They simply mess with the time because they can. Silly B.S. is the hallmark of government. If they want to move the clocks around they should also mandate the relocation of Longitudes by 15° eastward to coincide with the clock change. Since Washington is in charge of the whole world (to hear them tell it), I don't suppose that moving world geography would seem too outlandish to Congress.

All it did to me was give me an extra time at home

One benefit was that it probably forced some people into applying the latest service packs and security patches to their systems, or even to upgrade their OS to a later version.

But IMHO, they should move the clocks forward or backward by 1/2 hour (depending on whether DST is in effect or not) and be done with it. That's the time, all the time. No more clock touching. The sun will take care of adding/subtracting light when necessary.

If you want to make decent differences to energy emmissions, why not get your fat lardy asses out of your SUV's and walk around the block to the fast food joint, instead of taking the car..

What I think they forget to add in to their calculations is that when its brighter later, people are out doing things - so they drive around, shop..etc. This probably exceeds any energy savings.

Why do you think the trade groups were all for the change? They know that with more sun light comes more shopping time and thus higher profits in retail and entertainment.

People will gladly get out of bed while it's dark and go to work. They would much rather have some sunlight to go goof off after work though.

Amen, all of you. One time, all the frickin' time. If it's better to move up an hour, move the time zone up a f'n hour.

Make it permanent.

And for this one; all the money you have cost us on this, Congress, which is $150M plus $900M spent by companies to d*** with this, plus whatever they have to do in the fall, plus whatever they have to reset next year... F U.

Don't forget, Congress appropriated $150,000,000 simply to STUDY the effects.

That's appalling.

I find that just as appalling as presidential candidates spendinf $400 million on their campaign.

Heck, cap everyone at 1 million - Invest the other $399 million in more important things. If everyone has the same amount, then its all equal.

And as far as the DST - any savings was easily lost in what it cost companies to make the changes. Total waste of time for nothing if you ask me.

Well they had to pay for their yearly subscription to the New York Times some how! :)

(if you don't get this joke, you aren't politically educated enough for me to bother explaining it)

How can you all say it did nothing? In the world where I come from, it cost companies hundreds to perhaps thousands/maybe even more of dollars in IT personel and other 'software' costs to make the adjustment.
Everything that uses time in the U.S is affected - from your GPS to your Tivo, meaning these companies required programmers to mess with code, etc. etc.
So, while it didn't have the desired effect (or did it, hmm hmm hmm? lol), it certainly did something. At least the change is permanent (or is it? hmm hmm hmm?).

I agree, 1 time forever would be nice.

A couple of weekend fishing or golfing trips in Air Force One, and the pres just burnt all the fuel they saved.!! LOL

No, General Pelosi burned the savings with her useless subversive trip to visit with her terrorist friends in Syria.

Hate the Dems do you?

Doesn't any reasonable person?

First of all... it's been less than one fracking month. How the hell can anyone make such a quantified analysis?

Second... I'm in favor of year-round permanent DST.

Power plants keep hour-by-hour track of demand for every day of the year for planning purposes. They can watch the trends on any basis you would care to see above that -- daily, weekly, annual, whatever. They then compare those numbers to the average changes in demand from the weeks and months prior to get an idea of the overall demand increase, and then see what's happened in the last few weeks. They're pretty good at doing these kinds of things.

I agree. If it's a real savings, which it isn't, just adjust the damn time zones.

Arizona and Hawaii are geniuses.

Well, they only needed to analyze the power usage in the time frame that was daylight saving this year and not previous years, and compare to the usage of previous years.

Can't we just do away with Standard time and just stay in Daylight time if everyone likes it so much...

What is the darn point on moving back and forth. It just messes up my internal clock.

And let's not forget all the energy expended by everyone to make sure all our systems could deal with the change

Energy, costs, time.

All wasted. I did make some mad overtime however.

Worst President/Congress/Government: EVAR!

Really now... This is a stunt to have the American government to say "See, we care about saving energy, that's why we are moving DST." When in fact, it did and will do nothing.

That's all Congress does any more. I wonder if there is anything that they do that isn't a calculation stunt to appear to be doing something while avoiding the hard choices or admitting they don't really know what to do.

The stupid part was that the reasoning behind it was based on power usage in the 1970's.

HELLO! McFly - anyone in there!! Did nobody notice that things have changed a little bit since the 70's?

These are same people who now claim we're having man made global cooling (oh wait - that was the panic scare in the 70's), no wait - it's the whole in the ozone layer we're causing - oh wait - that closed up, oh yeah, I know it's now that Al Gore has spent so much time blowing hot air that he has single handedly raised the temperature 0.001 C. QUICK - head for the hills, we're going have flooding on the coast!

What a joke.

Reality always seems to mess with their plans.

Perhaps if they actually did some research before pulling stunts like this...

"Reality always seems to mess with their plans"

Hahaha. Dude so true. That's my quote of the month.

NOOOOOOO!!! I like having more sunlight after work.. we should always have DST!! Infact move it 2 hours.. I don't care about going to work in the dark..

What a waste it was changing DST's effective dates. Congress, please change it back.

No, because everyone has spent countless hours getting their systems in order. Changing it back would cause a "reversal" of patches. Maybe if America thought twice about its actions but that's for another topic...

Of course, no time will be wasted changing the clocks on all the non-updateable electronic equipment sold in the last few decades twice a year now that the daylight savings time feature has to be turned off.

we're not in the business of thinking. you should know that by now.

You clearly have no idea what I'm talking about. Someone like mjm01010101 does on the other hand. We'll leave it at that.

No, I am pretty sure I know exactly what you are talking about. I am just saying the overall amount of time people will be spending twice a year every year to adjust their clocks that no longer adjust themselves properly will amount to more wasted time than the time it would take to perform a one time change to the configurable machines of the world. That said, I think we should just do away with the damn DST altogether...all it does is screw with people's biorhythms.

I've always hated DST, so I agree that it should be done away with. We won't do that of course, but it's nothing more than a war-time measure that hasn't served a real purpose in decades.

The motto of Congress is "Doing without Thinking". Thinking is hard. It leads to unpopular decisions. Who wants to risk reelection when you can pay off your constituents and pass the bill to the next generation?