The California Energy Commission unanimously approved a proposed regulation today capping the power consumption of televisions sold in California, starting in 2011. Although the Consumer Electronics Assn., which represents the world's largest TV makers, was apoplectic about the ruling, The Times' Marc Lifsher reports that one faction -- the LCD TV Assn. -- was all smiles. The reason? LCD sets are less power-hungry than plasma TVs. In other words, as so often happens when the government regulates products, it favors one technology over another -- and manufacturers know it, even if the regulators insist otherwise.

(We on the Times' editorial board had also urged the commission last month not to adopt the rules, warning that they could inhibit innovations that might do more for the environment in the long run.)

The real bite in the regulations won't come until 2013, when the caps are reduced and, potentially, the rules are extended to larger TVs. Representatives of the CEA struggled at a news conference this afternoon to cite specific examples of new, feature-laden TVs that couldn't meet the 2011 cut-off -- after a bit of research, they offered one 50-inch Samsung plasma set, although more examples are likely to be forthcoming soon. But they warned that few if any of today's models would meet the tougher limits.

Granted, this is an industry that innovates rapidly and has been particularly good in recent years at lowering power consumption. On the other hand, this is also an industry that regularly loads new features into its products to try to restore the profit margins that erode quickly in the brutal competition for buyers. At the moment, manufacturers are racing to present digital TVs that can present 3-D pictures, a task that requires either a high screen-refresh rate or polarized glass. The former drinks power, the latter drinks dollars. Manufacturers are also integrating more robust Internet capabilities into their sets, which also can demand more power.

The CEA fears that the new regulations will kill that kind of innovation and feature-expansion, as well as blocking new technologies that, like plasma and LCD, enter the market as relatively inefficient users of power only to become significantly better at managing their electricity use as they mature. It's certainly true that the rules would hold technologies off the market until they're efficient enough to meet the new standards; the question is whether manufacturers would be willing to develop generation after generation of products they can't sell just to get to that point.

One other caveat: California's new rules may have little effect on the market if no other state follows California's lead. In that case, the main losers would be California retailers, who wouldn't be able to offer as full a selection of products as online merchants in other states.

The energy commission insisted that the regulations would benefit consumers because the new TVs they buy will use less power -- an average of $30 per year. That seems overstated, however, because it ignores the improvements the industry has been making on its own. And even if $30 is the right number, that's chicken feed compared with the higher prices shoppers may have to pay to get a more efficient set with the performance they want.

The commission didn't seem to recognize that not all TVs are created equal. Just because consumers can find a more efficient model that's the same size as a power-hungry TV they like, that doesn't mean they can find one with the same picture quality in the same price range. Of course, exceptional TV picture quality isn't a birthright, and conserving energy is good for public health and the environment. But the commission asserted that its rules would be all gain, no pain, and that's a quixotic view of the market, to put it kindly.

-- Jon Healey

A Rasmussen Reports poll released Tuesday seems to confirm a point The Times made in an editorial last month on a California regulation that would ban large-screen TVs from being sold because they consume too much energy: Leave it up to the market to catch up on electricity-inefficient televisions. An excerpt from the Rasmussen summary:

Conservation-minded folks (this bike and bus commuter considers himself one) may be discouraged by the majority opinion that most people feel being able to buy whatever mega-screen television they darn well please is more important than saving energy. But the energy-unregulated TV market is working in conservation's favor: Nearly the same percentage of people -- 54% -- say efficiency is important enough to them that would pay more for televisions that use less electricity.

As The Times' editorial pointed out, the new regulation would actually hamper the innovation already underway in the industry. The Rasmussen poll adds another point: California's action may deprive consumers of the energy-efficient entertainment they'd pay a premium for.

Hat tip: Katherine Mangu-Ward and Reason's Hit and Run.

-- Paul Thornton

Photo credit: Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times

Departing Police Chief William Bratton prods immigration culture warriors today with an op-ed explaining why the LAPD doesn't, and shouldn't, participate in the controversial 287(g) program, which gives local law enforcement officers the powers of federal immigration agents. Turning police into de facto Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents harms community policing and discourages witnesses who might be illegal immigrants from coming forward.

