Building an Analogy

Professor J,

Thorough answer, as always. I'm amused that you anticipated my question about adjustments and answered it before I even had a chance to think of it. :)

You are right in pointing out that a certain amount (you put it at $30,000) would need to be exempt, thus protecting a base amount of income for people to live on. I was more intrigued though by your concept of a "US occupancy fee." That might help in some small way towards people having a sense of "ownership." I think most people rarely give any thought to their own responsibility as citizens, or how they are or are not contributing to their communities or to the nation as a whole. It also reminded me of something I heard Ben Stein say during a panel discussion once. His Democratic counterpart used the analogy of a building association in reference to taxes used to pay for things we all benefit from and the meetings were likened to elections, where we all decide how we are going to manage the building. Stein stopped the anchor person who was ready to move on to say (I'm paraphrasing), "Can we just stop for a moment? I want to acknowledge an excellent point when I hear one, and that is actually a very good analogy."

The way the Republicans twisted the president's "You didn't build that" comment, when he was trying to make a point about how we all benefit from investments in things like roads and bridges, shows how detached we are from grasping this concept. A dearth of understanding (due to the lack of teaching, and valuing) of basic civics keeps us arguing and divided about things, that in reality, people would certainly agree on if they could be bothered to give it five minutes of rational thought.

Here's a question as the election looms: To what do you attribute the closeness of so many presidential elections? State and local elections seem to have more clear winners and losers.  We seem to be almost divided exactly in half in regards to political ideology. Are we like a divorced couple who agree on little sharing the same house, or is something else at play, like a populace that is wary of either side wielding too much power for too long?

I'd never thought of the fact that just after elections we are all distracted immediately by the holidays. Excellent point. Then it's time for weight loss and organization followed by Valentine's Day. And of course there are always squirrels! ;) We'll give it our somewhat full and temporary attention again when we are on the verge of a full blown crisis. But as you have noted, something may be coming that will demand our total long term focus. 

You just have time to squeeze in a civics lesson before Tuesday! :)

Look, A Squirrel

Madame M:

A completely flat tax might SEEM fair, but it isn’t unless adjustments are built into it, and, assuming no deductions, those adjustments are the same complexity as a progressive system.  But a progressive system without deductions brings in far more revenue on average, and, more importantly, spurs the system to delay and de-emphasize profit taking, and instead reinvest in both workers and the long-term. 

I will anticipate you asking me what adjustments would have to be built if there were a flat tax, and they are primarily these: A certain amount ($30,000?) of each person’s income would need to be exempt from taxation (except for maybe a $100 “US occupancy fee”) to keep a flat rate from falling disproportionally upon the poor.  In effect, this would mean taxation would not begin until one had an income of $30,000, with everything above that amount having the flat tax rate applied to it.  This too has complications, however, among them the determination whether one begins it at that point, or one “pro-rates” it over the whole expectancy period, meaning, the expected tax is deducted bit by bit every “pay period.”

The idea of eliminating deductions has complications where businesses are concerned.  We would have to decide as a society whether to allow businesses to deduct nearly the full range of their present types of deductions (there are both benefits and abuses to this), or to merely allow them to deduct the costs to directly produce the goods or services.  If we allow the full range, expect the number of “businesses” to increase significantly, and that means headaches with auditing and enforcement.  And deciding whether the present types of entrepreneurial businesses, that are treated as flow through individual persons for tax purposes, will get to have the deductions, is a problem too.  Always complications!

Regardless, having present tax rates without deductions can only be kept up for so long without needing to reduce the rates.  A deep and painful recession would be effectively unavoidable, and we would need to get some rate relief within a reasonable time so as not to contract the economy too much or trigger a depression.

Pain.  Serious pain.   Not going to be easy AT ALL.

