Big Government is On Its Way

Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act

I guess President Obama is accomplishing his goal of reversing President Reagan's achievements that gave us 28 years of growth.

Big Government is on its way back. The recent bill regarding lead and phthalates that went into effect on February 10 as I understand it requires any items sold for children's use to be tested and certified that it is lead and phthalates free. Sounds harmless and reasonable but its not. The law requires every batch of items to be certified.

Before there were existing laws against lead, now the new law says everything is guilty until proven innocent.

Small businesses are saying they will go out of business. One business owner said that if he produces a batch of 20 coloring books he must have them tested to certify they are lead free. The certification test cost nearly $2000 dollars. Even buttons on children's clothing must be certified. Bicycle vendors are having to take bicycles back because there is lead in some parts that is normally allowed but not under this law. Goodwill says they have $175 million worth of items that they can't sale now. Walmart is making many vendors take their products back because they're not "certified".

This all reminds me of the 1970's before Reagan got rid of this mess. I remember the government agency OSHA came out with a ruling that businesses must convert all toilet seats in their companies to oval shaped toilet seats. Then a few years later, OSHA changed its ruling and said all toilet seats must be horse shoe shaped costing business a lot of money. The government was involved in everybody's business to the minutest detail.

President Reagan freed us from a lot of this nonsense and the economy took off. The environment afterwards was quite different from the sickness and stagflation of the 1970's. Now when we are in our worst economic decline, the democrats want to heap this mess and costs on us again.

Here's a quote of who is affected by this law from the government office empowered by this act.
"Anyone who makes, produces or assembles a product is considered to be a manufacturer. If what you make is sold or donated, something as simple as adding ribbons to hair clips, knitting hats, or stringing beads into necklaces make you a manufacturer. " Quite broad, I would say.

Oh by the way the same office says there is really no way to test and certify there are no phthalates in an item but do you best to make sure.