Used clothing and other hazards
January 4th, 2009 - Written by Joey
I am absolutely livid right now. I hardly know where to begin I’m so stinking angry.
Have any of you heard about the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008? If you have, you probably heard that it was passed to protect children from imported goods that may contain lead or other harmful contaminants. Well did you know that the bill also includes the government-sanctioned testing of resale children’s clothing?
That’s right. As of February 10, 2009, you will no longer be able to sell or buy children’s used clothing under the CPSIA. Not at the Goodwill, not at a consignment shop, not on eBay. Not even at a yard sale. If you do, you face a $100,000 fine and 5 years of imprisonment. That is, unless the seller can find a government-approved way to test the garments that won’t force them out of business.
You think I’m joking?
Here’s an LA Times article on the matter, and here’s a brief analysis of this moronic piece of legislation over at Campaign for Liberty:
Congress, in its impeccable wisdom, effectively voted last year to shut down the children’s resale clothing business via the “Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008.” Not a soul in the House dared to vote against “children’s safety,” proving many in the Congressional cesspool of counter-productivity neglect to read legislation before voting. (I’ll cut a break for the 25 who abstained, as they potentially didn’t vote because they hadn’t an opportunity to read the bill.)
The act requires lead testing of all products sold for children aged twelve and under, including but not limited to clothing and toys, regardless of the date of manufacturing and the high improbability of lead in the clothing, particularly that manufactured domestically. Goodwill, other thrift stores, and one-person shops reselling new and used children’s clothing, making a couple dollars per item, would have to forgo a year’s worth of profit to fund third-party testing services, essentially putting most out of business. Further, as I understand it, the testing requires the destruction of an individual unit out of a batch, and would therefore not work for unique items.
Taking effect February 10, 2009, this ex post facto regulatory taking comes precisely at a time when lower-income and newly unemployed parents most need inexpensive children’s clothing and the dollars they receive from selling or consigning their children’s briefly used items.
While clothing is one of the few areas in which the market demands recycling, stores with existing, untested merchandise will have to opt for sending truckloads of perfectly good clothes to the landfill. And parents who purchased that expensive special occasion dress with plans to resell it after one wear are simply out the money. Not even Goodwill can take it now.
After planning my own recession-proof business, a children’s resale shop, where one was lacking in my neighborhood, I’m lucky to have found this news story yesterday, before signing a lease. Although I am out some minor capital expenses and inventory costs, the regulatory taking could have had a worse toll, and at least I avoided the $100,000 fines or five-year’s imprisonment.
When I was a poor single mother, the Goodwill and yard sales were the only places I could afford to buy clothing for my growing son. Those of you who have children know how quickly they outgrow clothing, and you also know what a godsend secondhand shops and garage sales are. And now that the economy’s in the crapper and parents are losing their jobs, buying new clothes is simply not an option for many families. Heck, I still shop at the Goodwill, garage sales, and consignment shops on a regular basis for my kids and myself.
But here comes Mommy Government, under the guise of ‘protecting the children’, not allowing us to be grown-ups and assume our own risks (as if purchasing used children’s clothing were really a ‘risk’).
And just exactly how do these clowns in Congress plan on enforcing this law? Will we have ‘Garage Sale Police’ working the beat in the suburbs, going from house-to-house to make certain that no renegade stay-at-home mom is peddling her illegal layette to innocent and unsuspecting garage salers?
“Please step away from the onesies with your hands above your head!”
ARGH. I’m going to go crazy.
And to those of you who thought that seatbelt and smoking ban legislation was a great idea, you’re getting what you asked for. You want government to take care of you, this is what you get. I’ve been preaching about the ’slippery slope’ for years, and people keep saying, “Oh, Joey. That’ll never happen. You’re exaggerating.”
Well? Did you ever think used children’s clothing would be banned from commerce?
Everyone of you–liberal and conservative–should be outraged. This isn’t about party politics, anymore. This is about a runaway government that seems intent on destroying our entire way of life under the ‘good intention’ of saving us from ourselves. So while everyone’s busy bickering back and forth over which party can ’save’ America, we–the common American citizens–are losing everything.
