In letters: How about a one-year break from daylight saving time? | Opinion

Down with daylight saving

The national self-delusion of daylight saving time is bad for almost everyone: Kids who have to go to school in the dark; farmers who have to start work in the dark; animals that don’t adjust well to changes in “human time”; and just about everyone else who suffers from negative health effects because of the sudden and unnecessary time change.

While there is not unanimity in the preferred alternative, I propose a one-year experiment in which the country does not change to daylight saving in 2026. Rather than propose a permanent change, ease into it by showing people how not changing works just fine for everyone.

By making it a one-year trial, if there is widespread sentiment to return to daylight saving that could happen the following year. A one-year pause should be acceptable to everyone, and I am willing to bet that a huge majority will like just staying with the standard time and not having to undergo the semiannual wrenching in our biorhythms.

Jan William Simek

San Luis Obispo

CPUC is not ‘demonizing’ solar customers

I agree with part of the editorial about the California Public Utilities Commission’s report on certain programs and issues affecting electricity rates.

It would be unfair to walk back existing agreements with legacy solar customers, such that their favorable net-metering setup would end sooner than expected, and I’m glad the editorial called attention to it.

But I can’t agree with the editorial’s depiction of the CPUC as “scapegoating solar customers” and “demonizing” them. Since the solar net-metering programs are a significant contributor to higher bills for non-solar customers — and most customers are non-solar — the CPUC could hardly avoid addressing that.

But the idea of possibly changing legacy net-metering timeframes was one suggestion among many. And the CPUC’s first suggestion for solving this was to find other, non-ratepayer-related ways to fund the costs that have shifted to non-solar customers.

The editorial went on to briefly allude to just a few of the CPUC’s suggestions unrelated to solar — understandable, given limited space and reader attention — but dismissed as “weak” some potentially powerful options for keeping rates in check. Any fellow electricity geeks can find the report, thrillingly titled “CPUC Response to Executive Order N-5-24,” on the CPUC website.

L.K. Miller

Los Osos

Please Reassure us, Mr. Dow

There is a reason the election for the office of the district attorney is non-partisan.

Once elected, the district attorney is to represent all of the people of the state of California within the county jurisdiction, and to apply the laws of the state impartially, fairly and without prejudice.

When you are a district attorney, you are a district attorney 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. A DA does not have the luxury of being “off duty.”

District Attorney Dan Dow, by posting on your Facebook page (now deleted) the people who are protesting in front of our courthouse as having “Trump Derangement Syndrome” shows bias.

I think it would be reassuring if your were to publicly state that if one of the people you refers to as deranged is a victim of a crime, you will prosecute that crime in a manner that is without prejudice, and if one of those people is arrested for allegedly committing a crime, you will also investigate and prosecute that crime without prejudice and with impartially.

Please reassure us that you are still able to execute your responsibilities to uphold the U.S. and California constitutions as you have sworn to do.

Rob Lewin

San Luis Obispo

Returned Wallet

To the thoughtful person who found my wallet and took it to the Arroyo Grande police station, bless you. All of my cards and my driver’s license were intact. Your act of kindness is just what we need more of in the world .

Sharon Williams

Arroyo Grande

Destroy, obliterate, gut

“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”― Theodore Roosevelt

The current regime occupying the White House professes to be ridding the United States of lawless immigrants. If this were the case, the first one on the list would be the incomparably lawless and arrogant immigrant from South Africa committing treason against our government and our Constitution.

He heads DOGE, whose mission seems to be to destroy, obliterate and gut every socially beneficial and socially responsible federal agency. And his tactics appear to be to destroy, obliterate and gut the Constitution as well.

Donald Archer

Cambria

This story was originally published March 15, 2025 at 5:00 AM.