Rick Scott and the Gordian Knot

Key West, like the rest of Florida and most of the US, is faced with a large number of mortgage foreclosures and unsold properties due to the bursting of the real estate bubble and related problems.

So the legislature of that state of fun and sun has come up with a unique solution: override any and all local zoning laws regulating use of residential properties as transient rental units.

This bill will allow investors to turn previous residential properties into mini hotels, and presumably will correct Florida's glut of unsold and foreclosed units.

Before you jump on the property rights bandwagon, consider that Key
West is an island roughly one by four miles, located over a hundred miles from the mainland, that they need adequate housing for middle and working class families, and that a great percentage of their housing stock is already designated for transient use.

UPDATE: 'House bill 883 - dealing with transient rental regulations - was amended in the House Economic Affairs Committee to specifically grandfather in all local ordinances and regulations adopted prior to June 1, 2011. After being amended, the committee approved the bill on a 7-3 vote.'
This action, if reported correctly, will take the pressure off local communities for a while, but make no mistake: there is so much short-range money to be made here, that this bill will come back in another form.

Herewith some of the commentary from locals on the impending changes:

A bill that's winding its way through the state Legislature would end Florida Keys governments' authority to regulate transient rentals, allowing property owners to rent their homes by the day, week,...

Talk with the people that will be adversely affected by this ruling. The ones now renting the small apartments in town and barely making enough to get by, but love Key West too much to leave. We're talking Conchs and non-Conchs. The ones doing the $10-$15 an hour jobs. They're worried about their "homes" being turned into transient rentals and they'll be forced to leave. Some people will say who cares about them, or if they need more money get a better job, or maybe why don't they start their own business. They're in the economic situation that best suits them at this time in their lives and don't have all those options. Folks when these people leave if you thought the service in this town was bad before, you ain't seen nothin yet.

Congratulations Floridians! Another helpful bill from the GOP and Rick "I take the fifth" Scott. Another step toward the destruction of any middle class in Monroe County. These people claim they want Government out of our lives and stand for local rule, but they are passing a law that will prevent local communities from doing what they want in terms of zoning and regulation. Surely our State Capital knows what is best for the people living in Monroe County. If Obama's administration had passed this at the Federal Level, people would be screaming for States Rights and against Mandates. I guess it is OK to stick Government into my life when it is Scott and his band of merry thieves writing the laws. The only people who think this would be good are speculators and people who own multiple homes. They bought these homes fully aware of the rules, but that will not stop them from babbling about property rights. No one wants to live next to a transient rental home. No one.

One day, two days, one week, two weeks and no transient license required? Hmmm....who is going to regulate the occupancy taxes? Or the required rental agreements. We just had a spring breaker DIE in a rental property. I wonder just how many kids were renting that unit and if any were of legal drinking age. Word on the street says there is more to that story. I can see the lawyers like vultures waiting for their next prey if this bill passes. I also smell lawsuits - how many more injured or dead tourists does Key West want? Do you want to live in the neighborhood where every day different people come and go as they want, partying all hours of the day, wrecking your property values in the process? Say hello Key West to more crime and problems than you can imagine!

The realtors will be happy about this, but the quality of life in the Keys; such as it is, will be even lower. It will be a rental free for all. No wonder the Keys is losing population. You'll be living next to a place being rented out by the latest Keys real estate genius who thinks he'll be a millionaire because he bought a house here.

We must be proactive and be sure Saunders and other
representatives KNOW that this must be stopped. It will really ruin our neighborhoods and will take away rentals from local workers. It will harm the legitimate, legal lodging facilities. And it will take away from the tax base. This is a losing proposition at every angle.

Sounds like another of Slick Ricks favors for his business supporters. take away a good regulation that helps the neighborhoods live in piece and quiet for some greedy MF to make a quick buck. If this does pass then the neighbors will have to be vigilant about calling the police when there is too much noise and making sure the laws regarding noise are enforced. One thing one might also consider if this bill passes and someone ends ups with people renting next to their home and causing loss of piece and quiet after hours is to get some speakers and place outside or in your windows and blare some very loud music starting at about 8am when those partiers are trying to sleep during the day. Rick Scott is going to destroy our state and make it so only the very wealthy have a say in the way things are.

