Watchdog Blog

The Power of People Over Profit

After our activists helped to defeat Michael Baroody as the once-dangerous nominee for the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), we put out another call asking for letters-to-the-editor on the urgent need to have the agency represent consumers, not manufacturers.  One of our more moving and inspiring responses came from Lisa Lipin, a mother and consumer advocate from Skokie, Illinois.

Lisa has since been published in the Chicago Sun Times (“Bush should put people before profit”):

I am a Chicago mother who became a consumer advocate in June 2003 after my son was nearly strangled by a dangerous toy that already had been recalled in countries around the world.

I have been urging the Consumer Product Safety Commission to ban the Yo-Yo Water Ball for years. I successfully lobbied Illinois lawmakers to ban this toy effective Jan. 1, 2006, with Senate Bill 1960. I gained the support of U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky and Senators Richard Durbin and Barack Obama -- all of whom sent letters to the CPSC urging that the agency ban the toy. Unfortunately, the CPSC refuses to take action and sits idle on the issue.

I was so relieved to hear that Michael Baroody, executive vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, had withdrawn his nomination to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission under immense public pressure. Baroody was clearly the wrong person for this position, given his background as an industry shill who spent the last 13 years of his career trying to disable the CPSC.

However, we must not forget that Baroody represents a regular practice by the Bush administration of promoting unqualified cronies and anti-government hacks to public office.

It is imperative that President Bush nominate a real advocate for consumers, rather than a spokesperson for big-business interests.

It is high time that the administration put people before profit!

The Chicago Parent also picked up a piece by Lisa, in which she challenges: "Who does the Consumer Product Safety Commission protect?" 

We congratulate Lisa on reaching thousands of readers!  We also thank her for being a relentless advocate for the safety of our children and all consumers.

Bye, Bye Baroody

Yesterday, Michael Baroody withdrew his nomination as head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Baroody, executive vice president and a chief lobbyist for the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), was the latest in a parade of Bush cronies nominated to oversee their former industries.

Baroody withdrew just before what would likely have been a tumultuous hearing this morning on his nomination, amid mounting opposition from Senate Democrats who were rightly concerned that Baroody's appointment presented a clear conflict-of-interest. Sens. Bill Nelson of Florida, and, Dick Durbin and Barack Obama of Illinois had all spoken out against Baroody's appointment.

Also adding substantially to concerns about where his loyalties lay, the New York Times revealed last week that Baroody would have received a $150,000 windfall severance package from NAM following his appointment.

Baroody was a stunningly inappropriate choice. His career included stints as a partisan political operative, pushing to elect pro-business and anti-consumer candidates. He has spoken out against numerous safety and health regulations, including ergonomics rules to prevent worker injuries, efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency to curb pollutants and regulations to mandate fire-safe cigarettes and prevent the 700 to 900 deaths that occur each year from home fires started by cigarettes and other smoking products.

Many of the companies overseen by the CPSC are NAM members or affiliates. In fact, as Public Citizen has shown, these industry groups accounted for more than half of the penalties the agency assessed in the past ten years for violating its most important rule, a requirement that companies inform the agency when they discover dangerous defects in their products. NAM successfully pushed last year to weaken that rule. Given Baroody's strong ties to the industries he would have had to regulate and his past positions, he would have faced unavoidable conflicts.

As with other appointments made by this Administration, choosing Baroody was clearly an attempt to undercut regulations that protect consumers in favor of fatter corporate profit margins. Thankfully for consumers, in this case it was an attempt that failed.

NAM weakened accountability for its members

We’ve had a lot to say recently about Michael Baroody, President Bush’s nominee to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Today, Public Citizen released a report that shows just how poor a choice he is for such a critical agency.

Last year, while Baroody was running the National Association of Manufacturers’ (NAM) lobbying and advocacy efforts, NAM and its allies pressed the CPSC to weaken the agency’s primary enforcement regulation, which has been responsible for more than 80 percent of the agency's fines since 1997, about $33 million.  NAM members and affiliates have paid more than half of those penalties, about $18 million in fines.

The safeguard in question requires companies to report when they find out about dangerous products defects.  It helps the agency decide when a recall is needed.

