Thursday, January 15, 2009

Go out and vote!

Please take a couple minutes and vote to save handmade toys at Change.org. The top three will be presented to Obama.

Remember a couple years ago the lead scare in children's toys? Well, the US government decided to step in and help with the situation by making a new law that will require increased testing of all products for children under the age of 12. So far so good, right? Well, they are requiring tests that are prohibitively expensive on everything, even on natural products that have never been a threat. This will force thousands of small business to go out of business as testing can cost up to $4000 per item. Say a mom works from home in her spare time to provde an extra income for her family. This law will effectively shut out businesses like that. However, the large mega-corporations will be able to afford all the testing no problem. There is more information on the link. Please take a minute to vote!

3 comments:

Jenni said...

I have been posting quite a bit about CPSIA on my etsy blog http://liletsyshop.blogspot.com One thing i'm doing is posting lots of pictures of items that are endangered by CPSIA--and tagging them with big red letters that say so! It's eye-opening to realize how wide-reaching this legislation is.
Did you know it passed with only 4 'no' votes (1 in the senate, 3 in the house)...there are a lot of people who either didn't read it very well, didn't think about it, or just didn't care. That's depressing to think that these are the people who are making our laws!!

Carolyn said...

Actually I think you may have been the first one to clue me in to all this mess. I've emailed my congresspeople, followed by phone calls a few weeks later. Now that it's crunch time I'm going to start calling again.

Maria said...

I e-mailed my reps and mailed letters. Will call maybe next week as well. Emma helped me fold, stuff and stamp the letters! Fun times.