Do you know the why behind ditching analog broadcast TV? Digital is the future and is a far more efficient use of finite resources.

I'm really torn about the environmental impacts of mining and industrial operations (that's what you're refering to with tungsten, right?).
There has to be some restrictions or greed and the desire for cheap products will destroy the planet we depend upon. Corporate responsibility doesn't exist so we come up with stupid blanket laws that are just as bad as none.

Should we impose a labor rate or environmental impact based tax on imported goods?

Either you pay Chinese kids US labor rates (those are going to be some wealthy kids) or pay import taxes based on the discrepancy.

Adopt US environmental protection levels or pay import taxes based on how badly you're ******* the environment vs what is allowed here. Should we extend that regionally in this country too? Afterall it's much cheaper to grow/build/develop/code/support/etc everything in the mid-west than it is on the coasts. **** those job stealing midwesterners.

**** your pork, I mean airport.

I can't wait for Amtrak to bring their auto transport services to me. I'd very much like to load the MSM on a train and relax as I'm shuttled across the country to some kick *** roads and sweet tracks. Would make for some fantastic vacations.

Recently, there have been shortages of some medicines. Cancer patients can’t get drugs they need.

Why not?

One reason is that a big drugmaker shut down for a year in part to meet Food and Drug Administration rules. The FDA makes it so expensive and difficult to sell drugs that there isn’t an eager pack of companies rushing to the fill the gap.

…Does the FDA say it’s sorry for its part and back off? Of course not.

Regulators almost never do that.

In fact, the FDA wants more power. It wants to regulate how your doctor uses his smartphone.

I’m not kidding!

The FDA wants the power to approve mobile medical apps that let doctors monitor patients’ vital signs over their phones. As one doctor put it, “Even though I’m away from the hospital, I can still look at … real-time wave form data just as if I were at the patient’s bedside.”

Sounds great. It makes doctors more efficient.

But the FDA basically says, “No, you just can’t put something on your phone if it’s a medical device. What if it doesn’t work right? We have to approve it first.” …what’s the harm in running apps past the regulators?

…There’s a big cost to the public when companies submit applications and then wait years for FDA approval. “We’re losing time, precious time that lives are dependent upon,” Emord said. “MIM Software developed a simple mobile device that would combine MRI images, PET scans, CAT scans all together and produce a super image that was better for diagnosis … right on your phone. To get that through the agency, it took two and a half years and cost some hundreds of thousands of dollars. All the while it could have been in use, and ultimately it was approved.”

Lawyers and reporters encourage bureaucrats to move slowly. If something goes wrong, the media make a huge fuss about it, and the class-action parasites pounce. But when the FDA delays a device for years and people die, we don’t report that.

We don’t even know who the victims are.

Useful HIV drugs were available in Europe for years before the FDA approved them for use here. A doctor at the Cleveland Clinic invented a medical app that helped physicians calibrate the amount of radiation to give to women with breast cancer. The FDA demanded so much extra and expensive proof of its safety that he abandoned it.

The FDA’s caution leads many companies to just give up on potentially lifesaving ideas. Yet I don’t hear companies complaining. “If you raise your head above the parapet and you become vocal in your criticism, the FDA remembers like an elephant and will stamp you out of existence. They’ll punish you. It’s so much discretion in their hands. They sit like emperors reigning over this stuff.”

I can no longer just hook an old TV into the wall and get some basic cable.

You can flip the channels anymore. I can go on and on with the downsides.

Analog was always going to be ditched, so why stick your nose into it and cause trouble?

The only reason this law was passed is so GE could get rich selling $50 light bulbs. The fact that there's some sort of benefit to the enviroment...like disposing of mercury in landfills, is only an easy selling point.

The technology isn't there yet; I hate LED, Halogen, and Flurencent bulbs -- I prefer candlelight to those POS bulbs...which frankly is about all the lumens they can output. And now, I can no longer buy the bulbs I like and enjoyed I've honestly looked into alternative sources to get some of the bulbs I used to buy. I've stocked up on 150 watt Revel type-A bulbs because those are no longer sold in store. It's retarded, and again, the market was already going in that direction.

Ok Al Gore...

Did you google it? That's your gov't innovation. They received $5 million in stimulous money in 2009, built this an extravagant terminal which hasn't been used. Now they are getting an additional $750,000 for a nice boost in innovation.

why hasn't a private company done this? they better, cheaper, and make a profit

unlike Amtrak that operates at a huge loss and it only in business because we prop it up.