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Until voters took matters into their own hands, we were the , those dog factories whose owners ignored humane considerations, forced puppies into tiny cages stacked on top of each other and managed to keep enough of them alive to turn quite a profit.

Rural lawmakers fought like, well, dogs to keep the new regulations from becoming law. A compromise was reached, and now state inspectors have the right, and Attorney General Chris Koster has the authority, to make sure the formerly out-of-control puppy mills are operated within the bounds of the law.

Unfortunately, too many of Missouri's children don't yet have that kind of protection.

As the Post-Dispatch's Nancy Cambria has outlined , Missouri lawmakers have been loath to bring the Show-Me State in line with national standards for day-care facilities. The results are tragic and obvious: Children are dying in crowded, unlicensed homes.

Call them kiddie mills.

Between 2007 and July of last year in Missouri, 56 children died in day-cares in Missouri. Fifty of them died in unlicensed homes.

Few of those deaths led to prosecutions. Why? Because Missouri's laws are weak, and their enforcement is haphazard.

Lawmakers made a minor improvement in the most recent legislative session by increasing penalties for common violations, such as caring for too many children in an unlicensed facility.

But tougher regulations are worthless if they aren't enforced.

Take the Barry County home-based day care Wiggles & Giggles, for caring for as many as 30 children at a time. State law limits even unlicensed day cares to no more than four children unrelated to the caregiver.

The owner of Wiggles & Giggles knows she's breaking the law. She knows she can keep doing so with impunity.

"I'm not being punished. I'm not being fined. I'm not being closed down. Unless those things start happening, there's no reason to stop," Allyson Maben told Ms. Cambria, as reported Sunday in the Post-Dispatch.

That was the case in Missouri puppy mills until recently, too.

When will children get the same protection?

In some ways, Missouri's situation with unregulated day-cares is much like the national health care debate. Many conservatives decry the law as an encroachment on their liberty. How dare the government tell them what they can and can't do? How dare the government impose a "tax" on them if they don't comply?

Those who refuse to buy health insurance and those running rogue day-care facilities fail to comprehend that their lawlessness is a tax on the rest of us. It is those of us with insurance who very literally have been picking up the tab for the nation's uninsured for years.

In much the same way, it is the law-abiding day care operators, be they in Barry County or St. Louis County, who suffer the business consequences of having unregulated, unrepentant lawbreakers saturating the market with cut-rate, substandard care.

Barry County's problem is our problem. When lawmakers refuse to protect children, when some kiddie mill owners decline to play by the rules, somebody pays. Children die. Law-abiders are taxed by a broken market.

Everyone loses.