Want to know where to recycle your bulbs here in Color Country? Here’s the details.

Ads all over TV urge you to “go green” and replace all of your old fashioned incandescent bulbs with cost-saving florescent bulbs. They use up to 75 percent less energy and last 10,000 hours or more - five times as long as incandescent bulbs. Businesses and lots of homes have been using foorescent tubes for years for exactly those same reasons.

But when one does burn out, don’t just throw it in the trash! This isn’t just a matter of recycling. This is a matter of poisoning the environment.

To get the great benefits of florescent lights, they have to use mercury … a dangerous environmental poison … to make them. It’s against the law to throw those lights in a landfill in seven states (California, Minnesota, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin - What about Utah? Utah’s Cowboy Legislature, remember? According to them, the land is there to be used … up.) Incinerating it is even worse. That just evenly disperses the poisonous mercury throughout the environment.

There is no safe level of mercury contamination, and it can cause “poor performance on neurobehavioral tasks, such as those measuring attention, fine motor function, language skills, visual-spatial abilities and verbal memory.” (Sound like your kids?) Because mercury in the environment builds up in fish tissues, it’s a leading cause of fish too contaminated to eat.

In fact, it’s bad enough that you should take special precautions if you happen to break one. You can read all about how to clean up a broken florescent light in this EPA document:

EPA Mercury Fact Sheet

So … Don’t throw that florescent light away!

What should you do?

Two stores here in Color Country will accept unbroken florescent bulbs for recycling.

   Home Depot
   725 W Telegraph St
   Washington, UT 84780

   Hurst Ace Hardware
   160 N Bluff St
   Saint George, UT 84770

The Ace in Hurricane and Lowes will not, however. So buy your new florescent lights at the two fine stores above when you drop the old ones off.

Things that Iran and California have in common.

California is officially bankrupt today. They can’t meet ordinary expenses and public services may become a bit ragged. If you were planning on visiting … don’t. They should nail up signs at the border saying, “Closed for Stupidity”. (Try Zion National Park instead! The Obama administration is giving away free weekends on July 18-19 and August 15-16!)

I documented one of the biggest reasons why an economy bigger than all but eight of the other countries on Earth can’t collect enough money to pay their bills in Getting What You Ask For. Back in 1978, right-wing mob leaders were able to redirect California property tax frustration into a free lunch for rich people. It’s been frustrating to me to read the articles about the California melt-down and see how few people recognize this fundamental linkage.

But that’s just why revenues are down. The cost side is also out of control and we can chalk a big part of that up to the same right-wing tunnel vision troublemakers.

I’ve documented the fact that the US is first in the world in putting our citizens behind bars before.

“There are FAR more people in jail in the U.S. per capita than anywhere. In 2005, there were 767 of us in the clink per 100,000. This is number 1 in the world by a long shot. Here’s a few comparisons with other industrialized nations: Australia - 126, Canada - 107, England/Wales - 148, France - 85. Why is it necessary to house more than nine times as many people behind bars than France?” (We’re Number 1!!)

California is ground zero for this kind of insanity. According to Wikipedia,

“From 1982 to 2000, California’s prison population grew at a rate of 500%. To accommodate this population growth and the war on crime, the state of California built 23 new prisons at a cost of 280 million to 350 million dollars apiece. The state of California constructed 12 prisons between 1852 and 1964.”

Why? Because right-wing lynch-mob leaders have stampeded California voters into insane ideas like the “three-strikes law” that takes control out of the hands of professionals and puts it into an inhuman mathematical formula. They’ve frightened suburban voters enough to sell the idea that they can simply warehouse the people who harvest their lettuce and clean their hotel rooms in vast prison camps and do nothing about why they’re there. Country Club martini drinkers have been convinced that it’s necessary to jail recreational marijuana users (while simultaneously creating wealthy marijuana sellers and even more crime) in blind denial of the evidence that it’s just not working.

Back in the 70’s, California was doing things right. The prison system used a concept called “indeterminate sentencing.” Judges could give defendants sentences controlled by parole boards that would decide when someone could be released.

But then the “eye-for-an-eye” crowd took over … basically the same people who cut off your hands for crimes against Islam in Iran … and in 1980, the California legislature “enacted legislation that said the purpose of incarceration was punishment alone, formally writing rehabilitation and treatment out of the penal code.” (Washington Post, June 11, 2006) In 1994, the “three strikes” law required 25-years-to-life sentences for most offenders with two previous serious convictions. Writing in the San Diego Union-Tribune (April 27, 2006), David Beck-Brown, an advocate for addiction treatment, documented one example where a man was convicted of stealing a bicycle twice and buying drugs in prison once who qualified for “three-strikes” and would be kept in prision for the rest of his life. Beck-Brown estimated the cost to taxpayers would be a cool million - even if your moral code isn’t bothered by jailing someone for life for recreational drug use.

California could save a lot of money by simply converting death sentences to life sentences. John Van de Kamp, former LA county district attorney and California attorney general, estimated this would save California $125 million a year. Considering that few executions are actually carried out and most death row inmates are actually just serving life sentences anyway, it would be a pretty good deal for California.

But no-o-o-o-o! Right-wingers need their pound of flesh. Maybe California ought to go all the way and behead them in public like they do in the Middle East! Another thing Iran and California have in common is a deep financial crisis that their respective right-wingers are trying desperately to blame on other people.

I’ve believed in him for years.

My first blog about Al Franken featured a link to a YouTube video of his outtasight sendup of Mick Jagger!

In my second, I condemned the hypocrisy of the Republicans for denying Franken his seat (and denying Minnesota their full representation) just to keep Democrats from having a 60 seat supermajority in the Senate. I never thought it could be dragged out this far.

But now that their delaying tactics have finally come to an end, we can chalk another one up. Say it with me: Senator Al Franken!

Why do I like Al Franken?

First and foremost: HE’S NOT A CAREER POLITICIAN!

In one of my earliest blogs, I described the logic behind something I call “The Gravel Pit Theory“. The basic idea is that the process of getting elected over and over is guaranteed to screen out anybody who is truthful and dedicated to serving the people. The only people who can win elections over and over have sold their souls and are dedicated exclusively to the goal of getting elected over and over. This principal applies to Republicans and Democrats alike and it goes double for the hypocrites Utah sends to Washington. (Did you see the list in the Salt Lake Tribune of all of the “other people’s money” European vacations Bennett is taking while in office?)

Not every non-career politician works out. (Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal seems to be flaming out, unfortunately.) But it’s better than sending a “School of Corruption” graduate back again.

Second: He’s smart! He ran a controlled and intelligent campaign that overcame the natural reservations that anybody would have about someone who has made a living the way he has. That takes some real intelligence.

Third: He called Rush Limbaugh a “Big Fat Idiot” right on the cover of one of his books. You’ve just gotta like somebody who will do that!

Check out his other books at Amazon!