The great majority of you turned back your clocks a few days ago, thankful for an extra hour of sleep.  I did not.  Why?  I live in the state of Indiana.  I have always hated living in Indiana, but the one thing I have consistently enjoyed is the fact that we do not have daylight savings time.  You see, Indiana straddles the Eastern and Central Time Zones.  If we were on Eastern all the time, the sun would stay up way too late in the summer.  If we were on Central all the time, the sun would set way too early in the afternoon during the winter.  At this point you are probably wondering why you would care about time in Indiana.  Aside from its sheer value in confusing you, the relation of this absurdity should help you see the pure idiocy of many of our so-called leaders and our need to stand up and stop our downward slide as a nation.

In the Hoosier State we observe Eastern Standard Time year-round.  Well, that is what we observe until April 2, 2006.  Our wonderful lawmakers decided that EST was destroying our economy.  I still do not understand how they reached this conclusion, as they never provided the public with any evidence.  However, they came to the consensus that they would put us on daylight savings time, thus saving the world (or so you would think from their dire predictions).  Acting as politicians act, they passed the buck on deciding into which time zone the state would move.  The federal Department of Transportation would tell us what time zone we would move to, our state officials informed us.  As it turns out, the DOT is also a bureaucratic body in the habit of passing the buck, so they passed it to the individual counties.

That’s right.  The United States Department of Transportation decided that each county would pick its time zone, subject to DOT approval, of course.  Is this not political correctness at its peak?  I am all for people feeling happy, but each county getting to pick its own time zone seems absurd, quite frankly.  They assured us that things would go well, though, and that everything would work out to the benefit of the entire state.  Well, they lied.  Look at the map in the upper right hand corner of this page (click on it to enlarge it).  As you can see, most of the counties will begin observing Eastern Time year-round, and some counties will begin observing Central Time year-round.  These are the counties that have not filed for a change.  However, we also have counties that will be granted status in the Central Time Zone and counties that want status in the Central Time Zone but will have to live in the Eastern Time Zone.

The largest uproar from the state at large comes from an issue over county number four on the map.  That is St. Joseph County, which includes the city of South Bend.  St. Joseph County will, according to the federal government, begin observing Central Time on April 2, 2006.  Many of its neighbors, including those who also requested a change to the Central Time zone, will stay in the Eastern Time Zone.  Thus, those commuting to work or events in South Bend will, for the most part, have to remember to subtract an hour, even though the city may only be several miles away.

I can only hope that our state legislature will see the light in its next session and repeal this law before it does some serious damage.  I would venture to say that you can much more easily explain, “We observe Eastern Standard Time year-round,” to someone out of state than you can explain to someone in state, “Well, we are based in South Bend, so don’t forget to subtract an hour.  Unless, of course, you observe Central Time, too, then don’t change the time at all.  But if the DOT is still reviewing your case, make sure you know whether to subtract an hour or not.”  This problem does not simply display the idiocy of the Indiana state legislature and our governor in this particular situation.  The situation is, instead, indicative of problems we see in politicians as a whole.  They move on a whim, ready to change literally anything if the polls show even the slightest support for that change.  However, they can never make the hard decisions once they follow those poll numbers.  Perhaps we must, as a nation, step back, review the situation, and ask our leaders to screw their heads on straight.  They have already dug us a hole.  Let’s try to keep them from filling it in while we are still in it.