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.
You can comment here:
Is there anything left to regulate?
The relevant quotation from Atlas Shrugged is the following:
“Did you really think we want those laws observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them to be broken! You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against… We’re after power and we mean it… There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”
I thought all this sort of crap was confined to the UK. Here we are told not to smoke, not to drink more than 14 “units” of alcohol a week (female), 21 (male) and to eat 5 portions of fruit or vegetables a day. All electrical appliances are sold with integral plugs and fuses, because us prols can’t be trusted to fit plugs and fuses ourselves.
This is all bad enough but this state sponsored nannyism as well as being unnecessary is quite often totally wrong, for example we were told to cut down on saturated fats, because they caused heart disease and to eat carbohydrates instead, the result? An epidemic of obesity.
I gather the USA Declaration of Independence was 12 pages in length, Tolley’s Tax Law Guide (the accountant’s bible for tax law here) runs to over 17,000 pages.
The world has gone barking mad!!!
Before the Premier of B.C. went crazy for climate change, he did this :
http://www.cga-bc.org/events.aspx?id=19408
Well, that government picked the low-hanging fruit. Next step should be eliminate major functions, like economic regulation of transportation, and agricultural barriers such as quotas.
My recommendation on one thing was deferred to a review of the whole subject it was under. I don’t know if that happened.
What is the use in living if we can’t even buy, hang and enjoy LED lights in celebration of anything?
You ask: “Is there anything left to regulate?” Well, take a look at the lunatic EU if you want to study insane regulations. Unbelievable things like adding further to vehicular regulations whilst forgetting that veteran and vintage cars cannot comply; and the latest? Stopping manufacturers from selling high wattage electric kettles/jugs whilst ignoring the physics that it takes a specific amount of energy to boil a quantity of water and if the wattage of the kettle is lower then it simply takes longer but uses the same (actually slightly more) energy. The list is endless and for some it’s laughable – if it were not so serious.
Yes, that’s a whole nuther list. Coming to mind:
– a regulation differentiating soup from stew, based on a sieve to check particle size content.
– its attempt to ban importation of Saskatoon berries (June berries south of that line on a map), because there was no history of consumption in Europe thus healthiness was not proven (that would take ten years, I don’t recall how one could do it). But OOPS, someone in a Scandinavian country had already been growing those furrin things for more than ten years, having imported plants or seeds from Canada. The bureaucrats had to back down on that, I don’t know if they got a lesson on research before ruling.
Is there anything left to regulate?
Well you can always pile regulations on top of regulations or have constant changing regulations, and for added ‘fun’ you can fail to tell others that you changed them in the first place .
But never underestimate they effort their willing to put in to find new ways and new things to regulate , after all Joe public is paying for it and it keeps them in a job.
This is what happened to a fellow, a regulation was changed, it was not well broadcast, a inspector sat in a tree for 4 days. Huge fines were threatened but the threatened person refused to give up and eventually the charges were drop, he won.
http://www.torontosun.com/news/ottawa/2010/08/07/14957596.html
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/charges-withdrawn-in-ottawa-pig-slaughter-case-1.977271
Legal drugs now kill nearly 38,000 Americans every year. Christmas lights caused 250 deaths since 1980.
Perhaps the regulatory institutions should take a wee peek at Big Pharma.
http://www.naturalnews.com/033639_prescription_drugs_deaths.html#ixzz3NHpkNNaT
You’re asking for common sense from institutions that purposely eliminate common sense from it’s rank.
What is puzzling is why it is taking so long for evolution to move bureaucracies to it’s long list of extinct species.
Quite simply, because its illegal to shoot them.
@ur momisugly Tim. Thank you. I have been trying to come up with unusual and notable causes of death that took place amongst folks in my little corner of the world this year. The most unusual that immediately come to mind are beheading (2 cases) and the death of a 4-year-old who had been taken to the hospital with some siblings for treatment of the flu. After they administered Tamiflu, the 4-year-old died.
As a matter of fact, there are already laws against beheadings. I guess there aren’t against using Tamiflu on sick little tykes. From what I can tell, even though there are numerous reports of harm done to little kids (and adults) by Tamiflu, and Japan has outlawed its use for young people, apparently the official position in this country is that it can be used on anyone older than 2 weeks.
