Big Brother In Your Yard Sale
If you’re planning a garage sale or organizing a church bazaar, you’d best beware: You could be breaking a new federal law. As part of a campaign called Resale Roundup, the federal government is cracking down on the secondhand sales of dangerous and defective products.
The initiative, which targets toys and other products for children, enforces a new provision that makes it a crime to resell anything that’s been recalled by its manufacturer.
“Those who resell recalled children’s products are not only breaking the law, they are putting children’s lives at risk,” said Inez Tenenbaum, the recently confirmed chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
I’m guessing in my house right now, I have roughly eleventy billion children’s toys. And we’ve been known to have the occasional yard sale. Does anyone really think I (or anyone else) is going to look up whether or not the My Little Pony Ponyville Starsong’s Stageshow Bus has been recalled?
Also, I have a friend who runs a kids’ consignment shop. Something like this could put her out of business.
HT to Tam.
August 24th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Walter Olsen at Overlawyered.com has been extensively covering this.
August 24th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Oh it is much worse than recalled toys. Your friend would do well to close up shop unless she intends on refusing all children’s products with zippers and any metal or plastic. Unless of course, she can certify the lead and other controlled chemical content is within standards. If not, large fines and jail time.
All thanks to our overweening congress. On the upside, Mattel imported lead encrusted toys which prompted a law to be passed that only large companies like Mattel can meet thus ensuring small competitors are forced out of the children’s products business.
August 24th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
I have a friend who runs a kids’ consignment shop. Something like this could put her out of business.
Actually, I believe it already has, she’s just unaware of it yet, and/or in defiance of the law.
I don’t think there’s any way she’ll be able to continue to sell used items less than new with the testing that’s mandated and required for every item now.
August 24th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Meh. Why shouldn’t it be illegal to resell dangerous items? And anyway, the “Resale Roundup” program is designed to help resellers avoid doing so, and is being done with the cooperation of NARTS, a trade organization representing thrift and resale shops.
August 25th, 2009 at 1:15 am
You’re right, tgirsch. A suburban housewife ought to be arrested by federal agents because she didn’t scour 3,000 pages of legal text, thereby selling a Raggedy Ann doll made in 1988 that we know was manufactured too closely to a peanut processing plant.
She ought to have a felony record, that dirty bitch.
August 25th, 2009 at 2:18 am
There were quite a few kids at the tea parties here carrying signs about this law. That was back at the first in April and with a few kids but several 20-30ish “hippie” types as well at the last party here in Cleveland.
The problem I see is that “it’s for the children” BS came into play and all the repugs hopped on the bandwagon, there were only a handful iirc of folks who didn’t vote for it.
Also, given the onslaught of other more overtly dangerous laws and bills attention has to shift, That’s how they roll in DC. Maybe they listened to maggot brain too much, afraid if they don’t pass laws we’ll all drown in our own shit.
August 25th, 2009 at 7:50 am
Children’s books have ink in them, and the ink may contain lead, so that takes care of that–most resellers’ stocks have already been destroyed. New USDA food inspection rules apply to roadside stands, church luncheons and game dinners, and “yes we can!” regulate your home garden (or your kitchen, if you have people over to dinner). Congressmen who voted for this without reading it will nevertheless have a complete talking-points list to defend it at the video-town meeting, and no SEIU member will be discomfited by its enforcement.
‘Somesay’ that Roman citizens, in latter days, stood in line to sign themselves into serfdom. Can you imagine how that could have happened?
August 25th, 2009 at 8:27 am
Yeah, don’t go getting all bogged down in details like collecting kids’ books could be illegal and how some person could be on the wrong end of a federal aid for not consulting a lawyer for everything they do. It’s for the children.
August 25th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Pronounced, with the Old Knickerbocker matronly trill, “chiddle-dren.”