My system time for root is correct, but for my normal user account it is wrong. The time in the BIOS is correct as well. I ran timeconfig as root and set the hardware clock to localtime and then set the correct timezone. Again as root the time is correct, when I run date as root I get this:

But when I run date as my normal user account I get this:

I did notice that when I run as root and type "date" it says "EDT" next to the time (which is correct) but as a normal user it says "UTC". How do I change the time for my normal user so it's the same time as it is for root?

As root I can change the time with date -s xx:xx but when I try as a normal user I get "operation not permitted". I understand I am probably getting this error becuase I am trying to change the global system time as a normal user.. so how do I go about setting the correct time for my normal user account? It seems like there should be some kind of a command I can enter as root that will change the time for all users.

Take a look at /etc/localtime:
and if the permissions are rw--- change it to rw-r-r.
Or as root run:
to see if you've defined somehow the TIMEZONE and use that TZ in /etc/profile, so it's the same for all users. I.e. edit your /etc/profile and at the end add a line like this:
Of course change EDT with the root's TZ.

Regards

Thanks bathory I did chmod 644 /etc/localhost as root and now the time is correct as a normal user.

Thanks again.