Minute Missive on Mental Health

Heads they win, tails you lose.

Depending on which Seattle news paper you read, you might have noticed an article that said Thousands of people could lose mental health coverage, or that millions might gain mental health coverage. Strangely enough these really are two sides of one coin.

In Washington State, Medicaid covers mental health. Most private health insurance policies only have the barest of coverage. As a result, people with severe mental health problems can very quickly end up on Medicaid. However, in this age of governmental belt tightening, the state feels they no longer have the money for this coverage.

This is a real shame, because people who are mentally ill have a hard time getting by without treatment. It should not be rocket science to say that if a person has a mental illness, it effects how he or she sees the world, and this has a very direct bearing on someone’s — anyone’s — ability to hold down a job and pay the bills. This is not an issue of pulling ones self up by the bootstraps, because they can’t necessarily tell that there are any boots. By some estimates, 20-25% of the homeless are mentally ill. If you want to solve homelessness, you have to treat mental illness. Although it is difficult to obtain figures for the number of convicted criminals who are mentally ill, there is evidence to support the idea that treating mental health issues among prison and parole populations reduces recidivism, or repeat offenses. Since reducing homelessness and crime are both societal priorities, it should be a no-brainer that mental health is an issue to address.

So, the Washington state legislature finds themselves in the unenviable position of not being able to afford services that would cost substantially less if there were insurance parity. The obvious answer is to mandate insurance coverage of mental illness.

However, before we gloat over having found such an obvious solution, let’s deal with why insurance companies do not already provide this coverage. First of all, it’s expensive. Rates will have to go up to provide this coverage, even if only a small percentage of the covered individuals need it. And since, as the saying goes, things are tough all over, this means that more employers will opt for cheaper, less comprehensive coverage for their employees, or that more employees will decide to take their chances with no coverage. The great irony is that these people might well end up on the new, improved, reduced mental health benefit Medicaid.

The other reason for the lack of coverage is buried decades ago. There was a time when mental health coverage was abused by authority figures, parents, and mental hospitals. A trouble maker could be labeled mentally ill, and taken out of the picture for a while. The hospital was happily compliant, as long as the insurance company paid up. It was the 80s version of boot camps for troubled teens, and it wasn’t a new phenomenon then. Insurance companies decided that it was easier to drop the coverage than to sort out the fraud from the actual necessary care.

Getting medical help to the mentally ill is a good thing, but we must tread lightly in how we provide it.

9 out of 10 Leading Ostrich Scientists

I am more than a little bothered by the current tendency to decry inconvenient science as “unproven theories.”

Whether it’s putting stickers about “evolution” on science textbooks, or disseminating simply false information about contraception, (or even the number of people who still think most overrated dictator of 2003 Saddam Hussein had anything at all to do with 9/11) there seems to be a more than trivial part of the population that would rather put their heads in the sand than look at reality.

I read recently that the most important scientific breakthroughs often come, not with the words “eureka!” but rather with “that’s funny…” Scientific theories often represent nothing more than our best current understanding of the world. Most of the time, we cannot “prove” these theories, but we can confirm or refute them by obtaining data that is either “consistent” with the theory, or “inconsistent.” The latter tends to indicate a problem with the theory. When a scientist — a real scientist and not just someone who knows a few facts and is willing to parrot the party line — comes across facts that do not fit theory, he looks at those facts and tries to figure out why. Is there a measurement error? Has something gotten into the data that shouldn’t be there? Is this some peculiar exception to the theory? Can the theory be refined to reflect this new data? Or is the theory simply wrong?

At some point, there is enough confirming data that a theory is accepted as more or less right. We don’t need more experiments to tell us that actions have opposite and equal reactions, or that germs cause disease, or that water is made up of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen.

Information keeps coming in that suggests that the theory of climate change, or global warming, is coming to pass. The world is definitely getting warmer on the whole, and strange things are happening to our weather as a result. The Pacific Northwest is having an unusually warm, dry winter, so the bulbs are blooming early and summer drought is expected. Las Vegas has had snow two years in a row. Field biologists in Alaska have noticed changes over the course of years. Europe and Japan have had record heat waves. Florida has been pounded with more hurricanes than usual.

How much confirming data do we need?

What is a subject for debate is exactly why the world is getting warmer. Is it the “greenhouse effect” of Carbon Dioxide trapping heat? How does that fit with the fact that the world has been getting less sunlight over the last few decades? Is this just a perfectly normal fluctuation in the temperature that humans are only now able to measure?