Speaking of so-called health care, does anyone else see the harm that could be done by outlawing the uplifting effect of lighting up one’s house and property in the dead of winter? It is no secret that the short daylight hours of winter have a depressing effect on many in our population. Yet many have been known to spend their hard-earned money on fuel to spend time driving their loved ones around to neighborhoods where there are Christmas lights to see. Why would they do that? I’m guessing it’s because it’s **FUN**! And it’s mostly free, except for the cost of the fuel and wear-and-tear on one’s vehicle.
So let’s outlaw one of the few free past-times that’s a known source of enjoyment during these long nights in the dead of winter. It can only enhance business for drug-makers, can it not?
/sarc
Land of the Free.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2841482/US-falls-FRANCE-global-personal-freedom-rankings-plummeting-12-places-Obama-administration.html#ixzz3NI2s32bw
too many laws. I’m supposed to (in maine) carry a shotgun to church with me but doing so violates other laws.
stupid crap.
It’ will be too late, but wait til my neighborhood finds out it applies to Halloween too.
So what! and what makes them think that they have any jurisdiction to tell me what i can and cannot do on my property? prove it!! I don’t have a contract with these people who make THEIR rules.
@Tim: How many Americans are saved each and every year because of drugs from ‘Big Pharma?
I wonder if they will include the Grow Lights that the dope growers in CA, CO & WA use for their “medical” and recreational products?? I bet not, given what I believe their socio/political philosphy to be.
The grow lights have been widely known for violating FCC interference generation provisions — and the FCC has sat on kits duff and refused to enforce the rules.
Freedom is risk. If we continue to allow the government to define “risk,” it will use that as the authority to eliminate freedom.
Having just read the proposed regulation https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2014/10/16/2014-24378/substantial-product-hazard-list-seasonal-and-decorative-lighting-products#t-2 I note a few points:
It only affects mains connected or transformer less devices so LED devices remain unchanged.
The requirements state that you have ONE of the following: minimum wire size, strain relief or over current protection.
Reasonable product design, I would suggest, would include all three of the above.
I cannot envisage any current safe product requiring a change to comply with the new regulations.
The number of deaths each year from this range of device has been falling year on year towards very low levels showing that the voluntary system is working well.
A well working voluntary system should not need the force of law behind it.
In the UK, our regulations require products to be ‘CE’ marked to ensure safety. We can, in most cases, ‘self certify’, but if a death occurs due to poor product design, then heaven help the company/supplier/importer involved in the supply chain.
If the USA voluntary schemes operated as though they were ‘design rules’ when called upon in court cases, then there should be no need for unnecessary federal regulation.
I am surprised that some people cry out to retain the ‘right’ to supply or buy lethal electrical good!
Scores of years ago, in the UK, the ‘weights and measure act’ and others, were introduced to prevent unscrupulous traders from selling bread adulterated with sawdust, gallons of petrol (gas) sold short, a pound of beef weighed 15 oz, (or was horse) (the horse bit still happens today!!).
Many of these laws are brought in to protect the weak, the innocent, the foolish and the rest of us.
Just because you or I may be in one of the above category’s, the majority of people are ordinary, going about their legal business relying upon these laws to keep them alive, safe and not unduly out of pocket.
“I am surprised that some people cry out to retain the ‘right’ to supply or buy lethal electrical good!”
The low death rate is proof enough that more regulation is unnecessary. Over ~100,000 people die of medical malpractice every year in the USA but we should be worried about less than ten people per year? Over 20,000 people die by fall accidents every year but we need to ban ordinary Christmas lights. Over 30,000 people are accidentally poisoned every year but look out for those lethal Christmas lights.
If a crime rate associated with some demographic is under ten per year it isn’t high enough to even qualify for being mentioned by the FBI.
I agree that those other things are much bigger problems that poorly-made Christmas lights. And you could well argue that more regulation is unnecessary. But the real question is: Will this regulation do more harm than good? There may not be much good in it, but there isn’t much harm either. It’s simple enforcing a rule that well over 90% of products already comply with voluntarily. Very little will change because of this rule.
