Right-Wing Media Continue To Mislead On Nonexistent Light Bulb "Ban"

[NNN0LHI]

http://mediamatters.org/research/201111280004?frontpage

November 28, 2011 11:27 am ET

With some provisions of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 scheduled to go into effect on January 1, right-wing media have revived the false claim that the government is "ban{ning}" incandescent light bulbs. In fact, the law simply restricts the sale of inefficient bulbs and has led companies to develop numerous alternatives, including energy-efficient incandescents.

[Ian David]

1. Florescent bulbs contaminate our precious, bodily fluids. n/t

[Tesha]

2. That's okay; all those douchebags stocking-up on 100W light bulbs will help the economy. (NT)

[ChoppinBroccoli]

3. You Would Think People Would Be Smarter Than This

Yet my Faux News-loving father-in-law just recently regaled my wife with stories about how agents from the government were going to come to everyone's house and confiscate all their incandescent light bulbs AND all their wood-burning stoves (he loves his wood-burning stove, which is why he's all outraged over this "news"). And under what authority will these mysterious, black-suited government agents be doing this? According to his "sources," the law that makes this all legal is the "Cap and Trade Law."

And this not a stupid person. He just believes everything he hears on Faux News and right-wing radio without question. Which I guess makes him the typical right-wing Faux News viewer. And THAT'S the scary part. There are MILLIONS of people out there just like him, all happily swallowing what Faux News feeds them, and all repeating their nonsense as if it is fact.

On the other hand, just think how many jobs would be created by all the new agents the government would need to hire in order to pull this operation off. But right-wingers wouldn't be happy about THAT either, because the government giving people jobs is "big government," and we all know that that is the worst thing ever.

[hifiguy]

4. No I wouldn't think that many would be smarter

than this. Part of intelligence is selecting what sources of information in which to repose your trust. If people want to believe Faux, they are immediately branding themselves as uninterested in the truth, and as such, pretty dumb.

[Odin2005]

10. There are people here that delusionally think vaccines cause Autism, even...

...when it is proven again and again there is no link. So, no, the average person is actually quite stupid.

Hysterical thinking is saddly common.

[hifiguy]

12. Yep. And re: autism

Back when I was a sprout in the early 1960s we got comparatively few vaccines. And I am Dx'd Aspergers, though not until about seven years ago. Once I learned what A.S. was it was as plain as a pikestaff that my entire life history was unbroken testimony to the correctness of the DX. Believing in the long, repeatedly discredited vaccines -> autism link is way too common even around here. And DU is a very smart online community.

Autism spectrum disorders, I quickly learned after getting my DX and doing obsessive research like a good Aspie, are a function of different hardwiring inside the brain and is largely genetic. Superior A.S. mutants ARISE!! ;)

[Odin2005]

13. I suspect my maternal grandfather was an Aspie, he was born in 1917.

He was a city accountant and was a very shy person, he was the "outsider" of the family and was in some ways shunned because of his eccentricity.

[hifiguy]

18. A cousin told me a few years ago that there were

quite a few "different" people on the maternal side of my family - depressives, one or two learning disabled folks and some others that were just "kind of odd." I know that my late mother suffered from some profound phobias.

[Bandit]

14. And this not a stupid person. He just believes everything he hears on Faux News

According to Forest Gump..."Stupid is as Stupid does"

[The Genealogist]

19. What?

"agents from the government were going to come to everyone's house and confiscate all their incandescent light bulbs AND all their wood-burning stoves"

Just out of curiosity, was it Faux Snooze that came up with this rot, or one of the blithering asses on the AM radio?

[ChoppinBroccoli]

25. I Never Got A Definitive Answer To That Question

Basically, the way this went down was my wife went over to her parents' house to pick up our kids after a visit. Whenever her father, who is retired, has been cooped up inside all day (like on days when the weather is bad and he can't work in the yard), he usually just sits around watching Faux News all day long and getting mad about things. And even if he goes anywhere, as soon as he starts the car, the radio goes directly to right-wing hate radio.

