60-WATT EQUIVALENT LED FOR $13
Doug Lindal: “I assume you saw this from David Pogue in today’s NYT, but if not it is huge for the LED bulb market. Ten-dollar (40 W) LED lights from CREE available at Home Depot!”
You actually must read this and replace all your incandescent light bulbs — and, when they burn out, all your CFL’s. Best investment you can make. (I think you’ll refer the “warmer” to the “whiter” light. Check them out before you buy to be sure.)
. . . The bottom line: Choose the Cree bulbs for their superior design and low price, Philips Hue to startle houseguests, or the GreenWave system for remote control of all the lights in your house.
By setting new brightness-per-watt standards that the 135-year-old incandescent technology can’t meet, the federal government has already effectively banned incandescent bulbs. And good riddance to CFL bulbs, with those ridiculous curlicue tubes and dangerous chemicals inside.
LED bulbs last decades, save electricity, don’t shatter, don’t burn you, save hundreds of dollars, and now offer plummeting prices and blossoming features. What’s not to like? You’d have to be a pretty dim bulb not to realize that LED light is the future.
LEONARD COHEN
Bob Miller: “Delighted to see you’re a Leonard lover, too! I saw him here in Chicago a few years ago with my late wife, and again just two weeks ago with my fiancé! I recommend the Leonard videos that were filmed in London in 2009. Here’s The Future (Repent), for example. If you can’t watch the whole thing, start it at about 7:00 and listen to his little talk. I’m sure it will put a smile on your face.”
PAPER
Fun video in 39 seconds. Trust me: your French is good enough. (Thanks, Dean.)
INEQUALITY
Joel Grow: “Reich has it right–once again. Here:”
. . . For over thirty years Republicans have pitted the middle class against the poor, preying on the frustrations and racial biases of average working people who can’t get ahead no matter how hard they try. In the Republican narrative, government takes from the hard-working middle and gives to the undeserving and dependent needy.
In reality, average working people have been stymied because almost all the economic gains of the last three decades have gone to the very top. The middle has lost bargaining power as unions have shriveled. American politics has been flooded with campaign contributions from corporations and the wealthy, which have used their clout to reduce marginal tax rates, widen loopholes, loosen regulations, gain subsidies, and obtain government bailouts when their bets turn sour.
Now five years after the worst downturn since the Great Depression and the biggest bailout in history, the stock market has recouped its losses and corporate profits constitute the largest share of the economy since 1929. Yet the real median wage continues to fall — wages now claim the lowest share of the economy on record — and inequality is still widening. All the economic gains since the trough of the recession have gone to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans; the bottom 90 percent continue to lose ground. . . .
All the struggling middle class has to do is elect Democrats, who would tilt the playing field back their way a bit, instead of Republicans, who would tilt it further still.
