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After Hundreds of Crashes, a Stroller Faced Recall Until Trump Appointees Stepped In
Corruption. That's the theme of our post this week. Republicans put into key positions in OUR government who are paid off by the industries that are supposed to be in charge of. Even when there have been hundreds of human injuries, lives lost, these GOP swamp creatures work tirelessly as servants for their corporate overlords instead of us.
The crashes were brutal. With no warning, the front wheel on the three-wheeled BOB jogging strollers fell off, causing the carriages to careen and even flip over. Adults shattered bones. They tore ligaments. Children smashed their teeth. They gashed their faces. One child bled from his ear canal.
But the front-wheel accidents kept happening.... the company failed to disclose many of these incidents to regulators. This prevented the agency from learning early on about the scale of the problem....
Staff members at the Consumer Product Safety Commission collected 200 consumer-submitted reports from 2012 to 2018 of spontaneous failure of the stroller wheel, which is secured to a front fork by a quick-release lever, like on a bicycle. Nearly 100 adults and children were injured, according to the commission. The agency’s staff members investigated for months before deciding in 2017 that one of the most popular jogging strollers on the market was unsafe and needed to be recalled.
And then the Republicans in charge of the CPSC made a swift decision to recall the stroller, safe us more serious injuries, and punish the manufacturer. YEAH RIGHT. Republicans punishing a corporation?
Britax Child Safety, refused the agency’s request in 2017 for a voluntary recall of nearly 500,000 strollers. They knew leadership of the safety agency was about to change and that meant Britax might not have to recall the BOB after all.... it unfolded as Republicans assumed day-to-day control of the agency, eventually earning a majority on the agency’s oversight commission for the first time in more than a decade.
....eight current and former senior agency officials, the agency’s Republican chairwoman kept Democratic commissioners in the dark about the stroller investigation and then helped end the case in court.
Its lawsuit against Britax ended in November with a settlement, approved by a 3-to-2 commission vote reflecting the new Republican majority. In a rare written dissent, the panel’s two Democrats called the settlement “aggressively misleading” for seeking to downplay the risks to consumers.
This is a sign of more terror to come as products we use daily are not properly recalled and manufacturers are not punished nor incentivized to provide safe products.
These events occurred with little notice amid other, higher-profile deregulatory moves by the Trump administration.... the Consumer Product Safety Commission could be a worrisome sign of regulators pulling back at an agency that oversees safety in 15,000 everyday products, from toys and dressers to lawn mowers and table saws.
The agency has historically been a leader in protecting children, passing strict limits on lead in children’s toys and ending the sale of deadly drop-side cribs.
This all ultimately leads to Ann Marie Buerkle, a Republican, who was named acting chairwoman in February 2017. We wrote extensively about her in past posts. She is a bad person.
The most powerful position at the Consumer Product Safety Commission is the agency’s chair. Trump’s election meant the commission would swing to the Republicans for the first time in more than a decade.
Buerkle, who has served on the commission since 2013, was the only commissioner to oppose proposed portable-generator rules aimed at reducing carbon monoxide poisoning in 2016 [Smart Dissent post on that here]. She was again the lone vote that year against a then-record $15.45 million penalty for a company accused of making humidifiers prone to catching fire.
In Buerkle’s first two years as chairwoman, the number of companies fined for misconduct declined to five in 2017-2018 from 12 in 2015-2016. Public voluntary recalls fell about 13 percent during the same period, resulting in approximately 80 fewer recalls, according to agency data. Last year, the number of public recalls fell to its lowest level in a decade, consumer advocates say.
Buerkle fights hard against corporations making their products safer for the American public, despite that being her job! She does so because she's either a truly terrible person or enjoys significant "inducements" from the corporations she allows to harm us.