Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Federal mandate for weather radios in mobile homes

I heard this one on the master's radio show. I thought it had to be a parody, but oh no, it's real:

The House of Repesentatives this afternoon unanimously passed legislation that will provide earlier storm warnings to people who live in manufactured housing, announced Congressman Spencer Bachus (R-AL).

Bachus is a lead sponsor of CJ’s Home Protection Act (H.R. 2787), which requires new manufactured homes to be equipped with NOAA Weather Radios.


Hmph. I'm re-reading Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution, and I'm not finding the part where Congress has the responsibility to keep people in mobile homes (who aren't in range of a weather siren, or aren't listening to the radio or watching cable or broadcast TV) aware of severe weather.

Note I said "aware of", not "safe from". When your federally-mandated radio goes off and tells you that a tornado is bearing down on your trailer, CJ's Home Protection Act doesn't provide you a storm shelter, ditch, culvert, or other low-lying area to hide in. (Yet, anyway. There's an awful lot of time left in the 110th Congress for the next unfunded mandate [probably Amber's Storm Shelter Act, or the ASS Act for short] to pass.)

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