Pirate's Cove

This is what modern Progressivism looks like (via The New Nostradamus of the North)

(Spiegel Online) Now that 100-, 75- and 60-watt bulbs have already been eliminated, as of Sept. 1 the smaller 25- and 40-watt bulbs will also slowly disappear from the lives of 500 million Europeans — without any of those citizens having ever been asked about the ban. Nowhere is the bureaucratic influence of European government agencies as powerful as in the delirium of energy efficiency.

“The EU has made a decision without consulting citizens and, in doing so, it has massively intervened in our quality of life,” says Hannot, the light-bulb activist. This paternalism and lack of transparency almost aggravates him more than doing without the stronger, warmer light of incandescent light bulbs. The makers of the documentary film “Bulb Fiction” even speculate that the European light-bulb lobby, including major companies like Philips and Osram, are behind the demise of the cheaper incandescent light bulb given the much larger profit margins associated with more expensive energy-saving light bulbs.

That sounds familiar, except here it’s legislators who are unresponsive to the people who elect them. One is not allowed to manufacture or import incandescent bulbs. Supposedly, fines for that can range up to $70k (US). Fortunately, there is a loophole in the bureaucratic rules allowing them to be sold for “industrial uses“. That will surely be closed.

For Holger Krahmer, a member of the European Parliament for Germany’s business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP), the reform is a complete failure. “We are heading for a dictatorship of bureaucrats,” he says. Krahmer is on the energy committee, which is using the Ecodesign Directive to make more and more products more energy-efficient.

For example, plans call for mandating that the heating plates of coffee makers are designed to only stay on for a specific amount of time. Vacuum cleaners are supposed to become more efficient with the additional of moveable suction mouths. Laundry detergent could be reformulated so that it dissolves fats at only 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit). And laundry itself could soon be cleaned using microwave or vacuum technology.

A debate over the showerhead of the future is also causing a certain amount of stress. Germany opposes water-saving showerheads. The country’s sewage pipes already threaten to dry up today because water-saving plumbing devices are making it so that not enough water is being flushed through the system. Everything from stoves to heating systems, ovens, windows and insulation is being tested and made more efficient by the EU.

When a refrigerator makes a beeping noise because the door has been left open too long, it’s probably because of the efforts of people working for EU Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger. It might not even be long before bureaucrats will be telling Europeans how brown their toast and how hot their showers can be.

The long term goal of the far left, ie, Progressives, is control. Control of people, control of companies, control of economies, all put in the hands of a central government, all in the guise of some sort of “we’re just here to help” issue. In this case, stopping globull warming and/or “protecting the environment”. Interestingly, the solutions create more problems which require more government regulations which create more problems which require more regulations. Wash, rinse, repeat.

You get the same thing in all facets of life when Progressives are involved. You have the so-called “death panels”, which have been regulating who gets access to health procedures in Europe for a long time. In America, Obamacare calls for the Independent Payment Advisory Board, made up of unelected bureaucrats, unresponsive to the American People, who will make decisions as to what health care you will have access to. This is what Progressives do: Big Government that Knows Better Than You.