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As the resident parent of the C&L bunch, I’ve been looking at the toy recalls closely and have written about the Bush administration’s version of Consumer Products Safety Commission, which like so many of Bush’s appointees, places more importance on corporations than the consumers it has been charged to protect. Well, now CPSC chairperson Nancy Nord has brought the wrath of Dobbs upon her:
This — Nord, is she as imbecilic as she appears to be as absolutely insensitive to American consumers, as absolutely lacking the judgment to run a federal agency designed and created to protect the American consumer? I mean this woman is beyond belief. [..]
How many of these recalls did her agency initiate? I wonder if she would like to answer that question. I wonder if she would like to explain how in the world she could say this is not a trade issue when she is sitting there testifying before Congress saying that this country is simply swamped with those giant containers filled with all sorts of things, but in this case, toys that are not being inspected.
Welcome to BushWorld, Lou. Where have you been for the last eight years?
Full Transcripts Below The Fold
DOBBS: American toy brands exposed American children to millions of dangerous toys just last year. And federal government regulators were powerless to stop them and to protect American citizens. Today our government assures Americans that things will be different in 2008, but there is absolutely no guarantee that those officials know what they are talking about that they learned anything from their mistakes. Most toys are still made in communist China and new recalls are occurring almost daily. Christine Romans has our report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROMANS (voice-over): From video games to soft toys, dolls to puzzles and games. Toy manufacturers and importers are showing their wares to retailers and reporters.
LEE SCHNEIDER, COMMONWEALTH TOYS: We plan on producing millions of these toys over the next six to 12 months.
ROMANS: Twenty-five million toys were pulled off the shelves last year for safety violations. Now the industry wants to put the year of the recall behind it.
ALAN DORFMAN, BASIC FUN: These are tested extensively. It is a big deal especially coming after the year we came off of the industry.
ROMANS: Wal-Mart and Toys R Us just announced stricter toy safety guideline. The Toy Industry Association is closer to improving safety standards, a process begun last July.
CARTER KEITHLEY, TOY INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION: The safety conformist system will assure that it doesn’t have any lead in it. That it doesn’t have small parts if it’s going to small children. That it doesn’t have sharp edges or sharp points.
ROMANS: The Consumer Product Safety Commission says it is hiring more scientists and adding inspectors at America’s busiest ports, though it doesn’t say how many. The acting chairwoman of the consumer agency says the toys sold in this country, three billion a year, are safer than they have ever been and she seemed to downplay the outcry over dangerous magnets, lead paint and deadly chemicals on store shelves last year.
NANCY NORD, CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY COMM.: Some of the media stories caused parents to become very confused.
ROMANS: Exaggerating the risks, she said, and Nord brushed aside criticism that America’s trade policies had eroded product safety.
NORD: Safety is not a trade issue. We will be vigilant in making sure that imports that come into this country are safe. Again, safety is not a trade issue.
ROMANS: But in testimony before a congressional panel last year she admitted her agency could not keep up with the explosion of imports.
NORD: There are just thousands and thousands of containers of consumer products coming into this country from overseas.
ROMANS: At this toy fair, aisles and aisles of new toys are mostly imported, mostly from China just like last year’s recalls.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROMANS: Now this toy fair seems familiar. Industry executives of the toy fair in October told us then it would be the safest holiday ever for toys and they featured a toy called the Aqua Dots. Lou, that toy was recalled just a month later after being featured at a toy fair just like this one because of course it metabolized into the date rape drug and it hurt some children.
DOBBS: This — Nord, is she as imbecilic as she appears to be as absolutely insensitive to American consumers, as absolutely lacking the judgment to run a federal agency designed and created to protect the American consumer? I mean this woman is beyond belief.
ROMANS: She says that she relates to — she’s a mother, she relates to mothers and consumers, but Lou, she says that all those recalls show that the system is working. That ironically…
DOBBS: That it’s working?
ROMANS: … it shows that the system is working.
DOBBS: How many of these recalls did her agency initiate? I wonder if she would like to answer that question. I wonder if she would like to explain how in the world she could say this is not a trade issue when she is sitting there testifying before Congress saying that this country is simply swamped with those giant containers filled with all sorts of things, but in this case, toys that are not being inspected.
ROMANS: Yes, she does insist that trade policies and safety are two separate matters. That they are not linked which a lot of Senate Democrats, House Democrat, parent’s groups and consumer advocates disagree with. They say that our trade policies have fostered this off shoring of our manufacturing…
DOBBS: Well, where the heck are the Republicans? Only an idiot would think otherwise. When the woman is sitting there saying that it’s because we are overwhelmed with imports and we can’t inspect them, how could it be anything but a trade issue as well? I mean unbelievable.
ROMANS: I think you have a significant philosophical difference with the chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission…
DOBBS: Well I think anyone with a triple-digit IQ would have a philosophical difference with her. Thank you very much, Christine Romans. And anybody who cares about what the heck they are doing in that job. Christine Romans, thank you, if I didn’t say thank you, I want to say thank you again — another failure by our government regulators to protect the consuming public in this country.
