Posted on 03/17/2022 7:00:36 PM PDT by algore
WASHINGTON — 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.
This is not how the Senate usually works. Passing a bill through the chamber is, by design, a long and painful process that usually results in shattered dreams and bitter failure.
Typically, to pass a bill you need to first clear it through a Senate committee, and then you need to ask the Senate majority leader to put it to a vote.
They will tell you no because Senate floor time is in high demand and they are too busy confirming judges and keeping the government funded to spend hours on your bill.
In the lucky event that your bill does move forward, you need to win over at least 60 of 100 senators, then go through hours of debate and multiple rounds of votes Passing a bill through the House is generally a lot easier than the Senate, but there is still an opportunity for standard time proponents — or clock-changing enthusiasts — to block the legislation.
One person said by a Senate source to be pushing the House to do exactly that is Tom Cotton.
The same people complaining about it getting dark so early are going to be complaining about it being dark when they go to school or work.
Noon on a clock should be as close to solar noon as is possible to maintain natural cycles.
Yes, that it why it is better to return to standard time during the winter months. The shift to year-round DST will have the sun coming up after 9:00 a.m. during the winter months in a place such as Indianapolis. That’s also why it is better to have DST in the summer — the hour of daylight is shifted to the evening when people are awake to use it, instead of in the morning when people are still asleep. If we didn’t have DST in the summer, the sun would be up shortly after 4:00 a.m. during June and July in Chicago.
Now I’ll never get that damn hour back!!
I think the House should introduce a Bill for the Sun to come up around 6 in the morning, then it should go back down at about 9 am. It could come back up at 4 in the afternoon for the start of a long bright evening.
It’s probably already on Nancy’s desk.
This will cause lots of needless deaths.
When changing clocks it is customary to replace smoke alarm batteries.
Women and children will be hurt the most.
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Sorry, but I’m confused. Does that mean we won’t have to change the clocks twice a year in California? One time is permanent? This is the first I heard of it, thanks to Free Republic.
A wise Indian once told me that only a politician would think cutting the bottom off a blanket and sewing it to the top would make it longer.
Apparently you could get the Senate to abolish itself via unanimous consent by titling the bill doing so the Increase of Good Things and decrease of Bad Things Act
They are using Longitude to fix a Latitude problem?
Absolutely correct.
“Noon on a clock should be as close to solar as is possible to maintain natural cycles.”
This mimics taking one of the colors out of the natural rainbow.
Clarification. The going to DST year round mimics the messing with the natural rainbow
There’s something strange about Cotton.
Biden issued a statement saying he is in favor of saving daylight as long as he gets his customary ten percent.
Brilliant!
It also depends on where you live in a time zone. Sunrise in Maine and Michigan are an hour’s difference despite being in the same time zone.
The 4 zone boundaries are not vertically fixed in stone.
For example, Arizona craves more dark than hot, hot daylight so we never tried to save any more daylight, As a result, we'll need to decide to join with Pacific time, OR mountain time (despite being vertically aligned squarely with the mountain zone). We will chose.
Point is; boundaries are not fixed and almost anywhere you are, you could carve out your corner of the world with whichever you prefer and be done with it. Gary Indiana in the east synced with next door neighbor Chicago in central. There are other examples. Gary is a tiny carve out. Arizona is a huge carveout. IIRC, Indianapolis jogs to central while most points east are eastern.
I wonder what Tom Cotton's objections were ?
IIRC...wrong....
Indy & surrounds are kinda’ carved out to the eastern zone. Northwest and southwest Indiana go central. I count 14 states which have 2 time zones within.
Don’t care either way, haven’t changed a clock in over 10 years (since I retired).
I get up when the light comes into the southeast bedroom window, I go to bed when I get tired!
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