Everyone Was Surprised By The Senate Passing Permanent Daylight Saving Time. Especially The Senators. 302
An anonymous reader shares a report: The Senate's unanimous passage of a bill to make daylight saving time permanent stunned many Americans, not least of which the senators themselves. In a twist the Founding Fathers likely did not anticipate, quirky Senate conventions and a decision by staff in Sen. Tom Cotton's office may result in an overhaul in the nation's time zones. Reporters and politicos were caught off guard Tuesday afternoon when the Sunshine Protection Act sailed through the Senate without issue, with no senators speaking up to object to it passing by unanimous consent. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, serving as Senate chair overseeing the motion at the time, broke composure, burst into a grin, and whispered, "Yes!"
"I was surprised that someone didn't object," she told BuzzFeed News the next day, while noting that Arizona does not change its clocks, "because we're smart." Any single senator could have blocked the daylight saving bill from passing but many didn't know it was even happening. Sen. Rick Scott, a permanent daylight saving time proponent who signed a similar bill into law when he was governor of Florida, said he would have gone to give a speech on the Senate floor if he had known. Asked to re-create his reaction to the news, Sen. Chris Coons issued a series of shocked stammers that is impossible to phonetically translate. One Senate source with knowledge of the situation said Sen. Tom Cotton vehemently opposes making daylight saving time permanent. "No comment," Cotton told BuzzFeed News when asked if he opposed the bill. The source said that Cotton would have objected to the unanimous consent request, but his staff never told him it was happening.
"I was surprised that someone didn't object," she told BuzzFeed News the next day, while noting that Arizona does not change its clocks, "because we're smart." Any single senator could have blocked the daylight saving bill from passing but many didn't know it was even happening. Sen. Rick Scott, a permanent daylight saving time proponent who signed a similar bill into law when he was governor of Florida, said he would have gone to give a speech on the Senate floor if he had known. Asked to re-create his reaction to the news, Sen. Chris Coons issued a series of shocked stammers that is impossible to phonetically translate. One Senate source with knowledge of the situation said Sen. Tom Cotton vehemently opposes making daylight saving time permanent. "No comment," Cotton told BuzzFeed News when asked if he opposed the bill. The source said that Cotton would have objected to the unanimous consent request, but his staff never told him it was happening.
I'm surprised (Score:2)
Such bills get introduced twice a year every year for how long?
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The state of AZ would beg to differ. I would think it is the states which have all the authority in something like this... I don't recall any clause of the Constitution granting the US Congress any authority over clocks.
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That was my thought too, but they could control the clocks on military bases, embassies, etc. If they really wanted to they *could* make accepting federal monies dependent on adjusting your clock as they require, but I doubt this bill does that.
OTOH, there's lots of precedent for the federal government deciding when daylight saving time would be on or off. This goes back to at least WWII, when they decreed "war time" which was double daylight saving time.
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Article I, Section 8, Clause 3: (The Congress shall have Power) To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
So much of what they impose on the states hinges on this one clause in the constitution.
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Article I, Section 8, Clause 3: (The Congress shall have Power) To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
So much of what they impose on the states hinges on this one clause in the constitution.
... and FDR's threat to pack the Supreme Court [https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/roosevelt-announces-court-packing-plan].
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I would think the stronger claim would be:
Article I, section 8 gives Congress the power to âoefix the standard of weights and measurement.â
As this clearly about standardization of the measurement of time and dates.
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The state of AZ would beg to differ.
Under Federal law, states are currently allowed to go to permanent standard time, but not permanent DST.
I would think it is the states which have all the authority in something like this... I don't recall any clause of the Constitution granting the US Congress any authority over clocks.
The Constitution generally lacks clauses specifically calling out anything that didn't pertain to an 18th century agrarian society (with travel and communications speeds limited to around 10mph). Luckily, in the real world it has been interpreted such that it usually allows the country to be governed within today's modern technological civilization. In this particular case, it's rather obvious that having
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Already been done (Score:2)
> I reject DST entirely. I will reside on permanent non-DST, meaning 1-hour behind everyone else. This will give me the superpower of knowing what will happen 1 hour in the future at all times.
