Tag Archives: Dan Flynn

Texas to keep Daylight Savings Time

We’ll all need to catch up on our sleep over the winter after all.

Texas legislators have defeated a bill to toss out Daylight Savings Time in Texas. The House of Representatives rejected a bill by Rep. Dan Flynn to revert solely to standard time in Texas, joining Arizona in staying away from having to spring forward and fall back every year.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/house-votes-keep-daylight-savings-time

I’m one who never quite has understood the problems people have with the time change. It’s been around off and on for many decades. It was brought back in force in the 1970s as a way to conserve energy. Longer daylight hours in the summer months meant using less electricity. What’s so terrible about that?

It’s interesting to me that Amarillo’s House delegation split their votes on this deal. John Smithee, who represents Randall County, voted “yes” on Flynn’s bill; Four Price, who represents Potter County, voted “no.” I don’t know why that’s important. I just thought I’d mention it to illustrate that occasionally the two Republican lawmakers do not vote in tandem.

I’ve gotten used to the time change since I was in my 20s. It’s no big deal to me.

Then again, I’m not a farmer or a rancher.

As Flynn told his House colleagues: “The only one who knows if it is sun up or sun down is the rooster.”

Whatever. It makes no difference to me.

Secede … one law at a time?

Dan Flynn appears to be one of a growing number of Texans with rocks in his noggin.

The Republican state representative wants to form a committee that decides which federal laws can be followed in Texas and which can be ignored.

It’s sort of a piecemeal secession plan.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/11/26/3596488/a-texas-lawmakers-bizarre-plan-to-secede-from-the-union-one-law-at-a-time/

Rep. Flynn? We tried that once. It didn’t work out.

The speaker of the Texas House and the lieutenant governor would appoint a committee, which then could decide which laws to obey and which ones to flout. Interesting, eh? The new lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, just might be on board with this nutty notion; I’m not so sure about Speaker Joe Straus, who’s one of those reasonable Republicans who I’m quite sure knows better. I’m not so sure about Patrick.

Let’s review something here.

Texas entered the Union in 1845 and declared at the time that it would become part of the larger entity, the United States of America. It declared also that it would honor federal laws. All of them, I’m quite sure.

Are we now going to break that vow and decide which laws to follow and which ones to ignore?

It’s nutty in the extreme.

C’mon, Rep. Flynn. Eat some turkey and think about what you’re proposing.