The CPSC’s searchable data base regarding dangerous products

Here's an idea that is so obvious and so important that we can expect to see great political pressure to dismantle it. In accordance with the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA), the Consumer Product Safety Comission (CPSC) is assembling its public database which will be a central location:

[W]here consumers can go to report product safety incidents, and to search for prior incidents and recalls on products they own, or may be thinking about buying. In conjunction with the web site launch, CPSC will also conduct a public awareness campaign to raise awareness of SaferProducts.gov.

The reason for the database is to "Protect and Inform the Public," according to the CPSC's recent report, which further provides that the database information:

• provides more timely dissemination of alerts and other information to the public and industry, • increases public access to product incident and recall data by making consumer product safety information available more rapidly, and • provides a publicly available, searchable, and easy-to-use database for use by consumers, industry, and CPSC staff. This CPSC database is not yet operational, but by March 11, 2011 (according to the current CPSC report), any consumer will be able to post complaints regarding dangerous products on this national database. The CPSC will review these complaints for accuracy. According to the CPSC,

All incident data submitted via SaferProducts.gov will be subject to CPSC review to verify its authenticity – that the submitters are who they say they are. Any data or incident reports found to be materially inaccurate will either be corrected or will not be published. Furthermore, CPSC will have the ability to remove or correct incident data that has already been published should it determine that the data is materially inaccurate.

This all sounds like a good idea, right? I think so. I would make this prediction, though. There is going to be a massive outcry from the Chamber of Commerce regarding this database and huge push in Congress to make the database less useful. Admittedly, such a database will embarrass and damage manufacturers of dangerous products. If misused, it could damage compliant manufacturers, and that would be a bad thing too. The focus should be on protecting consumers from dangerous products, though. If I'm sounding overly-concerned that the Chamber will try to bring down the database, it's because I just read an article called "The CPSC's Searchable Consumer Product Incident Database," in October 2009 issue of For the Defense, a publication of the Defense Lawyer Institute. The article repeatedly takes the position that consumers will be irresponsibly reporting incidents of dangerous products. Here's an excerpt:

Under the plan as currently proposed, the consumer submitting an incident report is not required to provide any proof or evidence to support the alleged incident. Instead, the consumer is only required to "click" on an electronic button next to an existing webpage statement that indicates that the consumer verifies "that the information is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge."

Horrors! Consumers will merely report what they think happened without any "'proof or evidence"! I suppose that the manufacturers will insist that nothing should go on the database unless either A) there is already a trial where the widow of the guy who was electrocuted by the toaster prevails or B) where the manufacturer and the consumer agree to the facts. Here's another excerpt from the lawyers representing the manufacturers (from the same DRI article):

Without procedures to prevent the disclosure of inaccurate reports pertaining to a company's products, the Internet publication of inaccurate, accessible, anonymous consumer product incident reports will be inevitable.

Anonymous? See the above portion of the CPSC report requiring the CPSC to verify "that the submitters are who they say they are." Inaccurate? See the above portion of the CPSC report: "Any data or incident reports found to be materially inaccurate will either be corrected or will not be published." So what would the manufacturers propose to protect consumers from products that explode, cut or burn consumers? Here's what I suspect: that there would be no publicly accessible CPSC database, and that most consumers would remain as they are today--in the dark.

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Amazon Accidentally Increases Internet Disinformation

We have previously posted regarding the latest reprint of Darwin's "The Origin of Species", by Ray Comfort. If you don't know about it, it has a 50 page forward full of untruths, confusion, and misdirection in an attempt to discredit the original text that follows. Yes, he's trying to use Darwin to discredit 200 years of thoroughly tested evolutionary biology. Unfortunately, Amazon.com reviews and ratings confuse it with another (reputable) reprint by the same name, as discussed in detail here:

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California court declines to publish anti-camera decision

Many of us have been caught by those increasingly ubiquitous red-light cameras. Police departments and local governments argue that these sorts of cameras improve safety and increase revenue. Studies are increasingly putting the lie to the safety claim, but nobody's disputing that these traffic enforcement mechanisms bring in revenue. The Wall Street Journal reported in March that

... a study in last month's Journal of Law and Economics concluded that, as many motorists have long suspected, "governments use traffic tickets as a means of generating revenue." The authors, Thomas Garrett of the St. Louis Fed and Gary Wagner of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, studied 14 years of traffic-ticket data from 96 counties in North Carolina. They found that when local-government revenue declines, police issue more tickets in the following year. Officials at the North Carolina Association of Chiefs of Police didn't respond to requests for comment.
California state law prohibits compensation to operators of these red-light cameras based on the number of tickets issued. Localities have been side-stepping this law through "cost-neutrality" provisions, which allow the cities to pay the operators up to a certain monthly amount. After that cap is reached, the city keeps all the revenue beyond that point. The intent of the law is to remove an incentive to ticket as a means of increasing revenue to the private operators. There is now a second appellate court ruling that has struck down the red-light programs as illegal under the state law.

