Miracle of the market place?

Senate Democrats have provided a timely reminder that private health insurance also has drawbacks.

Which is not to say that public insurance is problem free.

Faulty reporting

The New York Times finds fault with a new geothermal energy technique. The technique takes advantage of an abundant energy source--heat from the Earth's core. The minor downside is that it also causes earthquakes. Oops.

A new project is beginning 40 miles east of the San Andreas fault, in an area that already experiences swarms of earthquakes associated with previous projects.

Maybe it's time to go back to the drawing board on this one.

Going back to the 2006-7 budget would be draconian

North Carolina, which was already in tough fiscal shape, has revised its revenue projection for the upcoming (2010-11) fiscal year downward. The state legislature is meeting to close the budget gap. The Governor and state Democrats are looking to raise taxes and other revenues by approximately $1 billion. Republicans counter that revenue increases are not needed because the projected amounts would only lower the budget to 2006-7 levels.

Without raising taxes the state could spend $19.1 billion next year, the same as in 2006-07... Claims of the necessity for "Draconian" cuts and massive tax increases were wildly exaggerated. Thoughtful prioritization of spending could have balanced the budget without the need for massive tax and fee increases.

Because the Republicans have raised the issue, it's useful to consider why cuts back to the 2006-7 budget would be "draconian."

By the time that the 2010-11 budget year begins, the population of North Carolina will have increased by about 6 percent beyond its 2006-7 level. Though we can't say for sure, it's also likely that prices will have increased by at least that amount (they're already 6 percent higher than they were in 2006). So, just to keep up with population growth and price inflation, the budget would need to increase by at least 12 percent.

Unfortunately, those are not the only drivers in the budget. Higher education spending is a significant share of the budget, and the college-age population is currently growing faster than the population as a whole. Another large chunk of the state budget goes to Medicaid. Because of the recession, the number of households that qualify for Medicaid is increasing. Also, medical costs are rising faster than other costs. Although the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provides states with additional Medicaid funding, North Carolina's own costs are still going to increase.

Thus, once we adjust for changes from inflation, demographic change, and economic circumstances, the 2006-7 nominal budget falls roughly 1/6 short of state needs, assuming that the Republicans' choice of 2006-7 represents state needs.

As it is, the proposed $1 billion in additional revenues would only close about a third of this gap. Thus, even with a tax increase, spending will still need to be cut about 10 percent below what it would have been to keep pace with 2006-7 levels.

A 1/6 budget cut would be draconian, yet that's all the Republicans can offer.

Expressions of regret leading to healing

Contrary to critics' predictions, the Greensboro City Council's expression of regret for the killings at the 1979 "Death to the Klan" march does appear to be leading to increased racial healing.

Yesterday, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution apologizing for slavery.

And last night Jon Stewart healed some of the wounds between blacks and Jews.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Blacks and Jews
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Jason Jones in Iran

Can rapprochement between dogs and cats, old men and kids on their lawns, and road runners and cayotes be far behind?

Insurance fraud in North Korea

The Washington Post describes how the North Korean kleptocracy has raked in millions of dollars through insurance fraud.

...the impoverished and isolated North Korean government has collected hundreds of millions of dollars from some of the world's largest insurance companies on large and suspicious claims for transportation accidents, factory fires, flood damage and other alleged disasters.

...For years, the U.S. government and law enforcement agencies around the world have documented what they describe as state-sponsored criminality in North Korea. They have linked the North to illegal manufacturing and trafficking of drugs ranging from heroin to Viagra, as well as to expert counterfeiting of $100 bills and the production of high-quality counterfeit cigarettes.

Much less has been disclosed about North Korea's international insurance claims, in part because they have been cloaked in legal settlements by firms with no interest in highlighting their losses.

The scheme involved reinsurers who backed up policies written by the state-owned Korean National Insurance Corporation (KNIC). Initial claims would be adjudicated in North Korean kangaroo courts and then passed on to the reinsurers. The KNIC appears to have profited through outright fraud and by skimming money that should have gone to victims. Those profits were then funneled to the North Korean regime.

The obvious question is how did the North Koreans lure the reinsurers in. A defector from KNIC explains.

While working for North Korea's insurance monopoly, Kim Kwang Jin said, he and other managers had a tightly focused mission: to find reinsurance companies and brokers in different parts of the world who would accept high premiums to reinsure KNIC's policies.

