Last year’s Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act was supposed to make children safer by reducing the risk of lead poisoning in toys. Instead, the new law has become a case study in how hastily written regulation can club the economy and reduce consumer safety.
This bill was passed by wide margins in Congress and signed into law by President Bush in the aftermath of the controversy over lead paint in imported toys from China. The new law, which took effect in February, establishes strict limits on lead levels in products for children. Never mind that in 2008 only one American child was injured from lead poisoning from toys…Â Details
The Economic Meltdown Is Affecting Everyone
Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past 6 months, it’s been pretty difficult for a day to go by without hearing yet more gloomy news on the economy. And for many of us, it hasn’t been just watching/reading news or water cooler conversation–it’s been a brutal, harsh reality. Like most big corporations, SR’s parent publishing company has trimmed staff down to skeletal levels, and a few friends outside the magazine have been let go after years of service by their respective companies. For quite a few of us, the New Year was rung in with, “So long 2008, don’t let the door hit you on your way out.”
Nowhere in the motorcycle industry has the economic meltdown been felt more severely than with… Details