Ever hear of bracket creep? With inflation on the rise, you soon will. Especially if Obama’s tax plans as they’re currently outlined become enacted.

Bracket creep is the process where people’s taxes are raised because their salaries rise due to inflation and they are thus pushed into a higher tax bracket. So say your salary doubles due to inflation. You’re not any richer, and you’re certainly not rich, but suddenly you’re in a tax bracket for rich people because your nominal salary doubled in terms of dollars, even though it stayed the same in terms of wealth. That’s bracket creep.

One of the great triumphs of the Reagan legacy was that they got rid of bracket creep by indexing the tax brackets for inflation. Now obviously this gives the government every incentive to underestimate the effects of inflation, but it’s better than nothing. Now, apparently, there was no such provision written into the Bush tax cuts when they expire, meaning that the brackets revert back to the way they were in 2000 or so, before Bush took office, before all this inflation took place. Scared yet? Andrew Biggs comments:

Tax revenues would skyrocket if the tax cuts expire, due to “bracket creep.” Average incomes are higher today than in the 1990s, but income-tax brackets aren’t adjusted for the growth of earnings. As a result, Americans will shift into higher tax brackets and pay a greater share of their incomes in taxes.

Going back to the tax rates of the 1990s doesn’t mean that households will pay 1990s taxes. Because the tax brackets haven’t risen along with incomes, average taxes would be significantly higher, and grow each year.

If the tax cuts expire, income-tax revenues by 2018 will rise to 10.8% of the total economy from 8.7% today – an increase of 24%. Compared to the average over the last 50 years, allowing the rates to rise would increase tax revenues by 32%.

Believe it or not, income taxes will rise even if the tax cuts remain in place, because the revenue-increasing effects of bracket creep more than offset the lower rates. With the lower rates, total income-tax revenues will increase to 9.3% of GDP by 2018. This level is 7% higher than today, and 13% above the 1957-2007 average.

Obama had best address this issue if he wants to let the Bush tax cuts expire, because otherwise he is suggesting an enormous tax increase on the American people. Furthermore, he should also suggest indexing capital gains taxes for inflation in exchange for raising the rate as he wants to. That would at least be a fair trade-off.

Read Andrew Biggs.

A friend of mine just came back from China, and while his pics were amazing, all I cared about was the food.

Well the WSJ has a great expose on food in Beijing for the upcoming Olympic games. It has great photo spreads of some of the restaurants too. Seeing my friend’s pics and reading this article in succession really made me want to go to China.

My friend may give me some pics to post later. In the meantime, check out the WSJ Beijing food expose.

This time it’s Dick Morris stating the obvious:

Bill and Hillary Clinton have always believed that they’re very different than the rest of us. Over their more than 30 years in politics together, they’ve learned one important and consistent lesson: that rules don’t matter. Rules don’t apply to them. Rules are for other people. Rules can be bent, changed, manipulated.

And that philosophy has worked very well for them.

So it’s particularly ironic that they are now turning to the Democratic Party Rules Committee to try and steal the presidential nomination that Hillary has already definitively lost to Barack Obama in the popular vote, the delegate count, and the total number of states.

Now she’ll try to get the Democratic bosses to rig it for her. If the rules don’t work, change them.

Yeah. The thing is, the rules committee is filled with her cronies, so it’s not quite as cuckoo bananas as it sounds. But it’s still nuts.

Read Dick Morris.

They’re all discussed in the latest Ask Amber column.

Just because…

Don’t look:

SAN FRANCISCO - Computer attacks typically don’t inflict physical pain on their victims.

But in a rare example of an attack apparently motivated by malice rather than money, hackers recently bombarded the Epilepsy Foundation’s Web site with hundreds of pictures and links to pages with rapidly flashing images.

More here, but it’s just a news site. No flashing images. For that I’ll refer you to my banner ads.

Observe:

Hillary Clinton, 60, Illinois native and Arkansas lawyer, became, retroactively, a lifelong Yankee fan at age 52 when, shopping for a U.S. Senate seat, she adopted New York state as home sweet home. She may think, or at least would argue, that when she was 12 her Yankees really won the 1960 World Series, by standards of “fairness,” because they trounced the Pirates in runs scored, 55-27, over seven games, so there.

