There is something ideological amiss in this (via Seattlepi.com):
Ruling against a suit brought by the Building Industry Association of Washington, a federal judge on Monday upheld the state of Washington’s 2009 energy efficiency building code.
U.S. District Judge Robert J. Bryan rejected the BIAW’s claim that the code conflicted with federal law. The code sets energy efficiency requirements for new homes, and is designed to reduce energy use and the energy bills of Washington households.
The BIAW sued Washington over energy standards that, they claim, exceeded the Federal regulations. But shouldn’t the BIAW be suing the Feds, claiming that energy efficiency is a States’ Rights issue?
Huh…these Wingnuts are hard to figger-out sometimes.
It is rather inconsistent.
It’s not that the BIAW are wingnuts; it’s just that their interests are often aligned with those of wingnuts, so they become part of the increasingly entertaining republican coalition of short sighted selfishness.
The BIAW are rapacious unscrupled developers; they don’t care about abstract political theory – they only care about unfettered commerce.
Is it shark or are you misreading the modern right.
It’s all about states rights, unless of course a state wants to mandate higher fleet mileage standards.
It’s all about states rights, unless a state wants to legalize medicines that the Federal Government deems dangerous.
It’s all about states rights unless a state wants to legalize the gay.
We could play this all day.
The first energy codes that came out over thirty years ago gave us a lot of bang for the buck. To give you an example, jewelery stores in the 1970’s were averaging over twenty watts/square foot for lighting. Manufacturers responded to the code with new lighting technologies that helped lower that to less than two watts/square foot and these stores actually have better lighting now. However, since then there have been additional requirements imposed in the area of lighting controls that are more dubious in value but have certainly enriched the manufacturers and specifiers of complex lighting control systems. For some time now, at least for commercial and industrial occupancies, the developers of subsequent editions of the state energy code are saying that they don’t trust you to use a light switch. You are now required to install expensive automated control systems.
I’ve also seen other areas where manufacturers use the code development process to gain what I believe to be unwarranted market share for their products. Fuse manufacterers and the National Electrical Code requirement for selective coordination of an electrical system’s overcurrent protection devices comes to mind. Tyco and their circuit protective cables mandated by NEC and NFPA 72 is another example.
Don’t try to be Goldy-lite. Be your own man. Writing what he writes about just makes you seem like a kiss ass.
Steve @ 4: You are right, that there isn’t any easy left/right dichotomy at play. You really have to look at each regulation carefully, there are a multitude of parties in play with their own interests at stake.
Take, for example, bicycle safety. In the early 1930’s Germany made a requirement that bicycle pedals should have reflectors on them meeting specific criteria, to reduce motor vehicle/bicyle accidents. Sounds like a good idea, right? Until you learn that the Nazi party bought up the patent for a bicycle reflector, and the legislation effectively required only that particular reflector met the standards. The Nazis had a continuous flow of income into the party, apart from government revenues, which it could use for it’s own purposes.
Here in the U.S., you will sometimes see large businesses supporting MORE regulation, if it raises the entry barriers to new competition. Likewise, a number of companies see regulation as a way of making money by selling their services to other companies. Fifty years ago there was virtually no Hazmat/Dangers Goods transportation regulations, but now it’s a rather complicated subject, and there a lot of firms selling training and certification services, as well as classification, boxing, labeling, and shipping services for hazmat goods. You can see similar things in almost every industry.
So in the case of the BIAW objecting to the new energy efficiency regulations, remember that there are lots of suppliers, consultants, etc. who are quite happy with the regulations and stand by ready to supply whatever is needed so the builder can comply with them. Their interests in this are adverse to one another, although you won’t hear them saying so very loudly, since their adversary on this issue is also their potential customer.
@6 Another example would be a proposal submitted by Tyco a few years ago to NFPA that would have required testing of emergency voice systems to be done using an “intelligibility” meter. While that might sound good on the surface, it really wasn’t for a number of reasons. What wasn’t trumpeted, of course, was that Tyco had the only hand held intelligibility meter on the planet that met the proposal’s criteria and which they were going to sell for $4,000 each. The roll-out of the product was timed to the release of the new code edition. The proposal had passed at the committee level. Myself and a few others played a role in defeating that proposal with a floor vote at the NFPA convention.
I used to view code as “The Good Book”. After some of the manufacturer’s shenanigans of the last decade I no longer view code as such. Just because it’s code doesn’t mean that it’s good code.
Somewhere in their rants the BIAW probably has a good point or two to make about the state’s storm water regulations. But they’re such fascist shitheads about it that I couldn’t care less.
For all you “Debt doesn’t matter” Obama supporters, Silver is up about a Dollar today, and Robert Reich, one of your own Clintonians, is saying Reich: Market Correction a ‘Certainty’
http://www.moneynews.com/Stree.....ode=BA19-1
Because OF “THE HIGH EMPLOYMENT”, “INFLATION”, Rising GAS, FOOD ETC.
DEBT DOES MATTER
DEBT DOES MATTER
So along with spending cuts, will you join with me to call for a 90% tax rate on income over $1 mill, until we get our debt under control?
@8…well then all those(pension funds, banks, the rich, the Chinese, the Japanese, and others, etc.) buying trillions of dollars in US government debt instruments are just a fucking bunch of fools, what? And if we pay them back with funny money, who gets hurt?
The stupidity. It’s blinding.
Yes, they are fools! If you are in debt spending twice what you take in, what bank would loan you money?
@8
Debit does matter and we’re doing our best to dig our way out of misguided policies that date back all the way to Ronald McReagan. It’s gonna take a bit. Obama’s policies will shrink the debit in the long run.
I’d note, that while Reagan and the Republicans talked about paying off the debit, welfare reform, and shrinking the government, it was Bill Clinton that actually did it.
@8. Debt doesn’t matter is the mantra of the right dummy. See Reagan, Ronald
.More nat’l debt incurred in 8 Years than in the previous 204 years of the republic. See Bush, George (aka chimp, smirkey McJackass…) So much debt that two wars had to stay off books, creator of TARP)
Isn’t it amazing that the right clings to non-facts for 30 some years. Tax and spend is fiscally irresponsible. But lose your income (aka tax cuts) and spend and spend and spend and then buy a shiny new war is somehow the road to prosperity?
“For all you “Debt doesn’t matter” Obama supporters”
Tell it to Dick Cheney, who told America that “deficits don’t matter” as the Bush administration took two wars and the drug program off the books, all while lying about the costs. Where were all the Republican teabagger protests then? Where were they when the economy fell off the cliff during the last years of the Bush administration?
Robert Reich, one of your own Clintonians, is saying
Reich: Market Correction a ‘Certainty’
http://www.moneynews.com/Stree.....ode=BA19-1
So when you all WAKE the F UP
“Market Correction a ‘Certainty’”
Good grief! A bull market like the current, very strong Obama Bull Market always sees a “correction” sooner or later. That said, I like the idea of you pooping your pants and having a flopping-on-the-floor anxiety attack over it.
@15 piling on @16…
Saying a market correction is a certainty is like saying a plane crash will happen in the future. Or talking about Forrest management in terms of when the next fire occurs not if.
A market correction, nah, won’t see another few dozen of those in my lifetime.
Not a word of this burning states’ rights issue over with the little glibertarians at SoundPolitics (I just can’t look away!) – they muct be conflicted, like this guy.
However, Cathy McMorris Rogers was over at Stefan’s little fascist blog this morning – and was soliciting comments.
That went up at 8:59AM, and so far there is *1* comment, and syncophantic, of course.
Well then. This calls for a solution!
How about a little “job-enhancing” tax cut for the rich? And while we’re at it how about another war? Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran anyone?
We got a right wing House now – they’ll set the works in motion.
Only when there are Democrats anywhere near the levers of power.
At those times, crippling debt is leading us to damnation, and only draconian spending cuts and widespread misery can cure our ills.
Wneh Republicans are in power, debt is needed to finance massive transfers of wealth upward to our betters, and to pay for the war machine.
Heck, we’re already spending over $5 million per year for each and every Islamic terrist. That well’s tapped out.
If DEBT MATTERS really wants to control debt GOP-style, we’re gonna have to come up with a new fright mask enemy to spend money on.
Any suggestions?
Buddhists are probably no good. They won’t fight back. They’ll just light themselves on fire. Makes for bad publicity.
Becky nominates the Chinese. I’m skeptical. We kinda need their commerce.
Africa, anyone?
“Africa, anyone?”
We’ll stil have Mexico. And I’m sure that by the end of the week Beck will have connected them to the Caliphate and Muslim Bruthu’hood. After that, um, I say Canada. Too many of them speak French and there are Muslims there. What’s not to hate? So our neighbors to the north obviously merit a closer Beckian examination for what Pudge might call “obvious truths”.
“That went up at 8:59AM, and so far there is *1* comment, and syncophantic, of course.”
If you, Michael and Uncle Witz post in that thread it’d likely go to over ninety like the last one. You guys really perked the place up.
I liked the whiny SP post about the so-called leftist eliminationist bumper sticker. Combine that with Pudge’s target map and you get today’s wingnuttia in a nutshell. That reminds me, some wingnut nutball politician today called for activist judges to put on the endangered species list. So how many judges must be killed for that to happen? Hmm, I wonder how he feels about a federal judge falling to an assassin’s bullets last month? Score one for the cause?
From Christine O’Donnell’s plea for rent money,
“liberal-controlled GOP”
Too funny!
My admittedly too-late advice for the “liberal-controlled GOP establishment”? Be careful who you sleep with as you’ll be waking up next to them in the morning.
We really did – I started to notice that the posts there get a couple of comments in the first 24-48 hours, and then up to maybe 10 or 15 over a week. A really pathetic community.
However, if one of the liberals came and stirred the pot – there was an onslaught of rightist hate and stoopidity.
I think I’m going to go back over and ask McMorris Rogers how she feels about posting at a site where the President is regularly referred to as “Obongo”