Some of my happiest memories as a child are of reading the old children's books I found at houses and in the libraries of my school and camp. Musty smelling, filled with deco and nouveau style pictures of girls in strange costumes, they were a tangible link to the past. Not merely because some child had held that book in 1920, but because to read the popular fiction of another era is to take at least a few halting steps into its foreign mental world.
So when I see old children's books--and by "old" I mean "pre-1960"--I often buy them. I love having the companions of my childhood to hand. I've always enjoyed the prospect of having more space to really take up collecting.
Apparently, I can forget about that. Congress has apparently outlawed my hobby. Nor is this merely ideological hysteria. I just checked Amazon, and while there are still some old books for sale, it looks as if there are a lot fewer than there used to be.
Copyright © 2010 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
I think its better that those old books and ideas be suppressed. They are out of date with the new progressive era the US is entering.
/sarc
John's right.
We have always been at war with Oceania. Premier Chauncey says so.
children’s books published before 1985
Yeah, so much for 1984...
Seriously, is this real?
Who is John Galt?!
It's not just books, but small companies that make things for children are now saddled with onerous testing requirements (that are fairly irrational). Even larger manufacturers will probably reduce their variety to reduce the number of times they need to test. The whole thing is just idiotic and Congress seems to be uninterested in fixing it.
I agree. But small companies that make things have long struggled to find markets when they can't produce enough to sell to Wal-Mart and smaller retailers disappear.
Which is the beauty of the Web - you can find a widely distributed niche market. You can also outsource a lot of functions to UPS and PayPal.
Which is the beauty of the Web - you can find a widely distributed niche market. You can also outsource a lot of functions to UPS and PayPal.
Not anymore! Thanks to these new "safety" regulations, big corporations with large lobbying operations are now protected from the predation of small, mom-and-pop niche marketers.
Why do you think big companies like GE suddenly saw the light and actively supported Obama? It finally occurred to them that the government can guarantee them a nice, secure return from corporate welfare. Free markets are risky; you never know when some entrepreneur will pop up with a clever new idea and ruin everything.
This is very saddening. I hope it isn't what it seems.
Congress was warned about this. Even an Obama-appointed official that had to draw up the regulations that I heard interviewed thought that the law was overbroad, but their hands were tied by the explicit wording of the law.
As a systems engineer that daily has to evaluate requirements changes and determine their side effects on a multi-billion dollar program, I despair for the absolutely stupidity of these kinds of laws.
What is especially delicious and, frankly, outraging to me about this whole thing is how it so effectively illustrates the principle that, absent especial - indeed, near-superhuman - vigilance, government regulation redounds to the benefit of large corporations at the expense of small businesses and entrepreneurs. Here, if I recall correctly, the crisis that gave rise to this statute was prompted by contaminated toys imported from China by large multinationals like Mattel. Unsurprisingly, Mattel will have no problem meeting the testing requirements of the new legislation, and indeed appears to have been given the green light by the consumer protection commission to conduct its own testing. On the other hand, small, independent, and creative toy makers are screwed, despite the fact that they didn't cause the problem that led to the legislation in the first place: Most of them can't afford the testing and will have to cease production, or at least marketing domestically.
I understand that the legislation is "for the children" and thus, to many, an unquestionable good. But what dumbfounds me is the unabashed willingness, even among liberals, to raise the costs of rivals to multi-national corporations.
"On the other hand, small, independent, and creative toy makers are screwed"
I'm worried about the unintended consequences of this, and about excessive regulations that hit small businesses more harshly, but small toy makers have no business having their products produced in China if they don't have the resources to monitor the production. This was a badly-written, overly broad response to a very real problem.
I've talked to representatives from, for example, shoe sellers like Nike who'd learned that they needed daily inspections of the Chinese factories where their shoes were being made, since otherwise the factory manager would substitute cheaper foam. I read once about a company that was producing kosher food products in China that had surprise inspections once a week but still, after years of these, would regularly find the workers sitting around eating lunches with pork in them, near where the kosher food was being processed. There was that horrible example years ago where children in third world countries were dying because a Chinese state owned enterprise substituted anti-freeze for another ingredient in children's medicine (it looked and tasted the same and was a bit cheaper). No toy maker, big or small, can blindly trust these factories.
It seems to me that one big problem here is the difference in economies of scale between spot-testing a large batch of newly produced items, and requiring every single library, used book seller and thrift shop in the country to test each individual item on the second-hand market.
But Ann, this doesn't just apply to people who import from China.
If Bob the Woodworker decides to handcraft toys from wood he cut down in his own forest, and then paints them with paint that's lead free (he knows it is... he bought it at Home Depot), he'll have to submit to expensive testing that his small business can't possibly afford.
So basically, the parents who would LIKE to buy hand-crafted toys from Bob are now left without the option. They're stuck with the Chinese toys instead.
Mattel was going to have to test their products anyway-- after the recalls, they were going to lose their market share if they didn't PROVE that their stuff was safe...
But THIS way, all their competitors must test too. So Mattel doesn't lose its edge because of its incompetence, and instead gets to quash the competition since they can afford to test, but the smaller toymakers who already made SURE their components were lead-free CAN'T afford the testing.
Bad law all around. It reduces consumer's freedom, so Libertarians hate it. It involves massive costs and government regulation, so conservatives hate it, and it favors corporations over "the little guy" so liberals hate it.
All to solve a problem that the market had already solved on its own, and that hadn't even actually HURT anyone.
This is why we should limit congress to 30 days a year. When they're sitting in DC with nothing to do, they just get stupid and reckless!
I wasn't trying to defend the law as it is currently written, just making the point that there was a need to do something. As M.C. pointed out below, part of the problem is legislators rushing bills through so that everyone will see that they're doing something. Good regulation is very valuable, while bad regulation can be much worse than doing nothing. With the financial crisis, people talked about regulation in terms of "more" versus "less", but that's not a useful way to view it.
Ann, I'm not attacking you with this but using it to make a point. "we need to do something" is just typical of our Government. Consequences be damned, unintended or otherwise. Just doing "something" is justification in itself. Then you have these clowns who can't help the way the law is written, they just have to enforce it. This is what happens especially when laws are written as to be incomprehensible. Imagine the unintended consequences of an unread 1000 page health care bill.
It also illustrates a corrolary to the first law of bureaucracies: they always expand. I call this corollary, "regulators regulate." In any regulatory sphere, there can never be a point at which the regulators say, OK, I guess we've done our job here. Because then they have no purpose. So, they keep passing more and more and more and more regulations, with increasing costs and diminishing returns. The cumulative effect of this ultimately leads to absurd results like burning old children's books and suffocating all kinds of endeavors. "Contamination of various things goes from parts per million to parts per billion, to parts per trillion, not because there is any scientific proof that parts per trillion is a threat, but because they have to keep regulating. And the cumulative effect at some point must become oppressive and pointless.
It is fair to guess not a single actual health problem has flowed from the miniscule amount of lead that may be in some old books. But, having already addressed the sources of real threats from lead poisoning, the regulators in that sphere must continue to find new places to regulate, and thus justify their own existence. This is one corollary to the first law of bureaucracies: they always expand.
Megan,
You should check out Overlawyered's CPSIA postings. Walter Olson is all over this.
They also outlawed rhinestones for children's clothing, ATVs, bicycles, and anything with any sort of metal component that may contain lead. (I believe the ballpoint in ballpoint pens is under scrutiny now.)
Good - I think rhinestones look tacky on ATVs. They'd just get muddy anyway!
But seriously, this means kids will be riding ATVs meant for adults, which has got to be more dangerous.
OK - so let me get this straight.... You are upset that items that may contain lead, known to harm children, are being restricted from being purchased FOR children?
It is more than a mere shame that books are included in that category. Burning or banning books is one of the worst things that can happen in an open society. But in this case it is not the CONTENT of the books that is being restricted, but the potentially dangerous materials that were used to create the books. It would be more preferable to require a warning on these pre-1985 books rather than destroying them.