I can always tell when he's been sitting around the house watching Faux, because my wife will come home and relay to me all the horror stories her father has "warned" her about. He never really says WHERE he heard them, but it has to either be Faux News or right-wing radio. He almost never will say, "Rush Limbaugh said XYZ today," because he knows my wife and I are both liberals (one of the reasons why he doesn't like me all that much--I "corrupted" his daughter and turned her away from the dark side) and will immediately discredit it.

My wife doesn't follow politics as closely as I do, so she usually comes home and says something to the effect of, "My dad told me today that........(insert right-wing talking point here). That can't be TRUE, can it?" And then I have to explain why what her father told her is pure horse excrement.

So, to answer your question, I don't know whether this information came from Faux or from right-wing radio, but I do know it had to be from one of the two.

On a lighter note, just imagine how much my wife and I laughed when I explained to her what "Cap and Trade" really was. That would be like saying, "The government is going to come to everyone's homes and conscript all the firstborn males into the Army, because Bernoulli's Law says they can." It's nonsense.

[MADem]

5. Let the idiots stock up on incandescents, then! Fill up the basements, attics and barns!

Let them pay those electric bills, too.

Morons.

[saras]

9. No problem. The electric bill is my heating bill, and it makes no difference whatsoever...

...whether the heat comes from radiant heaters or incandescent bulbs.

I also break probably a light bulb a month in my shop. I sure as hell don't want those to all be spilling mercury in an environment where it would bankrupt me to clean it up. One of the reasons I break them is that in my shop I have about ten different lights, so as to light what needs to be lighted well enough to see it. (things like surface-mount electronic components, and 1mm dia. jewels)

If I could afford the $20 LED lights in bulk, they might work, but conventional fluorescents and CFLS have both failed miserably for a number of reasons (cost, quantity of light, quality of light, EM noise in the whole house, mercury spills, color distortion), not to mention the headache potential (I'm one of those people who is annoyed by 120Hz flicker, and can perceive it clearly. Apparently some can't).

It baffles me that this has become a "right-wing" issue. I think the real issue is people who still do stuff in the physical world (which would include a lot of right-wing working class people) versus those who just sit around and do virtual stuff on computing machines that are already lighted (which includes most of the middle class).

[MADem]

11. It's not economical to heat your home with light bulbs, though.

Also, hot air rises, so unless the bulbs are on the floor, you're trying to heat from the top down, as it were.

If you want to use them, more power to you, so long as you can pay for it. If you can afford the bills, knock yourself out.

It's only a right wing issue because the right wing likes any theme that suggests that "they are taking away our (fill in the blank)." "They," of course, are the evil left wing, determined to spoil their fun and degrade their quality-of-life.

They love to assert that people are stealing from them, grabbing things away from them, not permitting them to engage in practices that are unhealthy but satisfying (letting infants ride helmetless on ATVs, smoking in cars with kids, e.g.), preventing them from doing "whatever" that they love/want/need.

It's a well-polished schtick with those guys. They love playing the victim, and whining about how they are being pushed around.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

6. Wait. What?

What's the difference between banning and "restricts the sale"?

That's like saying the government doesn't ban marijuana, it just restricts the sale of it.

[onenote]

7. uh, no.

Possession and use of incandescent bulbs is not prohibited. Sale of new ones is.

Possession and use of pot is prohibited along with its sale.

You'd be right if the law today merely banned the sale of pot but grandfathered in the use and possession of it. But in most places, that isn't the case, is it?

