Abusing the Agency: "Underwear for the Undersecretary"

This column from the Washington Post describes the YouTube video campaign by anti-regulatory activists over a new regulation by the Dept. of Energy - the reg apparently makes affordable washing machines (under $900) too wimpy to get clothes clean.  In protest, the video encourages viewers to send their dirty underwear to the Undersecretary of Energy (just to make a statement; there is no promise that the Undersecretary is going to clean them for you)

From the article:

"Send your underwear to the undersecretary'' urges the actress in the Competitive Enterprise Institute's stinging 66-second anti-regulatory video posted on YouTube, a free video-sharing site that is a subsidiary of Google. The video blames a 2001 Energy Department rule for an energy-efficiency standard that it says has made new models of washing machines more expensive while getting laundry less clean.

The article concludes by saying that the office of "Undersecretary" Dennis R. Spurgeon has not yet received any underwear. I'm a little confused about whether he is the right recipient. This agency org chart does portray Spurgeon as the Undersecretary of Energy and puts the "Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency" beneath him.  But his main govt. bio page dubs him the "Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy," which presumably has little to do with consumer laundry machines.

E.politics seems skeptical  about the video's effectiveness, and also understood the video to say "clean" underwear, which I must have misunderstood when I watched it.  And this review has some production suggestions to make the video more interesting.  The original article mentions attempts by regulatory agencies to use online videos to promote safety awareness, etc.

-Dru Stevenson