The report describes a number of cases where manufacturers allegedly defied the requirements.  Graco Children’s Products paid a record $4 million penalty in 2005, settling charges that it failed to report numerous possible defects in its products, which killed six babies and caused injuries including skull fractures, concussions and broken bones in others.  General Electric’s vice chairman is on NAM’s board.  It paid $1 million for not reporting possible defects and problems with some of its dishwashers, despite knowing about more than 100 incidents, including nearly 50 fires, between 1992 and 1998.

It seems simple enough – consumers, especially parents, should be informed when merchandise they purchased is dangerous.  Especially if children are getting killed, companies shouldn’t be allowed to bury reports that their products are dangerous.  But the changes that NAM and its allies sought will almost certainly do just that, reducing the number of reports from companies, leading to more deaths and injuries due to defective products.

The upshot is that a Baroody confirmation would put consumers in harm's way while NAM member companies remain unaccountable.

Tell your senators that Baroody is a bad choice for consumer safety.

Bush Steps Up His Attack on the Regulatory System, Endangering Important Health and Safety Protections

When Democrats won control of the Senate and the House of Representatives in November, President Bush was backed into a corner.

For the first time since he took office in 2001, the all-powerful president, who appeared to have a blank check from lawmakers to do as he pleased, finally has had to worry that Congress would challenge his policies, launch investigations into his actions and harshly question his agency heads.

One of his latest and most disturbing power grabs is his stepped-up attack on the federal regulatory system - which establishes critical health, environmental, occupational, vehicle and other protections for citizens.

Toothless in Washington: CPSC Stalls While Children Die from Dangerous Toys

A two-part series that ran today and Saturday in the Chicago Tribune tells of the outrageous neglect of child safety by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and toy makers. 

Super-powerful magnets hidden in Magnetix and other toys fall out of the plastic pieces and have almost irresistible attraction for young children, who swallow them. The magnets attract each other as they move through the intestines, ripping bullet-like holes in the intestinal wall and admitting deadly bacteria. The toy defects have led to more than two dozen life-threatening injuries and at least one death. Kenny Sweet, Jr., a Seattle toddler, was killed by nine magnets in his intestines.

Despite the efforts of parents and caregivers to repeatedly call the issue to the attention of federal regulators who could initiate a recall, the CPSC at first ignored the seriousness of the complaints. When it did finally act, its authority to take decisive steps was muddled by Reagan-era laws that badly weaken the agency, handcuffing its ability to require a recall.

It also appears that the toy makers were aware of the complaints about the severe injuries from the magnets, yet the recall notices they finally sent following negotiations with the CPSC were weak and confusingly worded. The Tribune’s investigation found that many of the recalled versions remain on toy store shelves even today.

The article is a wake-up call to Congress to fix CPSC’s authority so that it can mandate recalls of hazardous products.  It also makes it painfully clear that confirmation of Bush’s nominee, manufacturing association lobbyist Michael Baroody, would be nothing short of a cataclysm for the safety of American families.

Wrong Man(ufacturer) for the Job

You've read here about Michael Baroody, the latest in a parade of industry cronies nominated by the White House. This time it’s to fill the empty chairman’s seat at the critically important Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Baroody, who was in charge of lobbying for the 14,000-member National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and has a long career as an industry shill and anti-regulatory politicker, spent most of his career working to tilt the playing field away from consumer safety and keep corporations from being held accountable for any damages they cause.

Today, a coalition of consumer groups, including Public Citizen, released highlights of Baroody’s record and of NAM’s actions during his time with them, showing why he is a bad choice to head up an agency dedicated to public health and safety. The story was also picked up in The Hill.

Under Baroody, NAM repeatedly pushed to weaken the CPSC, which safeguards consumer products, including most children’s products.

Take, for example, baby walkers – a source of numerous accidents involving infants. The paper released today details NAM’s hostility to basic safety protections on baby walkers, among other issues. The walkers’ original design lacked any locking mechanisms or other protective devices. Babies in them could, and did, injure themselves by falling down stairways and off ledges.

NAM’s “solution”? Blame parents for improper supervision – and fight new standards that would correct obvious, serious and potentially fatal shortcomings in the walkers.

