Thursday, December 15, 2011

Congress suspends light bulb ban


Breaking News from Watts Up With That?

Spending bill blocks light bulb standards - Politico (Image Source/AP)

The shutdown-averting budget bill will block federal light bulb efficiency standards, giving a win to House Republicans fighting the so-called ban on incandescent light bulbs.

GOP and Democratic sources tell POLITICO the final omnibus bill includes a rider defunding the Energy Department’s standards for traditional incandescent light bulbs to be 30 percent more energy efficient.

Are we so inculcated we can’t be outraged? - Protein Wisdom

The spending bill doesn’t actually amend the 2007 law, but does prohibit the administration from spending any money to carry out the light bulb standards — which amounts to at least a temporary reprieve....

A spending ban of a previous ban, in other words, both rendered into your daily life by unresponsive elected strangers wielding the increasing contempt an empowered and determined ruler has for the subject dependents in his sights....

I realize I’m stating the obvious and not without some emotion. But if this — if lightbulbs won back with opportunistic political sleight of hand — is how we take back liberty and pay just and proper allegiance to our individual sovereignty and with it our self respect in this, the age of client statism and what’s sold as patriotic reform and general pushback, I’m quite sure we’ve given up before we truly begin.


Light bulb ban NOT repealed - Steve Milloy/Canada Free Press

We fell for it, too. There has been no repeal of the light bulb ban.