Also on the Op-Ed page, columnist Jonah Goldberg argues that trying to limit carbon emissions to fight global warming is a pointless waste of money because it can't solve the problem; better to invest in technological solutions and adjusting to a warmer world. And think tank scholars Leo Michel and Robert Hunter argue that U.S. allies are already doing plenty of heavy lifting as part of the NATO contingent in Afghanistan, so American officials should do less lecturing and more listening if they want more cooperation.

Speaking of Afghanistan, the Editorial page says the country can't be pacified simply by sending more troops. That has become abundantly clear in the face of increased suicide bombings in Iraq, which like Afghanistan has been slow to build a credible government.

We also send a rare love note to the California Legislature, pointing out two genuinely worthwhile bills that will help cities make better use of water, an increasingly precious resource in this dry and crowded state. And we weigh in on Operation Gatekeeper, the federal effort started in 1994 to tighten border security in a five-mile stretch from the Pacific Ocean to San Ysidro. Though the program has been successful in reducing crossings in that area, it has had an unintended consequence that must be addressed: Deaths of people trying to cross the desert farther to the east have skyrocketed.

Editorial cartoon by Tom Toles / Washington Post

What's not to like about a proposed fee on California hospitals? The hospitals themselves support it, because it would bring in billions of dollars in federal funding to repay the hospitals and other health care providers for the medical care they give to poor people. The Times editorial board urges Gov. Schwarzenegger to see the logic and sign the bill to make it happen.

They call it overdraft protection, but there's little to protect the consumer from the multibillion-dollar flow of money to banks that charge a fee over and over and over again to debit-card users whose accounts can't cover their purchases. Often the fee is bigger than the purchase, but the customer simply doesn't realize the account is overdrawn. The Times calls on the Federal Reserve to fix this with rules that require better consumer information, a choice for customers who don't want the so-called protection and notification for the customer before that costly but unaffordable purchase is made.

And the board calls on Honduras to allow the return of President Manuel Zelaya -- with limited powers -- until the Nov. 29 election, though it also calls on the international community to make sure Zelaya understands he should not attempt to stay in power.

Let's admit this openly: Tuna aren't as awe-inspiring as whales. They don't spout in the middle of the ocean or do a slow dive that ends with the farewell wave of a giant tail. Nonetheless, they need protection after drastic overfishing, writes Joshua Reichert of the Pew Environment Group. On the Times Op-Ed page, Reichert argues that fishing caps haven't worked and that nothing but endangered-species status will save the Atlantic bluefin tuna.

Finally, energy journalist Richard Nemec writes that Los Angeles has been playing political musical chairs in determining leadership for the Department of Water and Power instead of hiring the experts it so desperately needs.

Photo: Gavin Newman / Greenpeace International / EPA

-- Karin Klein

Should California teachers be evaluated based on their students' performance on test scores? That's the subject of dueling pro vs. con commentaries on today's Op-Ed page. On the pro side is state Board of Education President Ted Mitchell, who says California must change a law forbidding such evaluations if it is to qualify for millions of dollars in federal funds, and that the system would help school districts reward exceptional teaching and weed out instructors who can't make the grade. On the con side is former LAUSD teacher Walt Gardner, who points out that teachers in low-performing schools are often dealing with kids from very poor families who are dealing with pressures that make learning a serious challenge, and expecting teachers to overcome such obstacles on their own is unrealistic.

Meanwhile, physicist Frank von Hippel aims to debunk claims from the nuclear-power industry that reprocessing nuclear waste is a solution to our problems with storing the highly radioactive materials. Not only is it extremely expensive, it fails to reduce the stream of long-lived nuclear waste and provides access to weapons material that could fall into dangerous hands.

Today's editorial page notes the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Bros. by pointing out that the $700-billion federal bailout that followed helped prop up the nation's financial system, and without it the economy would undoubtedly be in worse shape than it is. Nonetheless, now that the economy is on the rebound, "it's time for the administration and the Federal Reserve to lay out a strategy for pulling the government out of the financial industry."

The Times also weighs in on prospective furloughs or layoffs for city employees, who in tough financial times may be sacrificed in order to keep alive Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's ambition to keep hiring more police officers. Though that seems unfair, it's the right thing to do for Los Angeles.

And we give a boost to a package of state bills aimed at fighting animal cruelty, including a ban on puppy mills, a crackdown on dogfighting (thanks Michael Vick!), and a measure mocked by the governor to forbid docking (cutting off) the tails of cattle.