Affordable Christmas Lights Act. On the whimsical side, as the federal debt reaches for the stars, the deficit as a percentage of nominal GDP will continue to shrink. Do they subtract leverage from their accounting? Anyway, offering solutions for problems they create can be an expensive exercise and will necessarily be progressive as the dysfunction is additive. Or perhaps they will continue to redistribute the consequences globally, so Americans will not be the first to notice its effects.
the link to comment is down…
Immediate legislation must enforce Christmas Darks. Homes would be patterned in daylight by the operation of darkbulbs. Darkbulbs would then be banned for having unknown hazards – but only after massive government-funded studies (by their very good friends._
It’s all about control. Liberal doses of progressive control……..
Our string of old-fashioned outdoor lights that have worked flawlessy for over 35 years finally went south (fault of my husband or who knows how many more years they would have lasted). They didn’t raise our electricity bill by any noticeable amount, either.
Sooo, I bought a string of ugly LED lights, the only ones available at the local hardware store. They are a weird shape and so cold and unwelcoming that as soon as they come down they are going to Goodwill in spite of having spent $22 on sale(!) for that crap. If I can’t replace my traditional incandescent bulbs then I guess we’ll be in compliance with the new regulations, because we won’t have any lights up.
I wonder when they’ll start performing in-home searches to stop the proliferation of Christmas tree decorations…
It makes me wonder. Can people not tell the difference between the dark, pale lumen and the real lights?
Calm down, everybody. It’s not what you think. The feds are not proposing a ban on Christmas decorations.
If you read the actual PDF (http://www.cpsc.gov/Global/Newsroom/FOIA/CommissionBriefingPackages/2015/ProposedRuletoAmendSubstantialProductHazardListtoIncludeSeasonalandDecorativeLightingProducts.pdf), you’ll find that context changes everything. For over 15 years, there’s been a voluntary rule in place called UL 588, which describes best practices regarding wire size etc. for holiday lights. As manufacturers have brought their products into compliance, fatal accidents have declined. (Granted, there may be other reasons for the decline.) The CPSC estimates that “well in excess of 90 percent” of the holiday lights sold in the US already comply with UL 588. The proposed regulation simply forces the remaining 5% or so to get their act together, by making the UL 588 stuff mandatory.
So no, the feds are not trying to take away your Christmas lights. They’re just trying to make Christmas a little bit safer.
Even if this is a problem, it’s a very minor problem. Very few products will be affected.
I wish the WUWT post had made this clear.
soncisuns,
It’s another brick in the wall. It’s turning up the flame under the frog’s water dish. It’s a step in the wrong direction. Besides, LED lights are the future, and no one gets electrocuted by LED’s.
We don’t need these regulations. Even if some folks think we do, it is the job of the STATES, not the federal government.
The Constitution makes that crystal clear…
…oh, right. They don’t teach civics or the Constituion in gov’t skrewels any more.
“So no, the feds are not trying to take away your Christmas lights. They’re just trying to make Christmas a little bit safer.”
++++++++++++++
Safer than what ?
Playing hockey on the local (thin ice) pond
Floating down the creek on a homemade raft
Skitching behind cars
Getting sloppy drunk in a biker bar, then having a bottle rocket “war” in the parking lot with cars as shields
Having a tire tread peel off at 90 MPH and tear up your front wheel well
Ride a snowmobile as fast as you dare through tree studded trails
Talk about safety concerns !!
“seasonal and decorative lighting products that do not contain one or more of three readily observable characteristics (minimum wire size, sufficient strain relief, or overcurrent protection) constitute a substantial product hazard under section 15(j) of the Consumer Product Safety Act, 15 U.S.C. § 2064(j).”
http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Newsroom/FOIA/Records-of-Commission-Action-and-Commission-Meeting-Minutes/2015/2015-Docs/RCA-Proposed-Rule-to-Amend-Substantial-Product-Hazard-List-to-include-Seasonal-and-Decorative-Lighting-Products/
My comment to the proposed rule:
This is simply part of the Obama administration’s systematic dismantling of Christian influence out of America…piece by piece…in order to establish his Islamic/socialistic state.
A two-fer. The Religion of the Left gets to write more regulations and attack Christianity at the same time in the name of, well, something.
Can we sue since the Establishment of a State Religion is unConstitutional?