Only in America: The "Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act"

Never mind the amount of mercury that is released into the atmosphere due to burning coal to supply the extra energy needed to use incandescent lights.

And I was falling in love with her until she wanted me to sit through a sermon about damnation.

I grew up in Paul Wellstone's Minnesota and I find it extremely embarrassing that the people of my state elected this woman. Don't think poorly of the rest of us!

By the way I'm one of those great "workingest" Minnesotans she loves. Having two jobs makes my life so much more meaningful. Lets face it, she is insane and her district should be moved from Minnesota to a slowly sinking island in the arctic.

I thought Minnesota was one of the more liberal states in the Union. What gives?

Reading her bio, she is a terrifying wackjob. But I will say she looks great (at least in this photo) for being over 50.

I love conservative women. You just want to ask them: "honey, who gave you the right to vote and be here instead of the kitchen? A liberal or a conservative?"

We're ashamed of her. Very ashamed. She was bad when she was at the state level. She's worse at the national level. What happened was that the neuvo-rich moved out to Washington County on the St. Croix river and their money overwhelmed the blue-bloods out there. It'll reverse just as soon as enough of them default and have to move to a cheaper rental in the city. Sadly we haven't gotten rid of her yet. She's known for her hating and bashing about. As well as her inaccuracies.

A mother of 5 and a former tax attorney, she was. Go figure.

Yeah. The woman is a total whacko, one that would ensure that we waste needless energy on standard florescent bulbs.

Let's face it: If we phase out flourescents for CFLs and LED bulbs, we wouldn't need as much "juice" from power plants and we probably wouldn't need to build new ones.

Just doing her best to fend off the looming spectre of obscurity the only way her very small brain knows how.

Sweetie, just like you can't beat the onslaught of wrinkles and sagging, you can't do anything to stay relevant much longer. Look at it this way, if you fade into obscurity, that means you won't be being held responsible for your crimes against humanity. Pray for obscurity, pray.

Yeah. She's a total whacko. Everyone knows that if you phase out incandescents, then you won't need as much electrical power to run them. Hopefully, her fellow congressmen democrat and republican will toss her bill out and laugh at her face!

While I disagree with many of Ms. Bachman's political stances, in this case I agree with her. While I have personally converted many of the lights in my home to CFLs, the government has no business forcing me to do so. There are many applications where CFLs are not a good choice, and banning incandescents stifles competition and innovation.

Yes, we should strive to move people towards more energy efficient options, but making them do it by force is not the right way.

We should be able to choose what kind of light bulbs we want to use. Although I haven't read it, I suspect that the "Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act" is a reaction to actions our government has taken to ban the use of incandescent light bulbs. If electricity is more expensive, then market forces will lead consumers to make the best decison. That may be turning lights off when not needed, buying compact flourescent bulbs, or budgeting more money to pay the electric bill. I happen to prefer Incandescent lighting in certain applications. I'm also adverse to paying a massive price premium for compact flourescent light bulbs.

Well - this is only her first term - so we'll fight to get her out of office this fall.

"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) outline a series of steps that homeowners should take to clean up broken fluorescent lights: Open windows, use rubber gloves, dispose of all material in sealed bags and remove it to a hazardous waste facility."

This seems excessive to me. Are these things easily breakable?

She is such an embarrassment to Minnesota. I still can't believe she won that election. That woman is 100% nuts.

How dare the US Government dictate what kind of light bulbs we can use! Why I think we should all write in to congress expressing our outrage! It clearly stifles the Free Market to have the government step in! What is this communist Russia!

The Free Market should decide not the government... that is unless the market fails and the government needs to bail out my banking and investment firm, or if a small upstart competitor appears that threatens a larger more established group (that's what lobbiests are for!).

This is clearly misleading political garbage from a Jr Congress woman looking to make a name for herself. If people are really that upset about the government overstepping its bounds they have chosen the wrong place to wage battle. People should be less upset about a light bulb and more upset about how our civil rights continue to be eroded.

Just when I think that these people cannot get any more stupid, someone comes along and says something even more stupid. This stupidity knows no bounds.

Seriously, if I didn't already know that the USA has many very smart and innovative people, I'd think that the USA was full of complete wack jobs.

Can someone PLEASE get a hold of the insanity that has swept across the USA and restore some semblance of sanity, PLEASE?

"Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act" is what makes America great, and that's choice. I see it time and time again. We should remember that America is not just one country. We 're 50 countries and Minnesota can do what ever the hell it wants. Also Why are you a wacko for standing up for ideas like, that you have the right to own a gun .You can in the 2nd and 14th amendment (that I always remind my liberal freinds.) What so wacko about not want to pay some much in taxes, or being against school teachers that pulls the mic away from a high school class victorain for say God Bless America. Or believing that killing your baby on demand is a bad thing. The green movement should step back a moment and analyze how you going make these changes because it lately its been sounding alot like what Johan Goldberg been saying http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsFoiVZDSRs&feature=related

Grant and JE,

Sorry, but you are both DEAD WRONG. They said the same thing about mandated auto safety measures and emissions. This wacko Amurcan mindset that the individual freedom of choice trumps all social impacts is arcane. Grow the hell up. This ain't the infinite open space it was perceived to be, 100 years ago. Its a tiny ball of rock with 7 billion, soon to be 20 billion, crowding the F out of it.

Incandescent technology is done, over, finite. Toss it in the waste bin of excess and ignorance. If someone suddenly develops an incandescent technology that trumps CFL and LED and OLED, great. I'm sure they'll be able to get a waiver. But guess what, nobody is doing any R&D on that, BECAUSE ITS OVER.

I am waiting for someone to complain about forcing us to use light bulbs that are know to trigger migrane headaches.

Let those who want to pay the added cost for the flourescents, and don't mind living off of headache pills, have them. Let those of us who are subjected to that lighting all day at work have the opportunity to use whatever bulbs we want to use when we come home.

Can you seriously tell me that if I am going to destroy the world by using an incandescent light bulb for a few hours in the evening? Give me a break...my lights are off all day long, and during the night when I sleep. Why in the world does each and every minute of my life have to be subjected to government legislation???????

Maggie, only faulty ones do that. Return it and get a new one. Problem solved.

Why is there a need for government legislation for stuff like this? Because the free market does not react anywhere near fast enough when problems crop up. That's why, like I said above and you seem to have missed, it took legislation to implement things like seat belts, airbags, crash safety standards. emissions controls.

Get it? Good. Now move along and replace those incandescents.

excuse the pun, but she's a dim bulb.

I hope the government never finds out you broke an incandescent light bulb in your home. Can you imagine the cost to clean up the mercury? Lights bulbs, HD television, what's next? These are small details in life, government has no business being in.

I hope the government never finds out you broke an incandescent light bulb in your home. Can you imagine the cost to clean up the mercury? Lights bulbs, HD television, what's next? These are small details in life, government has no business being in.

And what about people with Scotopic Sensitivity Disorders for whom fluorescent lighting looks like strobe and to whom mandatory fluorescents are tantamount to torture?

Do they matter, or should they just endure the mood problems and migraines caused by CFLs and "take one for mother earth?"

My husband has Mears-Irlen syndrome. Here's what we'll do. We'll replace all the bulbs in your house with strobe lights and see what your quality of life is like after only a few short months.

Deal?

I'm all for energy efficiency and have those bulbs in my own home. Bbut the truth is flourescent light bulbs have a strobe-like quality to them that are very difficult for children with autism and seizure disorders to tolerate.

The bulbs seem to be better for people with small children because they don't get as hot, so if a lamp is knocked over, there is less risk of fire. As for them breaking, they are made of plastic, and I have dropped a few of them, I am very weak on the right side of my body, so drop things easily. I am more careful now that I found out about the mercury, but I have never broken a single bulb. I don't know about the problems with the flickering, I am blind, but my husband and children have said that we had one that flickered, but we took it back and got a new one and the new one didn't flicker anymore. I think there is more problem with the florescent tubes that have been used for years! What i want to know is, if you have the old kind of tube fixtures, will the government help to replace those? I seriously doubt that! That is the only major problem I have with the government telling us that we have to change!

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
-- C.S. Lewis

Smoking, light bulbs, dietary fat, speech codes.
Soon to follow: mandatory exercise, correct haircuts, one child per household and compulsory abortions.

Liberal fascism.
What is not compulsory is forbidden.
Because we know what's best for you.

Will you people please listen to yourselves.

