Lead paint in the toys from China, and they hire junior high kids to make them. China Labor Watch just released a report documenting "brutal conditions and illegal practices in Chinese toy factories."

Titan International won the first step in an effort to impose 210% duties on Chinese tires.  The International Trade Commission voted 6-0 in Titan's favor.  At issue are certain illegal subsidies.  Three more steps to go.  These things take too long. 

This article describes the action of lead inside our body's cells.

They have shown that after it infiltrates a cell, lead seeks out those regions of proteins where sulfur abounds and pushes aside smaller characters that stand in its way. But being bulkier than whatever it displaces, and chemically inappropriate besides, lead twists the entire protein into a sad, worthless shape. As it turns out, this distorting effect has a particularly severe effect on so-called transcription factors, proteins that control when genes flick on and flick off. In gestation, genetic timing is critical. This could help explain why even modest exposure to our old “civilizing” friend might corrupt the whole script of a developing brain. 

Lead is really useful.  Paints stick to wood better, and the paint colors are brighter.  Lead in gasoline reduces engine knock.

But paint eventually chips.  Babies and toddlers will put anything in their mouths.  When they eat the lead, they can't learn.  Their lives are less than they would otherwise be.

Exhaust from tailpipes pumped tons of lead in the air.  We breathed it every day.

Enormous political battles occurred over 80 years.  Tremendous costs were incurred finding replacements for the wonderful properties of lead.  But we took most lead out of our environment.

Then we started importing from China at artificially low prices enforced by that country's government through currency manipulation.  The 80 years of progress, then a great leap backward.  For what?

Nine million toys produced for Mattel, many of which were imported into the U.S.  Covered in lead.  But they were cheap.  It was only the most recent discovery inside the oceans of imports.

Nine million.  9,000,000.  If you started counting now, at one number per second, you would reach nine million during the second week of December.  An entire generation of kids could be affected.

One staid academic said:

“I’m not normally a rabble rouser, but I’m disturbed by the potential enormity of this problem,” said Jeremy R. Knowles, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Harvard. “We’re talking about millions of toys, and the possibility of an entire generation of children being exposed to gratuitous constraints on their neurological development.” 

This response to Farm Bill criticism in the nation's editorial pages was written by John Hansen, Nebraska Farmers Union president. 

***** 

    From my vantage point, as someone who has been up to his elbows in the fight for a fair, family farm agriculture friendly federal Farm Bill since 1972, I think the discussion of payment limits needs to be put into perspective. Rather than deal with the vast differences between per unit values, costs, and market values of various ag commodities, the political realities of what was or was not done on the payment limit issue in the House without sinking the whole Farm Bill, I would like to bring forward ten points to consider as the battle moves to the Senate.
  
    First, production agriculture, on a good day is a high risk, low margin business that faces uncontrollable variables from nature, such as heat, frost, flooding, hail, drought and insects to name a few.  While the House Farm Bill authorized a permanent emergency disaster assistance program, it did not fund it.  That needs to get fixed in the Senate. 
 
    Second, production agriculture buys its inputs from an increasingly concentrated and noncompetitive seed, chemical, machinery, fertilizer, insurance, and capitol sector,  Then, it sells its ag products into an even more noncompetitive system of shared monopolies. The House Farm Bill, with the exception of passing mandatory COOL, did not address a multitude of competition and market reform issues.  The Senate must do much  better.

(There's more.)