Welcome to Arizona [timeanddate.com]
Re: I'm against (Score:2)
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Well, I've shifted. I now get up early enough during winter to not need to change my sleeping schedule when DST rolls around. I do change the clocks, for purposes of communication with others, but I don't change my sleep schedule.
Re: I'm against (Score:2)
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And yet, how many people on here whine and bitch when the clocks change by one hour twice a year? It's one day to adjust, but you'd think the world is coming to an end.
Your comment shows it's simply about people whining because of one minor, insignificant inconvenience.
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I'm here to let you know that I'm whining and moaning because I actually cannot shift sleep cycle reliably by an offset of two hours each day. It takes me several days to a couple of weeks to adjust fully to the even one hour shift twice a year, especially in the spring when we lose an hour. Now it might not have been that way when I was a teenager who could party all night and sleep past noon when neces
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I am still out of whack from Sunday.
Re:I'm against (Score:4)
Here is something that I've noticed. If I know about the time change I would be out of sorts for a few days. But now every clock I have but a couple set themselves, and they do this for the time change too. Several times the time has changed and I never even noticed it for several days, sometimes weeks, later. If I never noticed the time change, I wouldn't be put out of sorts by the time change. Everything would be normal.
Weird how that works.
So what? (Score:2)
It still has to get approved by the House. The House will sit on it, and not bring it up for a vote.
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Considering a rather significant percentage of people support this, it might not :)
But we'll see!
Re: So what? (Score:3)
Perhaps not once the impact is understood. We already tried this. Permanent non-DST would be fine. Permanent DST is welfare for tourist companies. It's not a coincidence this bill was co-sponsored by a FL senator.
The reality is large parts of this country with lots of voters would absolutely hate this. Everyone I know in Michigan would support getting rid of DST. Almost no one would support getting rid of standard time because it would mean the major "morning" commutes would all take place at night during h
Re: So what? (Score:2)
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I feel you're being silly. ANY permanent change would work. If it's DST, that's fine. Companies can choose what hours they want to be open. They can have winter and summer hours if they want.
The only question is "How much advantage does switching between standard time and DST have? And offsetting it what are the costs? Different companies already have different hours of business, schools have hours approved of by the local parents, etc.
FWIW, the last year I've started to get a bit inflexible, so I've
Re: So what? (Score:2)
I love it when it's dark driving to work in the morning, it's so much easier on the eyes.
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I prefer my morning commutes in the dark.
But I'd still prefer year-round standard time over daylight saving time.
Re: So what? (Score:3)
Ask a doctor if it's more important to have daylight during the morning commute or the evening commute. There you will have your answer.
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What was the doctor's answer?
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Challenge, accepted [fortune.com]!
One study found a small but significant increase in road accidents on the Monday after the switch to summer time, as the lost hour of sleep affected peopleâ(TM)s driving ability. Other studies found the rate of workplace injuries and even heart attacks tends to increase shortly after the U.S. âoesprings forward.â
However . . .
In their fight to "protect sunshine," the U.S. Senate had the choice of making either standard time or daylight saving time permanent. The Senate chose to keep daylight saving, but that might prove to be the worse of the two choices, with potentially worse health outcomes.
Many sleep scientists support standard time over daylight saving, as the latter more closely aligns with the natural dayâ"and thus our natural body clocks.
Adopting daylight saving time as standard âoeleaves us permanently out of sync with the natural environment,â said Joseph Takahashi of the University of South Texas to the New York Times.
Scientists are also concerned that forcing people to wake up earlier and fall asleep later than their natural body clocks dictate may worsen sleep deprivation, which is linked to increased rates of obesity, diabetes, dementia, and other health issues.
Studies have found that people working night shiftsâ"forced to work at times that are out of sync with their natural sleep scheduleâ"have higher rates of heart disease and cancer than than those who work daytime hours.
