by Michael Reagan
It’s should be called the law of unintended consequences, and Congress should learn to abide by it, taking enough time to discover whether the road they choose to follow is smooth or filled with ruts.
Back in 2007, the Congress in their wisdom ruled that starting in the year 2012 the ordinary incandescent light bulbs we’ve been using for ages must be phased out and completely regulated away by 2014. They are to be replaced by so-called CFLs, those twisted fluorescent gizmos that if dropped become tiny mercury bombs.
Why do away with something we’ve been using, without problems, for just about forever? Well, because they allegedly contribute to a deadly hazard that exists only in their minds — nonexistent global warming.
Just think, every time you turn on a light you are helping to barbecue the planet, according to Mr. Gore and his fellow global-warming alarmists in Congress.
Shame on you!
Congress totally ignored the warnings that the allegedly wondrous CFLs they want to jam down our throats use high levels of mercury and when they break, as light bulbs tend to do when we drop them, they scatter mercury like shrapnel when a shell explodes.
The clean-up required to undo the damage cause by dropped CFLs is extensive and hazardous, as well.
In addition, medical experts warn that when broken, the bulbs Congress favors can cause migraine headaches and even epileptic attacks. Moreover they are unreliable in colder temperatures, failing to emit much heat, are hostile to such gimmicks as dimmer switches, and their lifespan is limited by being frequently turned on or off.
In addition, in this period of economic uncertainty and growing unemployment, the replacement of our usual bulbs has cost a lot of jobs.
General Electric, for example, has closed factories in Kentucky and Ohio, and has recently announced they are closing their major incandescent factory in Winchester, Virginia — a factory that employed 200 of our fellow Americans and the last major incandescent manufacturing facility in the United States.
That’s good news for China and other countries that will take up the slack with CFL manufacture, but will also undoubtedly create a new form of bootlegging or, rather, bulblegging.
According to the Heritage Foundation, in an attempt to undo the damage Congress has done with this outlandish regulation, Reps. Joe Barton, R-Texas; Michael Burgess, R-Texas; and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tennessee; have introduced the so-called “Better Use of Light Bulbs” (BULB) Act last week. It would repeal Subtitle B of Title III of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 — the phase-out of the incandescent bulb.
Said Rep. Blackburn: “Washington banned a perfectly good product and fired hard working Americans based on little more than their own whim and the silly notion that they know better than the American consumer. Now, hundreds more Americans are looking for work while assembly lines in China are churning out fluorescent bulbs for the U.S. market.”
Does anyone in Congress care about the plight of American workers, or are they so deeply embedded in the fantasies of Al Gore that they are willing to put American workers out of work?
Thank God for the oncoming Congressional elections. We’ll have an opportunity to put out the lights on Capitol Hill for a lot of these crazed ideologues.
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Undoing this massive potential for poisoning is the one idea I don't want overlooked or put on a back burner. Let GE bite it. I won't ever buy their bulbs again, so they can go to China. Meanwhile I hope other companies make good old bulbs until LEDs are cheap enough and perfected enough so the free market makes them competitve. This idiot bunch deserves to get themselves sued over this mess they've made. The first person killed by their Congressionally approved mercury poisoning will have been murdered.
Undoing this massive potential for poisoning is the one idea I don't want overlooked or put on a back burner. Let GE bite it. I won't ever buy their bulbs again, so they can go to China. Meanwhile I hope other companies make good old bulbs until LEDs are cheap enough and perfected enough so the free market makes them competitve. This idiot bunch deserves to get themselves sued over this mess they've made. The first person killed by their Congressionally approved mercury poisoning will have been murdered.
Right on Plunderpower. I only hope that the first case of mercury poisoning is slight but whosoever has it ends up owning the company that makes them.
Right on Plunderpower. I only hope that the first case of mercury poisoning is slight but whosoever has it ends up owning the company that makes them.
The light bulb is not the only stupidity coming from these dimbulbs ( the politicians ) , the watercloset thing requires me to flush my toilet twice every time I use it to keep it looking clean , instead of using 0ne gallon less water I use two full tanks each time . They want us to use electric cars recharged with power mostly from coal fired power plants to help the environment , what ?
Congress wants us to buy electric cars, which will get their recharge from the solar panels we will also have to buy, which will be needed to light our homes, heat our water, and cook our food. And we will have to do all of that, even though all the jobs we could work at, have been taken over by all the illegal aliens, which come to this country for cheap jobs.
IMPEACH OBAMA NOW!!!
The light bulb is not the only stupidity coming from these dimbulbs ( the politicians ) , the watercloset thing requires me to flush my toilet twice every time I use it to keep it looking clean , instead of using 0ne gallon less water I use two full tanks each time . They want us to use electric cars recharged with power mostly from coal fired power plants to help the environment , what ?
Congress wants us to buy electric cars, which will get their recharge from the solar panels we will also have to buy, which will be needed to light our homes, heat our water, and cook our food. And we will have to do all of that, even though all the jobs we could work at, have been taken over by all the illegal aliens, which come to this country for cheap jobs.
IMPEACH OBAMA NOW!!!