1)Our former President and Congress voted on this sweeping, overgeneralized legislation without even reading it and digging into what it would require for businesses and people that it likely never thought it would effect. Note this quote from Federalist Paper #62 ~
"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule which is little known, and less fixed?" (Hat tip: The Amused Cynic)
2) I was already teetering near the edge in my passion and disgust for politicians and what they end up becoming in the machine of The Beltway. I *so* know and believe that God is ultimately in control, and I trust Him and have almost given up on trying to "make a difference" on a grand scale.
3) I therefore prayed that the American Library Association, and other lobbying blocks would be able to sway the aforementioned politicians to see *reason* before the Feb. deadline rolled around.
Ha. Ha.
Look, I am all for getting rid of unnecessary and dangerous chemicals in plastics (Phthalates) and the high amount of lead in charms, jewels, toys that are predominantly come from imports from the far east. Why could not the testing requirements be on those highly known offenders and products? Oh, yeah, because the powers-that-be are always quick to throw out the baby with the bathwater in order to save us from ourselves.
More at the link.
I loved this, even though it made me want to join this grandmama in biting nails in half:
Ron and Kim Roupe of Georgetown, Beaver County, bought two four-wheeled all-terrain vehicles for their grandchildren's birthdays last July. The Roupes have three acres -- "and no grass in my yard," she says -- because the grandkids, now 9 and 10, have been riding since they were 4 and 5 (with time out for meals, sleep and school, of course).
The grandparents learned the hard way -- in a motorcycle spill 15 years ago that tore the skin from their arms and legs -- that protective gear is a must. So the kids have to wear jeans, helmet, goggles and boots when they ride anywhere, and add chest protectors and gloves when they ride trails. Mrs. Roupe sent me photos of her grandson, Alex, and granddaughter, Chey, in helmets that Darth Vader would envy.
The Roupes bought extended warranties for the new vehicles but found when they returned to West Hills Honda a couple of weeks ago that the dealers wouldn't order new parts for them or service them. The vehicles since "have been taken off quarantine," as they're designed primarily for youths 12 to 15, but the Roupes still couldn't buy gloves or a larger helmet for the growing 9-year-old boy.
"I was so hot, I could have bit nails in two," Mrs. Roupe said.
What were the odds of either of her grandchildren ever mouthing their vehicles?
"Slim to none," she said, "and Slim left town."
The journalist, understandably, cannot comprehend why the Roupes can't buy gloves. What follows is a little maddening- keep in mind that Rick Woldenberg heard Mommy bloggers so disparagingly dismissed for spreading misinformation and compare the Mommy blogger info with what this official spokesperson and Non Mommy Blogger said. In fact, compare what he said with what the CPSC's own guidelines actually say:
Ms. Love of West Hills Honda says that the way Honda is reading the rules, "clothing fabric is exempt but none of the fasteners are." So until the manufacturer provides the distributors and dealers with something saying the snaps have been tested to have a lead content of less than 600 parts per million, the gloves aren't for sale.
A spokesperson for the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce said testing isn't necessary if products aren't likely to contain lead, but dealers are wary. They recite safety commission rules that have them erring on the side of waiting and testing and keeping products off sale.
It is unfortunate that the government spokesperson quoted, like most of those on the Hill who dismiss concerns about this law, seems not to have read any of the literature from the CPSC itself, and very likely not the law, either. Either that, or, if he has actually read any of the documents from the CPSC, he is being quite disingenuous with the reporter and the public. Because snaps, zippers, buttons, and other fasteners very often do contain lead. Whether a snap on a pair of motor cycle gloves is any more likely to end up in a child's mouth for a long enough period of time to give the child blood poisoning is a matter which Congress forbade the Commission to consider.
In the stay granted on January 30ths, clothing fastenings were specifically excluded (as were books printed before 1985. Such children's books are now illegal to sell if you do not test them first, and my library is pulling those books from their shelves).
Such fastenings were specifically named in a CPSC issued FAQ as items that thrift shops should not resell- meaning most children's clothes except for sweat pants and socks, bascially, are illegal.
