Now if you're Al Gore you can afford $10 a pop for squiggly-pig-tailed fluorescent light bulbs. But if you're mainstream America two or three kids mom and dad working outside the home that's not a very good deal.

I come from Montana and in eastern Montana we have a lot of dirt between light bulbs. It is expensive trying to bring the new technologies to smaller schools to upgrade their technologies to take advantage of distance learning.

Well what did we buy? Instead of a leaner smarter government we bought a bureaucracy that now tells us which light bulbs to buy and which will put 16 500 IRS agents in charge of policing President Obama's health care bill.

Our work on light bulbs wasn't an arbitrary mandate. We didn't just pick a standard out of the air or look for a catchy sounding standard like 25 by 2025 not based in science or feasibility. Instead we worked with both industry and environmental groups to come up with a standard that made sense and was doable.

The earth is rocky and full of roots it's clay and it seems doomed and polluted but you dig little holes for the ugly shriveled bulbs throw in a handful of poppy seeds and cover it all over and you know you'll never see it again - it's death and clay and shrivel and your hands are nicked from the rocks your nails black with soil.