Earthquakes, Locusts, and Presidential Elections
Posted by EQF June 21, 2012

It has been a while since I have posted any notes here or updated my forecasting Web pages as I have been, still am, and will probably continue to be quite busy with other important matters up until early in October of 2012.

17 Year Locusts

As many people living in the U.S. are aware, every 17 years our friendly locusts come out of the ground, make a lot of noise, frighten the wits out of babies when they land on them, damage or destroy young trees, and then disappear back into the ground where I believe they live on tree root sap for the next 17 years.

That long wait between appearances is a popular survival strategy. I understand that birds are perhaps a locust’s only major natural enemy. After 17 years, most of the birds that developed a taste for them are probably dead. And the locusts then abruptly appear in such large numbers that regardless of how rapidly the birds multiply, they can never make dinner out of more than a fraction of the locust population.

4 Year Presidential Candidates

Similarly, here in the U.S., once every 4 years our presidential candidates emerge from their political caves in the ground or wherever they are, make a lot of noise, and then disappear for another 4 years.

Who knows what they dine on between appearances? Most likely it is expensive.

If you want to see the locusts in action then you have to do that when they are out there flying around. And if you want the presidential candidates to listen to anything you have to say then the best or perhaps only time to do that is after the list of candidates has shrunk to one or two Democrats and one or two Republicans. This year that time period is roughly April to October when they are looking for money and votes. The entire month of October then reverts back to chaos. Probably nothing gets done.

As someone who regularly sends humanitarian projects types of recommendations to people running for office, in the past I have been able to use this particular once every 4 years event to get some absolutely astonishing things accomplished.

This year I have been planning to be especially well organized for this event since this type of effort has been so productive in the past. I have between one and two dozen projects in various states of development (including several related to earthquakes) that I am planning to send information on to both of the candidates’ campaign headquarters. And, to increase the effectiveness of the effort, this time I am also planning to send much of that information to national news services. And news service personnel will be asked to publicly ask the presidential candidates about their positions regarding those matters rather than have to be satisfied with stories about “Joe the plumber.”

The proposal for the first of those projects for that process needs probably a few more days of work. Then it is off to the campaign offices, various government offices, private groups, news services, and perhaps even some Web sites.

This particular project has largely to do with interactions between the general public here in the U.S. and federal, state, and local government agencies.

The proposal is for the U.S. to develop a single downloadable computer program that would help people deal with the IRS, Medicare, Medicaid (state Medicare), Social Security, a person’s state IRS, driver’s and car license agencies, and even city or town agencies that require that a person have a sticker on the front window of his or her car.

This could be an extremely popular issue for seniors most of whom have virtually no understanding or any hope of understanding how Medicare works. And it will be interesting to see if our presidential candidates are willing to promise us anything along those computer program development lines. Only the U.S. government itself could develop and maintain a computer program like that as it would be so incredibly complex. And it would need constant updates.

Our presidential candidates’ interest or lack of interest and discussion of the matter in public could conceivably gain them or cost them a lot of senior votes. So we shall see how they respond to this proposal. I did already discuss the general outline for it with one important U.S. Policy Maker late last year and then again about a month ago. And he asked me to send him more details which is what I am in the process of doing.

These are personal opinions.