Looking ahead

The Consumer Product Safety Commission is the withered arm of our government that's been so busy lately sending out recall notices for the entire inventory of Toys "R" Us. Technically, I exaggerate, but if any of the imported product that flows in and out of our stores actually meets the safety standards our government claims to uphold, it would seem to be nothing more than a fluke. It's not as if they actually know.

The CPSC is less than half the size it once was and has, get this, one part-time inspector to cover the 15 million containers that move through the Port of Los Angeles--just for one example cited in the article linked below. The reductions started, not so shockingly, under Reagan, but Bush has continued to cut its staff, and thus the number of investigations it has been able to complete has fallen precipitously even as the amount of shoddy merchandise on store shelves has continued to increase. Remember when conservative Grover Norquist said he wanted a government so small he could drown it in the bathtub? I detect a change in tactics. I think they're going to try to either burn it or choke it to death, given the state of the art conditions at the Commission's testing labs:

"One lab worker used a magnifying glass and a mechanical stop watch to help conduct a fabric flammability experiment — the same equipment she has used for three decades. The toy laboratory, down the hall, is an office so cramped that the only space dedicated to a drop test to see if toys will break into small pieces and cause a choking hazard is the spare space behind the office door. “This is the toy lab for all of America — for all of the United States government!” said Robert L. Hundemer, the one agency employee who routinely tests toys, as he held up his arms in the air. “We do what we can.”

As an agency, though, the CPSC is not doing what it can, since, as is the Bush way, most of the top posts are now filled by pro-industry types who work to protect business, not you and me. Bush's nominee for commissioner was withdrawn back in March, so indefensible were his blame-the-baby's parents-for-his-unsafe-baby-walker attitudes, but something tells me that leaving the post empty was no accident. Since nobody's filling that top spot, action on mandatory recalls and regulation cannot proceed. Imagine. Foot-dragging has become official policy, maximizing profits as it does, whether for a hair relaxer that burns kids (but warning labels would cost a few cents a bottle, and pennies make dollars, and dollars make stock options) or an unsafe-at-any-speed Chinese-made ATV that cannot be taken off the market without a permanent commissioner.

But, there is a bigger problem here, even for those of us who feel as if they'd be smart enough not to suck the lead out of Thomas the Tank Engine or buy a gasoline-powered anything from China even without the government telling us it's a bad idea. The federal government is historically staffed with thousands upon thousands of people who are experts in whatever it is their agencies are responsible for, from product safety to justice. Thanks to the Bush misAdministration, thousands of them do not work for the government anymore, and after January 20, 2009, they still will not work there. A certain number of cronies and political appointees may be cleared out, assuming the voters don't get all irrational again next year, and the way back to functional may begin, but we'll still be left with this decimated shell of a government, and where's the recall notice for that?