timetable on it.”

Missouri is another state where the minibike community has been hard at work organizing, and the Associated Press, which in general has been a poor place to turn for news on CPSIA, covered the resulting rally in Jefferson City, in an article that got good national pickup. The Missouri House of Representatives has passed a resolution of support. And 2WheelTuesday offers “Stories of a Motocross Generation“: first-person responses to the ban.

Some miscellaneous CPSIA reading: Rick Woldenberg is introducing “our fabulous new Future World Collection of exciting educational materials for the post-CPSIA world. Our products will be lead-free and phthalates-free and in the case of most products, entirely play value-free.” The tongue-in-cheek “catalogue” can be seen here (PDF). At Politico, conservative columnist Hugh Hewitt blasts Congress for its inaction. The Hill covers the Washington wrangling. Punditry by the Pint says “it’s time to repeal this law.” And Scott Greenfield writes, “The Real Risk is the Loss of Childhood Happiness“.

P.S. CPSC has made available videos of its meetings with industry on bicycles and ATVs.

CPSIA and motorsports: jamming the spokes is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system