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Trump Administration Dims Rule On Energy Efficient Lightbulbs (npr.org)
An anonymous reader shares a report: If it's been a few years since you shopped for a lightbulb, you might find yourself confused. Those controversial curly-cue ones that were cutting edge not that long ago? Gone. (Or harder to find.) Thanks to a 2007 law signed by President George W. Bush, shelves these days are largely stocked with LED bulbs that look more like the traditional pear-shaped incandescent version but use just one-fifth the energy. A second wave of lightbulb changes was set to happen. But now the Trump administration wants to undo an Obama-era regulation designed to make a wide array of specialty lightbulbs more energy efficient.
At issue here are bulbs such as decorative globes used in bathrooms, reflectors in recessed lighting, candle-shaped lights and three-way lightbulbs. The Natural Resources Defense Council says that, collectively, these account for about 2.7 billion light sockets, nearly half the conventional sockets in use in the U.S. At the very end of the Obama administration, the Department of Energy decided these specialty bulbs should also be subject to efficiency requirements under the 2007 law. The lighting industry objected and sued to overturn the decision. [...] NEMA argued that Congress never intended for the law to apply to all these other lightbulbs. After President Trump took office the Energy Department agreed and proposed to reverse the agency's previous decision. Critics say if the reversal is finalized it will mean higher energy bills for consumers and more pollution.
At issue here are bulbs such as decorative globes used in bathrooms, reflectors in recessed lighting, candle-shaped lights and three-way lightbulbs. The Natural Resources Defense Council says that, collectively, these account for about 2.7 billion light sockets, nearly half the conventional sockets in use in the U.S. At the very end of the Obama administration, the Department of Energy decided these specialty bulbs should also be subject to efficiency requirements under the 2007 law. The lighting industry objected and sued to overturn the decision. [...] NEMA argued that Congress never intended for the law to apply to all these other lightbulbs. After President Trump took office the Energy Department agreed and proposed to reverse the agency's previous decision. Critics say if the reversal is finalized it will mean higher energy bills for consumers and more pollution.
(And just in case you miss it, I'm being sarcastic.. )
And an idiot, just in case you missed it.
Shhh. This is too much for the TDS afflicted to take in.
DOE has since determined that the legal basis underlying those revisions misconstrued existing law. As a result, DOE is issuing this notice of proposed rulemaking (NOPR) proposing to withdraw the definitions established in the January 19, 2017, final rules. DOE proposes to maintain the existing regulatory definitions of GSL and GSIL, which are the same as the statutory definitions of those terms.
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/02/f59/withdrawal-of-gsl-definition-nopr.pdf
What's that you say? Obama's legal basis underlying the revisions misconstrued existing law? The story of Obama's legacy. Maybe Obama shouldn't have ignored every law that went against his agenda to always have this happen.
The next question is; do you think the government should be able to ignore or misconstrue law for anything it wants? If the summary I quoted is true, then I do wnat the government to reign in on faulty legal actions taken by prior administrations. Just as I want future administrations to do the same for this one. I like it when the government follows the law> I don't like the government ignoring the law because some VIP has an agenda to push to buy off voters who don't actually care how they achieve their goal.
1) it is, in fact, much of the reason he was elected. So while you dismiss it as petty, he's doing what his voters largely wanted.
2) let's not forget that Mr Obama spent pretty much his whole second term in a fiat presidency where he simply issued Executive (branch) rulings and clarifications that tried to effectively enact legislation without having to do all that messy 'compromising' and such*. Erasing that crap like the Federal land grab, is practically Trump's constitutional duty and if congress were self-aware of the balance of federal branches, they'd welcome it.
*and just to save you spitting electrons, "he couldn't get anything passed because the congressional republicans had refused to approve anything". 2 points to that, too: i) as congress is directly elected and the president isn't, one could say that they are even more the voice of the people...and they were largely elected on resisting Obama. (Like the Dems today and Trump.) ii) I simply don't believe that he couldn't have carved out some defectors from Republicans IF HE HAD BEEN WILLING TO ACTUALLY COMPROMISE. Everyone - especially in Congress! - has a price. This is an extreme example, but if he'd promised to 'ban all abortions' swathes of far-right extremist congresspeople would have traded anything. But he wasn't even willing to seek to find what those key vote-movers were. Far easier (with lower expectations) to say "whup, I guess they won't compromise so I don't have to try"...
-Styopa