Archive for the ‘Ridiculous Regulations’ Category

Lawmakers and representatives from animal agriculture joined forces to educate nearly 100 people about the deliberate emphasis farmers and ranchers place on caring for the health and well-being of their animals. During a briefing hosted by Congressmen Adrian Smith (R-Neb.) and Joe Courtney (D-Conn.), congressional staff learned about multiple voluntary, producer-led animal care programs and about the concerns farmers and ranchers have with legislation introduced in the House that would mandate strict on-farm production practices.

Congressman Smith said science must be the driving force behind public policy decisions. He said farmers and ranchers are dedicated to caring for the health and well-being of their animals.
“Ensuring public policy is driven by sound science is critical to the continued success of agriculture, and in turn, the long term safety and security of our nation’s food supply. The landscape of American agriculture continues to evolve, but the concern and care farmers and ranchers show their livestock remains unchanged,” Rep. Smith said. “Improved housing, updated handling practices and modernized health and nutrition products are the result of generations of investment and research into raising high quality animals. Every day, our producers demonstrate their dedication to providing the highest quality, safest and most affordable products in the world.”
NCBA President J.D. Alexander joined Amon Baer, an egg farmer from Minnesota; Betsy Flores, director of regulatory affairs for the National Milk Producers Federation; and Bill Luckey, a hog producer from Nebraska on a panel to explain how they care for their livestock and poultry. Each speaker raised serious concern with H.R. 3798, legislation that would codify an agreement between the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and the United Egg Producers (UEP) to seek federally mandated production practices for the egg industry. Alexander, who is a Nebraska beef producer, said a one-size-fits all approach to animal agriculture won’t work.
“No two farms or ranches are the same. What works for my neighbor may not work for me because all farmers and ranchers have to adapt to meet the needs of their animals, to comply with regulations and, ultimately, to satisfy consumer demand,” Alexander said. “My biggest concern with H.R. 3798 is that outside groups with no knowledge of the industry will be dictating my livelihood and potentially compromising the welfare of my livestock. This legislation creates a slippery slope. Today, it’s egg farmers but tomorrow it could be any other segment of animal agriculture and we’re not going to let that happen.”
Alexander said the groups are not alone in their opposition to mandated, prescriptive production practices. He said the World Organization of Animal Health (OIE) has acknowledged mandated animal production practices, such as those proposed H.R. 3798, are not in the best interest of promoting true animal welfare because they cannot easily be adapted or updated for different farming models. A far better approach, according to Alexander, is voluntary, producer-led programs like the beef industry’s Beef Quality Assurance (BQA) program.
“BQA works and has been successful because it was created by beef producers working with veterinarians and other animal health and well-being experts to develop guidelines based on science. Unlike strict legislative mandates that would require an act of Congress to update, BQA standards are updated regularly to reflect the latest science,” Alexander said. “No one cares more about the health and well-being of animals than the men and women who work each day raising them. Together, we will work to stop this ill-conceived attempt to take animal care decisions out of the hands of farmers and ranchers and veterinarians.”
The briefing was hosted a coalition of agricultural organizations working to stop H.R. 3798. The coalition includes NCBA; the Egg Farmers of America; the National Pork Producers Council; the National Milk Producers Federation; the American Sheep Industry; and the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, following a recent anti-piracy legislative debacle with SOPA and PIPA, will lead his second effort of 2012 to push Internet-regulating legislation, this time in the form of a new cybersecurity bill. The expected bill is the latest attempt by the Democrats to broadly expand the authority of executive branch agencies over the Internet.

Details about the bill remain shrouded in secrecy. Clues available to the public suggest that the bill might be stronger than President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity proposal, which was released in May 2011. Reid said that he would bring the bill — expected to come out of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, chaired by Connecticut independent Sen. Joe Lieberman — to the floor during the first Senate work period of 2012.

A classified meeting behind closed doors in October 2011 between key Senate committee leaders with jurisdiction over cybersecurity and White House officials, took place at the request of the Obama administration. Lieberman, in an interview with The Hill in October, said that past Senate cybersecurity bills were considerably stronger than the White House proposal.

The White House proposal recommended that the Department of Homeland Security be given broad regulatory authority for cybersecurity matters over civilian networks. The White House proposal also recommends that the DHS program be “developed in consultation with privacy and civil liberties experts and with the approval of the Attorney General.”

A recent bill in the House – the Promoting and Enhancing Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Effectiveness Act of 2011 or PrECISE Act — also empowers DHS in the event of a cyberattack, but the bill has been criticized by Reid as not giving the agency enough power. PrECISE focuses on strengthening the information sharing component between private corporations and DHS by allowing a limited amount of information to be shared between the two.

Reid favors an approach that would expand DHS authority beyond currently regulated “critical infrastructure,” such as utilities and financial institutions, to also include Internet service providers and private networks. (RELATED: Full coverage of the tech industry)

“Lieberman said the turf war over which agency should be in charge of implementing the government’s cybersecurity plan has been largely resolved and there is a ‘broad consensus’ that DHS is best suited to the task, with technical and intelligence support from the military and National Security Agency,” reported The Hill.

Paul Rosenzweig, a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation, recently concluded that the NSA “does it better than DHS” when it comes to cybersecurity. Rosenzweig, who crafted policy inside of DHS, noted that the preference should be for a civilian agency to oversee a predominately civilian network, but it lacks the manpower to handle that responsibility. DHS recently announced a decision to hire 1,000 new cyber experts.

“But until these new experts are on board (and finding and hiring that many will be a long process), civilian defenses will have to rely on existing expertise that lies predominantly with NSA,” said Rosenzweig.

The NSA, at present, already works closely with financial institutions to battle hackers.

Reid sent a letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in November, which urged the need to act for fear of a major cyber attack, regardless of whether legislative working groups that have been working on this issue come to an agreement. McConnell replied with a letter of his own, advising Reid to introduce legislation that would have bipartisan support.

“Everyone wants to improve cybersecurity, but, if we’ve learned nothing else from previous legislation affecting the Internet, we know that an imposition of an overly broad regulatory regime of the Internet ecosystem will not sit well with the American people,” a Senate aide told The Daily Caller.

A Fine for Not Using a Biofuel That Doesn’t Exist

By MATTHEW L. WALD

When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law.

But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist.

In 2012, the oil companies expect to pay even higher penalties for failing to blend in the fuel, which is made from wood chips or the inedible parts of plants like corncobs. Refiners were required to blend 6.6 million gallons into gasoline and diesel in 2011 and face a quota of 8.65 million gallons this year.

“It belies logic,” Charles T. Drevna, the president of theNational Petrochemicals and Refiners Association, said of the 2011 quota. And raising the quota for 2012 when there is no production makes even less sense, he said.

Penalizing the fuel suppliers demonstrates what happens when the federal government really, really wants something that technology is not ready to provide. In fact, while it may seem harsh that the Environmental Protection Agency is penalizing them for failing to do the impossible, the agency is being lenient by the standards of the law, the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act.

The law, aimed at reducing the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, its reliance on oil imported from hostile places and the export of dollars to pay for it, includes provisions to increase the efficiency of vehicles as well as incorporate renewable energy sources into gasoline and diesel.

It requires the use of three alternative fuels: car and truck fuel made from cellulose, diesel fuel made from biomass and fuel made from biological materials but with a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gases. Only the cellulosic fuel is commercially unavailable. As for meeting the quotas in the other categories, the refiners will not close their books until February and are not sure what will happen.

The goal set by the law for vehicle fuel from cellulose was 250 million gallons for 2011 and 500 million gallons for 2012. (These are small numbers relative to the American fuel market; the E.P.A. estimates that gasoline sales in 2012 will amount to about 135 billion gallons, and highway diesel, about 51 billion gallons.)

Even advocates of renewable fuel acknowledge that the refiners are at least partly correct in complaining about the penalties.

“From a taxpayer/consumer standpoint, it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense that we would require blenders to pay fines or fees or whatever for stuff that literally isn’t available,” said Dennis V. McGinn, a retired vice admiral who serves on the American Council on Renewable Energy.

The standards for cellulosic fuel are part of an overall goal of having 36 billion gallons ofbiofuels incorporated annually by 2022. But substantial technical progress would be needed to meet that — and lately it has been hard to come by.

Michael J. McAdams, executive director of the Advanced Biofuels Association, said the state of the technology for turning biological material like wood chips or nonfood plants straight into hydrocarbons — instead of relying on conversion by nature over millions of years, which is how crude oil originates — was advancing but was not yet ready for commercial introduction.

Of the technologies that are being tried out, he added, “There are some that are closer to the beaker and some that are closer to the barrel.”

The Texas renewable fuels company KiOR, for example, has broken ground on a plant in Columbus, Miss., that plans to start turning Southern yellow pine chips into gasoline and diesel components in the fourth quarter of 2012 at an annual rate of 11 million gallons, although  Matthew Hargarten, a spokesman, said the quantity to be produced this year might be adjusted.

Mr. McGinn of the council on renewable energy, defends the overall energy statute. Even if the standards for 2011 and 2012 are not met, he said, “I am absolutely convinced from a national security perspective and an economic perspective that the renewable fuel standard, writ large, is the right thing to do.” With oil insecurity and climate changerelated to greenhouse gas emissions as worrisome as ever, advocates say, there is strong reason to press forward.

The oil industry does not agree.

Mr. Drevna of the refiners association argued that in contrast to 2007, when Congress passed the law, “all of a sudden we’re starting to find tremendous resources of our own, oil and natural gas, here in the United States, because of fracking,” referring to a drilling process that involves injecting chemicals and water into underground rock to release gas and oil.

What is more, the industry expects the 1,700-mile Keystone Pipeline, which would run from oil sands deposits in Canada to the Gulf Coast, to provide more fuel for refineries, he said.

But Cathy Milbourn, an E.P.A. spokeswoman, said that her agency still believed that the 8.65-million-gallon quota for cellulosic ethanol for 2012 was “reasonably attainable.” By setting a quota, she added, “we avoid a situation where real cellulosic biofuel production exceeds the mandated volume,” which would weaken demand.

The underlying problem is that Congress legislated changes that laboratories and factories have not succeeded in producing. This is not for want of trying, and efforts continue.

One possible early source is the energy company Poet, a large producer of ethanol from corn kernels. The company is doing early work now on a site in Emmetsburg, Iowa, that is supposed to produce up to 25 million gallons a year of fuel alcohol beginning in 2013 from corn cobs.

And Mascoma, a company partly owned by General Motors, announced last month that it would get up to $80 million from the Energy Department to help build a plant in Kinross, Mich., that is supposed to make fuel alcohol from wood waste. Valero Energy, the oil company, and the State of Michigan are also providing funds.

Yet other cellulosic fuel efforts have faltered. A year ago, after it was offered more than $150 million in government grants, Range Fuels closed a commercial factory in Soperton, Ga., where pine chips were to be turned into fuel alcohols, because it ran into technological problems.

Airlines have had marginally more success with renewable fuels, but mostly because they have been willing to pay huge sums for sample quantities. Alaska Airlines said recently it had paid $17 a gallon. Lufthansa plans to fly a Boeing 747 from Frankfurt to Dulles International Airport near Washington using 40 tons of a biofuel mix.

Here’s a Way to Eliminate the Regulators and Lawyers, and Build Community At the Same Time: Organize and Declare “Food Sovereignty,” Like Sedgwick, Maine

by David E. Gumpert
The Complete Patient

Maybe the citizens of tiny Sedgwick on the Maine coast were listening to the calls of Dave Milano, Ken Conrad, and others for more trust and community, and less rigid one-size-fits-all food regulation.

On Friday evening, they became perhaps the first locale in the country to pass a “Food Sovereignty” law. It’s the proposed ordinance I first described last fall, when I introduced the “Five Musketeers”, a group of farmers and consumers intent on pushing back against overly aggressive agriculture regulators. The regulators were interfering with farmers who, for example, took chickens to a neighbor for slaughtering, or who sold raw milk directly to consumers.

The proposed ordinance was one of 78 being considered at the Sedgwick town meeting, that New England institution that has stood the test of time, allowing all of a town’s citizens to vote yea or nay on proposals to spend their tax money and, in this case, enact potentially far-reaching laws with national implications. They’ve been holding these meetings in the Sedgwick town hall (pictured above) since 1794. At Friday’s meeting, about 120 citizens raised their hands in unanimous approval of the ordinance.

Citing America’s Declaration of Independence and the Maine Constitution, the ordinance proposed that “Sedgwick citizens possess the right to produce, process, sell, purchase, and consume local foods of their choosing.” These would include raw milk and other dairy products and locally slaughtered meats, among other items.

This isn’t just a declaration of preference. The proposed warrant added, “It shall be unlawful for any law or regulation adopted by the state or federal government to interfere with the rights recognized by this Ordinance.” In other words, no state licensing requirements prohibiting certain farms from selling dairy products or producing their own chickens for sale to other citizens in the town.

What about potential legal liability and state or federal inspections? It’s all up to the seller and buyer to negotiate. “Patrons purchasing food for home consumption may enter into private agreements with those producers or processors of local foods to waive any liability for the consumption of that food. Producers or processors of local foods shall be exempt from licensure and inspection requirements for that food as long as those agreements are in effect.” Imagine that–buyer and seller can agree to cut out the lawyers. That’s almost un-American, isn’t it?

