I thought of that too, but there is not 8 hours of difference between EST and UTC, isn't it? (West Coast perhaps, but not east coast.)
(That is why I did not reply to this post. Sorry!)
:idea: However I am just thinking that perhaps a wrong local timezone is set (East from Greenwich). Is KDE's clock right or not? When you type date in a console what do you get?
Have a nice day!