I wish our esteemed leaders would pick one -- daylight saving time or standard time -- and stick with it. This ritual of changing our clocks twice a year is so unnecessary that it can only be explained by government's obsession with control. Early Romans were so obsessed they changed the length of an hour in a range from a low of 45 minutes in the winter to a high of 75 minutes in the summer in proportion to the length of daylight. Source. Thank goodness that technique didn't endure. But at least their system had some relationship with actual daylight hours.
The general excuse for the current DST was energy savings. But evidence to support that is flimsy.
The Texas Legislature meets every two years, and like clockwork, someone introduces a bill to terminate DST. But like HB2400 in 2017, those bills never reach the governor's desk. Apparently, there isn't enough citizen interest in the subject to get lawmakers motivated -- no opportunities for graft, as some cynics might say.
Meanwhile, there's a C-Span video of a talk by Michael Downing, author of "Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time," available for viewing at this link. (Requires cookie acceptance.) As you can tell by the title, Mr. Downing isn't a big fan of DST, but kudos to him for finding a way to capitalize on it.
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10:18 AM 11/4/2017
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