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Or maybe they won't because it doesn't seem to be a strong partisan issue.
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That's the problem. There is more incentive to waste time debating things nobody agrees on than to actually pass things that most people agree on.
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so let me get this straight, they basically have a day in the US Senate where there's like 1 senator there from each side and they're supposed to object to each others bills, but tom cotton forgot to object, so this bill became passed by the senate?
does anyone else think thats fucked up?
Re:So what? (Score:5, Informative)
The US federal system, especially the senate, is kind of like a Calvinball match. Lots of obscure rules you'd swear are made up, and lots of other rules that actually are made up and you don't have to follow.
This is one of each. Apparently you can just show up and ask for a unanimous vote whenever you like. You're not *supposed* to do it if you know someone is not in favour, but there's no actual rule that says you can't.
The US senate does sometimes literally have one senator (the noob usually) show up, do the opening and closing ceremony things, and presumably be very bored in between. See, there's a rule that if the senate is recessed the president gets to appoint people without their approval, so if the senate never recesses....
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I'm really not certain that everyone else supports it, but it doesn't seem to have any huge number of opponents. It'll be interesting to see what the House does. If the house passes it with a 55% vote, would Biden veto it?
It's nice to have a furor in the Fed legislative branch where I don't care how it comes out.
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While the house is where the real crazies are. As they represent a smaller area of the country, Where the local nuttiness of the particular area tends to shine across. Say a district with the average of a 7th grade education, will elect a rather stupid representative as well, as they stand for very simple ideas with simple steps to achieve (often ignoring the real nuance or complexity in the fact that it is difficult to get everyone to follow said rules). An other district may be a center of a College are
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If you read the article I posted further up, the switch to DST was made in 1974 during the oil crisis. It was discontinued in October of 1974 after some well-publicized accidents involving children going to school in the morning.
I can understand (Score:5, Funny)
They were all still groggy from loosing an hour.
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loosing or losing?
They lost the hour when they loosed it upon the world.
Senators not knowing what they vote for? (Score:2)
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Happens all the time, do you think you could read through a 1000 page bill?
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Have you ever LOOKED at one of those bills. Each one is full of references to other bills, often by line number and key phrase. Understanding a 1000 page bill is about the same as a megabyte of spaghetti code in FORTRAN IV. Where you often can't tell the difference between text and numbers, because the same variable holds one at one time an the other at a different time, and sometimes it holds the address of a piece of code. (FWIW, I once wrote a self-modifying FORMAT. FORTRAN IV didn't die too quickly
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Well, shocked as everyone else, I assume....
But could anyone give a bit more detailed on which conventions and staff decisions exactly led to everyone passing a bill that they would object to?
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OK... that is .... wow.
Congress doing what Congress does! (Score:2)
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"those living in Russia or China" true At least I can say "This is the weakest, most inept, incompetent US administration and top leadership of my lifetime(I'm 66)." in public.
No, no, try to keep up. We replaced Trump with a boring bureaucrat.
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To be fair, BIden isn't that much more competent than Trump. Possibly not even AS competent. It's just that he isn't actively trying to destroy the country.
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And Biden listens to his advisors and generals and doens't overrules them. He has also been in the senate so long that he understands how it works, he knows what budgets look like and what they're for, he's done enough foreign affairs in his time that he knows where the countries actually are and how to pronounce their names (ha, now qanon claims Trump's "Jina!" was not bad pronunciation but a sleeper clue about bio weapons).
Really the whole "sleepy Joe" was just an insult but people are taking it seriousl
Figures (Score:2)
They're patting themselves on the back now ... (Score:2)
But if we go to permanent DST, come next winter you'll be hearing a lot of angry people in northern latitudes complaining about sending their kids to school or going to work in pitch darkness, and demanding a return to standard time for the winter months.
Those same politicians who are celebrating now will be scrambling to distance themselves from this vote.
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We already do that with standard time in the depth of winter.
I mean, if it was up to me, I would just make standard time the default. But I understand why people want more daylight hours in the afternoon.