Unfortunately, baseball’s rules — pesky nuisances, rules — say it matters how runs are distributed during a World Series. The Pirates won four games, which is the point of the exercise, by a total margin of seven runs, while the Yankees were winning three by a total of 35 runs. You can look it up.

On the money.

Read George Will.

So Hillary has leaked to Drudge via Stephanopoulos that she’d be willing to accept the VP slot if offered. Given Hillary’s utter duplicitousness, one may rightly ask “What the heck is she up to?”

Well, I’ll tell you.

Hillary’s new game is to join Obama’s team, get elected as Vice President and then, kill Obama. She would be sworn in as President immediately, before all the facts could be sorted out, at which point she would immediately pardon herself for the murder of Barack Obama.

Mark my words, friend.

So I’m listening to the BBC News on the way into work today, and they were describing last night’s election results, and the woman says, “Barack Obama came out ahead in last night’s elections in North Carolina and India…”

Hilarious. I also love how they roll their R’s when saying “Barrack”.

I’ve been way too busy to blog. And I have so much to say too, which really sucks. In the meantime, you should be subscribing to my Google Reader feed, which you can find in my sidebar. And if you aren’t subscribed, here’s what I’ve been reading for the last week:

• Syncman synchronizes your Apple address book with Gmail. Frankly, I’m floored that Google hadn’t built and released this product aeons ago…
• Boston angels suck wind compared to the Valley
• Conservatism means being unduly obsessed with homosexuality. What an embarrassment.
• Mexican meatballs. Remind me to make those for Cinquo de Mayo.
• Turkey attempts to shut down its pork butchers. So much for a tolerant Islamic society.
• Online brothel. I suppose everything exists now.
• Lesbians suing lesbians. Can’t we just all get along?
• Cupping and tweaking.
• Steamed citrus calamari. I saw Lidia make this on PBS, and now I have the recipe. I will make this once this summer.
• Marilyn Manson makes absinthe.
• Happy spamiversary.
• Best Rev. Wright caricature.
• Kollege kidz R Dum.
• Henry Blodget is back. The end is near.
• Craigie St Bistrot is expanding. We ate there recently, and it’s awesome.
• Rev. Wright email. I suspect that most black parishioners view hyperbole as stock in trade for their preachers.
• Cigarette tea.
• Real sugar coke. I guess they sell it for passover. I meant to buy some and stash it away. Damn.
• Is Top Chef Just One Big Lesbianic Morality Play?
• Protesting the Federal Reserve.
• Back in black.
• Rapping 101.
• Ostrich eggs at Whole Foods. Not mine, unfortunately.
• Ask Zawhiri.
• Wonder fish.
• RIGHT ON!!! Seriously, it’s been a long while since I’ve eaten at McDonalds.
• 20% off Apple Photobooks, good until Mother’s Day.
• How to flip your car in 30 seconds or less.
• Twitter
• Bolut. Someone should make this en gelée.
• Artificial meat. I think it’s probably better than the factory farms that we get most of our meat from currently…
• Measured in terms of death by time spent in the vehicle, airplanes are less safe than cars.
• Boston.com wants your copyright.
• The Nazis DID host the olympics. Gotta love protesters.
• More Paul Grahams.
• Waterproof your iPod Shuffle.

I’ll see if I have some time to blog tonight. I really do have some interesting stuff to say. Honest!!!

When the Wall Street Journal is telling you that your policies are designed to rob Main Street to give the money to Wall Street, you know it’s gotten bad:

So Federal Reserve officials are whispering to reporters that they will consider a “pause” after another interest-rate cut this week. Perhaps we should be more respectful, but this sounds like the alcoholic who tells his wife he’ll quit drinking next weekend, after one more bender. What Chairman Ben Bernanke needs isn’t a gradual withdrawal from easy money but membership in Central Bankers Anonymous.

* * *

Eight months into the Fed’s most recent rate-cutting spree, the evidence is overwhelming that it has been a major policy mistake. Aggressive rate cutting – taking the fed funds rate to 2.25% from 5.25% last September – has had little effect on the banking crisis it was supposed to ease.[…]

The practical impact has been to send energy and food prices soaring. This is a direct tax on both the world’s poor and America’s middle class. Just when the U.S. economy needs a resilient consumer given the fall in housing prices, these price increases have eviscerated consumer pocketbooks. In its attempt to help Wall Street and the financial system, Fed policy is punishing average Americans. The public is frustrated and angry with these price increases, and it has a right to be. Inflation is the thief of the thrifty middle class.