It is not possible to run experiments on something as large as the world’s climate, and even if it were possible it would be extremely irresponsible; if something went wrong it could have absolutely devastating consequences, like the death of all life on the planet. However, just because we can’t experiment doesn’t mean we can’t look for things that happened at the same time. We do know that as the world has been getting warmer, humans have been putting out progressively more pollution. Our power plants and car engines put out more carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide our cows fart more methane, and our trees are being cut down more than at any point in the past. We can’t prove that these things cause global warming, but we can’t rule it out either. And in any event, pollution isn’t good for us, either.

That is why people are getting involved. Shareholders are holding corporations responsible for pollution. That is why the Kyoto Agreement went into effect this week, and why some states and municipalities are trying to comply with it even if the United States won’t. Kyoto won’t cure the world on it’s own because too many countries are exempt. This is a real shame, because the underdeveloped nations that are exempt had the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of the developed world. If they seized the chance to install clean technology the first time, they could skip the environmental and health consequences that we face here.

Kyoto is not perfect, but it’s better than anything else on the table. Unless of course you are one of the huge polluters.

In closing, I don’t like Hillary Clinton, but I do like this idea: make Election Day a national holiday, mandate receipts for voting, and require all the new rules to be in place by the 2006 elections. Remember, this isn’t about partisanship, it is about making sure your vote counts. As many really close elections as they have been in the last five years, that’s really important. Thanks to Pandagon for pointing out this item.

Will Work For Food… And Affordable Housing

Those of us who have not been living in exclusive gated communities are probably aware that all is not wine and roses in America. Sure, the official unemployment rate is low –kept artificially so by the narrow definition of “unemployment” — but homeless shelters and food banks are working at capacity.

How can this be?

Well according to the experts cited in this article, it has to do with the high price of housing. When a family spends “too much” on housing, they don’t have enough money for food. And why is housing so expensive?

Among the concerns listed by HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson were slow permitting procedures and complex environmental regulations that can significantly increase the length and cost of home building review and approval processes.

That’s right. The official government stance is that this is the fault of states and local governments that want to make sure that new housing meets certain standards. Burdensome standards, like that they meet building codes. That a housing development won’t overwhelm local road and utility capacities. That developers don’t pave over a wetland and create a perennial flooding problem for miles around.

Mr. Jackson’s office calls many of these standards onerous and “archaic.”

Now, one thing that Mr. Jackson is right about is that affordable housing is necessary if we are to have people in our neighborhoods like teachers and nurses and firefighters. I will not dispute him on that point. But he is wrong that the same regulations which ensue safe, stable communities prevent these people from having affordable housing. Nor does Mr. Jackson address the issue of poverty, despite the fact that affordable housing is an even bigger problem to the poor than to the not-highly-paid professionals he speaks of. This is no surprise, since Mr. Jackson is on record as saying, more or less, that he doesn’t believe in systemic poverty.

But back to the issue of affordable housing. Why does this housing have to be owned? What is wrong with making sure there is adequate stock of “safe,” affordable, well-managed apartment housing? And why does this report not address other issues which undeniably drive up housing prices, such as rent controls (which artificially guts the supply of rental housing and thereby drives up the cost of owned housing)?

I will be utterly shocked if the HUD solution to the problem of affordable housing supply does not include “deregulation,” by which they will mean taking away the abilities of local governments to control local construction in any way shape or form. In the meantime, they will do everything possible to avoid looking for the real reasons real estate is experiencing double digit increases. Las Vegas house prices rose 47% last year. It had little to do with regulation, a lot to do with the fact that the city is gaining thousands of residents every month, and even more to do with the fact that the Las Vegas valley has a finite amount of buildable land.

In closing, Questions and Answers on Social Security and dispelling Social Security Myths. Seriously, it boils down to one question: if the problem is that Social Security will not have enough money, how is giving it less money going to help? Speaking of questions nobody will ask, what is more relevant, the percentage of kids who get a high school diploma, or the percentage of those kids who actually have the knowledge and skills to function in the job market? Oh, and here’s the latest in universal health care.

License and Registration, Please

Depending on what your news source is, you may have read that there are new guidelines for driver’s licenses, or you may have read that immigration laws have been tweaked. Believe it or not, this is the same bit of legislation. You can read the bill here.

During this discussion, I will overlook the fundamental difference between a “drivers license,” whose purpose is to show that one is a competent driver, and an “identification card,” whose purpose is to verify the identity of the bearer. Many if not most people use a drivers license as an identification card, but that does not make them synonymous. There are many people who, for whatever reason, need to be identifiable and yet do not drive.

