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Time tinkerers
Excerpted from the Richmond Times-Dispatch
The national debt may be approaching $2 trillion, but never fear, Congress is again flexing its muscles by tinkering with the hands of time.
A House-passed bill once again would change daylight savings time, this time giving the nation four additional weeks of it per year. How powerful Congressmen must feel when they decree “let there be light” for the surburban backyard chef, and, conversely, “let there be dark” for the farmers and ranchers who grow the fixings for the charcoal grill.
It’s a wonder our august lawmakers don’t turn the clock back to, oh, 1948 when the nation ran a healthy $12 billion surplus. That would be a plainless way to balance the budget, a feat the tinkerers for all their clout seem unable or unwilling to accomplish.
To show you Capitol Hill’s sense Of reality on DST, a Senate committee scheduled a hearing on the House bill Oct. 31 to demonstrate how an extra hour of light would benefit the trick-or-treaters.
Really now, have these senators ever gone forth in search of Halloween treats, or have they been too busy pulling their own political tricks? ^
Every vampire and wicked witch knows that one does not begin haunting the Joneses’ doorstep until darkness casts its spell over the neighborhood. All DST would do is keep the little goblins out an hour later and make heads nod at school the next morning.
The House bill would impose DST from the first Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October. The extra four weeks of “fast time” would, according to Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., the bill’s sponsor, save 100,000 barrels of oil per day, reduce traffic fatalities in evening rush hours, cut down violent crimes and help 400,000 Americans who suffer from night blindness. Sure. And it’d probably cure acne, bring peace on Earth, and win a Super Bowl for the New England Patriots.
To be sure, there’s nothing sacrosanct about the current DST setup, particularly since Congress has so often fiddled with it.
But there is a certain symmetry in an even six months of DST and six months of standard time.
If the tinkerers succeed in grabbing four more weeks of the Morning People’s light, they can’t be trusted to stop there.
Only two years ago, the House narrowly defeated a bill that would have begun DST the first Sunday of...not April, but March, when it would be mighty dark and chilly for children waiting for their morning school buses.
The clock ain’t broke. Why fix it?
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