Industry, not environmentalists, killed traditional bulbs

BY TIMOTHY P. CARNEY , Washington examiner  JANUARY 1, 2014 

Say goodbye to the regular light bulb this New Year.  

(Can you say "can't compete with China, so GE and others lined the pockets of Bush and Obama?"

For more than a century, the traditional incandescent bulb was the symbol of American innovation. Starting Jan. 1, the famous bulb is illegal to manufacture in the U.S., and it has become a fitting symbol for the collusion of big business and big government.

The 2007 Energy Bill, a stew of regulations and subsidies, set mandatory efficiency standards for most light bulbs. Any bulbs that couldn't produce a given brightness at the specified energy input would be illegal. That meant the 25-cent bulbs most Americans used in nearly every socket of their home would be outlawed.

People often assume green regulations like this represent the triumph of environmental activists trying to save the plant. That’s rarely the case, and it wasn't here. Light bulb manufacturers whole-heartedly supported the efficiency standards. General Electric, Sylvania and Philips — the three companies that dominated the bulb industry — all backed the 2007 rule, while opposing proposals to explicitly outlaw incandescent technology (thus leaving the door open for high-efficiency incandescents).

This wasn't a case of an industry getting on board with an inevitable regulation in order to tweak it. The lighting industry was the main reason the legislation was moving. As the New York Times reported in 2011, “Philips formed a coalition with environmental groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council to push for higher standards.”

Please read more!

Lou Calling: Reality Check!

July 23, 2011

In response to particularlly vocal liberal's post, the following article was submitted to the Sun Journal on July 17th. As is usual with her and her progressive liberal minions, their only defense for our current conditions is 'blame Bush'.That may have worked in 2008 but will fail in 2012. More to the point, if after more then two and a half years in office and control of the Senate, why would anyone reelect Obama and his fellow socialists on Congress?


Sun Journal Letter to the Editor

Reality check….

A recent letter to the Sun Journal from Jane Gaydos asked the question,

“surely, there are other writers who don’t blame Obama for the current mess in DC.”

For the four years, prior to the 2010 elections, the democrats controlled congressional spending. Obama has had over two years to bring spending under control but he has been too busy with other endeavors.

In a recent news clip, while making reference to his ‘stimulus shovel ready’ projects, he quipped, “some of those shovel ready programs weren’t er..(pause and laughter) shovel ready”.

Seated to his left was GE, CEO, Jeffrey Immelt (GE IS A MAJOR DONOR TO DEMOCRATS) who sits on the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, shared in the ‘chuckle’. I wonder how many Americans, out of work, would find this funny.

For the record, Immelt has sent a majority of his production business to China.

There is a simple test we can all take in the privacy of our homes. Here is the first question: ‘If George Bush was running for reelection in 2012 and the cost of gas was $3.65 per gallon, if unemployment was at a national level of 9.2% and he filled his cabinet with a bunch of Socialists, what would liberal progressives do’? My guess is they’d blame Bush for the current conditions and I would have to agree.

There is no second question because there are some who can’t get past the first; that is, they still blame Bush. When will this Country wake up and place the condition in this Country on the current occupant of the Oval Office and his puppets in the Senate.

Louis Call, CCTA Member
New Bern, NC

Guess Which Company Paid $0 in Taxes (on $14.2 Billion in Profits)? Hint: Its CEO Works for Obama

Half of all Americans don’t pay federal taxes on their income. And neither, apparently, does General Electric, the multi-national company that reaped $14.2 billion in profits last year. Though G.E. is the largest corporation in the U.S., it did not have to pay a dime in U.S. taxes, according to the New York Times. In fact, the company claimed $3.2 billion in tax benefits.


READ MORE ON THE BLAZE:  http://www.theblaze.com/stories/guess-which-company-paid-0-in-taxes-on-14-2-billion-in-profits-hint-its-ceo-works-for-obama/

Townhall Columnist:

Tim Carney:  Government Electric

Editor’s Note: Considering President Obama’s recent decision to tap GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt to head a new Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, we thought our readers might be interested to read a piece on General Electric’s cozy relationship with the Obama White House from the October 2009 issue of Townhall Magazine. To order Townhall Magazine, click here.



Barack Obama rose to office promising to take on the “special interests.” But there may be no “special interest” quite as special and quite as well connected as General Electric.

The company spends more on lobbying than any other corporation. GE’s CEO has a weekly phone call with a top economic policy official in Obama’s White House. GE, of course, also owns three television stations, including one -- MSNBC -- that has been famously supportive of Barack Obama.


READ THE ARTICLE:  http://townhall.com/columnists/TimCarney/2011/01/25/government_electric

CAN YOU SAY POLITICAL PAYBACK?

Obama Taps GE Chief to Head Job Board

President Obama is seeking to put a big business stamp of approval on his efforts to generate American jobs as he picks the head of General Electric to lead a new economic recovery board. While in Schenectady, New York, Friday, Obama will name Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO and Chairman of General Electric, as chair of the new ‘President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness’.

Immelt is a familiar face to an administration seeking to put more branches on its business tree. The White House has been struggling with a reputation among Republicans and business leaders alike of favoring big government at the expense of private enterprise.


The announcement is perhaps an attempt to counter that image and serves up a big name for what will become an effort to “promote growth by investing in American business to encourage hiring, to educate and train our workers to compete globally, and to attract the best jobs and businesses to the United States,” said a White House press release.

The council will be created by executive order and will replace the previous iteration: the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, or PERAB. Obama is allowing that board’s two-year mandate to expire on February 6, as scheduled. PERAB’s future was uncertain after its public face and leader, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, announced he would step down in recent days. Volcker’s office tells Fox News that it was time for him to move on and that Volcker would be willing to counsel the president in the future, should he ask.

In a statement issued late Thursday night by the White House, Obama previewed his new, refined focus on jobs. “As we enter a new phase in our recovery, I have asked the new Council to focus its work on finding new ways to encourage the private sector to hire and invest in American competitiveness,” he said.


However, the theme is not new. The White House has long leaned on the private sector to boost hiring, but wary business owners have held back, concerned about still uncertain economic conditions.

As the president warms up his engines for 2012, he’s pinning his hopes on an improved job market. Immelt, says Obama, is just the man for the task; “Jeff Immelt’s experience at GE and his understanding of the vital role the private sector plays in creating jobs and making America competitive makes him up to the challenge of leading this new Council.”

(Obama raised more moneyfrom GE in the 2008 Election than had and previous politician. Look at any major Obama policy initiative—healthcare reform, climat-change regulation, embryoni stem-cell research, infrastructure stimulus, electrical transmission smart-grids—and you’ll find GE has set up shop, angling for a way to pocket government handouts, gain business through mandates, or proftit from government regulation. In addition, GE owns the television networks, NBC, CNBC and MSNBC. It is not a stretch to call GE the for-rpofit arm of the Obama administation! READ “Obamanomics” by Timothy P. Carney. See data compiled from the Center for Responsive Politics and OpenSecrets.org.)

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/01/21/ges-immelt-head-obama-economic-panel/?utm_campaign=feed%253a+foxnews%252fpolitics+%2528internal+-+politics+-+text%2529&utm_content=google+feedfetcher&utm_medium=feed&utm_source=feedburner