The election is nine days away.  We Americans, among our many political/civic/historical bad habits, have the particularly bad one of most of us paying SOME attention to the spectacle of electioneering for a while, and then ceasing to pay almost ANY attention afterwards.  Just when the hard business of governing, legislating, and forcing the system to be responsive is needed, most Americans jump instead into shopping, holidays, and diversions of many sorts, and never really get TO, let alone BACK, to the matter of making their creature—government, the instrument Locke and the Framers devised for them—bend to their will, the good of the many.

Leaving the selfish relative few to get what they want instead.

Repeat.

Send in the Adults

Professor J,

Good to hear there was some shinkage of spending and the deficit.(I'll admit that the word shrinkage always makes me think of George Costanza in the pool.) :)

Well, you have a plan better than the ones spouted by actual candidates. And I think at this point when people are tired of the nonsensical platitudes being offered up by both sides that you might get more support for things like pain, shared sacrifice, confronting fear, and confronting fear than you might imagine. I often feel that the populace is in the same mood as the child who has had too many sweets and television over a holiday and longs for someone to rein them in. The child never admits this, of course, but when it is imposed upon them there is a relief in the return to more healthy and productive ways. Not without tears and complaints however.

The question is--are we mature enough to impose those painful, yet healthy limits on ourselves?

I especially like that you  threw in "confronting irrational and excessive fear." We are a people who are conditioned to now be afraid of everything. We are paying a heavy, though often unrecognized, price for that in many areas of life. From bringing up a generation of over scheduled constantly supervised children to the willingness to vote for the Patriot Act. When did we lose our spirit of courage? How might we work to get it back? Sadly, it seems one of those things which once lost, is gone forever.

The tax code is a big part of the problem and needs much correction as you have pointed out. You make several suggestions for tackling what is wrong with it now. Can you explain why you fall short of endorsing a flat/fair tax? Or is it just that a complete overhaul would be too big an endeavor in the current political and economic climate? OR perhaps your  answer is in your post when you said that our political system "doesn't lead it follows. Right now, it follows the selfish plutocrats."

I hear you echoing Hedges in pointing out that we are better off coming up with a plan and demanding that our "leaders" implement it. I'm remembering him saying that we shouldn't expect solutions to come from the top down, but from the bottom up.

Very interesting point you make about the "global stability of the core" and the world being more low risk than is sometimes thought due to the"desire of the non-core countries to join the core." It always strikes me that for most of these seemingly irrational despots and nefarious troublemakers that it is much more fun to run around and talk about blowing the world up than to actually do it. As we saw recently it can gain you a week's worth of attention at the UN no matter how crazy you are.

Confrontation Nation

Madame M:

Thanks for giving readers a peek at what each of our blogs are like!  And now on to today’s topic…

It’s too early to make definitive statements about Fiscal Year 12, which just closed September 30^th for the federal government, but it appears that total spending actually declined about a 100 billion dollars from the year before.  The deficit, while still quite large, appears to have shrunk by at least $200B, and maybe by as much as $500B.  It is on track to shrink further, but it is not going to go away on the present course, because that course has been a dozen years or more in the making.

There IS a way to meet our financial—deficit, debt, and otherwise—crises:

Pain.

Shared sacrifice.

Confronting irrational and excessive fear.

Taxing detrimental things the most and productive the least.

For instance:

Getting rid of deductions simplifies and equalizes the tax code without a flat rate, and generates $1.3T in revenue.  That more than solves the yearly deficit.  It will also mean pain.  And shared sacrifice—from everyone.  And maybe a painful transitioning recession.

Recognizing the global stability of the core, and the desire of non-core countries to join the core, means the world is far more low-risk than sometimes thought.  What risks exist are not of the big-ticket-item (tanks, ships, fighters and bombers) variety, and cost much less to address.  That could save half, maybe even two-thirds, of the present expenditures on “security.”  Savings: $300B to $1T a year.  It will also mean living with some general risk so that the certainty of present-course financial disintegration is averted.

Taxing environmentally damaging things will generate revenue AND steer us into REAL energy independence while we try to stabilize the environment and the climate AND will spur the transition to a clean, renewable energy future without the problems of direct subsidization.

