People hate the clock switching nonsense. Now it is gone (in about a year). Huzzah! But did you know we tried this 48 years ago and it didn’t go well?
Amid a U.S. energy crisis in 1973, President Nixon swiftly signed a bill which put the U.S. on daylight saving time for two years, Prerau said. The law went into effect on Jan. 6, 1974.
“When it was passed, most people thought it sounded pretty good,” he said.
The public liked the idea of avoiding the confusion and frustration of changing the clocks by an hour twice a year. But soon Americans realized what permanent daylight saving time meant: Sunrises at 8 a.m. or later in the middle of winter. In some areas, sunrises could be as late as 9:30 a.m., said Prerau.
Soon “the experiment … ran afoul of public opinion,” the New York Times reported in October 1974.
Public approval for the law dropped severely and rapidly: from 79% in December 1973 to 42% in February 1974, the Times reported.
Of all the bad actions by these bad actors, the Republican laws that deputize interested parties into a sort of anti-abortion, anti-trans rights jihad are really unsettling.
Conservative lawmakers across the U.S. have let loose a wave of state legislation attempting to restrict access to abortions and to gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth by allowing lawsuits to be filed against anyone who helps them.
But now there’s a new twist in a broader Republican strategy: Representatives in multiple states are pushing bills that would attempt to limit what residents can and can’t do beyond state lines.
Recently in Missouri, a state representative introduced a measure that would let people sue anyone they suspect of helping a resident get an abortion in another state.
This is old, but sucking up to Seniors is evergreen.
Hensley and Ramone Launch Re-Election Campaigns With Sops to Seniors
Five years ago, when Delaware was having projected revenue shortfalls of some $600 million, lawmakers took the ax to various programs to meet the legal requirement to have a balanced budget.
One was the popular senior school property tax credit that was established in 1999, with residents who lived in their own homes getting a 50 percent rebate or $500, whichever was lower.
But in June 2017, Gov. John Carney’s first year in office, the maximum amount was cut from $500 to $400, where it has remained in the ensuing years.
But now, with a $823 million revenue surplus projected for the fiscal year that starts on July 1, state Rep. Kevin Hensley wants to increase the credit to a max of $750.
A competing bill by Rep. Michael Ramone, a Pike Creek-area Republican, would take the rebate back up to $500.“By virtue of their lifelong contributions, no group of citizens has collectively paid more taxes than our seniors,” said Hensley, a Republican who represents the rapidly growing Middletown area of southern New Castle County.