I don't like short term transient rentals; I live next to one and the noise, arg. It is annoying to the residents who live here year round ( now it is quiet; thank god spring breakers are gone-college kids). Residential neighborhoods are quiet and peaceful, we don't want some rowdy people move in for a couple of days or a week and disrupt everything by partying all hours of the night and have no consideration for others. I would not want to end Florida Keys governments' authority to regulate transient rentals, allowing property owners to rent homes, condos town houses for the day or two or a week. JUST SAY NO! to the bill that would allow this.

Those of us who are paying our own way and purchased property with the expectation of living in a residential neighborhood have no sympathy for the ones whining about how they need to destroy our neighborhoods so that they can make a buck. And, obviously, if they intend to rent their property short term, they will not even be around to share the hardship this would create.

Just wondering if any of you people who support this have ever lived next door to a transient rental home and had your kids waken up almost every night by people partying from morning to night. My guess is of course not. Property Right always seem to end when the advocate is impacted. How about if I put a pig farm next door to your house? It might help if you take some time to think about your neighbors and those of us trying to raise families in this town. Wanting your kids to be able to sleep does not make you a "gotminer!". I hope Karma visits on those of you who are nasty and you end up with your neighbor illegally renting. Lets see how fast you change your tune.

Modern day Libertarians, Teabaggers, and just plain conservatives tend to forget that zoning was originally a middle-class intitiative, aimed at protecting neighborhood values. There is a place for hotel type units, just as there is a place for machine shops and pig farms. On a one by four mile island strict zoning makes sense. This "cure" is very likely to kill the patient.

George Friedman: What Happened to the American Declaration of War?

I have never reblogged outside material, but I thought that Friedman's article made eminent sense.

"This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR"