Sadly, your overly alarmist title of "Book Banning" (as well as Walter Olson's "The New Book Banning") does you no justice.
The lead in most of the affected products has never harmed a child.
Just because the element "Pb" is in something does not mean it is a hazard.
For example, bicycles are affected because lead and lead alloys are used in spoke nipples and inner tube valves.
"It would be preferable to require a warning..."
Why? If you think the lead in book ink is dangerous, surely a ban will save more children.
Burning or banning books is one of the worst things that can happen in an open society. But in this case it is not the CONTENT of the books that is being restricted, but the potentially dangerous materials that were used to create the books.
It doesn't matter what reason the government comes up with to explain to us why some books are dangerous and should be banned. We are still dealing with "banning books." The content is going to be just as out of reach whether the ideologues say they are opposing political hazards or environmental ones.
Because only a tiny fraction of these books will ever be reprinted or even scanned.
OK - so let me get this straight.... You are upset that items that may contain lead, known to harm children, are being restricted from being purchased FOR children.
Right. What this is is an example of a regulation that wasn't particularly well-written -- and was a bit over-broad -- and should probably be tweaked to allow old children's books back into legitimate commerce. But as "book banning" is a first cousin of book "burning," and as Megan's shtick has increasingly been hardening into 24/7 ressentiment of liberal fascism, you weren't really expecting a measured post, were you?
The "tweaking" hasn't happened yet, and if lovers of old books don't demand it vigorously, it might NOT happen.
A couple of headlines along the lines of "New Government Regulation Bans Pre-1985 Children's Books" -- which, measured or not, would be true, in case you haven't noticed -- is exactly what is needed to generate letters to the editor and calls to Congressional representatives. "Ho hum, the writers of the law were well-meaning" is not going to make the bad law rewrite itself.
The post is pretty measured. The title is a bit hyperbolic but true. Newspapers do it all the time. It got you to read it, and that's the point.
But in essence the CONTENT is being banned. The existing physical version can no longer be sold. In order for the content to be available, someone will have to republish the books. BUT the copyright on those books are retroactively in force for the life of the author + 150 years. Thanks to Disney and the late Senator Bono, nothing since 1930 is falling in to the public domain. So no one can republish the books, that content, those ideals, that part of our culture is effectively lost.
The pitiful part is that lead is only toxic if it is ingested. Lead paint is a problem for small children (especially crawling infants) because they crawl around on the floor of old dusty homes, get the lead paint flakes and dust on their hands and then stick their hands in their mouths, thus ingesting the lead. Which is toxic, and can cause developmental problems. Or if a chew toy intended for a teething baby is coated in lead, that's a problem.
But the ridiculous part of the law is applying it to items that can't be ingested--like dirt bikes--or are intended for children > 3 yo who are out of the "I want to put everything in my mouth" phase.
I mean, how many pages of these books would an infant have to eat to achieve toxic levels of lead?
GWMG, two things:
First, your post starts out, "Why do you hate children??" yet you then call Megan's title "overly alarmist." Pot, kettle, and all that.
Second, the CONTENT of these books is explicitly what makes them unsaleable: only children's books are forbidden for sale. Some have proposed calling these books "adult collectibles," but it's my understanding that the law covers that point by creating a test for the items to be offered for sale - a "reasonable person" sort of standard for whether the item appears to be made for children's use.
Yes, by all means, let's slap a WARNING LABEL ("Do not allow children to ingest pages from this book! This book may contain lead, known by the State of California to cause CANCER!! And brain problems too!!") on pre-1985 books. That'll be great. Especially for the really old, truly collectible books - they'll only be enhanced by this sign of ridiculous overcautiousness.
Many things are "known to harm children." Books, even books which may or may not contain trace amounts of lead in the ink on their often-full-of-white-space pages, are not among those things. Swings harm children: children, using them as intended, can fall off and break an arm. Bikes, used as intended, can cause freaking DEATH to a child, even while wearing a helmet. Legos? Don't get me started on Legos. So why, then, should we either ban (yes, ban) the sale of, or stick a stupid and alarmist warning label on, children's books that - for God's sake - have never actually harmed a child?
