Political Irony

Yes, today is the day that we all “spring forward”. The theory at least is that we are lowering our use of energy. Indeed, they do call it “Daylight Savings Time”, and it isn’t daylight we are saving, it is (supposedly) energy. With the high cost of energy, that could be a good thing.

Except that there is almost no evidence that DST saves any energy at all, and even some studies that show that it wastes energy.

Even if once upon a time DST saved energy — by not requiring people to use home lighting until one hour later in the summer — the advent of air conditioning more than cancelled out that savings. After all, air conditioning uses far more energy than lighting.

DST can also be bad for us. One study showed that on the Monday immediately after DST starts, heart attacks increase by 25%. In addition, traffic accidents increase, probably because of losing an hour of sleep.

So why do we keep doing it? I’m a pragmatist. Even if DST once helped save energy, it is an idea whose time has come and gone. As an article in The Atlantic puts it, DST is now wasteful, unnecessary, and even dangerous.

But for now, please be careful out there Monday morning.

For people who thought that Congress couldn’t get any more disfunctional — you were wrong. As the Daily Beast put it:

It used to be that Congress was broken, and was forced to repeatedly kick the can down the road. Now it seems that Congress can’t even properly kick the can down the road.

The first few steps happened as they have in the past, but with a new twist. As they did when they didn’t control Congress, Republicans attached some bizarre demand to an almost completely unrelated bill that had to be passed, just daring the Democrats not to pass it.

In this case, what remains of the GOP Tea Party faction is incensed that Obama is not immediately deporting every last illegal immigrant out of this country, even though kicking out over 10 million people (3.5% of the US population) is not just a virtually impossible task, but also one that would severely damage our economy (not to mention our landscaping!).

So what does the GOP crazy wing do? They threaten to defund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) unless Obama gives in to their ultimatum. Yes, they are willing to sacrifice the security of the US in order to piss off Latino voters (the people who Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Jeb Bush desperately need to court for the presidential election).

Never mind that while US Citizenship and Immigration Services is part of DHS, it is almost completely funded by fees from its users, so defunding DHS would have no effect at all on deporting illegal immigrants (if anything, lack of funding would make it more difficult).

So Congress tried to kick the can down the road for three weeks. Three measly weeks, and they couldn’t even do that. In the end, with less than two hours to go before DHS funding expired, they managed to punt the issue for seven days; then they have to try again.

Instead of rebuking Obama, it was Speaker John Boehner who was embarrassed as conservatives in his caucus once again showed how little control he has over the far-right Tea Party faction in the House.

Even Republicans are disgusted.

Republican Sen. Mark Kirk called for an end of “attaching bullshit to essential items of the government.” And Rep. Peter King, former chairman on the House Homeland Security Committee, slammed a potential lapse of DHS funding as “wrong politically” and “wrong morally.”

Meanwhile, during the next seven days we will have the spectacle of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking before Congress as part of his re-election campaign. So if you thought that now it can’t get any worse, you are still going to be wrong. Very wrong.

Today, the FCC made two important decisions that will have a profound effect on the future of the internet.

Most widely reported is their vote to reclassify the internet as a telecommunications service under Title II of the communications act. The immediate impact is that telecoms cannot charge extra for internet “fast lanes”. All traffic must be treated equally, which is the whole point of “net neutrality”.

Title II allows regulation of prices of telecommunication services, but the FCC has explicitly promised that they will not do this for broadband service.

Also today, the FCC voted to allow public broadband providers to compete against commercial internet providers. This allows cities to provide municipal broadband networks for their citizens, and overturns a bunch of state laws banning local governments from building or owning broadband services.

Personally, as someone who makes his living from the internet, I think these two decisions are VERY good news. In my opinion, the telecoms have done a terrible job providing fast internet to US citizens. The FCC decisions are a good balance between limiting the monopoly powers of the telecoms while leaving the internet free enough to continue to innovate.

Not surprisingly, the vote at the FCC split precisely down party lines.

UPDATE: Bloomberg has a good article about the issues. Also includes a good quote from Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who attended the FCC meeting and afterward said that the FCC action is “an indication that the people can sometimes win. This is a victory for the people, the consumers, the average Joes.” And indeed, if you look at the companies supporting the FCC decision, they are innovators like NetFlix and Twitter, while those opposed are the old-guard monopolies like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast.