† It’s Not Easy Being Green. Just Ask Al Gore.: After housewives in WA discovered that the "green" dishwashing soap they were forced to buy by government fiat left their dishes greasy and food-encrusted, they started driving across the state line to smuggle in Cascade and other tried-and-true products. Here's another well-intentioned government ordinance that went awry, causing environmental harm rather than preventing it - and pissing off a lot of constituents in the process.

Major traffic jams caused by the removal of a northbound traffic lane on Alameda de las Pulgas in late December to create two bike lanes have forced the Belmont City Council to consider emergency traffic-mitigation measures and even restoring the lane, reports the San Mateo (CA) Daily News:

More than 100 people have e-mailed San Carlos officials to complain about the lane removal, which city leaders think has quickly become the most contentious topic in both communities.

Belmont City Councilman Warren Lieberman, who is on the infrastructure committee with Vice Mayor Christine Wozniak, said Wednesday the city should seriously consider "throwing in the towel" and restoring the lane if the short-term improvements do not loosen up traffic.

"The rage (caused by the lane removal) is just doing things to people in the area that I'm just not comfortable with anymore," Lieberman said. "We've got to figure this thing out."

Because it would require the city to undergo a competitive bidding process, restoring the lane would not be possible until June, said Public Works Director Ray Davis.

In an e-mail, a reader of this blog who lives in the area writes:

This is like the detergent article. This is 1 block from my house. I've seen 2 bikes on this lane in 4 months. To travel that 2 block street used to take 1 minute. Now it takes 10. Take the hundreds of cars and multiply them by 10 minutes idling and polluting, then add the costs of police to route traffic versus stopping crime and then factor in the fact that kids may cross the street less safely and bravo to the Belmont City council. The same city council that made it illegal to smoke in your home [contextual link added by The Stiletto; second item on page].

And people who voluntarily buy "eco-friendly" products are find that they are a waste of money – for instance, compact fluorescent bulbs, reports The New York Times:

Irritation seems to be rising as more consumers try compact fluorescent bulbs, which now occupy 11 percent of the nation’s eligible sockets, with 330 million bulbs sold every year. Consumers are posting vociferous complaints on the Internet after trying the bulbs and finding them lacking. …

Experts say the quality problems are compounded by poor package instructions. Using the bulbs incorrectly, like screwing low-end bulbs into fixtures where heat is prone to build up, can greatly shorten their lives.

Some experts who study the issue blame the government for the quality problems, saying an intensive federal push to lower the price essentially backfired by encouraging manufacturers to use cheap components. …

Compact fluorescents once cost as much as $30 apiece. Now they go for as little as $1 - still more than regular bulbs, but each compact fluorescent is supposed to last 10 times longer, save as much as $5.40 a bulb each year in electricity, and reduce emissions of carbon dioxide from burning coal in power plants. …

[T]the most consumer complaints: poor dimming, slow warm-up times, shortened bulb life because of high temperatures inside enclosed fixtures, and dissatisfaction with the color of the light.

Experts and bulb manufacturers say that consumers need to play a role in solving the problems by learning more about the limitations of compact fluorescent bulbs. The Federal Trade Commission has begun to study whether it should force improvements in the labels of the bulbs.

† How Did We Get From A Knowledge Economy To An Unskilled And Illiterate Economy?: New York Times editorial Board member Lawrence Downes appears to have a peculiar form of dyslexia: he cannot discern the “il” in the word “illegal” so the words “illegal” and “legal” look identical to him. In this op-ed, Downes champions the cause of one Benita Veliz, who is as American as apple pie - except that she isn’t:

Ms. Veliz is an illegal immigrant facing deportation, but she is nobody’s idea of a criminal, social undesirable or drain on the public till.

She is a 23-year-old college graduate from San Antonio who works in a church office. She is smart, self-sufficient and hard-working. She is bursting with academic and professional ambitions - dreams that she has set aside because her paths to achieve them have all been closed. Immigration lawyers have told her that she has no hope of avoiding expulsion. She can only postpone it.

Ms. Veliz is here illegally, but not by choice. She arrived from Mexico with her parents in 1993 on a tourist visa. She was 8. She had never lived in the United States before but has lived nowhere else since. By all detectable measures, she is an American, a Texan.

And an impressive one at that. She was valedictorian at Jefferson High School, graduating at age 16. She went to St. Mary’s University in San Antonio on a full scholarship. She doubled majored in biology and sociology … She volunteered in a children’s hospital. And she waited tables 45 hours a week in a Mexican restaurant. …

As for the country she knows and loves, if it were smarter and kinder, more like the country we see in fuzzy old documentaries, where hopeful families cluster on the decks of ships passing the Statue of Liberty, it would find a way to let her stay. It would let her go to law school. It would accept Benita Veliz as the American she is.

The Stiletto does not recall Downes making a similar plea on behalf of Arthur Mkoyan (last item), but agrees that illegals who serve our country in the armed forces, or who excel in their studies, should be put on the fast track to U.S. citizenship via the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act (The "DREAM Act"). When Congress takes up The DREAM Act, it should also put an end to the nightmare of chain migration, an ill-begotten illegal immigration policy that allows functionally illiterate, low-skilled workers (third item) and their functionally illiterate, low-skilled mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins and next door neighbors to take up residence here.