This from a press release put out after the vote by supporters:

“Local farmer Bob St.Peter noted the importance of this ordinance for beginning farmers and cottage producers. ‘This ordinance creates favorable conditions for beginning farmers and cottage-scale food processors to try out new products, and to make the most of each season’s bounty,’ said St.Peter. ‘My family is already working on some ideas we can do from home to help pay the bills and get our farm going.’

“Mia Strong, Sedgwick resident and local farm patron, was overwhelmed by the support of her town. ‘Tears of joy welled in my eyes as my town voted to adopt this ordinance,’ said Strong. ‘I am so proud of my community. They made a stand for local food and our fundamental rights as citizens to choose that food.’”

The ordinance comes up for a vote in three other Maine towns upcoming–Penobscott, Brooksville, and Blue Hill.

(Thanks to Deborah Evans, a Sedgwick area farmer, for providing information for this post, and the photo above.)

Read the full article here: http://www.thecompletepatient.com/journal/2011/3/7/heres-a-way-to-eliminate-the-regulators-and-lawyers-and-buil.html

By Sheryl Devereaux

What if Houston businesses were forced to hire employees without a high school diploma before candidates who have one, for a job that historically required it?  It may sound like a ridiculous thought.   But as of November 17, 2011 (not December as some places have reported), all Houston businesses, along with the rest of the nation, are under new scrutiny by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission saying businesses would need to change the “wording” of their hiring requirement so they did not discriminate against the disabled who dropped out of  high school.

The letter states that there must be a “business need” and that a diploma is required only if it is specifically needed for the fundamental duties of the job. Putting aside for a minute the obvious concern that the federal government decides what all that means, there have been other significant arguments made against the policy. One is simply that a diploma is designed to automatically weed the field down,which the EEOC letter specifically prohibits.  Oddly, this is a strategy used universally across all sectors of society, including the  federal government, which weeds out candidates in the reverse direction by specifically targeting certain ethnicity, races and even genders.

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines now stipulate employers must consider high school dropouts under a number of vaguely defined rules that stand the threaten job growth heavyweights such as Houston out of fear of govt. sanctions.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, some 40,000 new laws take effect across the 50 States effective January 1, 2012.  California leads the nation in passing arguably the most absurd of these laws. The Assembly, State Senate and Governor Jerry Brown defy comprehension.

Among the thousands of California laws passed in 2011, California leads the pack of States with its composite head-in-the-toilet mentality. Here are a few of the inane laws which specifically address lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Californians. Disabled are also included in this group, though I am not sure why those who are physically challenged are lumped into a sexual classification.

• Effective January 1, there will be new curricula in our schools. K-12 children will learn about all the positive accomplishments
  • contributed by lesbians, homosexuals, bisexual, transgender, and disabled individuals in Social Science classes up and down the State.  The law bans teaching materials that reflect poorly on the above noted individuals. Never mind, teaching the truth; it is better to inculcate students with political dogma.  What ever happened to teaching the Revolutionary, Civil, and World Wars I and II?
  • California’s growing food stamp program will renamed Cal-Fresh. I am not certain if a new bureaucracy will be created adding to the list of 571 California State agencies and commissions many of which are duplicative.
  • • Beer with added caffeine will be banded from California stores, effective the New Year.
    • A minor who is 12 years of age will able to consent to medical care related to a sexually transmitted disease. No parental consent and knowledge required. Let’s remove the parents from the picture. The State will have ultimate jurisdiction over the child’s sexual behavior.
    • California continues to push the envelope and welcomes illegal aliens to the Golden State. Effective January 1, unlicensed and uninsured drivers who are snagged in sobriety check points will no longer have their vehicles impounded. Last year, thousands of illegally licensed drivers who also happen to be illegal aliens, lost their vehicles to impound. Law enforcement will be prohibited from impounding vehicles of drivers who operate vehicles without a license, if that is their only offense. The double standard is alive and well in California.
    • While Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Georgia will implement the highly successful E-Verify program to ascertain one’s social security number to verify employment eligibility, California bucks the tide, thumbs its nose at the law, and, effective January 1, prohibits private employers in the State from utilizing the E-Verify system. This side stepping of the law impacts California workers who follow the rules and is a major reason the State’s unemployment rate is the one of the highest in the nation, exceeding 12%.
    • Minors are not permitted to use tanning booths without parents’ permission. Interestingly, a minor as young as 12 in California can have an abortion without knowledge or consent of the parent but the child needs a note from the parent to use a tanning booth. Doesn’t it make you ponder who sits up at night and makes these laws? Do these lawmakers have children?

    I am curious to know, especially from the Left side of the aisle how progressives feel about these new laws.

    In the meantime, California lawmakers and Governor Jerry Brown are looking to close yet another $2 billion gap in the budget by raising the sales tax again to near 10%, and levying yet additional taxes on California millionaires with out a thought of making the slightest effort to cut spending. Things that make you go Hmmm.

    California is an amazing State. Amazingly stupid! It may indeed be too late to save her.

By DINA CAPPIELLO

Congressional negotiators struck a deal Thursday that overturns the new rules that were to have banned sales of traditional incandescent light bulbs beginning next year.

That agreement is tucked inside the massive 1,200-page spending bill that funds the government through the rest of this fiscal year, and which both houses of Congress will vote on Friday. Mr. Obama is expected to sign the bill, which heads off a looming government shutdown.

Congressional Republicans dropped almost all of the policy restrictions they tried to attach to the bill, but won inclusion of the light bulb provision, which prevents the Obama administration from carrying through a 2007 law that would have set energy efficiency standards that effectively made the traditional light bulb obsolete.

Stopping the bulb ban was a chief GOP priority coming into this year, with all of the candidates seeking to become chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee saying they would push through a repeal. That bill cleared the House but Democrats blocked its consideration in theSenate.

House Republicans then insisted on adding a provision into the year-end spending bill, and it was one of the last major sticking-points in the negotiations.

The spending bill doesn’t actually amend the 2007 law, but does prohibit the administration from spending any money to carry out the light bulb standards — which amounts to at least a temporary reprieve.

The spending bill is full of similar provisions that are included year after year to restrict what administrations can do.

At $915 billion in discretionary spending, the bill amounts to $750.6 million per page, and funds the vast majority of government operations, from defense to homeland security to federal parks. Since it is a must-pass bill, it also becomes a major battleground for policy fights such as the light bulbs.

Among the other policy riders attached to the bill is a requirement that all new federal employees be run through E-Verify, the voluntary government system for checking to see if employees are authorized to work in the U.S.; restrictions on the administration transferring suspected terrorist detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the U.S.; and a ban on the District of Columbia using government money to pay for abortions.

