Sure sounds like typical conspiracy theory junk to me. Meanwhile,
you can still buy an incandescent light that puts out the same light
as those 100W bulbs you stocked up on. It's just that they use 70W
to do it. Oh, and it's not GE; it's a Phillips Halogena bulb.

I paid about 34 cents a bulb for the incandescents I ordered to beat the ban because I got them in bulk. But here's a link:

http://homerepair.about.com/od/electricalrepair/ss/The-Incandescent-Lighting-Ban_2.htm

Banned bulb: 50 cents.

Compliant halogen bulb: $3-7.

Phillips (who along with General Electric and Osram Sylvania lobbied for this 2007 law and are major manufacturers of CFL bulbs made in China and other countries) sells this halogen-incandescent bulb under the name “EcoVantage Light Bulb” for about $5 to $7.

I have read before about the GE lobbying, but I'm up at 5am to write and need to get to work on my column. Perhaps somebody else can pull a link about this.

AFAIK all CFL's of any brand are made in China, most of them with substandard components. Same goes for ballasts for traditional fluorescent fixtures. I'm currently in ballast hell; we have about 12 fluorescent fixtures around our house and I've had to replace the ballasts in five of them, and another one went out last week.

Chinese-made electrical capacitors are a plague upon the earth. They've been the cause of PC motherboard recalls, failures of automotive engine controllers, and untold millions of premature flat-screen TV and monitor failures. Most Chinese capacitors are made as counterfeits of reputable brands. Companies for whom the reliability of the products matters (e.g., Boeing and Airbus) have to work like heck to make sure that Chinese-made electrical components are excluded from their supply chain.

The proof is in the energy savings and what the grren people push for being legal/illegal. lighting accounts for about 4-6% of an average households energy use. Drying clothes is around 20%. So in other words, using a clothes line which requires 0 energy just 1/4th of the time. will asve more energy than replacing all light bulbs in existence. But you don't hear this being mandated, actually clotes lines are illegal in many liberal arers, (they look white trash)Why because appearance is more importain to libs than actually saving energy, and since GE would lose money, fewer driers sold/no profit margin on rope. Such policies are not done.

Well screw GE and Phillips. Home Depot is now selling an 800 lumen LED bulb for $13.00. It Is 9.5 watts and has a color temperature of 2700k. Manufactured by CREE. With a rated life of 25000 hours it actually makes sense for normal use. Never buy another CFL

I am liberal. I live in a liberal area. Clotheslines are not illegal. I hang my cloth diapers and clothes out to dry on the balcony. Not all of them, because the balcony is small and it would take days to do all my laundry, but as much as I can.

You'll run into clotheslines being banned most frequently in areas with HOAs (although my HOA allows it.) People are worried about property values, and that transcends political lines.

Amy: If you dry in the morning or later in the afternoon (before or after the hottest part of the day) you can avoid the crunchies.

I sometimes forget not every place has Denver's massive temperature swings, sometimes as much as 40 F. I went out for a walk the other day and it was hot in the sunshine, but I needed a jacket to sit under a tree.

Another thing to stop crunchiness is air motion. Things on a fence generally don't/can't move so they get stiff.

I would air dry my clothes (I do all heavy items like comforters and rugs) but 1) there isn't enough yard space with 6 of us and 2) it's a nightmare for allergies and 3) I kinda hate that crunchy air dried feel. So I just got an energy efficient dryer, and usually take things out damp and put them up. It's not humid here, they finish up quickly and don't mildew.

I HATE the light from CFL's. I haven't found a decent one yet. And I have to replace them just as often-a problem when they are turned on and off frequently. So I still use the oldies and will as long as possible.

None of the above matters, anyway, because unless I'm hooking live cats into my sockets, it's none of the government's business what I light with.

Thanks Joe J. Now I've got to get this visual out of my head of guys putting their things on a fence instead of using viagra. The topic is laundry, not things. :)

I was wondering how the figures would come out for the bulk 100W
bulbs vs. the Halogena. Here's what I came up with.

Rated life: 1250 for Halogena, 750 for standard 100W

Bulb cost for 1250 hours:
Halogena  $5.00 (per Amazon.com, called EcoVantage)
Bulk 100W   .57 (.34 * 1 2/3)
So far, you're almost 9 times cheaper.

Electricity for 1250 hours @ California average of .13/KWH
Halogena (72W) $11.70
Bulk 100W $16.25

Total Halogena:  16.70
Total bulk 100W: 16.82
fairly close to even

Also Ron, that is total light hours, CFLs when turned off and on regularly will fail long before they get half way into their 'life span'