The story told to me by Pappy, back before the dawn of political correctness, involved a certain Native American who was reported to have said:
“What man is so foolish. He cuts a foot off the bottom of his blanket. Then he sews it to the top of his blanket and believe he has a longer blanket…”
Such was the first I heard of Daylight Savings Time when I was young as Daylight Time came to America in 1966.
This was when the Federal Fools on the Hill swallowed logic and enacted the Uniform Time Act.
“80 Stat. 107, enacted April 13, 1966, was a United States federal law to “promote the adoption and observance of uniform time within the standard time zones” prescribed by the Standard Time Act of 1918. Its intended effect was to simplify the official pattern of where and when daylight saving time (DST) is applied within the U.S. Prior to this law, each state worked out its own scheme for the dates of beginning and ending DST, and in some cases, which parts of the state should use it.”
Being a strict Constitutionalist, I have had a problem with the growth of the FedGov since about when president Kennedy was bumped off, some say by the early shadow government/deep state.
The reason the FedGov has no right to be declaring what is “time” is seen clearly when one takes the time to read the 10th Amendment:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Seems a simple enough recipe, does it not? If the States did not grant a POWER to the FedGov, it stays home, closer to the Will of the People.
FindLaw.com has an excellent discusion of the Reserved Powers” over here and it’s worth taking the time to read.
Really the key point is this:
“Nevertheless, for approximately a century, from the death of Marshall until 1937, the Tenth Amendment was frequently invoked to curtail powers expressly granted to Congress, notably the powers to regulate commerce, to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment, and to lay and collect taxes.”
Still, until the Johnsonian massive overstep program (of which the Great Society was part), government had been relatively in check. Civil rights had moved forward but for the most part the FedGov had not yet undertaken its more recent role of “Declaratory Government” which is the mode we are in now.
I tend to lump Daylight Time into the same “Question Bin” that holds other – and equally odd – questions about the FedGov’s involvement in the lived of Free Persons living within the States.
For example, the push to outlaw marijuana was a “tax deal” and was never a public threat, per se. Except that when the U.S. was involved with Mexico tensions in 1910, it became clear that Mexican Labor was being used by some large hemp plantations (it was used for cloth, rope, and lots of other items at the time) and so by outlawing the high (poor pun, sorry) THC versions of hemp, the labor for Mexicans dried up.
To me, it is little coincidence – in fact it’s a huge red flag to Constitutional Americans – that the end of the 10th Amendment as an effective defense ended in 1937 – which is precisely the year the FedGov went massively into controlling drugs with the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937.
“The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, Pub. 238, 75th Congress, 50 Stat. 551 (August 2, 1937) was a United States Act that placed a tax on the sale of cannabis. The H.R. 6385 act was drafted by Harry Anslinger and introduced by Rep. Robert L. Doughton of North Carolina, on April 14, 1937. The seventy-fifth Congress held hearings on April 27, 28, 29th, 30th, and May 4, 1937. Upon the congressional hearings confirmation, the H.R. 6385 act was redrafted as H.R. 6906 and introduced with House Report 792. The Act is now commonly referred to, using the modern spelling, as the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act. This act was overturned in 1969 in Leary v. United States, and was repealed by Congress the next year.”
Unfortunately, since 1969, some of the broader questions raised in Leary v. United States has been largely unaddressed.
While it’s true, for example, that the States never ceded the question of drug legality to the FedGov, the government took it upon itself to pass a law – and in the process made-up that God itself erred with Creation of such a plant.
I can’t speak for you, but it seems to me that the several States need to begin kicking-back on matters such as regulatory agencies, because States were never informed that the power grab to the FedGov would occur.
While there is no doubt that federal agencies do good work, they also fail to perform on many levels. Take the Food and Drug administration, as an example. I’m not clear where the State of Texas authorized the FDA to approve potentially life-saving drugs more promptly, nor am I clear where Texas had any say on whether a common drug (Colchicine) could be “taken private” to extortionately fund “research” by a private firm for several years. This despite the fact the use of the autumn crocus can be traced back to Roman times.
It’s akin to government racketeering.