A few other links for further reading:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2009/0901.blake02.html
http://crookedtimber.org/2009/02/01/toy-story/
http://crookedtimber.org/2009/02/12/toy-story-ii/
The best part is, no one can identify a child harmed by the lead contained in any of the banned items. All this for absolutely nothing.
It's not "for nothing", it's for the children. Hypothetical children, perhaps, but children nonetheless.
LOL! That's a great motto for the nanny state, "for the hypothetical children!"
Who needs any of that icky reality getting in the way of our petty quests for power?
We should pass hypothetical laws for hypothetical children.
The behavior of "hypothetical children" is so much easier to predict, categorize, and discuss than the behavior of real children. And, "hypothetical children" can get into all manner of hitherto unforeseen trouble, whatever trouble you want them to, such as having book pages for lunch.
Just put all of the old children's books together in a stack, and affix a little sign on it: "Collectible antique books, intended for adult use only." Since the products are no longer intended for children, wouldn't they now be magically immune from the law?
There are provisions in the law that anticipate that response.
Indeed, a product can be classified as a children's product solely on the basis of public opinion that it's for children. So you might make, say, a series of collectible plushes that you thought would be for grownups, but if a bunch of people (and we don't know which bunch) happen to not get your vision and think the plushes are for children, your plushes can be declared children's products.
Has anyone found any reports of them actually enforcing this for pre-1985 books?
Not yet, but any state attorney general who wants to can enforce it. Abd the CPSC seems to be taking enforcement seriously; earlier this year, they released a notice pointing out that the law applies to garage sales. Hardly anybody ever enforces the law against lying to the people investigating a crime, but that's what Martha Stewart went to jail for. So far as I know, no prosecutions of book sellers have yet been threatened. But there have been no prosecutions of kids' dirt bile dealers or manufacturers either, yet the entire industry has shut down, although the lead in these bikes poses no measurable danger to anyone.
If you owned a bookstore, would you take a chance on a felony conviction with jail time and a huge fine by selling old children's books? What if you were selling things that some local bluenoses disapproved of, like maybe Harry Potter books (withcraft!) in the bible belt? What if you were suspected, wrongly of some other crime, and the state threatened to go after you for selling pre-1985 books? Our modern tendency to criminalize everything and rely on the good sense of prosecutors to send only bad people to jail is not an example of the rule of law at its finest.
Curiously, it's still perfectly legal to sell fishing sinkers made entirely of lead. They aren't "children's products." But when the law goes fully into effect it will be illegal to sell any one-of-a-kind children's product, such as hand-knit sweaters or blankets, because they won't have been tested (and couldn't be, not just because of the expense but because the required testing is destructive).
They only have to enforce it against one bookseller for the rest to fold.
This just shows that it really, really matters how you write your legal rules. If you gallop along in a big hurry and don't read proposals carefully, you may end up with situations you don't want.
This is a useful thing to keep in mind whenever government is in a tearing hurry to DO SOMETHING NOW.
Are you referring to healthcare reform? Or perhaps the stimulus bill?
Among hundreds of others.
You are assuming these situations weren't "wanted."
Sure, Hanlon's razor and all. But in this case, every single provision was written by somebody's lobbyist and inserted by some Congressman's staffer.
The final result is a mish-mash of individual provisions, each for a reason.
That's one of the biggest problems with how this bill was written. If you'd asked Joe Consumer if he was worried that buying clothing from the thrift store or checking out library books was exposing his kids to lead poisoning, he would've stared at you like a small wooden bird on a spring was coming out of a door in your forehead. But these "consumer advocacy" groups who claimed to speak for him all insisted that this is what consumers want, a law that presupposes that 12 year olds suck on their socks.
Nobody listened to the actual consumers and businesses, just the ones who could afford lobbyists. And frankly nobody gave a flying fig newton about anybody who couldn't be bothered to have an office in D.C.
