Interfering, Nosy, Controlling Busybodies Continue Their Efforts to Control Your Life.

Interfering, Nosy, Controlling Busybodies Continue Their Efforts to Control Your Life. by The Elephant's Child

October 5, 2010, 7:35 am
Filed under: Energy, Freedom, Law, Liberalism | Tags: Control Freaks, Regulating America's Bathrooms, Zealotry and Tyranny

In National Review Online yesterday, Rob Long described his introduction to “the world’s most complicated toilet” in a Japanese hotel.  He described it delicately in an essay called “Dim Idea:”

There were hoses and nozzles where hoses and nozzles probably shouldn’t be, and along the side there was an alarming set of buttons and switches, which made the entire contraption look like a neat freak’s electric chair.

He was impressed, found an American dealer, and had one installed.  It uses a lot of water, which turned his mind to the nanny government’s problem with our lightbulbs, and  of course the low flush or low flow toilets that you have to flush several times, erasing the whole intent of saving water, and low-flow shower heads.  Remember when they sent you the little metal washer-thingy to put in your showerhead to restrict the flow, and of course nobody did, so they ordered manufacturers to build a restrictor in?  People were going to Canada to buy a decent toilet.

Unless you have stood in the aisle in Home Depot where they have the fancy showerheads, and dreamed of having one of the big ones, or the multiple nozzle versions, you may not appreciate the potential loss to us all.   With those, the nannies did not go after consumers, but after the manufacturers. A big shower rose, like the Raindance Imperial 500 AIR may sell for as much as $5,457.  It has a 24-inch spray face, 358 no-clog channels and a triple-massage option. Wow.

In May, the DOE turned on the plumbing-products industry, and said that it would adopt a strict definition of the term “showerhead” in enforcing standards that have been on the books, mostly unenforced,  for nearly 20 years.

The industry responded quickly.  “It was not the legislative intent of Congress to authorize the DOE to regulate the bathing habits of Americans,” the VP of California Faucets wrote to the DOE in June.

A 1992 federal law says a showerhead can deliver no more than 2.5 gallons per minute at a flowing water pressure of 80 pounds per square inch.  For years the term “showerhead ” was deemed to refer to a nozzle.  In May, the DOE decided that all nozzles were considered to be a “showerhead.”

In May, the DOE’s general counsel fined four showerhead makers $165,104 in civil penalties.

The DOE’s lawyer says that of course Congress limited consumer choice. “When you waste water, you waste energy.” Each multi-head shower fixture uses an extra 4o to 80 thermal units of energy per year, equivalent to 50 gallons of gasoline, or one barrel of oil, he says.

For a while, some time ago, I was following some of the insane regulations that were flowing out of European Union bureaucracies to control the intricacies of perfection of food in European markets.  They ordered toys for pigs, they controlled the size and curvature of bananas, the shape of other fruits. The lists were endless.

A family had made a marmalade for years from apricots (if I remember correctly) but the EU said it could not be produced, for marmalade was made only from oranges.  The ultimate, to me, was when they ordered farmers who sold eggs to label each egg with the name and address of the hen — in case there were complaints?

It is apparently in the nature of Lefties, that they must control the most minute details of the lives of others. We have pretty much established that they do not willingly allow others to disagree with them (see my many rants),  but this drive for control of everything is just plain sick.  It is not their business. Are their lives so shallow and so empty that they must fill the hours by controlling others?

There are many multi-millionaires among the Democrat leadership.  I strongly suspect that most of them do not have small stall showers with water-restrictive shower heads.  Lefties have never been bothered by being hypocrites, they just like to call other people that.

The sick controlling impulse of these control-freaks is way out of line.  They tell themselves that they are doing it “for the children” or “to save the planet” which makes them feel good and important. They are doing it to feed their own egos, and they are neither good nor important. They are zealots. We have a long and very ugly history with zealots who cannot control their impulses.   November can’t come soon enough.

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