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Rage and Injustice

When people ask why laws must be changed to protect behavior that seems "outside" social norms, it can sometimes be difficult to make the point that rights must accrue to individuals and their choices or they mean nothing. So when a woman is stoned in some backwater country for adultery (whether she is in fact married or not) or a young girl has her clitoris snipped off without having any say in the matter or when a child is allowed to die from a treatable illness because his or her parents believe that only prayer can save them or when people are denied basic civil rights because they don't play the social game the same way as everyone else or--- If this were an issue of a racially mixed marriage, everyone would be aware and outraged. In this case it is not, it is a lesbian couple with children, who suffered a dual outrage---the first being denial of partner's rights at the hospital where one perished and the second being the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by the survivor against those who callously disregarded their basic humanity. The assumption by strangers that because they didn't fit some cookie-cutter definition of Normal that their fundamental humanity could be abridged in a life and death situation is not something that is redressable other than by law, because without a law people will make up any old justification to be assholes. And without a law, the rest of us will let them get away with it. Read the story. Be outraged. But do not be silent.

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The nasty brutish “Darwinism” concocted by I-don’t-give-a-crap free-marketers

Many conservatives have a "hate-love relation with biology.” Primatologist Frans De Waal terms this "the first great paradox of the American political landscape” in his new book, The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society. In this new book, De Waal has produced another tome of lively writing and thoughtful analysis, reminding us of our exquisite human animal roots. He is out to set the record straight on a gnawing social issue: too many people invoke "evolution" to justify treating each other in contemptuous ways. This has got to stop, because this modern version of "Social Darwinism" paints a highly selective and distorted view of the kind of animals we humans are based on a wildly inaccurate distortion of how natural selection works. Although I am not even halfway into De Waal’s book, I can see that De Waal has launched a sustained broadside against the commonly expressed perspective that evolutionary theory equates to "social Darwinism," an approach embraced by many conservatives. The idea of social Darwinism is that "those who make it [successfully in life] shouldn't let themselves be dragged down by those who don't." The idea was championed by British political philosopher Herbert Spencer in the 19th century. Spencer "decried attempts to equalize society’s playing field," and said of the poor that "the whole effort of nature is to get rid of such, to clear the world of them, and make room for better." De Waal comments that the business world fully embraces this idea and characterizes competition as a "law of biology" that will improve the human race. We thus have "the second great paradox of the American political landscape": Whereas the book found in most American homes and every hotel room urges us on almost every page to show compassion, social Darwinists scoff at such feelings, which only keeps nature from running its course. Poverty is dismissed as proof of laziness, and social justice as a weakness. Why not simply let the poor perish? Many of these conservatives embrace the metaphor of the invisible hand, arguing that this invisible hand "will take care of society's woes." De Waal notes, however, "the invisible hand . . . did nothing to prevent the appalling survival-of-the-greatest scenes in New Orleans" following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Why are the assumptions about biology always on the negative side? [p. 4] . . . What we need is a complete overhaul of assumptions about human nature. Too many economists and politicians model human society on the perpetual struggle they believe exists in nature, but which is a mere projection. [p. 7] . . . Our bodies and minds are made for social life, and we become hopelessly depressed in its absence [p. 10] . . . [It is a great myth] that human society is a voluntary creation of autonomous men. [p.20] . . . When our ancestors left the forest and entered an open, dangerous environment, they became prey and evolved a herd instinct that beats that of many animals. We excel at bodily synchrony and actually derive pleasure from it. [p. 20]. . . . All primates have this tendency [to develop trusting alliances], and some even invest in the community as a whole. Instead of just focusing on their own position, they demonstrate group-oriented behavior. [p. 34] De Waal’s main message is that we are NOT condemned by nature to treat each other badly. Though competition is part of the picture, we have evolved to be predominantly groupish and peace-loving beings who are well-tuned to look out for each other. Not that we always look out for each other admirably, but there is plenty of reason to conclude that human animals are highly social in an empathetic way. Keep this book handy for the next time someone claims that they don't need to care about people who are struggling to make it because nature is “dog eat dog.” That approach to life is a cop-out; it is certainly not justified by Darwin's work.

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