How many legislators does it take...
...to screw in a light bulb, or ban one anyway.
I'm writing a short story for tomorrow's paper about House Bill 838, which would "prohibit the sale of general service incandescent lamps in the state."
An "incandescent lamp" is a light bulb to you and me. Specifically, the filament-filled light bulb that we pretty much all grew up with.
The idea is that incandescent bulbs burn a lot of excess electricity and that compact fluorescents can do the same job for less power.
The bill is sponsored by Greensboro Rep. Pricey Harrison, a Democrat.
For you boring folks who want facts and figures:
- Australia has taken similar steps, and states like California and Connecticut are pondering similar moves.
- The concept is being pushed by Philips Electronics, among others. It would be fair to note that Phillips makes energy efficient bulbs.
- Click here for more than you wanted to know about how incandescent bulbs work.
- Click here to have GE explain how a compact fluorescent bulb works.
But what I really want to know is, what's the punch line to my headline?
How many legislators does it take to screw in a light bulb? My stabs, both more apropos under the circa 2005 campaign finance system:
- 120 House members: One to write legislation proposing that a light bulb be changed, 15 to argue the point in committee, 10 members of the opposition party to argue that the light bulb doesn't need to be changed and that they've been legislating in the dark for years anyway, 93 more to create the deadlock and one more to slip the changing of a light bulb into the budget where no one will notice it was done until someone actually comes by and changes the darned thing.
- None, they'll just get a lobbyist to do it for them.
Help out the sleep deprived and offer your punch lines below.
Back to serious business tomorrow.
Comments (4)
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The headline should read:
How many lawmakers does it take to unscrew a lightbulb?
Posted on March 20, 2007 6:34 AM
How ungrateful!! After all the trouble I went through...
Posted on March 20, 2007 9:11 AM
This is NOT what this country was founded on. We need to be quite concerned about legislation such as this. What next? Banning TVs? Oh, yea, I forgot, we're all going to be FORCED to buy new TV's in a couple of years.
Let me ask this question? Couldnt we save a lot of money by banning mommies and daddies from driving their kids to school and picking them up each day? Isnt there a BUS that we all pay taxes for, that has to run the entire route (at least in the morning) because they dont know if these kids will be driven to school or not? How many of these parents are driving opposite of the direction they need to be going to work? I see it from my window each morning, they all leave with one (maybe two) kids and return 25 minutes later almost in a parade! You'd think they'd shove several kids into a minivan and SUV but no - they use ONE gas-guzzler.
These are the same folks who would support such a ban too I bet. If I were a betting person, I'd put a lot of cash down on the side that says we could MEET and EXCEED the Presidents fuel reduction AND reduce CO-2 emmissions all in one shot, if we passed LEGISLATION into law that forced parents to send their kids to the bus-stop each morning like we all used to do years ago ourselves. Wait... whats that? You dont want to be forced to do anything... huh? Oh, ok. Now you understand.
Posted on March 22, 2007 8:08 PM
This would be one heck of a setback toward getting the Lighted Christmas Ball designated as the Official State Light to say nothing of how dismal NC would look (in November and December) with little flourescent lights hanging all over the place...
Posted on March 28, 2007 10:04 AM