$50 Light Bulbs to go on sale next year

by Peter Svensson

NEW YORK – Two leading makers of lighting products are showcasing LED bulbs that are bright enough to replace energy-guzzling 100-watt light bulbs set to disappear from stores in January.

Their demonstrations at the LightFair trade show in Philadelphia this week mean that brighter LED bulbs will likely go on sale next year, but after a government ban takes effect.

The new bulbs will also be expensive — about $50 each — so the development may not prevent consumers from hoarding traditional bulbs.

The technology in traditional "incandescent" bulbs is more than a century old. Such bulbs waste most of the electricity that feeds them, turning it into heat. The 100-watt bulb, in particular, produces so much heat that it's used in Hasbro's Easy-Bake Oven.

To encourage energy efficiency, Congress passed a law in 2007 mandating that bulbs producing 100 watts worth of light meet certain efficiency goals, starting in 2012. Conventional light bulbs don't meet those goals, so the law will prohibit making or importing them. The same rule will start apply to remaining bulbs 40 watts and above in 2014. Since January, California has already banned stores from restocking 100-watt incandescent bulbs.

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Left Admits Environmental Justice Can Be Harmful To Business

Piñatas: A threat to your child’s psychological well-being

by I Hate The Media

Anyone here speak Spanish? How do you say “Can you people just butt out and let me raise my child as I see fit without writing a bunch of idiotic nanny state regulations intended to regulate every last aspect of our lives?”

We ran across the latest in nanny state nuttiness on Yahoo.com:

by Vanessa Bartlemus

A blindfolded child is let up to some poor helpless papier-mâché animal hanging off a tree by a string. They have a stick or a bat in their hand, and they proceed to whack the animal with all their might. Other children are cheering on the fight. When the piñata is broken open, candy spills out. Everyone rushes to grab as much candy as they can. It's every kid for them self.

As for the candy that spills out afterwards, each child is quickly grabbing as much as they can. Whatever happened to sharing? Not to mention that all that candy isn't that great for your child's health. And what about the shy kids, or the kids who aren't pushy? They end up with much less than everyone else. Is that how they're rewarded for their better behavior?

So what are some better alternatives? There are now pull-string piñatas...which get rid of the hitting element. Your child pulls a string and the contents of the piñata fall out. That way, your child can have the experience of having a piñata at their party, without the violence. Fill it with healthy snacks or toys. Have a set number of toys or snacks inside and tell the children before hand how many of each thing they can each pick out. Or have a set number of the same kind of thing for each child, and have the birthday child pass out the toys/snacks to each of the other children. If you really want the children to have the experience of all grabbing after the piñata contents, let them, but at the end, observe each child and see if anyone seems to have not gotten as much. Then find a kid or kids who got a lot and ask them if they would like to share with the kid/kids who didn't get enough.

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Should We Ban Walking While Wired?

The Nanny State targets hand-held gadgets

by Steve Chapman

You've had the experience of walking along and negotiating around someone who is walking slowly, weaving, or bumping into other pedestrians for an obvious reason: He or she is talking on a cell phone, listening to an iPod, or texting on a Blackberry.

And you've had the natural, inevitable response to this annoyance: demanding a law to prevent it.

Oh, you haven't responded that way? Well, Carl Kruger has. The state senator from Brooklyn, N.Y., wants to make it illegal to use an electronic device while crossing a big-city street on foot. He has an ally in Arkansas state Sen. Jimmy Jeffress, who wants to ban pedestrians from wearing headphones in both ears on or near a roadway.

These measures reflect a reflexive urge to regulate even the smallest elements of human behavior, from the flavorings in cigarettes to the type of fats in restaurant meals to the number of bullets a magazine may hold. Some people apparently sit around thinking, "What's the good of having all this government power if we're not going to use it?"

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Allen West: "Dishonest liberal tyranny wants control of your life"

Mark Steyn on how Big Government solves fictitious problems

by The Right Scoop

Steyn had a little fun today explaining the Government of Maine’s instructions on what to do if you break one of the new CFL lightbulbs in your house. Through all of this he’s making the larger point that none of this bureaucratic nonsense is necessary if you use a normal incandescent light bulb, which of course they are trying to ban.

Unintended Consequences

Big Brother Is Watching You Recycle

by Wendy McElroy

Citing the British model, Cleveland, Ohio, is taking a giant step toward a similar scheme of compulsory recycling. In 2011 some 25,000 households will be required to use recycling bins fitted with radio-frequency identification tags (RFIDs)—tiny computer chips that can remotely provide information such as the weight of the bin’s contents and that allow passing garbage trucks to verify their presence. If a household does not put its recycle bin out on the curb, an inspector could check its garbage for improperly discarded recyclables and fine the scofflaws $100. Moreover, if a bin is put out in a tardy manner or left out too long, the household could be fined. Cleveland plans to implement the system citywide within six years.