Photo by Seth Perlman / AP

The Opinion pages mark the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by looking at two very different aspects. Author Rebecca Solnit writes about the failure of the terrorists to terrorize in New York on that day, as ordinary people reacted with calm, generosity and bravery under the most fearful of circumstances:

A young man from Pakistan, Usman Farman, told of how he fell down and a Hasidic Jewish man stopped and saw the Arabic inscription on Farman's pendant. Then, "with a deep Brooklyn accent, he said, 'Brother, if you don't mind, there is a cloud of glass coming at us. Grab my hand, let's get the hell out of here.' He was the last person I would ever have thought to help me. If it weren't for him, I probably would have been engulfed in shattered glass and debris."

The editorial board looks at another effort that isn't going all that well: the war in Afghanistan.

But today, the situation in Afghanistan is grim. Taliban insurgents have been regaining ground while U.S. military and Afghan civilian casualties are on the rise and the support of the American public is eroding. Far from vanquished, Al Qaeda is largely residing in the borderlands of Pakistan.

Afghans are increasingly fed up with the corruption and incompetence of President Hamid Karzai's U.S.-backed government. Now Karzai's reelection is in dispute. Government election officials say he won a first-round victory with 54% of the vote in last month's balloting, but the independent Electoral Complaints Commission says it has "clear and convincing" evidence of fraud, and it has ordered a partial recount. Karzai must win fairly or face a runoff. Simply stated, there can be no good argument for risking American lives in support of a government that is considered illegitimate by its own people.

Altogether, the board concludes, the burden of proof is on President Obama to show why we should have a continued military presence in the country.

The board also considers the case of former Assemblyman Michael Duvall, who resigned after his, um, unofficial speech to a colleague about his sexual exploits. It's bad enough that a state legislator was voting in line with the interests of a power company while sleeping with its lobbyist, but why wasn't the assemblyman to whom Duvall was boasting disturbed by the ethical lapses and doing something about it?

Finally, on the Op-Ed page, an environment writer bemoans the loss of Van Jones from the president's environment team. Far from a radical, Jones has evolved into a pragmatic environmentalist, Judith Lewis writes.

Photo: A 2002 memorial for World Trade Center victims shines two columns of light skyward from where the towers stood. Credit: Peter Morgan / Reuters

--Karin Klein
 

The Obama administration announced today that the wildly popular Kash4Klunkers Car Allowance Rebate System will end Monday afternoon, setting up one last weekend frenzy at car dealerships. Of course, dealerships ran short of high-mileage cars some time ago, so the program may already have outlived its usefulness.

Compared to other elements of the $787 billion economic stimulus package enacted in February, the CARS program was remarkably effective -- at least when it comes to promoting spending. That, after all, is the theory behind fiscal stimulus: using tax dollars to keep commerce going in the face of a pullback by consumers and businesses. On the other hand, some economist argue that it's all smoke and mirrors because the stimulus dollars have to come from somewhere; in this view, it's a zero-sum game, with the government taking money from one pocket in order to put it into another. 

But I digress. With CARS poised to exhaust its $3 billion allotment, what's the logical second act? The economists featured in this week's LATimes.com Dust-Up, Brad DeLong and Edward Leamer, agree that enacting a hefty gasoline tax would be the right way to go if the goal is just to nudge people into more fuel-efficient rides. If the point is to help the economy by spurring the automobile industry, Leamer says, Congress should quickly enact a tax rebate for new car purchases.

The Times' editorial board urged Congress to refill the clunkers pot when the original $1 billion was running low. But now that the $2 billion refill is all but spent, my vote would be for Washington to bow out of the automobile market. Car dealers, particularly those for U.S. automakers, weren't ready to meet the demand ginned up by the stimulus program, largely because manufacturers had cut production when the economy tanked (and they ran out of money). That was the right thing for them to do under the circumstances. In fact, one criticism of the Big Three automakers is that they didn't adapt quickly enough to changes in demand, and as a result they had to beg Washington for a bailout last year. With new, streamlined versions of GM and Chrysler freshly emerging from bankruptcy, the last thing the government wants to do is encourage them to stay dependent on federal intervention. They have to learn how to succeed on their own, even -- or rather, especially -- in a down market.