And eventually, working citizens can get a real, sustainable, lowering of their taxes, WHILE the debt is paid down.

And along the way, we can decide how far we want to go in reforming government payments (transfer and otherwise) such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, in addition to all the things that get lumped into “welfare.”

The political system is completely unresponsive to the above, of course.  It doesn’t lead, it follows.  Right now, it follows the selfish plutocrats.  If non-plutocratic Americans take the energy they traditionally fritter on sports watching, shopping, holiday obsession, entertainment, and a number of other distractions and diversions, and instead apply it consistently and continually to the above, the system will respond.  Quite grudgingly at first, as the Great Ship rights itself, but it still is built to respond to the call of its Great People Captains.

We keep asking our politicians to come up with “a plan,” but actually, the plan is better if we come up with it and demand they implement it.

The world has so much promise, probably never more promise at any time in its history, and is set for more common cooperation than ever before. It’s just that right now, that world is largely in the hands of the selfish and the short-sighted, at least in the flagship country still in the lead (that would be US).  To wrest it away from the visionless will take confronting our own selfishness, illusions, and delusions, and the swallowing of painful, bitter medicine.  Medicine that will take a long time to heal our afflictions, but that give us real hope that life can be so much better than we presently imagine.

America, this is your character test.  The great historical pen is out to write either a chapter of renewal or a chapter of disintegration.  And unborn descendants perhaps watch from a spiritual plane whether those they will mortally call their “ancestors” rise to true greatness or just tell themselves they’re great and go back to all their petty diversions, distractions, and denials.   From greatness will come future reverence and present self-pride.  From the other will come future despising—and perhaps present self-loathing.

The Housewife Cheats

Professor J,

Okay, I know right now it's supposed to be all politics all the time as we head into the final stretch of election season. But a vacation and various other factors have conspired against me getting in a very thoughtful post this week. My solution is to offer up a distraction. "Look over there! Forget I haven't written a relevant post this week! And that I'm late! Would you believe the dog ate it?"  :)

So Dear Reader in case you never wander over to our personal blogs, here's what you are missing this week: On mine,                  The Danger of a Bucket List

When the movie came out the term "Bucket List" immediately made it's way into the American lexicon. Suddenly everyone has a list of things they want to accomplish and mark off before they kick the bucket. I actually had such a list written out about 15 years before the movie was released, but I think most everyone has a list of this sort, at least floating around in the back of their mind.

Here's the problem: Life isn't about scratching something off a list. In fact, the danger in seeing it that way is that the place, event, or activity may not be experienced to the fullest. Several years ago I took a trip and when I returned a friend asked it I had seen a couple of particular things. I hadn't, but I'd had a wonderful time and seen interesting different things that were enjoyable to me. Life is full of side streets and unexpected joys. It's best to stay open to those while you are on your quest. It's also full of detours and places you have arrived while the doors are locked. That's okay. Life may have unexpected treasures for you, you know nothing of.

Make sure your bucket has a hole in it. We want life to be full of exciting things. We want to sail around the world or write the great American novel. We see movies and read books about what other people are doing and we get a skewed view of our own lives. The better bucket list may include things like making little kids laugh, or volunteering at a local charity, or tutoring a struggling student. Sharing your experience and knowledge is a practical and rewarding thing to put on your list. Standing water stagnates. Keep what is in the bucket flowing in and out.

Today may have some things worth putting in the bucket. Life isn't actually made up of big moments. It mainly consists of millions of small ordinary moments, thousands of days, strung together to make a life. You don't want to spend so much time making, or dreaming about your list that you miss the simple joy of today.  When was the last time you visited a museum and sat in front of a work of art for half an hour contemplating it? You may want to add something like "See as many sunrises as possible." to your list. Too many people miss today searching for life's few big moments.

Keep filling the bucket. The thing about lists is, that we are eager to get to the end of them and feel a sense of accomplishment. As you learn and grow, the list will both shrink and expand. You may mark things off the list, not because you do them, but because you no longer need to do them. You may need to replace them with other more important or interesting things. Some of them may be released. Some of them may die. It's okay. Keep adding the new things you'd like to accomplish. Life, above everything else is a process.

