Eye on Cleveland: Light Bulbs to be Delivered by Utility

Story #5:

RUSH: Now here's a story out of Cleveland by Kevin O'Brien in the Cleveland Plain Dealer: "There was a time when you and I could be trusted to change a light bulb. In those days, powerful people who made weighty decisions understood that if a light bulb burned out, even the dimmest of us common folk would know enough to remove it from its socket, choose a suitable replacement and install it." We made jokes about it, it was so simple.

"Apparently all of the weighty decisions have been made, because powerful people have now worked their way down to telling us what kind of light bulb we will use -- and even bringing some to us, apparently fearing that even the brightest of us common [people] might botch the job. How is it that an act whose very simplicity spawned a genre of humor, based mostly on ethnic, sexist and sectarian slurs ... has suddenly become a complicated, labor-intensive, expensive, public endeavor? ... In just a few days, people dressed in green T-shirts and green caps will begin the rather enormous task of delivering two 23-watt, warm-white, compact fluorescent light bulbs to every residence FirstEnergy," which is the power company, "serves. They won't ask whether you want them."

Stick with me, here. This is Cleveland. "They'll just leave them on your doorstep, in a bag that will also contain a brochure called 'More Than 100 Ways to Improve Your Electric Bill.'" Now, don't... Folks, stick with me on this because we haven't even gotten to what's outrageous about this. "They won't ask for payment, though. As you might expect with an electric utility, that's already wired. These whiz-bang new light bulbs -- which cost FirstEnergy $3.50 each, and which you could buy all by yourself at any number of stores for even less if you were still trusted to do that sort of thing -- will cost you $21.60 for the pair." So $3.50 each is what the power companies has to pay for them. They're going to charge their customers 21.60 for the pair of 23-watt bulbs.

"You'll pay it off over the next three years, at 60 cents a month added to your electric bill." Hang on. "The bulbs you would buy at the store might come from China, like FirstEnergy's do, but they wouldn't come with delivery vans, or brochures, or paid bulb valets clad in green shirts emblazoned ... 'Providing energy-efficient light bulbs is just one way we can help our customers save money while also helping the environment,' FirstEnergy's Web site proclaims. Except that FirstEnergy really isn't 'providing' them. You are. FirstEnergy is just inflating your cost tremendously by having them brought to you. And, by the way, the $21.60 you'll pay for those bulbs [in Cleveland] also includes a little assessment to cover the cost of the electricity that FirstEnergy won't be selling you because you use those bulbs.

"Think of it as paying money to save money so FirstEnergy won't lose money." So can I set this up for you? The utility in Cleveland is going to deliver two 23-watt compact fluorescents to every customer. You're going to be charged $21.60 for the two of them when the utility is buying them for $3.50. You will pay for them over the course of three years at 60 cents a month added to your bill. But because they ostensibly save power, and you won't be using as much, you are going to be assessed an additional charge to make sure that FirstEnergy does not lose money by having you install the new bulbs; the purpose of which everybody believes is to reduce power consumption, to save the energy or save the climate because we're not going to be emitting as much carbon.

Do you follow that, folks? What? No, it's not insanity, it's liberalism! Pure and simple. It's liberalism. After they rope everybody in on all of this "Save the planet stuff! Save the planet stuff! We gotta reduce our carbon emissions," they're going to charge you for "saving" the planet. They're going to charge you for not using the electricity they tell you that you should not use! They're going to bring the light bulbs to you. "The General Assembly passed a law last year requiring Ohio's utilities to reduce their customers' energy use by 22 percent, and to shift 12.5 percent of their power production to 'renewable' energy sources -- solar and wind, for instance -- all by 2025." So this utility is just following the law, as passed by the Ohio legislature, folks. Liberalism is behind this.

Now, Snerdley, it's not a question of them getting away with it, it's that they're obligated to do it by the legislature, or what is it called in Ohio? The General Assembly. "The General Assembly passed a law last year requiring Ohio's utilities to reduce their customers' energy use by 22 percent, and to shift 12.5 percent of their power production to 'renewable' energy sources -- solar and wind, for instance -- all by 2025. The Great Light Bulb Boondoggle is the leading edge of an energy-reduction effort to comply with commands the government of Ohio has issued to the tides of technology. Those commands -- to foist immature and inefficient generation methods on consumers and push aside less expensive, more efficient power sources, like coal -- will be enforceable only at great expense to the public.

"People are upset about FirstEnergy's light bulbs, as folks with sore ears at the PUCO will attest. But let's keep this in perspective: $21.60 is nothing, compared to the expenses we'll pay if the greenshirts drop a bag full of cap-and-trade taxes on our front porches. ... Call your senators and your congressional representative instead. Tell them you've had enough of command-economy enviro-thuggery. And invite them to put cap-and-trade in a place where a solar array would be both impractical and painful." The author of this story is Kevin O'Brien at Cleveland.com. I don't know if the legislature or the General Assembly in Ohio mandated the price structure. Could be that the power company did that. I mean, folks, two light bulbs, $3.50 is what it costs the power company in Cleveland to buy them, and they're going to sell them to you for $21.60. You have no choice. You're going to pay for them whether you put them in or not. And you're going to get billed 60 cents a month for three years, but since you're going to be using less electricity because those two light bulbs, they're going to assess you a fee so that you will be paying what you would have been paying had you not put the light bulbs in. Huh? Well, but, Snerdley, health care costs aren't going to go down. He's asked me if health care costs go down like the government promises when they run everything, they're going to raise fees to keep the price up.

Health care costs are not going to go down, just like utility costs are not going to. Nothing is going to go down! For crying out loud, no price is going to go down. You have dips in prices and so forth with sales and a number of other factors, but as a general rule, prices of everything go up and they will continue to go up. When is the ban on incandescent light bulbs go into play? It's not that far down the road, a couple years, right, couple, three years? I don't think anybody knows about this. I mean this is not the same as requiring you to go to digital on your TV. This is not the same as that. This is bringing a light bulb into your house that requires a hazmat team to throw away because there's mercury in it. And when people find this out this could be one of many tipping points that wake up all these precious moderates and independents out there, say, "What do I have to do? You're telling me I gotta use these little spaghetti light bulbs here, and you're going to charge me more for it even though I'm supposed to save the planet by using less electricity?" What then?