Posted by Snow in 
I read about this on the weekend. The craft of chandelier making from recycled resources seem to be getting on in vogue. A $4800 chandelier made for recycled materials was bought by President Barack Obama for his two daughters. That’s some pricey recycling.
The dream is alive, Obama is in the White House. But the big ticket fixtures dim the halo a little bit.
Conspicuous consumption is evidenced spending almost $5K on a children’s lamp. I would like to see a catalog per state of recycled items such as this chandelier, coming in at well below the $4800 mark.
Then government and state officials could endorse recycled manufactured goods made in their own state with more information and choice than retail catalogs. I am almost sure this chandelier was not shipped or transported locally.
That is a LOT of money for one item, especially in a home not expecially hurting for practical light sources I would have thought that particular single family home, the white house, had enough leftover luminescence.
$4800 is a month’s supply of food for about 500 people or more. That’s a month’s rent on a building that could shelter 1500 people. I think a better idea might have been to get donations or buy from real grassroots organizations, not pricey catalogues.
I have heard people speak of Obama throwing money around to solve problems and using checkbook economics to solve issues in Washington DC, and this had an unhappy resonance for me with this purchase report.
The current elements of manufacturing can’t really be supported with $4800 lamp shopping. In this economy, is there any shortage of lamp vendors who would have sold him a lamp like that for one tenth the price?
The purchase of a recycled chandelier should drive feelings of re-using throwaway or current resources. But catalog shopping in this price range does not wear the re-use feel so many Freecycle good carry.
Somehow I don’t think Martin Luther King would be proud of black or white people going hungry while two kids enjoyed the luminescent glow of a $4800 chandelier. Doesn’t the White House have an attic? It makes me even more sad if this item is simply destined for an Obama Library exhibit.
I bet there are five people in this country who would have made the most amazing chandelier anyone ever saw for a fifth of that money. Think about how creative an entirely green and re-use refurbishment of the girls’ rooms could have been. That would have been walking the walk.
Obama is still a freshman President, and although the American public seems to be enjoying a Depression, Barack Obama is hardly Daddy Warbucks. But for a green choice, this one makes me see red.
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