[Nuclear Unicorn]

8. So it's a ban on the sale only. That's still a ban. n/t

[mmonk]

15. Incandescents aren't banned from sale. Just old inefficient ones

[joeglow3]

17. So, which ones are banned?

I HATE the new bulbs. I spent obout $150 putting them in the recessed lighting we have in our basement. I had 80% of them burn out before a single one of the old ones I put in my kitchen 6 YEARS earlier burned out. When I asked the clerk about it, he said the new lights are intended to be turned on and left on for long periods of time. Apparently, turning them off and on a lot shortens their lives. Thus, I have them in 2 rooms we spend a lot of time and the old ones in every other room. I for one DO want to stock up some of them are being banned, as I took a bite out of my budget originally and cannot afford to be replacing 50% of those expensive bulbs every year.

[slackmaster]

24. Sale of new (traditional, less efficient) ones is also not prohibited

You can buy any kind of light bulb you want online. You just can't walk into a Home Depot or Wal-Mart retail store and buy them.

[Edweird]

16. The Assault Weapons Ban called and would like to have a word with you.

[LanternWaste]

20. Regardless, appropriate and responsible stewardship of the planet will often

Regardless, appropriate and responsible stewardship of the planet will often take a secondary position to "my convenience" for far too many people.

Indeed, the justifications and rationalizations appear to originate only from the left only, while the right doesn't waste time, and comes right out and actually says, "the planet can go to hell when I'm done with..."

[LeftinOH]

21. "...In a related story, this one lady died from spiders nesting in her beehive hairdo."

[EFerrari]

22. I'm still always amazed at how pathetic these guys are. nt

[MisterP]

23. same for their "UN gun ban" and "Commie Obama" and "Christians are as mistreated as in Nigeria,

the Moluccas, or 20s Tabasco"

they have an APPETITE for ephemeral crap, a rootless anger that is directed to, or latches onto, random things; it's actually separate from other annoying and discourse-pissing tendencies (bizarrely hypertrophied health worries, the Mormon-connected far right, party and candidate cultism, rightist fundamentalism, scientism, screw-you bourgeois libertarianism, gun nuttery, and also conservatism in general)

[lighthouse10]

26. EISA specifications: All known incandescent replacements will be banned by 2020

While some may welcome it (and why not)
it is obviously a ban,

in the sense that not allowing products that don't meet a certain standard
is the same as banning them.

But that is not all.
It is effectively also a ban, on all known incandescent replacements for ordinary
("general service") household bulbs, including the touted Halogen types, by 2020 at the latest.

The Media Matters people understandably criticize all the
Republican scare stuff about people being forced to use "the darn squiggly bulbs"
- and in that they are correct.

However,
Media Matters also (deliberatively?) choose to cut off their quotation of the Energy Act specifications,
because the Act also says

"The Secretary of Energy shall report to Congress on the time frame
for commercialization of lighting to replace incandescent and halogen
incandescent lamp technology.
If the final rule does not produce
savings that are greater than or equal to the savings from a minimum
efficacy standard of 45 lumens per watt,
effective beginning January 1, 2020, the Secretary shall prohibit the sale of any general service
lamp that does not meet a minimum efficacy standard of 45 lumens per
watt"

EIA at Dept of Energy confirms:
"The second tier of efficiency improvements becomes effective by 2020,
essentially requiring general service bulbs to be as efficient as today's CFLs"

Whether one is for or against this, it is a token ban.

Only 1-2% of grid electricity usage is saved from it (Dept of Energy etc sources )
http://ceolas.net/#li171x
with more relevant generation, grid distribution and consumption savings.
Light bulbs don’t burn coal or release any CO2 gas!

Household energy saving does not necessarily save money anyway,
at least not overall, to the extent promised:
Electricity companies are allowed to raise prices, or be
taxpayer-subsidised, for any lowered electricity sales
As already seen in CFL programs in California, Ohio etc

It is a new strange kind of political logic,
to ban simple safe cheap and popular products:
Little point in banning what people don’t actually want!

[uncle ray]

27. thanks for the new -ism.

"deliberatively". the poster was deliberatively trying to disrupt, so i saw no need in refudiating what they were saying.