You are banning a light bulbs.

Even if nobody used light bulbs and lit their homes by candle, it would not change the temperature of the Earth.

This is just a stupid law, and it will increase the amount of mercury in our homes and in our landfills. What a terrible idea!!!

It's surprising how many of you want to reliquish control of your life to a few politicians.

If a vocal minority declares cotton plants are destructive to the environment, will you support banning cotton clothing?

The issue is FREEDOM. This is what our country was founded to create. Whether or not a bulb is good or bad for the environment should have no bearing on this issue. If it's bad, then convince individuals, and give individuals freedom to decide. Instead you're handing over the power to a FEW individuals instead of everyone.

I want to know how are poor people who can barely afford to buy a 50 cent regular 'ol lightbulb afford to buy these? FORCING (not suggesting) and LEGISLATING something as ridiculous as this is not what the Framers intended.

The thing that drives me nuts about environmentalists is why are they so quick to accept mercury in a light bulb that is in our homes but practically have an apoplexy if there is a trace amount found in a fish?

Strange dichotomy, eh?

Right to light...need I say more? You want the government to stay out of your womb, then you envirowhackos need to stay out of my house!

The bills needs to be passed because:

1) It is NOT a Federal issue, it is a State issue. No where in the Constitution is a person's choice of light bulb up for legislation
2) Global warming caused by humans is a political cause, not a scientific truth.
3) Given the current enviromental laws, the cumulative mercury that will pile up in landfills will be a violation of those laws. And culturally, we have a very negative reaction to even ridicuously small amount of mercury.

Rep. Bauchman is 100% correct in what she is trying to do. I work in the lighting industry and one thing I am sure of, this move by the government to ban incandescent light bulds is BS. The only ones to benifit from this are the big CFL manufactures which by the way are mostly made in China. Can you say MERCURY

Rep. Bauchman is 100% correct in what she is trying to do. I work in the lighting industry and one thing I am sure of, this move by the government to ban incandescent light bulds is BS. The only ones to benifit from this are the big CFL manufactures which by the way are mostly made in China. Can you say MERCURY

The government has no right to tell me what light bulbs to use. If Congress it wants to continually take it from behind from the environmental whackos, have at it, but stay the heck out of my house. I am sick and tired of the whole global warming scam, and the constant badgering on alternative energy "needs". Fact is, we have huge oil reserves within our reach, drilling and refining would bring down the cost of oil and gas. The ethanol scam is driving up the cost of food. Wind energy takes away land, coal is dirty, nuclear is clean but it is a dirty word.
We are destroying this country from within, terrorists can sit back and watch. Big business is running us, and they own BOTH parties of Congress.

The government has the right to encourage the use of certain light bulbs, but they have NO RIGHT to force the American people to buy a particular type of light bulb.

You guys are zombies. You have no brains to think for yourself and just jump on whatever thing the media or hollywod tells you to do. I have seen theses lightbulbs. Did you know that the warranty is void if you use it for more than 4 hours a day??? Ya they will last you longer, if you hardly use it. Sure the box says you get thousands of hours, but you can't use it for a long time, or it will burn up. And then you will have to throw them out, increasing the crap in land fills, and get a new one. You regects probably use your left hand to wipe your ass and bury your crap in the backyard to save water and paper.

LA: funny, the one over my desk has been going for three years, ten hours a day, and of the 16 in my house I have had exactly one burn out. One can disagree, but there is no need to be nasty.

Those of you who are upset by a biased discription of Michelle Bachman are missing the greater point which is as follows: The federal government should not be permitted to mandate the type of light-bulb you choose to use in your own home!
That is a point with which only a highly biased person would disagree. Else the federal government and citizenry of our USA edge even closer to fascism than it already is.
PS You tree hugging environmental global warmers are being duped into a lock-step fascist, nationalist mentality based on complete and utter inaccurate nonsense regarding so-called global environmental crises, which, by the way, do NOT exist.
PSS. Seek ye knowledge and wisdom....

