Regulation gone wild – Christmas lights are the next target of nanny state thinking
Anthony Watts / 1 day ago December 28, 2014
US GOVERNMENT SAY BAH HUMBUG! to Christmas lights
The Comment period ends December 30th on the new regulations that will outlaw affordable Christmas lights including indoor and outdoor lighted decorations of any type. See link below.
From the Washington Times via Gail Combs:
Christmas lights have become so affordable that even the humblest of homes often are lit like the Star of Bethlehem. Federal bureaucrats are working to end this. They claim it will make us safer, but the facts don’t back them up.
It’s not uncommon to find strings of mini-lights priced at $1 for a hundred lights, sometimes even less. To cure this excessive affordability, the feds are rushing to save Americans from mass holiday displays. They seem to believe we all are like Clark Griswold, the bumbling father figure in National Lampoon’s “Christmas Vacation” (played by Chevy Chase), who nearly electrocutes himself, starts fires, falls off the roof and short-circuits power in his whole neighborhood as he tries to create a home display that would outdo Rockefeller Center.
The Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) has created an example of regulate first and explain why later. In October they proposed new regulations to outlaw strings of bulbs, lighted lawn figures and similar items that would be declared as hazardous. The red tape deals with certifying wire sizes, fuses, and tensile strength of all “seasonal decorative lighting products.”
This includes Christmas tree lights, lighted wreaths, menorahs, outdoor strands, lawn figures of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, or Santa or Rudolph or Frosty the Snowman. Yes, Kwanzaa, too. CPSC is an equal opportunity Scrooge. The agency estimates that their proposed regulations will impact 100 million items per year with a market value of $500 million.
Of course, those items already are covered by safety regulations and also by industry standards and oversight. CPSC admits that 3.6-million unsafe lights were recalled under existing safeguards in place since 1974.
So what is CPSC’s justification for adding red tape to the red, green, blue, yellow, white and other colored displays? They report 250 deaths from fires or electrocutions by Christmas lights. That’s not 250 deaths per year; it’s 250 deaths since 1980. They had to add together 33 years of statistics to misportray danger.
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/24/ernest-istook-federal-regulators-say-bah-humbug-ch/#ixzz3NDoVRdcU
You can comment here:
http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Regulations-Laws–Standards/Rulemaking/Final-and-Proposed-Rules/Seasonal-and-Decorative-Lighting-Products/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Final+and+Proposed+Rules
Is there anything left to regulate?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/12/28/regulation-gone-wild-christmas-lights-are-the-next-target-of-nanny-state-thinking/
Of course there's more to regulate: Sprinkles
Nanny State: Sprinkles To Be Banned By FDA
Tue, Dec 30 2014 00:00:00 EA12_IS
Regulation: Cures for cancer and Ebola having been found, the federal ubernannies have decreed that sprinkles should no longer adorn kids' ice cream because they contain the trans fat that liberal groups once pushed for.
Come the New Year, the Food and Drug Administration, ignoring the principle that in most cases it's the dose that defines the poison, will issue new regulations designed to remove even trace amounts of hydrogenate oils, commonly known as trans fats, from our diets.
Trans fats have been in our foods since the 1950s to increase shelf life and improve taste. A small amount appears naturally in some foods, but research has determined that large quantities of trans fats in one's diet can be dangerous for long-term health.
But so can large quantities of bacon, and no one has proposed banning bacon, at least not yet, but we're sure that thought has occurred to those who want 16-ounce soft drinks banned while forcing our children to eat cardboard school lunches.
Each American consumes a mere 1.3 grams of trans fats per day. That's roughly 0.6% of our total daily calories, and no research suggests that this poses a health risk. But that's not enough to dissuade the federal nannies from regulating even the most minute aspect of our daily lives.
The irony here is that trans fats were once pushed by liberal groups such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest. This poster child for the food police in 1988 published a book titled "Saturate Fat Attack" that condemned the use of saturated and polyunsaturated fats then in vogue. Food companies soon switched to trans fats, a move for which CSPI proudly took credit.
In its Nutrition Action Newsletter on March 1, 1988, CSPI not only downplayed health risks associated with trans fats but promoted them as a health benefit. It even cited a study that found a "significant positive correlation" between trans fats in animal fats and cancer rates.
The nanny state that tells us what cars we should drive, what energy we must use and what health insurance we must buy has told mothers what they can put in their children's school lunches and even whether they can take mom-made lunches to school at all. Slurpees and now sprinkles are a health hazard, according to those who mysteriously know what's good for us.
We'd suggest that freer societies are healthier societies, and that government can have our sprinkle-covered cupcakes when they can pry them from our cold, dead, frosting-stained hands.
Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/122914-732486-fda-moves-to-ban-cake-donut-sprinkles.htm#ixzz3NLWi0Vd9
Follow us: @IBDinvestors on Twitter | InvestorsBusinessDaily on Facebook |