...According to Kim, KNIC would target a different potential disaster and a different reinsurance company each year. "We pass it around," he said. "One year, it might be Lloyd's; the next year, it might be Swiss Re; and the next, Munich Re."

A reinsurance expert added

"They pay good premiums, and they are very sophisticated, very clever," he said. "They would divvy business up into very small bites and use different brokers in different places. The division of losses was such that it would never be apparent to a prospective reinsurer just how bad the business was."

Thus, each reinsurer faced a high potential reward. And although each also faced an increased risk, the individual policies were small and diffuse enough to hide the risk.

Because of the publicity of some recent cases, reinsurers appear to be wising up. Nevertheless, stockholders and investors in reinsurance companies should insist that their companies cease all business with KNIC.

"Breaking the Bank"

Frontline aired a great report of the deal-making, arm-twisting, and self-dealing that occurred among the Treasury, Fed, and major banks during last fall's crisis, with a focus on the Bank of America/Merrill Lynch shotgun marriage.

The report should be required viewing for Money & Banking classes going forward.

Greensboro turning a page

Last night, the Greensboro City Council took the tough but necessary step of expressing regret for the killings at the 1979 Death to the Klan march.

From the News & Record

Thirty years after a Greensboro shooting — and four years after the issue first came before the City Council — the council said Tuesday night that it regretted the 1979 killings at Morningside Homes and pledged to help the city heal.

The council voted 5 to 4 to approve a statement of regret about the incident — one of the recommendations the city Humans Relations Commission made after studying the shootings and the 2006 Truth and Reconciliation Commission report about it.

The statement addresses a central concern of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. By acknowledging problems in the past, the city is in a better position to move forward.

The statement does not go as far as the Commission has recommended, and it would be foolish to think that this will mend all of the racial division in the city. However, the statement does go farther than many thought possible and is a positive step for the community.

What would you do for a Klondike bar?

I am frequently contacted by companies promising some compensation if I will write something nice about their site or product. Yesterday's post should give you a fair indication about my feelings toward these kinds of arrangements.

Last night, as if on cue, another of these e-mails along these lines arrived, but with a twist. The e-mail described a Spread the Word for Charity campaign, in which hotelscombined, a hotel search and comparison site, would contribute $20 to World Vision for mentioning its site.

World Vision is a charity that I support and advertise, so, the offer of a $20 donation hit a soft spot. Mentioning the site did mean a somewhat embarrassing retreat from yesterday's post; however, it didn't involve eating any more SNAP meals.

I went to the hotelscombined and Expedia sites to check hotels for an upcoming trip to a small southwestern U.S. town. For the town itself, hotelscombined returned the same hotels and indicated the same availability as Expedia. Hotelscombined also offered a better price on one of the hotels. Expedia listed additional hotels outside the town along with the distances to the town center.

I hope that readers appreciate the hypocrisy irony, and I especially hope that World Vision enjoys the donation.

Study results as told to

Bloomberg reports how Eli Lilly & Co. and other drug companies "ghostwrote" manuscripts for doctors to submit to scientific journals.

Eli Lilly & Co. officials wrote medical journal studies about the antipsychotic Zyprexa and then asked doctors to put their names on the articles, a practice called “ghostwriting,” according to unsealed company files.

Lilly also engaged in other unethical practices.

Lilly employees also compiled a guide to hiring scientists to write favorable articles, complained to journal editors when publication was delayed and submitted rejected articles to other outlets, according to documents filed in drug overpricing suits against the Indianapolis-based company, the largest manufacturer of psychiatric medicines.

Lilly was not alone.

In May 2008, Whitehouse Station, New Jersey-based Merck agreed to pay $58 million to 29 states and stop ghostwriting articles to resolve claims that its advertisements for the withdrawn painkiller Vioxx hid the drug’s health risks.

...Pfizer paid $60 million to 33 states in October to settle claims it improperly marketed its Bextra and Celebrex pain relievers. New York-based Pfizer agreed to halt off-label marketing of the medicines and stop ghostwriting about them. It withdrew Bextra in April 2005. Celebrex is still on the market.

...In 1996, Wyeth hired Excerpta Medica Inc., a New Jersey- based medical communications firm, to write 10 articles promoting drugs aimed at treating obesity...

As despicable as the drug companies' behavior was, it pales in comparison to the medical shills who abetted this practice.

