Political Crusades – Thomas Sowell @ Townhall

Thomas Sowell has written an other excellent piece entitled Political Crusades at Townhall.  He discusses the safety crusaders on the CFLs, how they are solution to saving energy, the airlines, how our politicians forced inspections in name of safety, and drugs, how the FDA regulation delay getting live saving medications to those who need it.  Mr Sowell gets it right in his opening paragraphs that we need to think these things through:

Since crusaders seldom stop to weigh the cost of what they are advocating, it is especially important that the rest of us do so before we get swept along by rhetoric and emotions.

I found Mr Sowell discussion on the CFLs refreshing.  Mr Sowell details how there are some major drawbacks to CFLs.  Please note that this is not mentioned in the media.  The major drawback to this blub is mercury.  Yes, these CFLs contain mercury. Here is Mr Sowell discussion on CFLs:

With the CFL light bulb, the initial cost — several times that of a regular light bulb — is only the financial cost. A bigger problem is what to do if a CFL light bulb breaks.

You are supposed to shut off all air conditioners or heaters, to keep them from circulating mercury vapor from the broken CFL. You are supposed to open windows and doors to air out the place.

Pregnant women and small children are supposed to leave the area while the mess is being cleaned up by someone else, wearing a dust mask and gloves.

What if there is only a pregnant woman present, with or without small children? And what if there is no dust mask around?

CFL light bulbs are only the latest in a long line of “solutions” that can turn out to be worse than the problem it is supposed to solve. But the crusaders will keep selling their solutions as long as we keep buying them.

One thing Mr Sowell did not discuss in this article is ‘What do you with blub when it finally burns out?’ Evidentually, it going to happen something in the future. You cannot just throw it away like you do with a regular light blub. Why? Because of mercury. My solution would be to send it to Algore for disposal. He is suppose to be the expert on these things, right? No, he really is not.

It would better to wait for a safer replacement. I plan to stock up on the regular light blubs prior to the Congressional mandate to stop producing them in 2012. Or maybe the alternative will be available by then. Maybe LEDs?

Read the rest of Mr Sowell piece regarding the airline inspections and FDA regulations on drug approvals.

 

Tax Day – April 15, 2008

Well, today is tax day.  Hopefully, you have paid your contribution to the federal government known as taxes.  One of my favorite bloggers, Mary Katharine Ham, has a link for the Top Ten songs in preparing your tax returns.  Here they are:

1. “Taxman” – The Beatles
2. “Movin’ Out” – Billy Joel
3. “I’d Rather Be Rich” – Chicago
4. “Money Money Money” – ABBA
5. “Money” – Pink Floyd
6. “Low Budget” – The Kinks
7. “Sunny Afternoon” – The Kinks
8. “Success Story” – The Who
9. “Lap of Luxury” – Jethro Tull
10. “Carnival World” – Jimmy Buffett

Check out the article for explainations for these songs.

Ms Ham does share some other tax related stories. Be sure to check them out as well. Here are some interesting ones:

The good ol’ days: “Soon after, Congress enacted a variable income tax rate of between 1 and 7 percent for the highest earners.” (1913)

Cartoons for Tax Day. To try to cheer you up.

Reversing Course – Monday Grapevine @ FoxNews

On Monday’s Grapevine segment on Special Report with Brit Hume on FoxNews, Mr Hume shared more on the global warming topic. A change of course for one hurricane expert. Please read:

One of the most influential scientists behind the theory that global warming causes hurricane activity to intensify is reversing his position. Hurricane expert Kerry Emanuel of MIT says in the March issue of Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society that hurricane frequency and intensity may not substantially rise over the next two centuries.

His new method of simulating weather patterns as computer models shows that there will be in fact an overall drop in the number of hurricanes. During the intense 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons, Emanuel was one of the first to blame global warming and even said that active storm seasons will become the norm.

But now Emanuel is changing his mind saying, “The results surprised me. The take home message is that we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Well, at least one person now realizes that the climate change debate must continue. We still have a lot to do in researching and studying our climate.