It makes sense. In fact, it's long over due. How about an online database for Americans providing information about the safety of specific consume products? The Consumer Product Safety Commission has done just that.
On Wednesday, the commission is scheduled to vote to create a new, publicly accessible database of safety complaints that is intended to make it easier for consumers to learn about problems with a product. ...NYT
Great! We should have had that a decade or two ago as people began to have computers and easy access to public information. But not according to the GOP. Republican members of the Commission are trying to prevent the database from being a reality.
The agency’s two Republican commissioners have waged a last-ditch effort to alter the database in ways they say would be more fair to manufacturers, but that consumer groups and at least one Democratic commissioner say would significantly weaken it.
The Republicans last week blocked a final vote on the database and posted an alternative proposal on the agency’s Web site that would restrict who could register a complaint, among other things. The proposal was removed by the agency’s staff, then later restored.
Does the GOP just not give a damn about how this makes them look? We could throw arguments at them like "competition is good for safety," but similar concerns sail right past them.
The database was authorized by Congress as part of a 2008 law intended to give the Consumer Product Safety Commission — long maligned for its tepid oversight — more teeth.
Currently, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has a similar database, called SaferCar.gov, in which consumers can file safety complaints about automobiles.
Under the commission’s proposal, the public could use the database to quickly report and find complaints about unsafe products. The agency’s current rules make it difficult to obtain such information without a manufacturer’s consent and typically require filing a Freedom of Information Act request, a process that can take months, even years.
“It’s a slow death,” said Ami Gadhia, policy counsel for Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports magazine. “That information never gets out in the public.”
But some businesses and their trade groups are concerned that any online database could become a government-sponsored bulletin board for bogus reports and merchant-bashing.
Any online site that offers access to commenters suffers from spam and trolls. There are ways of dealing with that -- ways that don't interfere with consumers' ability to give fellow consumers a heads-up about an unsafe, even a killer, product.
You get the feeling Republicans only like government involvement in "national security" when the top percentile profits from providing it? Like with those defense industry scanners?
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The issue of government "interference" is on its way to destroying the Obama administration. Matt Bai watches as health care reform, cash for clunkers and airport scanners are all part of an army of
"interference" and "incompetence" issues for which the White House is being blamed.
The Transportation Security Administration grew out of a moment in 2001 when Americans seemed open to the notion of a more expansive federal presence. But as memories receded and no other planes became weapons of mass destruction (a testament, in part, to the T.S.A.’s diligence), the urgency of that moment gave way to frustration with a constantly changing array of orders — “Hand over the toothpaste! Lose the baby milk!” — meant to thwart one new threat or another.
White House aides expressed shock this week at how controversial the T.S.A. has now become. They seem to regard this latest argument as a distraction from the security issues that matter more, not to mention a showcase for hypocrisy, since a lot of the Republicans now attacking them have called in the past for stricter screening.
But this is just the latest iteration of a larger debate that surrounds much of what Mr. Obama does. And, just as with the health care protests and the reaction to the BP oil spill, the administration’s surprise seems to indicate that it still doesn’t quite get what that debate is really about.