In my book “The Next Decade,” I spend a good deal of time considering the relation of the American Empire to the American Republic and the threat the empire poses to the republic. If there is a single point where these matters converge, it is in the constitutional requirement that Congress approve wars through a declaration of war and in the abandonment of this requirement since World War II. This is the point where the burdens and interests of the United States as a global empire collide with the principles and rights of the United States as a republic.
World War II was the last war the United States fought with a formal declaration of war. The wars fought since have had congressional approval, both in the sense that resolutions were passed and that Congress appropriated funds, but the Constitution is explicit in requiring a formal declaration. It does so for two reasons, I think. The first is to prevent the president from taking the country to war without the consent of the governed, as represented by Congress. Second, by providing for a specific path to war, it provides the president power and legitimacy he would not have without that declaration; it both restrains the president and empowers him. Not only does it make his position as commander in chief unassailable by authorizing military action, it creates shared responsibility for war. A declaration of war informs the public of the burdens they will have to bear by leaving no doubt that Congress has decided on a new order — war — with how each member of Congress voted made known to the public.
Almost all Americans have heard Franklin Roosevelt’s speech to Congress on Dec. 8, 1941: “Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan … I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, Dec. 7, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.”
It was a moment of majesty and sobriety, and with Congress’ affirmation, represented the unquestioned will of the republic. There was no going back, and there was no question that the burden would be borne. True, the Japanese had attacked the United States, making getting the declaration easier. But that’s what the founders intended: Going to war should be difficult; once at war, the commander in chief’s authority should be unquestionable.
Forgoing the Declaration
It is odd, therefore, that presidents who need that authorization badly should forgo pursuing it. Not doing so has led to seriously failed presidencies: Harry Truman in Korea, unable to seek another term; Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam, also unable to seek a new term; George W. Bush in Afghanistan and Iraq, completing his terms but enormously unpopular. There was more to this than undeclared wars, but that the legitimacy of each war was questioned and became a contentious political issue certainly is rooted in the failure to follow constitutional pathways.
In understanding how war and constitutional norms became separated, we must begin with the first major undeclared war in American history (the Civil War was not a foreign war), Korea. When North Korea invaded South Korea, Truman took recourse to the new U.N. Security Council. He wanted international sanction for the war and was able to get it because the Soviet representatives happened to be boycotting the Security Council over other issues at the time.
Truman’s view was that U.N. sanction for the war superseded the requirement for a declaration of war in two ways. First, it was not a war in the strict sense, he argued, but a “police action” under the U.N. Charter. Second, the U.N. Charter constituted a treaty, therefore implicitly binding the United States to go to war if the United Nations so ordered. Whether Congress’ authorization to join the United Nations both obligated the United States to wage war at U.N. behest, obviating the need for declarations of war because Congress had already authorized police actions, is an interesting question. Whatever the answer, Truman set a precedent that wars could be waged without congressional declarations of war and that other actions — from treaties to resolutions to budgetary authorizations — mooted declarations of war.
If this was the founding precedent, the deepest argument for the irrelevancy of the declaration of war is to be found in nuclear weapons. Starting in the 1950s, paralleling the Korean War, was the increasing risk of nuclear war. It was understood that if nuclear war occurred, either through an attack by the Soviets or a first strike by the United States, time and secrecy made a prior declaration of war by Congress impossible. In the expected scenario of a Soviet first strike, there would be only minutes for the president to authorize counterstrikes and no time for constitutional niceties. In that sense, it was argued fairly persuasively that the Constitution had become irrelevant to the military realities facing the republic.
Nuclear war was seen as the most realistic war-fighting scenario, with all other forms of war trivial in comparison. Just as nuclear weapons came to be called “strategic weapons” with other weapons of war occupying a lesser space, nuclear war became identical with war in general. If that was so, then constitutional procedures that could not be applied to nuclear war were simply no longer relevant.
Paradoxically, if nuclear warfare represented the highest level of warfare, there developed at the lowest level covert operations. Apart from the nuclear confrontation with the Soviets, there was an intense covert war, from back alleys in Europe to the Congo, Indochina to Latin America. Indeed, it was waged everywhere precisely because the threat of nuclear war was so terrible: Covert warfare became a prudent alternative. All of these operations had to be deniable. An attempt to assassinate a Soviet agent or raise a secret army to face a Soviet secret army could not be validated with a declaration of war. The Cold War was a series of interconnected but discrete operations, fought with secret forces whose very principle was deniability. How could declarations of war be expected in operations so small in size that had to be kept secret from Congress anyway?
There was then the need to support allies, particularly in sending advisers to train their armies. These advisers were not there to engage in combat but to advise those who did. In many cases, this became an artificial distinction: The advisers accompanied their students on missions, and some died. But this was not war in any conventional sense of the term. And therefore, the declaration of war didn’t apply.
By the time Vietnam came up, the transition from military assistance to advisers to advisers in combat to U.S. forces at war was so subtle that there was no moment to which you could point that said that we were now in a state of war where previously we weren’t. Rather than ask for a declaration of war, Johnson used an incident in the Tonkin Gulf to get a congressional resolution that he interpreted as being the equivalent of war. The problem here was that it was not clear that had he asked for a formal declaration of war he would have gotten one. Johnson didn’t take that chance.
What Johnson did was use Cold War precedents, from the Korean War, to nuclear warfare, to covert operations to the subtle distinctions of contemporary warfare in order to wage a substantial and extended war based on the Tonkin Gulf resolution — which Congress clearly didn’t see as a declaration of war — instead of asking for a formal declaration. And this represented the breakpoint. In Vietnam, the issue was not some legal or practical justification for not asking for a declaration. Rather, it was a political consideration.
Johnson did not know that he could get a declaration; the public might not be prepared to go to war. For this reason, rather than ask for a declaration, he used all the prior precedents to simply go to war without a declaration. In my view, that was the moment the declaration of war as a constitutional imperative collapsed. And in my view, so did the Johnson presidency. In hindsight, he needed a declaration badly, and if he could not get it, Vietnam would have been lost, and so may have been his presidency. Since Vietnam was lost anyway from lack of public consensus, his decision was a mistake. But it set the stage for everything that came after — war by resolution rather than by formal constitutional process.
After the war, Congress created the War Powers Act in recognition that wars might commence before congressional approval could be given. However, rather than returning to the constitutional method of the Declaration of War, which can be given after the commencement of war if necessary (consider World War II) Congress chose to bypass declarations of war in favor of resolutions allowing wars. Their reason was the same as the president’s: It was politically safer to authorize a war already under way than to invoke declarations of war.
All of this arose within the assertion that the president’s powers as commander in chief authorized him to engage in warfare without a congressional declaration of war, an idea that came in full force in the context of nuclear war and then was extended to the broader idea that all wars were at the discretion of the president. From my simple reading, the Constitution is fairly clear on the subject: Congress is given the power to declare war. At that moment, the president as commander in chief is free to prosecute the war as he thinks best. But constitutional law and the language of the Constitution seem to have diverged. It is a complex field of study, obviously.
An Increasing Tempo of Operations
All of this came just before the United States emerged as the world’s single global power — a global empire — that by definition would be waging war at an increased tempo, from Kuwait, to Haiti, to Kosovo, to Afghanistan, to Iraq, and so on in an ever-increasing number of operations. And now in Libya, we have reached the point that even resolutions are no longer needed.
It is said that there is no precedent for fighting al Qaeda, for example, because it is not a nation but a subnational group. Therefore, Bush could not reasonably have been expected to ask for a declaration of war. But there is precedent: Thomas Jefferson asked for and received a declaration of war against the Barbary pirates. This authorized Jefferson to wage war against a subnational group of pirates as if they were a nation.
Had Bush requested a declaration of war on al Qaeda on Sept. 12, 2001, I suspect it would have been granted overwhelmingly, and the public would have understood that the United States was now at war for as long as the president thought wise. The president would have been free to carry out operations as he saw fit. Roosevelt did not have to ask for special permission to invade Guadalcanal, send troops to India, or invade North Africa. In the course of fighting Japan, Germany and Italy, it was understood that he was free to wage war as he thought fit. In the same sense, a declaration of war on Sept. 12 would have freed him to fight al Qaeda wherever they were or to move to block them wherever the president saw fit.
Leaving aside the military wisdom of Afghanistan or Iraq, the legal and moral foundations would have been clear — so long as the president as commander in chief saw an action as needed to defeat al Qaeda, it could be taken. Similarly, as commander in chief, Roosevelt usurped constitutional rights for citizens in many ways, from censorship to internment camps for Japanese-Americans. Prisoners of war not adhering to the Geneva Conventions were shot by military tribunal — or without. In a state of war, different laws and expectations exist than during peace. Many of the arguments against Bush-era intrusions on privacy also could have been made against Roosevelt. But Roosevelt had a declaration of war and full authority as commander in chief during war. Bush did not. He worked in twilight between war and peace.
One of the dilemmas that could have been avoided was the massive confusion of whether the United States was engaged in hunting down a criminal conspiracy or waging war on a foreign enemy. If the former, then the goal is to punish the guilty. If the latter, then the goal is to destroy the enemy. Imagine that after Pearl Harbor, FDR had promised to hunt down every pilot who attacked Pearl Harbor and bring them to justice, rather than calling for a declaration of war against a hostile nation and all who bore arms on its behalf regardless of what they had done. The goal in war is to prevent the other side from acting, not to punish the actors.
The Importance of the Declaration
A declaration of war, I am arguing, is an essential aspect of war fighting particularly for the republic when engaged in frequent wars. It achieves a number of things. First, it holds both Congress and the president equally responsible for the decision, and does so unambiguously. Second, it affirms to the people that their lives have now changed and that they will be bearing burdens. Third, it gives the president the political and moral authority he needs to wage war on their behalf and forces everyone to share in the moral responsibility of war. And finally, by submitting it to a political process, many wars might be avoided. When we look at some of our wars after World War II it is not clear they had to be fought in the national interest, nor is it clear that the presidents would not have been better remembered if they had been restrained. A declaration of war both frees and restrains the president, as it was meant to do.
I began by talking about the American empire. I won’t make the argument on that here, but simply assert it. What is most important is that the republic not be overwhelmed in the course of pursuing imperial goals. The declaration of war is precisely the point at which imperial interests can overwhelm republican prerogatives.
There are enormous complexities here. Nuclear war has not been abolished. The United States has treaty obligations to the United Nations and other countries. Covert operations are essential, as is military assistance, both of which can lead to war. I am not making the argument that constant accommodation to reality does not have to be made. I am making the argument that the suspension of Section 8 of Article I as if it is possible to amend the Constitution with a wink and nod represents a mortal threat to the republic. If this can be done, what can’t be done?
My readers will know that I am far from squeamish about war. I have questions about Libya, for example, but I am open to the idea that it is a low-cost, politically appropriate measure. But I am not open to the possibility that quickly after the commencement of hostilities the president need not receive authority to wage war from Congress. And I am arguing that neither the Congress nor the president have the authority to substitute resolutions for declarations of war. Nor should either want to. Politically, this has too often led to disaster for presidents. Morally, committing the lives of citizens to waging war requires meticulous attention to the law and proprieties.
As our international power and interests surge, it would seem reasonable that our commitment to republican principles would surge. These commitments appear inconvenient. They are meant to be. War is a serious matter, and presidents and particularly Congresses should be inconvenienced on the road to war. Members of Congress should not be able to hide behind ambiguous resolutions only to turn on the president during difficult times, claiming that they did not mean what they voted for. A vote on a declaration of war ends that. It also prevents a president from acting as king by default. Above all, it prevents the public from pretending to be victims when their leaders take them to war. The possibility of war will concentrate the mind of a distracted public like nothing else. It turns voting into a life-or-death matter, a tonic for our adolescent body politic.

The Deal of the Day

Old Bill was a fine fellow, a man about town, caller of the weekly bingo games down at the DAV hall, and a sometime general factotum at the construction company, where I worked back in the day.

Not that he had to work—he was well set after twenty years working for a municipality back up in Ohio, first as a policeman, then as a fireman. “Was you on the force?” he asked enthusiastically. No, I was actually working there for a living, not as a sideline and for pin money as he was.

He came out of Ohio, he said, with full insurance coverage—medical, optical, dental for himself and his family presumably in perpetuity. His generous pension was twice what the average worker in our town was making. In today’s money it would easily be in six figures. He had no trouble keeping his large house up, his two cars on the road, a nice boat in the water, and at least one of his kids college tuition paid.

Sure, Bill had paid his dues, and had every right to cash in on the American dream. I didn’t begrudge him any of it, and to be fair, his attitude was “doesn’t everyone get this deal?”

I’d been around long enough to realize that no, not everyone gets this deal. In fact, if everyone got this kind of deal, it might be nice, but there is no way that our economy can sustain such a thing.

So now, years later, states and municipalities are beginning to realize that a giveaway to what is essentially a select few cannot be sustained—witness the goings on in Wisconsin. A number of local governments, like one with which I am familiar in Florida, saw the ultimate impossibility of paying retired employees full medical benefits for life, and quietly withdrew the “privilege” from new hires, so that new wage slaves would not be getting the same deal as their co-workers sitting a few feet away.

I imagine we will be seeing a lot more of this sort of thing, as local taxpayers realize that, essentially, they have been had.

Don't Tax You, Don't Tax Me, Tax That Man Behind That Tree

Much is the chatter this week about "net neutrality rules. "I see the issue framed not in the argument of government vs. corporate control, but in the age-old dichotomy between authoritarian and democratic ways of thinking.
There is always somebody (sometimes a frightening large number of somebodies) that thinks that everything should be controlled "from the top."

At the same time a few of the more perceptive "talking heads" are warning about unfunded mandates (like pension obligations) precipitating a crisis in state and local governments in the near future. So it is only a natural progression of things to say, "Let's just tax the Internet." A twofold benefit would result. (As our founding fathers knew, "The power to tax is the power to destroy.") Taxing the Internet would allow the government to control content, in a beneficent way to be sure. And at the same time, the tax could yield a great deal of much-needed revenue!

Far-fetched? Some time ago I made the mistake of going to work for a "taxing agency." Someone (with a degree of authority, too much perhaps) came up with the idea of taxing websites. They wanted us to comb the Internet for local businesses advertising on line, and devise a scheme to quantify their websites and assess a tax accordingly.

I maintained strongly that a website is not a tangible "thing," but something that can be created or deleted with the few strokes of a mouse, and therefore outside of the reach of the local taxing authorities. And in any event a website can be construed a free speech, thus protected, etc.

Needless to say with that argument I sealed my own fate as not being a "team player."

But if anyone thinks there aren't people (on the taxpayer's payroll) planning ways to tax (and therefore control) the Internet, that's OK. Maybe you'd be interested in this bridge we have for sale . . .

Cowed by the Nurses

Now the inpatients are easy, they’re cowed by the nurses
[In your case the angels] and they know what’s what in the set-up.

It caught my eye, this thing about angels in that poem. Sure, some of them are angels, or the earthly equivalent thereof, maybe even most of them. But I don’t know. At one time I was thoroughly convinced that at least two of them were trying to kill me.

Ten years ago, around Christmas time, despite a few premonitory symptoms I overindulged myself on a huge amount of food, including a half-dozen homemade Mexican burritos, a half-gallon of bourbon and eggnog, and at least six “Manhattans.”
Waking up in the night knowing something was wrong, I stubbornly spent two days sipping ginger ale and slowly slipping into a delirium, saying, “I ain’t going to no hospital,” making it inevitable that I ended up at the local, small, close-by hospital, where the only guy who could operate the CAT scan was off for the holidays, and even if he were still in town and could be located, he would most likely be too drunk to be of any use.

Ere long I woke up with stitches from sternum to pubis, and tubes coming out of various locations. I was still, thank God, alive, but severely indisposed. The surgeon had convinced himself of the presence of a “mass,” and had pulled just about everything out for an exploratory look. The intestinal blockage or kink relieved itself as soon as he got me “open,” but he performed a resection anyway.

The operating theater of that hospital didn’t have a reputation for being totally antiseptic, a situation they circumvented by giving the patients what might be considered to be extremely high doses of antibiotics as a precaution. They also had me on a morphine drip. The surgeon left for a week’s vacation in Miami.

For a day or two I actually felt OK. The morphine took care of any great pain I might have been having. Someone brought me a book to read: Robert Graves’s I Claudius. I started reading it, and got to the part where Caligula is secretly poisoning Germanicus, when I started to notice that my skin was starting to look yellowish. Then one nurse I called “Roundface,” sort of a Kathy Bates from Misery clone, only fatter, came in the room while I was sipping a small cup of water. “What’s this?” she said, and dashed it out of my hand. WTF? She came back a few minutes later and taped a piece of paper to the door with the letters NPO on it. They had been taking blood samples every few hours, and without telling me anything had determined that I now had pancreatitis. No more food or liquids until it cleared up. NPO stands for nihil per orem, nothing by mouth. Of course Roundface couldn’t be bothered to explain any of this. She just stared at me like I was a dog about to be kicked. In the meantime I was getting sicker and sicker. She’d occasionally burst in and find fault with something I was doing. Another nurse named Karen arrived about the same time. They both acted like my being there was my own fault, and although I couldn’t even get up by myself, they acted like I was some kind of a threat.


Because of the goings-on in the book—Romans poisoning and killing each other-- and the fact that I was partially delirious, I became convinced that Roundface and Karen were going to kill me. The local newspaper provided free copies to the hospital, and every day that I was there someone my own age appeared in the obituary columns. More than likely they died at the same hospital and on the same floor!

Around New Year’s Karen came into the room in a particularly foul mood, and started slamming things around. Her breath reeked of liquor. She announced it was time to take out my nasogastric tube, and that she would be back at the end of her shift to do just that. The damn thing had been in there for days, and it had rubbed the inside of my nose raw. I couldn’t wait to get it out. I was sure she was going to inflict the maximum amount of pain possible by the way she talked about it.

I tentatively pulled at it to see what would happen. Sure it hurt a little, but it seemed like it would be such a relief to get rid of it that I went ahead and pulled the whole thing out. I put it in an empty paper bag I had and put it under the bed. It felt so good to get rid of it, that I had a smile on my face when Karen came back in the room. “What are you smiling about?” she asked. “What’s so damn funny?” My suspicions were beginning to be confirmed. I didn’t say anything. She busied herself putting on rubber gloves, and then she noticed. “Where’s the tube?”

I smiled and pointed to the paper bag. “It’s down there.”

“What? You took it out yourself? You can’t do that!” She was furious. My suspicions were justified. She’d been robbed of a perfect opportunity to hurt me, and she was furious. “You won’t get away with this! I’m telling the doctor!” She stormed out.

Fortunately that was the last I saw of Karen. Roundface still came around, usually to ask embarrassing questions when I had someone visiting me. “Have you had a bowel movement? What color was it?”

Eventually the pancreatitis cleared up and they let me go home. I went without food for two weeks, and lost a lot of weight. Yes, you might chalk my paranoia up to the shock of the operation, the subsequent sickness, and the effects of the morphine. But I don’t know. They sure acted like they wanted to do me in.

The Damp November of the Soul

Was it my imagination? Ever since the time changed earlier this month I’d been feeling sort of blah---no energy, wanting to take a nap in the afternoon, difficulty focusing on work and projects, craving for sweets, putting on a lot of weight, no desire to go out and deal with other people---“social withdrawal.”

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off -- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

--Melville in Moby Dick

OMG, these are classic symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a form of depression that occurs in relation to the seasons, most commonly beginning in winter!

SAD was first systematically reported and named in the early 1980s by Norman E. Rosenthal, M.D., and his associates at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Rosenthal was initially motivated by his desire to discover the cause of his own experience of depression during the dark days of the northern US winter. He theorized that the lesser amount of light in winter was the cause. Rosenthal and his colleagues then documented the phenomenon of SAD in a placebo-controlled study utilizing light therapy. A paper based on this research was published in 1984. Although Rosenthal's ideas were initially greeted with skepticism, SAD has become well recognized, and his 1993 book, Winter Blues has become the standard introduction to the subject. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_affective_disorder

It’s hard to believe that the amount of ambient light reaching your retinas during daylight hours would have such an effect on your mood, but it does. Think about the number of animals that go into hibernation or “winter sleep.” Who is to say that a residual effect of this impulse doesn’t occur in modern humans?

Although they say it doesn’t affect everyone, Subsyndromal Seasonal Affective Disorder, a milder form of SAD, is experienced by an estimated 14.3% (vs. 6.1% SAD) of the U.S. population. The disorder may begin in adolescence or early adulthood. I remember my first twinges of it at that age, just before moving to Florida (from Vermont).

It’s said that the blue feeling experienced by SAD sufferers can usually be dampened or extinguished by exercise and increased outdoor activity, particularly on sunny days, resulting in increased solar exposure. Certainly Florida living with its warm weather and outdoors lifestyle cuts down of the endocrine, hormonal (or whatever) effects causing Seasonal Affective Disorder. But I’ve known people even there who were “victims” of this malady.

Now that we are living in North Carolina, it’s come back. As soon as I realized what might be happening, I started spending more time outside in the sunlight during the morning. Yes, it does seem to be working.

In some northern areas people use a light box. It seems a little ridiculous to picture someone eating their breakfast next to an array of 100 watt light bulbs, but they say it works. And for those who suffer from this syndrome, it enables them to ward off depression.

There was a businessman from Connecticut, who may or may not have been a SAD sufferer, but when he became successful, he built an indoor pool with banks of sunlamps and tropical foliage. There he drank his morning coffee, before the sun even came up. I really think he had the right idea.

Oh, It Counts, All Right . . . .

. . .But sometimes you have to wonder who is doing the counting. It's a lesson we should have learned in 2000, when the country waited two months to find out who would win the presidential election, during which time "hanging chad" worked its way into the American vocabulary.

Many people were concerned when the "fix" seemed to be computerized voting machines that would record the votes electronically. "Technology to the rescue." They pointed out that the only sure way to maintain the public trust was to have a printed ballot, which provide a concrete paper trail. Anyone who has any experience with computers know that a whole database can be extinguished by the click of a mouse or a surge of electricity at the wrong time.

As long as there's a paper trail, election officials can do a recount, even if the ballots are scanned optically by machine. Devices like the Accuvote system proved themselves in numerous recounts, with close to 100% accuracy.

Of course as long as there are politicians, there will be someone who will find a way to gain the upper hand in an under-handed way. In a not-too-distant primary election, someone sent back an absentee ballot which had the box to be filled in next to two of the candidates' names, but nothing next to the third guy's name.

The elections people quickly and quietly corrected the mistake, but left some of us thinking. "That was just an honest mistake, wasn't it?"This year in another election in a different state, yet another disturbing issue came up. The voter signs an affadavit attesting to his identity and right to vote. The affadavit contains a bar code. The voter brings it to another table in the polling place, where a clerk gets out a paper ballot which also contains a bar code. The he scans both bar codes, and hands the blank ballot to the voter.

The question is: does that mean that they can find out how you vote? The official answer is, "No, of course not. They wouldn't do that anyway."

But the computer types we have talked to say, "It'd be a piece of cake." Not every jurisdiction has a political machine that might, say, tinker with the property assessments depending on how someone voted. But it's enough of a threat just thinking that someone could find out, if they wanted to, to have a chilling effect not only on free speech, but on your right to choose your candidates.

It's something to think about. As a retired lawman who was in a position to know once told me, "Free elections are our last bastion of freedom."