† Employers Hiring Forged Documented Aliens Are Lawbreakers In Other Ways, Too (second item): Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has put several proposed workplace immigration raids on hold, signaling a shift in strategy to preferentially prosecute companies and executives and not forged documented workers, reports The Washington Post:  

"ICE is now scrutinizing these cases more thoroughly to ensure that [targets] are being taken down when they should be taken down, and that the employer is being targeted and the surveillance and the investigation is being done how it should be done," said the official, discussing Napolitano's views about sensitive law enforcement matters on the condition of anonymity. …

Critics say workplace and neighborhood sweeps are harsh and indiscriminate, and they accuse the government of racial profiling, violating due process rights and committing other humanitarian abuses. …

But Obama also faces pressure from conservative lawmakers and many centrist Democrats, who say that workplace enforcement is needed to reduce the supply of jobs that attract illegal immigrants, and that any retreat in defending American jobs in a recession could ignite a populist backlash. …

While a policy is still under development, Napolitano has said she intends to focus more on prosecuting criminal cases of wrongdoing by companies. Analysts say they also think ICE may conduct fewer raids, focusing routine enforcement on civil infractions of worker eligibility verification rules.

Former Bush administration officials said their raids were also targeted against supervisors, but that it took time to build complicated white-collar cases. In the meantime, they said, depriving companies of their workforces and in some cases filing criminal charges against illegal immigrant workers sent a clear message of deterrence to both management and labor.

Center for Immigration Studies executive director Mark Krikorian tells the WaPo the Obama administration is treading water until the economic crisis passes: "I think their calculus is, how do they keep Hispanic groups happy enough without angering the broader public so much that they sabotage health care and their other priorities?"  

† Gregg Is Gone: Six weeks after running for the hills, budget-hawk-and-almost-commerce-secretary Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) slammed President Barack Obama's grandiose spending plans in the weekly Republican radio and Internet address:

Here are highlights of Gregg’s address: 

This plan spends too much, taxes too much and borrows too much.

What do we mean? Well, let me give you a few examples:

In the next five years, President Obama's budget will double the national debt. In the next 10 years, it will triple the national debt.

To say this another way, if you take all the debt of our country run up by all of our presidents from George Washington to George W. Bush … it is President Obama’s plan to double that debt in just the first five years that he is in office.  

His budget assumes the deficit will average $1 trillion every year for the next 10 years and will add well over $9 trillion in new debts to our children's backs.

He also is proposing the largest tax increase in history, much of it aimed at taxing small business people who have been, over the years, the best job creators in our economy. …

He’s very forthright in stating that he believes that by greatly expanding the spending, the taxing and the borrowing of our government, this will lead us to prosperity. …

We believe you create prosperity by having an affordable government, that pursues its responsibilities without excessive costs, taxes or debt. It is the individual American who creates prosperity and good jobs, not the government. …

Our nation has an exceptional history of one generation passing on to the next generation a more prosperous and stronger country, but that tradition is being put at risk.

† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: “[C]oming of age in the recession of the early '90s on the wrong side of Connecticut,” The Washington Post’s Kelly Marages, resents the Johnnies-come-lately who are jumping on penny-pinching bandwagon the rest of us have been riding for years: 

In fact, frugal living is the new glamorous - haven't you heard? The haves have finally been granted access to the one club the have-nots had owned exclusively, and they've turned it into a fabulous party. Enter the "recessionista."

Whereas a year ago this person may have attended the gala du jour in a brand new designer frock, she's now wearing one recycled from the back of her closet. She is learning to cook at home - maybe even from vintage Depression-era recipes! And she's conspicuous about her non-conspicuous, discount-store, coupon-carrying consumption. …

And there were the magazines, the newspapers, the news stations proclaiming that you could still be a fashionista, even in these tough times. Just follow a few key tips. And while you're at it, pick up these dresses and shoes and bags and electronic wine bottle openers - they're all a steal at under $150.

The advice doesn't stop there. We've been told to go shopping in our closets [contextual link added by The Stiletto]. Cute - but what does it mean? That I should take a shirt and pair it with some pants or a skirt that I haven't already matched it to? Call me crazy, but isn't that just called getting dressed? Or does it mean I should - heavens, no! - re-wear an outfit that I've worn before?

Marages’ colleague Robin Givhan thinks “the increasingly outlandish advice on how to freshen up a wardrobe without spending a lot of money” has finally jumped the shark with this suggestion:

[A] stylist on "Today" suggested recently that women use double-sided tape to glue a decorative industrial zipper to a little black dress to make it look more modern. What could be left? Kleenex flowers as brooches? …

In addition to the practical concern that a little rain, sweat or accidental jostling could cause the zipper to fall off - or worse, to slither halfway down and hang there like a trail of toilet paper - it remains unclear why anyone would work so hard to take a timeless garment like a little black dress and muck it up with notions. Rule of thumb: If it was stylish enough for Audrey Hepburn, it does not need to be reinvented.

At a certain point - particularly when Scotch tape is involved - it's time to reassess exactly what "fashion" is supposed to do for the consumer. And when the consumer ought to salvage both her budget and dignity and just skip the current season's trends.

Here’s a money-saving fashion tip from The Stiletto: The “retro look” never goes out of style, so if you hang on to your clothes long enough they will become trendy again – and your outfits will have the added cachet of being “authentic” and “vintage.”

† Updates To Previous Posts (fifth item, Why Middle Class Americans Can’t Afford Health Insurance: Part II): Spurred in part by NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s investigation into UnitedHealth Group Inc. and its subsidiary Ingenix Inc., a database used by insurers to calculate "usual, customary and reasonable" rates for out-of-network doctors, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, will hold a hearing about ways to increase accountability and transparency, reports The Associated Press:

"They're lowballing deliberately. They deliberately cut the numbers so the consumer has to pay more of the cost." 

"It's scamming. It's fraud." …

"You ask me how are their 'usual and customary' rates being determined? I don't know."