The GOP tried but failed to attach restrictions on the Obama administration’s nuclear waste policy, its international family planning policy and major restrictions on the president’s environmental agenda. Mr. Obama and Democrats also forced Republicans to remove provisions that would have prevented him from requiring government contractors to disclose their political contributions — though they cannot be required to disclose them as part of an application for a loan or grant.

“These contentious policy riders had no place in our annual appropriations bills, and it was encouraging that we were able to remove nearly all of them from the final version of this bill,” said Rep. Norm Dicks, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.

Say what you will about Obama Adminis­tration regulators, their problem has rarely been a failure to regulate. Which makes the abdication of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission especially nota­ble—and dangerous for the U.S. power supply.

 

Last week FERC convened a conference on the wave of new Environmental Protection Agency rules that are designed to force dozens of coal-fired power plants to shut down. The meeting barely fulfilled the commission’s legal obligations, but despite warnings from expert after expert, including some of its own, the FERC Commis­sioners refuse to do anything about this loom­ing threat to electric reliability.

 

The latest body to sound the EPA alarm is the North American Electric Reliability Corpo­ration (NERC), which last Tuesday released its exhaustive annual 10-year projections. “Envi­ronmental regulations are shown to be the number one risk to reliability over the next one to five years/’ the report explains.

 

NERC’s forecasts are the gold standard for the U.S. power system because they are built from the bottom up, starting with finely grained data from individual plants. NERC has been do­ing this work since 1967, and since 2005 it has operated under the FERC umbrella as an “elec­tric reliability organization” similar to Finra, the securities regulator with quasi-governmental duties.

 

The threat is that the EPA is triggering what NERC calls “an unprecedented resource-mix change,” with utilities switching to natural gas from coal. For the first time in U.S. history, net coal capacity is in decline. On top of the 38 giga-watts of generation that is already being run be­low normal levels or slated for early retirement, NERC predicts another 36 to 59 gigawatts will come offline by 2018, depending on the “scope and timing” of EPA demands. That could mean nearly a quarter of all coal-fired capacity.

 

According to the report, “the nation’s power grid will be stressed in ways never before expe­rienced” and reliability depends on building new power plants to cover the losses. But the electric industry has only three years to com­ply under one EPA regulation known as the utility rule that is meant to target mercury and is due to be finalized soon, while many other destructive rules are in the works.

 

Replacing power is not like replacing a lost cellphone. There are bottlenecks in permitting, engineering, financing and building a new plant and then tying it to the electricity net­work. Over this same three-year window, NERC estimates that between* 576 and 677 plants will need to be tempo­rarily shut down to install retrofits like scrubbers or baghouses.

 

All of this has been obvious to anyone paying attention. In its draft utility rule the EPA it­self warned that “sources integral to reliable op­eration” may be forced to shut down, before it sanitized these concessions from the final pro­posal. Twenty-seven states say their regional re­liability is at risk, concerns echoed by FBR Capi­tal, Credit Suisse, Fitch, Bernstein Research and several grid operators. FERC’s own Office of Electric Reliability produced an alarming study, before its work was disowned by Chairman Jon Wellinghoff, as we reported in the September 26 editorial “Inside the EPA.”

 

Southern Co., the utility that covers states from Mississippi to Georgia, says the EPA’s timeline can’t be met “at any cost” and that in its region “reliability cannot be maintained without load shedding”—that is, rationing power to large industrial consumers. American Electric Power, which operates in 11 Midwest states, says that option may be a “last resort” as well. This is the kind of political overhang that harms economic growth.

 

Keep in mind that the EPA estimates that the benefits to society from the mercury reduc­tions in the utility rule max out at $6.1 million, total, while imposing $11 billion in compliance costs annually. That is a crazy tradeoff even if it didn’t endanger the electric grid.

 

The best option would be to kill the utility rule and put the EPA on probation, but second best is a longer phase-in to give utilities more time to comply. FERC could do some practical good by formally issuing a “215 finding” that the EPA utility rule endangers reliability. Or-the White House budget and regulatory office could require the EPA to repropose the rule with more flexibility. Or President Obama could declare that the rule endangers national security. Or Congress could block the rule, though that would take more fortitude than Senate Democrats have shown so far.

 

None of this is likely to happen because it would interfere with the larger Administration priority to kill as much coal power as rapidly as possible to serve the global warming agenda. But when the brownouts and cost-spikes occur, don’t blame the utilities. Blame their regulator.

 

Wall Street Journal 12-06-2011

 

Many of the freedoms we enjoy here in the U.S. are quickly eroding as the nation transforms from the land of the free into the land of the enslaved, but what I’m about to share with you takes the assault on our freedoms to a whole new level. You may not be aware of this, but many Western states, including Utah, Washington and Colorado, have long outlawed individuals from collecting rainwater on their own properties because, according to officials, that rain belongs to someone else.

As bizarre as it sounds, laws restricting property owners from “diverting” water that falls on their own homes and land have been on the books for quite some time in many Western states. Only recently, as droughts and renewed interest in water conservation methods have become more common, have individuals and business owners started butting heads with law enforcement over the practice of collecting rainwater for personal use.

Check out this YouTube video of a news report out of Salt Lake City, Utah, about the issue. It’s illegal in Utah to divert rainwater without a valid water right, and Mark Miller of Mark Miller Toyota, found this out the hard way.

After constructing a large rainwater collection system at his new dealership to use for washing new cars, Miller found out that the project was actually an “unlawful diversion of rainwater.” Even though it makes logical conservation sense to collect rainwater for this type of use since rain is scarce in Utah, it’s still considered a violation of water rights which apparently belong exclusively to Utah’s various government bodies.

“Utah’s the second driest state in the nation. Our laws probably ought to catch up with that,” explained Miller in response to the state’s ridiculous rainwater collection ban.

Salt Lake City officials worked out a compromise with Miller and are now permitting him to use “their” rainwater, but the fact that individuals like Miller don’t actually own the rainwater that falls on their property is a true indicator of what little freedom we actually have here in the U.S. (Access to the rainwater that falls on your own property seems to be a basic right, wouldn’t you agree?)

Outlawing rainwater collection in other states

Utah isn’t the only state with rainwater collection bans, either. Colorado and Washington also have rainwater collection restrictions that limit the free use of rainwater, but these restrictions vary among different areas of the states and legislators have passed some laws to help ease the restrictions.

In Colorado, two new laws were recently passed that exempt certain small-scale rainwater collection systems, like the kind people might install on their homes, from collection restrictions.

Prior to the passage of these laws, Douglas County, Colorado, conducted a study on how rainwater collection affects aquifer and groundwater supplies. The study revealed that letting people collect rainwater on their properties actually reduces demand from water facilities and improves conservation.

Personally, I don’t think a study was even necessary to come to this obvious conclusion. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that using rainwater instead of tap water is a smart and useful way to conserve this valuable resource, especially in areas like the West where drought is a major concern.