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This is the problem. On permanent DST, where I live, the sun will rise after 8 AM in the winter. And I don't live in the northern part of the country. DST isn't difficult if you manage it well. My normal sleep schedule is 10 PM to 6 AM. On the night of the switch to DST I go to bed at 9:30 PM and get up at 6:30 AM (which is 5:30 standard time). On the night of the switch to standard time, I go to bed at 10:30 PM and wake up at 5:30 AM. Voila, I always get eight hours of sleep and I've broken the hour
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Exactly. I never understood why changing the clock time was the solution to the problem of changing daytime throughout the year. If it is too early in winter, then shift your activities by an hour.
That what most of us already do. In summer, we eat later because there is more sun time. And that works just fine. We don't need to adjust the clock.
I suggest we split the difference (Score:3)
Please oh please (Score:3)
Get this through the house.
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Get this through the house.
I don't know if it will stick, even if it's fully enacted. If it is, it won't be the first time we've tried it. We did this in the early 70s and it only lasted a couple of years before it was repealed. People didn't like it.
ROFL (Score:3)
The source said that Cotton would have objected to the unanimous consent request, but his staff never told him it was happening.
There is no way that was by accident. Fucking hilarious.
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Or, it was just a convenient excuse to explain his abstention which allows him to say that he is opposed to it, while conceding to the majority.
Daylight savings time in winter (Score:3)
Will make sunrise crazy late in a lot of places.
We should drop daylight savings time and stay on standard time. This will seek solar noon and wall clock noon roughly lined up. DST can lead to solar noon happening at 1pm to 2pm. Please keep our clocks and the sun in sync (I know, there are lots of perturbations in the movement of the heavenly bodies. Without some crazy complicated scheme, the best you can do is have solar noon drift between about 11:30am and 12:30pm).
If you need to change your business hours, school start time, yoga class, whatever you are free to do so.
Re: Daylight savings time in winter (Score:2)
But that does nothing to enrich the coffers of FL tourism. That's the actual purpose of the bill.
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Re: Daylight savings time in winter (Score:2)
No. I think not changing clocks has widespread support. But I think half the country expects we'll do this by getting rid of DST (the sane thing to do) while the other half expects we'll do this by making DST permanent (the retarded approach suggested by this bill). When reality hits in the house, New York and the Midwest will stop it dead.
Re: Daylight savings time in winter (Score:2)
Oh, and I think the bill was introduced to enrich FL tourism. That's not the source of popular support, but it is the source pushing this now via a senator in their pocket.
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Will make sunrise crazy late in a lot of places.
It won't affect when the sun rises at all. Sunrise is determined by your latitude and longitude combined with the rotation and axial tilt of the earth.
Today there will be 12 hours, 3 minutes and 21 seconds between sunrise and sunset in New York City but Miami will get 12 hours, 4 minutes and 18 seconds. Tomorrow NYC will get 12:06:04 while Miami only gets 12:05:50. A month ago Miami got 11 hours 22 minutes and 36 seconds but poor NYC only got 10 hours, 48 minutes and 39 seconds.
There's nothing congress or y
..okay, what riders were snuck into the bill? (Score:2)
Year-round DST is better than what we have now. (Score:2)
I don't disagree in principle. DST is a stupid, Stupid, STUPID idea that should never have been a thing. Also, night time is the best time, and it's obnoxious AF to still have that baleful eye of Ra up there when it's time to go out to to the bars, clubs, shows, restaurants, and the like to socialize. And it's simply ludicrous to have actual noon be over an hour off from 12:00pm. What's even the point of time zones with that garbage? Oh, if I had a time machine and a pistol...
BUT: Even year-round DST
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I like the cut of your jib, my friend.
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Those of us who live in northern states already run into this for part of the summer. Somehow we cope.
Senator Tom Cotton ( R - Arkansas ) (Score:2)
Tom Cotton was asleep at the wheel and is now lobbying the house to defeat the bill.
