Wednesday, December 17, 2008

More on "National Bankruptcy Day" OR "The Elmo Who Stole Christmas"

I am honored to announce that I was invited to do a bit of actual journalism at the fantastic conservative site Culture11 about the little bit of fallout from the Great Lou Dobbs Toy Scare of 2007 known as the "Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act of 2008," which I initially wrote about last week as a wonderful project for non-partisan blogger activism.

The first half of my C11 piece goes into much more detail about the effects that this legislation is going to have on small and medium size businesses. The second half takes an interesting turn:

Although this law presents a case study in self-defeating legislation, it also poses an important dilemma: how do you successfully fight bad legislation and regulation when doing so puts you on the side of something that virtually anyone would agree is an evil, like lead-laced toys? The background of this legislation may actually provide the answer.

For both the background and the answer, you'll have to read the whole thing. (Hint: certain friends of this site will probably be pleased with the answer).