My wife has the hookup. Meet her behind the elementary school library. No real names, and CASH ONLY. We'll work out a deal.
M.C. has the right idea here. The tea-party types should start asking any Reps and Senators who voted for this if they really wanted to destroy all the old Little Golden Books, Madelines and more. If they have an answer other than an unequivocal yes, the follow-up should be whether they're really confident of what they're voting on for health care, cap and trade and the stimulus or whether we can look forward to more "Oops, we meant well, so sorry" moments from them.
This really only makes sense for board and wood/plastic books intended for babies, you know, the child population who chews on everything. The idea that your 9-year-old is going to lick her copy of _All of a Kind Family_ enough to ingest significant amounts of lead is ludicrous.
Oooooooo... All of a Kind Family...
I forgot about that, and I used to love it. My copy is probably long gone, but it was certainly printed before 1985. Doesn't seem to have hurt me any, except that it left me with a lifelong fascination with bead curtains in doorways. Or was that one of the sequels?
Watch out, this is all part of a slow but progressing trend toward the consolidation of knowledge. I have not heard one news report about widespread lead contamination from children's books. In my opinion this is just a flimsy excuse that will ultimately make it more difficult for book manufacturers to make hard copies. Soon everything will transfer to the Kindle or another digital format, where the administrators can add and delete data as they please. This is very, very troubling. If we're not vigilant now we will soon have a society not unlike that in Fahrenheit 451.
How horrid! I forget who it was, I think one of the Republican Senators has brought it up, but it's been remarked that the law has become so extensive that nearly everybody breaks it and we rely on prosecutorial discretion to keep from a real mess. It has been suggested that a State of the Union be started with 'My fellow felonious citizens.' So this law rather fits in that pattern but the edge between formal law breaking and common sense isn't there.
I'd bet that was Ron Paul. He's one of the few senators of either party who I could pictured saying that. But, its pretty close to the truth.
Ron Paul is not a Senator. He is a Congressman in the House of Representatives.
My mistake. Still sounds like something he would say.
So if you own a bookstore and find yourself in possession of a number of those very dangerous books, just what is it you are supposed to do with them? Pay HAZMAT fees to dispose of them?
What if you are a private collector, like our host here?
CPSIA makes it illegal to stockpile the untested items, which are legally classified as "banned hazardous substances" (that's the actual language they use in the law). That's one reason why libraries may be in trouble if they keep the books.
First they came for the children's books...
Seriously, though -- yes, kids eat books. But I think a warning would suffice.
TallDave, kids don't eat books! Babies and toddlers will put anything in their mouths, but not with the intention of eating it - just exploring it; and indeed they don't manage to "eat" very much of anything they put into their mouths. The occasional child may occasionally chew on a book. The occasional child (my youngest among them) may occasionally eat paper (straw papers are his favorite, over my strenuously voiced objections). But to say "kids eat books" as a justification for either banning the sale of children's books or putting WARNING LABELS on them - it's ludicrous.
I don't know, in fact, what's more ludicrous: warning labels against children's book ingestion (rare, unsanctioned by supervising adults, not an intended use) or warning labels about hot coffee's being hot (holy moley, I'll NEVER wrap my head around THAT one). What the bleeping bleep kind of place do we live in now?
Do we know that the regulation isn't regulatory capture? The ban goes back to the childhood of the current crop of child-bearing age people.
Seems like it would be a boon to the printing industry and perhaps to book sellers. Consumers replaced their vinyl with CD, why wouldn't they replace their copies of "Good Night Moon," for their own little sweeties.
And this somehow makes it ok?
Planned obsolescence seems to be one of your pet peeves. Do you feel differently about regulatory obsolescence?
You replace your own childhood books because your little brother trashed your copies. I'm pretty sure that's what happened to my All of a Kind Family.
Maybe he ate it. If it was full of lead, that would actually explain a few things. But I still don't think any surviving copies (those belonging to only children, perhaps) should be destroyed. Annoying younger brothers should just be kept out of their older sisters' rooms.
