Yesterday's latest news on poisonous toys from China is perhaps the most disturbing yet. As CNN reports 4.2 million Aqua Dots toys were recalled because they contain a chemical that when swallowed by children metabolizes into the date rape drug GHB. Ironically "The toy was named toy of the year in Australia and recently made Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s list of top 12 Christmas toys."
The Donkey family fortunately did not purchase any Aqua Dots, but we very well might have if Donkey junior was a couple of years older.
But hitting even closer to home, last week I discovered that we had in our freezer a recalled Totinos frozen pizza that potentially was contaminated with E-Coli.
My take is that all of this is a prime example of free market failures, and illustrates the need for greater government regulation in these areas. I don't care if I can get my frozen pizza for 99 cents at Walmart if that pizza can potentially kill me. I would rather pay a dollar fifty and not risk my life. Beginning with the Reagan administration Republican allegiance to the principles of Laissez-faire economics and small government has resulted in a systematic reduction of various government agencies. But the Bush administration has taken it a step further. They have gone beyond merely cutting the funding to these agencies, and are now appointing former industry insiders to lead them. As reported in the Seattle Post Intelligencer:
Profits valued over children's safety
By MARIANNE MEANS
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST
WASHINGTON-- It's a national embarrassment.
The Consumer Products Safety Commission is ordinarily not a controversial agency -- it is so small it operates largely in obscurity. But it has suddenly become a public outrage, a symbol of the Bush administration's cavalier attitude toward the public good when it conflicts with big business interests.
We have always known this is President Bush's basic notion of how to govern, but up to now we had seldom been hit smack in the face with it. The acting chairman of the CPSC, Nancy Nord, testified recently on Capitol Hill that the commission opposed congressional efforts to expand the agency's budget and powers in order to get a handle on tainted toys and other products flooding the U.S. from China.
Her indifference to the threat from lead-contaminated toys and other consumer items created a firestorm. It forced the administration to rush forth with an alternative plan that had been languishing for months. That plan would set up a system allowing most industries to police themselves but add more inspectors for companies with particularly dangerous products or bad safety records.
It is, predictably, far more limited in scope and authority than the congressional plan. But it will temporarily serve the administration's purpose of muddying the issue.
The decline of the CPSC is a shame. Congress proposed the agency at the peak of the consumer movement in the late 1960s, when the country was rebelling against the traditional concept of caveat emptor -- let the buyer beware. The public was tired of business getting away with shoddy practices and shoddy goods.
. . .
Nord and her predecessor, Hal Stratton, have made several trips around the world on junkets financed by the industries they are supposed to be regulating.
Nord rejected the congressional offer of more money and authority. She warned that the bill "would harm product safety and put the American people at greater risk."
Nord's logic seems a little nutty.
The bill would increase the agency's budget from $63 million to $142 million by 2015 and increase its staff by 20 percent. It would raise the cap on penalties for safety violations from $1.8 million to $100 million, ban lead in kids' products and make it illegal to sell recalled goods. It would add whistleblower protections.
But she is used to viewing the world from the one-sided viewpoint of business. She is a lawyer who worked for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and in private practice for clients such as General Electric and other leading manufacturers and retailers.
Her agency is responsible for overseeing more than 15,000 types of products. But it has only 400 staffers, fewer than half the number when the agency was formally established in 1973. It has only one full-time toy tester.
The CPSC has been without a chair for more than a year. In March, Bush nominated Michael Baroody, a manufacturing industry lobbyist, to become chairman. He withdrew his name two months later rather than reveal his severance agreement with the National Association of Manufacturers.
Democrats are now calling for Nord to resign. She is certainly in an inappropriate job. But Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., warned that if she leaves, Bush might just forget to replace her and leave the commission rudderless and helpless. That seems to have been Bush's goal all along. To get real consumer protection, we will have to wait for a Democratic president.
I could not agree more. The Bush team appears to be intent on corrupting as much of government as possible. Whether its Alberto Gonzalez at the DOJ, Halliburton in Iraq or Nancy Nord at the CPSC. His strategy is apparently to shrink government by ruining it? He has put the fox in charge of the hen house and in so doing has put our children at risk. The only hope is that in one more year we may be fortunate enough to elect someone who cares more about protecting our children from GHB induced coma's than promoting corporate profits and free market principles.
Sincerely,
Donkey
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