NYT Takes Toys from Babies

Katherine Mangu-Ward | February 18, 2009

Over at Overlawyered.com Reason Contributing Editor Wally Olson goes completely ballistic (in a good way!) on the terrible editorial in The New York Times today on onerous new testing requirements for toys. Here's the line in the Times editorial that sets off Olsonian fireworks:

The delay has caused confusion and allowed opponents to foment needless fears that the law could injure smaller enterprises like libraries, resale shops and handmade toy businesses.

I've written about the many problems with the toy testing legislation, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), here.

The cost of testing each individual model will essentially close down the operations of small, handmade toy makers and secondhand toy sellers when it is enforced. One manufacturer of wooden toys, Selecta, has already pulled out of the U.S. market, rather than get tangled up in the testing requirements. So it's hard to understand in what sense those fears are "needless." Or, as Olson has it:

Got that? “Confusion” about the law, and “delay” in implementing it, are the real problems. Fears that small business will be hurt are “needless” and are being “fomented” by presumably sinister opponents.

Or, put differently: anyone who imagines this law might be impractical for libraries, resale shops, handmade toy businesses, or other small businesses is just imagining things — fooled, perhaps, by misinformation spread by the law’s opponents.

Stop being a bunch of babies, toymakers. Pull it together. The New York Times knows what's best.

Comments

Jeff P|2.18.09 @ 2:58PM|#

I suspect Burgermeister Meisterburger is somehow involved...

I eagarly await the coming toy Black Market, where wooden choo-choos are smuggled over the border and caches of lawn jarts are confiscated in raids. Small choking hazrds, like twenty-sided die, will be transported in the rectums of nerd mules.

|2.18.09 @ 3:01PM|#

It's for the children. Salvation Army, Goodwill Industries, and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul should just quit whining. What do they know about helping the little ones?

Naga Sadow|2.18.09 @ 3:10PM|#

The kid pictured could use a little Force lightening to shut him up!

*glares at kid in picture*

Naga Sadow|2.18.09 @ 3:22PM|#

Jeff P.,

Lawn darts! They still make and sell lawn darts?!?! I was the victim of a cruel joke when I was younger! I hate lawn darts!

Jeff P|2.18.09 @ 3:27PM|#

Naga: your hatred nourishes me. I am the Lord of all Lawn Darts. I raise my arms and a cloud of metal-tipped plastic death darkens the sky...

BakedPenguin|2.18.09 @ 3:29PM|#

Small choking hazards, like twenty-sided die, will be transported in the rectums of nerd mules.

Murray, Full of Grok.

Naga Sadow|2.18.09 @ 3:35PM|#

Jeff P.,

That's the way I remember it. THUNK! I turn around and fucking lawn dart is right next to me. THUNK! One lands just in front of me. THUNK! THUNK! THUNK! I'm running away at that point. My redneck neighbors thought it was great fun.

|2.18.09 @ 3:41PM|#

Hasn't the New York Times collapsed yet?

phalkor|2.18.09 @ 3:53PM|#

I think the NYT can smell their own decay.

Bronwyn|2.18.09 @ 3:59PM|#

Here's idiot Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter's take on DeMint's solution.

http://www.timesanddemocrat.com/articles/2009/02/18/opinion/doc4999fe4b1b76c820406640.txt#tdcomments

Summarized as follows. "It's for the children! DeMint is a baby killer!"

Like I said... IDIOT!

Bronwyn|2.18.09 @ 4:00PM|#

There. Click my URL if you don't want to deal with that mess of a link-paste.

Sorry 'bout that.

BakedPenguin|2.18.09 @ 4:13PM|#

...our state's most precious resource is and always will be our children...

More precious than coal?

|2.18.09 @ 4:25PM|#

More precious than coal?

Duh. Can you eat coal?

Jeff P|2.18.09 @ 4:41PM|#

Naga: Let the trauma transform you. Reinvent yourself as a V For Vendetta-style avenger with rows of lawn darts lining your cape. Your underhand lobs delivering justice in high, wobbly arcs. Death from above.

Naga Sadow|2.18.09 @ 4:51PM|#

Jeff P.,

Wobbly? It's been a while but I remember them as fairly accurate missiles.

Solana,

Your paying for my dental bill. I tried it your way and broke a tooth.

h-dawg|2.18.09 @ 4:57PM|#

I didn't see that NYT editorial. Hold on. (Reaches into birdcage. Tells birds to settle down, will return it shortly.) Oh, here it is.

Hey. That's fucked up.

|2.18.09 @ 5:07PM|#

Click my URL

But I hardly know you!

T|2.18.09 @ 5:14PM|#

Fully assembled lawn darts are illegal for sale in the US. So what does one do? Buy the parts disassembled and make them yourself. They are easily and readily available for you to avenge your childhood traumas, Naga.

Naga Sadow|2.18.09 @ 5:39PM|#

T,

Negative. I put my anger away long ago.

*looks to see if Pro Liberate is around*

Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering

LarryA|2.18.09 @ 5:52PM|#

The delay has caused confusion and allowed opponents to foment needless fears that the law could injure smaller enterprises like libraries, resale shops and handmade toy businesses.

The fears are "needless" because these little people don't by NYT ads, and shutting them down is a feature, not a bug.

our state's most precious resource is and always will be our children

"and the state has the right, therefore, to manage those little resources so they grow up to be productive proles." How 1984.

|2.18.09 @ 9:35PM|#

I think I finally get it. The New York Times knows it's going broke, so they figured they'd go for broke and start advocating all the batshit crazy policies they've always dreamed about. The end is nigh, might as well smoke some crack while you can still afford it.

|2.19.09 @ 2:19AM|#

So with this editorial, is the NYT comforting the afflicted, or afflicting the comfortable?