And we wonder why people refuse to save.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

So Wesley Snipes is going to jail for 3 years for not filing tax returns. Dan Riehl understands the implications:

But what’s perfectly clear in America today is one thing - you don’t screw with the tax man. Never let it be said that our government doesn’t know from whence its power springs.

It would be wise to consider that when debating hyper-regulative responses to issues like global warming and supporting politicians who love big government. It always comes with a price. And ultimately that price is freedom, just as much as it is dollars.

In relative terms, there will be little or no liberal hand-wringing over the Snipes conviction, which causes one to wonder if they really understand freedom at all. Snipes appears to be guilty, but he WAS striking Big Brother at its heart in a way few if any anti-war protesters ever do.

And the message is clear - Big Brother knows how to deal with threats to its collective heart when they really matter.

It’s all about the money, which is all about controlling your life.

Read Dan Riehl.

(via kung foo)

So apparently it’s not good enough to tank the mortgage market and then have the US taxpayers finance a bailout. Now we have to have a repeat performance with the education market:

To summarize: Congress mandated a return on student loans that is too low to attract private capital in the current market. So Congress will now use your money to create artificial investor demand. Taxpayers will bear more risk so that Congress can fashion a new business model to replace the one it just destroyed. The Bush Administration, unwisely but typically, has endorsed this approach.[…]

Daniel Akaka, Bob Casey, Tom Carper, Chris Dodd, Tim Johnson, Bob Menendez and Jon Tester are desperately seeking a bureaucrat with a large checkbook to rescue them from their self-made political disaster. Last Thursday they wrote Mr. Bernanke asking him to accept student loans as collateral under the Fed’s new Term Securities Lending Facility. They sent a similar letter to Treasury Secretary Paulson asking him to order the Federal Financing Bank to buy student-loan-backed securities.

So having raised solemn alarms when the Fed began to accept dodgy mortgage-backed securities as collateral, the Senators are now demanding that the Fed accept dodgy student-loan paper too. The Senators helpfully note in their letter that a virtue of their proposals is that they can be implemented quickly. Indeed, November is just around the corner.

Of course, as George Will points out, out free education sector is a mess (which is probably why so many people need to pay to go to college; to learn what they should have learned in high school):

In 1994, Congress grandly decreed that by 2000 the high school graduation rate would be “at least” 90 percent and that American students would be “first in the world in mathematics and science achievement.” Moynihan, likening such goals to Soviet grain quotas — solemnly avowed, never fulfilled — said: “That will not happen.” It did not.

Moynihan was a neoconservative before neoconservatism became a doctrine of foreign policy hubris. Originally, it taught domestic policy humility. Moynihan, a social scientist, understood that social science tells us not what to do but what is not working, which today includes No Child Left Behind. Finn thinks NCLB got things backward: “The law should have set uniform standards and measures for the nation, then freed states, districts and schools to produce those results as they think best.” Instead, it left standards up to the states, which have an incentive to dumb them down to make compliance easier.

Great. Oh, and let’s not forget, our schools are super easy compared to intellectual strongholds like Bangladesh…

Question has been bugging my friend, I promised I’d blog it for him. Click to enlarge.

Please, Lord, when will it end???

Caught this interesting link over at Instapundit. Basically, fuel and food prices correlate 90% to the decline in the dollar. Go figure:

The chart below shows the price of 100 pounds of rice against the euro’s parity against the US dollar during the past 12 months. The regression fit is 90%. There is an even tighter relationship between the price of rice and the price of oil, another store of value against dollar depreciation.

As the chart makes clear, the ascent of the cost of rice to $24 from $10 per hundredweight over the past year tracks the declining value of the American dollar. The link between the declining parity of the US unit and the rising price of commodities, including oil as well as rice and other wares, is indisputable. China has bid aggressively for rice all year, and last week banned rice exports, along with Vietnam and several other producers.

