Feds are interested in your yard sale

CPSIA begins to get its feet under it, going forth to wreak havoc.

Seller, beware: Feds cracking down on garage sales

WASHINGTON — If you're planning a garage sale or organizing a church bazaar, you'd best beware: You could be breaking a new federal law. As part of a campaign called Resale Roundup, the federal government is cracking down on the secondhand sales of dangerous and defective products.

The initiative, which targets toys and other products for children, enforces a new provision that makes it a crime to resell anything that's been recalled by its manufacturer.

"Those who resell recalled children's products are not only breaking the law, they are putting children's lives at risk," said Inez Tenenbaum, the recently confirmed chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The crackdown affects sellers ranging from major thrift-store operators such as Goodwill and the Salvation Army to everyday Americans cleaning out their attics for yard sales, church bazaars or — increasingly — digital hawking on eBay, Craigslist and other Web sites.

Told you. And furthermore,

President Barack Obama and Democratic congressional leaders are crafting an appropriations bill that would boost the agency's funding next year by more than 11.4 percent — to $117 million — and it's already hiring new inspectors and other employees in anticipation of the funding infusion.

they'll have plenty of your money to do their surveillance of you. Of me? us? We all need watching. Just in case something fishy might be going on. Or, you might say, "De minimis nunc curat lex."

Thanks to Glenn Reynolds.

CPSIA even more unneeded than previously thought

Katherine Mangu-Ward at Hit & Run:

Mattel Gets Fined for Lead Toys, Three Years and One Terrible Law Too Late

… After years of hullabaloo, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has finally gotten around to levying a $2.3 million fine against Mattel and Fisher-Price for violating a perfectly good law that went into effect in 1978. That law, of course, already banned all of the stuff that freaked people out in 2007.

Some of the commenters get a little emotional, by which I mean, language warning! A good comment from Hazel Meade: "We've got so many laws and regulations on the books that it's easier for the political class to simply pass new ones than it is to figure out what the old ones are." Sure looks that way.

Derbyshire on Monkey, Zen, stimulus

Compare my Presidents' Day post on Coolidge with this by John Derbyshire at The Corner:

In his press conference last week the President chided "a set of folks who … just believe that we should do nothing." This got loud protests from various quarters on the right that, no, there are no such folks. We all want the government to do something.

Well, I'm for nothing. Perhaps not quite nothing: If Congress were just to go on a 12-month vacation, that would be a good thing; but even better would be if they were to spend 12 months doing nothing but repeal bad, stupid laws. (Repealing the CPSIA would be a good warm-up exercise.)

Like Monkey, they just can't sit still. This preposterous "stimulus" package is just one particularly big and obnoxious instance of a malign phenomenon — too much government action. Don't just do something, guys, sit there. But that, of course, is the one thing they can't do.

Monkey? What monkey? You'll have to read the whole thing to find out. It's short.

One of Derbyshire's readers responds, with a suggestion for another $150 billion of "stimulus."

I mentioned "Yes, Minister" syndrome a while ago.

We don't burn books, we landfill them. It's different. It's for the children!

Move over, Montag. Don't you realize that burning those books could give off toxic fumes?

From Overlawyered:

[T]he Consumer Product Safety Commission yesterday advised thrift stores and other resellers and distributors of used goods to discard (unless they wished to test for lead or take other typically unpractical steps such as contacting manufacturers) children’s books printed before 1985 and a very wide range of other children’s products, including apparel and playthings.

Just a small part of the results of a law called the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, passed as a Congressional overreaction to the toxic toys from China scare last year. I had not even heard of this law until Roland Dobbins sent Jerry Pournelle a link to the Overlawyered piece above. Which shows that I don't read Overlawyered as regularly as I should. There's a whole series there about this misguided, misbegotten, outrageous, foolish law. Letters to Congressmen and Senators are required, though probably will be useless. The Common Room, also with many posts on CPSIA, links to the House committee where bills to modify the CPSIA are under consideration. Since it is the same committee that the bill came out of in the first place, my hopes are not high. This law needs repeal, not amendments.

Speaking of useless, one of those posts deals with the question, "How useful is Snopes.com for figuring out the truth about something?" The answer seems to be that it's about as useful as any other site on the Internet: to be taken with a grain of salt. Sometimes right, sometimes wrong, sometimes careless, possibly deliberately deceptive. Oh well, you knew that all the time, anyway. I hope I'm not going to find out that there are mistakes at The Straight Dope, next.

Seriously, that whole series on CPSIA is worth reading. It's not just books, there's much, much more involved. For instance, the law puts Gepetto out of business, closes thrift and consignment shops, and stops kids from buying youth motorbikes or parts for the ones they have.

This is what happens when Congress passes these bloated bills that nobody reads, and the President signs them, and then we start to find out what was in there. Oh dear, what did they just do last week!

Related: The legal system.

The legal system

Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

There's an essay, or a blog post (McArdle) or two (Poretto) or three (Max), or a book, in this. I don't feel like writing it today. But the cartoon is a pretty good multum in parvo of something that there's already too much of, with a lot more on the way.

Update a few hours later: See how these things tie together. In a few hours, I will write a post about the CPSIA. Concerning which Rick Woldenberg, chairman of Learning Resources, Inc., has this to say:

Is it just me (okay, it's probably just me), or are we being overwhelmed with critical information and rulings on a daily basis, to the point where it is impossible on a practical basis to even READ them?

He goes on with some bullet points:

A. It is incredibly complex and difficult to understand. Ask five people to explain how the law works, and see if there is even ONE point they agree on. Won't happen.…
B. It's infinitely more risky. Any violation of ANY provision (and there are a lot of provisions now) can be the subject of a recall.…
C. The law has become detached from consideration of risk and thus no longer corresponds to common sense. …
D. Finally, and most importantly, these laws are so complex that they cannot be taught.…

But go read the whole thing.