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Posted on 12/02/2011 11:37:19 PM PST by george76
Include me among those crazed Americans who can’t walk into Home Depot, Target or my local grocery store right now without wanting to grab a king-sized shopping cart and stuff it to the gunwales with 100-watt incandescent light bulbs.
Maybe it’s the sheer thrill of buying bulbs that in just a month, as of Jan. 1, 2012, will be banned for sale in America. What fun, in this incandescent twilight, to acquire legally what the federal government will soon treat as contraband. Or maybe it’s that gut sense that with the dollar teetering, those beloved old 100-watt bulbs will at least provide a decent store of value, even if all I do is use them to read by for the rest of my life.
First the 100-watt incandescents will vanish from the shelves. Then the 75-watt, the 60-watt and 40-watt...
Presumably, federal authorities will now be spending US tax dollars (excuse me — “creating jobs”) to deploy light-bulb cops.
For decades, America has been the world’s beacon of freedom. Yet here we are, wards of the nanny state, with politicians dictating that even that prime symbol of American ingenuity, Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulb, shall be regulated into oblivion. All this has been ably exposed as an act of crony capitalism, designed to enrich manufacturers who prefer to sell pricier light bulbs that a lot of Americans, if free to choose, prefer not to buy.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
About 6 months ago I bought three hundred 100W bulbs online for $0.79 each.
I also stocked up on reflector bulbs for my ceilings and 3 ways for my bedside lamps.
If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival.
There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
— Winston Churchill
There will be a thriving black market from Mexico and Canada.
What else would one expect?
About 10 years ago I went on an energy saving kick, and changed out most of the bulbs in the house to florescents. Now, for every one of the damn things that crap out on us, there’s a mini celebration! What an annoying, off color, awful light comes out of them!
It probably wasn’t causative but many of us in the Fed or the military blamed the mid-1970s energy consciousness for the decline of our vision as they loosened or removed every other fluorescent tube from our overhead lighting. I began wearing glasses in 1976.
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Last weekend I was hunting for the 95 watt bulbs that replaced the 100 watters. I looked at Home Depot and Lowes to no avail. They have some new hybrid bulb using halogen inside an incand. looking bulb with thr pitch that 72watts equal 100. It costs several dollars extra.
Halogens are generally hot. FYI.
AND what has our Republican-Controlled House done to repeal this do date? Why have they not added a rider to a "Must Pass" piece of Legislation to rescind this onerous law?
They are (almost all) afraid of their own shadows, the wusses!
Jimmy Carter's stupid blue cardigan on steroids.
I've been stocking up on 100-watt bulbs at Walmart in Salem, NH -- pack of 4 (no name that I can see) for 94 cents. They work fine and seem to last longer than the old GE that seemed to go every other day or so.
Are 150-watt not included in the ban? I prefer them for reading, especially in the winter months. Just in case, I stocked up on them from bulbs.com (I never knew there were so many kinds of light bulbs!).
I don’t see a black market springing up. Even if one did, it won’t last very long because light bulb manufacturers have already stopped making the incandescent bulbs that would be outlawed at the first of the year across North America.
Been stocking up too. I stay away from Sylvania bulbs because they don’t have a very long lifespan and pop on a brownout.
“Yet here we are, wards of the nanny state, with politicians dictating that even that prime symbol of American ingenuity”
The author is a coward and conveniently refrains from mentioning that this light bulb issue was due to the GOP and Dumbo Dubya.
I have been studying the different lights... Incandescences are cheap and give good warm and cool lights but 85% of the cost of running them is from the heat they produce. The “squiggly” ones are also going to be phased out; which is fine with me ‘cause I hate them and they contain mercury. There is a light on the horizon coming into production that will be great when it finally gets here...it is the LEDs. They are expensive right now, but will cut your electric bill in half because they do not produce any heat at all. Also, they are suppose to last at least 10 years. Can you imagine not changing a light bulb for 10 years? Companies that have installed them are saying that they are saving from 50 to 85% cost on their lighting bills.
Finally, the LEDs are being produced in cool and warm white, and are also being made in the tube (fluorescent). I expect the cost of these lights will come down in the next couple of years....I am looking forward to that. I actually tested three bulbs...a 60w, a 60W squiggly, and a 20 Lumens LED (the equivalent); within 30 seconds the 60W was too hot to touch, the squiggly was also hot, but the LED was as cool as it was before I screwed it in. This is a wonderful thing, as it won’t rot your lampshades any more!
Great quote!
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