Put "Keep moving forward." at the top of the list.  Here are some things that are on friends' lists: Travel to Italy, get a Ph.D., run a marathon, repair a broken relationship, write a book that will challenge status quo thinking. All of those goals have something in common. They cannot be accomplished standing still. Being a life long learner, getting and staying fit, and working on improving relationships are worthy of a spot on your list. The more you focus on forward momentum, the more you can tweak that list into something more meaningful than just a list of places to see and things to do.

A lot of things show up on these lists because of what everyone else thinks we should want to do. Your list will be unique and personal to you. It doesn't have to include skydiving or visiting the Taj Mahal. Think about what you really want to accomplish in life and let your list reflect that. Work toward making those things happen, but leave yourself lots of freedom to explore, wander, and dump out the bucket and start over. Just don't let it get rusty. You are only going this way once.

On The Professor's: Doubling Down on a Dose of Double Bull

“Double taxation” is mostly a straw-man argument.  Lots of people and situations are double or triple taxed:  Income taxes, payroll taxes, and sales taxes.  Every time you pay your repairman, or well, practically ANYBODY, you do so with money you have already paid taxes on.  And that repairman will pay taxes on the money you give him or her, and so on.

So capital gains and corporate taxes are not the big deal of disparate treatment they’re made out to be by the right-wing, although the flow of capital and investment PERHAPS needs consideration. 

Lower capital gains don’t create jobs here either.  We’ve had them for many years and few livable wage jobs have been created by it.  They mostly just enrich the rich further, while the secretaries who serve the rich pay a higher rate on an incredibly smaller income.

We have to quit being manipulated by these deflective, deceptive lines of bull.  History is going to record us as self-destructants willingly conned into acting against our interests and for the interests of those doing the conning.  The people of the future will say those words: “How could they let that happen to themselves?”

Unless we start questioning more and accepting less.

A Word On Three Programs

Yes, Madame, yes!  We HAVE mentioned those before.  We’ll keep it up though.  Sometimes things have to be mentioned a lot and be around for quite a while before they stick.

I know I’m probably supposed to mention something about last Thursday’s VP debate.  Ok.  Both men performed adequately for what their “side” sent them up to do: Biden to be the more assertive/aggressive, and Ryan to be foreign policy savvy and “vice-presidential” in his first big debate.  Both men along the way threw out deflections, “screens,” and a lot of other manipulative debating/politicking points.  Mostly so we wouldn’t know the R/R ticket largely doesn’t have realistic plans and specifics and the O/B ticket doesn’t want to take a black eye over an obvious bad show (death of ambassador Stevens) before the election.

Turning to JC’s comments of September 8^th (here: http://www.facebook.com/ProfessorandHousewife?sk=notes):

I’m an Independent.  I don’t drink anyone’s Kool-Aid.  I don’t like or put much faith in Democrats, but their “opposites,” the Republicans, have largely abandoned rationality and reasonable cooperation in favor of the most petty and often bizarre obstructionist stances.  I actually respect and heed thoughtful Republicans like David Stockman, Mike Lofgren, or Olympia Snowe.

While I have disagreements with Paul Krugman’s stands at times, I don’t categorically dismiss him or disparage his credentials.  Labeling him a “socialist/economist” is painting a picture that plays well to American rabid politics, but is not very meaningful.  He might be considered a fan of the socialist/capitalist hybrid on the Scandinavian model, but that doesn’t make him a socialist.  And your use of the word indicates a bias that can cloud appraisal.  You’ll also have to be more specific about such blanket ideological assertions that Dr. Krugman is not competent in macro-economics.  You may disagree with his positions and conclusions, but the analytical tools he uses are classic in nature, and just as macro as other economists.

