The Senate has passed their stopgap spending bill, which included a rider that annuls, temporarily at least, what would effectively have been a ban on incandescent bulbs beginning this year. The intrusive legislation had made an awful lot of people hopping mad — but looking on the bright side (especially now that it has been deferred), it became such a cause célÁ¨bre for the Right, and such a poster-child for the excesses of the liberal nanny state, that it seems to have awakened a lot of people to the urgency of the conservative cause.
Getting people fired up about this wasn’t too hard, when all you had to do was quote the Energy Secretary’s remarks on the State’s rationale for the ban:
“We are taking away a choice that continues to let people waste their own money,” he said.
This sums up the paternalism of the big-government Left so precisely that it could probably be used with high accuracy to identify political orientation. Does the quoted remark seem to you a perfectly sensible policy statement from an unelected Federal executive? Or does it get you thinking dark thoughts about the the consent of the governed, and the Second Amendment? Form two lines, please.
Anyway, it’s a small victory, but we’ll take it. It’s too bad that Mr. Obama’s chum, General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt, has already closed our last domestic incandescent-bulb plant, in anticipation of a flow of consumers given no choice but to buy the more-expensive and less-popular compact-fluorescent bulbs — but chalk up one for liberty, and for the free market, nevertheless. If people actually want to buy CFLs, of course, they’re still perfectly welcome to do so.
I haven’t read the bill itself yet, but my understanding is that it also forces the White House to make a call on the Keystone pipeline project within 60 days, rather than deferring it until after the 2012 election, as the president had hoped to do. All good.
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Wasn’t sure whether the post title was a reference to one of the spells in the Harry Potter series or to something more ancient.
Why not “Fiat lux!“?
Anyway, I should go grab some bulbs.
Nope, it’s a Potterism. Just felt right.
Ermmm, Malcolm? Sometime ago after you’d made reference to the incandescents not being available after some date – I’d recalled from my subscription to Electrical Contractor (ecmag.com) reading from the actual magazine [I’m pretty sure referenced at that time was Sylvania] but anyway – the bulb manufacturer had designed past the regulated efficiencies.
Trouble was, (and is) I read and toss. I bookmarked yesterday the following to a folder labelled, perhaps surprisingly “Waka”.
http://shine.yahoo.com/green/truth-light-bulb-law-200200491.html
Well, no problem there. If the new bulbs are affordable and more efficient, and as good as the old incandescents without the drawbacks of CFLs, then people would have snatched them up anyway in a free market, as I imagine they will once they are widely available. I’m all for it.
The idea that innovation can’t happen until the government makes it happen, however, as the eco-lobby mouthpiece quoted in the article would like us to imagine, is utter rubbish. People are always trying to build a better mousetrap.
“The idea that innovation can’t happen until the government makes it happen, however, as the eco-lobby mouthpiece quoted in the article would like us to imagine, is utter rubbish.”
Emphatic agreement – and the perfect example is…
Light emitting diodes or, LEDs.