Away from my desk for three days, and just catching up with the flow of commentary on the issue:
- Too much reporting in local press sources to round up, but check out, e.g., the Knoxville News-Sentinel, Fredericksburg (Va.) Freelance-Star, Arizona Republic, and Nashville Business Journal. Carter Wood at ShopFloor links to excellent coverage in, among other places, the Grand Rapids, Mich. (Jennifer Ackerman-Haywood, “Running with Needles”) and Portland, Maine newspapers.
- Law compared to “an anvil on a onesie” [Small Things Considered; more; via]. Crafts-market site Etsy has an interesting thread on vintage sellers and the law, among many other valuable forum discussions.
Mami Mobile rounds up many links from affected bloggers. More: Daily Grind of a Work at Home Mom, Eve Tushnet (scroll to Jan. 15), Kim’s Play Place with many updates, and Evolving Excellence. - Until only weeks ago, Henry Waxman and his allies were blasting the beleaguered leadership of the CPSC for not being tough enough on producers of kids’ goods; now Waxman seeks to reposition himself as favoring deregulatory steps that the Commission has unaccountably failed to implement. Some appear to be taken in by this imposture, but not blogger Common Room, who has been doing a series of posts documenting why Waxman and his Congressional colleagues were and are the key decision-makers and ought not to be allowed to shift the responsibility to others;
- Who’s dug in to the “great law, no need to change, only evildoers oppose it” position? Well, there are the trial-lawyer-allied, student-fee-funded PIRG groups (Seattle Times), and, even more stridently, the trial-lawyer-defense outfit Center for Justice and Democracy (The Pop Tort). Eric Husman and Common Room have taken a look at the law’s supporters as well. But note an exception: InjuryBoard, the large online trial lawyer site, just ran a surprisingly open-minded interview with anti-CPSIA activist Kathleen Fasanella of Fashion Incubator;
- “[T]he only feasible alternative is for Congress to delay implementation. Many in Congress will not agree to this, in part, because of pressure from the consumer groups ….However, Congress may do something this week or next to either clarify the law, give further guidance on legislative intent to the CPSC, or maybe even delay implementation.” [Ross/Product Liability Prof Blog]. More from the law and policy blog world: Prince/PLProf; Bader/CEI “Open Market”; Bill Childs, TortsProf.
2 Comments
Thanks Walter for your ongoing coverage and attention to this inane law. It has been a tough fight and we need all the help we can get. Thanks for getting the word out, as well as correct info to the public!!
Purely anecdotal input. My wife typifies the bourgeoisie working mom of a five year old; active with other moms, involved with the school, weekends doing all sorts of family things, but yet has little to no interest in political or economic discussion at all. She has a nice white collar job with a huge telecom, for whom she’s worked for about sixteen years. She was raised by right-leaning to very right parents. My point: I read to her, out load, Walt’s piece from Forbes and some of the other blog-bytes. I explained the utter absurdity of this piece of legislative garbage and explained the finer points of its literal enforcement. She was convinced that I (and Walt) were somehow misreading this. She truly believes that there can’t possibly be a law this wacked out and that if Walt is true, someone will step in and fix this…after all, we’re now in the Age of The Messiah. She called her other moms, many of who are middle-left. They all rallied around her and showed my wife Waxman’s PDF from his official House site. My wife thus attempted to
convincecon me that “see, it’s not going to be that big of a deal…” I tried to explain the separation of powers and state AGs and to this moment she, like so many other people seems to think this monster is really just a paper tiger. Thus, I suppose we’ll have to wait until a few too many victims fall prey to this tiger before people realize that it’s not paper.