And now to the first of the specific points, the assertion that the prime reason for the problems of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security is that those who never paid into these “accounts” took money from them.  First, there are no “accounts”; that is a common misconception that plays into the hands of those who want to privatize these programs.  They are just that: programs.  They are all three, in effect, insurance, from those presently working, supplied to the elderly who have ceased work (for Medicare and Social Security), to those who have become disabled (Social Security), and to those who are too poor to afford care or who are on the verge of extreme poverty (Medicaid and Supplemental Social Security).

Social Security is funded by workers and employers.  Those are inadequate to continue benefits as at present, although even if there were no “trust funds” and taxes were never raised, the system could go on in perpetuity if it only paid out 70-80% of the stated benefits.   Social Security, at least, is not “going broke.”  Its problems are very addressable.

Medicare is funded from three sources (workers, employers, and premiums on recipients).  All three of those sources are inadequate.   Medicare has severe funding problems, and with the rise of both medical costs and numbers of elderly, it is a train wreck in the making unless something is done (refer to my previous post as to why the “Ryan Plan” is not that something).

Medicaid is not separately funded at all, and comes from general federal and state revenues.  It too has seen its costs rise, as more people slip into poverty, and more people attempt to get it.  It is one of the drivers of state budgets becoming hard to manage.

Illegal aliens are not entitled to any of these benefits, although fraudulent obtaining does occur.  It’s just unknown what the rate of that fraudulent obtaining is. 

The first point needs to be worded more carefully.  Saying “People drawing from Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security who have never put anything into these accounts” implies use of the actual programs by freeloaders.  This can easily be used as deceptive, manipulative language.  Words matter. 

It is also largely incorrect even in the subsequent explanation.  Yes, the yearly surpluses in Social Security and Medicare were foolishly and selfishly squandered by a people and their politicians who irresponsibly delayed hard decisions or even emplaced selfish ones.  That part is true.  But the yearly surpluses in those programs, surpluses used to mask the true size of the deficits, were not spent on non-taxpayers—unless your professor means the foreign beneficiaries of our military’s posture and actions.  No, the diverted yearly “surpluses” were spent on  a mixture of misplaced allocation on contractors, on subsidies and corporate welfare, on defense, intelligence, security, etc. and also, in one form or another, directly or indirectly, on the citizens who were largely already paying the Social Security and Medicare taxes.   Was that spending often misplaced allocation of resources?  Yes.  And it helped us cover our underfunding of the government to go along with our overspending on the above.  Was it largely spending on the non-working?  Yes and no, often no.

Point two is simply incorrect (see here: http://www.factcheck.org/2009/03/social-security-for-illegal-immigrants/).  It has never been legal to pay Social Security, Medicaid, or Medicare to illegal aliens.  Has fraud sometimes occurred?  Yes, and so has a lot of Medicare and Medicaid fraud unrelated to illegal aliens.  Has all that been enough to be a root cause, let alone THE root cause, of our fiscal problems?  No.  Calculations of pay ins and pay outs in the 3 mentioned programs generally run along actuarial expectations, with the margin of error in calculation generally no more than 7% or so.  Is 7% too much?  Yes.  But that’s the high end of the estimate.  And it’s not determinative exactly WHAT is causing that variance.

Even children born here of illegal immigrants, children who eventually receive “benefits,” usually enter the work force and begin paying, yes, payroll taxes—Social Security and Medicare.  Even many illegals pay these taxes—even though they may never qualify for them.

Do we have a problem with the poor from elsewhere wanting to get the “good life” in America?  Yes, another problem that comes with marked disparity—and desperation—between next door neighbors (if Mexico became more prosperous like Canada, much of the illegal immigrant difficulty would go away—we don’t have an illegal Canadian immigration problem).  Does this problem manifest with some illegally or loophole obtaining of benefits?  Yes.  Once again, it’s not the driver.  More likely a kid in the back seat.

