change - Obama's Appointees Are Flexing Their Regulatory Powers

[spanone]

The Obama administration is taking on Cheerios. And popular cold remedies and swimming pool drains and rhinestones on children's clothing.

With much of Washington focused on efforts to revamp health care and address climate change, a handful of Obama appointees have been quietly exercising their power over the trappings of daily life. They are awakening a vast regulatory apparatus with authority over nearly every U.S. workplace, 15,000 consumer products and most items found in kitchen pantries and medicine cabinets.

Top appointees at the Food and Drug Administration, for example, have cracked down on dietary supplements with "steroid-like" substances that for years had been sold in gyms and health-food stores. In a move designed as much for symbolism as effect, the new chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission last month dispatched all 100 agency inspectors across the country to enforce a law that requires special drains on swimming pools to prevent children from entrapment. The agency shut down more than 200 pools.

The new regulators display a passion for rules and a belief that government must protect the public from dangers lurking at home and on the job -- one more way the new White House is quietly reworking the relationship between government and business.

"In the Bush administration, the problem was that the political folks were hostile to the mission," said Michael A. Livermore, executive director of the Institute for the Study of Regulation at New York University Law School. "We've already seen the new direction of this White House play out in other regulatory aspects -- the Environmental Protection Agency and financial regulation. With the consumer protection agencies, you're going to see a lot more stuff happening because they fit Obama's broad vision for government."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/12/AR2009101202554_pf.html

[MannyGoldstein]

1. Thank God There's No Change For Bankers!

This post's subject line had me worried! I thought bankers might be affected!

Whew! Close one!

[joeunderdog]

2. The rest of the Madoff family can breathe easy now.

We're busy busting heads over bad pool filters.

[Orsino]

5. It takes *guts* to stand up to the powerful swimming pool lobby. n/t

[starroute]

7. Faulty pool filters can kill or mutilate

There are some real horror stories out there. I'm not going to google for them, but you can find them if you want to.

[Orsino]

12. My post was aimed in a different direction.

I don't think that anyone here is seriously questioning the value of good regulation--rather, we are wishing that it could be applied more widely.

[NutmegYankee]

11. It has killed or seriously hurt dozens of children.

They get sucked onto the suction and either drown or if caught in a sitting position, their intestines have been sucked right out of their anus. The solution was to ban flat suction inlets for raised ones that cannot be easily sealed with a child's body.


Nice to see you could give a rat's ass about children...

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

3. "The Obama administration is taking on Cheerios."

Words I thought I'd never hear.

[backscatter712]

4. It's progress. Small progress, slow progress. But progress.

One thing I might want to mention is that by going after Cheerios now, it makes it easier to go after Wall Street later.

Right now, lobbyists from Wall Street have Congress by the balls, making it impossible to rein them in.

But get a few of the businesses with regulation, and those regulated businesses will point at their competitors and yell "WHY AREN'T THEY REGULATED TOO!", and before long, there will be more wind blowing in our direction for doing things like reimplementing Glass-Steagal.

[Cha]

10. Yes, Progress in Action..I

love it.

[spanone]

6. sorry, meant to post this on d.u.

[Cha]

9. You're a regular riot

spanone:D.

A few people don't care what good PO's admin is doing..only here to complain.

If not about something real ..they'll latch on to "media" lies.

[AllentownJake]

8. Get the Cheerios people on Goldman Sachs

Good to hear they are flexing their muscles somewhere.

[crispini]

13. This is good. K&R!