Poison Your Kid for Christmas: Hollow Government, Continued

If you needed an illustration for Hollow Government and how it connects to the unsafe toys that are at the very least complicating Christmas shopping for many Americans, we've got Exhibit A: Nancy Nord, acting Chairman of the Consumer Products Safety Commission.

Since Reaganism struck the first blow against too much gubment, this Commission, charged with insuring the safety of consumer products (yes, they actually have the responsibility spelled out in their name), has seen what the New York Times calls a "steady decline" in funding and in staff, so that today it's about half the size it was in 1980. So even though the importing of consumer goods has exploded to become a $614 billion business, the Commission polices those imports with all of fifteen inspectors.

Now Congress, alarmed by the killer pet food, contaminated toothpaste and leaded toys, wants to double the Commission's funding and greatly increase its staff. But Nancy just says no.

Says the Times: Ms. Nord opposes provisions that would increase the maximum penalties for safety violations and make it easier for the government to make public reports of faulty products, protect industry whistleblowers and prosecute executives of companies that willfully violate laws.

She argues that stricter regulations and more people to enforce them would create an unnecessary burden on the toy industry, for example, and anyway, making lead-free toys is "impractical."

Here is Hollow Government at its most naked. It isn't just Nancy--the Times quoted a White House spokesperson as saying the top Bush economic advisor "was preparing to send a letter to Congress 'that is probably even more forceful than Ms. Nord’s.'” So the ideological framework is clear. According to the Bushites, as Jon Carroll put it in his column on the subject, "the only problem currently faced by the Consumer Product Safety Commission is the continued existence of the Consumer Product Safety Commission."

So according to them, it's up to the corporations--the Hollow Corporations who subcontract the actual manufacture to the lowest bidder in China, India and elsewhere.

And as we've seen in the past, this kind of relationship of the deathly hollows leads not only to lead in toys, but to blatant corruption. The Washington Post has detailed some of the 30 or so free trips taken by Chairman Nancy and her Bushite predecessor, paid for by Hollow Corporations she is supposed to be regulating.

One such trip was an 11 day junket to China and Hong Kong taken by the previous chairman--not a factfinding mission or perish the thought an inspection tour, but "gift travel"--paid for by a Hollow Corporation with offices in suburban DC but nothing else in the U.S.--its products all made in Asia.

In the Clinton administration, the story says, this just didn't happen--no trips were paid for by regulated corporations and most were paid for by the agency itself.

In calling for Nancy Nord to resign, Senator Sherrod Brown stated, " Parents have the right to trust that their children's toys are safe. Every American has the right to trust that their government is doing its job to keep us all safe."

Those "rights" simply aren't recognized as such by the far right and the Bushite Hollow Government. The functional Bushite philosophy is that the role of government is to funnel tax money to crony corporations, and if that's not possible at the moment, to let corporations do whatever the hell they want as long as they are buying the drinks, and greasing the right palms.

Yesterday parents had to worry about not knowing whether particular toys have been recalled or not. Today they have to worry that not only doesn't the government have enough people to check these toys out, they don't really want to. And even if Congress feels it is representing the people's interest in safe toys by appropriating more money so the government can do its job, the Bushites won't do it.

So now it may not matter if a toy is made in China or India or in Indiana. You're taking your chances on poisoning your child for Christmas.