This can't quite be regulatory capture, since it's an issue of pure legislation. (The CPSC, charged with fleshing out the details and enforcement, has repeatedly pointed out that the law gives them no flexibility
But yes, big companies like Hasbro and Mattel lobbied heavily for the law alongside self-described consumer groups like Consumers Union.
I am completely puzzled by this post.
You are upset because the government has identified a danger and enacted a law to eliminate that danger from our lives because it somehow limits your 'freedom' to pursue a collecting hobby?
I am likewise mystified by everyone who keeps pointing out that most of what is 'accidentally' targeted by this far-seeing, wide-ranging, danger-prevention legislation poses no 'measurable' danger. What, the government should only protect us from 'measurable' danger?
I think we all realize that the best government is the one that protects us best. Sure, Megan thought her hobby of collecting poisonous children books was harmless but the government knows better. They have experts and very learned people who know all about this kind of thing. Those people, who know very nearly infinitely more about living a safe, wholesome, productive life than anyone not labeled 'expert' and employed by the government, no doubt carefully studied this issue and realized that this was an easily preventable danger. So they went ahead and prevented it.
Aren't we all better off? Isn't this the point of government? To give those of us who are just innately better people the power to improve the lives of all those ordinary dullards constituting the general populace?
Slowly but surely, our government will root out ever more lurking dangers (both 'measurable' and not) and ban them for us, b/c we're too stupid to know to leave them alone. And along with rooting out dangers, as the experts determine ever more exacting parameters for "the good life", they will (and should!!) impose those parameters on all of us. Eventually, everything not mandated will be forbidden and we will all be living our very best lives, b/c the government will have determined what that is and set things up so that we can do no other.
Why would anyone demand the 'freedom' to endanger themselves and others? Why would anyone argue with someone who is only trying to save you from yourself?
Sure, we might think "gosh, but I like old children's books and rarely eat them!" We think, "I can rationally evaluate the tradeoffs inherent in the things I enjoy, I don't need somebody else to tell ME what to do!!"
But, in truth, you probably only think you can evaluate dangers b/c you're already suffering from latent lead poisoning brought on by long-term exposure to bicycle spokes and "my first reader" books. You should be glad that others will be spared the mental impairment that keeps you defending your 'freedom' even as your well-meaning betters keep expanding their power to save you from yourself.
You are upset because the government has identified a danger and enacted a law to eliminate that danger from our lives because it somehow limits your 'freedom' to pursue a collecting hobby?
The government has identified a non-existent danger, and has enacted a law which destroys significant value in order to "protect" people from this non-existent danger. And you think this is ok?
Anthony, blighter is writing tongue-in-cheek. Took me till the third paragraph or so to suspect because I was frothing at the mouth and skimming, then I went back and read carefully - it's really funny. Read again - you'll enjoy it! (In a frothing-at-the-mouth kind of way.)
Whoa, did Professor Peabody just set the wayback machine to February 2009?
Where am I - The Stale News Network???
It's an evolving topic. The CPSC just confirmed, for instance, that rhinestones and zippers are indeed impermissible in children's clothing.
Yeah...which would imply that there would likely be more current items to have linked to yes???
And I'm horrified to learn that garage sales are also included. My organization's major fundraiser each year is a big rummage sale, featuring lots of books and lots of toys and lots of children's clothes. What I'm going to replace it with, I don't know.
Congress does not care about unintended consequences;
Votes and umm...other considerations are what matter.
Consider the example of asbestos:
http://www.jamesphogan.com/bb/bulletin.php?id=219
http://www.jamesphogan.com/bb/bulletin.php?id=107
http://www.jamesphogan.com/bb/bulletin.php?id=44
I learned of this nonsense from here
http://www.zianet.com/ehusman/weblog/labels/CPSIA.html
and here
http://www.fashion-incubator.com/
with regard to its impact on the fashion industry.
The thoughtlessness of this episode is an excellent reason to take
libertarianism seriously.
It has to be a hoax! On the other hand, if it happened in my country (Brazil), we would surely count it as a law that "would not stick", i.e., it would never be enforced.
