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Sunday, March 11, 2007

Daylight Shifting

As brilliant as Benjamin Franklin was, I do have an argument with him about his proposal, in 1784, for instituting what is called Daylight Saving Time. He was in Paris at the time. He may have been imbibing a bit too much. Keep in mind that Benjamin Franklin also proposed the turkey as our national bird.

Farm Animals and babies don’t do Daylight Saving Time well – in fact, do any of us do Daylight Saving Time well? It is sort of like giving everyone Jet Lag. Babies still wake up at their regular time. Animals still want to be fed and milked and taken care of at the time their systems have become used to.

Those who are for Daylight Saving Time say that it saves energy and gives us more daylight hours. Nonsense – we just shift the hours to evening rather than morning. They also say that there are fewer accidents during Daylight Saving Time. Another study says that the accidents are more severe, especially during the first few days and weeks of the change. It was in 1918 that the US first instituted Daylight Saving Time. During World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt instituted year-round Daylight Saving Time, called “War Time,” from February 2, 1942 to September 30, 1945. On January 4, 1974, President Nixon signed into law the Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act of 1973. Then, beginning on January 6, 1974, implementing the Daylight Saving Time Energy Act, clocks were set ahead for a 15-month period through April 27, 1975.

Now it doesn’t take Benjamin Franklin to figure out that if our nation needed extra energy at those times, couldn’t we use extra energy now? Why not just change to Daylight Saving Time and then just leave it alone. I picked up a clock at the clock repair shop on Saturday. Can you imagine the nightmare of changing all those clocks twice a year?

Why do I expect Congress to do something logical and easy?

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