MuskRama Suggest Their Most Pointless Idea Yet

Tuesday, December 03, 2024

The heads of government efficiency want to try a plan that has already been tested and rejected. The government efficiency czars Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy seem to be mulling over a monumental change: eliminating daylight savings time.

Posted by Corky at 08:30 PM | 9 COMMENTS | permalink | Comment on This Entry |

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If anyone was worried that Musk and Ramaswamy would move unilaterally as unelected bureaucrats making sweeping decisions on behalf of the electorate, you can calm your fears: Apparently they're seeding ideas from polls on X.

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"Looks like the people want to abolish the annoying time changes!" Musk posted on X last week, in response to a poll by X user James Stephenson that found nearly 82 percent of fewer than 38,000 X users would "abolish" the system of changing the clocks forward in the spring and backward in the fall."

It's not clear that the two have seriously considered ending the practice of changing the clocks, but Musk reiterated his intention to "end the semi-annual time changes" in a follow-up post on X.

The U.S. already tried to permanently change to daylight savings time in 1974"a briefly popular decision to manage fuel consumption that ended in disaster as reports rolled in of children being killed by cars as they waited to be picked up by school buses in the dark."

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"For the children!" - Nullifidian, circa 2005

#1 | Posted by Corky at 2024-12-03 08:34 PM | Reply

If they want permanent Standard (real) Time, I am totally on board with this.

If they want permanent (fake) DST, they should rot in Hell for all eternity.

That said, it does seem to be an odd thing for a major lobbyist group to take on.

#2 | Posted by REDIAL at 2024-12-03 08:55 PM | Reply | Newsworthy 1

Muskrat will simply block out the sun, a la Mr. Burns.

You ------- idiots voted for cartoons.

#3 | Posted by LegallyYourDead at 2024-12-04 01:10 AM | Reply

How does that add to government efficiency in any way?

#4 | Posted by Nixon at 2024-12-04 07:21 AM | Reply

#2, Exactly.

DST is an anachronism and should be abolished. They did it wrong in the 70s, if they had stuck with standard time it would have worked.

#5 | Posted by qcp at 2024-12-04 08:49 AM | Reply

I am for permanent DST.
Children waiting in the dark at a bus stop is easily solved, start school later, along with everything else.
Regular time only became 'settled' with the onset of artificial lighting allowing people to be out and about in the dark.
I am sure that settling this will save DOGE a 1/2 trillion or so. (Snark)

#6 | Posted by mattm at 2024-12-04 08:58 AM | Reply

Isn't the option to use or not use DST up to the states?

Why do Republicans think that abortion should be left up to the states, but DST should not?

#7 | Posted by LampLighter at 2024-12-04 12:18 PM | Reply

Idaho voted to allow the upper portion of the state to remain on DST and match time with the southern portion of the state, but it cannot go in effect until congress allows states to choose to remain on DST. At this time states can only choose to remain on standard time...

#8 | Posted by justagirl_idaho at 2024-12-04 01:18 PM | Reply

@#8 ... At this time states can only choose to remain on standard time... ...

Thanks for that clarification.

Back in the early- mid-1970's when the DST was extended to be year-round, I was in Louisville, KY.

When the switch to year-round DST occurred, Louisville's county (Jefferson County) decided to switch from Eastern-time-based DST to Central-time-based DST. That made things interesting because within a few mile radius there was CT-DST, ET-DST and just across the Ohio River in Indiana a county that was year-round CST.

Where I worked drew workers from all those areas. I asked them how do they manage. The common answer, they had multiple clocks on the wall in the kitchen, one for each time.

#9 | Posted by LampLighter at 2024-12-04 01:30 PM | Reply