Whipped Cream Difficulties

Picked this up from Overlawyered, and thought it deserved wider circulation.

Woman and a friend are having coffee. Friend mentions that her daughter just had her first baby. The daughter works in a job that pays just above minimum wage, so money is tight. Daughter stretches her money by shopping the second-hand market for baby stuff. But daughter can’t find any used cribs for sale.

I had to tell my friend that her daughter could not find a second-hand crib because the CPSC basically outlawed selling them. The CPSC has put in place a new safety standard for cribs and, by the law’s terms, all cribs, regardless of when they were made or where they are sold, must meet these new standards. Because the standard is fairly new, cribs meeting the new standard have not yet cycled down to the resale market. And because of the standard, the new cribs are quite expensive, so they will probably be used for a long time before they are available to be bought second-hand. Therefore, those consumers who count on the resale market for their basic needs—such as a crib—are out of luck.

Daughter is trying to make do with a used “play yard”. “One of its sides is broken but it has been mended with a metal rod and tape.” Not the safest thing in the world.

Here’s the punchline: the author of that blog entry is CPSC commissioner Nancy Nord.

This conversation led me to wonder if we as Commissioners are doing as much as we should to consider the full consequences of our decisions.

I’m willing to bet that people warned commissioner Nord, and the other commissioners, that this kind of thing would happen: you dry up the used crib market, and people are going to resort to alternatives that may be even less safe than a used crib. I’m also willing to bet that commissioner Nord ignored those warnings. I’m glad she’s had her moment on the road to Damascus, but it seems to me to be too little, too late.

Three in one day? I know. But there’s a story in the NYT that offers some instructive lessons.

Chris Huhne was a British political figure. The NYT describes him as “a fast-rising politician with fashionably left-of-center views on social issues and a background in high finance that had yielded a multimillion-dollar fortune“.

He also had a lead foot. He was caught speeding by a roadside camera back in 2003, and he had three previous convictions prior to that. If he had been convicted on the 2003 charge, he would have been banned from driving and fined.

So he got his wife to say she was driving instead.

Safety tip #15: the cover-up is always worse than the crime.

Had he pleaded guilty at the time, he would have faced a $100 fine and been barred from driving for six months to a year; by lying in the case, he ultimately lost his cabinet post, the first politician in British history to be forced from office by a criminal prosecution, as well as his parliamentary seat, and, British pundits say, any prospect of a future political career.

Huhne pled guilty to a charge of “perverting the course of justice”. He hasn’t been sentenced yet, but the judge in his case has indicated Huhne will probably serve time.

Vicky Pryce, Mr. Huhne’s wife at the time, was convicted of the same charge, and will probably serve time as well.

How did things fall apart?

Ms. Pryce stuck with the deceit over the speeding ticket for more than seven years until Mr. Huhne, faced with the imminent exposure of an extramarital affair with one of his political aides by a London tabloid, abruptly walked out of the 25-year marriage.
The court heard that Ms. Pryce learned the news from her husband when he confronted her during a halftime break in a Saturday-afternoon telecast of a World Cup soccer match in 2010, announcing that he needed an immediate separation to save his cabinet post.

Tip #16: if you’re going to ask your wife to cover-up your crime, treat her well. Don’t plan on divorcing her, unless you’re sure the statute of limitations has run out. And I’d check with a lawyer first, just to make sure you haven’t overlooked some crime that you could possibly be charged with.

I don’t care how good looking you are, or how handsome you think you are.

I don’t care how lonely you are after your divorce.

I don’t care how beautiful the bikini model is, or what her cup size is.

Don’t check luggage that belongs to other people.

Because the best thing that can happen to you is that they’ll find the cocaine hidden in the suitcase, and you’ll wind up doing hard time in an Argentinian prison.