"It has to be a hoax! On the other hand, if it happened in my country (Brazil), we would surely count it as a law that "would not stick", i.e., it would never be enforced."
Actually that point has been made on this thread. But I don't think non enforcement is as common in the US as it is in many countries, except for a few old "blue laws" that have been on the books forever and nobody bothers to repeal. The real danger is selective enforcement, i.e. enforcing it against only those who've broken the "real rules." Often this just means being perceived as insufficiently deferential to the authorities, or being part of some already unpopular group. I'm curious, by what means does widespread nonenforcement occur in Brazil? I'm just interested in how potential cultural differences might drive obedience to the law.
don't u think this is a loose corollary to the "cash for clunkers" only applied to books? how poetic. Truth *IS* stranger than fiction, Part N.
Obvious parallels to the healthcare debate, particularly proposals for a benevolent all-powerful IMAC healthcare board to make us all safer and healthier...
Which would be worse than the all-powerful HMO board precisely how? It's the replacement of one omnipotent, arbitrary, profit-oriented group with one that's omnipotent, arbitrary and monetarily disinterested. My vote's with the latter, as it's got one less agenda to implement. Private enterprise has totally dropped the ball on managing healthcare decisions.
Monetarily disinterested?
You're hilarious!
Part of the problem is that the testing is required on each different part of each finished product. You can't pre-test components and certify them as safe. So if you paint four different toys with the same paint, you have to test the paint on each toy. And the wood. And the fasteners. And etc... four times. Even if they are identical on the four toys.
So a small toy maker might continue to make toys but will be under financial pressure to reduce the number of toys they make. Or clothing items.
So can we still give away clothes for kids? Can I give my little cousin clothes from my kids? Man... what a stupid law.
Technically it's illegal to give away clothes for kids unless you know they're under the lead limits. Under the stay of enforcement, you can get away with it as long as the clothes don't have buttons, zippers, snaps, hooks, rhinestones, or other non-textile parts. Of course, they're not likely to ever enforce the law on you giving hand-me-downs to your cousin. But the point is that we're all there, lined up, bent over with our pants down and the CPSC and 50 state Attorneys General are all holding paddles saying they're not going to spank us today. How kind of them. We should all be grateful.
To answer a few questions:
NPTO: Yes, this is a real law and it's not a joke.
Blighter: "Aren't we all better off? Isn't this the point of government? To give those of us who are just innately better people the power to improve the lives of all those ordinary dullards constituting the general populace?"
Good God, Blighter, I really hope that's satire.
There's a sort of Laffer curve for regulation. A little regulation results in a lot of benefits, but there comes a point where a little more regulation actually results in negative benefits. I don't claim to know precisely where that "sweet spot" is, but CPSIA is clearly well past it.
It's not like there weren't laws on the books already prohibiting lead in paint. The 2007 recalls that drove CPSIA's creation were for violations of existing law, indicating that the problem wasn't strict enough law, it was enforcement. Congress responded by saddling CPSC with not only a stricter and harder to enforce lead law, but two other sweeping laws as well at the same time, all without delivering the promised budget increases. The burden of enforcing the other two laws alone would have eaten up the planned increases. CPSC has been pulling massive overtime just trying to meet the statutory deadlines CPSIA and the other statutes imposed on them.
CPSIA might possibly prevent one or two cases of lead poisoning a year, but at what cost? Putting millions (I'm not exaggerating) of people out of work in the middle of a recession? Destroying the market for used children's clothing?
If the government wanted to really do something about lead poisoning, they'd do well to fund more lead paint abatement programs. Lead house paint in existing homes is by far the #1 cause of lead poisoning, and it's not a theoretical risk. And they'd have let CPSC go ahead with the rulemaking they had in progress on lead content in jewelry, which also has caused lead poisoning and even a death. Instead, this is what we got.
Blighter was kidding. It is sometimes hard to tell these days.