Additionally, the study revealed that only about three percent of Douglas County’s precipitation ended up in the streams and rivers that are supposedly being robbed from by rainwater collectors. The other 97 percent either evaporated or seeped into the ground to be used by plants.

This hints at why bureaucrats can’t really use the argument that collecting rainwater prevents that water from getting to where it was intended to go. So little of it actually makes it to the final destination that virtually every household could collect many rain barrels worth of rainwater and it would have practically no effect on the amount that ends up in streams and rivers.

It’s all about control, really

As long as people remain unaware and uninformed about important issues, the government will continue to chip away at the freedoms we enjoy. The only reason these water restrictions are finally starting to change for the better is because people started to notice and they worked to do something to reverse the law.

Even though these laws restricting water collection have been on the books for more than 100 years in some cases, they’re slowly being reversed thanks to efforts by citizens who have decided that enough is enough.

Because if we can’t even freely collect the rain that falls all around us, then what, exactly, can we freely do? The rainwater issue highlights a serious overall problem in America today: diminishing freedom and increased government control.

Today, we’ve basically been reprogrammed to think that we need permission from the government to exercise our inalienable rights, when in fact the government is supposed to derive its power from us. The American Republic was designed so that government would serve the People to protect and uphold freedom and liberty. But increasingly, our own government is restricting people from their rights to engage in commonsense, fundamental actions such as collecting rainwater or buying raw milk from the farmer next door.

Today, we are living under a government that has slowly siphoned off our freedoms, only to occasionally grant us back a few limited ones under the pretense that they’re doing us a benevolent favor.

Fight back against enslavement

As long as people believe their rights stem from the government (and not the other way around), they will always be enslaved. And whatever rights and freedoms we think we still have will be quickly eroded by a system of bureaucratic power that seeks only to expand its control.

Because the same argument that’s now being used to restrict rainwater collection could, of course, be used to declare that you have no right to the air you breathe, either. After all, governments could declare that air to be somebody else’s air, and then they could charge you an “air tax” or an “air royalty” and demand you pay money for every breath that keeps you alive.

Think it couldn’t happen? Just give it time. The government already claims it owns your land and house, effectively. If you really think you own your home, just stop paying property taxes and see how long you still “own” it. Your county or city will seize it and then sell it to pay off your “tax debt.” That proves who really owns it in the first place… and it’s not you!

How about the question of who owns your body? According to the U.S. Patent & Trademark office, U.S. corporations and universities already own 20% of your genetic code. Your own body, they claim, is partially the property of someone else.

So if they own your land, your water and your body, how long before they claim to own your air, your mind and even your soul?

Unless we stand up against this tyranny, it will creep upon us, day after day, until we find ourselves totally enslaved by a world of corporate-government collusion where everything of value is owned by powerful corporations — all enforced at gunpoint by local law enforcement.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/029286_rainwater_collection_water.html#ixzz1g4zxtqvs

By Craig Andresen
THIS makes me SICK. Sick to my stomach. This may well be the sickest thing I have heard in a long, long time. It’s DISGUSTING and exactly what I should expect from this administration.

I was tipped off to this today by a tweet from Congressman Allen West who has just been named as a member of the National Defense Authorization Act Conference.

“This declaration by Obama is a slap in the face to Fort Hood victims. America has no Commander in Chief!”

Congressman could not be more correct but, I will go farther in my assessment.

What has me so riled up, and Congressman West likewise, is a statement from the Defense Department.

Obama and his Defense Department have declared that the Fort Hood shooting was…

WORKPLACE VIOLENCE!!!

All of this blather from liberals…Obama’s not a Muslim…Not siding with Muslims and so on…
STUFF IT WHERE THE SUN DON’T SHINE!!!

Workplace violence my keester!

Two years ago, on November 5th 2009, Major Nidal Malik Hasan shot and killed13 people and wounded 29 more at Fort Hood Texas. As he started his rampage, he was yelling, “Allah Akbar!!”

Hasan is a MUSLIM.

Hasan, according to a witness, walked into the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood and sat at an empty table where he bowed his head for a few minutes before suddenly standing, yelling “Allah Akbar!” and opened fire!

Here is a list of those killed that day.

Michael Grant Cahill 62 Spokane, Washington Civilian Physician Assistant.

Libardo Eduardo Caraveo 52 Woodbridge, Virginia Major

Justin Michael DeCrow 32 Plymouth, Indiana Staff Sergeant

John P. Gaffaney 56 Serra Mesa, California Captain

Frederick Greene 29 Mountain City, Tennessee Specialist

Jason Dean Hunt 22 Tipton, Oklahoma Specialist Amy

Sue Krueger 29 Kiel, Wisconsin Staff Sergeant

Aaron Thomas Nemelka 19 West Jordan, Utah Private First Class

Michael S. Pearson 22 Bolingbrook, Illinois Private First Class

Russell Gilbert Seager 51 Racine, Wisconsin Captain

Francheska Velez 21 Chicago, Illinois Private First Class

Juanita L. Warman 55 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Lieutenant Colonel

Kham See Xiong 23 Saint Paul, Minnesota Private First Class

Killed by workplace violence?

This TERRORIST, Hasan, went to the same mosque, at the same time, as two of the 9-11 hijackers!

This TERRORIST, Hasan, had a computer full of visits to radical Islamist websites!!

This TERRORIST, Hasan, while speaking at a medical seminar, went off topic and talked about Islam and how non believers would be sent to hell, decapitated, set on fire, and have burning oil poured down their throats.!!!

This TERRORIST, Hasan, has at times, expressed his admiration for Anwar al Awlaki!!!!

THIS TERRORIST, Hasan, ON THE VERY DAY OF THE SHOOTING…HANDED OUT COPIES OF THE KORAN WITH BUSINESS CARDS STATING… “Behavioral Heatlh – Mental Health – Life Skills | Nidal Hasan, MD, MPH | SoA(SWT) | Psychiatrist”!!!!!!

And now, Obama and his administration is classifying what the TERRORIST HASAN did as…

WORKPLACE VIOLENCE???????http://www.thenationalpatriot.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/hood-3.jpg

Hasan IS a TERRORIST and what he perpetrated was an ACT of TERRORISM. To call it anything less is not just a slap in the face to the victims and families who lost loved ones that day, it’s a slap in the face to ALL Americans.
Hasan IS a TERRORIST and what he perpetrated was an ACT of TERRORISM. To call it anything less is not just a slap in the face to the victims and families who lost loved ones that day, it’s a slap in the face to ALL Americans.
Obama and this administration has been systematically making the world a safer place for terrorists and elevating them to positions of government everywhere a vacuum can be created.

Libya and Egypt are PRIME examples of that.