And this gets us all the way back to when John Locke was writing in 1690 about something called “Non-delegation” doctrine.
“The Legislative transfer the Power of Making Laws to any other hands. For it being but a delegated Power from the People, they, who have it, cannot pass it over to others. . . . And when the people have said, We will submit to rules, and be govern’d by Laws made by such Men, and in such Forms, no Body else can say other Men shall make Laws for them; nor can the people be bound by any Laws but such as are Enacted by those, whom they have Chosen, and Authorised to make Laws for them. The power of the Legislative being derived from the People by a positive voluntary Grant and Institution, can be no other, than what the positive Grant conveyed, which being only to make Laws, and not to make Legislators, the Legislative can have no power to transfer their Authority of making laws, and place it in other hands.”
Notwithstanding, the FedGov has virtually unlimited power because the 16th Amendment was never enacted – and that’s why we have a “war on drugs,” an industry-related FDA, and oh yeah, Daylight Time.
“The original Bill of Rights approved by the House of Representatives included a Sixteenth Article, which stated that “(t)he powers delegated by the Constitution to the government of the United States, shall be exercised as therein appropriated, so that the Legislative shall never exercise the powers vested in the Executive or Judicial; nor the Executive the powers vested in the Legislative or Judicial; nor the Judicial the powers vested in the Legislative or Executive.” This article was not included in subsequent versions of the Articles or in the final Amendments.”
The fix, as you can see, was in! Government would not really have to be responsive to the States, and as a result, bureaucracy has run wild. To his credit, I believe President Trump sees some of this, but the danger now is that we could be in position to “throw the baby out with the bathwater.” The FedGov does good things, but often with crooked reasoning.
And that’s how we get to the time mess we just went through this weekend:
“Most areas of the United States observe daylight saving time (DST), the exceptions being Arizona (except for the Navajo, who do observe daylight saving time on tribal lands), Hawaii, and the overseas territories of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands.”
There isn’t a hill of beans we can do about it, though. Like the Federal Deficit, powers have been either ceded or usurped and nowhere is it more clear to me than in regulation of plant life and declaring the Hour of the day.
We know it is wasteful, we know people lose productivity when their circadian rythmns are tweaked, and we know energy use goes up and so do predawn accidents.
Bad ideas have become very popular in America, though, because most people ignore the obvious.
Still, there is one thing we can all do: In discussing the subject, please refuse to toss in the Big Lie Word “Savings.”
There is no savings. There is a foot of the blanket. And the Native American who allegedly made that observation is right…we are a bunch of deluded, slow-witted, and foggy-thinking sheep.
What we really need is strong coffee, clearer thinking, and a modern analog to the 16th Amendment.
These could rein-in the omnipotent central government and return power to local hands where it would repose safely in the arms of its would-be victims of government overreach.
Such people already know what time it is.
Late.
Write when you get rich,
The one hour for DST adjustment isn’t as bad as you think:In the 1950’s,the Baltimore Colts had a wide receiver named Raymond Berry who would live on Pacific Time for an entire week-in Baltimore-if the Colts were going to play on the left Coast that next Sunday.
DST is an LONGITUDE solution to a LATITUDE problem.
Actually, George, I’m back on my “right” time schedule today. During Fall and Winter, I sleep poorly and wake up far too early. Today, I actually feel pretty good. So I’m one of the few on that other side of DST. :)
Your date for the institution
of DST is way off the mark!
War Time or the Devil’s
time been around since
WWI more or less.
I AGREE!!!
I am outdoors so much that when the time changes hit I am confused internally. I get up with the sun cracking and know when it is supposed to set. All this has ever done for me is add more complexity and frustration, especially when I have clients in other time zones.
“What man is so foolish. He cuts a foot off the bottom of his blanket. Then he sews it to the top of his blanket and believe he has a longer blanket…”
God George I am with you on that one.. just wake up an hour earlier or an hour later.. quit messing with the clocks..
when EVER the feds are involved you can safely bet it will be screwed up or somebody of there liking will make a BUCK from it!! they cannot balance a budget how could we think they can handle the time!! LOL,