For developing countries whose currencies track the American dollar and whose purchasing power declines along with the American unit, this is a catastrophe, as World Bank president Robert Zoellick warned the Group of Seven industrial nations in Washington last week. Food security suddenly has become the top item on the strategic agenda.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

Also, Robert Samuelson today talks about the effects that changing demographics have on the economy:

The “life cycle” (aka demographics) also promoted the shopping extravaganza. People borrow and spend more in their 30s and 40s, as they buy homes and raise children. In the 1980s and 1990s, many baby boomers were passing through their peak spending years. That reinforced the wealth effect. Finally, the “democratization of credit” supported the shopping spree. At the end of World War II, it was hard for most Americans to borrow. Since then, mortgages, auto loans and personal credit have been liberalized. By 2004, three-quarters of U.S. households had debt.

All these forces for more debt and spending are now reversing. The stock and real-estate “bubbles” have burst. Feeling poorer, people may save more from their annual incomes; it’s already much harder to borrow against higher home values. Demographics tell the same story. “Life-cycle spending drops among 55- to 64-year-olds” — they borrow less and their incomes decline — “and that’s where our household growth is now,” says Susan Sterne of Economic Analysis Associates.

And credit “democratization”? Well, the message of the subprime-mortgage debacle is that it went too far. Up to a point, the spread of credit was a boon. Homeownership increased; people had more flexibility in planning major purchases. But aggressive — and often abusive — marketers peddled credit to people who couldn’t handle it. There are no longer large unserved markets of creditworthy consumers. Indeed, many Americans are overextended. In 2007, household debt (including mortgages) totaled $14.4 trillion, or 139 percent of personal disposable income. As recently as 2000, those figures were $7.4 trillion and 103 percent of income.

The resulting retrenchment of consumer spending is already being felt. “Retailing Chains Caught in a Wave of Bankruptcies,” headlined The New York Times last week. […]

[W]hat if nothing takes the place of the debt-driven consumption boom? Its sequel is an extended period of lackluster growth and job creation. Somber thought. The ebbing shopping spree may challenge the next president in ways that none of the candidates has yet contemplated.

Now put those both together. Inflation while the economy is showing down due to an aging population. Remember the Jimmy Carter years, when senior citizens ate dog food because inflation has turned their SS check into nothing? I do…

The future looks bleak indeed.

I don’t have much to say about it. It was relatively close. Hillary picked up a few delegates, which will be negated by the upcoming Indiana and North Carolina primaries. Obama will still be the nominee. The only question is what Hillary does with herself once that happens.

Its editor resigns:

In the highest-profile sign of change at The Wall Street Journal in the five months since Rupert Murdoch became its owner, Marcus Brauchli resigned his post on Apr. 22 as the top editor.

Brauchli, 46, had been managing editor, the Journal’s top editorial position, for less than a year. He was named to his position, one of the world’s most powerful in newspaper journalism, mere days before Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.’s (NWS) unsolicited bid for Wall Street Journal parent company Dow Jones became public.

He says that the new ownership deserves the opportunity to choose their own editor. Sure that’s why he’s leaving.

Read more here.

So here a few bits from Earth Day. First the founder of Greenpeace explains why he left:

The breaking point was a Greenpeace decision to support a world-wide ban on chlorine. Science shows that adding chlorine to drinking water was the biggest advance in the history of public health, virtually eradicating water-borne diseases such as cholera. And the majority of our pharmaceuticals are based on chlorine chemistry. Simply put, chlorine is essential for our health.

My former colleagues ignored science and supported the ban, forcing my departure. Despite science concluding no known health risks – and ample benefits – from chlorine in drinking water, Greenpeace and other environmental groups have opposed its use for more than 20 years.

John Cox celebrates Earth Day; with a finger up the nose.

David exhorts us not to buy the hype.

And on a different note, check out the Solatube.

George Will is on fire over the recent Fed moves. Welcome to the party:

The late Sen. William Proxmire, a populist Democrat who represented Wisconsin for 32 years, wanted all members of Congress to write on their bathroom mirrors, so it is the first thing they read each day, this: “The Fed is a creature of Congress.”[…]

Today’s argument is that Bear Stearns was so connected to the financial system in opaque ways that no one could guess the radiating consequences of its failure — the financial consequences or, which sometimes is much the same thing, psychological.

But what is now the principle by which other distressed firms will elicit Fed interventions in future uncertainties? By what criteria does Washington henceforth determine whether a large entity is “too connected to fail”?