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Lou is another xenophobic corporatist who has masked himself in patriotism.
L&P nailed it….
This is just another of ‘example’ of ‘magic of the free market’…
another one would be Iraq…
Liberal AND Proud @ 1:
okay, I’ll bite…
What is Lou Dobbs’ agenda, then?
Verdillac @ 3:
He takes a “populist” view when it suits his corporate masters to do so. Why…for ratings. He does bocu ratings with his xenophobia on immigration, while skirting the fact that it is CORPORATIONS and BUSINESS that promote illegal immigration.
The whole “consumer protection” issue is easy to jump up and down about…he can point at ONE person while again ignoring the real issues…deregulation and outsourcing.
“Cmon Lou, you know that Bush hired her to represent the interest of Business over consumers.
Wait until a Dem. takes over the Presidency. We are going to discover malfeasance that will even shock that magically obtuse 25% that still believes that God picked George Butch to be our leader……..PHFFFT!
CIA experts suggest we should cigar bomb castro
For once, Lou Dobbs makes sense!
Safety is not a trade issue. …Again, Safety is not a trade issue.
Nord’s Lady Liberty rewrite: Give me your tired, your poor, Your bundled masses burning me to breathe free..
Liberal AND Proud @ 4:
oooo…that is sleazy. True enough too! Deregulation and outsourcing are never mentioned, but the menace of goods made by Foreigners is…I didn’t catch that at first.
thetruest @ 6:
From the ACME school of espionage, Dept Head, Wile E. Coyote.
The fact that it’s true is even worse!
It’s not enough to say that Bush appointees have been corporate-friendly. Many have seemed bent on the actual destruction of the agency they were tasked to manage.
To put it another way: Bush would appoint Ahab to be in charge of the whales.
Michelle Obama said yesterday, which Lou and others were kind enough to remind their audience, that for the first time she was really proud of the United States, seeing what’s happening throughout the nation, seeing people’s reaction to her husband’s message and so on. I personally didn’t have a chance to feel proud of the US yet even though I’m 25. The Reagan years, economic injustice, promotion of corporations to the master status, then the Bush Senior years, wars, the Clinton years, NAFTA and the negative effects of the whole idea, no introduction of any long-term alternative ideas to globalisation, etc. Then came George W. Bush, the period which made me want to leave this nation, a nation that elected a criminal and let him do criminal things. I will be probably proud, for the first time, if a person like Obama is elected the president of the United States. If Clinton, the sell-out is the best Democrats can offer, I will unfortunately have to keep on waiting for this moment. Pride is a tricky thing, has many levels to it. As Hillary Clinton said,Yes we can even though Words are cheap — Hillary Clinton and… Toaster Leavings. Nice try MSM, but aren’t there more serious issues that we could discuss and make a big fuss of.
“Welcome to BushWorld, Lou. Where have you been for the last eight years?”
I believe he has been sitting on a horse at the Mexican border crying about illegal immigrants coming here. Of course focusing on the cause of Ronald Reagan’s union busting would be news in it’s self.
I think bush’s appointees have gotten their job for one reason, they support bush. Whether or not they were competent to hold the job they were given was not a requirement. She is another example of this. That’s why people like her, Brownie and the last guy in charge of veteran’s affairs seemed like nut cases, they just had no idea how to do the job they were given. Bush prefers to surround himself with support instead of finding people who can successfully accomplish the task they are assigned.
Is Nancy Nord any relation?
http://www.retrojunk.com/img/art-images/80i.jpg
Liberal and Proud nailed it.
mark @ 11:
Joe Scarborough has made that quote by Michelle the center ring in his morning circus today. He’s ranting and raving that Michelle Obama has had many other times to be proud to be an American. He said she should have been proud when the Berlin wall came down etc, etc, etc. He doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about because he is not Michelle Obama.
pissed off patricia @ 13:
Which is why I am thankful…If Bush had a brain, we’d have all been dead by now, because he would have inflicted his newly-given powers upon the population that didn’t agree with him. He has signing statements, but I bet he doesn’t know why…and I bet Cheney is impatient to get W “out-of-the-way”. I mean, it must be torture having to wait for a chimp to get around to signing executive orders and all…
pissed off patricia@16: I agree. Here is another rich white man with a silver spoon stuffed up his ass. telling us how a black women in america should feel.
Verdillac @ 17:
Why would Cheney have to wait for Bush to sign executive orders? It’s done with a signature stamp. Executives use this all the time. It looks like their signature, but in reality is nothing more than a stamp. When the media shows world leaders signing documents, they are not really signing anything.
Nancy Nord has continually acted in the best interest of her corporate allies and blamed the media for parents’ “blown-out-of-proportion” reactions to the toy recalls. She may be a mom but she does not speak for all parents.
We happen to be discussing the toy recalls and what we expect toy corporations to do about it at Corporate Babysitter. Please stop by.