Happy freakin’ New Year.
21 Responses to “Used clothing and other hazards”
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- Civil Disobedience: Prescription for Tyrannical Laws | Core Conservative Values
- PheistyBlog » Blog Archive » Along came the CPSIA
- PheistyBlog » Blog Archive » Along came the CPSIA
- HR 4040 - Killing Charity, Making Life More Difficult For Many « The Loud Talker
January 5th, 2009 at 2:17 am
What does that do to the value of my antique, still works great, Lionel Train? What about used guns? What about used anything? Cars have mercury in them in small amounts in some of the electronics, I believe.
The next time someone says “America–love it or leave it”–my answer will be that America has already left..
January 5th, 2009 at 6:12 am
Unbelievable!! When did this bill pass and why haven’t we heard about this earlier?? This is going to affect A LOT of people…especially in the poorer areas (ours).
January 5th, 2009 at 6:13 am
I’m going to research the actual legislation and see exactly what it says. More than likely our nitwit legislators never thought any deeper than preserving their reputations for caring about ‘the children’. I shouldn’t insinuate that they wanted to shut down the used clothing business, but rather should point it out as yet another example of how government idiots don’t think things through.
The thing that I find ironic is that this is the same Congress who passed the squiggly lightbulb law which states that by 2012, we won’t be able to buy incandescent bulbs. I broke one of those squiggly suckers a couple of months ago, and I had to follow some very particular instructions (complete with rubber gloves and two ziplock bags) to remove it because of the mercury vapors that was contained in it. Where’s the law banning these from homes where children are present??? What about ‘no safe levels’???
I guess if your particular industry has enough money to lobby Congress, you can do just about anything…regardless of whether or not it makes any logical sense. The used clothing and eBay entrapraneurs aren’t exactly big lobbyists, the poor suckers. They thought they could just be allowed to make money without shoveling a big chunk of it into campaign coffers.
January 5th, 2009 at 6:18 am
Countless times, I’ve pleaded with the sponsors of bills that I supported to rename them as something along the lines of “the Enactment to Save Puppies, Ducklings, and Orphans”.
Problem is, everybody always thinks I’m kidding…
-jjg
DailyScoff.com
January 5th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
I wonder if our church’s kids clothing swap will be illegal. If you are not buying and selling the clothes, it seems like they would not be able to regulate it. I also wonder if this is only true for clothing manufactured and sold before this year. I presume that there will need to be new labels on kids clothes declaring them to be lead free. If the used clothes have these labels, there should be no problem with selling them. I think this is a stupid thing to do, but permanently banning the sale of kids clothing for lead seems really really stupid.
January 6th, 2009 at 5:14 am
Could you refer me to the section of the bill that mentions resale of clothing? I found paragraph 104 which talks about applying the standards to resale of cribs, but I haven’t found the language about resale of children’s clothing. It is a long and complicated bill, so the language might be in their somewhere, but I don’t trust the word of some newspaper article on the content of legislation.
January 6th, 2009 at 6:18 am
Joey – good find. I too LIVED at 2nd hand shops and garage sales when my son was growing up. Shoot our church has a resale shop that sells specifically to a poorer community in our county and the proceeds from those sales go to an orphanage in Haiti that we sponsor. A vast majority of our items are kids clothing and toys.
This is freaking insane!
LL
January 6th, 2009 at 9:00 am
WOW Joey did you cause a stir. I forwarded this to a bunch of friends here in Utah and whoo boy are they screaming bloody murder. One gal talked about multiple friends who run little home businesses making kids clothing and accessories who are going to be out of business with this. Deseret Industries (the LDS version of the Salvation Army) sells a lot of kids clothes in their stores to folks that are down on their luck. Another asked how this would effect stores that sell material for people who make their own kids clothing…..others are just dumbfounded at the stupidity of the legislators that voted for it!
My phone has not stopped buzzing since I sent this off! I have done my deed for the day…..