In Table C of this PDF file, the CPSC plainly tells thrift shops and other resale venues that if clothing has "rhinestones, metal of vinyl snaps, zippers, closures, or appliques" the store should test the items, contact the manfacturer (presumably for thier testing data) or simply not sell it.
In table B of the same file, the Commission explains that textiles ARE exempt, but only if the textiles do not have rhinestones or fasteners such as "Buttons, metal snaps, zippers, or grommets."
The Boston Globe reports:
St Vincent de Paul is currently removing children’s clothing with metal zippers, buttons, and painted fabrics from its processing center, which sends out merchandise to its six stores in Massachusetts.
I am not sure why this spokesperson the reporter spoke to didn't think it was important to acknowledge that Honda has an excellent reason for pulling their gloves.
Rick Woldenberg has a round-up of articles about the death of children's goods in thrift shops. It's sickening. He also shares that even the Chicago Trib is mocking the law now.
Thomas Moore explains in one letter: "...zippers, buttons and snaps, which are the items in children’s apparel most likely not to meet the new lead content limits."
A librarian notes the effects of the law are both prohibitive and disruptive and his library could not operate under the law as written.
I do not understand why so many libraries and stores are so complacent about this law- they simply obey, and obey quietly, not wanting to draw any publicity to the negative and detrimental responses to the law.
I was saddened this week when I visited my local library's book sale room to browse the children's used book section only to read the following sign: "We will no longer accept children's books." Sure enough, the former children's shelves (which my children had often enjoyed browsing) were now occupied with popular fiction. Sadly, the library's booksellers decided that it would be too difficult to separate the pre-1985 and post-1985 children's books, and therefore decided to avoid selling any books for children.
Ornamentia has some pictures of lovely hand-made things now in danger if not already extinct, thanks to the CPSIA.
We've talked about how our this law is putting a barrier between our children and free access to information, to their history, and their culture. Let me share a few more examples of that.
Freedom Train, written by Dorothy Sterling and illustrated by Earnest Crichlow It's a biography of Harriet Tubman, the first biography of a black woman that I ever read. It is the first biography of a black woman that most people my age read, because Ms. Sterling basically created the genre. This hardback was published in the fifties, 1954. Scholastic reprinted it in paperback in the 70s, and there is now a post-1985 mass market paperback edition available if you don't mind flimsy paper, shoddy gluing, and loose pages.Sterling was a Jewish writer of more than 30 books for children, mostly non-fiction titles. She wrote some of the very first children's books about black Americans. According to her obituary in the times (she died just last December):
Her research for that book using the Schomburg collection of the New York Public Library resulted in a series of books designed to introduce young readers to black history. These included “Captain of the Planter: The Story of Robert Smalls” (1958), about a former slave who captured a Confederate gunboat and later became a congressman from South Carolina, and “Lucretia Mott: Gentle Warrior” (1964), a biography of that Quaker abolitionist.
“I had found a subject about which I cared deeply,” Ms. Sterling wrote for the reference work “Something About the Author.” “At the age of 40, I had finally become a writer.”
And if you want your children, like mine, to own a copy of this ground breaking work of children's literature in a durable hardback rather than a flimsy paperback, thanks to the CPSIA and the public interest groups who pushed it through, your chances of that happening in an affordable fashion have just decreased, and they are shrinking every day, as more libraries and bookstores hear of the law and purge their collections.
It's ironic. Politically, Ms. Sterling was a feminist, a socialist, a former member of the Communist party, in other words, quite liberal. She wrote this book because she was searching for a strong role model for girls, and she found Harriet Tubman- she'd never heard of her before, and she was furious:
Determined to write the biography of a strong woman who could inspire girls, she found her way to Tubman and discovered a new field of research.
“I was excited, but also bewildered and angry,” she wrote. “Why had I never heard of Harriet Tubman or Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass or William Lloyd Garrison? Here was a wealth of information, dozens of inspiring stories to tell to young readers.”"
She also wrote “Forever Free: The Story of the Emancipation Proclamation," which was published in 1963, in 1972 she published “It Started in Montgomery," and she published a book called Mary Jane, which we also own, a fictionalized account of desegregation in the schools.
There are no post 1963 copies of Forever Free at Amazon.