Now, I don’t think anyone would disagree that an identification card should include certain basic bits of information: name, date-of-birth, address, a picture. Since it will be used to verify identity, it makes perfect sense to verify that the applicant is who he says he is. It is also, frankly, in everyone’s interest to make identity documents difficult to forge or falsify. This bill goes beyond that.

This bill wants your state DMV to check your Social Security number against SSA files, digitize your picture, put a scanned image of your birth certificate and immigration papers and social security card and who knows what other information in a digitized database forever, and make your complete driving record available to every other DMV in the country. Your state has the option of refusing to comply with these standards, but if they do not only will your state lose all it’s interstate highway funds; you and every citizen of your state will not be able to use your “non-compliant” drivers license for federal identification purposes, including boarding an airplane.

Rather inconvenient.

But wait, there’s more. The stated purpose of this bill is to close the loopholes under which the 9/11 boys were able to get “legitimate” identification. This here is an anti-terrorism bill, and it’s unAmerican to be against anti-terrorism. And since we all know that all terrorists are foreigners — except for McVeigh, and the Unabomber, and Krar, and let’s just not talk about the Earth Liberation Front or the cornucopia of other homegrown radical violent groups — this bill deals harshly on immigration issues. Illegal immigrants will not be able to get compliant identification at all (no problem, they shouldn’t be here). There will be new rules on amnesty and political asylum: “Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader, said the bill ‘targets legitimate victims of persecution – innocent people under threat of torture or death for their religious beliefs’ and ‘unconstitutionally forbids federal judges from hearing asylum cases involving real threats of torture.'”

But wait! There’s a special bonus in section 102. “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall have the authority to waive, and shall waive, all laws such Secretary, in such Secretary’s sole discretion, determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads under this section…. Notwithstanding any other provision of law (statutory or nonstatutory), no court shall have jurisdiction to hear any cause or claim arising from any action undertaken, or any decision made, by the Secretary of Homeland Security pursuant to paragraph (1); or to order compensatory, declaratory, injunctive, equitable, or any other relief for damage alleged to arise from any such action or decision.”

Maybe my legalese is rusty, but that sounds like it can be reduced to “The DHS has the right to do whatever it wants, and the courts have no authority to stop them or even charge them a fine.” DHS wants to fill the Rio Grande with acid? Fine. DHS wants to erect a giant replica of the Berlin Wall on the border with Canada? Great. DHS wants to clear-cut a forest so illegal aliens can’t use the trees for cover? Alrighty then.

As long as you are planning to write your Senator, you might want to read this set of articles: How to owe $40K by doing nothing, and Tighter Bankruptcy Law Favored, 2005 dance mix.

Budget Whoa!

Today, after much posturing and theorizing, the 2006 Federal Budget has been released. You can get your very own copy! Isn’t the internet great?

Now, don’t get to thinking this budget is set in stone. It’s as malleable as a Word document at this point. The Congress still has to wrangle over each line item, alternately decrying what is there and demanding what is not there. The President’s proposal is described as “a tough sell.” Although the 2006 fiscal year starts on October 1, recent history tells us not to expect the final version to pass until next January. It must really be nice to be able to let financial decisions slide for three months; it’s certainly not anything most people can get away with.

Now, the numbers we are talking about are big, big numbers, and most people kind of fuzz over numbers than end in “illion,” so go ahead and start thinking of “a billion” as “a thousand million.” “A trillion” becomes “a million million.” This should help add perspective as you read information about this budget. The overall budget is two and a half million million dollars. That is nevertheless several hundred thousand million less than expected tax revenues.

This budget includes a facade of fiscal conservatism. President Bush’s stated goal is to reduce the budget deficit by half as compared to GDP, a sufficiently vague figure that allows economists plenty of room to argue. Oh, and that figure, estimated at a 2009 deficit of $230 thousand million, “do not take into account some big-ticket items: the military costs incurred in Iraq and Afghanistan, the price of making Bush’s first term tax cuts permanent, or the transition costs for his No. 1 domestic priority, overhauling Social Security.” That’s like writing your household budget without accounting for electricity and the credit card bills.

Just about everything but military spending is supposed to be cut if not eliminated. Farm subsidies top the list, a controversial measure long demanded by the international community, but one must wonder if this is being done in a manner which helps family farms, or whether this is another favor to agribusiness. More cuts will occur in the Department of Education, despite the fact that states and school districts are already screaming about unfunded federal mandates and the expenses associated with No Child Left Behind. Other Big Big Cuts include public health and housing for the poor. Just think how much money this nation can save by making sure there are plenty of chronically ill homeless people. Why, that just makes me want to read some Dickens novels!

