Sunday, January 11, 2009

The Government is Here to Take Care of You-No Need to Think for Yourself, Don't Worry the Highly Incompetent Lawmakers Will Do it For You

In one swoop the government has closed down the cottage industries, such as Hope Chest Legacy, which I love, most small businesses geared towards children, such as both my sisters' who have made and sold children's products from home, the children's department in Goodwill, which will be tossing all of their children's departments into the landfill before the February 10th deadline, and it looks like the children's section of the public libraries as well.

I don't have a problem with a law saying things should be labeled and then let the consumer decide, but to say we will give you no other choice but to purchase from large retailers, new items, that will now have to pay for all of this testing which will increase your costs, is tyrannical. I'm sure it will help our ailing economy, too.

The real question is where are the statesmen in our government-not the reactionaries, that have no core principles to judge their decisions by, and come up with stupid hasty laws that create bigger messes than the ones they were trying to fix in the first place? We need people who get the fact that in order to be free me people need to be free to make their own decisions even decisions viewed as dumb or unhealthy by others. We should not be making laws against every dumb decisions, so that noone has any choice, but to make what the government deams a good decision.

Perhaps, this is part of why so many of us homeschooling moms have felt prompted to collect and store really good books in our homes and to not rely on the public libraries to have them.

For more links you can go here:

http://www.cpsc.gov/about/Cpsia/cpsia.html

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6627969.html

--Update--
The law was added to to say that resellers did not have to test their products, but if they sold anything within the lead limits they would still have to pay the fines, so they will be taking on a large risk if they sell certain catergories of items, but it is up to them.

There has been nothing to address the unique cottage industries yet.

3 comments:

Amber said...

I wasn't really paying attention to this until you put this on here. I guess I would not be able to sell card table houses anymore. I also wanted to start making felt play food to sell at the local farmers market I guess I would not be able to do that. I think this will shut a lot of people who work at home doing stuff like this down. I didn't really read the whole thing but since an in home thing is not an industry would we still be able to make and sell things?

Amber said...

As for the book thing that does make me sad if they have to throw out library books. We love going to the library and can't afford to buy many of the books we would like. It would make me sad if the library no longer had them.

Melissa said...

My understanding is that as the law stands right now, every item sold and intended to be used by children needs to be tested-this includes a $2 felt toy made be the mother at home and sold to her neighbor. The minimal test is $400 dollars and the process usually ruins the product, so selling unique items intended for any child is basically banned.