If you live in AK, you should reach out to him.
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His staff decided not to wake him up from his nap. He's really grumpy if he doesn't get his long nap every afternoon.
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AR=Arkansas
Next up ... (Score:2)
Getting rid of time zones and everyone simply using GMT.
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The idiotic scheme is the only reason we have daylight in the evening now. That's why most of us want permanent DST, not permanent standard time.
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Less sun in the morning will probably be worse then less sun in the evening.
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People who like long evenings have a tendency to forget that they have to get up in the morning.
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Re: Give us our nightime daylight!!! (Score:2)
The sunrise and sunset are not symetric about the solstices. E.g. The earliest sunset here in Louisville is around Dec 5, but the latest sunrise is around Jan 5. But near the summer solstice, the earlist sunrise/latest sunset are separated only by a few days.
Here's a graph to visualize it: https://celestialprogramming.c... [celestialprogramming.com]
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Re: Give us our nightime daylight!!! (Score:2)
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I can choose to shift my sleep cycle, but the work cycle still follows the nominal clock time. And when it gets dark before 5pm in the winter, shifting my sleep cycle won't change that.
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The most outspoken proponents of permanent DST are living in the South, where the difference in the day length between Summer and Winter is smaller, and the Winter time is less cold.
In 1974, permanent DST was already tried out, but it didn't go well [washingtonpost.com]. People have short memories, it appears.
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I'm in the central midwest. I'd rather drive in the dark in the morning when my eyes are adjusted than drive home in the dark in the evening as light is decreasing.
I actually don't mind the time change. But I'll take permanent DST over permanent standard time any day of the year.
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Blame cars (Score:2)
In 1974, permanent DST was already tried out, but it didn't go well [washingtonpost.com]. People have short memories, it appears.
Notice how the problems with the permanent DST experiment mentioned in the Washington Post article have to do with road safety? The real message here is that we rely too much on driving, and that driving is inherently unsafe. We should move to permanent DST, and then also work to reduce car dependency and make the roads safer.
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DST during Winter time makes people to stay in bed an hour longer just to avoid the most dreadful time of the day. And then you effectively have DST in the Summer and Standard time during the Winter, just in a less organized manner.
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I would much rather wait for my train during the coldest time of the day rather than drive in the dark (and rather than wait for the train or drive in the light) since that means I can sleep on the train.
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This is decades late.
How many years of our lives have been unnecessarily darkened by this idiotic scheme of messing with our clocks twice a year?
I'll see you on the trail!!
I actually think this is going to suck in a different way. But only because they chose to stick to DST instead of standard time.
OTOH, maybe my state will finally decide to rejoin the rest of Central Time so we're not so far from the correct time zone.
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That's 95% of everything that gets passed. I don't disagree, but that ship's long sailed, sunk, taken over by sharks with lasers, and eaten by that lost sock monster from your washing machine.
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There weren't surprised by their own votes. They were surprised with the number of how many people voted the same.
Maybe it is a good thing. (Score:2)
Maybe if every vote was a surprise, then everyone would vote honestly instead of waiting to see how the lobbyists and TV pundits say they should vote.
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Symptom of how broken the system is when things get passed no one even knew they were voting on.
This is exactly what I thought. It's so far gone, the people making the decisions have no idea what's happening.
Re: Not a good thing. (Score:2)
Re: Finally. (Score:2)
It probably won't change much. Not unless you can guarantee you'll never work with a pre-DST date. All the time libraries will still need tz databases. Most will still need to support regions outside the U.S. Etc.
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If these devices have not been maintained with security updates in the past decade-and-half, then I don't think accuracy in timestamps is their greatest concern.
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I believe that international ATC has been on Zulu (GMT) since ... before WW2? I don't know how America handles it's 50-odd time zones (if Arizona has it's own rules, then you have to be prepared for the case of every state having their own time zone(s)), but I suspect that as soon as the wheels leave the ground, the plane's management (nothing to do with the passengers, including if it's a freight flight) will be on Washi