I'm embarrassed at how certain I was that the problem was busybody environmentalists.

It's been 24 hours... I miss the L.A.'s plastic grocery bags.

And before the usual Obama-is-responsible-for-sunspots crowd weighs in, I'll just quickly point out that this was signed into law under Bush.

So there's something that needs to be said here. Conservatives of a certain age, including me, came of age thinking of Wall Street as essentially libertarian. It made no sense to us that business, even big business, would welcome the intervention of government -- all it ever seemed to lead to was higher expenses, less employment, lower profits, and lower-quality products. Why would a business, or its customers, want any of those things?

Here's where the '50s and '60s liberals were right and we were wrong: fascism. We didn't worry about fascism because we assumed that WWII had put a stake through it. Facism was a record that somebod had yanked out of the jukebox and broken, never to be played again. In our minds, the fight was between socialism and capitalism. Fascism simply didn't enter into it.

And there was a further assumption in which we, liberals and conservatives, were all wrong. We assumed that 19th-century aristrocacy was dead and gone, buried along with the headless corpse of Louis XVI. European-style aristocracy in 21st century America? Don't be ridiculous.

Well, let's look at what has happened. Wall Street is now in the grasp of people who grew up in privilege. Nearly all of our captains of industry come from well-off and well-connected families. They all have law degrees from an Ivy. Almost none of them have ever actually experienced the making of the product or service that their companies sell.

These people are comfortable with Big Government. They grew up seeing its innermost workings, and learned its secrets. They know how to pull strings, call in favors, scratch backs. They are not the entrepeneurs of American lore; those people are almost gone from Big Business today. The Big Business / Big Government nexus (and don't forget Big Labor) is all they've ever known. The idea of libertarianism frightens them; to them, there's no difference between that and anarchy. Lo and behold, fascism is alive and well.

So old-school liberals, I tip my hat to you. You diagnosed this one correctly, decades ago. Now let's together figure out what we need to do about it.

And yes, Patrick is absolutely correct. Bush signed that stupid law.

And, of course, nobody behind the mandates understands how this affects the lower end of the economic spectrum.

These wonderful low-electricity-use bulbs are pretty much unaffordable for a lot of people, thanks to the mandate.

Hmm. . .that sounds familiar, from somewhere. Perhaps recent news. . . .

Try getting one of those fluorescent bulbs to come on in a timely manner when it is -15 F. I -only-use incandescents in my garage door opener.

We had CFLs in most of the sockets when we moved into our apartment. It was like living in a cave because it took forever to get bright. Most are now switched to LED and they are too bright in most applications. We tried a few xenon bulbs and those are so damn hot it's like sitting under a heat lamp. A friend of mine had a house fire recently and the fire inspector said it was caused by a CFL bulb burning out and told her it was actually a common problem with CFLs. We're putting in LED bulbs wherever possible in the house we're having built, but I know I won't be happy about it.

Same problems with CFL bulbs. Replaced all the old single-bulb house fixtures with nicer multibulb lights (and they came prepackaged with CFLs). Other than all the same problems with slow warm-up and poor light quality, the damn things burn out after 1-2 years of use! I believe Amy had an article about this in the past but these 'long-life' lights are made to be used for many hours per day and only switched on-and-off once per day. Most of us just turn lights on-and-off as needed, which unfortunately quickly kills the longevity of CFLs.

Now in the process of 'upgrading' to LEDs. Man those things are expensive!

Grew up in the late '40s and early '50s when my father inflicted his Depression-era habits on me and my brothers: turn on the light bulb, quickly perform the task, turn off the light bulb. Dad lived just long enough to use and despise slow-starting compact fluorescents.

Capitalism ruining their party, the bulb-makers turned to government. Philips teamed up with NRDC. GE leaned on its huge lobbying army -- the largest in the nation -- and soon they were able to ban the low-profit-margin bulbs.

Die, corporate scum.

And the saddest part about this? Way too many conservatives love corporations because they produce products that we supposedly aren't forced to buy. Well, guess what? In this case, we'll eventually be forced to buy their high-faluting environ-MENTAL light bulbs, because they partnered with government, being the communist corporate scum they are, to outlaw the low-cost competition.

Eloquently stated, Cousin Dave. And I congratulate your objectivity. (I'm referring to your first post; not the one where you said I was right.)

Wall Street is content with big government, because as they recently found out, they can socialize their losses and privatize their profits.

On an unrelated note, Cousin Dave, I wonder if you (or anyone) can address answer something that always puzzled me, which you hit upon when you wrote: "We assumed that 19th-century aristrocacy was dead and gone, buried along with the headless corpse of Louis XVI. European-style aristocracy in 21st century America? Don't be ridiculous."

