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Editor’s Note: This is a Must Read
Townhall
Finance...
Stuck
On “Stupid Liberal” Mode
By Mark Baisley
7/11/11
BLACK
MARKET TOILETS
My
dad builds custom homes in
California and the regulators at all levels routinely give him new,
maddening
impediments to practicality. The
example
that I remember most had to do with toilets.
In
response to the apparent public
outcry about excessive tank capacity, sales of toilets that exceed 1.6
gallons
per flush have been banned throughout America.
United States Senator Rand Paul recently told
a senior bureaucrat at a
Senate hearing, “Frankly, my toilets don’t work in my house, and I
blame you.”
If
you are like Senator Rand and don’t
think that it makes sense to have to flush twice to make up for a
deliberately
insufficient vortex, you can buy a Canadian-made 3.5 gallon toilet on
the black
market. Can you
imagine having that
crime on your rap sheet?
POISONOUS
LIGHTBULBS
The
government’s Office of Energy
Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) at the Energy Department also
thought it
would be really swell if Americans would use less electricity to match
their
new toilets. So,
they made some suggestions,
through nationwide mandates, that we replace our bright, warm,
inexpensive
light bulbs with compact fluorescent lighting (CFL).
CFLs
don’t lend as much ambience, they
are vastly more expensive, and they take a while to warm up before they
can perform
their singular purpose in our lives.
But, they do provide an element of mercury for
you to deal with when
they burn out or break.
The
Environmental Protection Agency
recommends that, if your CFL light bulb breaks, first get all people
and pets out
of the room, shut down your air conditioner for several hours (another
excellent suggestion for saving energy), and thoroughly collect every
bit of
glass and powder into a sealed container.
The
government’s Energy Star program
argues that this mandate actually reduces mercury emissions in American
households because CFLs demand less electricity from mercury-generating
coal
plants that poison the fish we eat.
FUNNY
THING ABOUT PHOSPHATES
About
a year ago, I called the
manufacturer of our dishwasher with a performance complaint. The 10-month-old appliance
was simply no
longer getting the dishes clean. The
repair guy approached the situation like the main character on the TV
show
House.
His
assessment was that all three
name-brand detergents we had on hand were too low on phosphates to get
the job
done. It turns out
that ours is one of
millions of households victimized by the latest regulation - low
detergent
phosphates. We now
dump in twice the
normal amount of detergent and set the cycle to “stupid liberal mode”
which
runs the dishwasher for nearly three hours, using 50% more water and
electricity.
BOGUS
BUREAUCRATS
It
is hard to believe that these
busybody bureaucrats are simply trying to improve the environment. Evidence to the contrary
includes the results
of an investigation by the Government Accountability Office. They received an Energy
Star label for their
application of a gas-powered clock radio (really).
With
a full staff of uniformed gropers
at every airport, Obamacare and government controlled thermostats on
the
horizon -- I mean, if one were to undertake the goal of listing the
most
personally intrusive acts that a government could commit against its
people, I
think this list would just about be it.
With
their hands in my pants, my
physical health, my home, and even my toilet, I have never felt so
uncomfortably close to my government.
Read
it at Townhall Finance
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