Universities regularly flunk and expel students who engage in academically dishonest practices, such as turning in other people's papers from paper mills and fraternity files. As the Bloomberg article indicates, universities need to look more closely at their own faculty members regarding the same practices.

Middle East election goes our way

The New York Times speculates that the favorable election outcome in Lebanon may be the first tangible benefit from President Obama's outreach to Muslims.

There were many domestic reasons voters handed an American-backed coalition a victory in Lebanese parliamentary elections on Sunday — but political analysts also attribute it in part to President Obama’s campaign of outreach to the Arab and Muslim world.

...It is hard to draw firm conclusions from one election. But for the first time in a long time, being aligned with the United States did not lead to defeat in the Middle East. And since Lebanon has always been a critical testing ground, that could mark a possibly significant shift in regional dynamics with another major election, in Iran, on Friday.

With Mr. Obama’s speech on relations with Muslims still fresh in Lebanese minds, analysts point to steps the administration has taken since assuming office.

Before anyone gets too excited, it's useful to recall that there have been previous "harbingers" of changing Middle East dynamics, such as Libya's dismantling of its nuclear program following the start of the Iraq war.

A bigger and vastly more important test of President Obama's approach will be the Iranian elections later this week. There are lots of internal reasons why the Iranian hard-liners should lose the election. President Obama's conciliatory, yet challenging speech last week may also deprive the hard-liners of an external rallying point.

Protecting tax payers

The IRS is looking at ways to protect tax filers from unscrupulous preparers.

IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman announced today that by the end of 2009, he will propose a comprehensive set of recommendations to help the Internal Revenue Service better leverage the tax return preparer community with the twin goals of increasing taxpayer compliance and ensuring uniform and high ethical standards of conduct for tax preparers.

Some of the potential recommendations could focus on a new model for the regulation of tax return preparers; service and outreach for return preparers; education and training of return preparers; and enforcement related to return preparer misconduct. The Commissioner will submit recommendations to the Treasury Secretary and the President by the end of the year.

The IRS and the government more generally are right to be concerned about tax payers. However, this is a classic example of one problem begetting further problems.

Tax preparers owe their existance to the complexity of the tax code. The size of this industry (in January 2009 the National Association of Tax Professionals claimed more than 19,000 members) is an immediate indicator of the burdens that tax payers face.

Tax simplification, which hasn't occurred in a meaningful way since 1986, would reduce abuses by reducing the need for preparers.

Sadly, simplification doesn't seem to be in the set of recommendations being considered, but it should be.

Preview of Republican-style health care reform

The local News & Record has a poignant story about the cold reality of private, go-it-alone health insurance--the kind of "choice" that Republican lawmakers like Sen. Burr are advocating.

In his mid-50s, George Kretchun was finally living the dream: After years of working for someone else, the Reidsville man opened his own catering business.

But when he went looking for health insurance, the dream dimmed.

At his age and with a pre-existing condition, he faced paying more than $25,000 a year in premiums.

Mr. Kretchun's problem was that he developed a liver condition several years ago. As part of a larger risk pool, such as a large employer, Mr. Kretchun's bad health draw would have been balanced by better health draws, making affordable insurance possible. However, as a self-employed person, Mr. Kretchun constituted a pool of exactly one. Insurance companies seeing his pre-existing condition would only offer him unaffordable policies. Mr. Kretchun's experience illustrates a well-known market failure that can arise in the presence of adverse selection.

The Republican plan, which calls for ending end tax subsidies to companies for providing health care and replacing them with individual subsidies, would lead to the further dismantling of employer-provided care. The plan hails itself as providing "choice," but choice in the insurance market is a two-way street--insurers also get to choose how much they will charge each customer based on that customer's health.

Mr. Kretchun was eventually helped through one of those supposedly awful government-established and subsidized programs, Inclusive Health, North Carolina's high-risk health insurance pool. The pool is administered by a non-profit that was established by North Carolina with strict rules regarding how much it can charge and who can be admitted. The plan is targeted toward people who are unhealthy and who lack access to employer-based plans. Because insurance for these folks would be unaffordable to them, the plan is subsidized by the state. Inclusive Health is still much more expensive than the insurance available to currently health people, but it's premiums are nevertheless within reach of most people.

The Republican plan rules out "new government spending." However, individually-affordable high-risk health insurance requires some type of subsidy. The Republicans also criticize "public plans," like Inclusive Health thusly

Patients should be able to choose from a variety of private insurance plans. The federal government would run a health care system—or a public plan option—with the compassion of the IRS, the efficiency of the post office, and the incompetence of Katrina.

