Friday, December 16, 2011

For Sale Cheap--1MM 100-watts: "Congress overturns incandescent light bulb ban"

That'll teach me.

When the little voice in my head said "Go long 100-watts, they're the most popular" I should have remembered the Great Pork Fiasco of aught-eight when the Chinese threw open the doors to their Strategic Pork Reserve and I ended up eating BLT's for a year.

But no, instead the little voice says "If you buy 'em by the freight car load you'll make even more when the phase out hits".
Fuckin' little voice.

From the Washington Times:
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 the Senate.

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....MORE