The Fed has no mandate to be the dealmaker for Wall Street socialism. The Fed’s mission is to preserve the currency as a store of value by preventing inflation. Its duty is not to avoid a recession at all costs; the way to get a big recession is to engage in frenzied improvisations because a small recession, aka a correction, is deemed intolerable. The Fed should not try to produce this or that rate of economic growth or unemployment.[…]

If Congress cannot suppress its itch to “do something” while markets are correcting the prices of housing and money, Congress could pass a law saying: No company benefiting from a substantial federal subvention (which would now include Morgan) may pay any executive more than the highest pay of a federal civil servant ($124,010). That would dampen Wall Street’s enthusiasm for measures that socialize losses while keeping profits private.

Read George Will.

Sorry, that was completely unwarranted but I couldn’t resist. The Journal has hired Thomas Frank, author of “What’s The Matter With Kansas?” to do a weekly column and in effect be the Journal’s left-of-center token columnist. Tom was a graduate student at the University of Chicago while I was a college student there, and we came to know each other in the fight to save the college radio station, WHPK. I haven’t spoken to him since then, and he probably doesn’t remember me in the slightest, but he was a good guy, and so I thought I give his new column a plug here.

Today Tom is writing about Obama’s so-called “bittergate”. Read Thomas Frank.

Here are my Google Reader & Short links for the week. Enjoy:

• Cats For Engineers
• Kohler Karbon Faucet
• Leatherman for Gardening
• Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy Infocom “Sequel” Released
• Obama on Tax Fairness
• 5lbs of Silly Putty
• Mocha Latte Pig
• What Happens When You Steal A Leopard Mac
• Obama’s Comments Not Seen As Bad Among Liberals
• Garlic and Rosemary Pizza Dough
• Jack In The Box BBQ Bacon Sirloin Burger Review. This really cracked me up.
• McCain Recipe Scandal
• Charcuterie
• Congress Wants To See States Tax The Internet. I guess their popularity isn’t quite low enough for them, huh?
• SOA Trade Show
• When Eating Dog Is Illegal, Eating Dog Becomes Dangerous. I have no interest in eating dog, but the attempts to ban horse meat here in the States bother me immensely.
• FSJ Rails Against Eco-VCs
• Curing Meat
• Like Mother Like Daughter
• Who’s Bitter?
• Index Tax Rebates To Inflation
• Hug An Athiest Day. Wow.
• iTunes Synchronization
• Virgin Broadband Hates Net Neutrality
• Free the Jefferson 1

Welp, that’s all folks!

I’ve lived in and around the Boston area for most of my life. Both my parents and their extended families hail form Watertown. So imagine my surprise when I got a postcard for Cosco Landscape which advertised itself as being located in Water Town, MA.

Who the heck writes it as two words???

What’s also weird is they feel the need to let me know they’re incorporated as an LLC, and finally it says “email at www.coscolandscape.com” which of course is not an email address.

Weird.

So Net Neutrality continues to be a big issue. The FCC is apparently getting involved, and their ideas don’t seem terribly bad:

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin is bringing his campaign for unfettered Internet access to Silicon Valley Thursday, putting Comcast Corp. on the spot, despite the cable giant’s efforts to back away from a policy of limiting the way customers download some Internet files.

Mr. Martin will preside over a seven-hour hearing at Stanford University that will explore what responsibilities Internet providers have to deliver traffic fairly, and what phone and cable companies should be telling consumers about the services they can expect for their $40 or $60 a month.

“We’ll focus on the disclosure issues and the broader impact these practices are having from the consumer perspective,” Mr. Martin said in an interview Wednesday.

If an Internet provider decides to limit traffic in some way to manage its network, that should be “clearly and reasonably disclosed to the consumer,” Mr. Martin says. “If people are going to upgrade [their Internet service] they need to understand what they’re getting.”

I think that’s basically right. What’s needed is truth in advertising, a sense of what you’re really getting for the money you pay. The simplest way for the networks to manage their bandwidth is to charge for peak vs off peak times, rather than a one price all you can eat approach. By manipulating pricing, they can get consumers to manage their behavior. But when they mess with Internet Protocol itself, they destroy the Internet, which is predicated on everyone playing by the same rules.