We chronicled stories involving the victims of harmful products as well. What happened to four-year-old Lee Ann Gryc is a particularly tragic example. Lee Ann has scars on more than a fifth of her body after her pajama top burst into flames while she was reaching across an electric stove. The pajama maker had cut costs by not treating the clothing with flame-retardants, although the fabric they use is almost as flammable as newspaper.

The Flammable Fabrics Act, which CPSC enforces, makes it illegal in most cases to peddle flammable sleepwear. NAM and other groups often tried to gut that rule and others, blaming parents or consumers for injuries and deaths.

Check out our information page on why Baroody is not the right man(ufacturer) for the job. Then tell your senators that you don’t want child safety jeopardized by a “loyal Bushie” and industry shill like Baroody.

More on Fox for Henhouse

Yesterday Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook announced our opposition to the nomination of Micheal Baroody as the head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).  We also released a short summary of some of the reasons he's so wrong for the job.

Baroody’s nomination reflects an arrogant Administration attempt to further gut the CPSC by filling positions designed for public-minded honest brokers with the Administration’s corporate cronies. His nomination should be rejected by the Senate.

You might have read our first shot across the bow on this blog a few days ago . . . so stay tuned . . . and thanks for taking action.

Easter Recess... And Rotten Eggs

The Senate is out for Easter recess now.  Which means the White House might be planning to hide some rotten eggs — by giving out recess appointments that would give a lot of power to some unacceptable special interests.

Rotten Egg #1: Susan Dudley

One of them might be Susan Dudley.  You might remember Dudley: she spent her career arguing that if we truly valued protections like air bags or privacy rights, then corporations would already be giving them to us… so there’s no need for any regulation to protect us.

Bush nominated her to an office where she would have power to weaken and eliminate all those pesky regulations, like air bags and privacy rights, which Dudley thinks we don’t really need.

Your calls and letters to the Senate last year were successful:  the Susan Dudley nomination wasn’t even allowed to leave the committee.  And the Republican Senator who chaired that committee last year actually told the press that the president would be within his rights to send the nomination back in 2007… but it would just be a waste of time.

So did Bush learn his lesson?  Nope.  Bush is at it again in 2007 – nominating, once again, Susan Dudley to become the regulatory czar.  But even that wasn’t enough:  while the Senate is looking again at her nomination, Bush decided to put her in power through the backdoor, by making her a “senior advisor,” so that she can go ahead and do the job that the Senate decided last year she shouldn’t be allowed to do.

Remind the Senate that Dudley is unfit to have such enormous power to ruin your health and safety, and tell the White House not to use the Easter recess to give her a recess appointment.

Rotten Egg #2:  Michael Baroody

President Bush would be hard-pressed to find a more inappropriate nominee to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CSPC), the government agency charged with protecting consumers from dangerous products, than Michael Baroody.  Why?  Because Baroody has spent the past decade lobbying to undermine consumers’ rights.

As the head of advocacy efforts for the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), Baroody has spearheaded campaigns at both the federal and state levels to limit the ability of regulatory agencies like CPSC to protect us, and to bar consumers who have been injured from being able to go to court and demand justice.

NAM advocacy efforts include a wide-ranging strategy to influence elections. In conjunction with the Business Industry Political Action Committee (BIPAC) and other groups, NAM helps run the “Prosperity Project,” an effort to elect pro-business candidates.  2004 was a busy time for NAM and its “Prosperity Project” – which NAM claimed was a neutral voter education effort, although University of Minnesota political scientist Lawrence Jacobs thought otherwise:  “This is not nonpartisan, evenhanded campaign material,” he said, about literature distributed by Prosperity Project companies and associations.  “It’s material that’s subtly but clearly promoting one candidate at the expense of another.” While Baroody told the National Review that NAM did not endorse candidates, Baroody slammed 2004 Democratic nominees John Kerry and John Edwards as being “virtually in a league by themselves,” in terms of their credibility gap with manufacturers.

The White House has likely calculated that Baroody won’t pass the smell test in the Senate.  Tell the White House that a recess appointment of Baroody stinks.