I'll probably be flagged and removed because there's nothing you first amendment loving libs hate worse than someone exercising their 1st amendment rights.
1st - Julia Bovey of the Natural Resources Defense Council needs to do her homework before she opens her pie hole. I'm sure they make tinfoil hats her size. Mercury amalgam fillings wouldn't release 1/100th the inhalable mercury vapor that one broken mad hatter bulb would (google mad hatter for those that don't get the reference).
2nd - If I weren't married, Michelle Bachman would be the pin-up on my wall. She's intelligent, informed, honest and better looking than Shrill-ary. Her talents are wasted on paste like you. However not everyone in your state can be mindless Gore-ists because she won in a popular election. Thank goodness conservatism isn't dead in Minnesota (although I haven't figured out the whole Jesse Ventura thing yet).
3rd - You look which states gave women the right to vote before the 19th amendment and then reconsider the idea that some Dem gave women the right to vote.
In parting, I'd like to say, keep drinking the Gore Kool-Aid. Eventually we conservatives will out number you by the mere fact that we procreate and you abort.

The liberals are once again showing their angst. The woman makes a comment and puts forth a recommendation to be voted on and the libs here want her tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. The in case you people are too dumb to get it, the bill mandating fluorescent bulbs is a very expensive law, that BTW, also incurs on the freedom that you all claim that you cherish.

Liberal compassion, is an oxymoron.

Personally I could care less what you people think, shes a politician and her job is to work on legislation. If you don't like it vote her out, if you don't vote her out then quit your bitching.

All that being said, don't ask me to pay for the HAZMAT team that you will need to change your light bulbs if they break and spill mercury on your carpet.

If Ms Bachman fails, I will soon be lighting my home with the coal oil lamps and candles, that ought to help in the global warming hoax started by the guy who invented the internet, and the only person in history to tell a good enough lie to get an Oscar and Nobel prize for doing nothing more than giving a power-point presentation.

Gore the Clintons, and Obama, don't you people ever get tired of voting for the most guttural of liars?

As a person with an inability to work in florescent lighting, the idea that the government is going to make it every HARDER for me to get my disability compensated in the workplace AND force me to stockpile or buy black market light bulbs just so that I can see without splitting headaches is crazy.

There are other ways to save energy without forcing this on people who's health is already an issue.

I'm green and I'm against mandatory fluorescents.

http://www.lightbulbchoice.com

The push to use fluorescent lights could be very bad for many people with disabilities. The Job Accommodation Network (http://www.jan.wvu.edu) lists reduction or elimination of fluorescent lighting as an appropriate accommodation for many conditions. In addition to causing headache, fatigue, and problems with light sensitivity, they are listed as problematic for individuals with epilepsy, migraine, lupus, chronic fatigue syndrome, and vertigo (related to cardiovascular problems, multiple scleroses, and several other disorders.) I have also seen accounts of difficulties faced by individuals with hyperactivity, autism and anxiety. Fluorescent treatment of depression can have the side effect of mania.

When I talk about my own sensitivity (resulting in seizure activity regardless of the type of fluorescent), approximately 15% of the population respond with stories about symptoms from this type of lighting, most commonly headache, fatigue and confusion. I find that many people are not aware that their lights are causing their symptoms, until they start thinking about the circumstances the problems occur in.

Doctors are not talking about this either; they are using the troublesome lights. I had uncontrollable seizures for 20 years before I figured out the lights were triggering most of my problems. The doctor said he was not surprised, and told me about some of the many other problems people have! No one even suggested I consider it before that.

When standard lighting triggers severe health problems, one is excluded from many important activities. It seems to me that if cement were as valuable as energy, we would be telling people in wheelchairs that it is not reasonable to expect a ramp. I was very disappointed to learn that cities have started developing building codes encourage, or even specify, that this health hazard be implemented in much of the new construction.

Compact fluorescents for household use should come with a hazard warning! The ideal would be to exclude fluorescents from commercial use with accessibility standards. Certainly, with the recent increases in problems experienced by children, this issue should at least be addressed in schools.

Please consider taking action to reverse this trend. Write your city, state and national legislators to make them aware of this problem. They are starting to pass laws to make incandescent bulbs illegal, which would leave some of us completely in the dark. We need to look further for alternatives that do not harm any one, or leave them stuck outside, or in the dark.

For my part, I am writing letters, and making requests to be accommodated at public meetings. Not being able to participate seems to be percieved as "Reasonable" many places.

Where do I go to sign this petition? Any chance I get to overturn liberal wackjob ideas, I'm there!