There’s Lots of Waste in California’s Government
March 25th, 2009 | Author: RussThat’s the only conclusion I can draw after perusing this morning’s Orange County Register. A headline reads, “State Considers Ban on Big-Screen TVs.” No, it’s not April 1st—the headline is for real.
The California Energy Commission—that’s the same group of bureaucrats who wanted to control California’s thermostats—are behind this. It’s in the name of energy efficiency, they say, to prevent global warming. Well, global warming hasn’t been proven (indeed, there’s beginning to be lots of evidence that the sun has a lot to do with that), but perhaps this will save hundreds or thousands of dollars of electricity per television. Electrical rates have gone up, after all.
Would you believe $18 to $30 per television per year?
When California’s Legislature is forced to make massive budget cuts (and that day is coming, whether they like it or not), a good place to start would be the California Energy Commission. Its elimination probably will only save a fraction of the billions that are needed to be cut, but it will eliminate a source of lunacy in the bureaucratic pantheon of California. Needless to say, this proposed regulations should be dumped with the remote controlled thermostats in the regulatory ash heap of history.
Maybe they could use the state energy commission as a sort of crackpot honeypot: it would attract people who come up with ineffectual ideas, and basically give them somewhere to vent. This would save us from the risk that these people would get real jobs and cause actual harm.
hm. actually, larger screen LCDs take up about 10% of the power of a similar CRT type display. Which means that as they get larger and larger, the amount of power they use is negligible in comparison.