Two government rulings I agree with

Capitol Building - image from Wikipedia

I know it is not popular to like things that the Federal Government does. I can see why that is. No one likes to be told what to do and nobody likes paying money for things they don't think they need. The problem is that this is a large and diverse country with a lot of people. If we aren't organized, some other country with good organization is going to start taking our business or, worse, taking our property or, even worse, taking our land. Being organized and making sure things get done takes time and money. It takes people and sometimes those people have to tell other people what to do. That's the way government works.

So, even though I don't like being told what to do and I don't like paying for things I don't think I need, I do see a place for our various levels of government. I get very angry at our town and state governments just as I often get mad at the Federal Government. The difference between me and a certain overweight, hard-of-hearing radio host is that I see good things in government, too.

Two of those things I like are represented by two recent rulings by two independent government agencies. They are considered independent because they are not directly under an Executive Branch department. For instance the US Geological Survey is part of the Interior Department and the Secretary of the Interior is in the President's Cabinet and it is not an independent agency. The National Transportation Bureau used to be part of the Department of Transportation but it is now independent. The Federal Communications Commission has always been independent of the Executive Branch. This independence lets them make tough decisions with less political pressure than if they were directly under a president's cabinet.

OK. Enough about the structure of government and on to the two decisions I liked. The first happened on December 13, 2011 (this year) when the Federal Communication Commission ruled that starting on December 13 of next year, 2012, commercials must have the same average volume as the program they are interrupting. It drives me up the wall when you're watching a show and the commercial comes on and blasts you with loud music or has someone shouting at you. Now, if we can just hold out for a year, that will be behind us. Sure, some smart commercial makers will figure out how to get the average volume to be low while still blasting us for part of the commercial. But now that this has been labeled as a bad practice, it will be harder for them to get away with it. It is called the CALM act (Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation - where do they get these stupid names?) and here is some information about it at the FCC site. Here is a link about how the CALM act will be enforced.

Now, if we can just get the FCC to make a ruling about channels that show little, moving images while we're watching the shows! I'm referring to those stupid little inserts that take up a part of the screen with some of the characters from the next show that will be aired who are dancing and jiggling around to get our attention to announce that they are coming on next and in the process they distract us from what we're trying to watch. Please FCC - get rid of those things.

Well, this is turning out to be longer than I thought so I'm splitting this up into two blog posts. The second will concern a recommendation from the National Transportation Safety Commission. I hope to post it soon. By the way, the picture of the Capitol Building here is from Wikipedia at this location. It has a much higher resolution image.