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Your Yard Sale Is Illegal (seriously: feds now regulate those too)
Reason ^ | May 7, 2009, 4:41pm | Katherine Mangu-Ward

Posted on 05/07/2009 6:25:24 PM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines

Thinking of having a yard sale this weekend? Before you do, be sure to consult CSPC Publication #254 [PDF].

This handy 28-pager from the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) reminds the American people that, thanks to the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, the government is totally in charge of your yard sale:

This handbook will help sellers of used products identify types of potentially hazardous products that could harm children or others. CPSC’s laws and regulations apply to anyone who sells or distributes consumer products. This includes thrift stores, consignment stores, charities, and individuals holding yard sales and flea markets.

Selling old kids books, anything with metal, paint, or plastic that a kid might use, old clothes or shoes with metal components that a kid might wear? You know, any of the stuff people routinely sell at yard sales? Technically, you could be on the hook for thousands of dollars worth of fines. Obviously, it's unlikely the CPSA goons are going to bust up your yard sale. But putting out a detailed booklet that reserves the right to do so is hardly encouraging about where the implementation of this legislation is heading.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS: consumers; freedom; lead; liberty; lping; oppression; product; safety; selfsufficiency; tyranny; yardsales
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To: Behind Liberal Lines

Clearly they are setting grounds for endless lawsuits.

“I bought his 63454 year old jacket and it pinched my neck when it zipped up, causing pain, blood loss, and endless psychological damage. I’ll never be able to zip anything again without feeling that horrible pain.

It’s all your fault. You owe me $23432898 plus damages.”


41 posted on 05/07/2009 7:24:32 PM PDT by Veto! (Opinions freely dispensed as advice)
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To: muir_redwoods

There are government programs for starving artists? Really?


42 posted on 05/07/2009 7:25:40 PM PDT by Veto! (Opinions freely dispensed as advice)
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To: Behind Liberal Lines
So the goobermint says it is illegal to sell this highly contaminated auto at your garage sale...

But the same goobermint will give you $4,000 of OPM to take it off your hands, no questions asked.

Goobermint logic at its finest.

43 posted on 05/07/2009 7:27:50 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
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To: Ken H

I thought Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 settled that in 1942 when SCOTUS declared that the Commerce Clause permitted Congress to “regulate Commerce...among the several States.” It was wheat in ‘42, not weed. Sounds like the same case, though.


44 posted on 05/07/2009 7:31:10 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
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To: pandoraou812

>Common sense is dead. I swear there is something in the water these kooks drink.

...too bad it isn’t arsenic. [/sarc]


45 posted on 05/07/2009 7:32:52 PM PDT by OneWingedShark (Q: Why am I here? A: To do Justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with my God.)
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To: Veto!

Yes there are, the National Endowment for the Arts


46 posted on 05/07/2009 7:35:38 PM PDT by muir_redwoods ( O.B.A.M.A. = One Big Asinine Mistake, America)
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To: Behind Liberal Lines
Your Yard Sale Is Illegal (seriously: feds now regulate those too)

On the positive side, the feds may come up with a way to prosecute the "early birds" to the full extent of the law. The next time we advertise "No Early Birds", WE MEAN IT...

47 posted on 05/07/2009 7:43:16 PM PDT by FDNYRHEROES (In just 3 days, the War on Terror became the War on Free Speech.)
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To: Diana in Wisconsin

I would rather go to yard sales than fish. It is the only place you can find something not made in China.


48 posted on 05/07/2009 7:46:10 PM PDT by Big Horn (Rebuild the GOP to a conservative party)
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To: Behind Liberal Lines

Good, great news. My last yard sale made very little money, so where do I apply for my bailout?


49 posted on 05/07/2009 7:54:37 PM PDT by BlueStateBlues (Blue State business, Red State heart.........Palin 2012, can't come soon enough.)
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To: Behind Liberal Lines

More and more Big Brotherism every day. Lock and load patriots. The whites of their eyes are beginning to show.


50 posted on 05/07/2009 7:55:28 PM PDT by Don Corleone (Leave the gun..take the cannoli now reads "Oil the gun..eat the cannolis.")
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To: Behind Liberal Lines
Some enterprising lawyer needs to make up one of those 40-page manuals in 10 languages that come with everything we buy. The kind that tells you all of the dangers that might be involved in the use of the item. Just attach one to every item at your sale.

"Do not stand on this saw while operating."

"Do not use the electric space heater under water."

"This chain saw is not intended to be used to saw down icicles."

"Do not use this concrete saw for slicing meat."

51 posted on 05/07/2009 8:01:01 PM PDT by Right Wing Assault ( Obama, you're off the island!)
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To: FlingWingFlyer

I think this is another piece of crap that got started under Bush. Reagan would have never stood for this. He would have laughed it out of existence.


52 posted on 05/07/2009 8:02:51 PM PDT by Right Wing Assault ( Obama, you're off the island!)
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To: Behind Liberal Lines

Why aren’t we all dead?


53 posted on 05/07/2009 8:07:31 PM PDT by lastchance (Hug your babies.)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom
I thought Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 settled that in 1942 when SCOTUS declared that the Commerce Clause permitted Congress to "regulate Commerce...among the several States." It was wheat in '42, not weed. Sounds like the same case, though.

It looks pretty similar. The opinion cites Wickard:

The case comes down to the claim that a locally cultivated product that is used domestically rather than sold on the open market is not subject to federal regulation. Given the CSA's findings and the undisputed magnitude of the commercial market for marijuana, Wickard and its progeny foreclose that claim.

J. Stevens, Opinion of the Court, Gonzales v Raich.

54 posted on 05/07/2009 8:08:06 PM PDT by Ken H
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To: Big Horn
It is the only place you can find something not made in China.

That's true.

While I am not a lover of yard sales, especially in my own neighborhood (our homeowner assn plans two a year & non-participants can't get out of their driveways), I resent the government dictating this nonsense.

55 posted on 05/07/2009 8:10:07 PM PDT by lakey (To ALL Congressperps - YOU'RE FIRED!)
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To: pandoraou812
Shaking my head again & wondering just what these people are on.

Crack? Meth? The smell of stimulus money?

Massachusetts will buy welfare recipients cars to get to your garage sale....

Massachusetts welfare recipients provided cars at taxpayer expense

The state pays for the car’s insurance, inspection, excise tax, title, registration, repairs and a AAA membership for one year at a total cost of roughly $6,000 per car.

56 posted on 05/07/2009 8:20:38 PM PDT by MamaDearest
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To: MamaDearest

Wow....I never knew that.


57 posted on 05/07/2009 8:29:54 PM PDT by pandoraou812 (elected officials should be required to pass drug, alcohol & dementia testing)
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To: bamahead; Quix; LucyT; metmom

Thanks for the ping, adding some pings & a BTTT!

This is one thing that really gets me, my husband got laid off 6 weeks ago, and it is the beginning of “yard sale” season here. In an effort to try to bring in more money I was going to start collecting things around the house that my children had grown out of, and other various items that were “collecting dust” (toys, books, knick-knacks, etc...). I guess that idea may be a bad one now — like I can afford to risk THOUSANDS in possible fines???

These new regulations are just one more way our overstepping Federal Government has made being self-sufficient that much harder. When your family find themselves in need at an inopportune time you will suddenly realize that almost EVERYTHING charity wise is connected in one way or another to the government. Any REAL help (besides enough for a few meals through a church or neighborhood pantry, for instance) is ALL administered through the government and in some cases you are basically handing over a great many decisions and personal freedoms in agreeing to accept gov’t help (like food stamps, or gov’t subsidized health care programs). Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad for the sake of those like us who only need TEMPORARY help that these things are there, but the fact that I need to go to the GOVERNMENT/SOCIAL SEVICES to get help really bothers me.

It would be so ideal if the members of a community could come together WITHOUT the government and provide essential services to those in trouble within the community. There would also be WAY more accountability, and WAY less fraud. (People committing fraud and using the system as a “way of life” are the ones that have made it so hard for family’s like my own to seek TEMPORARY HELP. It’s as if they WANT you on the rolls for a LONG TIME — Just like my husband’s unemployment waives his job search requirements as he’s been termed a “temporary Lay-off” (in which ‘temporary’ is basically just a way for his company to deny him his accrued vacation pay).
[Note: my husband isn’t waiting around he’s applied, or at least inquired to every shop in person within a reasonable area, and he has used the phone book to inquire to places out of typical driving range and such. We’ve gotten a good “bite” — details on that at the bottome of my post]

Sorry for the little rant there...

Back to the yard sale stuff: Besides, what am I to do with these things now — I can’t sell them, and if I give them to a thrift store, IIRC they need to send the stuff to be tested before THEY can sell it, and usually the stuff will end up in the GARBAGE because charities like the Salvation Army can’t afford testing fees and such! (Maybe that’s an issue to bring up with enviro-liberals about this law — so much trash will be accumulated in our landfills as a result of this law).

I know creative people can “get around” these laws, and I don’t see garage/tag/yard sales to end... If anything seeing a neighbor fined for holding a garage sale would be one more thing that would wake America up.

In fact, I may just hold that garage sale after all in an act of “civil disobedience”. I will follow all my STATE and LOCAL regulations (don’t think we need a permit, but I’ll check, etc...). I’m right off a busy street, so chances are I’ll have a good sized “crowd of witnesses” if I hold it on the right weekend. Then if the Feds decide to come and try to fine me, or arrest me at least I’ll have witnesses as I said, and the ability to REALLY raise a big ‘ol stink about these regulations and how it hurts the average American — I’ve got a great angle seeing as how I’ve got four kids and a “temporarily laid-off” husband, too. They’d look like the jerks they really are for fining someone in my situation, frankly. (I’ve also got medical issues at the moment that would work to my defense and show them as cruel and heartless.)

I’m envisioning a rather funny scenario at the moment — Many communities hold “neighborhood garage sale” weekends and such and widely advertise them. Do you think the Feds are going to send their Black SUVs and folks with printed windbreakers, or your typical “Men in Black” to descend on these neighborhoods and fine all the homeowners en masse?

It’s the ENFORCEMENT of these laws that will immediately cause people to see what an incredible JOKE this is...

[As for that job “bite” — Thanks be to God, my husband has a walk-through for a job tomorrow and may be working again by next Monday! So hopefully my garage sale plan, and seeking gov’t based assistance at this point WON’T be necessary after all — Prayers are greatly appreciated!]


58 posted on 05/07/2009 8:32:54 PM PDT by LibertyRocks ( http://LibertyRocks.wordpress.com ~ ANTI-OBAMA STUFF : http://cafepress.com/NO_ObamaBiden08)
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To: LibertyRocks

Prayers going out for you & your family.


59 posted on 05/07/2009 8:37:55 PM PDT by pandoraou812 (elected officials should be required to pass drug, alcohol & dementia testing)
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To: LibertyRocks

hideous horror abounds from D.C. and wherever the oligarchy scum zap their orders to puppets like OThuga traitor in chief.


60 posted on 05/07/2009 8:44:36 PM PDT by Quix (POL Ldrs quotes fm1900 2 presnt: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2130557/posts?page=81#81)
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