An amazing thing happens when the federal government tells the light bulb industry that their products need to be more efficient. Scientists go to work to make their products more efficient. While it’s true that the incandescent bulbs that we are used to will be phased out over the next two-to-three years, all the major producers of incandescent bulbs are introducing new, more efficient models. In other words, no one has banned the incandescent bulb, and they aren’t going away. They will have more upfront costs, but that will be offset by much greater efficiency and a greatly extended use-life. But, for some strange reason, right-wingers are convinced that the federal government is going to take our light-bulbs away.
One of the leading Republicans in Congress, Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), appeared on the G. Gordon Liddy Show yesterday and discussed this notion of an “innovation economy.” After Liddy peddled the ludicrous claim that House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) had implemented a ban on incandescent light bulbs in the United States, McCotter used the opportunity to scoff at liberal efforts to improve the incandescent light bulb, a product that was first invented over 200 years ago. He called the irony “striking” that liberals would “prais[e] the end of the incandescent bulb at the very time they’re talking about an innovation economy”
It’s like one half of our country is suffering from cerebral hypoxia.
