Incandescent Light Bulb Insanity and the Groucho Marx Republicans

[NNN0LHI]

http://swampland.time.com/2011/07/12/incandescent-light-bulb-insanity-and-the-groucho-marx-republicans/

By Michael Grunwald Tuesday, July 12, 2011

The William Wallaces of the Republican Party are defending our freedom again, this time our freedom to buy inefficient light bulbs. The GOP-controlled House is about to pass a bill to repeal the lighting efficiency standards that Congress passed and President Bush signed in 2007, standards that the lighting industry actually supported. The federal government sets energy-efficiency standards for all kinds of products, but Republicans have decided that these are particularly tyrannical, because they ban all incandescent bulbs. Thomas Edison invented incandescent bulbs! What’s next: banning rotary-dial telephones?

Except that Congress didn’t ban incandescent bulbs. It simply required them to use less energy, and manufacturers are responding with a new generation of more efficient incandescents. Say what you want about that biker dude who got killed when he fell off his bike at a rally protesting mandatory helmet laws, but at least those laws were really mandatory. Did Republicans even bother to read the bills before deciding it was evidence of an evil socialist nanny-state conspiracy?

Why, yes. In fact, a Republican wrote the bill.

The lighting standards were the brainchild of GOP Congressman Fred Upton of Michigan, who explained them thusly in a press release at the time: snip

You won’t find that press release on Upton’s website, because he’s now chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and he’s now helping to repeal his own legislation. But Daniel Weiss of the Center for American Progress found it. As Weiss points out, Upton publicly defended the light-bulb standards as recently as 2009, but after the midterms, he changed his tune after Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck tried to mount a campaign to deny him the gavel.