Answer: Too many, but generally once a month by either Robert Farley or W. Gardner Selby.
While it can’t really be proven PolitiFact (PF) is liberally biased (although some people are convinced of it), there are some things they do which don’t help them. It may be easy to do the rulings on this subject because it is fairly straight forward, cut and dry, or that is to say, the light is on or it’s off. PolitiFact has done nine rulings (as far as I can determine) since November on the subject of light bulbs, about the phasing out of incandescents beginning in 2012 due to a law congress enacted in 2007.
What’s more is that all nine rulings were on Republicans/Conservatives, and if you scored them with the PolitiFact Truth Index, the result is a negative 83.33, which puts light bulbs well above the top-rated “least truthful” subject on the Truth Index, which is Republicans on healthcare/Medicare at a negative 47.22. Light bulbs did not make it to the list because they were classified under the subject Energy, which was actually in 11th place based on the number of rulings and so just missed my list as I only did the top ten subjects. A light bulb Truth Index would look like this:
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| No Trues or Mostly Trues puts light bulbs way down the dark side. |
Two of the rulings were just too much alike, almost looking like duplicates, done the same day by the same writer (Robert Farley). One ruling was a chain e-mail from the conservative AmeriPAC: (emphasis added)
The other was AmeriPAC itself: (emphasis added)The letter, circulated by AmeriPAC, a political action committee that largely supports conservative Republican candidates, claims President Barack Obama is "banning" incandescent light bulbs in favor of compact fluorescent lighting.
"The Democrats have already voted to BAN our conventional lights bulbs (that you and I use even today!) in favor of DANGEROUS fluorescent light bulbs," writes Alan Gottlieb, chairman of AmeriPAC, a political action committee that largely supports conservative Republican candidates.
If you ask me, there was no need to repeat the obvious: yes, the conservative AmeriPAC likes to use the light bulb analogy to illustrate government over reach. While Farley does make some distinctions, these two rulings are really too closely related to be separated.