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King County to Ban Electronic Cigarettes in Public

by Vanessa Ho

Five years after Washington residents voted to ban smoking cigarettes, cigars and pipes in public places, King County wants to add one more thing to the list: Electronic cigarettes.

The 2006 state law banned smoking in bars and restaurants on the basis that second-hand smoke causes cancer and other diseases. But King County's rationale for adding e-cigarettes - also known as battery-powered nicotine-delivery devices - to the list of forbidden acts is a little different.

The fake cigs, from which users inhale vaporized nicotine, don't emit smoke. Rather, they produce a less-smelly, combustion-free mist.

But public health officials say they're so similar to the real thing that they make tobacco enforcement difficult and often prompt smokers to think it's OK to light up in public. And that leads to second-hand smoke, health officials reason.

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FCC Plans to Regulate Free Speech

Local Governments Told to Buy New Street Signs

by Jonathan Karl

The federal government says THIS is harder to read than This.

Got that? ALL CAPS are bad. Mixed Case is Good.

It's just one reason the Federal Highway Administration is ordering all local governments -- from the tiniest towns to the largest cities -- to go out and buy new street signs that federal bureaucrats say are easier to read.

The rules are part of a tangle of regulations included in the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices.

The 800-plus page book tells local governments they:

-- Should increase the size of the letters on street signs from the current 4 inches to 6 inches on all roads with speed limits over 25 miles per hour. The target date for this to be completed is January 2012.

-- Install signs with new reflective letters more visible at night by January 2018.

-- And whenever street name signs are changed for any reason, they can no longer be in ALL CAPS.

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Farmer Fined $5000 For Growing Crops On His Own Land

Ciggarette tax hike creates total drag on sales

by Brendan Scott

ALBANY -- Sales of taxed cigarettes have plummeted a staggering 27 percent statewide since the highest cigarette tax in the nation took hold in July, a Post analysis has found.

Law-abiding cigarette dealers have sold an average of 30 million packs of smokes in each of the last four months -- some 11 million fewer than before Gov. Paterson and lawmakers raised the state tax on cigarettes to $4.35 a pack in a scramble to close a massive budget gap.

Such a drop in smoking would exceed even the wildest imaginations of anti-smoking advocates, who estimated the arrival of the $10 cigarette pack would trim sales by 8 to 10 percent as cash-squeezed smokers cut back or quit.

More likely, experts say, sales have simply shifted to nearby tax havens that allow New Yorkers to stockpile cut-rate smokes at the expense of the state treasury.

Both Pennsylvania and Vermont, which each have significantly lower cigarette taxes, have seen tobacco sales rise since New York's hike, The Post's analysis found.

The Post reported in August that retailers said sales were off by as much as 45 percent in stores bordering low-tax states like Pennsylvania and Vermont, as well as tax-free Indian reservations in western New York and on Long Island.

The hike raises the average price of a pack of Marlboros to $11.60 in New York City, compared to $5.93 in Matamoras, Pa.

Anecdotal reports suggest sales are booming on in-state Indian reservations, where tribes have so far stymied Paterson's efforts to collect taxes on cigarettes sold to non-Native Americans.

"That's what we warned would happen, and obviously it has come to fruition," said James Calvin, of the New York Association of Convenience Stores.

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Disabling Cell Phones in Cars?

by The Patriot Post

Apparently, virtual strip searches and "love pats" at airports aren't oppressive enough for the federal government. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood this week discussed government mandating cell phone scramblers in automobiles. "I think the technology is there and I think you're going to see the technology become adaptable in automobiles to disable these cell phones. We need to do a lot more if we're going to save lives." Indeed, it's never enough for big government advocates.

LaHood, who is a Republican (snort), is missing a few side effects of this Big Brother idea. Blogger Ed Morrissey lists them:

• The scrambler would also affect the passengers in a car that want to use their cell phones, which doesn't do anything to improve public safety.

• The presence of multitudinous scramblers in autos driving in a city will likely render cell phones used by pedestrians useless as well, or at least unreliable.

• Adding more required equipment to cars will make them more expensive, and increase the value of used cars without the scramblers.

• People who want to make calls from their cars or allow their passengers to do so will likely hold onto current vehicles longer.

• Anything installed in a car can be disabled by the owner, especially electronics. Will car owners have to submit to random searches, or annual verification of scrambler functionality? Will the federal government make that yet another unfunded mandate on the states?

• People also get distracted by eating, reading printed material, and applying make-up. Shall we ban drive-through restaurants, newspapers, and cosmetics, too?

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) admitted in a report this week that they can't draw a statistical relationship between deaths in vehicles and cell phone use. But no matter, "safety" is the reason for all sorts of intrusion. Morrissey concludes, "Finally, we come to the most basic point, which is that traffic law enforcement is not a federal jurisdiction. It's a state and local jurisdiction."

There's also such a thing as personal responsibility. Bureaucrats hate that one, though -- it ruins all their fun.

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