Iran continues to build a nuclear weapons program. Obama told Israel to return to their pre 1967 borders. All mentions of radical Islam, as though there is any other sort, have been REMOVED from Defense Department reports. Obama has broadcast our departure dates for Iraq and Afghanistan to our, and their enemies.

Yes, bin Laden is dead and so is Gadaffi but he made sure bin Laden got a proper Muslim funeral and the flag of al Qaeda now flies over the court house in Benghazi!!!

Obama props up Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood while he scolds Israel for building apartments in east Jerusalem.

And now he calls the Fort Hood shootings, carried out by a TERRORIST…workplace violence.

Were the 13 people listed above at their place of work?http://www.thenationalpatriot.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/hood-4.jpg

Yes.
They were working to protect our nation and We the People from our enemies and those enemies include terrorists.

Hell, Obama can’t even call terrorism terrorism…He calls it “Man Made Disasters.”

It was Obama’s homeland Security Department which said of returning veterans and right wing groups like the Tea Party that fears of possible new restrictions on firearms, as well as troubled veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violence attacks.”

Obama’s Vice President called the Tea Party Terrorists just a few months ago and Obama said NOTHING about it.

But…Call a TERRORIST a TERRORIST???

Oh HELL NO.

Hasan committed an act of workplace violence.
Hasan committed an act of workplace violence.

This Obama administration made it so against political correctness that those who saw bright red flags waving all over the place regarding the TERRORIST Hasan wouldn’t even report what they saw for fear of being labeled “Racist” or “Islamophobic!!!”

For those who refuse to believe Obama leans toward the side of Islam…Just WHO exactly is he protecting by declaring the Fort Hood Shootings an act of workplace violence?

WHO?

Labeling this terrorist act as workplace violence is despicable, disgusting, lacking in any credibility whatsoever, disturbing, abhorrent and flies in the face of reality.

As for Obama and this administration of his…SEE THE ABOVE!!!

Anybody who wonders why the U.S. economy continues to stagger along with 9 percent unemployment and an anemic 2 percent quarterly growth rate need look no further than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Under President Obama’s hand-picked administrator, Lisa Jackson, EPA is hog-tying the economy with dozens of proposed major new rules. One of them, which is aimed at coal-fired power plants that generate electricity, will add at least $18 billion in compliance costs by 2020. As Kathleen White of the Texas Public Policy Center told the House Energy and Commerce Committee earlier this year, “never in its 40-year history has EPA promulgated — at the same time — so many costly new regulatory dictates. The rules on track to go into effect in the next three years could cost more than $1 trillion and result in hundreds of thousands of jobs lost.”

It’s not just the raft of new rules that is killing economic growth, however. Jackson and her EPA minions have been purposefully slow-walking the agency’s already hideously complex process for approving permits in a crucial sector of the energy industry. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., asked the EPA inspector general to review the agency’s permitting process for surface mining permit applications in the Appalachian region over the last two years. The EPA IG found that of the 185 permit applications it identified, only 56, or less than one-third of the total, had been approved. Almost half of the 185 required at least 731 days for EPA to complete its evaluations. That compares with the 144 days EPA claims is its average evaluation period for all mining permit applications. At least a third of the 185 were simply withdrawn from consideration, presumably because the applicants despaired of ever getting a response from EPA.

The IG report confirmed Inhofe’s prior suspicion that EPA has been “systematically slowing the pace of permit evaluations in Appalachia. Even more troubling is that as our nation works to find ways to cut our national debt, EPA has increased its budget and staff to evaluate these permits. Instead of spending more and more taxpayer dollars to wage this war on affordable energy, the Obama-EPA should be processing and approving these permits to spur job creation, especially in areas such as the Appalachia that have significant employment needs. Equally important is the potential domestic energy production that these permits would provide.”

Because 40 percent of the electricity that Americans depend on daily is generated by power plants fueled by coal — much of which comes from Appalachia — sluggardly permit processing by EPA should concern everybody. And let’s not forget that Jackson works for a president who before he was elected promised that his environmental policies would “necessarily cause electricity prices to skyrocket.”

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/2011/11/obamas-epa-killing-economy-costly-rules#ixzz1fspvd3WJ

IT WON’T BE LONG AND HE WILL HAVE ELIMINATED ALL JOBS.

Texas energy company Luminant announced on Monday new burdensome Environmental Protection Agency regulations are forcing it to close several facilities, which will result in about 500 job losses.

The company will be idling — stopping the usage of — two energy generating units. It will also cease extracting lignite from three different Texas mines.

The EPA regulation Luminant cites as too burdensome is the new Cross-State Air Pollution rule, which requires Texas power generators to make “dramatic reductions” in emissions beginning on January 1, 2012.

“We have hundreds of employees who have spent their entire professional careers at Luminant and its predecessor companies,” Luminant CEO David Campbell said in a statement. “At every step of this process, we have tried to minimize these impacts, and it truly saddens me that we are being compelled to take the actions we’ve announced today. We have filed suit to try to avoid these consequences.”

The company said it has been trying to meet the new standards, but won’t be able to do so without closing down several facilities and eliminating 500 jobs.

“As always, Luminant is committed to complying fully with EPA regulations,” Campbell said. “We have spent the last two months identifying all possible options to meet the requirements of this new rule, and we are launching a significant investment program to reduce emissions across our facilities.”

“However, meeting this unrealistic deadline also forces us to take steps that will idle facilities and result in the loss of jobs,” Campbell adds.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/12/epa-regulation-forces-closure-of-texas-energy-facilities-eliminates-500-jobs/#ixzz1XqTgplkM

Barack Obama has told his Environmental Protection Agency to back down from new ozone level standards the agency has been pushing.

The EPA had aimed to reduce the acceptable level of ozone in any given region from 75 parts per billion to between 60 and 70 parts per billion. If they were implemented, the regulations would have forced local governments that fail to attain this goal to develop their ozone-reduction plans.

On Friday, however, Obama announced that he doesn’t support the regulations. “The President has instructed me to return this rule to you for reconsideration,” Obama’s regulatory czar Cass Sunstein wrote to EPA administrator Lisa Jackson. “He has made it clear that he does not support finalizing the rule at this time.”

Sunstein wrote that Obama has told him to “work closely with all executive agencies and departments” to “implement” the president’s executive order aimed at cutting back on regulations. “The President has instructed me to give careful scrutiny to all regulations that impose significant costs on the private sector or on state, local or tribal governments,” Sunstein’s letter explains.

The EPA ultimatum comes mere hours after August jobs numbers came out showing a net total of zero new jobs in August.

“This letter is perfectly timed with today’s announcement that the economy produced zero jobs in August, the first time this has occurred since the end of WWII,” Rick Manning of Americans for Limited Government told The Daily Caller. “The letter details a litany of job killing actions by the EPA during Obama’s presidency while delaying the issuance of one more economy-destoying rule. If the President was serious, he would fire Lisa Jackson and rescind her regulatory war on coal and other fossil fuels.”