Mr. Kretchun had his choice of market-based private insurance plans--the private insurance market failed him. As he put it "I don’t mind if they tell me you’ve got to pay double. But don’t tell me I’m not allowed to get any insurance." His experience shows that government intervention can be compassionate, socially efficient, and competent, "a God-send" in his words.

Prairie dogging in DC

I'm in Washington for the week attending a yearly research conference sponsored by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). The conference covers programs, mostly anti-poverty and family assistance programs, funded by the ACF. There are also presentations on other promising programs, demonstrations, and social experiments.

A striking feature of the conference is the vast array of programs and services (and the accompanying alphabet soup of program acronyms). In one respect this is fascinating. I get to "prairie dog" for a week, poking my head out of the tunnel of my own research on food assistance and welfare programs and getting to hear about other initiatives.

In another respect, you have to wonder how potential clients navigate all of these various programs. The programs address many related issues but typically are run by separate agencies within states and communities. Depending on the state, one program could be in a health department, another in a workforce or employment security agency, others in social service departments, and yet others in agencies for children.

Having many programs means that services can be tailored toward specific issues, problems, and populations. It also means that program staff can become highly knowledgeable about these issues. It is certainly not a one-size-fits-all approach.

The problem, of course, is the services become fragmented and can be hard to find. Despite being a reasonably well-informed researcher, I have trouble keeping track of all of the programs. I can only imagine what a new client would face in trying to determine what services might be helpful or available. Many states and localities do operate "one-stop" centers to help with some groups of services; still the choices are bewildering.

Beyond this, there are inefficiencies associated with potential duplication of services. There are also inefficiencies associated with the administrative overhead for each of the programs.

In many of the presentations at the conference, we've heard about the dire fiscal situation. States are facing very tough budget conditions and paring (chopping?, gutting?) expenditures. The federal government is spending huge sums and running enormous deficits. However, relatively little of this money is being directed toward social services, and the federal government will have to close its spending gap going forward, putting pressure on social programs.

One thing that has not been discussed is the possible consolidation and simplification of programs. Given the budget exigencies and the existence of so many programs, it may be time to put consolidation on the agenda.

A bomb too far

North Korea's apparently successful detonation of a nuclear device presents a significant challenge to the still-new Obama administration. As with previous administrations, President Obama has few good options. Still, the North Korean kleptocracy may soon discover that it has finally over-played its hand.

Kim Jung Il and his cronies have shown that they are incapable of running a modern economy. Previous brinkmanship has brought some assistance, but the North Korean regime has not used that assistance to address any of the underlying vulnerabilities in the economy. If anything, the regime may be more vulnerable now to sanctions than it has been before.

President Obama will have one additional partner for a get-tough approach that President Bush did not have--South Korea. During the Bush administration, the South Korean government pushed for conciliation over confrontation. Now, however, the South Korean government is taking a tougher stand. Already, and at some risk to itself, South Korea has announced that it is joining the Proliferation Security Initiative and will support efforts to interdict nuclear materials coming out of North Korea.

From the Washington Post,

South Korea said Tuesday that it would join a U.S.-led effort to intercept ships from countries like North Korea that are suspected of exporting missiles and weapons of mass destruction -- a step it had been reluctant to take in the past for fear of provoking its isolated neighbor into additional retaliation. North Korea has repeatedly said it would regard the South's participation in the security effort as a "declaration of war."

For the time being, North Korea's main patron--China--as well as Russia have joined in the condemnation and seem to be discussing not whether but how to punish the regime.

Besides interdicting ships, the U.S. also has other levers including renewing financial sanctions and reducing food and energy assistance.

The important thing at this point, which the Obama administration seems to grasp, is a measured, calm, and unified response. The nuclear genie was already out of the bottle on the Korean peninsula. The current test does not change that unfortunate reality.

While Kim Jung Il's threats have to be taken seriously, he has resorted to brinksmanship too many times and reneged on too many agreements to be viewed as a credible partner. He will be hard-pressed to get the same kinds of rewards from this stunt that he has gotten from previous behavior. Cooperation with other countries in Asia will be key to denying Kim Jung Il those rewards.

President Obama may not be able to remove nuclear weapons from North Korea; however, he can make sure that the North Koreans do not benefit from their threatening behavior.