Oh but wait, America’s big cities aren’t going to be happy with that arrangement. We both know that the States and cities will not have much choice but to suck up expenses the Feds won’t pay for. Governors on both sides of the political spectrum are not happy. Most of them must balance their budgets every year by law, most of them have cut everything they can, and some of them have raised taxes as high as they dare. Even radical conservatives like The Heritage Foundation say it’s time for the Feds to be honest about their budgetary obligations.

And you know what we haven’t even talked about yet? The cost of President Bush’s Social Security plans. Over the weekend, Cyborg Vice President Dick Cheney admitted that the Bush plan would cost $754 thousand million over the next 10 years, and unknown millions of millions after that. He claims this is still better than the alternatives. Or is it? The money Mr. Cheney is talking about appears to be more than the cost to shore up the current Social Security System. It would be more intellectually honest to say they would like to shut down the Social Security Administration altogether. Supply Siders would have to grudgingly accept this as a good thing because it would have the net effect of a 12% tax cut to most Americans and the businesses that pay them. Fiscal conservatives would have to grudgingly accept this as a good thing because it would allow the government to retire $1.6 million million in federal debt. Many Baby Boomers and younger Americans would grudgingly accept it because it’s at least honest, and many of them never expected to see a dime anyway.

Of course it would really suck for the millions of Americans who need that money to pay the rent. You remember, the ones for whom the Safety Net was built in the first place?

Form 1040, lines 28 and 31

This morning I read an article entitled “GOP taking aim at health insurance paid by employers.” Let me save you some time, it’s another Ownership Society bit of propaganda, stating “they want to erect a system in which workers, instead of looking to employers for health insurance, would take personal responsibility for protecting themselves and their families: They would buy high-deductible “catastrophic” insurance policies to cover major medical needs, then pay routine costs with money set aside in tax-sheltered health savings accounts.”

Now, don’t get me wrong. I feel that traditional health insurance drives up costs by, among other things, directly short-circuiting market forces. Most people have no idea what their health insurance costs, because it is paid for by their employer. There is no ability, let alone incentive, to try and get a better deal. This GOP proposal largely addresses that problem, although I must admit some amusement that the party of the Supply Siders is proposing a Demand Side solution to the problem. The benefits of this idea are not only that people would be in control of their own medical and health insurance expenses, but also that it would limit the medical expenses that have to be funneled through the overhead (read: unnecessary added expenses) of the insurance company, and that Doctors would actually get what they bill in a timely fashion. Win-Win, so far.

However, there is a bit of this puzzle that is missing, and it can be fixed with a little change of wording on the 1040. Scoll down to the instructions for lines 28 and 31. You can probably get them on one screen together. Line 28 allows you to deduct personal contributions to a Health Savings Account, unless your employer contributed. Oh, yeah, and you need another form. Line 31 allows the self-employed to deduct health insurance premiums.

Change that line so health insurance premiums are deductible, period, without having to itemize, and we might just have a plan to rein in costs.

Of course, this still doesn’t do a darn thing for 45 million Americans who don’t have health insurance at all, mainly because they can’t afford it. They won’t be able to afford this proposal either.

In closing, by the time I finished watching this video clip of Jon Stewart commenting on a Good Morning America interview with the CEO of WalMart, an interesting question came to mind. Why does the CEO of one of the biggest companies in America so rarely appear on America’s number one business news channel, CNBC? (Apparently he was on January 13, but strictly to talk about how they will counteract perceptions, probably to say the exact same things he said on GMA. I can’t tell because I run an “unsupported operating system.”) Maybe because Mark Haines wouldn’t be as nice as Charlie Gibson.

Merger Mania Mania Mania

Today’s big business news is that Dow Component SBC, the company that used to be known as Southwestern Bell, is in talks to buy former parent company, none other than Ma Bell herself, former Dow Component AT&T.

Oh wait, that’s yesterday’s big business news.

Today’s big business news is that Dow Component Proctor and Gamble is planning to buy Gillette for about $57 Billion in stock, creating the world’s biggest consumer product firm. It is a rich valuation. If you happened to own shares of Gillette yesterday and the deal goes through as planned in a timely fashion and you hold until the end, you stand to make a cool 18% on the deal, not too shabby. The second richest man in the world, Warren Buffett thinks this is a great idea, partly because he stands to make a lot of money on the deal.

It is a safe bet that unless you are actively boycotting these companies, you have their products in your home. P&G’s complete product list includes Alldays and Allways feminine hygiene products, Attends incontinence products, Aussie hair-care, Bold, Dash, Era and Cheer detergents, Hugo Boss clothing, Bounce and Downy fabric softeners, Bounty paper towels, Charmin toilet paper, Cover Girl cosmetics, Crest toothpaste, Dawn and Cascade dish detergents, Eukanuba pet food, and that only takes us through the letter E. By my count, there are over 15 kinds of clothes detergents –add in fabric softeners and it’s hard to do laundry without them — about 10 varieties of dish detergent, over 25 hair care lines, a dozen kinds of makeup, fragrances, and toiletries, a half dozen kinds of toothpaste, another half dozen body soaps, and 2 different lines of toilet paper and dog food. Gillette is primarily known for their shaving products, but don’t forget they own Duracell, Oral-B, and a line of skin care products. Just think for a moment about how much of your local grocery store is devoted to their products. Now consider what would happen if they decided to take advantage of this position –ooops, I mean “leverage” their “market advantages.”

Of course, to pull this deal off, they are planning on laying off 6000 people. This deal will also have an impact — mostly negative — on advertisers, suppliers, and of course competitors. In short, the gorilla in the kitchen is rapidly approaching 800 pounds. Will you benefit from any of this? Probably not.

I mean, not unless you are a shareholder.

I leave you with economic growth is slowing while exports drop, the law of unintended consequences, and finally don’t dare think in a crisis.

Confuseopoly

There is so much wrong information about Social Security and Social Security Reform and Social Security Privatization that even people who should know better are saying things that don’t make sense.

I will say this one more time: Social Security is not a savings account, it is not a pension plan; it is an insurance policy; it has no returns.

The fact of the matter is that Social Security will take in more money than it hands out in benefits until about 2018. Furthermore, the extra money that has been taken in over the years has been put in nice, safe United States Bonds and Treasury Bills. Yes, that’s right, the Social Security Administration owns a big chunk of the National Debt, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The Feds can’t default on this obligation without either defaulting on bonds held by private holders, banks or other nations, or by special, politically suicidal act of Congress. Either way, worldwide economic chaos would ensue. Yes, these bonds earn less over the theoretical long term gain in the stock market, but frankly that is irrelevant. Benefits paid are not linked in any way to performance of the trust fund. Putting the returns on trust fund investments into the argument is a big, fat, red herring. Aren’t you glad these funds haven’t been invested in the NASDAQ Composite for the last 5 years?

If nothing at all is done, there is still no problem until sometime between 2042 and 2052. Even then, Social Security would be able to pay something between 75% and 81% of promised benefits. For “flat broke” and “busted,” that’s not too shabby.

There is no consensus that major changes need to be made. Republicans are daring to ask for details before they pledge support. The religious right is threatening to link support of this to a Gay Marriage Ban Amendment. The AARP opposes major changes, perhaps because enough of their members remember why the program began: a stock market crash plunged the economy into a depression and wiped out many people’s retirement savings.

The idea that a Private Retirement Account would be “your” money to invest as you wish is being exposed as a lie. There would be an approved list of investables, and thus an approved list of Wall Street firms that stand to make a lot of money, particularly since we are talking sums of money that will initially fall under “small accounts” rules. So much for controlling “your” money. Seriously, if the goal is to have more people invested in the stock market, then increase the maximum IRA contribution, maybe loosen 401K requirements. Don’t pretend that a maximum of $1,000 per year, invested in much of anything, is going to provide a decent retirement. Even if you do manage to get 7% a year — which frankly involves a lot of really good luck, skilled investment choices, and no fees whatsoever — we are talking about a PRA nest-egg of less than $200,000 at the end of 40 years. (Note: this figure is from Microsoft Excel’s investment calculator). How long do you expect to live past retirement age? Ten years? More?

And no-one has yet answered the underlying question: If the problem is that Social Security won’t have enough money, how will giving it less money help?

President Bush has said there will be no benefit cuts, and maybe that’s true for the next 4 years. But then again, members of his administration said they knew exactly where Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction were.

In closing, Fannie Mae Follow Up and Meat Packing Plants Aren’t Just Bad for Livestock.

Must be here somewhere….

They say the devil is in the details, and strangely enough we aren’t getting to see those details.

Florida Governor Jeb Bush is fed up with the rapid increases in state Medicaid expenses. Medicaid, you may recall, is supposed to be a safety net for the health care of Americans near and below the poverty level. The number of Floridians in this system has quadrupled over the last 20 years. The state portion of these expenses have increased 88% since 1998, while tax revenues have only risen 24%. It is not known how much of this increase is due to the Federal government shifting expenses to the states. In which case, Mr. Bush has his esteemed brother to thank.

Having much the same philosophy as his brother, Mr. Bush feels that this problem can be solved by getting private insurance companies involved. Poor people can theoretically choose from a variety of programs, with coverage and limits suiting their individual needs, and the state will pay the insurance company. Policies will pretty much work like any other health insurance policy, paying negotiated rates to doctors and hospitals.

A number of people are wary of this proposal, and for good reason. They fear this will limit the types of services available, since specialized services cost money, and money spent cuts profits. Of course the insurance companies want to make a profit if they are going to get involved in this thing. And certainly providers have a right to make a living from services they provide. From the TBO link above:

Hospitals are wary that the plan may leave them with more unreimbursed costs for indigent care, but representatives at facilities such as Tampa General Hospital said they were reluctant to comment until Bush’s plan is evaluated further.

There’s the problem. Nobody really knows how this program is supposed to work. Nobody knows how it will be paid for. Nobody knows how much it will cost. Nobody even knows if, in the end, it will be a proposal that insurance companies will want to participate in.

I have long felt that health insurance in particular drove up costs. It inserts a profit-driven middleman. It insulates people from insurance costs, and from actual healthcare costs. It drives up the overhead costs of doctors and hospitals. This proposal does nothing to mitigate these concerns. If Mr. Bush really wants to get the free markets involved in healthcare, he should consider giving the poor a stipend with which to pay for healthcare and/or healthcare insurance. They should get to keep what doesn’t get spent — maybe in one of those nifty Health Savings Accounts his brother is so keen on — but once it’s gone, it’s gone.

But since Medicaid is a safety net, that almost certainly will not work either.

In closing, why does American Airlines want to know who you might be visiting, and is it really a secret TSA regulation?

Perspective

Imagine with me.

It is a couple weeks before national elections. Everybody is worried about terrorism, and whether it could disrupt voting. There is widespread violence, and the police are powerless to stop it. Sometimes, they are targets themselves. Military and law enforcement officers are patrolling every major city, heavily armed; they have an “us versus them” philosophy, and do not hesitate to shoot first and ask questions later. News networks are pressured to limit coverage of these events. Things seem to be getting worse.

In an effort to prevent disruptions to the elections, the border has been closed to all entry except those returning from religious pilgrimages. Citizens outside the country who wish to vote are encountering problems with the registration system. Interstate travel has been closed down and car traffic prohibited except for certain government officials and military troops. Waco, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Las Vegas, and Flagstaff are under martial law. In some places, even the location of polling places is secret. Citizens in these cities must wear ID badges at all times, and travel in or out is almost impossible.

Several dozen people have been arrested preemptively. Some argue that they are militants or militant inciters who would have made trouble. Others aren’t so sure. Some point out that we used to consider people innocent until proven guilty, that we used to arrest people for crimes, not thinking about crimes. Since no names are released, it is impossible to know whether the arrests are politically motivated. Odds are good they are not being treated well.

There is much rumbling in the West Coast Blue States about how the United States Government does not represent them, and hasn’t for a long time. A number of people seem to have forgotten that The Governator only played a commando in movies, and seem to believe he can lead armed rebellion. The NAACP and several other large minority groups have called for members to boycott the elections, and there is some question whether certain more militant members might not be violently enforcing this boycott. Meanwhile, in places like Ohio, Florida, Washington, and Chicago, people openly comment that this election will be no different from any in the last 50 years; just because more than one name appears on the ballot does not mean that the candidates chosen by those in power will not win.

Speaking of the candidates, they fear for their lives. Most of them will not even admit in public that they are running. They issue no statements, have no advertising, give no news interviews. A dizzying array of alternative parties confuse the issue further. The citizens who do think there is something to be gained by voting are frustrated, because they can’t find out anything about who is running and what they stand for. If they live to vote, they are reduced to randomly selecting candidates.

The international community is rightly concerned. They question whether it is possible to hold free and fair elections in this environment. They question whether it will even matter.

What would you do?

This didn’t happen in the United States, but it is happening right now in Iraq. The whole situation is a big mess, and only getting bigger by the day.