DIRTBAGS AT THE EPA: Making It Harder to Be Clean
For the love of God, environmentalists–STOP HELPING ME!
In February, new Environmental Protection Agency rules will go into effect for yet another consumer product that works perfectly well now: dishwashers.
Now, I’m not saying that dishwashing is going well now, because it’s not. Thanks to environmentalists’ pressure on manufacturers and states, dishwasher detergent isn’t anywhere near as effective as it used to be, largely due to the idiotic decision to stop using phosphates somewhere around 2010. Phosphates, you see, are what make the products work. They put the “cleaning” into “cleaning product.” But environmentalists only like “clean” when it precedes “-up fund.” When we are talking about removing actual dirt from things we wear or put our food on, or appliances to get the waste out of our bathrooms, environmentalists don’t give a crap about you. So to speak.
That was bad enough. But now, new regulations will require that dishwashers use less water. This should save the average household fifty-six cents per year in energy consumption. Yippee. I can get that Rolls Royce Corniche I’ve always wanted.
However, that wonderful savings comes with a price. And that price is…an extra forty-five minutes or more to finish washing the dishes.
Between washing and drying clothes for two hours, and tacking forty-five minutes onto the dishwasher cycle, I’m starting to wonder what the point of the industrial revolution was. I think my great-great grandmother spent less time doing housework. Of course, she had multiple children to help out—and as we know the government doesn’t like that, either.
So now we can add dishwashers to the list of things that the government has ruined for the rest of us. Of course, as Hank Johnson made, uh, clear to us recently, we should love government regulations because we all know people in government, and we are the government—therefore, we’re only making rules for ourselves that we need and love.
I’m not buying it, Hank. I don’t think having relatives in government would make the regulations they promulgate reasonable. I think having relatives in federal government perpetrating this idiocy would just make me related to hyper controlling idiots.
Toilets don’t flush right any more. Light bulbs cost a fortune and have to be decontaminated by a guy in a hazmat suit if they ever break. Neither laundry detergent nor dishwashing detergent has the cleaning agents our parents had that kept their clothes clean.
All to keep the environment pristine pure, even though we’ve sort of sailed the boat on that one.
Sorry to hurt anyone’s feelings, but I am not an environmentalist. I don’t deliberately throw trash on the ground, but I don’t recycle it, either (and I have to admit one of my favorite “sixties moments” in Mad Men was when the Draper family went on a picnic and afterward, Don just hauled back and pitched his empty beer can into a stand of trees, after which Betty delicately picked up the picnic blanket, leaving all the trash that had been sitting on it strewn about the ground. Then they got in their car and drove away. I also enjoyed the scene where little Bobby Draper was “playing” in Betty’s presence by walking around with a plastic bag over his head. Who doesn’t miss the early sixties?)
You won’t see me shed a tear over trash on the highway. Not when there are fifty-seven million unborn children that ended up in dumpsters and landfills in our communities (yes, that again. And, no, I won’t shut up about it. We’ll be returning to it often here.)
As cold as it’s been around my neck of the woods, I’m ready to write Global Warming, INC a check and see if it can’t expand its reach enough to roll back bitter-cold winters. I wish I had the courage and the money to replace all my dishes with high-quality disposable Styrofoam—except even that is probably made with some environmentally-friendly weakening agent that makes food fall through it.
Call me an environmental monster. Call me an unconscionable breeder because I have three children. Call me a tree hater, a cow-killer, an evil petroleum hog ruining the planet with an internal combustion engine.
But I want washing machines that wash clothes and dishwashers that turn dirty dishes into clean ones. I want toilets that flush and light bulbs I can break any time I want to. I want what Rosie the Riveter wanted after the War, when she went home to dirty dishes and clothes and floors—a dishwasher, a washing machine, and a vacuum cleaner. And I want them all to work.
Is that too much to ask?
Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/89093669@N00/1440322817