Empty threats by credit card companies

Michelle Singletary is usually spot on in her analyses of consumer finance issues. But today's "Color of Money" column on possible responses by credit card companies to new consumer protection measures misses the mark.

Singletary writes

Credit card users who crow that they're seldom charged interest on purchases because they pay their bills on time may not be able to crow much longer. President Obama is about to sign into law new restrictions on the credit card industry that lenders say may lead to the return of widespread annual fees.

I wouldn't be too sure.

Singletary seems to accept the basic industry arguments that one group of card-holders subsidizes another and that the new restrictions will force companies to raise fees on cardholders who use credit responsibly. She quotes industry spokesperson Edward Yingling

"Those who have managed their credit well and currently have very good credit card deals will find that card companies are limited in their ability to distinguish between them and those that have credit problems," Edward L. Yingling, president and chief executive of the American Bankers Association, said in a brief written statement after the legislation passed. "The result will be some subsidy from those that manage their credit well to those that have problems, affecting negatively the terms the former will receive."

Yingling added that the "new rules will limit the ability of card companies to price according to risk."

Singletary goes on to dismiss, correctly, the argument that companies won't be able to identify or discriminate among different levels of risk, but she allows the cross-subsidization argument to stand.

Responsible card users are profitable for card companies. Those users might not often rack up large interest charges and penalties, but the companies are still able to make money on the fees they charge retailers for each purchase, about 2 percent of the value of each transaction.

Also, even responsible customers sometimes miss payments or run into problems that keep them from paying off their full monthly balances. By extending credit, card companies are effectively buying an option on the probability of a payment stumble.

Finally, if the current arrangements with responsible card holders were really so costly to the card companies (at least costly enough to require subsidization), why would they extend credit to such customers at all? The profit-maximizing behavior would seem to be to extend credit only to people who are likely to run balances and to cut other people off. Companies can and do discriminate. From their behavior, we know they aren't charities.

The bottom line is that the extra revenue that companies have received from abusing their high-risk customers have gone into company profits, not into subsidies for other types of customers. The new rules are likely to reduce some of those profits (that is, to the extent that companies don't find new "gotcha" fees to replace the old ones). However, the rules are not likely to raise rates or fees for responsible card holders. To think that they would is to think that the companies were already cutting their responsible customers a break.

Proms in black and white -- part 1

One gets the sense that Ebony & Ivory won't be played at the segregated proms in Montgomery County, Georgia. (Okay, given the song's high cheese factor, Ebony & Ivory probably won't be played much of anywhere else--nobody's that lactose tolerant).

From the New York Times,

Racially segregated proms have been held in Montgomery County — where about two-thirds of the population is white — almost every year since its schools were integrated in 1971.

...The senior proms held by Montgomery County High School students — referred to by many students as “the black-folks prom” and “the white-folks prom” — are organized outside school through student committees with the help of parents. All students are welcome at the black prom, though generally few if any white students show up. The white prom, students say, remains governed by a largely unspoken set of rules about who may come.

The quotes from one white student effortlessly reprise some of the "greatest hits" in racial excuse-making.

Remember this classic (beloved by Confederate flag-fliers everywhere):

Trying to explain the continued existence of segregated proms, Edge falls back on the same reasoning offered by a number of white students and their parents. “It’s how it’s always been,” he says. “It’s just a tradition.”

Or how about this timeless favorite?

I have as many black friends as I do white friends. We do everything else together.

And of course the grand-daddy of rationalizations

I don’t think anybody at our school is racist.

Of course not.

The lone bright spot in this story is that it is rare enough to be news.

Liberty University and the scarlet "D"

It seems that the college that was founded by the leader of the "moral majority" can't abide a Democratic minority. The Washington Post reports that Liberty University is disestablishing a student Democratic Party organization.

Liberty University will no longer recognize its campus Democratic Party club because its parent organization stands against the conservative Christian school's moral principles.

The club, which has about 30 members, will no longer be able to use Liberty's name, hold on-campus meetings or be eligible for student activities money.

...students who violate the rule face reprimands under the school's conduct code, which could result in expulsion.

The school will continue to fund a College Republicans chapter, as its advocacy of preemptive wars, torture, capital punishment, unrestricted gun ownership, environmental despoliation, and income redistribution toward the wealthy is in keeping with the school's principles of "develop(ing) Christ-centered men and women."

Will David Horowitz's Freedom Center or other conservatives who have railed against one-sided policies on college campuses take up the cause of freedom of expression at Liberty U? Don't hold your breath.