Too bad I don’t think the FCC has jurisdiction over Internet matters. If only congress would do it’s job…

Read more here.

So I’ve written about the shifting fault line in American politics before. My basic thesis is that with socialism out of the way, party politics will re-align with civil-libertarians and economic-libertarians aligning under one party roof, with the other party roof basically looking something like the Christian Democrat parties of Europe except more fundy.

The operative question is: which party will become which? Will black Christians eventually migrate over to the Republicans with their fellow white Baptists, or will civil-libertarian democrats wind up migrating over to the Republicans? According to Daniel Henninger, the Democrats are making a play for white Christians to head their way:

Remember the culture wars? This week the Democrats sued for peace.[…]

But even Karl Rove couldn’t invent God, and God and faith were everywhere in Grantham Sunday evening.

Sen. Clinton: Faith “is everything that makes life and its purpose meaningful as a human being . . . We want religion to be in the public square. If you are a person of faith, you have a right and even an obligation to speak from that wellspring of your faith . . . Our obligation as leaders in America is to make sure that any conversation about religion is inclusive and respectful. And that has not always happened, as we know.”

Sen. Obama: “Religion is a bulwark . . . Somebody like myself whose entire trajectory, not just during this campaign, but long before, has been to talk about how Democrats need to get in church, reach out to evangelicals, link faith with the work that we do . . . There is a moral dimension to abortion, which I think that all too often those of us who are pro-choice have not talked about or tried to tamp down. I think that’s a mistake . . . A comprehensive approach where we focus on abstinence, where we are teaching the sacredness of sexuality to our children.”

Some bloodless analysts have said for several years that Democrats had to say this to win because, you know, a lot of people “go to church.” And yes, what candidates seeking votes say may be false, faked or fantastic. What remains is the fact that these two, in competition for votes, have conferred political legitimacy and respect on this swath of America.

It remains to be seen where people actually head. But I do think that things are shifting. Economic-libertarians have no obvious home, religiously informed voters will eventually unite around one party, a party that preaches some form of mild socialism along side with social critiques, and the capitalists will unify with the ACLU and the gays and others to form the other party. I personally figured that the Republicans would wind up as the Religious party, since switching on the abortion stand seems to be impossible for either party to do. But I could be wrong.

Read my original essay on the Fault Line in American Politics.

Everyone on the planet has already referenced this MS sales video. In case you haven’t seen it, here it is:

Most everyone who has commented on it has either made some snarky remark, or made fun of corporate booster videos generally.

But what strikes me about this is the extent to which Microsoft disrespects its customers. If this video is to be believed, the typical corporate buyer is a stereotypical caricature of the fat businessman in a suit, easily angered and kinda dumb. The problem is, not everyone out there has Steve Ballmer for a boss. In fact, most of us don’t. And if you are the boss, the guy who makes that buying decision, is that how you want to see yourself portrayed? I’m serious…

So yesterday at lunch, a friend was showing me his implementation of SUSE Linux on his HP laptop. It was truly slick, and fast as hell. I’d really like to try one out. But one detail he pointed out to me really struck me. The HP laptop he had had this neat kind of volume control. It was a touchpad slider kind of mechanism; slide your finder to the left to turn the volume down, to the right to turn it up. My friend told me that when he had XP on it, it never worked properly. When he installed SUSE, it recognized the gizmo and now it works perfectly, as intended.

If my friend were the tech guy in my company and I were the boss, that demonstration alone would have made my decision for me. Videos of Bruce Springsteen imitators singing about how SP1 will finally convince the fat dumb suit that it’s ok to use Vista now actually push me in the same direction.

Nice work.

No, I didn’t watch. These debates are pretty much unwatchable, and you can get a better sense of the candidates positions by watching interviews with them or reading their positions on their websites. Nevertheless, a few articles about last night’s debate caught my eye. Apparently, the debate lived up to my craptastic expectations. Let’s start with booster David Brooks [emphasis mine]:

First, Democrats, and especially Obama supporters, are going to jump all over ABC for the choice of topics: too many gaffe questions, not enough policy questions.

I understand the complaints, but I thought the questions were excellent. The journalist’s job is to make politicians uncomfortable, to explore evasions, contradictions and vulnerabilities. Almost every question tonight did that. The candidates each looked foolish at times, but that’s their own fault.

