Unleaded Economy Could Fuel Huge Job Losses

by Quin Hillyer - February 3, 2009 - The DC Examiner

Last August, Congress passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, which mandates that all products for children ages 12 and under be tested for lead and phthalates (a chemical in many plastics), and that no such products be sold with lead contents higher than 600 parts per million. (Ingested lead, of course, can cause serious health problems, including learning disabilities in children.)

The sales ban applies retroactively, too: Even if the items in question were made 100 years ago, The Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) has advised that a second-hand store could be subject to lawsuits or even “criminal penalties” for selling them.

Even antique lead soldiers sold as collectibles for display, rather than as play toys, could conceivably trigger punishment.

In the realm of the bizarre, the ban scared Honda into withdrawing all its youth all-terrain vehicles from the American market because the vehicles contain lead alloys. As Olson noted, “the irony, of course, is that of all the imaginable safety hazards posed by the existence of youth motorcycles and ATVs, the danger that kids will eat the darn things must rank at the very bottom.”

Obama and his mindless socialist tyranny is off and running.

Unintended consequences are the foundation for bureaucratic tyranny. I cannot stop laughing at the absolute stupidity of this law, even as I recognize how evil it will become. Nothing could be a more perfect illustration of how bureaucrats and lawyers are empowered to destroy a nation. This is like passing a law that it is a crime to sell eggs while making it retroactive for 100 years. We can send bureaucrats out to imprison anyone who it can be proved ever sold an egg to someone who had a heart attack. After all, at one point we thought that the cholesterol in eggs was bad for you too.

The idea of stopping children from being exposed to lead is a laudatory one. Making this the act of a federal bureaucracy is STUPID. Vast improvements in protecting children from lead have been made by state regulation of toys and paints in their homes. However these rules were already bordering on overkill. This new law is beyond insane. Can anyone really think that children are going to go out and LICK or EAT their ATV? Do you really think that is a law we need? Is there any level of stupidity that we will hold consumers personally accountable for?

ROTFL