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Response To California's Large-Screen TV Regulation
An anonymous reader writes "It's great that unelected bureaucrats in California are clamoring to save energy, but when they target your big-screen TVs for elimination, consumers and manufacturers are apt to declare war. CEDIA and the CEA are up in arms over this. Audioholics has an interesting response that involves setting the TVs in 'SCAM' mode to meet the energy criteria technically without having to add additional cost or increase costs to consumers. 'In this mode, the display brightness/contrast settings would be set a few clicks to the right of zero, audio would be disabled and backlighting would be set to minimum. The power consumption should be measured in this mode much like an A/V receiver power consumption is measured with one channel driven at full rated power and the other channels at 1/8th power.' This is an example of an impending train wreck of unintended consequences, and many are grabbing the popcorn and pulling up chairs to watch."
Actually that's not funny. After all, the pigs already use infrared sensors to search homes without a warrant looking to bust up harmless pot farms. Maybe they'll add cool televisions to their targets when they invade our privies.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
I think nothing could be better for the people of California. Tell the Federal Empire which robs us blind, kills our young men, and embroils us in endless overseas conflict to get lost. California would save tens of billions a year not paying taxes to the Empire, which we could turn around and use on our own infrastructure and defense. We have the eighth largest economy on our own, we don't need the American albatross hanging around our neck.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
California's problems are self created. They spend more than they take in, it's just that simple. Removing themselves from the union would just add additional costs for subsidies that they currently get at the federal level.
Their problems stem mostly from social services run amok and loss of tax income revenue. They have a huge illegal problem (some estimates as high as 10 percent of their workforce) according to a recent non-partisan study, where folks earn money, and then simply send it back to Mexico. Same on the health care front. They end up offering social services not only to tax payers, but to the large illegal population. They also spend millions on wasteful social services they simply can't afford. I found it odd that everyone was screaming when they put those services on the chopping block in order to get a budget that would pass muster. They simply don't realize that you can't spend what you don't have. They've been in that sort of spend cycle for years, and it finally came to a breaking point.
Public schools are a biggie. They actually tried to deny illegal children the right to attend public schools but a federal judge blocked that. The illegal population can collect welfare, as well as take advantage of health services all on the taxpayer dollar. Many of these are also avoiding taxes simply because they are paid cash for day labor. I'm generally about as left as you can go, but I have to stop short on giving a free ride to illegals. Unfortunately most border states suffer from the same issues.
Add on top of all that their tax system, which relies almost heavily on income taxes (over half of their budget money comes from this). Every time the economy tanks, so does their revenue.
They have a lot of problems that have to be addressed both in their taxation, and spending. Succeeding from the union won't fix them.