Social Security and Medicare should not be compared to IRAs or 401ks.  First because those programs are primarily insurance, not investments, and function largely as transfer payments between generations.  Second, because those investment vehicles you name have been abused by Wall Street to deceive Americans that those Americans could “control” their “own” money rather than having it “locked away” with “no control” in a pension plan.  When, in reality, those average investors were at the mercy of traders and funds managers, while pension trustees usually got better deals and better results because of their greater collective leverage.  So this idea of “accounts” is more privatization code-talk by those beholden to a greedy Wall Street.  A Wall Street that salivates at the prospect of more large amounts of money they can make big profits on and leave the ill-informed and near-powerless small investor depleted and whipsawed.  You can almost see the subliminal “sucker” message.

As for whether those who paid into Social Security and Medicare may not get what they paid for, because much of the money was diverted:  There’s a great amount of truth to that.  But once again, the people—a largely apathetic people, a people with poor knowledge about, or valuing of, civics, politics, or history—let it happen.  While their politicians did do them a leaderless disservice, it is just as much true, in a way, that the people largely only have their own willful ignorance, uncaring attitudes, and selfishness to blame.  They devote most of their energies to things other than how their government and their society functions (or doesn’t).

Debate Rumblings

Professor J,

There was a lot of debate about the debate. Last week's first debate between the candidates (well the two we are allowed to hear from) pulled in a little over 62 million viewers. With 131 million voters in the 2008 election, we could say nearly half of voters (assuming that most who were watching could vote) watched the debate. I'm guessing if we take into account the high turnout in '08 due to people's excitement about being able to vote for the first African American to run for president, we might expect this year's turnout to return to the 2004 number of roughly 122 million, so we could say very nearly half of voters watched.

I'm slightly encouraged by the fact that half of voters would take time to inform themselves by watching. But the point of a debate is to make your points, provide evidence as to why you are right and your opponent is wrong (or at least not as right), and to change people's minds if they weren't going to vote for you. I'm not sure how successful either candidate was on that third one. The comments I've seen and heard are along the lines of "Our guy won," or "I didn't really want to vote for Romney but I feel better about it now," or "Their guy just showed how (pick one) sleazy, arrogant, uninformed, he is."  I haven't heard anyone say "I wasn't going to vote for him, but he made a really good point," or "I hadn't thought about it that way before."

We have lost our ability to listen. Hey, haven't we mentioned that before?

Having watched that debate I was pretty excited about another debate that just took place: The Rumble in the Air Conditioned Auditorium between Bill O'Reilly and Jon Stewart. The country needs a good laugh about now and those two provided it. It wasn't all fun and games. They covered some serious topics in a passionate debate while keeping a sense of humor, being good sports, and maintaining a relationship in the process. They made a great case not only for their respective ideas for but for the importance of civil discourse, and how the country suffers because of our lack of it.

Hey, haven't we mentioned that before?

Here are some quotes from the debate:

In reference to Romney's 47% O'Reilly said:  “About 20 percent of us are slackers, and it’s a growing industry.”

O'Reilly: “The mind-set is, if I can gin the system, I’ll do it because it’s easy.”

Stewart:  “If you take advantage of a tax break, you’re a smart businessman. If you take advantage of something you need to not be hungry, you’re a moocher.”

 O'Reilly: “It doesn’t matter what [President] Bush did. The job of the president now is to get the deficit under control, and you got to cut stuff.”

 While discussing cutting funding for PBS, Stewart said: "Give me back the $800 billion for the Iraq war and children's television is on the house."

O'Reilly: “You gotta let the free market run away a little bit. You gotta unleash the machine.”

A funny quip by Stewart (We can only hope that a somewhat less than civically-informed populace got the joke): "The first sentence of the Constitution mentions unions and welfare. I don't know what to tell ya."

There was one thing that both debates had in common. The speakers ran over the moderator. Though viewers would have much preferred looking at E.D. Hill compared to Jim Lehrer, at one point after a lengthy exchange, O'Reilly turned to Hill as she attempted to ask a question and said "Are you still here?"