One interesting thing about all this is that nobody seems willing to defend the Act on the merits. Yet it passed with overwhelming majorities (just one "no" vote in the house), Congress has resisted revisiting it or even holding hearings, and outfits like the New York Times and Snopes insist that there's nothing to see here, folks, just move along. Democracy in action ain't much like the civics books.
Yup this whole bill was pretty much a textbook case in public choice economics, with everything from regulatory capture to rationally ignorant voters not knowing what they were really doing. The scary thing is, it seems like Congress has become a body of rationally ignorant voters also. A republic might survive rationally ignorant voters as long its representatives pay attention, but when a lot of the house and Senate admit they pass legislation without reading it, then I can't see anything good out coming out of it. If this trend continues, then regardless of what your exact politics are you might conclude that the best solution is just to stockpile canned goods and ammunition and wait for the coming collapse.
From my cold, dead hands.
So are you still allowed to ebay and amazon them to people who live in free countries?
Nope. They can't enter or leave the country unless you can prove that they meet CPSIA standards. You're not supposed to dump these "banned hazardous substances" (that's the actual words used in the law to describe untested books, clothing, etc.) on the poor benighted foreigners.
Every time the Congress makes a joke its a law and every time the Congress makes a law its a joke.
The nanny state extends it tentacles a bit further and people think its a good thing --- until it hits home. When, oh when to liberals wake up and realize whats happening to all of us.
That's why I purchased the two sets of books from my childhood earlier in the year. Both were from the 50's and had classic stories and illustrations.
I had to find one set "The Children's Hour" in England.
I don't know how this government can claim to be concerned about the enviornment, the poor, etc. when they are literally and figuratively destroying wealth.
The destruction of children's books and usable vehicles seems like book burning and pig shooting.
I hope some publisher brings out reprinted (not updated) versions of both "the children's hour" series and "Child's World".
Cash for book burnings. Has a ring to it. It's all about stimulus people.
Why so stimulus?
In my day, we read the books, we didn't eat them.
On the other hand, those old books were filled with reactionary ideas, like honesty, courage, determination, duty - things we can best replace with children's books like "Why Mommy is a Democrat".
ZZMike,
That should be "Why BOTH my Mommies are Democrats" you homophobe.
Ooh! I just realized. Does this include Children's bibles? Does this include Children's KORANS???? Somebody better alert the media if it does.
I am one of those former Amazon sellers who removed my pre-1985 children's book listings in response to the CPSIA. There are still a few sellers risking it, but pretty soon the special interest groups who lobbied for this bill (PIRG, Public Citizen, etc) will choose to fill their coffers and make an example of somebody and this law permits them to do it, and I cannot put my family through that. So my children's books remain on my shelves, but I know a number of other sellers just had to dump their inventory. My local library, where my daughter works PULLED their pre-1985 kids' books from their shelves and packed them away in the attic. If the law isn't fixed in the next few months, they will throw them out- that's what the librarian there told me. It's sickening.
Y'all should also know that CPSC Commissioner Thomas More has called for libraries to 'sequester' pre-1985 children's books until the Commission decides what to do about them.
Some pre-1985 books do apparently have some lead in some of the ink colors used- but there is no evidence at all this lead is accessible and can result in elevated blood lead levels in children. It becomes part of the substrate and merely licking the book wouldn't result in transference of ink to child. And since it's only sometimes in SOME colors, a child would have to eat a shocking number of books before you could find a measurable increase in blood lead levels. The law does not just apply to three year olds and under, but ALL children's products intended for the use of children 12 and under. It treats 12 year olds as though they were two.
Does not matter. This law specifically bans the common sense approach of risk assessment.
Congress should be outlawed. Considering how much more dangerous than lead they are, can we get rid of them? For the children?
The provisions of this law that deal with books and bicycle spokes are not rationally related to any legitimate state interest. That, combined with the 1st Amendment concerns raised by trying to remove an entire class of literature from the market, would seem to make this fertile ground for a lawsuit.
Of course, the sensible thing would be for Congress to exercise it's constitutional power of mea culpa. But as that august body seems incapable of even basic human thought, let's all remember that the courts are open!