A New York Times editorial published this week has been excoriated by Walter Olson, proprietor of the popular "Overlawyered" blog and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and justly so. The subject is the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA), a law that went into effect earlier this month and which even now is causing libraries, thrift shops and used book stores to throw away large volumes of used children's clothes, toys and any children's books published before 1985. Don't take it from me:
If you browse through the racks of children's clothing at area Goodwill stores, you'll notice half the supply is gone - all because of a new law being implemented by the federal government Tuesday morning. -KPTM FOX 42 News, Omaha, 2/9/09 (Hat tip for the link: Ace of Spades.) ...our realistic choices are: 1. Shut down our children's section, or 2. Ban kids 12 and younger from the library. -Librarian, Idaho (Hat tip for the link: Ace of Spades.) Chip Gibson, president and publisher of Random House Children's Books... 'This is a potential calamity like nothing I've ever seen. The implications are quite literally unimaginable,' he said, noting that children's books could be removed from schools, libraries and stores; nonprofit groups like First Book would lose donations; and retailers, printers, and publishers could ultimately go out of business. 'Books are safe. This is like testing milk for lead. It has to be stopped.' -Talkback on Publishers Weekly, 1/12/09 (Hat tip for the link: Overlawyered.com.) 'The economy is tough enough right now, and now I'm not allowed to sell dirt bikes?' -Hitching Post Motorsports (MN) sales manager Andy Buddensiek, as quoted by KARE 11 News, Twin Cities. The Motorcycle Industry Council estimates that $100 million dollars worth of motorbike inventory may have been frozen nationwide. As sales of adult ATVs are unaffected, some worry that children will ride adult ATVs that are too difficult for them to properly handle. (Hat tip for the link: Overlawyered.com.) ...unless the law is modified... handmade children's products will no longer be legal in the U.S. -Handmade Toy Alliance (Hat tip for the link: Overlawyered.com.)
There are many, many more specific examples of damage this law is doing on Overlawyered.com, some of which are heart-rending. Here's what the New York Times published:
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. (Emphasis added)
Needless??? Walter Olson at Overlawyered put it this way, in part:
...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.
It appears the New York Times' belief that regulations have no harmful economic or social benefits is so calcified, it didn't even examine the question of whether anyone was being harmed by CPSIA before declaring news of such harm as being the product of mere "needless fears." Meanwhile, a significant part of our nation's cultural heritage (children's books published before 1985) is literally been thrown in the dumpster, and many small businesses and charities and the people they serve are being hurt. Some are being hurt quite a lot. Shame on the New York Times for putting its passion for regulation ahead of the truth. Cross-posted on Amy Ridenour's National Center Blog
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That would include those
February 19, 2009 - 20:04 ET by SickofLibsThat would include those pre-1985 board books and popup books that have maimed so many toddlers at bedtime?
I have a whole bookshelf full of them - I better call the local Hazmat team for safe, proper and 'legal' disposal.
Throw away that old book
February 19, 2009 - 20:08 ET by 10ksnookerHere take one of my shiney new Al Gore books.
Where Oh where are all the recyclers? oh i get it, like fireman
February 19, 2009 - 20:31 ET by upcountrywaterin the book Fahrenheit 451
Fahrenheit 451 is a novel by Ray Bradbury. The work is one of
the most beloved works by Bradbury, but it's also controversial. What
would you do if you couldn't read? Here are a few quotes.
a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You
don't stay for nothing."
- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Part 1
- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Part 2
they turn on you. Others can use them, too, and there you are, lost in
the middle of the moor, in a great welter of nouns and verbs and
adjectives."
- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Part 2
- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, Part 3
circle and turned on its axis and time was busy burning the years and
the people anyway, without any help from him. So if he burnt things
with the firemen and the sun burnt Time, that meant that everything
burnt!"
pURPLe pINKy
Thanks for the reminder,
February 19, 2009 - 22:27 ET by longway2goUCW, I just got the strangest urge to hunt down that paperback copy of Dandelion Wine.
Information is meant to be free!!!
February 20, 2009 - 00:33 ET by mizflame98If you can find these books that goodwill and the libraries are throwing away, bring them home and list them on the swap sites. We can not let these books become unavailable.
http://www.titletrader.com/
http://www.paperbackswap.com/index.php
http://www.whatsonmybookshelf.com/
http://www.frugalreader.com/index.php
http://www.bookins.com/index.php
We must barter these books. Get them circulated out to people like myself who love books and love to have a never ending supply for my kids. Information is meant to be free. It's meant to be liberated. It's the source of our liberty! Fight this book ban by giving the books to others to share!
"Not to be a republican at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head." - Francois Guisot
This is government as nanny-state stupidity at its worst
February 19, 2009 - 21:02 ET by R D Helm-Dave
Our clueless political leaders are about to drive us all over a cliff. The time to HITM is now-before we go over.
1984
February 19, 2009 - 23:16 ET by jaywlFrom time to time we all exclaim that "This" is the biggest, the worst, the most thing to happen since whenever. My turn , I guess. This nutty law has got to be one of the worst to come down the pike. The children's books being thrown out are part of our heritage. We are losing that heritage step by step, a little at a time with laws like this. There will come a day when we wake and realize that the country that once existed is no more. We have this law, the stimulus bill full of social change, and government ownership of banks and businesses. Step by step, and in a way that when someone like me, educated, newspaper reader, Internet user, etc., while I may have read or heard about it, I didn't pay attention and did not realize the importance of this law until after it took effect says something else.
Is the real problem that the
February 20, 2009 - 04:34 ET by snaggletoothieIs the real problem that the kids in those old books don't have two dads?
you have really hit on something there!
February 20, 2009 - 06:20 ET by clinging to my guns and my religionof course, it would never be admitted! those books are full of stories about normal families in normal relationships and normal situations. they are in direct conflict with the "progressive" effort to indoctrinate our children into the "new normal" line of thought. you can bet destroying those books because of lead content isn't the only "benefit"!
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." Edmund Burke
Fortunately, Jim Demint is
February 20, 2009 - 08:45 ET by HockeyKidFortunately, Jim Demint is sponsoring reform of the new act that would protect small business.
"Beauty is only skin deep, but liberal's to the bone." - me
Buy and store old books!
February 20, 2009 - 13:11 ET by tpmintxJust like the people who are burying their guns to keep them out of government hands, my wife and I are buying old encyclopedias and history books, so that we can have access to our history after the inevitable purge that is coming.