LL
January 6th, 2009 at 9:14 am
I found this website, which explains things pretty clearly.
http://www.thesmartmama.com/bg/
So when does the law that requires children to wear rubber gloves, face masks and twin holsters for lysol and hand sanitizer going to be enacted?
Perhaps more and more children are getting sick because their IMMUNE SYSTEMS ARE SO CRAPPY BECAUSE THEY HAVEN’T BEEN EXPOSED TO GERMS!!!!!!!!!!!!
Don’t get me wrong, lead is very toxic and shouldn’t be in products that could get ingested some way, but the Gov needs to take the time to get things right. This bill is like that last piece of chocolate in the box. It looks sooooooo goooood on the outside, but when you bite into it………..you realize why it was the last piece. (you didn’t read the legend under the candy box cover did you)
January 6th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Who reads the chocolate legend? I just dive right in, with all the hopes and dreams of a small child, vying for that sweet caramelly goodness to be on the inside, and istead I get that disgusting pink foamy looking crap.
January 6th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
My son has powerful lobbyists…He wins!! How do you suppose they will be able to enforce this at Garage Sales? Oh, Gosh, dare I ask? That is not helping children AT ALL…there will be many children without coats, gloves etc. jut in my area, alone! The road to hell is paved with what now?
January 6th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Who will monitor all this?
Obama’s service core robots. I heard today O wants to have all 18 to 25 year olds to serve their country in some federal service idea. They will brain wash these young adults to turn in their mothers and grandmothers for unsafe childrens cloths at a rummage sale.
Reminds me of…….. Ah, no one will believe it till it happens to them and by then it will be too late.
January 12th, 2009 at 9:46 am
Joey, calm down. This is actually a really good bill, because it will stimulate more spending in the new clothing business, and jump start the economy by creating jobs. Sheesh, don’t you know anything?
January 12th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Question?
If the original sellers of the childrens clothing have the clothes tessted for lead from the beginning then why not simply mark them with a special tag declaring them safe. Because if this is for our childrens safety then I want proof that the items are lead free before I buy them new. Therefore they should be tested and free of lead so why cant they be resold? I understand the economy needs to be improved but this is ignorant and a 12 year olds clothes will be band but the day they turn 13 they could be contaminated?
I have only read a few articles on this and I need to become more active and informing myself and will do so but for now my question still remains “If the orinial mfg. or seller tests the items before selling to the public then the items will at that time get a bill of lealth for being LEAD FREE then why should it need re-tested? Confused?
January 12th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
I am absolutely speechless. Just how many small businesses, and CHARITIES, have these freaking idiots shut down? I have 3 children in elementary school–they outgrow clothes long before they’re worn out. So now I should just throw them in the garbage to fill a land fill? When is this insanity going to stop? THANK YOU for your blog and what you do–I contacted the Consumer Product Safety Commission on this because of you.
January 12th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
My friend has a store that sells New and Slightly used clothing. She is going to lose everything because of this law. This is how she pays for her house payment and all of her bills. All my 4 children were clothed by secondhand clothing stores. They still shop at thrift store to this day. I would like to know what the difference is between children and adult chothing? Isn’t most made out out of the same fabrics. So that would mean that when you are holding your child we are indangering them because they are breathing in these fibers. Who was the idiot that thought of this law.
January 25th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
I am in shock that our congress would pass such a bill at this time.What is young single mothers going to do ?
I was raised by a single mother who depended on used cloths frpm thrift stores when I was growing up back in the 60’s ,things are much worse today than then.
In 2005 we were hit with a massive storm Katrina and everyone lost everything ,our church gave away tons of uses and new cloyhs from around the country .What is going to happen when we have another tragedy loke that in the USA.? our church has a non.profit thrift store to help the poor ,we give away childrem cloths whrn there is a need. I see these struggling moms everyday and I know what this is going to do for them.there children are going to do without. This is going to hurt our country ,Job losses high cost of living this is just going tp make things worse for the already struggling poor.
My daughter and her husband do ebay selling name brand childrens used cloths they ownrd a morgage co. and had to close a year ago sue to the econemy and that was their lively hood this is going to effect them also.
This is not good !!!
Pat Lee