Stop the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008. 

Have you heard of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008? It was passed to protect children from imported goods that may contain lead or other harmful contaminants.

Did you know that the bill also includes the government-sanctioned testing of resale children's clothing?

As of February 10, 2009, you will no longer be able to buy or sell children's used clothing under the CPSIA. Not at Goodwill, not at Deseret Industries, not at a consignment shop, and not on eBay. You won't even be able to buy or sell at a yard sale.

If you do, you face a $100,000 fine and 5 years of imprisonment unless you as the seller can find a government-approved way to test the garments that won't force you out of business.

Here's an LA Times article on the matter, and here's a brief analysis of this moronic piece of legislation over at Campaign for Liberty:

     "Congress... effectively voted last year to shut down the children's resale clothing business via the "Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008." Not a soul in the House dared to vote against "children's safety," proving many in the Congressional cesspool of counter-productivity neglect to read legislation before voting.

The act requires lead testing of all products sold for children aged twelve and under, including but not limited to clothing and toys, regardless of the date of manufacturing and the high improbability of lead in the clothing, particularly that manufactured domestically. Goodwill, other thrift stores, and one-person shops reselling new and used children's clothing, making a couple dollars per item, would have to forgo a year's worth of profit to fund third-party testing services, essentially putting most out of business.

Further, as I understand it, the testing requires the destruction of an individual unit out of a batch, and would therefore not work for unique items. Taking effect February 10, 2009, this ex post facto regulatory taking comes precisely at a time when lower-income and newly unemployed parents most need inexpensive children's clothing and the dollars they receive from selling or consigning their children's briefly used items.

While clothing is one of the few areas in which the market demands recycling, stores with existing, untested merchandise will have to opt for sending truckloads of perfectly good clothes to the landfill. And parents who purchased that expensive special occasion dress with plans to resell it after one wear are simply out the money. Not even Goodwill can take it now.

Why you should fight against this bill:

• For many families , the Goodwill and yard sales are the only places parents can afford to buy clothing for their children
• Children quickly outgrow their clothing, and those secondhand shops and garage sales are a godsend to a thrifty parent
• With the economy collapsing around us and many parents out of work, buying new clothes is simply not an option for many families

Did you ever think used children's clothing would be banned from commerce?

This isn't about party politics. This is about a runaway government intent on destroying our entire way of life under the 'good intention' of saving us from ourselves.

"The Only Solution to a Tyrannical Law is Civil Disobedience "

• Civil disobedience is a time honored tradition in the face of tyranny
• Without civil disobedience, blacks would still be confined to the back of the bus and would not have ever had the chance to be a President-elect
• Without civil disobedience, who knows how long the Viet Nam war (originally called a police action when they first went in) would have continued

We must be willing to draw a line in the sand and say, "No sir, I will not comply."

We must be willing allow our lives to be disrupted to spend a night or two in jail, face the firehose, endure the bruising from night sticks, the thread of fines, the agony of pepper spray and the shock of the Taser.

If we are not willing to stand against tyranny now and stare it down eyeball to eyeball, we will not like at all what comes next.

Keep in mind that Germany was a democracy when Hitler was elected. The very same steps that Hitler took to turn Germany from Democracy to a Dictatorship are the very same steps that are being taken right now here on American soil.

We don't want to wait until many of our friends and neighbors have been shipped off to concentration camps and burned in the incinerators before we say enough already!! Because if we wait that long, it will likely be too late.

February 10th through March 10th - Show Your Solidarity

I propose that from February 10th (the day the law goes into effect) until March 10th every freedom loving citizen of this great country sell at least one item of used clothing each day in a public setting (Ebay, yard sale, in front of WalMart, wherever you can think of) to protest this law.

Let's be willing to face the $100,000 fine and 5 years jail time because I promise you that those who dare to run the gauntlet of bad publicity that would inevitably come from arresting parents of children who participate in this act of civil disobedience would suffer a backlash unlike any you've ever seen in this country since the Civil War.

It's very likely that some overzealous DA or other law enforcement arm might be stupid enough to initially enforce the law, but the resulting PR nightmare they experience would be tremendous and would eventually cause the immediate reversal of this particularly onerous piece of legislation. Which is indeed, our intent!

Here's how to spread the word:

• Copy and paste the URL for this website into an email and send to all your friends, letting them know about this piece of bad legislation and how it will affect them
• Sign the pledge to participate by putting your name, city and email address into the form below
• Log into Facebook and join our group and spread the word to all of your Facebook friends
• Join our Twitter and follow our Tweets

Here's What Else You Can Do... 

• Call the CPSC (Consumer Product Safety Commission) and let them know exactly how you feel about this law, how you believe it will affect you personally both from as a consumer, and as a small business and the impact you believe enforcing certain precepts of this law will have on the economy, particularly during the current economic downturn. Their phone numbers are 800-638-2772,
  (TTY 800-638-8270). If you don't want to call, send a FAX:
  Fax: (301) 504-0124 and (301) 504-0025, or writing a message on their online contact form.
• If you want to make a greater impact with the CPSC then you can go to this page to contact people within the CPSC directly. We don't want another agency turning into something like the BATF.
• Write an email or snail mail to your Congressmen/women & Senators TODAY and let them know what you want them to do. Click on the link below to find out who your representatives are and how to contact them: