Who Will be Left Standing When It's All Over?

From: Rick Woldenberg
Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 9:43 AM
To: 'Christian.Fjeld@mail.house.gov'; 'robin.appleberry@mail.house.gov'
Cc: 'brian.mccullough@mail.house.gov'; 'shannon.weinberg@mail.house.gov'; 'william.carty@mail.house.gov'; 'mjg@brown-gidding.com'; Etienne Veber; 'challengeandfun@gmail.com'; 'kathleen@fashion-incubator.com'; 'Stephen Lamar (slamar@apparelandfootwear.org)'; 'Nancy Nord (nnord@cpsc.gov)'; 'Joe Martyak (jmartyak@cpsc.gov)'; 'Mary Toro (MToro@cpsc.gov)'; 'tmoore@cpsc.gov'; 'Patrick Magnuson (patrick.magnuson@mail.house.gov)'; 'Carter Keithley (ckeithley@toy-tia.org)'; 'Rick Locker (fblocker@LockerLaw.com)'; 'Desmond, Edward'; 'David Callet (calletd@gtlaw.com)'; 'ravitz.georgia@arentfox.com'; Dennis Goldman; 'Pamela Gilbert (pamelag@cuneolaw.com)'; 'Robert Adler'; 'Dan Marshall (dan@peapods.com)'; 'erik.lieberman@mail.house.gov'; 'cfalvey@cpsc.gov'; Judy Bailey (judith.bailey@mail.house.gov); adele@narts.org; kmchugh@astratoy.org
Subject: CPSIA - Who Will be Left Standing?

Christian/Robin,

I wanted to draw your attention to the following small business: Hands and Hearts, a homeschooling education company located in Greenwood, South Carolina, and one of Learning Resources’ valued dealers. This company apparently makes a range of proprietary History Discovery Kits which have been sold to homeschoolers safely and appropriately for some time now. Unfortunately, our friends at Hands and Hearts have concluded that the CPSIA effectively outlaws the sale of these items and is discontinuing them one day before the new standards take effect. See their notice below.

I understand that some people feel this law is “misunderstood”. With only four weeks to go before implementation of the new standards, that seems to quite a failure to me. Congress wrote this law to change the rules on children’s product safety yet even five full months after the law’s passage on August 14, “misunderstandings” abound. I think you know by now that I do not share the view that Hands and Hearts or the other opponents of this law misunderstand anything. It is important to distinguish between making legitimate criticisms of the CPSIA and “misunderstanding” the law. The words in the law have only one meaning, and if Congress thought that the CPSC would clarify everything to avoid these “misunderstandings”, it made a big miscalculation. How so? The law is actually quite clear. The folks at Hands and Hearts get it. Many people get it. Does Congress?

I hope the Rush Subcommittee will start to take the deep expressions of pain of U.S. citizens and U.S. businesspersons seriously – and soon. The damage illustrated by the Hands and Hearts situation CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO CONTINUE.

Sincerely,

Richard Woldenberg
Chairman
Learning Resources, Inc.
rwoldenberg@learningresources.com



http://handsandhearts.com/index.asp?PageAction=Custom&ID=99


It is with the deepest possible regret that we must announce that we are discontinuing production of our Hands and Hearts History Discovery Kits. We, like so many other small business in America, are simply unable to afford to get in compliance with the new Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act.We know that these kits have blessed thousands of homeschoolers around the world, and we have prayed, wracked our brains, and sought council in hopes that we would not need to take this step.

As of today, the prices of our kits are discounted. We will discontinue the sale of these kits on February 9th, or when current stock is depleted, whichever comes first.

We do honestly believe that amendments will be made to the CPSIA, and it is our hope that these amendments will be reasonable enough that we will be able to offer our kits again at some point in the future. We want to absolutely walk in integrity, so we want to be clear that while we HOPE to be able to offer these kits again, we simply cannot guarantee that we will be able to do so. Only you can decide if you want to buy a kit now so that you know that you will have it, or whether you are comfortable waiting and hoping with us.

It is also our hope and intent to leave our store open after Feb. 10, but the loss of revenue from our kits may force us to close our business entirely. If it is important to you to purchase anything from us, please consider doing it now or you may be unable to do so in the future. This law affects MUCH of our inventory, and there are many, many products which are being discontinued by their manufacturers. As a result, we will not be able to reorder any of those products once our current stock is depleted. We would like to urge each of you not to buy in a panic, but to pray about what you need to do.

Please read this article [http://handsandhearts.com/index.asp?PageAction=Custom&ID=98] that I have written. It contains an overview of the CPSIA and a detailed action plan with steps that we can take to try to get this over-reaching law ammended.

Please let other homeschoolers know both about the above article and about our sale. It saddens us to know that we cannot reach everyone and that there will surely be many homeschoolers that come to our site too late and are unable to purchase kits. We will be continuing to send updates and breaking news about the CPSIA and the status of our company through our newsletter, so if you are not a subscriber please use the form in the left-hand side of our website to subscribe.

IMPORTANT: Shipping times WILL be delayed due to this sale. If you need your order within a certain time frame, let us know and we will try to accommodate you. As we sell out of kits, they will be removed from the website.

As I wrote on my blog, we know that the king's heart is in the hands of the Lord, and that He works all things together for our good. We can't see it rigt now - we just have to believe. We are sure that there will come a day that we will be able to give God the glory for all the ways He worked through this situation, but right now we can give Him praise for Who He is.