As additional reasoning for why Obama shot down the EPA rule, Sunstein cites critics’ existing complaints: the Bush administration’s new standards in 2008, and the Clean Air Act’s lack of a requirement for the EPA to revisit standards until 2013.

“The Act explicitly sets out a five-year cycle for review of national ambient air quality standards,” Sunstein wrote to Jackson. Issuing new standards before 2013, Sunstein says, “would be problematic in view of the fact that a new assessment, and potentially new standards, will be developed in the relatively near future.”

Sunstein wrote that the administration isn’t convinced ozone level recommendations from the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee are “based on the best available science.” The most recent CASAC report is from 2006, and Sunstein said Obama wants a more “current … scientific assessment” before implementing new, stricter regulations.

Sunstein also says says Jackson’s EPA has already regulated ozone and other pollution standards at an “unprecedented” level. He says Jackson has already reached many “truly historic achievements in protecting public health by decreasing air pollution levels, including ozone levels, across the nation.
A Manufacturers Alliance study estimated that the EPA ozone regulations would eliminate 7.3 million jobs by 2020, something a coalition between the National Association of Manufacturers and 35 state-level manufacturing associations cites in a letter to Obama urging him to stop these regulations.

NOW THERE ARE SEVERAL MORE EPA REGULATIONS THAT NEED KILLING= JUST ASK RON  PAUL

Posted on August 18, 2011 by Cowboy Byte

The Obama regime wants to change the way farmers farm. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, part of the Department of Transportation, has proposed reclassifying all farm vehicles as Commercial Motor Vehicles. Farmers would be required to obtain Commercial Drivers Licenses” for their tractors and their combines out in the fields, not on public property. “If the rule goes into effect, anybody who operates any motorized farm equipment will have to pass the same rigorous tests that semi drivers do. They’ll have to fill out the same, highly detailed forms and daily logs. American farmers would have to keep track of how many hours they work and sleep, how many miles their vehicles travel.

They’d have to display Department of Transportation numbers — and, of course, they’d have to pay the government fees for all these new burdens. In one fell swoop, the regime would have more regulatory control over farmers and their 800,000 vehicles.

by Dave Urbanski
Ronnie Bryant was vastly outnumbered.
Leaning against a wall during a recent Birmingham, Alabama, public hearing, Bryant listened to an overflow crowd pepper federal officials with concerns about businesses polluting the drinking water and causing cases of cancer.
After two hours, Bryant—a coal mine owner from Jasper—had heard enough and, in a moment being described as “right out of Atlas Shrugged,” took his turn at the microphone:

“Nearly every day without fail…men stream to these [mining] operations looking for work in Walker County. They can’t pay their mortgage. They can’t pay their car note. They can’t feed their families. They don’t have health insurance. And as I stand here today, I just…you know…what’s the use? I got a permit to open up an underground coal mine that would employ probably 125 people. They’d be paid wages from $50,000 to $150,000 a year. We would consume probably $50 million to $60 million in consumables a year, putting more men to work. And my only idea today is to go home. What’s the use? I see these guys—I see them with tears in their eyes—looking for work. And if there’s so much opposition to these guys making a living, I feel like there’s no need in me putting out the effort to provide work for them. So…basically what I’ve decided is not to open the mine. I’m just quitting. Thank you.”
The Blaze contacted Bryant, and he remains as resolute as he was at last week’s public hearing. To him, it’s just not worth the time, “If they want to create jobs, provide health insurance, and increase revenue,” Bryant said in reference to the federal government, “they need to back down on the regulatory burden. It’s like pulling an iron ball with a chain. I’m not saying to make it go away—just the stuff that’s not pertinent or useful.”
Terry Douglas, who owns two mines in Jasper with Bryant, said it costs them about $250,000 per mine in permit fees alone and that paperwork and regulatory inspections are a constant presence (as well as an additional revenue strain). When asked about typical concerns surrounding coal mining—including companies skirting health and safety regulations—Douglas said it “doesn’t make sense” to let safety lapse and risk losing miners to illness or injury when it would only cost more to train new personnel.
“We take care of our equipment and take care of our people,” Douglas said. “The regulations make coal miners out to be criminals; but we’re not outlaws. Coal mining is an art. I have a civil engineering degree; Ronnie has a mining engineering degree. It’s not wildcat whiskey we’re making; this is drinking whiskey we got.”
Bryant pointed to less stringent environmental regulations in countries such as China, saying that the U.S. is falling behind even though it has abundant resources. “But you can’t get to them,” he said, adding that while there are concerns over dwindling wildlife populations, “people are becoming the endangered species.”
Gwendolyn Keyes Fleming, regional administrator for EPA’s Southeast Region, attended the Birmingham public hearing but could not be reached for comment.

Turn Your Sound On

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W07bFa4TzM&feature=player_embedded

They Ban outdoor lights while mandating use indoors

Posted: July 22, 2011

7:48 pm Eastern © 2011 WND

In what critics call a classic case of the government working at cross purposes, Washington is forcing residents across the country to install mercury lighting inside their homes while phasing out mercury lighting outside homes to protect the environment.

Yes, you read that right.

In 2005, Congress passed a law banning mercury vapor streetlights – two years before it bannedincandescentlightbulbsin favor of mercury vapor compact florescent bulbs.

Under the Energy Policy Act, signed by President Bush in August 2005,manufacturerscannot make or import ballasts for mercury vapor lights after Jan. 1, 2008. According to the act, mercury vapor security lights are being phased out to “protect the environment” and to “promote energy efficiency” in lighting.

Mike Huckabee spells out 12 essential truths about government every open-minded American should agree upon in “Simple Government,” available at WND’s Superstore

Utilitycompanies across the country have been replacing mercury vapor street lamps with high-pressure sodium fixtures or metal halide fixtures, which are twice as efficient as mercury vapor and possibly safer. The EPA classifies mercury as a hazardous material.

Yet the federal government is pushing consumers to replace traditional incandescent bulbs used in their homes withcompactfluorescentscontaining toxic mercury vapor.

A former Energy Department official says there’s a regulatory “disconnect” regarding mercury lighting.

“We’re removing mercury from outside the home while adding it inside,” he said. “It makes no sense.”

In 2007 – two years after enacting the ban on outdoor mercury lighting – Congress passed the Energy Independence and Security Act, also signed by Bush. It mandated the use of compact florescent lighting in U.S. homes by making incandescent bulbs a controlled substance and outlawing the 100-watt bulb by 2012, and all other wattages by 2014.