Frankly, I don’t think he could have been more wrong about what the journalist’s job is. The journalists job is not to get the candidate in a “gotcha” moment or to try and embarass the candidate about some personal matter or some lack of knowledge about some trivial matter. That’s the Tim Russert/Sam Donaldson/Andy Hiller school of journalism, and it sucks.

The job of the journalist, if I may be so bold, is to ask questions so as to illuminate us as to what this candidate is likely to do once in office, particularly on issues that may be controversial, where the candidates may differ on their approaches. It would appear as if none of that occurred at last night’s debate. I’m glad I didn’t waste my time watching.

Oh, and on a side note, which brainiac decided it would be a good idea having George Stephanopoulos ask questions when one of the participants in the debate was a Clinton? I mean, I don’t know if Stephanopoulos loves or hates Hillary, but given his previous close working relationship with that family, shouldn’t ABC have found someone else to ask questions during the debate?

Now on to Tom Shales, who gives what sounds to me like an accurate description of last night’s “debate”:

When Barack Obama met Hillary Clinton for another televised Democratic candidates’ debate last night, it was more than a step forward in the 2008 presidential election. It was another step downward for network news — in particular ABC News, which hosted the debate from Philadelphia and whose usually dependable anchors, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, turned in shoddy, despicable performances.

For the first 52 minutes of the two-hour, commercial-crammed show, Gibson and Stephanopoulos dwelled entirely on specious and gossipy trivia that already has been hashed and rehashed, in the hope of getting the candidates to claw at one another over disputes that are no longer news. Some were barely news to begin with.

The fact is, cable networks CNN and MSNBC both did better jobs with earlier candidate debates. Also, neither of those cable networks, if memory serves, rushed to a commercial break just five minutes into the proceedings, after giving each candidate a tiny, token moment to make an opening statement. Cable news is indeed taking over from network news, and merely by being competent.

Wow. I actually thought ABC did an OK job with their first Republican debate, and CNN had sucked wind there. Regardless, I think it’s time for the candidates to just debate each other in slow motion on YouTube, taking their time to answer questions from each other and perhaps from noteworthy bloggers. If they did that, say taking one question a day for a month, the people would learn far more about the candidates than they ever do now with these “televised” debates.

Gingrich was right, this is no way to choose a President.

So it appears Honda is selling, leasing actually, their first fuel cell vehicle. It’s available in southern California only, for $600/mo. That includes maintenance. The car runs on hydrogen. They say they’re going to make it more available as they get more hydrogen stations up and running, and they’re even planning a “home station” to generate your own hydrogen.

Check out the Honda FCX Clarity.

Robert Samuelson delivers his usual goodness:

Even after today’s slowdown (recession?) ends, the outlook is worrisome. Consumers are heavily indebted. Housing will recover but probably not, for many years, to previous highs. Government spending is constrained by growth in the rest of the economy, unless Congress sharply raises taxes or deficits. Exports and related investments are the best hopes.

What House Democrats did was particularly perverse. They suspended Trade Promotion Authority, which mandates that Congress vote up or down on trade agreements within 90 days of their submission. TPA gives other countries a reason to negotiate in good faith. They can make politically difficult concessions without fearing that Congress will ignore the agreement because it dislikes the U.S concessions.

Americans do have legitimate trade complaints: China manipulates its currency to aid exporters; other countries restrict imports. It’s in the U.S. interest to dismantle these obstacles. Now the suspension of TPA can serve as an excuse — symbolically and substantively — for other countries not to negotiate, just when U.S. firms can most benefit from market openings.

No wonder no one trusts us. First we clamor that we want to unilaterally re-negotiate treaties that were negotiated in good faith, and then we suspend our rules that encourage other countries to negotiate with us in good faith. So much for the Democrats repairing out international image abroad.

Whatever. Bust just negotiates treaties with Iraq and then doesn’t submit them to the Senate as he’s constitutionally requires. It’d be nice if someone in out government lived up to their commitments.

IN any event, read Robert Samuelson.

Apparently, Boston is the #2 place to buy real estate in the country right now:

Average in Waltham: $406,000

One of the first places to experience the downturn, Beantown also appears to be among the first to rebound: In the last quarter of 2007, prices rose 1%.

#1 is Atlanta.