I always wondered why the Founding Fathers gave their vigorous support of the French Revolution, which claimed the heads of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. The American Revolution was basically another front the longstanding warfare that existed between England and France. Had it not been for Louis XVI, there would be no United States (or at least not until much, much later). For the Founding Fathers to support the French Revolution, which cost Louis XVI his head, seems like such profound ingratitude.

Do you have any insight into this?

Patrick, that's a good question, and I'm far from the expert on it. I think a lot of France's involvement stems from the influence of the Marquis de Lafayette. From what I've read, he saw the American revolutionaries as intellectual cousins to the then-gestating French movement, and was instrumental in persuading Louis XVI to back the Americans. (Although the king's willingness to play probably stemmed more from a desire to stick a knife in England's back by proxy, it does seem that his outlook on the French intellectuals circa 1775 was more liberal than it became in the following decade.) After the war, Lafayette went back to France, somehow surviving the Reign of Terror, and he kept working to move France towards a constitutional form of government until he died in the 1830s. Among a lot of pretenders in the French Revolution, Lafayette was the real deal.

That's the extent of my knowledge... someone who knows more about it, jump in.

"In this case, we'll eventually be forced to buy their high-faluting environ-MENTAL light bulbs, because they partnered with government, being the communist corporate scum they are, to outlaw the low-cost competition."

mpetrie98 - Actually, your point should be "Die, government scum. A corporation cannot by itself force us to buy anything. Only the force of government can make that happen (see Obamacare). That is why republicans to not push for limited government.

In April 2008, I put together a review of CFL's and some of their difficulties that are not talked about or printed on the box.

The CFL Advertising Account

The good and bad about compact fluorescent lights. Why the ads are both true and false. How to save and waste money on CFL's.

My research indicated that the average CFL at that time will turn on 2000 times before its electronics fail. The recommendation to leave them on for 15 minutes is a crazy interpretation of that fact. Leaving them on doesn't heal them. But, hey, at least if you leave them on for 15 minutes each time, you will get 500 hours use out of them before they fail. If you leave them on for 5+ hours at a time, then you will probably get the full 8000 or 10000 hour rated life.

Interesting to me, people who report on current CFL's omit definite information about how many on-off cycles current bulbs will complete. Consumer Reports gives a Good-Bad rating for this, but not an absolute figure. This still seems to be a problem.

I also present a cost analysis of expected savings, taking into account CFL and standard bulbs release of heat energy, under air conditioning, winter heating, and no heating or cooling needed.

The rules for cleaning up a broken bulb are hilarious. I think the small amount of murcury is not harmful with a bit of care. But, our environmental agencies can't admit that, because they have taken an extreme position on mercury in coal emissions. So, they give instructions suitable for hazmat toxic cleanup.

EasyOpinions.blogspot com

"We're putting in LED bulbs wherever possible in the house we're having built, but I know I won't be happy about it."

Posted by: BunnyGirl at January 2, 2014 10:42 AM

If you put the LED lighting fixtures on dimmer switches (in your new house) that should help.

"If you put the LED lighting fixtures on dimmer switches (in your new house) that should help."

A lot of LED lamps do not work well with dimmers. I don't think that problem is really solvable without a change in the basic technology -- the dimmer is going to have to have a data llnk of some sort with the lamp.

"A lot of LED lamps do not work well with dimmers."

Frustrating. I might be using the wrong terminology - I don't mean freestanding lamps - I meant light fixtures, the kind built in to the ceiling. I'm not sure if that changes anything regarding viability. It did take the electrician several visits to get the dimmers working for the bedside lamps that extend from the wall, but he got the lights imbedded in the ceiling, with dimmer switches at the light switch, working in short order.

Michelle, sorry about that... I lapsed into electrian's terminology. To an electrician, the "lamp" is the part that actually makes the light -- the part that we ordinarily call the bulb. The thing that holds the bulb is the "fixture", whether it's freestanding or built into something. (Changing the bulb is called "relamping".)

Ahhh. Thank you for clarifying, and for anticipating the usage question. :)

The CFL bulbs are utterly useless in cold weather.
And the politicians think us rural people are going to drive miles out of our way to recycle burned out CFLs which are crap full of mercury and heavy metals? Fer suure.

LED's can work well outdoors in cold, such as in porch lights. I purchased a Feit Electric BR30 type flood light for my porch from Amazon at the beginning of last month, right before a very cold spell with subzero temperatures, and it worked just fine. It uses 1/5 the electricity for the same amount of lumens as an incandescent bulb. Apparently LEDs are better for outdoor applications, but not always for enclosed indoor fixtures, so the location is important.