Daylight Saving Times Should End (and the problem of political inertia)

Daylight saving time arrived this past weekend and 70 countries around the world sprang one hour forward for spring. John Oliver on Last Week Tonight did a nice, short piece on the history of daylight savings time and why it should “no longer be a thing”:

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Daylight Saving Time – How Is This Still A Thing? (HBO)

Besides debunking the myth of it starting to benefit farmers, the piece also illustrates why a social policy put into place 100 years ago is oftentimes not relevant today due to tectonic technological and societal change. Yet, it’s still with us due to political inertia. Once a law or policy is put on the books, it is very difficult for politicians to muster any will to remove these laws when they are no longer necessary or wanted. The Republicans talk the talk about freedom, but they use their power only to deregulate for corporations and businesses. Some of that is necessary (particularly for small businesses), but why don’t they deregulate the policies that restrict individuals? Instead they go along with more laws regulating individuals, taking away the freedom to make choices, face consequences, and solve one’s own problems/issues (for example, Republicans have been major proponents for so-called “revenge porn” laws).

As for daylight savings time, why not just spring forward forever? Does anyone really enjoy sudden early darkness when we fall backward? Reset the time zones so sunrise is 6:30 or 7:00 AM, and let darkness fall later in the day. It’s self-evident that this change should be made, but political inertia won’t allow it. Every time a law gets passed, it’s hard to get rid of, so lawmakers should think hard before doing anything, and perhaps  spend their time undoing the damage to individual freedom that previous lawmakers have done. That would be progress, but instead we stand still in time’s past.

Puerile Theatrics of the State of the Union Address

Are the theatrics of calling out to special guests in the balcony something the American people really want? It’s childish so it’s hard to imagine a nation of adults could take it seriously… yet there it is year after year: a show spectacle a la Broadway of staged events that are meant to be perceived as smoothly spontaneous. Why can’t the state of the union be an intelligent and sober recounting by the chief executive of the state of the nation with his/her prescriptions for the year? Part of the problem is that the US has no royalty to perform ceremonial functions of state, so the President has to take part in meaningless rituals such as staging White House Easter egg hunts and pardoning of turkeys at Thanksgiving. There needs to be a separation of the theater of the White House from the hard business of day-to-day governing and policy-making. The State of the Union has become another proverbial tree-lighting ceremony without real substance.

The Republican “response” was hardly any better. In fact, it’s hardly a response at all, it’s a pre-scripted (i.e. written before the President’s address) speech that offered no riposte to POTUS, but instead offered the opposition party’s policy papers. Why can’t we have a serious debate? Why does it have to be so puerile with petty bickering? Why can’t some of these politicians act and speak like adults? The US Republic is “led” by substandard actors reading from scripts that pander to a public that is apathetic, ignorant and too often beholden to imagined spectacles on their view-screens.

When will there be an adult in the house?

Originally posted: http://www.mccarthyism.com/2015/20150122.htm