Once the recession is well behind us, the specter of global warming may justify the government trying again to promote the use of high-mileage vehicles. But rather than providing large subsidies for new-car buyers, the best approach, as DeLong and Leamer note in today's Dust-Up, is to push gasoline prices above $4 a gallon through higher taxes. Such an increase could force the price of just about everything to rise, however, given how much fuel is used to make or ship products. The U.S. economy isn't ready for such a blow, and it's not clear when it will be.

Photo credit: AP Photo / Toby Talbot

-- Jon Healey

Columnist Tim Rutten returns from vacation to find the "birthers" still discussing citizen grand juries and opponents of healthcare reform bringing guns to President Obama's town hall meetings. There's more than the usual dollop of crazy talk in our politics, Rutten warns:

Read the column, then leave your comments -- rational or otherwise -- below. Elsewhere on the Op-Ed page, criminal law scholar J. Kelly Strader warns that courts around the country are essentially ignoring the Supreme Court's admonition in Lawrence v. Texas that states couldn't outlaw private behavior that clashes with the majority's view of morality. And Vanda Felbab-Brown, a foreign-policy fellow at the Brookings Institute, offers insights on the four front-runners in Thursday's presidential election in Afghanistan.

In the editorial stack, the Times board blasts the California legislature for its failure to mandate more use of renewable energy by state utilities, despite the support of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, utility regulators and most voters. It pooh-poohs GM's eBay initiative, questioning whether the carmaker can do anything truly innovative on sales without hurting its dealer network. And it looks past newly released scores on standardized tests to find something encouraging at Locke High School:

Photo credit: AP Photo / John Bazemore

-- Jon Healey

In an editorial today, the Times notes that a federal judge will soon decide what actions should be taken to help the endangered salmon on the Snake River in southeastern Washington. The populations of four types of fish have been endangered or threatened since four dams were constructed on the river, despite billions of dollars spent on fish ladders, hatcheries and even trucks to haul upstream-swimming fish around the dams.

Noting the importance of the northern salmon habitat to the West Coast stocks of the fish, the board concludes:

The Obama administration should call for settlement talks that include all the parties involved -- power utilities, farmers, fishermen and environmentalists. At least some of the dams must be breached, but only in conjunction with helping the region develop new sources of clean energy and transportation for Idaho's grain. In the long haul, it makes more sense to truck wheat than fish.

But what do you think? Leave a comment!

Bet you thought that the business of your publicly elected California Legislature was, well, public, since your public dollars pay these public servants to make public decisions in the public's Capitol building. Is there a theme in that sentence? There ought to be, especially with the editorial board today bemoaning the Assembly's decision to expunge the record of the individual votes of its members on whether or not to allow drilling off the Santa Barbara coast. In other words, you can't find out how your own Assembly member voted.

Assembly members sometimes complain, privately, that their constituents just don't understand how difficult it is to make laws and balance a budget. But making the very public process of lawmaking into a secret ritual doesn't help matters. On the contrary, it makes Californians feel like they are part of the stuff being fed into the meat grinder.

The board also weighs in on the latest maneuvers to stop a worthy bill that would extend hate-crime laws to cover crimes against gays and lesbians. Since conservative lawmakers in Washington D.C. weren't getting anywhere with the specious argument that halting hate crimes against people because of their sexual orientation would somehow impinge on the perpetrators' freedom of speech and religion, they've come up with a new tactic: making certain hate crimes a capital offense, thus changing the congressional conversation from one about equal rights to one about the death penalty.

And though the people of Afghanistan have a million good reasons to mistrust the election process, the editorial board notes the importance of holding new presidential elections and giving voters hope that they can, at least eventually, have an impact on changing the government that has turned out a disappointment to many of them.

On the other side of the fold, Tim Rutten reprimands Police Chief William Bratton for the timing of his departure from Los Angeles and some of the dealings that took place beforehand:

...The manner and timing of Bratton's departure is almost breathtakingly irresponsible. It also raises troubling questions about his relationship with Michael Cherkasky, the court-appointed monitor who evaluated the LAPD's compliance with the federal consent decree, and about Cherkasky's role in convincing the federal judge to terminate oversight of the department.

And a professor in Mexico calls on President Obama to do more than praise Mexican President Felipe Calderon for his courage in the war on drugs; he must also remind Calderon that the human-rights abuses that his army is accused of in that war are unacceptable.

Photo: Philip Scott Andrews / AP