Sponsors of the law argue that it willsaveenergy. According to the Energy Department, however, lighting accounts for only 11.6 percent of the electricity costs in the average American home. So savings will be minor. And critics pCalifornia has already banned stores from restocking 100-watt incandescent bulbs. CFL shipments nationwide reached 400 million last year, according to Megan McKoy-Noe of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. Right now CFLs account for roughly 30 percent of the lighting market.

The EPA warns that the amount of mercury in one bulb is enough to contaminate up to 6,000 gallons of water beyond safe drinking levels. The agency provideselaborate instructions on its websitefor cleaning up broken CFL bulbs on hard surfaces and carpets. It also recommends disposing of unbroken old CFL bulbs at special recycling centers.

Rep. Michelle Bachmann, a Republican running for the White House, has introduced a bill demanding that government first guarantee “there are no public health risks from the mercury in replacement bulbs at home or in any public building.”

House Republicans earlier this month failed to overturn the ban on incandescent bulbs, but passed a bill that would bar the Energy Department from spending money next year to enforce the ban.

Texas recently enacted legislation seeking to get around the federal law by declaring that incandescent bulbs – if made and sold in Texas – do not involve interstate commerce and, therefore, are not subject to federal regulation.

EPA has published detailed recommendations for “what to do if a CFL bulb breaks inyourhome.”

The agency recommends numerous steps to “reduce exposure to mercury vapor from a broken bulb,” including:

Before Cleanup:

• Have people and pets leave the room, and avoid the breakage area on the way out.
• Open a window or door to the outdoors and leave the room for 5-10 minutes.
• Shut off the central forced-air heating/air conditioning (H&AC)system, if you have one.
• Collect materials you will need to clean up the broken bulb:
• Stiff paper or cardboard.
• Sticky tape (e.g., duct tape).
• Damp paper towels or disposable wet wipes (for hard surfaces).
• Glass jar with a metal lid (such as a canning jar) or a sealable plastic bag(s).

Cleanup Steps for Hard Surfaces:

• Carefully scoop up glass fragments and powder using stiff paper or cardboard and place debris and paper/cardboard in a glass jar with a metal lid. If a glass jar is not available, use a sealable plastic bag.(NOTE: Since a plastic bag will not prevent the mercury vapor from escaping, remove the plastic bag(s) from the home after cleanup.)
• Use sticky tape, such as duct tape, to pick up any remaining small glass fragments and powder. Place the used tape in the glass jar or plastic bag.
• Wipe the area clean with damp paper towels or disposable wet wipes. Place the towels in the glass jar or plastic bag.
• Vacuuming of hard surfaces during cleanup is not recommended unless broken glass remains after all other cleanup steps have been taken.

[NOTE: It is possible that vacuuming could spread mercury-containing powder or mercury vapor, although availableinformationon this problem is limited.]

If vacuuming is needed to ensure removal of all broken glass, keep the following tips in mind:

• Keep a window or door to the outdoors open;
• Vacuum the area where the bulb was broken using thevacuumhose, if available; and
• Remove the vacuum bag (or empty and wipe the canister) and seal the bag/vacuum debris, and any materialsusedtoclean the vacuum, in a plastic bag.
• Promptly place all bulb debris and cleanup materials, including vacuum cleaner bags, outdoors in a trash container or protected area until materials can be disposed of properly.
• Check with your local or state government about disposal requirements in your area. Some states and communities require fluorescent bulbs (broken or unbroken) be taken to a local recycling center.
• Wash your hands with soap and water after disposing of the jars or plastic bags containing bulb debris and cleanup materials.
• Continue to air out the room where the bulb was broken and leave the H&AC system shut off, as practical, for several hours.

Cleanup Steps for Carpeting or Rugs:

• Carefully scoop up glass fragments and powder using stiff paper or cardboard and place debris and paper/cardboard in a glass jar with a metal lid. If a glass jar is not available, use a sealable plastic bag.(NOTE: Since a plastic bag will not prevent the mercury vapor from escaping, remove the plastic bag(s) from the home after cleanup.)
• Use sticky tape, such as duct tape, to pick up any remaining small glass fragments and powder. Place the used tape in the glass jar or plastic bag.
• Vacuuming of carpeting or rugs during cleanup is not recommended unless broken glass remains after all other cleanup steps have been taken.[NOTE: It is possible that vacuuming could spread mercury-containing powder or mercury vapor, although available information on this problem is limited.]

If vacuuming is needed to ensure removal of all broken glass, keep the following tips in mind:

• Keep a window or door to the outdoors open;
• Vacuum the area where the bulb was broken using the vacuum hose, if available, and
• Remove the vacuum bag (or empty and wipe the canister) and seal the bag/vacuum debris, and any materials used to clean the vacuum, in a plastic bag.
• Promptly place all bulb debris and cleanup materials, including vacuum cleaner bags, outdoors in a trash container or protected area until materials can be disposed of properly.
• Check with your local or state government about disposal requirements in your area. Some states and communities require fluorescent bulbs (broken or unbroken) be taken to a local recycling center.
• Wash your hands with soap and water after disposing of the jars or plastic bags containing bulb debris and cleanup materials.
• Continue to air out the room where the bulb was broken and leave the H&AC system shut off, as practical, for several hours.

Future Cleaning of Carpeting or Rugs: Air Out the Room During and After Vacuuming:

• The next several times you vacuum the rug or carpet, shut off the H&AC system if you have one, close the doors to other rooms, and open a window or door to the outside before vacuuming. Change the vacuum bag after each use in this area.
• After vacuuming is completed, keep the H&AC system shut off and the window or door to the outside open, as practical, for several hours.

Actions You Can Take to Prevent Broken Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs:

• Fluorescent bulbs are made of glass and can break if dropped or roughly handled. To avoid breaking a bulb, follow these general practices:
• Always switch off and allow a working CFL bulb to cool before handling.
• Always handle CFL bulbs carefully to avoid breakage.
• If possible, screw/unscrew the CFL by holding the plastic or ceramic base, not the glass tubing. <
• Gently screw in the CFL until snug. Do not over-tighten.
• Never forcefully twist the glass tubing.
• Consider not using CFLs in lamps that can be easily knocked over, in unprotected light fixtures, or in lamps that are incompatible with the spiral or folded shape of many CFLs.
• Do not use CFL bulbs in locations where they can easily be broken, such as play spaces.
• Use CFL bulbs that have a glass or plastic cover over the spiral or folded glass tube, if available. These types of bulbs look more like incandescent bulbs and may be more durable if dropped.
• Consider using a drop cloth (e.g., plastic sheet or beach towel) when changing a fluorescent light bulb in case a breakage should occur.
• The drop cloth will help prevent mercury contamination of nearby surfaces and can be bundled with the bulb debris for disposal.

Read more:Feds can’t make up minds on mercury bulbshttp://www.wnd.com/?pageId=325049#ixzz1SvqCQzcvoint out that CFLs are more expensive than traditional bulbs.