It was refreshing to see a debate that was fun, and where every answer hadn't been focus grouped to death and polished beyond any substantive meaning. A friendly yet fiery argument that didn't leave frost hanging in the air. In his closing remarks Stewart referenced the other candidates we aren't allowed access to, specifically naming Gary Johnson.

Hey, haven't we...

Oh, never mind.

De-Brief

For those surfers who have come to this site by mistake thinking it is some Lady Chatterley’s Lover type collection, I’m afraid this title too will disappoint, despite its promise, for it’s not about either Madame or I shedding our undergarments, it’s about my short dissection of the first presidential debate of 2012.

That it has consumed the chattering communication channels says a lot about us.

First, it seems to confirm, in waves, Hedges’ contention that we are a spectacle culture, more about form and show than substance. 

It also says much, at least about many males, that we place so much emphasis on “scoring,” “slamming,” “beating,” etc., and little about issues, other than our surface knowledge which politicians use to manipulate us.  It is also why falsehoods and half-lies and deceptions and deflections can be tossed out by our politicians with no lasting consequences for them from us. 

We have a traditional/corporate media that needed a shake-up of this race, an imperative to make it tighter regardless of whether it really was or is, because that increases interest, and interest equates to money.  Social media, which emphasizes money matters far less, was much more in the middle on assessments of the debate.

Yes, the debaters were overbearing (the reader can decide which, if any, was more so), yes the moderator was not as assertive as maybe could have been the case (but an argument could also be made that letting the men talk revealed more than cutting them off), yes the questions were maybe too softball or general.

Yes, one candidate with low expectations turned in a “stronger” performance than expected, and that helped that candidate.  Yes, the other, with high expectations, turned in an acceptable performance, but because it was below expectations, it was termed “soft,” “meek,” or “off.”  Yes, we Americans love a contest between two contenders.

It’s one debate.  And it only occurred between the two establishment candidates.  The other two or three real candidates, who would have provided true breadth and perspective, were nowhere to be seen.  And most Americans neither know nor care.  And that makes our democracy feebler, for our discussions and considerations have resulting gaping holes in them.

One debate.  In a month it could be forgotten.  This American obsession with the NOW can be quite a weakness, and works to the detriment of our perspective.  We never seem to remember how our obsession with, well, most everything, turned out in hindsight to be excessive.

A Little Bird Told Me

Professor J, 

Our readers are probably still studying your last post. So as not to overwhelm them, and because I'm really tired, tonight's post is just for fun. My brilliant plan to do tweet live during tonight's debate was derailed. Twitter however, is my favorite part of live television and tonight's tweets did not disappoint. I'll leave the in depth analysis to you (our readers know how you love that). Here were my favorite moments:

Dan Savage ‏@fakedansavage

Domestic issues? Mitt is prepared to discuss maids, drivers, and gardeners.

Kevin Gosztola ‏@kgosztola

RT @chrislhayes: Glad they're going w/ red and blue ties that correspond with our now well-established chromatic partisan coding.

Laurie Penny ‏@PennyRed

Did...is Mitt FLIRTING with Obama?

 Peter Z. Scheer ‏@peesch

Obama only wants to hire math and science teachers in a country where no one knows ANY history.

Peter Z. Scheer ‏@peesch

Hi class. I'm professor Obama. Here's my syllabus.

 big_bird ‏@big_bird

shivering 

llisonkilkenny ‏@allisonkilkenny

I'm glad they shut third party candidates out of this thing to preserve its painfully boring atmosphere 

Melissa McEwan ‏@Shakestweetz

"You can't have people opening banks in their garage." LOL! What about in their CAR ELEVATORS?

jeremy scahill ‏@jeremyscahill

Any pundits who try to say someone won this debate was (incredibly) paying less attention than Jim Lehrer.

M. ‏@TrancewithMe

How can we make Jon Stewart hosting the debates happen? #debates

 Fire Tom Friedman ‏@firetomfriedman

Candidates seem tired. Y'all seem tired. I'm tired. How about we all get some sleep and try this again some other time? 

What an excellent idea...