The Creative Society

I woke up the other morning to a cascade of apologetics from a toy industry spokesperson interviewed on NPR's Morning Edition. She was explaining away the recall, this past week, of nine million Mattel Barbies and lead-painted toy cars manufactured in China. Groggily groping for the snooze button, I caught the tail end of reporter Renée Montagne's question—"...really does seem there's an increase in problems with imports from China in this last year. This is, as I just said, the second recall in a month for Mattel. What's going on?"—and the flack's pat response:

"Well, we do recall products on a regular basis. This year we've recalled over 400 products. Of those, 44 of those recalls have been of toys. Frankly, Renee, that is a lower number than the number of toy recalls we did last year and the year before. Nevertheless, it is something of concern to us. We look at it very, very closely. With respect to what's going on, as I'm sure your listeners realize, much of our manufacturing has moved outside of the United States and much of it is in China. So if that is where products are being made it is not unexpected that that is where the recalls would be occurring."

And this, I thought to myself, was frightfully clever stuff. The reason crap from China seems so crappy is just because there's lots of crap being made in China--nothing to do with the fact that, say, Chinese newspapers aren't allowed to report "negative news" about business, thus giving Chinese factories impunity to work whatever scams they can dream up without fear of discovery; or that Chinese factory owners who slather lead paint on toy trains are allowed to escort inquiring American reporters to jail. No: the fact that there were more recalled Chinese toys was just a function of the fact that there are more Chinese toys. Simple arithmetic. Move along. Pay no attention to the lead paint behind the curtain.

Mantagne followed up: "Consumer groups do say that Mattel is one of the most conscientious and rigorous toy manufacturers in the country so does this mean that if their products have problems, all products from China could be suspect?"

Great question. As Chaucer said: "If gold rust, what shall iron do?"

Great answer: she ignored the question.

"Toys are one of the most heavily regulated products in our economy. And by and large toys are very, very safe. Obviously we don't like to see any recalls; a nine million piece recall is, although it seems to be big it certainly isn't the biggest recall we've done, and if you put it in perspective of the hundreds of millions of toys that are sold in the United States every year--frankly, we want to make sure that the marketplace is safe, but consumers really shouldn't be panicking and thinking that somehow everything in their toy chest is unsafe for the children."

I said to myself: "She's goooooood." Not quite as good as ol' Rick Berman, the superflack immortalized in the book and movie Thank You For Smoking, but gooooood. I found the link for the NPR broadcast to transcribe her words for a post on the wiles of corporate public relations, upon which I learned the following:

This woman was not a toy industry spokesman. This woman is acting director of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

In one of my more epic posts here on The Big Con, I wrote about how George Bush had put a scion of the Corleone family of the right, Michael Baroody, up for that job—the man who, as chief lobbyist for the National Association of Manufacturers, fought a CSPC plan to improve safety standards for baby walkers, did his level best to put the kibosh on making it easier for consumers to learn about recalls of children products, and lobbied to eviscerate guidelines on determining whether companies must report product hazards. His nomination was withdrawn after an outcry. I was one of the many who heaved a sigh of relief. Prematurely.

For the woman he would have replaced is cut from the same cloth. Substandard, child-choking, toxic cloth.

Nancy Nord was previously chief lobbyist ("Director of Federal Affairs") for Kodak, executive director of the American Corporate Counsel Association (in other words chief the lobbying organization for big business shysters)and, lo and behold, director of consumer affairs for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the group blogger Matt Stoller has aptly characterized as "a fully functional part of the partisan Republican machine."

And given this background, quelle surprise, it turns out she lies through her (no doubt perfect) teeth. On the News Hour, where the questions were tougher, she claimed products had to be tested in China by an "independent third party tester"; she was countered by Don Mays of Consumer Union countered, "Mattel actually entrusted the testing of those toys to the very factory that was producing them." She promised that the system was eagle-eyed, too, at the ports: "If something is coming into the United States that does not meet our safety standards, we would like to catch it at the border." To which Mays of Consumer Union pointed out that the Consumer Product Safety Commission has all of fifteen people spread across America's ports. And that—even I was shocked—the agency's budget was a mighty $63.5 million annually. That's probably about as much as the combined compensation packages of the CEOs of the top four or five companies the CPSC oversees.

National Public Radio, by the way, was taken in hook, line, and sinker by Nord's bamboozlement. They entitled their dispatch "Safety Agency: Importers Must Meet U.S. Standards." Even though Nord had never quite said thatgood flack: they never quite liebecause it's simply not true.

Allow me to pivot.

This is not a story about toy cars. It's a story about conservatism. It's a story about what happens when you abandon the idea of government as a conveyance for the common good, and start thinking about it as the problem. You hire "regulators" like Nancy Nord. And you hire mine safety administrators like Richard Stickler.

America is in mourning again over a mine tragedy: like the sorcerers' apprentice try to tame his metastasizing brooms, the efforts to save six lives has already cost the lives of three more. Because another section of the mine collapsed. Because priming mines in ways that makes them more susceptible to collapse, the better to squeeze out a tiny portion more of profit, is what mine owner and Republican contributor Bob Murray does best.

What does Richard Stickler, the mine safety czar the President had to sneak in via recess appointment in 2006 when it became clear he couldn't have survived a confirmation hearing in even a Republican congress, do best? Look the other way. This man our president has entrusted with mine safety has three deaths on his conscience in his career a former mine manager, and, Keith Olbermann reports, "an incident rate that was often twice the national average." Running mine safety in Pennsylvania, a grand jury practically blamed him for a flood that trapped nine miners; then after the Sago collapse last year, Stickler declined to endorse new safety rules the day before two of the miners died.

Dude's a "stickler" like I'm a ballerina.

Listen to Olbermann. Coal mining fatalities had been declining since 1926: yes, the last time mine safety was this bad the Charleston was all the rage. Then, in 2006, the most coalminers died than had in any one year in a decade. We're up to the largest percentage increase in 107 years.

Why? How? By formula. They use corporate contributions to weaken government regulations, and to help cripple unions. They wage fierce anti-union jihads to keep workers and their advocates powerless. They violate even existing anemic safety rules, while pushing the mineral seams beyond all earthly limits to squeeze forth just a teensy bit more precious profit.

Then they call the result a "mine accident."

When Ronald Reagan ran for governor of 1966 he proposed what he called the "creative society"—government mobilizing the energies of the people" and "helping them organize their own solutions to these problems" by hiring business "experts" instead of civil servants. For example, since state hospitals and mental institutions were "in a sense, hotel operations," an expert committee of hotel operators could oversee them instead of "government planners."

Well, they got their "creative society." Now that we've seen what it creates, can we please now just make it go away?

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future