A new federalism?

In a move that genuinely supports states rights, President Obama is directing federal agencies to review and, where possible, eliminate rules that "preempt" state actions.

President Obama continued to reverse his predecessor's policies this week by undoing a controversial Bush administration rule known as "preemption" that used federal regulations to override state laws on the environment, health, public safety and other issues.

...The president ordered department heads to review all regulations issued in the past 10 years that are designed to preempt state law and determine whether they are justified under the new policy. If they cannot be justified, Obama said, his administration should consider amending the regulations.

From the President's memorandum

Throughout our history, State and local governments have frequently protected health, safety, and the environment more aggressively than has the national Government.

An understanding of the important role of State governments in our Federal system is reflected in longstanding practices by executive departments and agencies, which have shown respect for the traditional prerogatives of the States. In recent years, however, notwithstanding Executive Order 13132 of August 4, 1999 (Federalism), executive departments and agencies have sometimes announced that their regulations preempt State law, including State common law, without explicit preemption by the Congress or an otherwise sufficient basis under applicable legal principles.

The purpose of this memorandum is to state the general policy of my Administration that preemption of State law by executive departments and agencies should be undertaken only with full consideration of the legitimate prerogatives of the States and with a sufficient legal basis for preemption.

Republicans "talk the talk" on the states' rights issue. Their current contrived fetish is the Tenth Amendment movement, whereby states reclaim sovereignty from federal regulations not expressly described in the Constitution.

What though did Republicans do while they held the reins of federal power? They used that power to run roughshod over the states, usually to the benefit of big business but sometimes as a sop to the religious right and other right-wing interests. Strengthen emissions standards? Protect consumers from the worst abuses of lenders and credit card companies? Decriminalize marijuana? Republicans couldn't leave those decisions to the irresponsible states.

My guess is that you won't see the Republican apparatchiks behind the Tenth Amendment movement lauding this latest change in policy. They want their states to be able to enact every kind of kooky, right-wing strangeness; they just don't trust all those other states that might do something different.

Incidence of sick leave

A couple of updates on Saturday's post on pending sick leave legislation, the Healthy Families Act...

In the comments, Pino called shenanigans on the numbers I gave for the incidence of paid sick leave benefits. I cited the most recent BLS employee benefits report that gave figures for personal leave benefits in March 2008 but not sick leave benefits specifically. I had assumed that the leave categories listed in the report were exhaustive and that sick leave was included in personal leave. I should have remembered the old saying about the work assume and done some more research.

I have not been able to find sick leave information for 2008; however, an earlier BLS report gives figures for workers in private industry in 2007. That report (Table 19, p. 28) indicates that 57 percent of workers in private industry have paid sick days as a benefit, a much higher incidence than paid personal days though still far from universal (about four out of every nine workers don't have the benefit).

Just over two-thirds of full-time workers get paid sick leave, while fewer than a quarter of part-time workers do. The incidence among managers and professionals is 80 percent, while the incidence among service workers is 39 percent.

Another update is that the Healthy Families Act has now been introduced as H.R. 2460.

Profiles in courage, circa 2009

In a stirring display of utter fecklessness, Senate Democrats yesterday announced that they are, at least for now, refusing to fund the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

Senate Democrats said they still backed Mr. Obama’s decision to close the prison. But lawmakers have not exactly been eager to accept detainees in their home states. When the tiny town of Hardin, Mont., offered to put the terrorism suspects in its empty jail, Montana’s senators, both Democrats, and its representative, a Republican, quickly voiced opposition.

Administration officials have indicated that if the Guantánamo camp closes as scheduled more than 100 prisoners may need to be moved to the United States, including 50 to 100 who have been described as too dangerous to release.

Of the 240 detainees, 30 have been cleared for release. Some are likely to be transferred to foreign countries, though other governments have been reluctant to take them. Britain and France have each accepted one former detainee. And while as many as 80 of the detainees will be prosecuted, it remains unclear what will happen to those who are convicted and sentenced to prison.

Many of these same Democrats have spent the last seven years criticizing the Bush administration's operation of the detention facility. Now when the time has come to make the hard choice about providing a secure facility in the U.S., they tuck their tails and run.

A new, empty, jail in an economically distressed part of Montana has offered to take the prisoners. This or another facility could be made suitable in short order--that is, if Democrats restore the funds.