It Started in Montgomery was published by Scholastic, and I can find no post-1972 copies at Amazon.
Would PIRG, Public Citizen, or Congress care to defend this to us? I am sure Grandma Moses would be proud.
John Henry and His Hammer, by Harold Felton is another good title if you're looking for a strong story about a strong man- listed as suitable for 4-6 graders and placed in the legends and folktales genre on this teacher's website, the book was published in 1950, and Amazon doesn't have a copy after 1966. The website is for a lesson plan for the book, which is summarized thus:
He worked hard as he grew up on his parents' farm, but he never used a hammer. He was the strongest worker on a steamboat and the best fireman on the railroad. Before long he took a hammer in hand and quickly became the best worker on the crew that built the Big Bend Tunnel. He broke through to the far side three times. John Henry encouraged the other men and saved the crews' lives twice. He raced against the white men's steam drill to drill a railroad tunnel in West Virginia and John beat the machine, but his heart burst with the effort and he died "with his hammer in his hand." Some people say his friendly spirit still haunts the dark.This website describes the book this way:
82 pp. A chapter book with a ballad and score at the end. As the frontispiece says, "Watson's dramatic two-color drawings portray with sensitive appreciation the dignity and strength of this heroic character."
Harold Felton has a knack for biography and character study. We own several of his folk tale and American legend 'biographies,' and I think they are all great books for boys in particularly. But I hope you already found your copy of this well told story, because Congress has just seen to it that it will be illegal to sell another copy of Feltons' version of John Henry.
Copies will grow scarcer and more expensive all across the country as more people learn of the impact of the CPSiA. Thrift shops will purge their shelves and turn away pre-1985 book donations.
She Wanted to Read, the Story of Mary McCleod Bethune- a most remarkable woman, this title was written by Ella K. Carruth. It was published in the sixties and seventies, but I can't find any later editions.
I had never heard of Bethune, at least not that I recalled, until I found this old book at a library booksale and brought it home to read- and I was an adult mother of five children by then. At this website you can read her biography and listen to her give a WW2 era speech:
In the New Deal era, educator and activist Mary McLeod Bethune was called the "First Lady of the Struggle" for her influence on the Roosevelt administration on civil rights issues. In 1904, Bethune founded a small school for black girls in Florida that she quickly built into a thriving college-prep and vocational training program. In 1923, she merged the school with Cookman College to create the first fully accredited black institution of higher learning in the state.
Bethune was born to former slaves in 1875. One of seventeen children, she grew up picking cotton in Sumter County, South Carolina. Her parents owned a five-acre parcel of land, and her mother continued to work for the family that once owned her. Though her parents and siblings were illiterate, Bethune knew as a child that she wanted to escape "the dense darkness and ignorance" in which she found herself.1 Her ambition to read was only fueled by a white girl who once commanded her to put down a book, saying, "You can't read."
Bethune was a proud American, and here is the start of the short speech she presented when asked to give a radio address on 'what Democracy means to me:'
Democracy is for me, and for 12 million black Americans, a goal towards which our nation is marching. It is a dream and an ideal in whose ultimate realization we have a deep and abiding faith. For me, it is based on Christianity, in which we confidently entrust our destiny as a people. Under God's guidance in this great democracy, we are rising out of the darkness of slavery into the light of freedom. Here my race has been afforded [the] opportunity to advance from a people 80 percent illiterate to a people 80 percent literate; from abject poverty to the ownership and operation of a million farms and 750,000 homes; from total disfranchisement to participation in government; from the status of chattels to recognized contributors to the American culture.
I recommend listening to the speech, she is an impressive speaker. She went on to note other areas where American still had room for improvement. I think a ruling like the CPSIA, which would remove Carruth's excellent biography of Bethune from children under 12, and from the market at all, since it is for children under 12, would have shocked her to the bottom of her rolling victorian r's.
She was also a friend of Eleanor Roosevelt's, and Franklin D. appointed Bethune to his 'black cabinet.' February was black history month, and the month when the CPSIA went into effect and all these, and thousands of other worthy books, were effectively banned by Congress, just one of a hundred or more ironies about this foolish, shortsighted law. Pin It
