Deroy Murdock explains in National Review how politicians in Washington have imposed legislation – which most Americans still don’t know about – to ban traditional light bulbs.
As American as the grand slam, the Mustang convertible, and the constitutional republic, Thomas Alva Edison’s incandescent light bulb is among this nation’s most enduring gifts to mankind. …Today’s federal government, naturally, had to hammer something that has hummed along nicely for 130 years. In one of his most shameful moments, former president George W. Bush foolishly signed the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. EISA establishes performance criteria that Edisonian bulbs cannot meet. …Few Americans realize that federal busybodies plan to snatch their traditional bulbs. Sylvania’s December 2009 survey of 302 adults found that “awareness of the 2012 100-watt bulb phase-out” is just 18 percent (error margin: +/- 5.7 percent).
The political elite are imposing these rules on us because they think we’re too stupid to make intelligent decisions about the tradeoff between cost and energy. That’s offensive, but it’s just one of the problems. Deroy also points out that there are potentially serious health risks associated with the new light bulbs we’ll be forced to use.
CFLs should be discarded at recycling centers. Hundreds of millions of busy Americans, however, will toss these dangerous bulbs in the trash, atop table scraps and junk mail. CFLs will clog landfills from coast to coast. Decades hence, mercury will have leeched into the environment. Americans will wonder why people are suffering brain, kidney, and lung damage. Medical visits will yield lawsuits. And yet another national disaster will erupt, courtesy of Washington, D.C. …“Here we have the government entering all of our homes. Our homes are our castles,” says Brandston, a former adjunct professor of architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a founder of its Lighting Research Center. “Now they are telling us how to light our homes, and they are putting onerous burdens on us in terms of handling these toxic CFLs. The government should not enter our homes, tell us how to live, endanger our health, and ruin our quality of life.” Republicans and thinking Democrats running for Congress this fall should pledge publicly to repeal the federal ban on Thomas Edison’s monumental creation. Why not try something worthy of the Spirit of ’76? Keep traditional bulbs, CFLs, halogens, and everything else on the market, and allow Americans to purchase whatever bulbs help them pursue happiness.
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I have stocked up on regular bulbs. I have over 700 of them now. I suggest everyone do it. Hey, maybe bulbs will be tomorrow’s gold.
It seems like Washington has forgotten that it was thinking Americans that put the decision makers into their respective offices, and it will be thinking Americans that will either keep them in office or will vote them out. I vote because as I am in persuit of life and liberty. I am able to make choices that correlate directly with those freedoms. It seems the lawmakers have forgotten I AM free.
[…] International Liberty […]
Add to this the fact that the incandescent bulbs are manufactured in the U.S., while the CFLs are manufactured in China. And I am not sure, but I don’t think we could manufacture CFLs if we wanted to because the process probably wouldn’t pass OSHA regulatory control.
Thanks again, Democratic Congress, for exporting jobs.
I am an electrician and i tell everybody i do a job for that they are not going to be able to buy the reg bulbs in a couple of years and better stock up now. And you can bet on it that the cfl bulbs are going to fill up landfills and trouble is coming down the line sometime in the future as they will leach away the mercury in them. Ha and then the lawyers will come out with the long knifes.
Leave it to Washington Pol,s to ruin peoples lives.