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Monday, March 15, 2021

Daylight Saving Time 2021: Contact Your Congresspeople for the Sunshine Protection Act Reattempt!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Quit the clock-changing! ...Here's how to affect change.

I thought we were getting close for the past couple of years on getting the United States of America to take action on Daylight Saving Time (sometimes pluralised as Daylight Savings Time). You guys had President Donald John Trump, who was “O.K.” with making it permanent (as opposed to switching from daylight and standard time twice a year). We had all-time negative opinion polling on Americans’ thoughts on Daylight Saving Time.

And then nothing happened. No change was made, despite the Sunshine Protection Act of 2019 in both the Senate and the House of the 116th Congress. It never made it out of committee. Now President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. is the president of the United States, and he has a very mixed record on DST! (Though he doesn't really matter as long as he doesn't veto it.)

But a new session (117th Congress) is still a new chance, and now there is the Sunshine Protection Act of 2021 in both the Senate (S.623) and the House of Representatives (H.R.69). Like before, they're sitting in the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee and House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce, respectively.


If you live in the United States in the states that these committee members represent (or are willing to pretend to live in those states), call them up and/or email them. Tell them to get going on voting and passing this legislation. For the record, KoopaTV supports year-round standard time as opposed to year-round daylight time, but either one of those is still better than switching between them. Here are the list of committee members and how to contact them (if you choose the email form, select “energy” or “commerce” in the topic drop-down; if you choose phone number, you probably want to call their Washington D.C. office). You might want to ctrl + f your state:

Members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation

Shout-out to the very last guy, freshman Senator Raphael Warnock the Warlock. He hasn't yet cosponsored the bill. So if you're from Georgia (or feel like he should listen to you wherever you're from), definitely contact him. We'll see if he's as good as he campaigned himself to be!

I listed ALL of the Senators in the committee because, even though they definitely have sub-committees, the Sunshine Protection Act of 2021 hasn't been assigned to a sub-committee. Neither was the 2019 version. Therefore, as far as I know, the whole committee is relevant.

Members of the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce


So this one is hard to make a list for, because, unlike the Senate list which will apply to a whole state, House members only represent certain weirdly-shaped slices of each state, so...

If you live in Illinois (1st, 2nd, and 9th Districts), Florida (2nd, 9th, and 14th Districts), Massachusetts (3rd District), California (9th and 29th Districts), New York (9th District), Michigan (6th and 12th Districts), Texas (7th District), Ohio (5th District), Indiana (6th and 8th Districts), Arizona (8th District), North Dakota (lucky for you, the entire North Dakota is one big district with Kelly Armstrong; email him here with phone numbers at the bottom) New Jersey (6th District), or Washington state (5th District) you may be represented by these subcommittee members.

The leader of the subcommittee is Jan Schakowsky of the Illinois 9th District, but I can't begin to describe what the district looks like. So you either know you're in it or not. Try putting your zip code into this official look-up. If you match one of the districts I mentioned in the preceding paragraph, you win an obligation to contact your Representative and tell them to support the Sunshine Protection Act of 2021!


By the way, this change has screwed up KoopaTV and I didn't know what to do about it for...hours on end.

Blogger KoopaTV Daylight Saving Time comment from the future
KoopaTV's back-end settings have the timezone at Eastern Daylight Time (GMT -4), which is what it should be.
Yet I get this weird comment-from-the-future thing.


It actually turns out that my computer clock is wrong and it wasn't synced since the day before Daylight Saving occurred. Took me the whole day on Sunday to figure that one out, and now it's an hour later than I thought it was!

Windows 10 Time & Language current date settings adjust for daylight saving time DST synchronize your clock
“Adjust for daylight saving time automatically” is a FAKE NEWS setting.
It was actually 6:12 PM, Sunday, March 14 2021 when this screenshot was taken.


If we didn't have to worry about Daylight Saving Time, then this would never be something we have to deal with. There's a lot of other problems involved with constant time switching, like it being unnecessarily difficult to coordinate with multinational parties and the shifting time relations, and the pain of adjusting clocks.

This is genuinely awful stuff. March 14 is a worse day than March 10!



This was more work to put together than Ludwig was expecting. He doesn't want to do this again next year, so please contact the appropriate people and get it right in 2021. He KNOWS that some KoopaTV regular readers are in the applicable states where there are Congressional committee members. In non-partisan legislation like this, it only takes a few constituent requests to set a Congressperson's mind. You can be the constituent that changes American history!


Eight months later, Daylight Saving Time 2021 is over. Despite getting a few more cosponsors from KoopaTV's list, the Sunshine Protection Act of 2021 has not progressed through the legislative process.
One year later, the Sunshine Protection Act still hasn't gone anywhere.

2 comments :

  1. Wow you really went all out for this one. I feel so tired. But wait, march 14th is really worse than march tenth? Waking up early is worse than murder?! Actually, maybe I'll agree with you on this one.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Murder at least means I get to sleep longer.
      ...Forever, but still longer.

      Delete

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