Lou, I’m going to let you in on a few secrets:
1. Wealth does not trickle down.
2. Tax cuts don’t increase government revenue.
3. Deregulation does not make us safer.
4. The free market is not looking out for consumers.
So, now you know, and you can stop acting surprised when these things happen.
You can still buy toys made in the USA or made in Europe. I’ve gone to second hand shops and picked up some old toys that were made in USA. Be careful of Melissa and Doug products, too. I thought Melissa and Doug toys did not come from China so I bought my granddaughter this wooden walk behind alligator http://www.toysrus.com/product.....Id=2668135 only to find out that this toy was made in China. There is a toy company in Vermont that makes the toys right there. The name is Maple Landmark.
Kids! we don’t care about no f–kin kids.
outsourcing manufacturing jobs to countries where QA is limited at best and companies can use the cheapest paint and parts for maximum profit is bushes MO. Companies get rich, consumers will lose out every time. I used to buy some of these ” some assemble required” products and if they were missing a bolt or nut i would just find one in my garage to replace it with. not anymore, now if it is missing anything or a part is damage at all, it goes back to the store. I bought a fan not long ago put it all together and the damn thing would’nt work, so i took it back to the store still assembled out of the box. the store told me it need to be put back in the box, long story short, i told them to go to hell and they gave me my money back.
my point is that everything you buy now days is crap and i refuse to pay for crap. nothing is QA’ed and so much of it is damaged shipping it from over seas that its not worth buying.
Hindsight is 20-20; we will always see there is more that government could have done.
The real story here is how an inherent system of checks and balances came into play, as driven from the bottom up by end consumers. A problem was discovered, mainstream media disseminated accurate information widely, consumers responded by making different choices, corporations were hit on the bottom line and in turn responded to meet consumer demands.
Given that government has no competition in so many areas, it’s inherent that more people in the public sector will rise to their level of incompetence. Dobbs is wasting his time railing against something which is inherent in the system and will never change.
When consumers speak with their wallets, corporations listen and change. Dobbs should be using his bully pulpit to effect more of the same, where it is possible.
Where has Lou Dobbs been the last eight years?
Beating up on Immigrants, including ignoring the fact that some of those people he beat up on are probably related to his wife.
mark @ 11:
Stay active Mark, and encourage your young friends to use their Constitutional Right to Vote.
Remember that net neutrality is the free speech platform that your generation needs to rally for and protect.
The only way to stop the dangerous toys from coming into this country is to STOP buying them. Children don’t need all those toys.
1. Wealth does not trickle down.
2. Tax cuts don’t increase government revenue.
3. Deregulation does not make us safer.
4. The free market is not looking out for consumers.
So, now you know, and you can stop acting surprised when these things happen.
Joementum, you nailed it right there. He’s only acting surprised because he wants ratings that equals Keith Olbermann’s.
peaceful easy feeling @ 25:
Great idea. When your kid gets brain damage from toxic toys, just don’t buy any more of those toys. Eventually enough parents of brain-damaged kids will stop buying the toxic toys and the corporations will get the message. Ta-da! Another market-based success formula!
Mark@11
Don’t give up. It is important that the young voters get out and vote. This nation needs your vote to enable change to happen.
I watch Lou Dobbs a lot. He has been on the message about corporate control ove the last few years. Yes, that’s right years. He has been opposed to the unfair free trade acts. He has bee asking for substantive penalalties against business and corporations who hire undocumented workers.
Yet, much of the progressive community defames him because of his stance on illegal immigration and refuses to recognize his stances on other issues.
I loved watching this fat idiot yell at his own reporter.
His faked outrage and faux concern to sell books makes my skin crawl.
Not to mention half the shit he says is bullshit.
Christine Romans,
Lend me your ears.
Lou Dobbs may be right to be angry, but his outburst is not proffesional or mature. Sure would be nice if he could comment without going over the top.
Cats r Flyfishn @ 28:
There you go bringing up common sense…you fight dirty! ;-p
I look at the toys at the stores…all of them are made in China! There is nothing more nauseating than seeing G.I Joe special editions of Eisenhower, Carter, Marine in Dress Blue Uniform, John Glenn…et al…with “Made In China” Stamped on the box.
I always hated the science fiction and caste-like Barbie dolls too, now that they’re made in China, Barbie can have 5 Dream houses! All made of toxic plastic! Just like the dolls, action figures ,toddler beds..all toxic plastic! of course, using the word “toxic” before plastic is redundant.
Lou bashes them daily.
Where have you been?
BTW, Obama is a fraud:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....87199.html
Calling a politician a fraud..isn’t that like saying water is kinda wet?
Did Obama sell out America for a bigger slice of the by for himself…? History shows that the Clintons did.
Lou catches on to Nancy Nord only a year after everyone else knows that she’s yet another ‘winger put in charge of a gov’t agency in order to sabotage it.
Wanna bet she’s on her way out and Lou just got word of it?
I don’t need Lou Dobbs to be outraged for me. Fact is he’s unskilled and performs poorly.
–Click–
Off. Screen fades. Then Silence. Bye, Lou.